Day of Rage

I had wanted to ride the escalator since I arrived in Afghanistan last weekend. The Kabul City Center, a huge new shopping and hotel complex, is a symbol of sorts of the country’s rebirth and development after decades of civil war. It also houses the nation’s first and only escalator. But when I finally got the chance to visit the mall yesterday, it wasn’t to take a ride-it was to save my life.

I fled there to seek refuge from anti-American rioters that had taken to the streets after a rush-hour traffic accident involving a runaway U.S. military truck. The crash killed five, but it also knocked the lid off a pot boiling with the frustrations of a country that remains poor, bombed out, insecure, and with an uncertain future. By the end of the day, between eight and 12 were dead and scores injured in the worst violence since the fall of the Islamist Taliban at the end of 2001.

Few things in life are scarier than a mob. One of them is a mob that’s being incited by agitators, as the roaming gangs of rioters yesterday clearly were. After the accident, rumors spread that U.S. soldiers had deliberately hit the motorists and then opened fire on the irate crowds that gathered afterwards. Faster than Kabul’s inundated mobile phone network could ever hope to operate, word spread through the streets about the alleged American transgression. (A spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition confirmed there was gunfire but said coalition personnel in one military vehicle had fired over the crowd, not into it.)

Unfortunately, I was also on the streets at this time, walking outside the headquarters of the coalition forces. They were on a security lockdown in response to the accident and the nervous, heavily armed American soldiers on guard refused to let me in. As my driver Walid and I drove back to my hotel, shop after shop began shuttering their doors and people scurried in all directions to find cover. I could feel the tension in the air multiply, and time, as it does in moments of chaos, suddenly sped up.

Amid the blur, our car turned a corner and ran smack into a mob of young men armed with clubs, stones and who knows what else, smashing windows, chanting anti-American slogans and looking in cars for foreigners to beat up. They surrounded our car and began pointing at me, but before they could reach for the doors, Walid gunned the engine and we sped off. The last thing I saw was an Afghan policeman, with an expression on his face that undoubtedly said, “Get out of here, stupid,” directing us down an empty side street. We had made our getaway.

The next phase of “Operation Survival” was more complicated. There was utter chaos on the streets, and my driver and I both knew that if I were spotted, there was a possibility I could be hauled out of the car and beaten to death. As we roared through the streets, we agreed to drive to Walid’s home, which he said was in a safe area. But on the way we passed the Kabul City Center, which despite being an obvious target for the mobs, is big, safe and had armed guards.