Media
In Afghanistan, memories of Vietnam
Published 16 August 2007
It is one of the constants of war zones that the further you are from front lines, the more optimistic the military assessments become
Rather late in my career I have become a paid employee of the United Nations. Unicef commissioned me to travel to Afghanistan and write what it calls a Child Alert - a report on the children who make up more than half of the country's population. Things are not as they used to be, and the UN especially has its very own way of doing them. So being assigned to a war zone was not, as in the old days, a simple matter of getting the call, grabbing a bag and jumping on a flight. First I had to pass an advanced safety test (all virtual and electronic, fortunately, which is nothing like the nerve-testing ordeal of the real thing). Then I was obliged to fill in a detailed 20-page application form for a job with the UN, with four full pages for previous employments and the references to go with them. Finally, I had to negotiate a contract, to put the assignment on a regular footing. The work will take about a month. The fee is one US dollar.
But the plight of the children is so extreme, that to find the words to do justice to it will be a challenge and an issue. In the United Nations anything negative is invariably a "challenge" and an "issue", since it might appear defeatist to speak of dangers, difficulties and downright impossibilities. The euphemisms are understandable, but contribute to the fog of war that covers the whole battlefield. The security situation in Afghanistan is characterised as "calm but volatile". A friend on the ground assures me that this is code for bloody awful. "Security challenged" means extremely dangerous. Another euphemism of the moment is "air". Those who know the military will understand that this has nothing to do with ventilation, but with air strikes in support of the ground troops. These continue at high intensity, because without them the ground troops might lose. But the point may have been reached where the military value of the air strikes is outweighed by their propaganda advantage to the Taliban and the strains they impose on the Nato-led international force. Look to Ottawa: if any of the combatants peels away, my guess is that the Canadians will be first.
The fighting season
War is seasonal in Afghanistan. This is the height of the fighting season, especially in the provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, and all the numbers are higher than last year's: troop strengths, suicide bombings, military operations and the casualties that go with them. "We are where we wish to be," says a Canadian commander enigmatically. Memories of the Vietnam War come floating back. The evening briefings in Saigon, the notorious "five o'clock follies", inhabited a similar parallel universe. It is one of the constants of war zones that the further you are from the front lines the more optimistic the military assessments become - until you get to the very top, where today's generals seem so much cleverer and less gung-ho than yesterday's.
It is the politicians who worry me - the more so perhaps because for a while I was one of them. If only they were as smart as the generals, we might indeed be where we want to be.
Editor crossfire
I am suspicious of those who claim to have lived in a golden age of anything, especially journalism. But being close to this conflict reminds me that war reporting is immeasurably more difficult today than when I gave it up in the mid-Nineties. The greatest risk we faced in those days was being caught in the crossfire. Today's practitioners are in danger of being targeted and kidnapped in almost any place they go. They also have to deal with the pressures of rolling news. The game was up when the first mobile phone appeared in a war zone, and reporters were exposed to their editors' every whim around the clock. Today it is not only the dangers but the constant demands for a reworking of the same story that drive them back from the front lines into green zones. The result is the phoney phenomenon of rooftop journalism. My hero in this matter is Sandy Gall of ITN. One day an intrepid sub-editor called him in Afghanistan requesting an update on a story he had filed. "Sorry, old boy," said Sandy, "I don't do updates."
Martin Bell's book "The Truth That Sticks" will be published by Icon on 6 September (£16.99)
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