Afghan journalist Bilal Sarwary saw the fall of the Taliban in 2001 and the transformation of your country. But, as he explains in this note, he believes that the United States lost the opportunity to try to achieve a lasting peace.
In the last two weeks the path of his homeland took a terrifying turn, one that endangered his own life.
In 2001, was a carpet seller at the Pearl Continental hotel in Peshawar, Pakistan , and I was having another hassle-free day at work.
I’ll never forget the moment I looked up to watch TV, for a brief break between sales, only to witness firsthand the dramatic footage as a passenger plane hurtled toward the World Trade Center in New York.
Then the second plane and another at the Pentagon.
None of our lives would ever be the same again.
International attention was immediately focused on Afghanistan, where the ruling Taliban were accused of providing a sanctuary for the main suspects in the attack: Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda movement.
And the next day, all of a sudden, hundreds of foreign media teams crowded into the hotel lobby, desperate for someone who could speak English to help them as translators as they crossed the nearby border into Afghanistan.
I accepted that offer and haven’t stopped since.
I had not lived in Afghanistan since I was a child; our family had fled violence during the civil war, in the decade of 1990, when the Soviet troops withdrew.
So when I re-entered Kabul for the first time after all those years I was surprised discover destruction, with buildings reduced to rubble and twisted metal.
All signs of activity and bustle had vanished. The people were so poor and there was so much fear .
Initially I worked with Abu Dhabi TV and it was based at the Intercontinental hotel, with five other journalists.
I woke up every morning wrapped in a cloud of fear, as Kabul became the main focus of US airstrikes.
Known al Qaeda and Taliban operatives came and went from our hotel, and we saw them wandering the nearby streets.
Explosions echoed through the night. I wondered if our hotel was next. And then one morning in early December, the Taliban left .
In a matter of hours, people were lining up in front of the barber shops to have their beards cut.
Afghan rhythmic music hit the streets, filling the void left by the explosions . Afghanistan was born again that morning.
From that moment on, I was intimately involved in observing the lives of ordinary Afghans first hand, as they returned to normalcy, no longer as a translator but as a journalist in his own right.
From covering Tora Bora in the east, to the battle of Shai Koat in Paktia, he had seen the Taliban fall.
Their fighters disappeared in mountainous rural areas and their leaders fled to Pakistan.
In hindsight, it is clear to me that this was a missed opportunity, a moment in which USA he should have sat down with the Taliban to discuss a peace deal.
I saw a genuine will among the Taliban rank and file to depose arms and resume their lives.
But the Americans did not want that. From my reports, it seemed to me and many other Afghans that their motivation was revenge after 11 September.
The following years were a catalog of mistakes.
Poor and innocent Afghan villagers they were bombed and detained. The willingness of the Afghan government to allow foreigners to drive the war effort created a chasm between the authorities and the people.
I clearly remember an incident in which the Americans had mistakenly arrested and detained a taxi driver named Sayed Abasin on the road between Kabul and Gardez.
His father, Roshan, was an elderly and former employee of Ariana Airlines. After we exposed the bug, Abasin was finally released. But others did not have such good connections and were not so lucky.
The Americans persisted with a heavy-handed approach, leading to an excess of loss of lives among common Afghans .
In a clear attempt to minimize U.S. casualties, they prioritized bombs and drones over the use of ground troops.
Confidence in the Americans continued to erode and hopes for peace talks faded.
There were brief glimpses of what Afghanistan could become. I could drive on a highway for thousands of kilometers without fear of dying.
I traversed the country, driving from Kabul to remote villages in Khost and Paktika provinces late at night or early in the morning. the morning.
You could traverse the extraordinary countryside of Afghanistan.
The year 2010 was the turning point . It was when the insurgents began to fight back with renewed forces.
I remember one day very clearly: it was the day when a huge truck bomb pierced the heart of Kabul, shaking the city and breaking windows.
I was one of the first journalists on the scene and I am still traumatized by what I saw.
It was my first experience witnessing what would become the new normal , a fact of life imposed: killings, parties of bodies and corpses strewn across the blood-spattered ground.
And got worse . Later we would come to understand that the truck bombs and suicide attacks against Afghan forces, foreign forces and unarmed civilians in the middle of the city would mark the beginning of a very brutal chapter of the conflict.
In response, Americans increased their dependence on airstrikes , this time expanding its list of Taliban targets: weddings and funerals in rural areas of the country.
Ordinary Afghans came to see the sky as a source of fear. Gone are the days of gazing at sunrise, sunset, or the stars for inspiration.
On a trip to the lush green valley of the Arghandab River near the city of Kandahar, I arrived eager for see the most famous pomegranates in the country. But when I arrived, it was the blood of its residents, not the fruit juice, that flowed.
What I saw was a microcosm of what happened in so many rural areas of Afghanistan.
The Taliban had pushed their fighters into the valley, but government forces were doing everything possible to push them back.
Control of the area swung back and forth between the two sides, with ordinary Afghans caught in the middle .
That day I counted 33 air strikes. I lost count of the number of suicide car bombings launched in response by the Taliban. Houses, bridges and orchards were destroyed.
Many of the US airstrikes were based on information n of false intelligence , provided by someone who wanted to resolve a bitter personal rivalry or land dispute.
The growing lack of trust between ground forces and ordinary Afghans meant that American forces could not distinguish the truth from the lies.
The Taliban used these attacks to turn the Afghans against their own government, which turned out to be a fertile ground for your recruiting campaigns.
It was also during this period (between 2001 and 2010) than the generation of 11 September – Young Afghans who had been given the opportunity to study abroad, in India, Malaysia, USA .USA and Europe— returned to join the reconstruction effort of his country.
This new generation was hopeful to be part of a great national rejuvenation.
Instead, they were faced with new challenges . They returned to see new warlords empowered by the Americans. And they saw that corruption abounded.
When the reality of a country strays too far from its ideals, everyday pragmatism becomes the main engine of a person. A culture of impunity began to prevail.
The landscape of our country is misleading. It’s easy to be amazed by its beautiful valleys, sharp peaks, winding rivers, and small villages. But what is presented as a peaceful image has not brought peace to ordinary Afghans.
Peace cannot be found without security in your own home.
About four years ago, I was in a small village in Wardak province for a wedding.
By nightfall, people had gathered and were eating under the stars.
The sky was clear. But suddenly, the night erupted with the sound of planes and drones.
Clearly, an operation was taking place nearby. A sense of doom fell on the wedding party.
More late that night, I found myself sharing kabuli pulao (also called kabuli palaw or qabuli pulao, it is the Afghan national dish, rice with raisins, carrots and lamb), bread and meat with the father of a Taliban fighter who described in egregious detail how they had killed his son in Helmand province.
His son had only 25 years and left a widow and two small children.
I was speechless when the father explained to me with melancholy pride that, although he was only a humble farmer, his son was a talented fighter who has He believed in fighting for a different life.
All he could see on this old man’s face was pain and sadness.
Under the control of the Taliban, music was not allowed, not even at weddings . Instead, all the villagers’ gatherings were filled with these sad stories.
People often overlook the human cost to the Taliban: on the other side there are also widows, parents who have lost his children and young people crippled by war.
When I asked this father what he wanted, his eyes filled with tears and he said: “I want to end the fight. It’s enough. I know the pain of losing a child. I know that Afghanistan must have a peace process , there must be a ceasefire. ”
My Kabul office was just a few kilometers from a large military hospital.
Friends, family and acquaintances from my home province, Kunar, they often asked me to accompany them to the hospital to identify the bodies of family members who were members of the Afghan National Security Forces.
Sometimes I felt that the weight of these coffins crushed the spirit of my province.
When the Americans recently began negotiations with the Taliban in Doha, we were initially overwhelmed with hope.
The country yearned for a complete and permanent ceasefire and Negotiations were seen as the only way forward.
I, like so many millions of Afghans, had not seen peace in me i country in my life .
It didn’t take long for our dreams shattered.
It became clear that the conversations were only trying to capitalize on victories on the battlefield, not trying to agree on a vision
From the perspective of an ordinary Afghan, they made no sense.
The Americans liberated 6. 01 Taliban fighters and commanders from prison, which was sold as a way to achieve a credible and meaningful peace process, and a permanent ceasefire.
But that never happened.
Instead, the peace process was marred by a heartbreaking campaign of high-profile assassinations.
Some of the most capable people in our country, from the media media, the legal sector and the judiciary, were murdered on their doorstep in Kabul and across the country.
As the talks between the Americans and the Taliban were taking place, I remember a local police chief standing up in the middle of a court martial meeting and suddenly accused the Americans of abandoning to Afghan forces when talking to the enemy.
“They have stabbed us in the back,” he said angrily.
Like many Afghans, your relationship with the US It is full of pain.
One of my former classmates is a member of the Taliban and we are the same age. During the last 20 years, we have continued talking, despite the fact that he adheres to a different ideology than mine.
But recently, I saw him at a wedding and I could see how his attitude had hardened and soured. I saw and felt how this conflict has really divided Afghans.
When we passed each other we could barely talk. He wasn’t the guy I remembered from our days in Peshawar, playing cricket and filling our faces with juicy oranges.
How was I to know that all these years later I would find him on the other side?
His story is also one of deep personal loss. His brother, father and uncle were killed in a raid that was based on false intelligence information and petty local rivalries.
Separated as we are, no I can avoid having l in hope of a future of national reconciliation.
But that seems like a distant possibility now.
I covered the regional capitals that fell into the hands of the Taliban in recent weeks, with massive surrenders in which no one resisted. But I didn’t think they could get to Kabul and take over the city.
The night before it happened, the officials I spoke to still thought they could hold out with the help of the US air strikes.
And there was talk of a peaceful transition of power to an inclusive government. But then (former president) Ghani left the country by helicopter and suddenly the Taliban were in town.
Fear hung in the air, people were very scared to see them return.
Then they told me that my life was in danger.
I took two changes of clothes and they took me to an unidentified place with my wife, my baby and my parents.
This is a city that I know intimately, inch by inch. I belong to her and it is incredible to think that no place was safe for me.
I thought of my daughter Sola – her name means “peace” – and was just devastating wrap up that the future we had hoped for her was now shattered.
As I was leaving for the airport I realized that for the second time in my life I was leaving Afghanistan behind.
When I got there, the memories of years of work overwhelmed me again: trips I had made with officials or as a journalist heading for the war front.
Then I saw all these people, all these families lining up to flee.
A generation of Afghans burying their dreams and aspirations. But this time he wasn’t there to cover the story. I was there to join them.
Bilal Sarwary worked for 14 years for the BBC as a translator and then as a Kabul-based producer and reporter. He also worked for Abu Dhabi TV and ABC News America and more recently as a freelancer.
You can follow him on Twitter , where he publishes photos highlighting the beauty of his country under the hashtag #AfghanistanYouNeverSee (# AfghanistanQueNuncaVes)
Here are some examples:
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