Dispatches from Afghanistan -- Part One
Weekend Edition Saturday Producer Writes from War Zone

Longtime NPR senior producer Peter Breslow has covered trouble spots around the world, including Kosovo, Bosnia, Somalia, the Middle East and Central America. In 1988 he won a Peabody Award for his series of reports documenting a mountain climbing team's efforts to scale Mt. Everest. Since 1992, Breslow has been a senior producer with Weekend Edition Saturday. For three weeks in January and February, he produced Scott Simon's reports from Afghanistan, and sent back these dispatches.

Dear All,

Feb. 5, 2002 -- First the bad news: As I sit and write there is no water, no electricity and no heat. Our generator is broken. Our toilet is broken. Our satellite phone is broken. The weather in Kabul has switched from crisp Colorado sunshine to biting cold and snow and I’m wearing as much fleece and Capeline as my skeletal structure can support, but still, the end of my nose is as chilly and drippy as a Labrador retriever's. We, of course, only have to endure this for a month -- for most Afghans it's a lifetime.

Kabul View Photo: Peter Breslow, NPR

Scott Simon and translator Zalmai in Kabul. Photo: Peter Breslow, NPR

Now the good news: We have a great staff that is doing its best to try and make life comfortable. Zalmai is our translator. He graduated second in his class in engineering but has the heart of a poet. Andar is the can-do guy who runs the show. He is the former chess champion of Afghanistan. Shaffi is the cook who is also a kickboxing champ. (I'm sure a better kickboxer than chef... although with our instructions he's using less lard and more olive oil. We eat a lot of lamb and chicken, overcooked vegetables and, the occasional plate of pasta for whom al dente is but a faint dream.) I keep joking with him that I want to create a new cable TV show, Shaffi The Kickboxing Cook, learn culinary skills and self defense simultaneously!

These guys all suffered under the Taliban and the Mujahidin. Shaffi, who is certainly the sweetest person in central Asia, was hired to train some Talib bodyguards. When he did his job too well and slightly roughed up one of his sparring partners they cracked his head open with a rifle butt. Today, he wears the scar above his left eyebrow. Zalmai has survived bullets, grenades and rocket launchers. He’s got a brown spot in one of his eyes where some shrapnel burned him during an attack that occurred as he was filling sandbags in his end of town... ordered to do so by one of the warring factions. He had to flee to Pakistan when the Taliban heard that he was assisting women in a hospital. While in Pakistan he was drugged and robbed. The fighting has prevented him from furthering his education at home and taking advantage of an international scholarship he was awarded.

We’ve given everyone NPR caps so now it looks like a very minor league baseball team is piling out of the car when we show up.

Kabul is surrounded by unwelcoming peaks, which have become snowcapped in recent days. Parts of the city look like an archaeological dig. The south end of town has been shelled to Hiroshima proportions. With the adobe quality of the construction the ruins truly appear to be something from Masada or Mesa Verde. Other areas, like ours, are in good shape. NPR is renting a three-bedroom house that, when the electricity and water are functioning (before 8a.m. & after 6p.m.) is always chilly, but comfortable enough for a quasi-war zone. There are shops with goods... we bought Oreos (double cream filled), Ritz Crackers, Rice Krispies and tuna fish the other day. But we paid through the nose.

Wherever you go there are women, children and dusty old men begging for a 10-thousand Afghani note (less than $.30). If you start giving out money you are immediately engulfed by a quickly expanding crowd of grabbing hands that pursue you into the car. We are all bundled up against the stinging cold while these people wear the thinnest of wraps and no socks.

Scott, Peter, the brother of Padsha Khan - a warlord, and Sonia Pace - a VOA correspondent in Gardez.

In Gardez, Afghanistan: An associate of warlord Padsha Khan and Andar, a "fixer." Photo: Peter Breslow, NPR

Women are still clad in their baby blue burkas, still unsure whether someone might throw acid in their face if they bare it. I tried on a burka the other day. It is totally claustrophobic, eliminates peripheral vision and the ability to see where you are stepping. I don't understand how these women aren't falling on their noses half the time.

We've been sharing the house with Sonia Pace, the Voice of America correspondent, and Guy Chasen of The Wall Street Journal. (We've been using VOA's sat. phone when ours doesn't work.) Guy has now left... ordered out of the region by his editors for safely reasons after the kidnapping of his colleague Dan Pearl. Guy’s translator helped the Journal in procuring the computer hard drives with the al Queda materials on them which the Journal reported on and turned over to the U.S. government some weeks ago. Some people think the hard drives are the reason for the Pearl kidnapping. Now, people are after the translator. He came over the other night scared out of his wits, people hunting for him. His wife is due with their baby this week; he's had to sleep in a different place every night and now has fled to Pakistan, where he is hoping the U.S. will grant him a visa and asylum.

Yesterday, we made our first foray out of Kabul, about 2 1/2 hours south to the town of Gardez. Last week, two opposing factions there opened fire, killing 61 people. We were on hand for a prisoner exchange, which came off without incident. The ride to Gardez involved a climb over an icy mountain pass and we were all relieved to find that our driver was not a hotdog and really took his time. It was a bone-chilling scene waiting for the exchange to take place. We stood on a hillside, the snow and wind swirling, surrounded by men armed to the teeth with Kalashnikovs, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and anti-aircraft artillery. Some guys customized their guns with fluorescent tape; others wore a half dozen grenades around their waists (try not to trip, Buddy.) It may sound a little dangerous but it really wasn't.

But Afghans are very friendly to guests and the brother of the warlord Bacha Khan invited us out of the cold and into his wood-heated hut for some tea. We gave him an Oreo. When it came time for the prisoner exchange the group we were with asked for a piece of paper to write down the names of the men they were handing over. Scott supplied them with a sheet from his reporter's notebook, which just happens to be emblazoned with the logo of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association. So little did these fearsome warriors know that they carried a slip of paper bearing the imprint of a group that proclaims, "We’re here. We’re queer. We’re on deadline."

Right now we're waiting to receive from Islamabad a new charger for the sat. phone to replace the one that got fried from all the fluctuations in electricity. After it arrives we'll head out of town to Bamiyan, where the Taliban destroyed the giant Buddhas last year.

The sun has gone down. Time to put on another layer of long underwear and wipe my nose.

Read Part Two, Feb. 11, 2002.

In Depth

 View NPR correspondent Steve Inskeep's photosof war-ravaged Afghanistan from Dec. 10, 2001.

 Pictures and audio from Afghanistan by NPR correspondent Eric Weiner.