Johnston reporting for BBC in Gaza and just after his release from the captivity
(Pic 1 courtesy : Associated Press, Pic 2 courtesy: Reuters)
BBC correspondent Alan Johnston was freed by Palestinian militants on July 4 ending his 16 weeks of ‘terrifying’ ordeal. Johnston was abducted on March 12, and was taken at gunpoint by a group called the Army of Islam while he was on his way back home in Gaza city.
We at the GNBI pay tribute to the spirit of courage and fearlessness that accompanies those journalists, who risk their lives to bring to us those stories without which the world would have been darker and opaque.
We are reproducing an article of Alan Johnston which he had written for the BBC’s “From Our Own Correspondent”, and narrates his 1997 rendezvous with Uzbek warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum. Johnston was then posted at Kabul and reported the initial phase of the War on Terror, post 9/11 that saw the end of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
We at the GNBI pay tribute to the spirit of courage and fearlessness that accompanies those journalists, who risk their lives to bring to us those stories without which the world would have been darker and opaque.
We are reproducing an article of Alan Johnston which he had written for the BBC’s “From Our Own Correspondent”, and narrates his 1997 rendezvous with Uzbek warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum. Johnston was then posted at Kabul and reported the initial phase of the War on Terror, post 9/11 that saw the end of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
General Dostum’s Cavalry
Alan Johnston
(November 3, 2001)
Early one morning in the spring of 1997, I was standing on the Soviet-made airstrip outside Mazar-i-Sharif. Beyond the tarmac the flat steppe land of central Asia gave way to aline of mountains, a spur of the Hindu Kush range. Off to the left sat a dilapidated old military helicopter that looked badly in need of repair. I asked a militia officer where the helicopter was that was supposed to take me to the front line. Disturbingly, he just pointed at the machine that looked badly in need of repair.
Eventually, the pilot coaxed the clattering, shuddering, contraption into the air and we were off, low over the steppe on our way to the battleground and an appointment with General Abdul Rashid Dostum. The general started his career on the Communist side of the war, as a security officer in a factory during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. But he quickly expanded his horizons. He transformed his security unit into a fighting force drawn from his own Uzbek ethnic group, which dominates this part of northern Afghanistan. Soon his men were being used by the Communists government as shock troops against the Mujhaheddin guerillas. They were sent to do their brutal business in areas where the hold of the regime was most tenuous. And when General Dostum eventually switched sides and allied himself with the guerillas, it spelt the end for the Kabul government.
By the time I’d climbed aboard the helicopter in 1997, the war had brought the army of the Taliban movement to the borders of General Dostum’s northern stronghold. But that spring morning, the word was that his militia had made some advances on the long front line in the rolling hills of Badghis province.
The helicopter put us down close to the front. The place bustled with General Dostum’s fighters, many in traditional Uzbek dress: tightly bound turbans and long padded coats for keeping out the icy winds of the steppe. Far away, across a plain, a column of armed horsemen was making its way down a hillside. They hit the flat ground and broke into a canter. This was Uzbek cavalry, perhaps a hundred strong, surging towards us, dust rising from the pounding hooves. And there at the centre of the line, on a white charger, rode General Dostum himself.
As the riders reached us they reined in hard. There was a great neighing of horses and stamping of hooves. We were engulfed in dust, and the gathered soldiers roared in salute of their commander-in-chief. The general dismounted and strode towards me, a huge man in a turban, his Uzbek jacket reaching down his riding boots, and in his hand he carried a whip. He was orchestrating what amounted to a grandiose photo opportunity. His fighters had some success, and he wanted to make sure that the BBC and the outside world knew about it. In his deep, booming voice he joked with his troops and gave a running commentary as he strode down a line of captured Taliban vehicles. The general glowered briefly at a forlorn group of six Taliban prisoners of war.
He line up his senior officers and introduced them to me one by one. He’d been angered by some report in the media that his generals had been absent from the front. He wanted to make the point that they were, in fact, all there putting in a good day’s work. Next a string of jeeps took us rocketing up a hillside. At the summit, arrangements had been made for a picnic like no other. There were carpets and cushions spread on the grass, and there was chicken and rice and fruits and nuts. The guns on the front line were silent, and as we ate and drank we gazed at the hills that turned blue in the distance as they rose and fell towards Iran. The general talked of politics and war, and at one stage he pointed with a chicken bone at a peak off to the left and said: “See that mountain, the one with the snow on it? Well. I captured it three days ago.’
Alan Johnston
(November 3, 2001)
Early one morning in the spring of 1997, I was standing on the Soviet-made airstrip outside Mazar-i-Sharif. Beyond the tarmac the flat steppe land of central Asia gave way to aline of mountains, a spur of the Hindu Kush range. Off to the left sat a dilapidated old military helicopter that looked badly in need of repair. I asked a militia officer where the helicopter was that was supposed to take me to the front line. Disturbingly, he just pointed at the machine that looked badly in need of repair.
Eventually, the pilot coaxed the clattering, shuddering, contraption into the air and we were off, low over the steppe on our way to the battleground and an appointment with General Abdul Rashid Dostum. The general started his career on the Communist side of the war, as a security officer in a factory during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. But he quickly expanded his horizons. He transformed his security unit into a fighting force drawn from his own Uzbek ethnic group, which dominates this part of northern Afghanistan. Soon his men were being used by the Communists government as shock troops against the Mujhaheddin guerillas. They were sent to do their brutal business in areas where the hold of the regime was most tenuous. And when General Dostum eventually switched sides and allied himself with the guerillas, it spelt the end for the Kabul government.
By the time I’d climbed aboard the helicopter in 1997, the war had brought the army of the Taliban movement to the borders of General Dostum’s northern stronghold. But that spring morning, the word was that his militia had made some advances on the long front line in the rolling hills of Badghis province.
The helicopter put us down close to the front. The place bustled with General Dostum’s fighters, many in traditional Uzbek dress: tightly bound turbans and long padded coats for keeping out the icy winds of the steppe. Far away, across a plain, a column of armed horsemen was making its way down a hillside. They hit the flat ground and broke into a canter. This was Uzbek cavalry, perhaps a hundred strong, surging towards us, dust rising from the pounding hooves. And there at the centre of the line, on a white charger, rode General Dostum himself.
As the riders reached us they reined in hard. There was a great neighing of horses and stamping of hooves. We were engulfed in dust, and the gathered soldiers roared in salute of their commander-in-chief. The general dismounted and strode towards me, a huge man in a turban, his Uzbek jacket reaching down his riding boots, and in his hand he carried a whip. He was orchestrating what amounted to a grandiose photo opportunity. His fighters had some success, and he wanted to make sure that the BBC and the outside world knew about it. In his deep, booming voice he joked with his troops and gave a running commentary as he strode down a line of captured Taliban vehicles. The general glowered briefly at a forlorn group of six Taliban prisoners of war.
He line up his senior officers and introduced them to me one by one. He’d been angered by some report in the media that his generals had been absent from the front. He wanted to make the point that they were, in fact, all there putting in a good day’s work. Next a string of jeeps took us rocketing up a hillside. At the summit, arrangements had been made for a picnic like no other. There were carpets and cushions spread on the grass, and there was chicken and rice and fruits and nuts. The guns on the front line were silent, and as we ate and drank we gazed at the hills that turned blue in the distance as they rose and fell towards Iran. The general talked of politics and war, and at one stage he pointed with a chicken bone at a peak off to the left and said: “See that mountain, the one with the snow on it? Well. I captured it three days ago.’
General Abdul Rashid Dostum
As it turned out, one of the commanders lounging on the cushions at that picnic betrayed General Dostum a few months later. It was the kind of act of grand treachery that is very much part of Afghan warfare. General Dostum lost his front line in the hills of Badghis and soon the whole of his northern stronghold was gone. The general endured a brief exile in Turkey but stormed back within months to retake his lands. In another stunning reversal he lost them once more to the Taliban the next year. And Mazar-i-Sharif could be about to fall yet again. General Dostum is back in the north, and he is determined to drive the Taliban from Mazar one last time. He has complained that he lacks heavy weaponry. He is reported to be using riders armed with Kalashnikovs, just like the cavalry I saw four years ago before that picnic on the Badghis front.
So here we are, at the start of the twenty-first century and Mazar-i- Sharif is still locked in a scene that could be drawn from the darkest passages in central Asia’s history. Armed horsemen laying siege to a city on the steppe; it is a drama in which Genghis Khan would have felt at home.
(Excerpts from book titled: From Our Own Correspondent)
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