Kandahar Dispatches

I cannot use his real name, so I will call him Ahmad. Today, he called me his boss, probably the only Afghan man who will ever grant me that title. But I am not his boss, because he is my colleague. And I believe he is more courageous than I could ever hope to be.

Ahmad is the man who works with the CBC in Afghanistan as an interpreter and producer. In the business, he is called a "fixer." Without him, we would never be able to do the stories that do not involve Canada's soldiers.

Ahmad is our eyes and ears in the Afghan community, and has talked us into places we might never have been able to go. He has also talked us out of situations that became risky, using the right mix of pressure and gentle persuasion.

Along with a local cameraman, Ahmad has rushed to the scene of numerous suicide bombings to capture pictures we would otherwise not get, and says he has seen far too many Afghan children maimed and killed.

As I watch the story of the kidnapped Afghan journalist Ajmal Naqshbandi unfold, I cannot help but think of the risks Ahmad takes almost every day so we can do our jobs.

Our quiet fixer

Naqshbandi was taken hostage by the Taliban on March 5 in Helmand province while he was working with Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo, who was released on March 19 after being held for two weeks and being forced to watch the beheading of his driver, 25-year-old Sayed Agha.

Mastrogiacomo's release was met with a wave of condemnation from governments around the world. It isn't that he was let go, everyone is relieved he is safe and well, but it is because of the deal the Afghan government made to get him out. Under immense pressure from the Italian prime minister, Afghan President Hamid Karzai personally approved the devil's bargain: He would trade Taliban prisoners for Mastrogiacomo's release.

When the news broke of Karzai's bartering, I saw a Canadian diplomat, who sullenly observed that now "we all have a price on our heads, we are all currency" in the eyes of the Taliban. The risk of kidnap has shot up and every foreigner working here, from journalists, to aid workers to soldiers, knows it.

Dinner at Ahmad's

But that overshadows another equally frightening fact: the risk may be even greater for the Afghans who choose to work with us. I know that is true of other conflicts. In Iraq, for example, local journalists who work with foreign news agencies have also paid with their lives.

Now, that is becoming reality here too. So the number of Afghans willing to put their lives on the line for the sake of helping us do our jobs may soon dwindle. So far, Ahmad is still with us. In the last few years, he has worked with many CBC journalists and has shown that he is an intelligent, thoughtful man who tries to recognize potential dangers and works hard to avoid them.

Last night, Ahmad invited our cameraman Richard Devey and I over to his home for dinner. He married less than a year ago and it was the first time he had entertained Westerners. He was both proud and obviously anxious to please his guests.

Ahmad dressed in his best shalwar kameez, insisted on finding beer and wine for Richard and me. His young wife, pregnant with their first child, is painfully shy and stayed in the tiny kitchen cooking mutton, meatballs, rice with almonds and raisins, marinated eggplant and more on half a dozen propane stoves placed on the floor.
I spoke with her as Ahmad translated and told her how hard her husband worked for us. She smiled and welcomed us into her home.

Ahmad laid a cloth across the floor in the living room and marched out the meal. We sat and ate and drank for some time, talking about our latest experiences in Mazar-e-Sharif and about his country.

I asked him how long he felt it would be safe for him to continue working with us, how long he could risk being identified as a potential bargaining chip for the Taliban because of his work with Western journalists.

He looked down to the ground, as he often does when he is thinking. He gave no definite answer but said he enjoyed working with journalists so much because of the kind of work we are trying to do in Afghanistan.

Today, the father of the Afghan interpreter being held and the head of the Afghan journalists' defence committee are asking why Karzai did so much to come to the rescue of a foreign journalist while his Afghan colleague is still being held hostage.

Ahmad showed off his wedding pictures last night. He and his wife make a beautiful couple: Young, and brimming with happiness and the promise of a future together. Sadly, I cannot share any photographs of him. As long as he works with us, he will have to stay in the background.

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