Chat transcript: Sun war reporters

SunSpot: Dan Fesperman and Will Englund have just joined us to discuss their experiences as correspondents in Afghanistan. Thanks for joining us gentlemen. Let's begin with our readers' questions.

Fred, Roland Park: What chance does the Karzai government have of keeping Afghanistan together? Might it be better in the long run to split it along ethnic lines, create a "Pashtunistan", give the Tajik areas to Tajikistan, etc.?

Fesperman: I think Karzai would probably disagree with that approach. I think he seems to believe that consensus broad-based government is the only way to go and if you listen to other Pashtun tribal leaders from further north, they tend to talk the same game. It would be hard to divide it up right now the way things are now on the ground, because the Northern Alliance is militarily into so many other areas. Also, there are lots of divisions within these ethnic groups, territories divied up by rival warlords, that could be an even greater problem than the ethnic divisions.

Englund: I was in the predominantly Tajik area of Afghanistan. There's no particular movement to split off from the Pashtuns at this point. There's no particular hatred of the south.

Fesperman: You generally don't hear much talk about setting up ethnic republics as you did, for instance, in Bosnia.

Amanda, Baltimore: Fesperman: How did your experiences in Afghanistan compare to those you had in Sarajevo?

Fesperman: Kabul is much more normal minute-to-minute than Sarajevo was during the war. In Sarajevo you had shelling and sniper fire sporadically throughout almost every day. Kabul was a lot more relaxed.

Englund: I think in some ways Taloqan in the north was somewhat similar to Pristina in Kosovo right after NATO went in in 1999. There was the same sense of a happy city coming to life again, but a lot of danger lurking in the dark corners.

William Maya, Concord, Calif.: Do the Afghanis you met believe there can be a real chance for a unified state, or do they still mistrust the other factions?

Englund: Hi William, nice to hear from you. I ran into tremendous skepticism but I think the mistrust is more local and particular than it is aimed at other factions. You know, 'I don't like that guy standing on the street corner' more than 'I don't like the Hazar representative in Kabul.'

Fesperman: I think that the biggest thing they've got going for themselves right now is their war weariness, their sheer exhaustion with all of the fighting that's going on may outweigh all of their gripes and factional differences.

Tom, Towson: How prevalent is opium in Afghanistan? Could we stop its production there?

Englund: I saw poppy fields throughout the north in Northern Alliance territory. I think we can stop its production there. I think we can stop its production there just as soon as we stop coca production in Colombia.

Fesperman: I think the irony of this is that one of the few benefits of the Taliban's severity was that they cut opium production in their part of the country almost to nil. Roughly 80% of the opium production out of Afghanistan last year came out of the Northern Alliance's 10% of the national territory.

Blythe, Baltimore: Fesperman: Do you plan to write a fiction book about Afghanistan like you did with "Lie in the Dark?"

Fesperman: Likely. I'm revising a second book set in the Balkans and will soon be taking time off to write a third which will probably be set in Pakistan, Afghanistan.

John, Phoenix, Md.: Dan, you wrote a compelling story about why journalists do what they do after the actions by your driver in that caravan possibly saved your life. I wonder what professional and personal effects that incident has had on you.

Fesperman: It shook me up personally mostly because I'd met two of the journalists who were killed and one in particular had been very helpful to me the night before in getting a story filed. I think it was the type of killing that could happen even here, a random crime, a brigand just trying to make a buck and not caring whether his victims lived or died. So I guess it really didn't change the way I looked at the safety of war zones -- they're not safe, but you learn to take calculated risks and hope that your calculator is working.

Englund: The night I left Taloqan a Swedish cameraman was killed there in a robbery. He was in a house in a compound and I think we all felt that it was pretty disturbing. The issue there was that Konduz had fallen and the Northern Alliance commanders had all moved to Konduz, which was incredibly tense. It was constant gunfire in Konduz. The question arose for journalists: Is it safer to be in a tent city where the commanders were or to be back in Taloqan, which was quieter, but had virtually no armed authority? I'm still not sure what the answer is.

Tim, Baltimore: What is daily life like in Afghanistan since the Taliban has been routed? Has the Northern Alliance brought any sense of order to the area, or is it chaotic?

Fesperman: I think there was far too much order under the Taliban -- that was a large part of the problem. They had legislated all the spontaneity out of life, especially for women, barbers, TV repairmen. There is a sense of disorder these days.

Englund: The most chaotic moment came, of course, as the Taliban was collapsing. As every day went by, more normal life was reasserting itself. I don't think it's getting worse there.

Justin, Columbia: What do you think will happen in Afghanistan once the fighting stops? What should the U.S. and its allies do to ensure stability -- if that's possible?

Fesperman: The operative part of that question is 'when the fighting stops.' You've got some sporadic factional violence going on now in one area in the north, and to a lesser extent, in Kandahar. If you can disarm and pull apart some of these factions you'll have a far better chance of maintaining order.

Englund: After that, the U.S. and its allies have to get some kind of an economy moving again. For one thing, there are thousands of widows. There were aid groups in the north that were trying to promote work for women. That should be expanded to the entire country.

Fesperman: I think the single greatest problem facing Afghanistan now is the number of children with little or no future. In Kabul alone, you've got an estimated 50,000 street children whose begging serves as the main source of income for their families. Most of them are orphans or have only one parent.

Englund: The level of illiteracy in Afghanistan is incredibly high, far greater than it was 30 years ago.

SunSpot: How have womens' roles changed in Afghanistan since the Taliban collapsed?

Englund: In Taloqan they're still wearing burquas. But women can now go out on the street on their own without a male escort and you can see quite a few of them wearing high heels under their burqas.

Fesperman: I think a lot of women in cities like Kabul are really taking an attitude of 'wait and see.' They're not convinced yet that the Taliban is gone for good but many young women are already trying to get back to school and looking into the possibility of taking jobs. I think the burqas are going to be the last thing to go.

Englund: I spoke to a doctor and asked him if his mother had worn the burqa and he laughed and said, "No, of course not." I asked him if his wife would be taking her burqa off soon and he said that the society had become so radically Islamicized that he didn't think people were ready for that now. By people I think he meant men and not women

Fesperman: I think women are worried about the same thing. They feel like if they were to suddenly take off their burqas that men would be completely out of control. Just from my own experience in Kabul, when women started showing their ankles on about the fifth day, believe me, I noticed. When you go from nothing to ankles, it's a big deal. So if they were to suddenly uncover, you would have a bit of pandemonium on the streets odd as it sounds.

Jay, Washington, D.C.: What was your most challenging feat through the experience and what were you most proud to have accomplished?

Englund: Going out on a Thanksgiving morning to a little village where we found a turkey and took back to a restaurant in Taloqan where the cook had agreed to whip up a dinner for us. It was an all-day adventure, but it was definitely worth it.

Fesperman: I think my proudest accomplishment was being able to see a few innings of the final game of the World Series while passing through Islamabad and catching a feed of ESPN International in a hotel coffee shop.

A.B., Baltimore: Has your attitude toward Islam changed at all since you were in Afghanistan?

Fesperman: I think my attitude toward Islam is roughly the same as it is toward all religions in that intolerance and extremism always seem to end up getting a lot of innocent people killed.

Englund: I spent eight years covering the former Soviet Union, which has a very large Islamic population, so I don't think my attitude changed in Afghanistan. But in fact it was interesting to see people practicing Islam without the psychological baggage of 70 years of communism.

Kate, Virginia Beach, Va.: Do you believe, based on what you saw in [the] country, that the U.S. has made serious inroads to limiting Al Qaeda's ability to pull off another Sept. 11-like attack through the actions they've taken in Afghanistan?

Englund: I believe the danger from Al Qaeda now will come from their cells in Europe and the U.S. and not from Afghanistan.

Fesperman: I think the impact on Al Qaeda will be its long-term survival. This has effectively severed the head from the organization and probably cut off a lot of its financing but any operations that were already being planned elsewhere are probably going to continue unless we stop them in those locations.

SunSpot: Did you have any contact with U.S. ground forces while in Afghanistan?

Fesperman: I saw a few dozen at Bagram Airfield north of Kabul as I was driving through. I said hello and they nodded and that was the extent. They were special forces troops.

SunSpot: Many domestic journalists have expressed concerns about how little information is coming from the Pentagon. Did either of you experience anything similar overseas?

Fesperman: What I can tell you is that, in Pakistan, I think the Pentagon hurt its public relations campaign by playing everything so close to the vest. The population there was already predisposed to believe the Taliban and then when you had the Pentagon often not releasing information about helicopter crashes or firefights for days at a time, it only hurt their credibility.

Englund: I had no contact with Americans in Asia. I did learn that Northern Alliance commanders were usually boasting of cities they had taken several days before they actually took them. The so-called official information you could get was unusually unreliable. A lot of us think they'd been trained by Russian PR experts.

SunSpot: Which of your stories got the most response back home?

Fesperman: Oddly enough it was a story that I thought was sort of a throw-away about the Kabul zoo. A blinded lion and a few stir-crazy wolves mostly. I've received at least a dozen e-mails, letters or calls, mostly from people in Chicago, where I guess the Tribune ran the story. It just goes to show that even in a war the old saw [is true] about nothing beats a good dog story. So here I am writing about orphans and war victims and women who've basically not been able to leave their apartments for five years and what do people get all upset about? An underfed lion who somebody shot a grenade at. I think it says a lot about the way people get inured to coverage of human suffering and then fall to pieces at the first sign that some furry creature might be suffering.

Englund: The biggest response I got was also to an animal story, but mine was about a turkey and we ate it.

Jim, Columbia, MD: It's no exaggeration to say you both risked your lives in Afghanistan. How does The Sun make it worth your while? Would you do it again? Thanks for the superb coverage.

Fesperman: Thanks Jim, would you be interested in a position on the Tribune company's board of directors?

SunSpot: What sort of a leader do you think Karzai will make?

Fesperman: Karzai seems to have impressed most of the people who have met him. He is a very worldly, well-read, broad-minded individual. I think the single biggest thing he did to help himself establish legitimacy was by becoming something of a guerilla commander in the last few months. He's sort of earned his Pashtun rough-and-tough merit badge and that carries a lot of weight in that part of the world. Otherwise, some of the locals might be thinking of him as just a glorified diplomat and desk jockey.

Englund: I would say the Northern Alliance has taken the most powerful cabinet positions in the interim government but all those officials come from a faction of the alliance that I think will get along quite well with Karzai.

SunSpot: How much do you think Russia is trying to project its influence in the region via the Northern Alliance?

Englund: Certainly, Russia wants to have a role but I don't think Moscow is under any illusions about how much influence it can bring to bear. The Russians were very concerned about the Taliban and are thrilled with what has happened so far. Look for the Russians to try to act in concert with the Iranians and Indians to influence events in Afghanistan.

SunSpot: This concludes the chat. Thanks for joining us this afternoon.

Will Englund (left) has been with The Baltimore Sun since 1977. He worked briefly as a copy editor; then as a local reporter he covered city hall and education. In 1988 he worked for the Glasgow Herald in Scotland as a Fulbright fellow. From 1991 to 1995 he and his wife, Kathy Lally, were assigned to Moscow as correspondents for The Sun. In late 1997 they returned to Moscow to begin another tour. He completed that tour in September 2001, and was back in Baltimore only a few days before heading to Afghanistan to briefly cover the war. He is currently reporting from Baltimore.

Before coming to The Sun, Englund had worked for a year at The Record, in Bergen County, N.J.

A native of Pleasantville, N.Y., he graduated from Harvard College and earned a master's degree from Columbia University. He and Ms. Lally have two daughters.

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