Richard Dunwoody's Blog by Richard_Dunwoody

I first visited Kabul in June last year as a guest of the late Doctor Karen Woo and her fiancé Mark ‘Paddy’ Smith. Shockingly and terribly sadly, Karen was killed six weeks later at the hands of insurgents while returning from a medical expedition that she was leading to Nuristan. She had a great love for the country and was in the process of setting up a charity to help its poor and sick when I arrived. Her dynamism, drive and energy ensured a fascinating overview of the city. We visited and filmed many of the sights; the ruins of the Darulaman Palace, the infamous zoo and the reservoir and black-greened golf course at Qarga, 10km from the centre of Kabul. I was also making the trip as a recce for the Fulham-based adventure travel firm, Wild Frontiers. Over the past seven years I have travelled fairly extensively for the company, hosting tours to some far-flung spots across Central Asia. Wild Frontiers is keen to send more groups to Afghanistan, and the Afghan Explorer tour last September took in Herat, Mazar-e-Sharif, and Bamiyan in addition to the capital.

With the help of Muqim Jamshady’s Kabul-based Afghan Logistics and Tours it was an incredibly successful trip, and after my June visit, I read tour leader Marc Leaderman’s fascinating blogs with more than a touch of envy. Kabul had buried itself deep under my skin and I started counting the days before I could return. Travelling this time with acclaimed artist, Charlie Barton, I really wanted to find out more about the country and its people. In two weeks we did catch up with a lot of ex-pats and old friends of Karen’s, but this time I was also able to meet many more Afghanis and people who did have the best interests of the country at heart. Many typically painted a bleak view of the state. There was Ali, whom we met one afternoon at the reception in our guesthouse. He had grown up in Kabul before moving to the U.S. and he recalled, with a resigned smile, Afghan life in the 60’s and early 70’s. Times were good and the people incredibly hospitable.

He talked of a friend who cycled 250km to Bamiyan as a 16-year-old boy. Not only was it safe to do so, but also at no time did he have to put his hand in his pocket for provisions along the way. He was taken in and looked after in the true spirit of Afghan tradition. Ali told us also of the days when there were mini skirts and Marks & Spencer’s on the streets of the capital and women held high posts in Mohammed Daoud’s government. “Now,” he said, “the people have changed and there is a thick black cloud spreading over the country. It is like Tolkien’s cloud of Mordor spreading over the Shire and that cloud is emanating from Riyadh.” “And what would you expect,” he continued, “If you put Al Capone, Lucky Luciano and the Corleones in charge of America. That is what has happened here.”

On our travels around the city we also met an Iranian lady, Darya, who, having spent 16 years in the country, was now advising the military on cultural sensibilities. I asked her if it was, indeed, possible to summarise the situation. “Dire,” came the not-so-tongue-in-cheek reply. And we shared a taxi with Michael, whose role was to assess the situation and then help to implement a strategy to prevent and eradicate corruption. He was resigned to the fact that he had taken on the impossible and he imagined he would write his report in a few weeks and depart. In a failed state like Afghanistan, the well-worn cliché is often trotted out that the key to regeneration is its youth. Having met several teenagers around the streets, there are some shards of sunlight piercing that morose cloud. In the shadows of the ruins of the once-majestic Darulamen Palace, boys played cricket on specially-prepared concrete wickets. Asif wore an England shirt and talked clearly, intelligently and fluently of his ambitions to one day play for his nation. At the Gandamack Hotel, the regular haunt of ex-pats, we spoke to 17-year-old security guard, Hamed. His father had been killed, but as he stood with his rifle, he told us of his desire to study at Kabul University and enthused about his future in medicine.

At the Ghazni Stadium, a regular execution spot during Taliban times, we met Parveen, a young woman who worked for the Afghanistan Women’s Football Committee. She was delighted with the way her team were progressing and she couldn’t wait to tell us about their latest victory over the ISAF Girls. Kabul continues, without doubt, to be a dangerous place for these young people to grow up in. There have been three major insurgency attacks since the turn of the year and there are many shootings. We even encountered a firefight at the gates of our guesthouse, later said to be an attempted hit on a local businessman, and there are regular security alerts of vehicle-borne IEDs and suicide bombers. In February, mud lies deep on the streets and the ridiculously heavy traffic is as chaotic as the National sport, buzkashi; a form of no-rules rugby played on horseback with the carcass of a calf. But Afghanistan is a magnetic and compelling country.

There is culture, history and beauty in abundance within its borders, and there are signs that travellers are willing and beginning to return, despite the terrorism and lawlessness. This month there is a conference on tourism in the stunning Panjshir Valley and there are plans for new hotels in that region. Visitors can ski in both Bamiyan and the Salang Pass during the winter months, and the Wakhan Corridor, my destination in July, is ripe for trekking, climbing and riding. Band-e-amir, 70km from Bamiyan, is one of the most beautiful lake districts in the world. Yes, you will find safer destinations, but there are few places as captivating. I daresay it will be many years before tourism reaches the levels it enjoyed when Ali was growing up 45 years ago and when Afghanistan was a major stop on the hippy trail. But charities like the Aga Khan Development Network are striving hard to upgrade facilities for travellers in the less dangerous and most visited areas, building guesthouses and visitor centres. Hopefully their efforts will not be in vain and I, for one, welcome their initiatives. And I have started counting off the days again.

I was back in the UK at the weekend and was fortunate enough to be invited to the Wales v Ireland Six Nations Rugby Union clash at the Millennium Stadium, as a guest of racehorse owner and businessman, Alan Peterson. The game itself may not have been the most entertaining, with general sloppy play and errors all round. But it was a closely-contested affair and the atmosphere, as ever in Cardiff, was electric. It was great to see Brian O’Driscoll equal the Six Nations championship record number of tries (24), even though a controversial Welsh try basically won them the match. Try-scorer Mike Phillips took advantage of a quick line-out and the Irish were left fuming when the try was allowed to stand. Ireland pointed to rules which stipulate Phillips’ score would only have been legitimate had he used the ball that had gone out of play. Instead, he was passed a different ball in a quick line-out by Welsh hooker Matthew Rees. My old friends at Paddy Power are never ones to miss a trick. They turned Phillips into a masked highwayman in a national advertising earlier this week. They mocked up the scrum-half in a bandit mask in full page adverts headed “robbed” as they promised to refund every punter who backed an Ireland victory as a gesture of goodwill.