Eye witness report from Pakistan

Nothing left to bomb

Voice editor Alan McCombes is in Pakistan to see first hand how the so-called 'war against terrorism' has affected life there. In last week's Voice, he described the horror and destitution in the Afghan refugee camps. This week, he travels through the desolate and lawless Kyber Pass into Afghanistan, where some of the poorest people in the world are risking their lives to feed their families.

The Khyber Pass begins on the western outskirts of Peshawar, just beyond the disease-ridden Afghan shanty towns.
Since America began its bombing campaign, no Western journalist has been allowed to travel this 30 mile road to the Afghan border.
But somehow I've managed to obtain permission. Or maybe it's because the top official has family links in Scotland.
We set off in a van accompanied by a government bodyguard brandishing a Kalashnikov. Even at the best of times, the writ of the Pakistan government runs no further than the Peshawar city boundary.
The Khyber Pass and its surrounding lands are controlled by armed tribesmen. There have been reports of local uprisings in support of their Pashtoon kith and kin across the border in Afghanistan and we're under strict instructions to be back in the city before sunset.
Strung along this mountain road are numerous forts built by the British during their doomed attempt to conquer Afghanistan. There are also graveyards where the headstones are in English. Many of the fallen soldiers are buried in these.
Today there is a heavy presence of the crack Khyber Rifles. The enemy they are here to repel are not armed soldiers in uniform, but ragged women and children and their elderly relatives.
This is the road that leads to the flattened cities of Jalalabad and Kabul. Hassan, my Afghan translator and a native of Jalalabad describes how people survive in these cities today:
"At night the city is deserted. Everyone has gone to live with relatives in the mountain villages to get away from the bombs.
"The houses are all abandoned. But during the day, the men travel into the city to try and make some rupees.
"They might set up a little vegetable stall in the market, or drive a truck back to the villages at night, or repair a broken down vehicle."
The men are concerned for their families, but have no fear for themselves. As Hassan explains: "They feel a little safer in the daytime. Anyway, they have lived through 25 years of war and have become used to living at the edge of death."
Here on the Pakistan side of the border, everything is peaceful. The only vehicles trying to cross the border are the food lorries of the Afghan Red Crescent.
They are driven by poor Pakistanis, undertaking one of the most dangerous jobs in the world.
One says: "We are trying to feed our own families as well as those on the other side." In poverty-stricken Pakistan, where hundreds of thousands are forced to beg to survive, any job is welcome no matter how hazardous.
Every truck is meticulously searched by the soldiers. They are on the look-out for mujahideen fighters trying to cross into Afghanistan to join the Taliban resistance. And from the other direction, they are hunting for refugee stowaways.
By Western standards, Pakistan is a desperately poor, third world country. The average income is just 25,000 rupees - about £275 a year or less than a fiver a week.
Yet Afghans believe that Pakistan is a rich country. Even before the bombing began, the average wage in Afghanistan was just £3 a month.
Now this impoverished country is being blasted into oblivion by generals and politicians who will spend more on a single meal than an Afghan family have to live on for a decade.
"We know the exchange rate between dollars and rupees," one Afghan told me. "But what is the exchange rate in human lives? Is one American life worth ten Afghan lives, or 100 Afghan lives, or 1000 Afghan lives?"
In four weeks, the most powerful country in the world has dropped half a million tons of bombs on Afghanistan - 20 kilos for every man, woman and child in the country.
Shrapnel from the bombs is now being sold as scrap in the bazaars of Peshawar.
During the first week of the bombing, Behram Shah discovered an unexploded Tomahawk cruise missile beside the body of a dead goat. He took the missile, worth £1 million, to the Taliban and was given two goats in exchange.
Every day, Behram Shah's family began taking goat's milk to the patients at Herat hospital in the city where the family live.
But then on October 23, American and British warplanes bombed the hospital. Behram Sha's three daughters and one son were among those killed.
Back in Pakistan, in the south western city of Quetta, civilian casualties are stretchered daily across the border to the local hospital by Red Crescent volunteers.
But blood supplies are running out rapidly and an emergency blood bank has been set up in the University of Baluchistan. Muslim Hands, a British-based aid agency says they need 100 litres of blood urgently to save the lives of little children whose limbs have been blown off in this heroic 'War against Terror'.
Meanwhile, back on the Khyber Pass, the jagged mountains of Afghanistan stretch out before us. This barren, beautiful landscape could be the Cuillins on a fine summer's day.
But tonight these skies will be illuminated. The tranquility of these mountains will be shattered by the murderous roar of the warplanes and the thunderous explosions of the bombs while children in the mountain cower under their blankets in terror.

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