Rudaw English correspondent Robert Edwards was in Afghanistan’s capital Kabul when the US-Taliban peace process collapsed in September.
He and a team of Afghan filmmakers documented the hopes and fears of the city’s war-weary population, spoke to those involved in peace talks, and to those who will live with the consequences.
Now, as the peace process gets back on track, this new documentary and six-part written series explores a city anxious for peace – but terrified of the cost.
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Part I: ‘Welcome to Kabul’
It wasn’t an encouraging start. Stepping off the airport shuttle bus at Hamid Karzai International, bleary eyed after a long layover in Dubai’s Terminal 2, my first impression of the Afghan capital Kabul is of a towering column of black smoke rising from the expat Green Village, which had been hit just hours earlier in a massive truck bombing. As I set down my bags on the hot tarmac, a cab driver nudges me, pointing at the menacing dark cloud. “Welcome to Kabul,” he grins.
I soon meet my local fixer, Saleem, a tall and broad-shouldered Tajik with wire-rim spectacles, dressed in light blue jeans – the kind you buy ready-frayed. Our young driver Reshad, meanwhile, is immaculately dressed in a checkered, charcoal grey suit that hangs loosely on his thin frame. As he pulls up in his white Toyota Corolla, I recall once being told this is the car of choice for suicide bombers. Pulling out of the car park and into the downtown traffic, the penny drops. Everyone here drives a white Toyota Corolla.
Kabul is greener and more developed than I expected – sharing the Soviet blockiness of other Central Asian capitals and the bustle of Indian cities, overlooked by pastel blue houses perched on rugged hillsides.
Despite the rash of bombings in recent weeks, Kabul’s streets are teeming. Men dressed in long salwar kameez swing strings of prayer beads as they walk, while others don Western attire, complemented by thin patterned scarves to keep out the sun and dust.
Several women, hair covered by floral headscarves, pick their way through the traffic, many without accompanying husbands or male relatives as had once been the law. Now and then I catch a glimpse of a sky-blue burqa – the full face veil women were forced to wear in the Taliban era.
Reshad drops us at the Park Star Hotel – a modern fortress among fortresses in Kabul’s commercial and diplomatic centre of Shahr-e-Naw. The high blast walls and incessant checkpoints leave the area feeling claustrophobic, blocking out the dramatic view of the Hindu Kush I had seen from the plane.
Once through the rigmarole of security, I find the hotel is much like any other in the world, except perhaps for the underground squash court that doubles as a panic room. A tacky water feature gurgles in the central courtyard overlooked by armed guards prowling like cats on the rooftop. This was my home for the coming week.
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Peace talks between the United States and the Taliban had been rolling on in Doha for months. I arrived in Kabul just as a deal appeared imminent, one that offered the gradual withdrawal of America’s remaining 14,000 troops over a period of 16 months. In exchange, the Taliban pledged to never again shelter terrorists like Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.
There were also vague commitments to a ceasefire and for inter-Afghan peace talks to end the insurgency. US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad was in town with a draft copy of the deal to show Ashraf Ghani, the skeptical Afghan president. Unbeknown to the public, a meeting had also been scheduled at Camp David between US President Donald Trump and the Taliban leadership.
There is certainly an appetite for ending America’s longest war – now longer than WWI, WWII and the Korean War combined. Babies born after 9/11 are now old enough to serve as soldiers in Afghanistan.
The peace process was also taking place against the backdrop of Afghanistan’s presidential election, then scheduled for September 28. Election posters cluttered every street and roundabout I passed, the faces of Ghani and his main rival Abdullah Abdullah eyeballing me from every billboard and lamppost.
The Afghan government, viewed by the Taliban as a US stooge, was excluded from the Doha talks. The Taliban said it would only negotiate with Ghani’s side once an American departure was signed, stamped, and delivered.
Figures from Afghan civil society were permitted to attend a preliminary dialogue, first in Moscow, then in Doha, but only in a personal capacity.
The US deal – or what was publicly known of it – was not popular among Kabulies or Afghan political leaders. The only people who seemed pleased were the Taliban – who chalked up an American departure as another victory over an invading superpower, like the British and the Russians before them.
Significantly, Taliban attacks intensified the closer a deal came. The election period also saw an uptick in violence. According to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), July 2019 saw the highest number of civilian casualties for a single month in a decade.
In the first nine months of 2019 alone, UNAMA counted 2,563 civilians killed and 5,676 injured – 41 percent of them women and children.
Tadamichi Yamamoto, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Afghanistan, said the appalling level of violence underlined the critical importance of peace talks.
“There is no other way forward,” he said.
Yet, on September 9, under pressure at home, Trump abruptly called off the Camp David meeting, tore up the draft deal, and declared the peace process “dead”.
Click here to read part II
