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102 Interview The Caucasus, a Journey in Time – A conversation with Wojciech Jagielski<br />
as opposed to a training ground, is defi<br />
nitely an advantage. Th e war victims<br />
are the price we pay. Th ere has been<br />
a lot of talk about those killed in action,<br />
but not so much about the mentally<br />
injured. Some people believe that we<br />
should withdraw our contingent from<br />
Afghanistan. Th e Netherlands and Canada<br />
have done so, would anyone accuse<br />
them of being faithless allies? To be<br />
honest, I am not sure why Americans<br />
need troops from allied nations in Afghanistan<br />
when they do nothing but<br />
complain about them.<br />
The Soviet Union lost over fi fteen thousand<br />
people during the war in Afghanistan…<br />
I think that if the West had been involved<br />
in a war against terrorism back<br />
then, losses in men would have been<br />
equally high. Th anks to technological<br />
progress the allied armies in Afghanistan<br />
have lost 2,500 soldiers within the<br />
past ten years. Where the Russians used<br />
to send infantry units and helicopters<br />
into combat, the Americans send unmanned<br />
aircraft.<br />
It is also the war of two diff erent<br />
worlds. One side is using remote-controlled,<br />
unmanned aircraft while the<br />
other is made up of a mujahideen with<br />
a Kalashnikov for 120 dollars. Th ese<br />
disproportions really struck me in 2003<br />
and 2004 in Kabul when I observed<br />
American soldiers dressed in something<br />
that looked like science fi ction spacesuits,<br />
communicating among themselves but<br />
not able to say a single word to the Afghan<br />
people. Now Americans desperately<br />
want to reach an agreement with the<br />
Taliban and pull out of Afghanistan as<br />
soon as possible.<br />
Could events in Afghanistan have taken<br />
a different turn?<br />
Had the September 11 attacks in <strong>New</strong><br />
York and Washington DC not happened,<br />
the Taliban regime would have been<br />
overthrown by the Afghans. Several<br />
reasons indicate such a probability. It<br />
was intolerable to the Afghans that the<br />
government in Kabul interfered with<br />
their private lives. No Afghan man would<br />
allow his woman to leave home without<br />
wearing a burqa. But he cannot stand it<br />
when he is told to do exactly the same by<br />
a minister. Osama bin Laden would have<br />
been expelled from Afghanistan because<br />
he was imposing and the Afghans could<br />
not tolerate it any longer. Let us not forget<br />
that there was a short period of fi ve<br />
years when Afghanistan was occupied by<br />
the Arabs. I was in Afghanistan at that<br />
time and I could see that there was a lot<br />
of hatred towards the Arabic invaders<br />
who treated the Afghan people just as<br />
bad as Russians had before or the West<br />
does now. Mountain people tend to be<br />
very independent.<br />
As a war correspondent you had to face<br />
many dangers. Your serious car accident,<br />
for instance…<br />
We were part of a convoy that started<br />
from Faizabad. All members chose<br />
to drive in off -road Toyota trucks except<br />
for a friend of mine, Krzysztof<br />
Miller, a photographer, who decided
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