I drove up the hill with my Afghan fixer Mike, an English name we gave him. The Afghan police officer refused us to go to the top to shoot close up of the Afghan flag. In fact they were quite rude about it as I tried to get permission from some Ministry guys and I also showed them my working visa ask a journalist. Pulling out my phone I also called Saeed Taraky who worked in the Foreign Affairs office but they weren’t having a bar of it so I had to travel down the hill to get the photo.
After almost twenty years, since the Americans came and kicked the Taliban out of power and sent Osama Bin Laden in hiding, the Taliban were coming back stronger than ever taking over province after province but I laid optimistic that the Afghan National Army and the police force would be able to take them on. Also the old warlords were gathering their own militias to fight the Taliban. It was definitely interesting times and I wasn’t expecting that Afghanistan would fall.
Before all this I was living a quiet life again in Australia. It was too quiet in fact especially since COVID had made Australia an authoritarian state. Three cases and we would be sent to lockdown. Lockdowns just make you stir crazy for adventure and being a travel photographer these days and a motorcycle tour guide just left you in a rut.
A journalist colleague I knew, Hollie McKay was keen to work on her second book and wanted a photographer to come on the journey. We had been mutual friends on the socials and chatted a few times about places and countries. We tried to work together when she was working for Fox News in Yemen but it didn’t eventuate and I was busily covering Syria mainly. Anyway I took as an opportunity to get out of Australia and go back to a country I loved.
Afghanistan has always been in my heart though it can be quite ruthless. I call it the abusive husband. You want to love him but he gonna hurt you in the end. You leave for a bit and hope that he has changed and sure it is good for a little bit then the abuse comes back. When I talk about this, I think of the corruption and the misogynist men in power who use their power to make money or force women to sleep with them, in my case the few Afghan female sport stars I knew who wanted to travel to complete their dreams or girls forced off to early marriage.
There was many things you couldn’t change with this country, the people were generally good, kind but maybe it is the hospitality that is in their culture. As much as the Afghans would say I looked like one of them, I wasn’t one of them and maybe that is why I was treated so well
Mike and I washed away the frustrations of not getting a better shot and we went for a mango smoothie in Share Nau. Fruit adorn around the smoothie store and Mike did his best to apologise for the policemen behaviour. We grabbed kebabs from Herat Restaurant as take away since Hollie was at home working on a story from the day before.
The news was looking grim with the Taliban assaulting the city of Herat. The old Mujahideen leader Ismail Khan was out with his militia fighting. We were hearing reports of street battles. It seemed the Taliban were moving quite rapidly in almost every city. Kandahar, Helmand, Kunduz, Badakhshan, Mazar were being assaulted from all sides.
Once the food was ready we headed back to our guest house and we began to make our plans to go to Mazar E Sharif. Hollie had contacts with Uzbek warlord and former vice president as well as Marshal of the military Abdul Rashid Dostum. Dostum seem to boast about having a lot of men in his militia group but his hometown of Jawzjan province was taken over and the Taliban were shooting videos of wearing his military suit and having fun in pink mansion.
Dostum was cross and had gone to Mazar to wage a campaign against the Taliban, we took it as a good chance to head to city and get an interview and hopefully embed with the troops on the ground. We had also contacted Afghan Special Forces and spoke to Colonel Safi to catch up.
I packed light except for a bullet proof vest and helmet which I borrowed from TOLO television incase we were going to the frontlines.