Lessons learned writing from abroad

This is a draft of what I sent the Independent.
Link to the story they actually went with
The lesson, broader stories have scope to reference specifics. Specifics, particularly regularly repeated events, are subsidiary stories or hooks, but not stories in themselves. Also the relevance to the UK/US readership should be the focus. In their article it is the headline.Any other takes on this?


A suicide bomber killed at least 12 people and injured 42 this morning when he blew himself up near the interior ministry in Kabul.
Ministry workers were arriving for work opposite the Kabul Republic hospital just before 8am when the bomber attacked.
A man had aroused suspicions and was confronted by policemen just inside a checkpoint as he approached the Interior Ministry and a crowd of workers.
Before policemen could shoot, the bomber detonated explosives strapped to his body.
"It was a suicide attack. The bomber blew himself up as ministry employees were getting off a bus at the ministry gate," said Kabul's chief of criminal investigations Alishah Paktiawal.
A stream of ambulances took casualties to several hospitals throughout the city which, according to Mr Paktiawal made a definite tally of dead and wounded difficult to make.
After the 8 September bombing which killed two US soldiers and 14 civilians, US military sources announced they were aware of a terrorist cell operating within the city targeting US and international troops.
Residents however believe that there is more than a single cell. They say the terrorists pass through security nets because they can blend in with peaceful Afghans. Checks at access points to the city are arbitrarily policed, and a bribe can secure passage.
Along with a peak in military confrontations, this year has seen an increase in these types of attack. There have already been at least 50 compared to 21 last year.
The attack comes as NATO expands its sphere of operations to the whole of Afghanistan where the US has suggested that Pakistan's peace with tribal leaders has lead to increased attacks in this country.
At a meeting in Slovenia this week, it was agreed that NATO's ISAF force will take control of American troops in the east Afghanistan, unifying the command of all coalition troops within the country.
This step comes as attacks in some areas of eastern Afghanistan have tripled since President Musharraf negotiated a ceasefire two months ago with tribal leaders in North Waziristan. Under terms of the treaty, formally signed on 5 September, Pakistani army presence in the Pashtun areas will be reduced. In exchange the tribal leaders agreed to expel foreign fighters and gave assurances they would stop aggressive incursions across the porous border into Afghanistan.
The treaty designed to end 5 years of attacks on Pakistani army and installations in the area also included the release of thousands of prisoners held for suspected links to terrorist organisations.
Hamid Karzai and Pervez Musharraf met earlier in the week with George Bush. Accusations of blame for the regional instability had been cast back and forth, though while Karzai referred to his Pakistani counterpart as a friend, Musharraf blamed him for not being in control of his country.

Suicide Bomber Sept 30

photos by Jamie Scott-Long
The deep thud of a nearby explosion shook the windows and as the senses scrambled to make sense of the sound, my eyelids flicked open. Ten to 8, wake up. The suicide bomber detonated the bomb he wore 500 meters away. We went into the garden, scanning the skies for helicopters to lead us to the site. Quiet. Last time the resounding boom was followed by dogs barking, sirens, and cars blaring their horns unaware of the traffic's cause.
Chicken street where souvenir and craft shops cater to tourists who don't come was awash with people streaming away from the incident. We walked against the current, shopkeepers still trying to entice us to buy a rug.
International troops were not hit so Afghan policemen were left use their own techniques to control the crowds. When ISAF is involved there are cordons and huge stern men with guns, people obey. Here everyone tries their luck. The officers charge, angrily waving telescoping batons or scraps of metal picked up from the road. Then they turn around and forget about the line for a while. One has a loudspeaker which he uses as a sonic gun to push people back.

A sucide bomber detonated explosives strapped to his body as workers arrived at the Ministry of Interiors to start their day.
Just before 8am as workers were getting of the bus that brought them to the office, a man known to the police charged past a checkpoint towards the crowd. Before the police officers closing in on him could shoot, he blew himself up.
The explosion shattered shop windows and ripped through flesh. The leaves on trees all fell, shredded, to the tarmac in a gruesome early autumn.


The trend of intensifying combat which has seen 2400 people die has been matched by increasing numbers of suicide attacks. Last year there were 21. So far this year there have been more than 50. More than 150 civilians have been killed in these attacks, comprising more than 80% of the casualties.

This week NATO announced that its remit is to expand to include command of the American forces in eastern Afghanistan. They have been facing more attacks since Pakistan agreed to a peace deal with tribal elders. Some say though that the motivator for the pact on the tribal side was Mullah Omar. The agreement was made formal on the 5th of September and stipulated the reduction of Pakistani military presence in return for the cessation of attacks on military personnel and installations. Thousands of prisoners originally held for their links to Al Quaeda, Taliban, and other terrorist groups were released on the proviso that they would be peaceful. Bill Roggio claims that among those released were the killers of Dan Pearl, the Journalist murdered in 2002. Musharaff's attempts to paint this as a deal with tribal elders who would co-operate against Al Quaeda ring hollow as Mullah Omar, the Taliban commander seems to have motivated the agreement and ensured tribal militants signed.

The effect has been a threefold increase in attacks in some eastern regions of Afghanistan.
Musharaf claims the treaty was aimed at increasing stability in the area, though it looks like a concession to the extremists. Effectively it will mean that the tribal border areas are even less policed, permitting the freer movement of weapons and training of fighters.

Following from their meeting with Bush, Karzai and Musharraf have agreed to hold joint meetings with tribal elders.

Pakistan is seen in Afghanistan as the source of instability. Karzai called for the closure of madrassas or religious schools where men and boys are indoctrinated with the extremist beliefs in martyrdom an a hatred for the west. Tom Koenigs told me that there is an unlimited supply of fighters all willing to die.



To Afghanis, Musharraf, a general who seized power through a military coup, has an interest in a destabilised Afghanistan. Should the government here regain strength it could make demands for the return of the land south of the British bureaucrat created Durand line. That land would allow Afghanistan access to the sea and a way of trading Central Asian resources without having to go through Pakistan.

New Faction Story

new story based vaguely on the remains of the devastated darulaman palace seen in the background of the first picture of Golden Kettle and on the mausoleum

Following the orange stream

In the twisting streets of old town Kabul, a child squats by a gutter and a small fountain of urine arcs through the medieval air before joining the steaming bright orange stream. A man, his hair and beard white with the fine dust from the flour sack he carries on his back walks up a plank into the organised chaos of a noodle and fried chickpea factory. Heat from five spark spitting furnaces brings instant beads of sweat to his head where they clot with the dust. He walks, crouched under the weight of his load, past three giant tubs of chickpeas stewing in boiling water the colour of a setting sun lingering on low lying clouds. Hands stained by years of work scoop chickpeas into a big round pan then carry them to one of the furnaces. Oil bubbles in deep vats above the wood fuelled fire. The chickpeas sizzle as they slide off the pan and into the vats.
Sunlight filters into the room through gaps between corrugated iron sheets and spaces forged as warping wooden slats separate. As flour is sifted, small clouds of powder rise and catch sunbeams, making them tangible. Hakim makes fried noodles. He loads his syringe-like press with dough then flicks his hands at the oil. The hiss is not loud enough so he scoops some oil and throws it into the fire, it roars and flares, its tongues flicking the air outside the furnace mouth singing falling flour dust. He dips the end of the syringe into the oil and turns the handle, squeezing dough through a metal plate full of little holes. The oil froths as the thin threads of dough deep fry.
Its Ramadan, so the 30 men and boys working in the intense heat have not had a drink since 4 o'clock this morning. The boys are working their way up to working with fire and scalding oil, for now some pack the peas and noodles into plastic bags and others pack the bags into sacks.
Business is conducted as far away from the furnaces as possible. At the end of the row of sacks full of little bags of chickpeas sits the seller, his worn notebook on a small table. Around him sit men in neat, ironed loose fitting clothing and crisp black headscarves. They walk in and out briskly, the steps along their paths in and out are vacated just ahead of them in series so their entrance and departure is swift.

Kabul zoo

The Kabul zoo is on the way to the bombed out west, before the river dries out and becomes a sludge of vegetable rubbish and holms where men sit on plastic chairs by plastic tables underneath plastic umbrellas selling minutes on a telephone to loved ones. At the entrance by the road, foreigners pay 20 times what locals pay, but the real moment you enter is when you go through the façade of a building that has no back. You scrabble down the rubble and bent metal and en up in front of a black bear enclosure.

The bear takes three loping steps, sniffs the bars, then takes another three loping steps back and sniffs the stone wall. Over. And over. And over. The cage itself, while not adequate, would permit a mindless stroll about ten times as long. This bear's mind has gone. It hides behind comfort routines it picked up long ago. Perhaps three loping steps is how far away mother used to be.

Huddled as far away from the public as possible and breathing at the speed of rabbits, the jakals live in a perpetual state of fear. They dart back and forth, jostling for a space behind eachother, burying their heads in corners so they can pretend that the world is just black. That would be a comfort.

Playful monkeys fare better. They have society to structure their day. Their fur may be falling out, and their muscles atrophied through lack of stimulating activities, but they seem to just be monkeys in a closed space. A male turns around and stands on his groomers back legs while his pneumatic powered penis pounds him/her. Once satisfied he turns his back and allows the groomer to pick mites out of his back.

Young ones take turns chasing and being chased. Murky moat water designed to keep them from climbing out has become a playground. The younger they are the better they are at swimming. Some grapple underwater for ten seconds at a time, emerging with a green wig of stringy pondweed. Their colossal eyebrows fold over with the weight of water.

Vultures with wide wingspans scrabble along the floor. Those with hope left jump on and off of dead tree branches, reliving for the split second they stretch their wings the sensation of flight, the sensation of control over their own movements.

The predecessor to computer games: There is a box with a disc on it. The disc spins as the old man whose hands shake as he counts disintegrating notes turns a crank. On the disc are three toy cars of different sizes. Off the disc are two metal cars, racers. When a boy who has taken another note from his indulgent father pays, the old man takes a metal car and places it on a spot and begins turning the crank. The boy twists a steering wheel on the side of a box trying to keep his car out of the path of the cars coming in faster cycles at him. I imagine there is a magnet underneath the disc and the steering wheel moves it towards the edge or the center.

Friday in Kabul

Headscarves are wound tight around heads with sunglasses nestled on invisible noses. "Al Quaeda" says Shalqullah, but when he pulls down the white cloth that bulges when he speaks, he is smiling underneath, proud to let me have a free ride on his motorbike. During the week hes an intelligence services officer, but on Fridays, he and another 40 motorbike owners come to a park where 8 football pitches, 3 cricket grounds, 10 wickets overlap. Shalqullah rents out his $600 150cc bike for 15 afs a lap of the dusty mesh of playing fields opposite the national stadium. If you know how to ride, you can go on your own, but if he can sense the shakes building inside at the thought of stalling, or crashing, on a dusty plain surrounded by football players and flying balls, hell sit behind you guiding your hands and feet.

Down one side of the park, facing the street where the infant military parades one day a year, there are stands facing away from the pitches. When the final of the national cricket competition begins, the fans sit in the shade of a fruit stall, or on a wall, in the gaps in the fence.

In Taliban days people played football, but in traditional dress. "If you wore knickers the Taliban would beat you, would kick your ass," says Ashmal, laughing. He means shorts. He doesn't laugh when he tells you what the half time show was. "they bring criminals and kill them. I can show you where the holes in the wall are from the bullets. They have a doctor to cut off their arm or hands." He is a regular in a Kabul team supplemented by the under 15's today because some members are in Pakistan, where most of the team learned how to play cricket.

They practice with tennis balls wound in electrical tape. "This ball can last us a year because we can tape it back up. The hard balls are expensive, maybe 4 dollars, so we share them and take turns buying them. The cheaper ones last maybe a day."


Kabul win the toss, and almost instantly a dust eddie a meter wide chases the umpires and captains from the wickets, whipping up rubbish to set it down in the middle of a football game. Spin Ghar will bowl first. They already played this morning to make it to the final, and the Kabul captain wants to keep his team out of the sun and tire the challengers.

Holding his hand up against the sun and squinting to keep the dust out of his bloodshot eyes Zabi points out the boundaries. Chunks of wall broken in bombings form one side, the wall itself is another. One of three goalposts he waves at marks the third and a more obvious goal is the last side of the square.

Well within those limits there are two clusters of people sheltering in the sparse shade of fruit juice stalls. There is the expectation that the crowd will move. "Good shot" he says, with his best English pronunciation, "If it hits them, then its four, unless its in the air." He explains as Abdullah, at 13, the youngest on the pitch sends the crowd scampering. With that he has reached his 50 and the team applaud and shout.

"When the Taliban were here we could not clap, or they would kick your ass!", says Ashmal. Clapping is not enough for him, in appreciation for a task he knows he can not match he picks up a stone and bangs it against a metal upright on the fence. The pitch of the metal poles is not determined by their length, but by the size and number of bullet holes.

Everyone fought over this ground. "Russies, Taliban, Mujihadin, USA, coalition. you know, Mix". War is war, bullet holes are bullet holes. Six is Six.

The thirteen year old Abdullah finishes on a flourish before one of two volunteer umpires calls him out.

Ashmal is bowled out on his first ball. He points at the floor. The surface of most of the playing pitch is irregular and rocky, but for the wicket they have lain down a cement rectangle. It is uneven and the opposition spin bowler has managed to find a place where the ball bounces low.

Halfway through his walk of shame he meets Zabi, they exchange bats and he gives Zabi the team's second crotch box. Ten steps from the wicket, at this exchange they are in the middle of a sparse crowd of bystanders, players in other games, locals taking a shortcut across the pitch, Jamie taking photos. Dodging rented motorbikes in unsteady hands just inside the boundary, Zabi makes it to the wall where the rest of the team sits.

King Amanullah's mausoleum crowns a gentle hill behind the wickets. The dome is in disrepair. Above it a flock of kites rise and fall in the gusts rushing up the hill.

On Apologies

As a child I was often guilty of false apologies. "I'm sorry you got angry"
"Im sorry you are saddened because I set my dog on your pet rabbit"
"I really am sorry youre frail and insignificant ego was dented by the expression of my completely rational and justified point of view."

Is this an apology?