Traders bring back eye-witness accounts of bombing
Paul Gallagher In Peshawar
The Scotsman (Scotland); October 11, 2001



Allied military action is hardening Afghan resistance
towards West

THE lorry drivers arriving at Gulbahar fruit market
yesterday were carrying with them an added
commodity. Leaping from the cabs of their trucks, each one
of them has a story to trade about the military onslaught on
Afghanistan.

Despite the high state of military alert over the threatened
civil war in Pakistan, the cross-border fruit trade with
Afghanistan continues as normal and provides the only
independent eye-witness accounts of the effects of the US
and British attacks.

Within the walled courtyard of Gulbahar Market in the
frontier town of Peshawar, the hauliers described the terror
faced by residents in Afghan cities and towns which they had
left behind and also the rising anger against the Western
powers responsible for the attacks.

The US has described how it is dropping thousands of
emergency rations, along with bombs and missiles, in an
attempt to win over ordinary Afghans, but according to the
drivers these are being received more with incredulity and
anger than with the gratitude America had hoped for.

"We don't want their food parcels, people are burning them
in the street," one driver said. "How can they drop bombs
from one plane and then food from another? Only America is
capable of such hypocrisy."

Iqbal Anwar, who had just arrived from Kabul, said the
residents in the capital city were becoming traumatised
after three nights of bombardment. "People are trying to
carry on with their normal lives, but it's impossible to
sleep at night with the sound of missiles and jets flying
overhead," he said.

"After the first night's bombing, they were able to go about
their business in the day before sheltering at night, but
now the attacks are in daylight as well. This is terrorism
to the people of Afghanistan. It is America and Britain who
are the real terrorists."

Mr Anwar was in Kabul when the first bombing raids were
launched on Sunday night, and he loaded his truck with fruit
at dawn yesterday to drive to Peshawar, an eight-hour
drive. "The border is open to us, Pakistan needs fruit and
business must go on," he added. "There are not many signs of
damage along the roads, but there are many frightened women
and children who want to find somewhere safe but have
nowhere to go."

None of the hauliers reported any signs that the attacks
were spreading discontent with the Taleban. Instead, they
are hardening support for the regime. "The Taleban will
never fall because they are the people of Afghanistan, and
this is what the US and George Bush does not understand,"
one driver said. Another haulier, sipping green tea while a
crowd of traders gathered to bid for his consignment of
grapes, said he had driven from Jalalabad where there had
been nightly explosions around the city since Sunday.

"The situation is very bad. The people will never forgive
America for these attacks because innocent people are being
hit and killed and they have no defences. "I saw a house
which had been destroyed and we hear of people who have been
injured and killed. "It is not just military targets that
are being hit. The Americans cannot win because there is
nothing for them to bomb and they cannot kill everyone in
Afghanistan."

In one corner of the courtyard, a group gathered around a
transistor radio to hear the latest bulletins on BBC World
Service. Radio Sharriat, the Kabul-based Afghan radio
station, has been off air in recent days and the Afghan
drivers have to look elsewhere for information on the air
strikes. They sat in silence as news of the Taleban's
response to the attacks was announced and nodded in unison
to the defiant declaration of the Taleban spokesman which
was read out over the air.

"After these attacks, the Americans and British have
declared war on our people and we will fight back," one of
them said.


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