http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23969165-peers-wife-i-hid-in-cupboard-as-taliban-searched-hotel.do
In 2011 NATO initiated Inteqal – the process of transition of security responsibilities from ISAF to the Afghan state and its forces. It was launched on the assumption that the Afghan Army, Police and governance system, at national and local level, would have progressed to the point where handover was tenable. President Karzai formally announced transition arrangements to the Afghan people and in March it was welcomed in a joint statement by Foreign Secretary William Hague and Defence Secretary Liam Fox.
NATO aims to complete the transition by 2014, reducing its military presence but retaining a ‘footprint’ in the country beyond that date. Since the announcement of Intequal Osama Bin Laden has been killed – and ‘talks with the Taliban’ have rarely been off the agenda. Heady stuff – but what do these events mean to Afghanistan’s female population? One British woman went to find out. This is what happened to her.
Fiona Hodgson and her friend walked out of the bloody siege of the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul wondering how they had escaped death.
They’d survived the bloodbath in which Taliban gunmen killed 11 people by hiding in a cupboard while slaughter and mayhem took place around them.
Fiona had gone to Afghanistan to connect with women’s organisations and activists and see for herself what women’s hopes and fears were about transition and its security implications for half the population.
In February this year a travel reviewer wrote of the ‘Intercon’ - “There are often large official events because of its secure location and plentiful armed guards. There have been no Taliban attacks and the last major incident was a shoot-out in 2003. So, by Kabul standards, it is very safe.”
For those who know the Afghan capital this is not such a surreal recommendation, but when I watched my friend walk out of this ‘safe’ hotel on a TV news channel I was stunned. As the story of the siege and suicide bombing unfolded I knew she was physically unharmed, but it wasn’t until she arrived back in London that I understood how close to death she had been.
Fiona and her companion from Action Aid spent nearly six hours in hiding listening to the sound of gunfire, explosions and screaming just yards away from them.
“I honestly thought we were going to die,” she recalled. “My heart seemed to be pounding so loudly I felt the gunmen could surely hear it.”
So how did this Kensington mother of four find herself at the epicentre of a bloody siege? Call it displaced guilt, but I feel (very slightly) to blame!
We met a few years ago when I had just returned from a trip to Helmand. Fiona was then Chair of the Conservative Women’s Organisation and already alert to the plight of Afghanistan’s women. From our different perspectives, but with shared interests, we joined forces to co-author The Female Face of Afghanistan, a series of largely unedited opinions from a diverse range of contributors. Fiona became very keen to visit the country, meet some of the women and hear first hand how they felt.
We talked about going together but could never quite co-ordinate it so travelling independently, at her own expense, she went alone. First stop was Kabul where she stayed with Ana Hozyainova, a founder member of the Afghanistan Public Policy Research Organisation. Seven days, eighteen meetings, several private visits and a joyful Afghan wedding party later, her nightmare began.
Over tea in the garden of her West London home Fiona re-counted the most frightening six hours of her life. In this most English of settings, with Monty the family dog chewing his favourite toy at our feet, a story of horror, courage - and even occasional humour - unfolded.
“Ana helped me meet some wonderful women in Kabul – mostly from NGOs, activists, former refugees and even a TV presenter. My admiration for these women grew as the week progressed but they are very, very worried about transition. There is generally enormous alarm about what would happen if the Taliban came back.
“Some said they would leave; one said she would get a gun and flee to the hills. A particularly impressive group was Young Women for Change – aged mainly in their early 20s. One told me ‘It would be like slow death’. They know that activism identifies them but feel they have no alternative and quote the depressing proverb ‘Afghan women belong in a house or a grave’ as their spur.”
On the eve of the suicide bombers’ attack Fiona left Ana’s quiet home in a residential district for the Intercontinental Hotel where she was to meet her new hosts.
“The Action Aid representative had flown out that evening. I was tired but excited and looking forward to the next part of my stay. We were due to leave for Bamiyan early the next morning and had a full programme.”
After a buffet dinner with members of the Action Aid team and Kabul MP Shinkhai Karokhail, Fiona and her friend retired early to their rooms on the second floor. The hotel is on a hilltop and Fiona had left her curtains open to look at the panoramic view of Kabul.
Then the gunfire started. She crawled to turn her bedside lights out before cautiously leaving her room. “I remember there was a man in the corridor, his body language was all wrong – he turned and looked at me, his arm flapping, then he ran past me. I knew then that something was going on and banged on my friend’s door.
“I don’t know why but I said ‘we’ve got to get into the cupboard’ – it was behind the door to the room which would swing back against it. And so we sat there, in the dark, still dressed in the clothes we’d worn to dinner while the firing continued. We rang the Action Aid security officer who had only recently left and he said he’d come back for us straight away.”
But it was to be nearly six hours before the women were able to leave. Huddled in the confined space they heard shooting above them, on the ground floor, in the stairwell and along their own corridor. At first they thought it was the hotel security team fighting off attackers. The shouting was harsh, aggressive and close, but incomprehensible.
“We put our phones on silent because we were terrified of being discovered,” recalled Fiona whose strangest moment was seeing a call come in from her husband Robin. “ I decided not to take it. Then he sent a text – and I replied saying that I was fine. I didn’t want to worry him.”
A man whose calls she did take was to prove a rock that night. “I suddenly remembered that we had registered our visit to Afghanistan with the FCO and had a number to call at the Embassy ‘in emergencies’.
“Rather hesitantly I rang it, thinking how mad I would sound saying ‘Hello, this is Fiona Hodgson; I’m in the wardrobe of Room 206 in the Intercontinental Hotel’ .”
The man at the Embassy did not laugh however, he simply asked for details. “He was wonderful; very professional and calm and as the night went on it was reassuring to have him to talk to. Sometimes he asked us to leave the phone on so that he could hear what was happening, but he told us not to move until someone official came for us.”
Alternately whispering and lapsing into silence the two women strained to hear what was happening; the gunfire was intermittent but the stillness too was threatening. Then the unimaginable happened - it got worse.
“Suddenly we could hear doors being kicked in and shots. Then the helicopters came and the most massive explosions. The hotel rocked and we felt the floors below were giving way. We’d no idea what was going on. We were past thinking and in extreme terror. Later we learned that the explosion above us was what set the hotel on fire. We felt helpless but between us we managed to hold it together!”
A loud knock and a voice in broken English told the women to come out. “But we were beyond movement until the man on the phone ‘instructed’ us that it was alright. I slid the door open and put an arm out first, then went into the corridor where there was an Afghan soldier and a line of people. A New Zealand Special Forces soldier met us at the stairwell, we went through the lobby and into the kitchen.”
At last they were allowed to leave. “Dawn was coming up and we just walked down the hill towards the police checkpoints and past them. I still didn’t feel safe; I feared there could be gunmen in the bushes but when we got to the second police barrier the Security officer from Action Aid was waiting for us. He had been there all night.”
He drove the women to a rendezvous with the Embassy vehicle where they were provided with body armour. Fiona laughed. “I thought ‘we could have used this last night’!”
The journey home was not comfortable for either woman. Luggage at Kabul airport suddenly looked sinister; the clatter of suitcases pulled along a hotel corridor in Dubai sounded like gunfire. While we spoke in Fiona’s garden sudden noise on a nearby construction site made her twitch.
At Gatwick the women were met by their husbands and the CEO of Action Aid. Fiona said “They took us to a quiet room and that was when I was able to tell Robin the full story. I‘m fine talking about it all, but perhaps part of me is in emotional lockdown. So as for how I really feel – I don’t know. For a while I was numb. It’s OK for me – I can get on a plane, but for the people I’ve left behind, it’s different. So many women are psychologically damaged, so many are fearful. No woman will vote for the Taliban. ”
After Fiona’s return I spoke to Afghan journalist Bilal Saraway in Kabul. He said “The gunfire could be heard by residents in all the surrounding neighbourhoods and it has shattered confidence in security. Everyone is asking how this could have happened. What was pretty upsetting was that the Minister of the Interior had been warned of a possible attack and despite that they were able to get in through the back entrance, past a police checkpoint.
First to die was a hotel driver and an old guard who had worked there for more than 50 years.”
Saraway added “There were renovations going on in the main lobby which may account for the lack of security, but people are asking senior police how it is they managed to take in so many heavy weapons – nine people are understood to have had RPGs while the Afghan police were only lightly armed with AK47s.
“It’s clear too that the attackers were prepared for a long siege; their backpacks contained cans of Red Bull and biscuits. But if there is a positive aspect to this, it is that the Police Chief arrived straight after the attack; local forces did well.”
Fiona echoed this. “I don’t blame anyone; we were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Everyone was wonderful – Action Aid, the Embassy staff, the Afghan police/army and the New Zealand Special Forces. I just feel so very sorry for those who lost loved ones or did not survive.
“Will I go back? I hope I have the courage to return and finish what I set out to do. I don’t want this tragic incident to overshadow the real issues, Afghanistan’s women must not be forgotten. We can help them in all sorts of ways, through networking and information hubs as well as practical support. Women must be involved in the peace process in a meaningful way and not just as window dressing. ”
Her companion doesn’t want to be identified but added "The best way to ensure that the rights Afghan women have gained over the last 10 years are not swept away is to make sure that women are at all peace and reconciliation negotiations and are able to represent their interests. This is their right, but it is also the only route to a just and lasting peace. Any deal that excludes women does not deserve the name of peace."
So, as the Intequal process takes it’s course all eyes should be on those women and the West’s ears open to their very real concerns about a return to the ‘ground zero’ of human rights abuse in Afghanistan. To many, exhausted by the demands of yet another long engagement in a country where no-one has ever ‘won’ a war, the death of Bin Laden might signify ‘mission accomplished’. If it leaves Millennium Development Goals for Women unaddressed it will be a job far from done.
ENDS
Lady Fiona Hodgson is a member of the Conservative Human Rights Commission and the Chair of the Advisory Board of GAPS: (Gender Action in Peace and Security), President of the National Conservative Convention and former Chair of the Conservative Women’s Organisation. She is also a patron of Afghan Connections. She is the wife of former Tory MP Lord Robin Hodgson.
