In the Danger Zone (5 page)

The cameras start to roll and The Fear returns with a vengeance – more so than when I'd been laced with kidnapping and IEDs. As I chop, toast and mix, I try unsuccessfully to strike up a witty repartee with Farzana without causing a diplomatic incident.

It's all going well until I attempt to use the blender – it's useless. I start jamming the ingredients down with a wooden spoon to get the flipping thing to actually blend my pesto. In frustration I lift the lid off and shove with the spoon at the same time, whereupon the whole thing vomits a geyser of raw sloppy garlic over me, although it largely misses Farzana. She raises one cakey eyelid and I blunder on hoping that no one suggests I'm stoned to death for desecrating the national treasure. After another five minutes of excruciatingly slow chop 'n' chat, I notice the director motioning wildly at me to wipe my nose – I have spent most of the show with a huge green bogey of pesto swinging from the end of my nose. Lovely.

In the event, the pesto is delicious, although Farzana doesn't bother to taste it. After the show I interview her and discover that she's actually lovely and not a little courageous – women are rarely visible on the streets, let alone on the telly, and she and her family get regular threats for being on television. But her profile on the show (coupled with the fact that she wears traditional Afghan fishing nets on her head) is a brave example.

My Testicles

It's my penultimate day in Afghanistan and I'm exhausted, but I feel as though I've spent two weeks taking people's hospitality and giving nothing back. To make up for this one-way love, I decide to invite everyone I've met in Kabul to a picnic. Picnicking is Afghanistan's second national sport after
buzkashi,
and at the weekends, families head for any free patch of land for a bite to eat and some hard-core kite-flying.

On the way to buy the food I pass Kabul stadium, where the Taliban were wont to advertise football matches and then lock the gates and force the crowd to watch mass executions. At the next-door market I meet a sparkly-eyed butcher called Jan, who shows me how to butcher a fat-tailed sheep. I invite him to join me for the picnic tomorrow, and he kindly accepts. He tells me he'll bring a special present.

That night, I meet up with Captain Harraway and a few of her friends who take us for dinner at the airport ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) base, which has several restaurants – we visit a Thai one that serves merrily and comprehensively overcooked Thai food. Although I've become oddly fond of the soldiers, it's the least pleasant meal (other than cheese grits) I've eaten in Afghanistan.

The day of the picnic dawns and Aleem has pulled strings to get us access to President Doud's ruined palace on the outskirts of the city. It's been a shock to see a country with such a proud history reduced to such a desperate, anarchic, confusing, corrupt mess, and it truly feels that Afghanistan is, in its current form, ungovernable. This place isn't given to democracy and paternalism, but instead is ruled by feudal, tribal and religious systems. It seems as though central government rule is almost impossible without the power and infrastructure that a little prosperity might bring, and that's a hard thing to kickstart. Without it, all the lives lost by NATO (over 500 since 2006), the Taliban (3,700 in 2006) and ordinary Afghans (1,000 in 2006) will have been tragically wasted.

But right now the sun has come out and the gloom lifts slightly. It's just a few days before I see my wife and daughters again, and this puts me in a good mood. I feel free and uplifted, like a schoolboy who's finished his exams.

Doud's palace has been looted, but it has stunning views across a devastated and dusty Kabul on one side, and a 180-degree panorama of the Hindu Kush on the other. Military helicopters and cargo planes roar over every now and then. It's guarded by a group of eight ragged and hungry soldiers so I invite them to join us for lunch, too.

I cook Quabili rice, salads and lamb kebabs – cooking always calms me, and I love the solitude of the work. My friends set up a tent with the help of the soldiers then lay down cushions and sit chatting. Aleem has managed to join us, along with Basir the driver, soldiers, translators, drivers, market-stall owners and a bunch of kids (don't know where they came from, but they're welcome). Arn from the posh hotel is here, and we even have an Afghan woman: Fahima, who runs the Kandahar Lodge. Sadly our US army friends couldn't make it as they're busy fighting the good fight.

At the last minute Jan, the butcher, arrives bearing a bloody bag and a huge grin. Inside are ten vast lamb's testicles. Excellent, I will get to taste them after all. I kebab them and get everything grilling. Finally I serve the food with a little speech thanking everyone for their kindness, hoping that Afghanistan will rebuild itself, that things will get better and that discrimination against women will end. We chat about reconstruction and the future. Fahima says that although she hates the way women are treated in Afghanistan, she is proud of her country because it's her home.

An aid package of $4.5 billion has been committed to Afghanistan, yet most people haven't seen real improvement to their lives yet and many live in worse conditions than they did under the Taliban. You can say what you like about how good it feels to be free, but it adds up to bugger all when half the kids here are malnourished.

We try out kite-flying (my main research for this film was to read
The Kite Runner,
so it felt like the right thing to do). In Afghanistan, kite-flying is vicious and competitive: the kite string is covered in ground glass, and the idea is that you tangle your kite with someone else's, then yank it down to cut their string. The downside is that the string rips through your fingers so that within a minute, you're a bloody mess. But it's fun.

As we pack up, two of those vast Chinook helicopters clatter across our view of the Hindu Kush. I look up into the sky and I realize that I'm going home tomorrow, that I've survived my first Category One conflict zone without physical injury or dysentery. But I've seen suffering on a level that took my breath away. Does this make me a real journalist? Does this mean that nothing will ever seem so bad again? I'm about to head off to Uganda to live with refugees fleeing a vicious conflict, but I wonder if I'll slowly become immune to pain and suffering. Will I be able to understand what they are experiencing? Gradually I feel my arse cheeks relaxing and The Fear gently fades away, but I'm not entirely sure if that's a good thing.

POPULATION:
31 million

PERCENTAGE LIVING ON LESS THAN
$2
A DAY:
35%

UNDP HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDEX:
145/177

CORRUPTION PERCEPTIONS INDEX POSITION:
105/163

GDP (NOMINAL) PER CAPITA:
$316 (167/179)

FOOD AID RECIPIENTS:
2.9 million in 2006

MALNUTRITION:
19% of the population

Major Nfor is on the verge of pushing my military clearance passes across the table. He hadn't batted an eyelid when I said I wanted to visit war-torn northern Uganda – in fact he isn't too bothered where I go, as long as I pay cash. I've coughed up, as requested, and spent a fair amount of time waiting for his innumerable forms to be filled in. And now, with my pass sitting on the table under his hand, inches from my grasp, he asks the tricky question 'So, what will your story be about?'

'Well . . . it's about cooking.'

His hand stops sliding the documents across, and his smile vanishes.

I'm sitting in a dirty little office in Kampala, the capital of Uganda. It's a crumbling, filthy but functioning city that looks as though it was hastily built in the 1950s, after which the builders scarpered, taking all the paint and tools with them, and since then it hasn't crossed anyone's mind to buy any more. The place is bristling with guns; most shops and offices have a bloke slumped on the front steps chatting to passing girls and swinging an AK47 around as if he's the bee's knees. But unlike many central African cities, Kampala works. Overall, Uganda works – you could even say that it's doing pretty well. It's relatively prosperous, with a growing economy, it's more peaceful and democratic than most of its neighbours, and it's blessed with decent natural resources, fertile soil and favourable weather.

So it's all the more tragic that in the north of the country one of the world's greatest forgotten humanitarian disasters has been going on relatively unreported for the last 20 years. A small terrorist paramilitary group called the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has waged a pointless war since 1986, forcing somewhere between 1.2 and 1.7 million people to abandon their homes for the safety of IDP camps. An IDP is an Internally Displaced Person (basically, a refugee who hasn't actually left his own country), and the IDPs in northern Uganda survive on subsistence rations provided by the UN's World Food Programme (WFP). I'm going to call them refugees anyway, because 'IDP' sounds even more cold and impersonal than 'refugee'.

Major Nfor's lips curl involuntarily at the thought of me going to one of the world's hungriest regions to talk about cooking. 'It's not like that,' I say, 'it's a film about how people survive.' After a very long pause he pushes my pass over to me. I ask if there are any recent security issues in the north that we need to be aware of. 'No. No problems in the north.' I get up to leave, but just as I'm out of the door he shouts after me: 'Of course, no one is allowed to be outside after 6 p.m. Curfew everywhere.'

On the way to catch a UN flight northwards, my driver casually mentions that the LRA have recently threatened to kill all
mazungus
(whites) they find.

Kitgum

The next morning we touch down in Kitgum, one of the regions worst affected by rebel attacks. It's baking hot as we climb into an enormous 4x4 belonging to the World Food Programme with 'UN' printed on the side. I stick out like a sore thumb, a red-faced
mazungu
peering out of a white car.

I check into the Bomah Hotel – one of the worst hotels in the world. It has a pool full of what looks like snot, some of the filthiest rooms I've ever set foot in, and tap water that's a disturbing light brown colour. But on balance, I'm surprised and grateful that you can even find hotels in places like this.

I make a quick visit to the local market. It stinks, and there are open sewers all around. Most stallholders have only a handful of sweet potatoes or a small sack of flour to sell, and it scares me that there can be so little food available in a town this big. A few traders are doing better: there's a woman who buys and sells fish, standing amidst a cloud of fish scales and flies, and she has a mobile phone, but people like her are few and far between.

The local WFP head, Robert Dekker, takes me to his aid depot where 30-odd bare-chested fellas are loading 140 tonnes of food onto huge, ancient trucks. It's the first time I've seen an aid operation in action and I'm disappointed to see how emotionless it all is. I thought it would be about sympathy, kindness and generosity, but it's actually about logistics. The WFP does a serious job and at this level food aid is about distribution issues, transport, manpower, efficiency, bureaucracy and accountability. Robert knows that he's saving lives but he's not a knight in shining armour – he's doing a job.

Once the food is loaded, a huge army escort of 60 men rocks up to protect the convoy en route. There's an arrogance to these Ugandan army soldiers and I'm not sure I like them, but they've got some big guns, and they should keep us safe from attack by the LRA. I hop onto a Mamba – a rudimentary armoured vehicle – with the commanding officer, Norman, and some of his soldiers and set off for the day's delivery.

I try to talk to Norman on the way, asking some devilishly incisive questions hinting at the army's collusion with the LRA, but he just raises his eyebrows, smiles and stays silent. I haven't got the hang of this journalist thing yet.

We roll into the camp and grind to a halt in clouds of dust. I've been anticipating this moment for months. I had imagined grateful people running and whooping with joy as the convoy arrived, people rushing to grab food, and myself handing out bags of rice to happy, smiling children. The reality is something of a shock. No one comes to meet the trucks when they arrive, and instead there's an eerie silence as the dust settles. Not a soul.

I spot some people milling around the nearby huts, and I can see that the camp stretches for miles. The aid workers get busy with clipboards and signs, organizing distribution points, but I stand there baffled. Where is everyone? These food deliveries happen only once a month, for crying out loud. An hour later a few women start to arrive – the first refugees I've met – and from their resentful expressions and bedraggled appearance I realize how wrong I was about the nature of aid.

See, I thought that people would
be grateful.
I thought that the WFP would feel good about helping the world and saving millions from starvation, and the refugees would in turn give gratitude and thanks for being saved from that starvation. But kindness and gratitude have no place in a humanitarian disaster of this scale, and aid becomes a transaction. These people have lived with extreme deprivation for up to 20 years, and when 1.5 million are this desperate it's the world's duty to resolve it.

In reality, when those aid lorries arrive they aren't dispensing joy. They are a symbol of the refugees' problems, part of their utter dependence on others. We've arrived today, just as aid has arrived every month, and they won't get any more food than before, they won't be any more comfortable, safe or free. If these people have managed to be frugal and no one has stolen their food, last month's rations will have lasted until today, and this month's rations will need to be eked out for another long month all over again.

It's upsetting to see this, and I can't help but feel that we are all complicit to some extent. It's been going on for 20 flipping years, and no one talks about it because northern Uganda isn't a
sexy
conflict. It's long-term, without drama and incident, and with little progress towards resolution. The aid programme doesn't have dramatic, quantifiable results other than keeping people alive. It's an amazing achievement, but you don't get headlines that say 'More than a million people survive for another year'. As a result there's little international pressure or help to resolve the problem, and all we can do is treat its symptoms.

Eventually women, children and a handful of men begin to arrive and queue up, holding their ID cards, and we dispense the rations. It's a sombre affair, and we return to town feeling drained.

Events in town overtake us: the leader of the Ugandan opposition, Dr Kizza Besigye, turns up, and he holds a mass rally on the football pitch. There must be 20,000 people here, so I join the party to film it. There's a general election in a few weeks and tensions are running high.

Besigye is the only realistic contender to the incumbent president, Yoweri Museveni, and he's tremendously popular up here in the northern districts. Museveni has presided over a period of increasing prosperity and stability in most of Uganda, but here in the north, many of the Acholi people feel that he is their enemy. There are rumours that Museveni has failed to act against the LRA because it serves his best interests to disenfranchise and terrorize the Acholi people (they don't vote for him anyway, so they feel dispensable), and to keep this area militarized. It certainly seems odd that such a bizarre conflict with such a small group of protagonists can be sustained for 20 years.

Museveni seems to have become a little dictatorial in recent years, with the abolition of the constitutional limit on presidential terms and the creation of a 10,000-strong Presidential Guard Brigade that is effectively his private army. There seems to be intense intimidation of the opposition, including the arrest of Besigye on a raft of charges such as treason and rape. Yet it's a mark of the state of the country that most Ugandans think Museveni is still the best bet.

That night my career takes another twist: I track Besigye down to the Kitgum radio station and manage to have a short interview with him. I surprise even myself when I step forward with my hand outstretched and say, 'Good evening, Mr Besigye: Stefan Gates, BBC. Can I ask you a few questions?' I ask him why he thinks the LRA conflict has gone on so long and he talks about 'lack of political will' and a need for a renewed offensive. He's calm, direct and doesn't make rash claims, which I find refreshing. We talk for a short while, then he returns to carry on his radio interview.

Aggoro

I am picked up by a UN driver, Richard, who takes me (with three trucks of soldiers for protection) to Aggoro, one of the most remote and dangerous of the camps where I will live for the next few days.

The UN Land Cruisers have air conditioning, VHF radios and cassette recorders, and if you put your bottles of water on the dashboard jammed against the windscreen and put the air con on high, you'll get slightly chilled water. I think if I were a refugee, I might resent these cars. But without this vehicle and protection from the UN and the army, I wouldn't be allowed to travel here.

After three hours bumping along a dirt road, we arrive at the camp. Médedecins Sans Frontières have kindly lent me a thatched hut to stay in, but there's no food around, so I pull out my camping stove for the first time and make dinner. Risotto, since you ask, as it's the cheapest, most portable and filling meal I could carry. It's not bad, considering.

Agorro is very isolated and it's been attacked frequently in the past so I go to sleep scared, my fear fed by the sense of terror that spreads across the whole camp at dusk as everyone runs back home and the sun drops like a stone. The LRA attack anywhere, even inside the camps, and usually at night. Throughout the night loud bangs startle me, and I get ready to run. I finally fall asleep just before dawn.

The morning is beautiful and I stroll through the camp accompanied by a small army of children. Wherever I go there are shouts of
'mazungu,
and people stop to stare at the speccy white fella wandering around their camp. I meet Odwa, a gently spoken man of 40 or so, and Doreen, his moon-faced wife. They've kindly agreed to let me see how they and their nine children live for the next few days, and he shows me around the camp.

Agorro is strangely beautiful, a sea of thousands of identical circular mud huts with reed or thatched roofs. They are low and small, about the size of a hatchback car. Families are crammed inside them with pitifully few possessions – usually a few pots and some bags containing their aid rations, some plastic sheeting to lie on, maybe a couple of blankets and a few clothes. On the surface, the dust, the sun and beautiful kids make it seem idyllic. Underneath, though, it's gruesome. Utter poverty, terrible sanitation problems, disease, and almost no education or healthcare.

But (it's a big but – the biggest but of the whole story and our reason for being here) people in these camps shouldn't be defined just by their misery or inability to support themselves, or even their status as refugees. It sounds banal to say it, but until I met refugees and cooked and ate with them, I thought of them as a concept, as a problem that needed solving, rather than as normal, complex people with lives as complicated as my own. Of course, refugees have the same concerns as us: they are falling in and out of love; the kids are playing up; they listen to the news; like me, they can be happy, frustrated, sad, proud, pensive. And the one thing I really never expected: they can be very, very
funny.
Odwa constantly takes the micky out of me, cracking jokes. The revelation is a shock: Odwa and Doreen are just like me, it's just their situation that's so completely different.

The LRA

As I play with the younger kids, Doreen tells me that her son was abducted by the LRA and forced to fight as a boy soldier. 'He was badly beaten and he was forced to undertake training to fight alongside them. I was distraught, I broke down and cried. But I got support from people around me. I had to just keep my head up. Occasionally my heart would stop, but I stayed firm.'

Her son finally escaped and returned home two years later.

The Lord's Resistance Army is a bizarre, brutal and psychotic militia group led by a reclusive man called Joseph Kone, an ex-spirit medium, who has become a perpetrator of self-propagating, aimless spiritually inspired brutality. It's the most evil and destructive organization I've ever come across. The LRA is waging a pointless war against everyone and no one, attacking civilians indiscriminately in their villages. They've never stated any clear political objectives, although they have mentioned that they'd like to rule Uganda according to the Ten Commandments (whatever that means). But the worst bit is yet to come: their tactics.