| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"maff" |
| Date: |
01 Oct 2005 04:18:44 AM |
| Object: |
OT: Face to face with the world's most wanted man |
Face to face with the world's most wanted man. Exclusive extract from
Robert Fisk's new book (short version)
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article314587.ece
Only one Western journalist has gained access to the inner sanctum of
al-Qa'ida. In this extraordinary account from his new book - serialised
all next week in 'The Independent' - Robert Fisk recalls meeting the
world's most wanted man
Published: 01 October 2005
Knew it would be like this. On 19 March 1997, outside the Spinghar
Hotel in Jalalabad with its manicured lawns and pink roses, an Afghan
holding a Kalashnikov rifle invited me to travel in a car out of town.
The highway to Kabul that evening was no longer a road but a mass of
rocks and crevasses above the roaring waters of a great river. A vast
mountain chain towered above us. The Afghan smiled at me occasionally
but did not talk. I knew what his smile was supposed to say. Trust me.
But I didn't. I smiled back the rictus of false friendship. Even inside
the car, I could hear the river as it sloshed through gulleys and
across wide shoals of grey stones and poured over the edge of cliffs.
Trust Me steered the car carefully around the boulders and I admired
the way his bare left foot eased the clutch up and down as a man might
gently urge a horse to clamber over a rock.
A benevolent white dust covered the windscreen, and when the wipers
cleared it the desolation took on a hard, unforgiving, dun-coloured
uniformity. The track must have looked like this, I thought, when Major
General William Elphinstone led his British army to disaster more than
150 years ago. The Afghans had annihilated one of the greatest armies
of the British Empire on this very stretch of road, and high above me
were villages where old men still remembered the stories of
great-grandfathers who had seen the English die in their thousands. The
stones of Gandamak, they claim, were made black by the blood of the
English dead. The year 1842 marked one of the greatest defeats of
British arms. No wonder we preferred to forget the First Afghan War.
But Afghans don't forget. "Farangiano," the driver shouted and pointed
down into the gorge and grinned at me. "Foreigners."
.
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