THE WARLORD, THE SUICIDE BOMBER AND ME

When Paul Raffaele travelled to Afghanistan to report on the destruction of the opium crop, he almost paid the ultimate price

THE MOST FATEFUL WEEK OF MY LIFE BEGAN with my arrival in Kabul. It was April 2008 and my first time back in Afghanistan since 1963 when, as a teenager, I spent a month traversing the country from Herat to Kandahar and Kabul. Then, the ruggedly beautiful country was at peace under the rule of a modernising king. Now, merely walking down any street carried the risk of being blown up by a Taliban suicide bomber. As the jet from New Delhi came in to land, I spied from the window the lofty Hindu Kush snow mountains looming over the ancient city of Kabul. At ground level I found the old section of the city looked much the same as I saw it in 1963, dense huddles of mud huts…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, December 2021

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