interviews of the half-brother of a distant cousin to one of the US Air Force pilots. But overall it was a terrific service with Bobby Batista with her crossed eyes and Wolf Blitzer with his squeezed voice as if he needed a quenching drink. Peter Arnett, a New Zealander, was also on CNN in those days and he had a booming voice. It was him who reported watching cruise missiles zooming in front of the Al-Rasheed hotel in Baghdad that he and other journalists were staying in. Years later I happened to meet Peter Arnett and realised his voice came across that way because he was three quarters deaf. In 2006, I was also to live in the Al-Rasheed hotel in Baghdad for about four months when I took the post as the UN’s Chief Security Adviser in Iraq.
ooOoo
The day we arrived in Islamabad went quickly and soon it was the next morning. I was collected by a UN driver and taken to the OCHA (Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) headquarters that was also the UN demining program headquarters. It was located in the Pakistani Red Crescent compound that was a rambling facility, though many of the buildings had been used before the UN moved in. I soon learned of all its foibles and hiding spaces, but in the first day or so I was lost. I knew I had to represent my country as my first consideration and also represent the Australian Army in a professional manner, but I also needed to understand who these people where and what made them tick.
The head of OCHA was a Brit named Martin Barber and his chief of the demining program was Jan Hagland. Martin was very much a UN bureaucrat, though very effective and highly intelligent whereas Jan was an eccentric older guy from Norway who introduced himself as an ‘adventurer’. He had many stories of fantastic trips to the North Pole with dog carts and through the deserts of Pakistan on camels, and I came to like him a great deal. I spent the next several days meeting all the new staff, being briefed on the demining program and having administrative issues sorted out. The OCHA administrative officer was a Pakistani and a former military man. We became close friends over the following years, before he immigrated to the US. I have not heard of him since. Finally, I also met Selwyn Heaton who was a New Zealand officer at the lieutenant-colonel level. Selwyn was the senior adviser for the demining program, based in Islamabad and I got to know him quite well in those first few months before he returned home. He was an energetic and very smart operator who had a wisp of thick blonde hair over an otherwise balding scone.
My duty station was in Peshawar, two to three hours away by road and I thought I needed to get there as soon as possible. By the end of the week I was informed that my new day-to-day employer, Afghan Technical Consultants (ATC), would send a driver to collect Jude and me and drive us to Peshawar. This was exciting and most welcomed, as a week in a hotel really is about enough. Interestingly, the Holiday Inn eventually became known as the Marriot hotel and was bombed nearly twenty years later by Al-Qaeda in 2008, when large numbers of victims were injured or killed.
I finally said farewell to all the staff I had met at the headquarters in Islamabad and early that last afternoon I headed back to the hotel. On my arrival, Jude was just walking into the lobby after shopping with some ladies she had met at the hotel. One was a Dutch woman and the other a Pakistani lady who was, interestingly, from Peshawar. They had taken Jude out to buy the ‘necessities of life’, which, of course, included a number of bags full of new clothes. Jude had so many bags she looked like a kid at the Royal Melbourne Show. But Peshawar was far more traditional and austere than Islamabad and Jude would need all the comforts she could carry.
The next morning we were up and ready at 8.30 am after finishing an early breakfast and packing our bags. I had paid the hotel bill and we were ready to be picked up, though no-one had given us an exact time. By 9.30, I was a little concerned and rang the OCHA headquarters. They called back and said ATC had dispatched a driver and he should be with us shortly. By 10, I went down to the lobby to check that we didn’t have a driver sitting down there waiting for us, but no-one was there. I rang OCHA again at 11 but before they could call me back, my telephone rang and it was the reception saying our driver from ATC was here. I got the bell boys to collect our bags and down we went, all expectant. I was ready to receive another Mr Danesh when a young, pimply faced Afghan in baggy jeans and a padded denim jacket stood up and came towards me. He said his name was ‘Ridiculous’ or something similar and he grabbed some of our bags. I looked at Jude and she just smiled and we followed our man Ridiculous to the car. I scanned the car park for the expected UN Toyota Land Cruiser for our long journey to Peshawar. But none were apparent as Ridiculous approached an old, small and beaten up Toyota Corolla. Obviously this was to be our new vehicle. The bags wouldn’t all fit into the boot so we loaded the front passenger seat and squashed another into the rear with Jude and me. Ridiculous seemed embarrassed and was really very nervous even as I tried to calm him through a few jokes and a soft tone. But he never really did calm down that day and our trip from Islamabad to Peshawar was a frightful, if not adventurous, trip that deserves a special chapter, perhaps in another book, but not now.
Although somewhat expected but never really coming true previously, our adventures in the ‘wilds of Pakistan’ and of course Afghanistan, had really just begun.
ooOoo
After arriving in Peshawar following our stressful journey along the Grand Trunk road, we were taken to a large house in the outskirts of an area known as Hyatterbad. Hyatterbad was a new and partially under construction suburb of Peshawar that the very wealthy Pushtun folk and the international community were moving to. It was at the outer limits of Peshawar city though only 15–20 minutes from shopping areas. The house we were allocated to was the former communal house for the Canadian Special Forces troops assigned to the demining program. They had now all left along with the Americans, the French and the Brits, as the Gulf War had started and they were recalled back home.
This house was almost standing alone with only some partially built structures around it and a lot of nearly completed houses some 200–300 metres away. It was a good spot and large enough for a big Canadian team, but far too big and far too remote for me and my heavily pregnant wife. Although this was only our temporary accommodation, it still had the seven household staff, a driver, three gardeners and three more ‘external’ workers at the house all day and with many remaining during the night. Most slept in a small set of rooms at the rear of the property and were there 24/7. Now that’s ok once you’re used to it, but coming from Australia where really no-one has domestic staff, it’s a culture shock. Every meal was watched by someone who would hover around waiting to take empty plates and bring more food. Every activity was viewed and some form of assistance, whether an added hand or equipment, would be offered. And every rest period was monitored to ensure you were well and comfortable. I really found this hard to take and it frankly annoyed me greatly. But all this was free for us during the first weeks before we could find suitable accommodation.
This house was fully furnished and had all manner of accessories that we thought the Canadians had left when they pulled out, in a hurry. Most obvious were the 40 huge boxes containing countless packets of Cornflakes, at least 30 boxes full of peanut butter jars and about another 30 boxes full of the chocolate drink Ovaltine. All these were stacked up like a secondary wall. This overburden of foodstuffs was amazing. The actual food we did eat was either bought by us in the local shops and markets or by the staff who we gave money to. We had a cook who prepared our meals and he was a lovely man, but things were just not right. The bread was flavoured with sugar to be extremely sweet, the tea was boiled black and gooey, the milk was only UHT and tasted vile, the meat was too tough to chew and the eggs were cooked in deep animal fat, or Ghee. The reality was that the food actually tasted good, but in those first few weeks, the difference from home cooking Australian style to that of suburban Peshawar was just too much to absorb all at once.
The first few nights in this remote and fairly isolated place were difficult as there were no street lights and we had to use a generator for electricity. We were for sure, not yet comfortable in north-west Pakistan and with the Gulf War battling in Kuwait and Iraq, it really was a serious security issue we had to contend with. I recall sitting outside after dinner talking to the main chowkidar, or home guard, as flashes erupted in the distance and were followed by muffled
