Pakistan declares Siachen avalanche buried dead

Digging operations at the site of the avalanche have been going on for weeks

I worked in Pakistan for some time in the 1990s and travelled extensively in the mountainous regions of Pakistan, and have followed this tragedy with interest.

Today, Pakistan has declared 129 soldiers and 11 civilians dead, seven weeks after a massive avalanche in the disputed Kashmir region buried an army camp.


On 7 April 21m (70ft) of snow engulfed a military camp in Gayari near the Siachen Glacier.

The announcement that those buried are "martyrs" comes days after the first body from the avalanche was dug out.

The incident prompted calls for India and Pakistan to withdraw troops from the contested glacier.

The battalion headquarters of the 6th Northern Light Infantry, located 15,000ft (4,572 m) above sea level in Kashmir's Gayari district, near the border with India, was hit by an avalanche at around 06:00 local time (01:00 GMT) on 7 April.

Although rescue efforts began shortly after news of the avalanche in the remote region reached officials, freezing and arduous conditions made hope of rescuing any of those trapped virtually impossible.

Over the past seven weeks rescuers have been digging tunnels in the snow and ice to try to recover the bodies, AFP news agency reports.

So far only three bodies have been recovered.

Kashmir has been partitioned between India and Pakistan since 1947.

Failure to agree on the status of the territory by diplomatic means has twice brought India and Pakistan to war.

The Siachen glacier is known as the world's highest battlefield, and soldiers have been deployed at elevations of up to 6,700m (22,000 feet).

However, more soldiers have died from the harsh weather conditions there than in combat.

Thanks to the BBC for permission to run this article.

Hemingway & Gellhorn

Image Credit: Karen Ballard/HBO

I met Martha Gellhorn in 1971.

In 1971, sitting in the bar at the Continental Palace in Saigon I met the famous war correspondent, Martha Gellhorn, the woman who changed the face of war reporting by giving accounts of the suffering of real people . A pioneer in journalism, telling the story of war in a unique and personal way, she reported on virtually every major world conflict that took place during her 60-year career. Gellhorn covered the Spanish Civil War the Finnish-Soviet winter war, World War II, the Vietnam War and the 1977 Arab Israel conflict.

When I met Gellhorn she must have been 62 going 63 and was a compelling person with a magnetic personality and had just come back from having been with US forces somewhere in the central highlands. I was 23 on my first Red Cross mission sitting at a table with a few other journalist and she joined us. I was unsure of who she was at that moment but I could immediately see the respect accorded to her by journalists that knew her incredible history. I can recall her commenting on the futility of war and the deeper meaning of life...”That spiritual world up or out there,” she described so wistfully with delicate hand movements, and then she dismissed the comment.

A few days ago I started getting a large amount of hits on my weblog and I starting wondering why ? After a bit of research, I found that a new movie by HBO, Hemingway & Gellhorn, was shown for the first time on HBO the other day. I am delighted that the story of Martha Gellhorn, one of the world's great war correspondents, is made into a movie.


I looked at many reviews and the one from the Ottawa Citizen was typical of many, and I copy it below: Towards the end of this post, I write in more detail about my meeting with Martha Gellhorn.

Quiet, studied, cerebral and eerily compelling, the new HBO biopic Hemingway & Gellhorn is both a throwback and surprisingly modern.
The two-and-a-half-hour film, long by TV-movie standards, is a reminder that made-for-TV movies don't have to pander. Increasingly, films made by adults for adults are being seen on cable channels like HBO. If the Hollywood studios had their way, and it weren't for indie filmmakers, summer at the movie theatres would be one long superhero movie. There's a reason A-listers like Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman choose to slum in TV. Increasingly, that reason is movies like Hemingway & Gellhorn.
As directed by seminal filmmaker Philip Kaufman - few film directors can claim credits as distinctive and differing as The Right Stuff, The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Invasion of the Body Snatchers within a few years of each other - Hemingway & Gellhorn is a reminder, too, that, long before Arwa Damon, Marie Colvin and Christiane Amanpour, women were at the front lines of the world's most prominent, respected war correspondents. Gellhorn, considered by the Daily Telegraph to be one of the greatest war correspondents of her generation, covered nearly every major conflict that occurred during her storied 60-year career.

Clive Owen as Ernest Hemingway Nicole Kidman as Martha Gellhorn from the movie Hemingway & Gellhorn. Photograph by: The Movie Network

Although Hemingway is the more familiar name, Hemingway & Gellhorn is Gellhorn's story. It's a cliche to describe Gellhorn as a woman before her time, but consider this: Shortly after meeting Hemingway in 1936 in Key West and becoming his third wife in 1940, Gellhorn chafed at being cast in the shadow of the renowned novelist and ladies' man, famously remarking to a friend that she didn't care to be "a footnote in someone else's life." Extramarital affairs followed - on both sides - and the marriage fractured, as the saying goes: "We were good in war. And when there was no war, we made our own."

Kaufman, Kidman and Owen faced the press at a meeting with TV critics in Los Angeles earlier this year. Predictably, perhaps, it was Gellhorn, not Hemingway, that commanded the most interest, and Kidman who fielded the most questions.
"(Gellhorn) found her voice when she was with Hemingway," Kidman explained. "He was a big part of helping her to, as he says in a line in the film, 'Get in the ring and start throwing punches for what you believe in.' The great thing about Gellhorn was she was the first female, really, war correspondent. She wrote about people's lives, and she wrote with direct truth. That's hard to do.
"During their relationship, you see her formulating who she is as a writer. She's not Hemingway. She didn't want to write novels. She wanted to be a correspondent. I love that she was the first woman to really do that. In the film, you see her on the front line, you see her hands bloody. She's a sponge, and then she's able to feed that back to America and the world. She was a trail blazer."
Is Hemingway & Gellhorn right for you? If the first image that comes to mind when you hear the words Island in the Stream is Kenny Rogers, possibly not. If the image that comes to mind is the posthumous Hemingway novel set in Cuba, Bahamas and the Florida Keys, or the George C. Scott movie with Claire Bloom, you owe it to yourself not to miss Hemingway & Gellhorn. This is the kind of movie that brings history to life and makes you feel better for understanding it.

Martha Gellhorn - War correspondent by Bob McKerrow

In 1971, sitting in the bar at the Continental Palace in Saigon I met the famous war correspondent, Martha Gellhorn, the woman who changed the face of war reporting by giving accounts of the suffering of real people . A pioneer in journalism, telling the story of war in a unique and personal way, she reported on virtually every major world conflict that took place during her 60-year career.Gellhorn covered the Spanish Civil War the Finnish-Soviet winter war, World War II, the Vietnam War and the 1977 Arab Israel conflict.

When I met Gellhorn she must have been 62 going 63 and was a compelling person with a magnetic personality and had just come back from having been with US forces somewhere in the central highlands.; I was 23 on my first Red Cross mission sitting at a table with a few other journalist and she joined us. I was unsure of who she was at that moment but I could immediately see the respect accorded to her by journalists that knew her incredible history. I can recall her commenting on the futility of war and the deeper meaning of life...”That spiritual world up or out there,” she described so wistfully with delicate hand movements, and then she dismissed the comment.

Many years later I found out exactly what she thought about the US engagement in the Vietnam war.
"The American army in Vietnam was an army of occupation, victims and victimizers both," she later wrote. "Victims because they were wrongly sent 10,000 miles from home, to take part - even as mildly as storekeeper, clerk, cook - in a political aggression. Victimizers because they looked on Vietnamese as a lesser breed..."




 I find her courage and writing ability as two things I will remember forever about this pioneering war correspondent.

Caroline Moorehead, author of Gellhorn: A Twentieth Century Life, says Gellhorn remained undaunted for most of her 90 years. "I think she was fearless but she knew what it was like to be frightened," a toughness she got from her upbringing, Moorehead says.

Gellhorn covered wars in a different way than other journalists. "She didn't write about battles and she didn't know about military tactics," Moorehead says. "What she was really interested in was describing what war does to civilians, does to ordinary people."

In 1939 Gellhorn witnessed the first weeks of the Winter War between Finland the Soviet Union. She was in Helsinki when the Soviet air forces bombed the city, as a declaration of war. "An Italian journalist had remarked in Helsinki that anyone who could survive the Finnish climate could survive anything and we decided with admiration that the Finns were a tough and unrelenting race, seeing them take this war as if there were nothing very remarkable in three million people fighting against a nation of 180 million." (Gellhorn in The Face of War, 1959) Gellhorn also met President Svinhufvud, whose name she wrote "Szinhuszue". Svinhufvud offered his guests small apples from his orchard. At the Karelian front Gellhorn interviewed Finnish fighter pilots, astonished by their age: "they ought to be going to college dances," she remarked. Gellhorn's reports emphasized that Finland was not the aggressor and deeply influenced the public opinion in the United States about the war.

Gellhorn married Hemingway on November 20, 1940, in Cheyenne, Wyoming. (photo left) Hemingway's friend, Robert Capa, photographed the ceremony for Life. The author dedicated his famous novel about the Spanish Civil war, For Whom the Bells Toll (1940), to Gellhorn. Maria in the book was partly modelled after her. "Her hair was the golden brow of a grain field," Hemingway wrote of his heroine. In the film version of the book, Ingrid Bergman played Maria, but hair was darker than Gellhorn's. However, Gellhorn had suggested her for the role.

The first years of their marriage were happy, although Gellhorn was never really attracted to Hemingway, or believed in romantic love. Hemingway taught her to ride, and shoot, and fish. In the afternoon they played tennis.

Gellhorn was sent to China by Collier's to report on the China-Japan war. They met General Chiang Kai-shek ("he had no teeth"), and continued to Burma, where they spent some time. Hemingway returned to Hong Kong and Gellhorn left for Singapore and Java. "She gets to the place,"

Gellhorn was sent to China by Collier's to report on the China-Japan war. They met General Chiang Kai-shek ("he had no teeth"), and continued to Burma, where they spent some time. Hemingway returned to Hong Kong and Gellhorn left for Singapore and Java. "She gets to the place,"



Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway with unidentified Chinese military officers, Chungking, China, 1941

Since she walked out on Ernest Hemingway in 1943, after five years of marriage, Gellhorn had refused to talk much about him. She was a writer in her own right, a woman who had covered the heaviest of wars, and she wished to be remembered for that. Yet all people recalled was the marriage. That obviously was disappointing to such a talented writer.

After the war she served as a correspondent in Java. Her only play, Love Goes to Press (1947), written in collaboration with Virginia Cowles, did not gain much success. Liana (1944) was a story of a mulatto woman. "True, there is a suspiciously Hemingway-like handling of the dialogue," wrote John Lucas in Contemporary Novelists (1972), "but for the rest there is a sharpness, a truth of observation in the studies of Liana herself and of Marc that would make the novel worth reading if there were nothing else to commend it." The Wine of Astonishment (1948) fallowed a U.S. in Europe in World War II. "Anything at all would do," thinks one of the characters, Lieutenant Colonel Smithers, "except this hour to hour hanging on, with time like a rock in your brain." A young soldier, Jacob Levy, confronts man's inhumanity toward man in Germany. The book was partly based on Gellhorn's experiences - she had been at Dachau a week after American soldiers had discovered the concentration camp.

The Continental Palace in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) where I met Martha Gellhorn in 1971.

In 1958 Gellhorn received an O. Henry Award. The sale of a short story to television enabled her to pay in 1962 her own way to Africa. Gellhorn's love affair of the continent lasted off and on for thirteen years. Much of her time she spent in Kenya, where she had a residence in the Rift Valley. Eventually she fond hopeless to try to write about the "natural world where everything was older than time and I was the briefest object in the landscape." One morning she was attacked on a beach - according to her friend, she was raped. Later she wrote a short story dealing with the traumatic experience.

Between 1934 and 1967, Gellhorn published six novels. She covered wars in Vietnam in the 1960s, and the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1967 for the Guardian of London. "The American army in Vietnam was an army of occupation, victims and victimizers both," she later wrote. "Victims because they were wrongly sent 10,000 miles from home, to take part - even as mildly as storekeeper, clerk, cook - in a political aggression. Victimizers because they looked on Vietnamese as a lesser breed..." In 1962 Gellhorn made a tour of German universities.

She could describe vividly decades later, how people were dressed and what they discussed on particular occasions. She had a sharp eye for significant details, and her writing was clear, clever, and precise - all qualities of a good reporter.  Her article Is there a new Germany ? written in February 1964 shows her accute powers of observation, analysis and committment to truth. She could describe vividly decades later, how people looked like on any ocassion when questioned..

There is an excellent doco on youtube with a Spanish commentary. You'll love it as you see the places she visited and so many photos of her exciting life.

How I enjoy her writings, love her as a person and am so grateful to have met her. R.I. P Martha..

Working in Central Asia - Keeping people alive in the Pamire mountains 1996-1999

A friend and colleague asked me the other day, what was the most rewarding Red Cross assignment I have had in the last ten years ? It was Central Asia from 1996 to 1999. Here are some excerpts from the diary:

As I write a bevy of 4000 to 4500 metre peaks stud the horizon less than 10 km from my window (see photo above). Living in Almaty, Kazakhstan, which nestles in the foothills of the northern Tien Shan mountains and working with people living in the Central Asia, has brought another distant dream true. Ever since I was a boy I was fascinated by the thought of Samarkand and travelling the ancient silk road which twists through the Celestial Mountains (Tien Shan)

After three years in Afghanistan (1993-1996) I moved in late 1996 to Central Asia to be in charge of major Red Cross programmes in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.


With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, one in twelve people have had to move in Central Asia because of dire economic difficulties or conflict. In Tajikistan one in five people have had to move due to the civil war. Therefore my work with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in the support of the national Red Cross societies in these five Central Asian countries, has been important in assisting isolated elderly and families who are facing starvation and other forms of acute deprivation.

My work takes me from the high Pamirs in the east of Central Asia to the extreme west where the Kara Kum desert in Turkmenistan meets the Kopet Dagh mountains on the Iranian border. I am rarely out of sight of soaring snow capped peaks.

In Gorno-Badakhshan many children show signs of stunted growth because of malnutrition, and are delighted to get even one pie a day.


Much of my travelling is done along the ancient silk road which travels through the heart of Central Asia, formerly linking China in the east to Europe in the west. Frequently I pass through the historic cities of Samarkand, Tashkent, Khojent, Khokand, Dushanbe, Termez, Merv, Ashgabat and cross the mighty Oxus River.

One of the most Herculean tasks has been during the past 3 months when have hauled 3200 metric tonnes of coal, 2,000 m2 of glass, 25 tonnes of roofing iron, 500 stoves, 600 flues and 2,000 sets of bed linen plus thousands of tonnes of food to remote hospitals scattered throughout the high Pamir mountains of Tajikistan.


Sunset of the high peaks of the Pamir mountains in Tajikistan



The coal is extracted from the Alai coal mines at 3,300 metres under the shadow of the 7,134 m Peak Lenin, to the schools, clinics and hospitals situated in the Pamirs where temperatures plunge as low as -40 oC during the long and bitterly cold winter. Last winter we distributed just over 5000 metric tonnes of coal, but now with having provided all the institutions with an improved type of stove, which burns less coal and produces greater heat, we have distributed slightly lesser amounts this year. Our office in Osh Kyrgyzstan is run by Jagan Chapagain from Nepal, who is the lynch-pin of the operation.

From the Alai mine, the coal is moved by truck (more than 600 truck loads this year) over the Kyrgyzstan pass, further up the Kyzl-Art or Red Clay Pass at 4,275 m then over the incredibly high White Horse Pass at 4,650 m and driven to the recipients, an average of 600 - 800 km away.

A lake in the Pamir mountains in Gorno Badakhshan



The Alai mine is situated at the cross roads of the old silk road. It is in a small valley leading to the larger Alai Valley, which connects Kashgar and the Sarafshan mountains of Tajikistan. Traders going through the nearby town of Saritash had a choice of taking the Pamir route up to Murgab and then down into Afghanistan or the more westerly Alai valley.


Zebunisso Karimova; all she wants is her family to be healthy. Her eyes fill with tears as she tells the Red Crescent that most of her furniture has been sold or traded to buy food.


The stoves were produced in the ancient Kyrgyz city of Osh, creating jobs for many unemployed engineers and metal workers. Osh celebrated its 3000 year anniversary late last decade.

In the remote areas of Gorno Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast ( GBAO) in the Pamirs, we have worked closely with the Red Crescent Society of Tajikistan financing the purchase of sheep, goats and yaks to enable these remote Red Cross branches to generate income which will in time, enable them to finance their programmes. Earlier this year I visited I visited the valley of Joshangoaz at about 3,500 metres where a Red Cross shepherd tends about 150 sheep and goats.

One of the coldest nights I spent in Tajikistan was in Murgab situated at 4000 m, where the temperature dropped to - 30 oC.
Our Red Cross workers; drivers, shepherds and field officers tell stories of hardship and danger of the past three winters of getting coal and food out to the people. Heavy snow falls blocking roads for weeks, frostbite while repairing vehicles, convoys getting scuttled by avalanches and being looted by modern day highway men is not uncommon.

The Tien Shan mountains lie mainly in Kyrgyzstan with northern parts stretching into Kazakhstan and a south-east finger poking into Uzbekistan. Approximately 750 km, or half of the Tien Shan lie in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Home to 60% of the world's dwindling population of the snow leopard ( Panthera uncia) there are estimated to be about 450 snow leopards dwelling here.

A young Kazakh girl.

In the foothills of Kyrgyzstan's Tienshan mountains, the International Federation of Red Cross supports the Kyrgyz Red Crescent to run a large relief programme providing food to isolated elderly people on a pension of approximately US $15 a month, and to institutions such as schools, orphanages and mentally handicapped homes.


I live on the outskirts of Almaty, Kazakhstan, at about 1000 m.

It is paradise for mountaineers and skiers for you can drive to 2600 m within 45 minutes and can climb a 4200 m peak in a day and for six months of the year, the Chimbulak ski field offers some of the best and cheapest skiing in the world.

But it the people that makes Almaty's local mountains unique. The relationship between mountain dwellers and mountains has long fascinated me and it has been great to make strong friends with Kazakhstani mountaineers and share their natural mountain life-style.

Looking across the foothills to Almaty in winter



These mountaineers live in the foothills of the Tien Shan and every Friday night either walk the four hours to their alpine huts from Almaty or drive. They spend every spare moment, every holiday in the mountains and from the age of three or four, the children ski like the wind and climb rock like a mountain goat. They have their songs, poems, climbing competitions and age old traditions of producing exquisite wood carvings.

Khan Tengri, the highest peak in Kazakhstan 7000 metres high


I fondly recall spending Christmas and New Years day (1996-97) with my good mates Sergy and Yuri, their families and other Kazakh and Russian mountaineers in their club huts consuming large amounts of Vodka, horse meat and intestines, the staple of Kazakhstan. Outside at least a metre of snow covered the ground offering superb skiing. It was here I first met Anatoly Boukreev the famous Kazakh climber who not only climbed Mt. Everest a few times, but made one of the most selfless rescues on Mt Everest in 1996.

I met the greatest of Kazakh mountaineers in 1997, Anatoli Boukreev

Spending days with Kazakhstani mountaineers and their extended families in the alpine huts in the Tien Shans while blizzards rage outside, it has been amazing to find those who have scaled Everest, Makalau, Dhalagauri and to hear them speaking modestly of significant climbs in most ranges of the world.

In 1997 the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies has assisted 3 million elderly, orphans, handicapped people and multi-children families through a very difficult year. With one of the worst winters on record affecting Central Asia and heavy snow and severe gales lashing the region, we have stepped up our relief assistance to those without heating and inadequate clothing.

A view from the road into Gorno Badakshan in the Pamir mlountains. We had to cart coal over passes up to 4,600 metres in winter.

Bob McKerrow 1999

A tribute to Derek Round - war correspondent

RESPECTED JOURNALIST

I have spent at least 30 years in conflict and post conflict situations and I would say that Derek Round was one of the best war correspondents I met. Unobtrusive, disarming, and yet he possessed a piercing ability to analyse the heart of a situation, always better than others, and wrote with blunt honesty.

Derek would just turn up unannounced in the middle of a tense situation in central Vietnam in 1973, and if I recall correctly, he popped in to see us again in Pleiku (Vietnam) in 1974 when I was leader of a New Zealand Red Cross Refugee Welfare team. Bullets, tanks, landmines, threats he knew too well, but was never obessed by security which meant he got into seldom visited places.

In 1975 I was in Saigon in the weeks leading up to the fall of Saigon, trying to find how New Zealand Red Cross leader Mac Riding was killed, and Derek was in the thick of it.. I recall many meetings and the ocassional evening in a lively bar, trying to drink beer as 'bargirls' lamented the likely take over of the NVA, and pestered us.

I passed through Singapore on the scores of times in the early 70s and I recall visiting him and I am sure he visited our New Zealand Red Cross team in Bangladesh shortly after the end of the Indo-Pak war.

Derek has a wide and distinguished list of accomplishments in a media career which began in the mid-1950s when he was editor of the Canterbury University student newspaper Canta.

In the 1960s he became the bureau chief in Singapore and Hong Kong for international news agency Reuters, and for four years from 1973 he was the Asia correspondent for the New Zealand Press Association (NZPA).

His work in Hong Kong was credited as playing a prominent role in presenting Asia to New Zealanders at a time when New Zealand was developing stronger links to the region.


His cousin Martin Round claimed the journalist also served as a spy for the SIS after he was contacted by the Soviet Union.

"The Russians paid him Stg30 a fortnight, which Derek gave to SIS, and SIS paid Derek either Stg20 or Stg25 a fortnight," Martin Round told 3 News.

Mr Round was the first New Zealand reporter accredited to Beijing, something he gained while accompanying then Prime Minister Robert Muldoon on the inaugural New Zealand prime ministerial visit to China.

He wrote several biographies, was a former chairman and trustee of the New Zealand Portrait Gallery, and had several roles in Wairarapa community organisations.

A Canterbury University law graduate, he turned to journalism after working as a legal intern on the infamous Parker-Hulme murder trial in 1954, when he was 19-years-old.

Derek wrote a book called " Barbed wire Between Us, published by
Random House New Zealand, Jul 15, 2002 - 189 pages

In summary, the bood starts with Kenelm Digby and Mutal Fielder meeting on a P and O liner returning to the Far East from England on the eve of the Second World War. As a 21-year-old undergraduate, Kenelm had made headlines when he took part in the notorious 1933 'King and Country' debate at the Oxford Union. Now he was returning to Kuching as legal adviser to Sir Vyner Brooke, last of the legendary White Rajahs of Sarawak. Mutal, who had trained as a ballet dancer in London and Paris, was on her way back to Hong Kong where she and her parents enjoyed a life of privilege and comfort, waited on by Chinese servants in their home on The Peak, then the exclusive preserve of the upper ranks of the British expatriate community. The young couple's shipboard romance led to their engagement in Singapore, celebrated with champagne at Raffles Hotel. But their idyllic world soon came crashing around them when the Japanese invaded Hong Kong and Sarawak at Christmas 1941. Kenelm spent the next three and a half years interned in Kuching. Mutal, with her parents, spent the war in the humiliating and squalid conditions at Stanley Internment Camp, separated from her fiancé by barbed wire and the South China Sea. Constantly hungry and often sick, she watched friends die, carried to lonely graves in makeshift coffins. But her courage and resourcefulness helped her to obtain desperately needed food for herself and her ailing parents. She survived to be reunited with Kenelm after the war and the couple eventually made their home in New Zealand. Derek Round spent much of his 20 year career as a foreign correspondent in Hong Kong where he was bureau chief of Reuters news agency and later Asia correspondent of the New Zealand Press Association. He and his family lived in Stonycroft, the old colonial mansion on The Peak which had once been the home of Mutal Digby and her parents. Earlier, as Reuters bureau chief in Singapore he also covered Sarawak and was a correspondent in Vietnam during the war. He was later NZPA's political editor and Fleet Street-based chief European correspondent before returning to Wellington as Editor of NZPA. He lives in Christchurch where he began his career in journalism on the Star-Sun.

I was devastated to learn that one of our greatest foreign correspondents was killed in his own home in New Zealand, such a despicable act of cowardice.

An autopsy shows journalist Derek Round was killed in a "horrific attack" in the living room of his Whanganui home, police say.


Detective Senior Sergeant Dave Kirby of Whanganui CIB said he had received results from an autopsy carried out today.

"Although I can't go into details at this stage the results would indicate a horrific attack on Derek, which took place in the living room of his home."

Round was found dead in his Campbell St home on Thursday morning.

Police were searching for clues to provide some insight into the events that unfolded before the 77-year-old's death.

"We have made pleasing progress today, but this is one of those cases which the public will help us solve,'' Kirby said.

"I really need know more about the movements of Derek's car which we know left his property in Campbell Street sometime after 7pm on Wednesday. It is a 1996 blue Jaguar XJ6 - a quite distinctive car.''


Interviews with Round's neighbours, a scene examination at his house, and a forensic examination of his car would continue tomorrow.


The police were also focusing on a few items of clothing, which they believed were linked to the crime scene.

Parks, reserves and bush areas would be searched by police tomorrow.


Kirby asked residents to check their front yards and bushes for the missing clothes, which included a red long-sleeved jersey or sweatshirt, a black leather sleeveless vest, dark coloured stonewashed jeans, dark fingerless gloves, and a pair of dark coloured sports shoes with light markings around the soles and coloured laces

The clothing has the hallmarks of gang attire.

Police, however, declined to say whether the clothing led them to consider a gang connection in their hunt for suspects, saying it would be speculating.

A team of 40 police were working on the investigation, which also involved canvassing both sides of the Whanganui River.

"This is a meticulous process involving a team of detectives piecing together what Derek was doing before he was violently attacked. As part of this we are talking to a range of people who had contact with him."

Kirby said some people have come forward with information.

Thanks to  Fairfax NZ News for permission to use part of their story.

Am I my brother’s keeper

Love Changes Everything

With celebrations marking the third anniversary of the military defeat of the LTTE going on in Colombo as I write, I was touched by this editorial which appeared in the Daily Mirror Editorial, yesterday, May 18, 2012 .

Former female Tamil tiger combatants, in white shirts, spend time at the sea promenade with Sri Lankan female army soldiers during their visit, in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Friday, May 11, 2012. Hundreds of former Tamil tiger combatants are on a visit to Colombo as part of their rehabilitation program.

The country celebrates tomorrow the third anniversary of the military defeat of the LTTE. Yet, what should touch the heart of our nation and probably of people elsewhere, is that the rehabilitation processes is taking place. More than 600 former LTTE cadres were brought to the city during the Vesak season, as part of a larger tour of the country.

True victory does not lie so much in destroying the enemy, but the platform on which it stands. The LTTE and those who used these cadres would have thought they were fighting a just war. Such would naturally harbour bitter feelings towards the ending of it all. Somewhere along the historical line, they would have felt alienated; made to see themselves as a minority race, devoid of equal status with the majority.

Every person yearns to be accepted and loved, let alone the holding of the label of whatever race we are branded with, through no fault of our own. The basic platform then, from which terrorism originates, is the deep need to receive recognition and acceptance.

It is truly commendable of the armed services to reach out and show that they care. Giving such acceptance to the former enemy in itself is a meritorious act. It is unlikely that such a thing has seldom happened in other countries, where such wars were fought. Here lies the human side of the armed services that others need learn from. Then would the victims and vanquished be comforted and secured.

Here was a rare war where brother fought brother. Both fought justifying their need. Our soldiers fought not the Tamils, but the violent edge from a part of society. The need of the hour is to reach out, not only to the LTTE but all neglected minorities. We are all our brothers' keepers. We have to lift those we have wounded and hurt. We have to be emotionally moved during this anniversary to place our arms over each other. Some may have no arms to do so, yet our tears could mingle with theirs and fall on our soil, to water seeds of unity for the future growth of our country. If one needs to boast, let it be to showcase our brotherhood, with not only the minority but even those labeled, LTTE; who after all seek to belong.

On victory day, an emotional cord needs to be touched in the heart of the victor and the vanquished. A brother calling to another-reaching out; promising to restore the dignity and acceptance long denied; a call to come back home and belong to the family. To share in whatever privileges is enjoyed. As the popular song goes, “Love Changes Everything”. This message could be conveyed to those brothers who lost their way, disowned by politicians and bring them back into the family of Mother Lanka.

Source: Daily Mirror - Sri Lanka

Some history on the Transit of Venus

Jeremiah Horrocks makes the first observation of the transit of Venus in 1639

At breakfast the other morning, my son Ablai mentioned that a Transit of Venus is appearing next month. I reminded he and his brother Mahdi that their Great-great-grandfather James McKerrow observed the Transit of Venus in 1885, near Wellington in New Zealand.

There is a really good link on stuff website that explains more.


McKerrow had his own wide ranging interests. He was a competent astronomer and, in December 1882 made the arrangements for the observation of the transit of Venus when New Zealand was visited by American and British scientists.

A number of observers, including five parties from the Survey Department, set up in different places while McKerrow, using a five-inch equatorial telescope of fifty inch focal length, secured a splendid set of observation from Boulcott Street in Wellington.

For this he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. In recognition of his early survey work in Otago and Southland he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and of the New Zealand Institute of Surveyors


However, on my James McKerrow blog, I wrote:

In 1882 Jame McKerrow observed the Transit of Venus, and in 1885 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Astromnomical Society, and this was taken from their journal:

Since this was New Zealand's only total solar eclipse a glance at reports from other parts of the country may be of interest.
No one would have blamed Wellington observers for going elsewhere to observe the eclipse but as it turned out they would have done better to have stayed at home. At Wellington the dark shadow of totality was seen rushing toward the city and then came the "beautiful flood of white light which surrounded the moon". Coronal rays extending for from two to three solar diameters were seen, as well as a large red prominence "conspicuous on the right". The weather was described as "most favourable in a southerly gale".
Wellington observers who moved closer to the central line of eclipse, however, did not see as much. Dr Hector (after whom the Dominion Observatory was formerly named), together with Archdeacon Stock (who had predicted the end of the world from the comet of 1883) and Messrs Adams (later Dr Adams, the Dominion's first professional astronomer), McKerrow, Humphries, Travers and Beverley went to Masterton, selecting sites on Rangitumau and Otahiaho hills. They saw the eclipse through a watery sky which dimmed its beauty. Bailey's Beads were seen, as well as coronal rays extending only half a solar diameter from the sun's limb. Mr Humphries got good photographs of the beads, corona and prominences.

A water supply for 90,000 people in Galle Sri Lanka.

The American Red Cross in partnership with the Sri Lanka red Cross, supported by the  IFRC, has just completed a 7.5 km of pipeline  bringing safe water to 21,000 households, which is 90,000 people, in the southern town of Galle in southern Sri Lanka.

This project was one of the last to be started with funding from 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami and should have been completed last year, but was held up as the crucial part of any pipeline, is a surge vessel,  pictured above. This had to be made in India and transported by sea to Sri lanka which delayed the project

Marcus  Bolleurs (right) the Amcross water and sanitation delegate who is based in Bangkok, has been 'pulling his hair out ' over the delays in the project. He has been ing every month and drops in to give me an update and above is a photo taken discussing progress with me earlier in the year.

So some of you may be asking, what is a surge vessel ?
A surge tank (or surge vessel) is a standpipe or storage reservoir at the downstream end of a closed aqueduct or feeder pipe to absorb sudden rises of pressure as well as to quickly provide extra water during a brief drop in pressure. An open tank to which the top of a surge pipe is connected so as to avoid loss of water during a pressure surge.
 
Consider a pipe containing a flowing fluid. When a valve is either fully or partially closed at some point downstream, the fluid will continue to flow at the original velocity. In order to counteract the momentum of the fluid the pressure will rise significantly (pressure surge) just upstream of the control valve and may result in damage to the pipe system. If a surge chamber is connected to the pipeline just upstream of the valve, on valve closure the fluid instead of being stopped suddenly by the valve will flow upwards into the chamber hence reducing the surge pressures experienced in the pipeline.


Upon closure of the valve, the fluid continues to flow, passing into the surge tank causing the water level in the tank to rise. The level in the tank will continue to rise until the additional head due to the height of fluid in the tank balances the surge pressure in the pipeline[1]. At this point the flow in the tank and pipeline will reverse causing the level in the tank to drop. This oscillation in tank height and flow will continue for some time but its magnitude will dissipate slowly due to the effects of friction.

Red Cross work in northern Sri Lanka

Returning to Colombo after a week-long field trip, is a time a reflect, write and sort photos taken on the trip.

While returning to Colombo last Friday, I wrote this in my diary"

Each day I learn a little more on how to map the human heart. This week I have visited over 20 villages in Anaradhapura, Kilinochchi and Jaffna districts. I see joy and suffering, hardship and kindness. Our Red Cross work restores life and livelihoods after conflict and floods. The map charts the extremes of human deeds, emotions and actions. A life saved, a life taken, it is all mapped.


I travelled with Michael Annear, Head of the Disaster Management Unit for IFRC Asia and Pacific Zone. Michael is an engineer and an expert on risk reduction so Nimal Silva, Dr. Mahesh and I appreciated his expertise as an Engineer, and someone who understands 'surge capacity' and 'scaling up.'  With 3000 houses almost completed, we are trying to secure more funding to scale up and reach more of those 100,000 families without permanent houses.

On Tuesday I visited the village Kakula in northern Anuradhapura which was totally inundated by flood waters in January and February 2011 and where the Red Cross has built 34 houses under the flood recovery programme. ( During the flood recovery programme we built 1400 houses in 8 districts.)

We met an inspiring  lady who led this house-building programme and she told us how she moblised voluntary labour from the communities, particularly to construct houses allocated to widows. A group of smiling women and children flocked around us and thanked us for the support to their community.

The worst affected people now have a house, water and sanitation and improved livelihoods. Strengthening community resilience has been the focus of this programme and I was particularly impressed with livelihood programmes where people elected to breed goats and chickens.

Then to we travelled a kilometer or so to Rambewa to see a Red Cross and government blood donation programme, followed by a ceremony to mark World Red Cross Red Crescent Day. Many of the donors and mobilisers were young people from the local Red Cross unit. As a fundraising venture, members of this unit were given some fallow paddy land and grew a very profitable crop of rice. Youth are certainly on the move here.

Next we inaugurated a community centre which was 50% funded by the Red Cross and the rest given by the community. Here we had a few speeches for World Red Cross Red Crescent day and then presented tractors to poor, flood affected farmers, kitchen sets and mosquito nets to other villagers, and school bags and kits to children.


On Wednesday morning I met up with Michael and we travelled to Vavuniya where we teamed up with Nimal Silva (SLRCS) and Dr. Mahesh (IFRC) who run our ever-exanding Post Conflict Recovery Programme. (PRCP). We all travelled to Kilinochchi district where we have built 900 houses, provided water and sanitation, and livelihoods. We visited Krishnapuram and Michael had the chance to see the programme for the first time. He was impressed with our integrated or holistice approach and spent much time examining the owner-driven houses, the latrines and water supplies, but the thing that grabbed his attention, was the varied livelihoods programme. He spoke to a number of villagers and went to see their fields and saw how their lives have dramatically improved since receiving livelihood grants and training.

Michael Annear talking to Sinathamby Vellachame who has a Red Cross funded house with water and toilet, standing in front of his chilli field which is an integral part of the Red Cross livelihood programme.

On Thursday we travelled to Karainagar a small island off the coast of Jaffna. This was my second visit to this very poor part of Sri Lanka where we are building 70 houses in two villages. In the first village 16 recepients of the owner-driven houses are widows as so many men were killed in the brutal conflict. Conditions in the village are grim with no potable drinking water and the poorly dug wells produce a sour and brackish water, and drinking water has to be trucked in daily. Since my last visit in late January this year, people are smiling and everyone in the two villages are building their houses. Men split wood for the roof, masons skillfully position and cement bricks, while women cart sand and stones. Before and after school, children contribute to the family owner-driven approach to house building.

Karainagar. After 3 months since starting, foundations are complete and the walls start going up. Each house takes between six and ten months to complete.

Michael Annear (l) Dr. Mahesh (centre) and Ganesh at Kiranchi village near Malankavil discussing the finer points of construction.

We left Jaffna late Thursday morning and embarked on a 2 and a half  hour drive to Mulankavil half way down the west coast of Kilinochichi, which must be the remotest part of Sri Lanka. We have an office at Mulankavil and we stopped there to pick up members of our dedicated Red Cross team.

The Red Cross PCRP team in Mulankavil with Michael Annear. Living conditions are basic but the committment shown, 'beyond the call of duty' is impressive.

In and around Mulankavil, we spoke to those building Red Cross houses, putting in latrines and water supplies and discussing livelihhoods. I am sure with 3000 houses nearing completion, we have got the formula right.

..

It was a successful trip and a chance to look at where we are with the current programme, and to further develop a methodology to market what we are doing and the need to advocate for those 100,000 families without permanent housing. I am hopeful some of our partners will get behind us and fund more houses, watsan and livelihoods.  Thanks to Michael Annear for joining us.

But it is so easy and understandable to focus on the hardware side of the project, but we are also dealing appropriately with people who have been traumatised by a 25 year long conflict is something the Red Cross quietly does as a cross cutting initiative. The photo above was taken at a YABC workshop I attended last year in Vavuniya.Youth as Agents of Behavioural Change (YABC) is an initiative to empower youth to play a lead role in transforming mindsets, attitudes and behaviour in their local community. It starts from the premise that a prior commitment to inner change and being the living example of our Fundamental Principles and Humanitarian Values is the best way to reach this objective.

YABC uses innovative and artistic platforms; it integrates peer education and non-cognitive learning to promote behavioural change and uses games, role plays, visualisation, drama, dance and art for youth to make the journey "from the heart to the mind" and succeed in social mobilisation.

Toolkit

In 2008-2009, the IFRC P&V department in Geneva developed a draft skills-based toolkit for YABC, together with the Youth Commission, Youth focal point of the Organisational Development Department, and a network of youth leaders from 42 National Societies world-wide. Here is an update on what we are doing in this respect.

Distinctive and different: #RCRC day in Sri Lanka

I first celebrated World Red Cross day in South Vietnam in 1971, and in 41 years have participated in ceremonies in Himalayan Kingdoms, Pacific Atolls, three in war-torn Afghanistan, once in an elegant ballroom in Jakarta, deserts in Ethiopia, villages in southern India, diplomatic enclaves in New Delhi, slums in Bangladesh, and in the streets of Geneva when we celebrated the 150 anniversary of the birth of Henri Dunant.

After attending 41 birthday parties for dear Henri, I feel I should become an honorary member of the family.

Today was distinctive, and definitely different. I have never celebrated with people who had just received houses, running water and sanitation and livelihoods support. This was a community who were beneficiaries of a Red Cross flood recovery programme in Anaradhapura, so it was a double celebration. One for Henri and one for safer communities.

After a five hour drive from Colombo, I teamed up with Baratha, the vice president of the Sri Lanka Red Cross, Tissa Abeywickrama, the director general. DG of SLRCS, and the chairman of Anaradhapura branch. First we visited the village Kakula which was totally inundated by flood waters in January and February 2011 and where the Red Cross has built 34 houses under the flood recovery programme. ( During the flood recovery programme we built 1400 houses in 8 districts.)

We met the lady who led this house-building programme and she told us how she moblised voluntary labour from the communities, particularly to construct houses allocated to widows. A group of smiling women and children flocked around us and thanked us for the support to their community.

Tissa Abeywickrama, (l) the director general SLRCS with Baratha, (r) Vice president SLRCS, with the writer in the centre at the inauguration of houses build with  funds from the flood recovery operation

The worst affected people now have a house, water and sanitation and improved livelihoods. Strengthening community resilience has been the focus of this programme and I was particularly impressed with livelihood programmes where people elected to breed goats and chickens.

Then to we travelled a kilometer or so to Rambewa to see a Red Cross and government blood donation programme, followed by a ceremony to mark World Red Cross Red Crescent Day. Many of the donors and mobilisers were young people from the local Red Cross unit. As a fundraising venture, members of this unit were given some fallow paddy land and grew a very profitable crop of rice. Youth are certainly on the move here.

Next we inaugurated a community centre which was 50% funded by the Red Cross and the rest given by the community. Here we had a few speeches for World Red Cross Red Crescent day and then presented tractors to poor, flood affected farmers, kitchen sets and mosquito nets to other villagers, and school bags and kits to children. It was such a joy to be with RC youth and to see them working in communities and involved in all programmes. These flood prone areas are now safer and more resilient thanks to Red Cross support.

Thavarani one year later. Poorest of the poor.

Thirteen and a half months ago I visited Thavarani a disabled widow with 3 children, in the village of Krishnapuram, in Kilinochchi district. She was in a very desperate situation and I was worried about her health, the health of her children, and was deeply concerned as to whether she would be able to build a house with the funds allocated by the Red Cross for her to build an owner-driven house. Today, her house is almost finished, just the floor to cement, and then she and her children move in. This is nothing short of a miracle.  I am so grateful to Red Cross volunteers who helped her. She looked so much healthier, and the children too. This is one of 3000 success stories, based on the 3000 houses Red Cross has built to date.

I was with Michael Annear, Head of the IFRC Disaster Management Unit for our Asia and Pacific zone.
Tonight I will sleep well knowing that Thavarani has a three roomed house with kitchen, water and sanitation, and a large vegetable garden that feeds her family, and surplus to sell.

This is the story I wrote 13 months ago.
 
Some nights I struggle to sleep wondering how a disabled widow like Thavarani survives with three children in a very basic make-shift shelter, while I am in a sound hotel or apartment. We work in some villages where people are in desperate situations, but it takes time to get communities functioning normally after such a long and brutal conflict in the north of Sri Lanka, which has grossly affected so many people, and ruined infrastructure, livelihoods, dreams and minds. Getting funds for this life-saving programme has been so difficult and we have had to graft all the way.

In my blog posting one before last. I wrote about Vimala Rani ( SEE LINK:vimala) who has rebuilt her life after a long and cruel war in the north of Sri Lanka.  She lost her husband, her house and nearly all possessions. Now she has a Red Cross house, a small income through our livelihood programme, a toilet and running water, and her five children are doing well, one training to be a nurse, and the rest at school. It takes time, patience and dogged perserverance to fund raise for such projects.

Last Thursday after visiting Vimala Rani in the village of Vivekanandanagar in Kilinochchi I went to visit the village of Krishnapuram where we are building another 100 houses for people who lost theirs. Some houses are completed but the majority are in various stages of construction. I asked Dr Mahesh, who runs our IDP programme to show me some of the poorest people in Krishnapuram. He said, the initial survey conducted by Red Cross shows that a 33 year old woman, Thavrani, as one of the poorest.

Thavarani, and her youngest child.

Thavrani is a widow, and has three young children. She lives in a very basic temporary shelter, while her Red Cross funded house is being built. During the conflict she got hit by a shell or mortar and her left leg is withered and left her with a bad limp. Her left arm was damaged and twisted so the palm of her hand is always in a face up position. The reason Thavrani is in a worse situation than most other widows as being disabled limits her in what she can do, her extended family is minimal, and support group limited.

Thavrani with her basic shelter on the left and her Red Cross funded house going up in the background.

A closer look at her very basic home where she lives with her three children

Red Cross has workers like Surethi and Nithya (pictured on the extreme right above)  ride on a small motor cycle, supervising this owner-driven housing programme, visiting all people in the community and when they find someone las destituteThavrani, they have the skills to discuss and advise her on problems, and also able to provide counselling and material support. Thavani, like many others, is suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and needs regular visits and support. She also need Red Cross to provide her a voice for the future, and 'protection.'

Three of our staff supervising the housing programme Surethi and Nithya at the left and Chamini right, visit Thavarani and many others on a regular basis and do an amazing work helping them become self sustaining.

Thavrani's house will look like this within two months, and she will be able to move into it.



With the Sri Lanka Red Cross programme targetting 5000 familiers, it is frustraing seeing people suffering as they work even harder to get their houses completed before the next rainy season.

Thavrani maanges a broad smile as Dr. Mahesh asks her what additional help she needs. " I need a little extra help with laying the blocks, so I can finish it as soon as possible," she says.

As I walked away from her house I glanced back and saw her talking to  Surethi and Nithya and I know these two dedicated Red Cross workers  will watch over and care for Thavrani and her children, and ensure her house and other facilities are completed quickly.

It doesn't make me sleep easier as there are thousands of people like Thavani in Sri Lanka affccted by the aftermath of tsunami, recent floods and landslides and by a long and brutal war. But the hope comes from people like Nadeeka and Melinda from the Australian Red Cross who visited Jaffna, Kilinochchi and Vavuniya last week, and have given funding for over 300 houses, plus livelihoods, water and sanitation, and a little extra to support very vulnerables women like Vumala and Thavani.

We need continuing support from our partners and the general public out there to ensure people affected by war and natural disasters can live with dignity and hope.

The American Club Peshawar

The American Club (in Peshawar) was populated by a peculiar group of colorful ex-patriots: journalists, aid workers, would-be spies, and political operatives. The strongest presence at the club was a clique of journalists who covered the Afghan war with a markedly pro-American intervention bias. Key players of this group in the late 1980s included Kurt Lohbeck of CBS News, his girlfriend Anne Hurd of Mercy Fund (a pro-Mujahideen charity), and Steve Masty, an independent journalist and writer. For years their reporting had been nurturing a positive image of the Mujahideen in the American press. They portrayed the Afghan fighters as noble warriors fighting solely to liberate their country from brutal Soviet invaders and their puppet Marxist government.

from the Spy of the Heart by Robert Abdul Hayy Darr click here

Brilliant musicians gathered at the American Club, and so many were of Irish descent. I frequented this establishment regularly between 1993-96 and the photos were taken in that era.

Sean pictured below, must have been the most colourful of them all, with an amazing voice. But with the passage of time, I have forgotten the names of other performers who appear in the photos below. If you know the names of any of these characters, please make a comment in the section at the end.

Sean, the Irish Australian singer who played the banjo so well.

                Some good old boys sat in a circle near the bar singing songs poking fun at the Mujahideen to popular 1960s melodies strummed on the guitar. Laughter and shouts added rhythm to the songs as they floated across the smoke-filled room and mixed with the clanging of glasses and bottles, fuel for the party atmosphere.

All sorts of groups formed at the bar and I became a member of a paragliding club that practiced at Kohat.

I first met Steve Masty (left) in Peshawar He was managing the American Club. It was late 1993, He was louging in a wicker chair, wearing white Shalwar Kemeez and chatting to a friend. I used every drop of charm and decorum. I possessed as I was going to work some years in Afghanistan and wanted membership to the club, as it was the only place in this fundamentalist frontier city one could have a wee dram when visiting.


"No problem, “ he smiled. This was the start of a friendship that has lasted ever since.

What a talented man: Song writer, movie director, singer, author, once a speech writer for Ronald Reegan, Steve did a PhD in Scottish literature in Edinburgh.

To describe the  of that era I quote from the Spy of the Heart by Robert Abdul Hayy Darr

Chapter 11. A Loss of Face


The first evening back in Peshawar, I walked ten minutes along the main avenue to the nearest ice-cream parlor to claim the treat I had been thinking about for the last few months. I was still exhausted from my trip to northern Afghanistan, but excited by the prospect of meeting some friends at the local gathering place for ex-patriots of all descriptions. The American Club was located in University Town, the nicest and safest neighborhood in Peshawar, on a large parcel of well-watered land planted with all kinds of trees and flowers that thrived in the heat of the Subcontinent. The club building was a simple two-story cement structure, square in appearance like most of the buildings in the neighborhood, but considerably larger. The club is where journalists and aid workers from all over the world met for drinks and talk.


Some good old boys sat in a circle near the bar singing songs poking fun at the Mujahideen to popular 1960s melodies strummed on the guitar. Laughter and shouts added rhythm to the songs as they floated across the smoke-filled room and mixed with the clanging of glasses and bottles, fuel for the party atmosphere. The consumption of alcohol was no small part of club life.

Alcohol was by law forbidden to Pakistani Muslims, but within the confines of the club, Scotch whiskey and American triumphalism flowed freely. I could smell it on the breath of the guests and in the sweat in the air. I could hear the unreason of alcohol in the livelier-than-usual conversations, sometimes unduly insistent, but often quirky and amusing, here at happy hour central. The lampooning of the Mujahideen and their leaders was just part of the usual night of fun at the American Club.

It felt very strange to be back here after my recent mission to remote northern Afghanistan. As desperate as things were in the famine area and as agitated as I had been working with the various parties of that conflict, those experiences felt solid and meaningful compared to this social carnival.


I always felt out of place when I stepped into the club. I didn’t drink or smoke, I didn’t enjoy small talk and gossip. When staying in Peshawar, I usually remained with the Afghan staff that I worked with, even into the evening. This was partly because my office and living quarters were in the same compound as those of our foundation’s local manager, Mohammed Ali. Only a wall running down the middle of the compound separated us. I was delighted by the opportunity to learn about Afghan culture and language as fully and quickly as I could.

There were times that I could not avoid going to the American Club to meet colleagues, and for special events. Our foundation, the Afghan Cultural Assistance Foundation, occasionally made presentations on Afghan poetry and music at the American Club. We would also take the foundation’s refugee-made crafts to sell there on certain evenings.

The American Club was populated by a peculiar group of colorful ex-patriots: journalists, aid workers, would-be spies, and political operatives. The strongest presence at the club was a clique of journalists who covered the Afghan war with a markedly pro-American intervention bias. Key players of this group in the late 1980s included Kurt Lohbeck of CBS News, his girlfriend Anne Hurd of Mercy Fund (a pro-Mujahideen charity), and Steve Masty, an independent journalist and writer. For years their reporting had been nurturing a positive image of the Mujahideen in the American press. They portrayed the Afghan fighters as noble warriors fighting solely to liberate their country from brutal Soviet invaders and their puppet Marxist government.

This certainly was true in a general sense. The irrepressible Afghan will to drive out the invader was both heart-wrenching and inspiring to witness throughout the early years of that conflict. Yet a shadow was falling across this bright picture of bravery, a pall of sectarian and interethnic warfare and the emergence of those with a literalist, militant interpretation of Islam. Theft, murder, drug smuggling, and the oppressive reign of petty warlords also darkened this image of the struggle for freedom. Yet none of these issues were adequately addressed by the press. The Peshawar clique was partly responsible for this inattention to detail. Its members were fully engaged in describing a simple military struggle. For many of these journalists and politically-motivated aid workers, the Afghan Mujahideen were doing what the Cold War had been unable to do: bring down the “Evil Empire.”

I met Lohbeck at the Club sometime in 1987. My first impressions of him left me amused and wary. He presented himself as an authority on all aspects of the Afghan conflict. Over time I observed that, although he did have many Afghan acquaintances, he did not speak Persian or Pashto. He was like most foreigners to the region, a “special case” for Afghans who relax the social rules in the presence of Westerners like Lohbeck in order to better understand them while trying to obtain their help. Lohbeck weighed in on conversations about the war and American policy in the region, with a particular bias on which Afghan leaders he thought were worthy of support. His own support for Commander Abdul Haq was really unquestioned. He glowingly portrayed Abdul Haq as the liberator of Afghanistan and its likely future president because, he said, all the other commanders accepted Abdul Haq’s authority. I knew that this assertion was really far from the truth (though I wish it had been true—Commander Abdul Haq was one of the few commanders who was both a good military strategist and ethically beyond serious reproach). But because of Lohbeck’s bias, I naturally came to question, like many others, whether he had the objectivity necessary for good journalism