IRAQ, Cradle of Western Civilization

British Museum, London - A drawing from the flag of Ur (ca 2685 BC) depicts Ur at war. The other side of the flag showed Ur at peace. Ur, believed the first Western city, flourished in Mesopotamia 5,500 years ago. Its temple, or ziggurat, to the moon god was damaged during the 1991 Gulf War. Allies left 4 massive bomb craters, including one within the temple complex, and 400 bullet holes in temple walls.

Iraq is the cradle of Western civilization, how we became what we are. Mesopotamia was the universe's center 5,000 years ago, the world's oldest civilization, older than China or the Americas, lasting 2,600 years under many rulers. The area produced the first Western writing, wheeled vehicles, cultivated and irrigated crops, domestic livestock, the calendar, mathematics, and astronomers and philosophers laying the groundwork for future Greek thinkers. Biblical scholars suggest it's the site of Adam and Eve's Garden of Eden and Abraham's birthplace. City-states of antiquity flourished in Mesopotamia, in the Fertile Crescent between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers including Iraq. Growing of grain spread from the Fertile Crescent to the north, then west to the Atlantic and east to the Pacific by the time of Christ. Nomadic hunter-gatherers first settled in villages and raised crops there over 1,100 years before Egypt's first pyramid was built. Beer was one of ancient Mesopotamia's many inventions, nearly 6,000 years ago. Elite received 5 liters a day, others 2.

Sumerians, Mesopotamia's earliest known inhabitants, lived in independent city-states before 8000 BC. By 3200 BC they invented the earliest form of Western writing, cuneiform, using a sharp stylus to inscribe wedge-shaped characters in soft clay tablets. Mistakes were corrected with a smudge of a finger. Completed tablets were baked to preserve them. It took years to become an accomplished scribe because Sumer's alphabet had 550 characters. One of the oldest works of literature in existence is the Epic of Gilgamesh, a long, narrative Sumerian poem about Gilgamesh, a king of Uruk in Babylonia about 2700 BC. Virtually all requisites for Western civilization were developed in Mesopotamian city-states 8000 - 6000 BC, spreading north to Greece, west to Rome and on to the British Isles, as well as east to the Orient. For centuries scholars hailed cuneiform as the world's first written language. Now they believe writing, wheels, irrigation and other advances in science and the arts developed independently in China, India, Central America and Egypt, perhaps coinciding with cuneiform. Sumer is still credited with dividing the hour into 60 minutes and a circle into 360 degrees while developing basic algebra and geometry.

50 years after Hammurabi's death Hittites overthrew Babylon. Over 500 years later Assyria took over. Babylon's most powerful, aggressive, creative ruler was Nebuchadnezzar (605-562 BC) His military leadership expanded Babylon's empire from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea. He captured Jerusalem, defeated Egypt and conquered Syria and Palestine. Nebuchadnezzar oversaw the rebuilding of old Babylon's mud brick walls and buildings, rebuildt and strengthened its life-giving canals and waterways. He also created the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Ancient World's 7 Wonders. Fed by an elaborate irrigation system and 300 high the garden was created for his wife, who came from a faraway, hilly country.

In 539 BC Cyrus the Great's army, including fearful war elephants and chariots equipped with leg-chopping scythes, captured Babylon. Cyrus, founder of the Persian Empire, entered the walled city without a fight. In 331 BC Alexander the Great, 33, marched into Babylon unchallenged, pleased not to need to besiege it. Instead, he led his troops over a road ceremoniously covered with welcoming flowers and garlands. He died there 8 years later. 11 years later the Greek Seleucid Dynasty conquered Mesopotamia and moved the commercial center from Babylon to Seleucia, touching off over 1,000 years of conflict over Mesopotamia between Greeks, Romans and Persians before a new center of Mesopotamia was created northeast of Babylon. Modern Baghdad, with 3 universities, 5-star hotels and many mosques and old bazaars, is a city of 4.8 million people on the banks of the Tigris River. Once Islam's spiritual, political, intellectual and cultural hub, its history goes back 1,241 years.

Birth of Baghdad
Founded in 762 AD, Baghdad was sacked and looted in 1258 AD. In the middle of ancient Mesopotamia Baghdad, the world's biggest city west of China, flourished 496 years, a major center of learning and a crossroad of ideas and trade between East and West. It quickly became Islam's spiritual, political, intellectual and cultural hub, capturing all of Mesopotamia, Iran and parts of central Asia, Spain and Egypt by 711 AD. By the 800s baghdad's caliph built a "House of Wisdom" for students, scholars and scribes. A magnet for thinkers and scholars it became the Oxford, Cambridge or Harvard of its day. Ideas were freely discussed. Literature from across the known world, brought by camel caravan or sailing dhow, was preserved, studied and translated. Cultural diversity was truly celebrated in this Golden Age of Learning. Christians, Jews, Muslims and "infidels" discussed the merits of their religious, racial and ethnic beliefs in public debates. Debaters weren't allowed to read from scripture or shout down opponents. They had to mount arguments based on reason, following a protocol predating Roberts Rules of Order by eons. Control of Baghdad became a bone of contention between warring factions. In 945 AD Caspains known as Buyids took control and left old rulers as a powerless symbol of unity and legitimate Muslim government. Mongols attacking Baghdad in 1258 AD slaughtered 800,000 people. The Tigris River ran black with ink from hundreds of thousands of destroyed books. Control of the area constantly changed for the next 400 years as Turks, Mongols and Persians repeatedly captured and lost territory. The Ottoman Empire conquered Iraq in 1640 AD.

Friend or foe?
Violent regime change, invasions, wars, revolts and massacres have been a way of life for 6,000 years in Mesopotamia. When Turkey entered World War I on Germany's side the British invaded Mesopotamia in 1914. When Britain marched on Baghdad in 1915 to protect future oil fields from Germany its army was roundly defeated twice, suffering 23,000 casualties in 5 months. 10,000 British and Indian troops surrendered unconditionally in what was then the British Empire's most humiliating defeat. It took 3 years and disastrous defeats at Ctesiphon and Kut Al Amara before England captured Baghdad. During World War I they promised the Arabs national independence if they revolted against Turkey. Arabs agreed to fight Turkey but England reneged. Enraged by betrayal and continued military occupation Iraq rebelled in 1920. Britain rushed in reinforcements from India, Iran and England. Iraq was established as a pro-British monarchy in 1922 and gained independence in 1932.

Modern Middle East problems go back to bad diplomatic decisions during World War I. England and France promised a Palestinian homeland and a Jewish state in return for a second front against Turkey. Instead, they took control of the Middle East including Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq. After putting down an anti-British revolt in 1920 Britain controlled Iraq 38 years until the monarchy it installed was toppled in 1958. Creating the Jewish state of Israel in 1948 without the long-promised Palestinian state sparked a series of wars beginning with the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. 1956 France, England and Israel invaded Egypt. Israel attacked Egypt, Syria and Jordan in the June 1967 Six-Day War. Oct 6, 1973 Egypt and Syria attacked Israel in the Yom Kippur War. 1983 Israel invaded Lebanon. Iraq played a role directly, or indirectly, in each war.

Iraq's first commercial oil began flowing in the 1920s, after British and American firms gained control of oil production and profits. Iraq seized the oil fields 45 years later. Adjacent Kuwait, with the world's 3rd-largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia and Iraq, was a British protectorate 74 years before becoming an independent sheikhdom in 1961. Oil revenues helped Iraq build a modern education system to achieve a 70% literacy rate. Health care increased life expectancy to 69 for women and 66 for men. In 1980 within a year of seizing power Saddam Hussein diverted oil revenues to launch a war against Iran. Historians estimate 375,000 Iraqi casualties during that 8-year war. Iraqi health authorities say over 1.2 million citizens died during and after the 1991 Gulf War, partly from health problems caused or aggravated by UN sanctions.

Washington doesn't talk about it, but the U S strongly supported Hussein during his war against Iran. Iraq acquired the means to manufacture weapons of mass destruction and wage chemical and biological warfare because of the U S and others who supported Hussein at the time. Any American invasion must be followed by several years of occupation in order to be as effective as the 7-year occupation of Japan after World War II. As Washington beats the drums of war the world no longer sees the U S as the good guys. Nor is today's Iraq a cradle of modern civilization. Saddam Hussein created a culture of death by elevating the value of death over life. The culture of death becomes a weapon of mass destruction. Palestinians, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden use it.

Among the firsts:

Cultivation of grains 8000 BC 
Writing (cuneiform) 3200 BC 
Wheeled vehicles 3200-3100 BC 
Calendars, 24-hour days
Mathematics, astronomy, religion 
Irrigation, canals, dams 
Domestic livestock, cobblestone streets 
Plows, metal working, beer, pottery 
Measuring and surveying instruments 
Bleaching and dying of fabrics 
Architecture, city building, urban plumbing 
Preservation of literature (Epic of Gilgamesh) 
Legal system (Code of Hammarubi) 
Medical writings 2100 BC 
Laws regarding liability of surgeons 1700 BC

Tallying cultural losses in Iraq

U S soldiers provide security as Baghdad archaeological museum worker returns items stolen during the looting spree.

WASHINGTON Looting priceless antiquities from the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad is mourned worldwide but their cultural significance might be less widely understood.

Q How significant are museum losses? A The museum was the world's main repository for Mesopotamian archaeological treasures. Mesopotamia developed the world's first cities, states, empires, kings, laws and writing, over 5,000 years ago. Sumer, Akkad, Babylonia and Assyria exercised enormous influence on the world of the Bible and formed the foundation of Western civilization. Artifacts, inscribed clay tablets and art that document the rise of the world's first civilization are priceless.

Q Were there comparable losses, historically? A As a crime against world culture, this one equals Crusader sack of Constantinople, incomparably worse than demolishing Afghanistan's Bamiyan Buddhas by the Taliban, an act of barbarism shocking the world. The museum's looting amounts to destruction of the cultural patrimony of an entire nation, and of Western civilization.

Q What will the losses mean to Iraq? A Iraq is highly literate, with a deep understanding of its archaeological heritage. Their historical consciousness is one of the most important factors in defining a national identity uniting Iraq's religious and ethnic groups. This national identity based on a shared cultural tradition is one of the strongest counterweights to the twin dangers of religious fundamentalism and ethnic balkanization. Saddam Hussein understood these sentiments, which is why he tried to define himself in his political propaganda as a great ruler in the tradition of Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar and gave his Republican guard divisions these names.

Q Will the museum's looting make rebuilding Iraq harder? A Certainly. By letting the National Museum be looted and devastated we needlessly destroyed one of the most valuable emblems of Iraqi unity. We now run the very real risk that Iraqis will view this act as a calculated American attempt to undermine their nationhood.

Q What can be done? A Several things: First and starting immediately: civil and military authorities should offer an amnesty and rewards or an actual buyback of the stolen treasures with no questions asked. This would be in keeping with the Iraqi Antiquities department's longstanding policy of purchasing antiquities found by local farmers or others as a way to prevent the materials from being smuggled out of the country and sold on the international art market. Second, the military must seal the borders of Iraq and do everything possible to apprehend anyone attempting to smuggle antiquities out of the country. Third, photos of the looted antiquities should be posted on the Internet so that they can be immediately identified if and when they surface in the international art market.

Tracking treasures
A HIGH-TECH, HIGH-STAKES HUNT FOR IRAQ'S PRICELESS ANTIQUITIES

Hundreds of ivory sculptures, including the "Mona Lisa of Nimrud," are missing from the National Museum of Iraq. Thieves pilfering priceless artifacts from the National Museum of Iraq, from 5,000-year-old vases to ancient clay tablets, may have known exactly which masterpieces to lift. Professional art sleuths hunting for the culprits are better equipped than ever at restoring treasures to their pedestals. The FBI and Interpol alerted eBay and antiquities dealers to notify them if any exceptional Middle Eastern finds come their way. Museum curators worldwide met this week in London to plot the return of archaeological objects looted from the museum during a citywide rampage as U S troops entered Baghdad. FBI spokesman Ed Cogswell, who works with the FBI's art theft program, called the thefts in Iraq unfathomable, characterizing Iraq's situation as the most disastrous heist since Hitler's World War II art pilfering. He said the FBI will interview witnesses who may have seen the uncontrolled looting, contact artifact collectors and find informants to see if anything turned up on the black market. Odds of finding all the ancient Iraqi objects, many of which were already purchased by unscrupulous collectors and traded on the underground market, are sobering. Art prices ballooned in the past decade, making art theft the third-most lucrative international crime, after drugs and arms running, now totaling $5 billion annually.

Recovery rate low
Though money-laundering laws instituted in the 1980s made banks more vigilant at tracing the flow of cash, art thieves can still move objects with relative ease across international borders. Experts estimate that less than 20%of looted art is recovered. Most stolen art is transferred from country to country to a buyer who knows it's stolen and sells it to someone who hangs it in their castle or home. Often children who inherit the work don't know it was stolen, so it doesn't pop up until decades later. Speedier communication and better international coordination give art detectives more tools than ever to catch a thief. Interpol, the FBI and dozens of cultural organizations hold conferences and send e-mail alerts flagging art theft, enabling them to call on a stable of cultural historians to coordinate searches. Over a dozen U S nonprofit arts groups formed the Cultural Heritage Coalition on Iraq to help determine the extent of the losses. Various government-run Internet art theft sites help disseminate information to the media and dealers quickly, before thieves can fence the goods. Art institutions around the world also evolved in ways that aid recovery. In the past, museums typically kept thefts hidden to avoid negative publicity about lax security. Such reticence faded in recent years with realization that reporting crimes and recovering valuable art are well worth the embarrassment. Private collectors and museums also keep far better records of their collections than in decades past, logging photographs and proof of ownership as well as physical descriptions helping identify forgeries. The Art Loss Register, set up in 1977 by the non-profit International Foundation for Art Research in New York, helped retrieve hundreds of stolen items by encouraging buyers to check its worldwide art database of 120,000 stolen objects before adding that sculpture, painting or silver tankard to their collection. Auction houses such as Sotheby's in London routinely check with the registry before putting an item on the auction block. If a Tiffany lamp, say, or Impressionist gem has a questionable past the sellers immediately alert law enforcement. A painting from a series of "Water Lilies" by Claude Monet, looted during World War II from the Rosenberg family in France, was recently recovered while on loan in Boston from the Musee des Beaux Arts in Caen. Several organizations including the Art Loss Register helped identify the work as stolen.

World War II loot found
Government policies and political upheavals also helped unearth art looted during World War II, squirreled away in private collections. U S government's declassification of war documents and freer access to records since the fall of the USSR helped recover as many as 100,000 of estimated 600,000 paintings, sculptures and tapestries pilfered from museums and homes throughout Europe. Experts say law enforcement is becoming more sophisticated at nabbing thieves. On the eve of the 1994 Winter Olympics a gang of burglars broke into Norway's National Gallery and took in less than a minute Edvard Munch's famous painting The Scream. 2 years later a Scotland Yard officer tracked down the suspects and retrieved the painting by posing as a Getty Museum curator interested in borrowing it for an exhibition. Skyrocketing art prices fuel more art theft, and the number of private art sleuths. Scientific improvements in detecting forgeries and authenticating art also helped private and government agencies. Art experts criticizing U S troops for defending oil fields and bridges while leaving Iraq's National Museum unprotected now work with the British Museum to train experts to locate missing antiquities from some of the earliest manmade tools to clay cuneiform tablets, the first evidence of writing. About 100 pieces were returned, including priceless manuscripts and antiquities, though the most notable items are still missing.

Pictures of items looted from the Iraq National Museum are online at http://www-oi.uchicago.edu/OI/IRAQ/SLIDESHOW/slideshow.html Lost in Iraq looting Among the most valuable items looted from Iraq National Museum:

Cuneiform tablets (evidence of earliest writing) 1980 BC 

Ivory plaque, head of a woman from Nimrud, circa late 1700s BC 

Alabaster Uruk vase with reliefs of plants, animals and temple scene 3000 BC 

Gold dagger with lapis handle and sheath from the Royal Cemetery at Ur 2400 BC 

Scarlet ware jar from Khafaje, ca 2900 BC

Baghdad museum hopes to reopen ARTIFACT LOOTING, THOUGH SERIOUS, LESS SEVERE THAN FIRST THOUGHT

BAGHDAD Iraq National Museum, ransacked by looters who destroyed and carried off priceless cultural artifacts, may reopen at least partially. Losses seem less severe than originally thought. Repairing damage at the museum, at least enough for a soft opening of some of the museum's exhibits, would be a much-needed symbol of the country's future as well as its past, and a point of pride. The museum might be ready for public visitors in as little as 2 - 3 months although it will take year to clean up damage wrought to the museum's records and many of its exhibits. Only 10 - 15% of the museum's artifacts were stolen, with most of the treasures packed away in vaults and in storage by museum officials anticipating bombing. Major treasures stolen include a lyre from the Sumerian city of Ur, bearing the gold-encased head of a bull, 2400 BC; a Sumerian marble head of a woman from Warka 3000 BC; a life-size statue representing King Entemena of Lagash, 2430 BC. Even as damage may not be as widespread as originally reported, there's still no clear answer to the most important question: Just how much was taken? Some of the museum's missing treasures were returned by Iraqis taking them to protect them from further damage. People brrsking in say, `We won't tell you our name or address but we took these items to keep them safe and we'll return them' These people are called clean hands. Dirty hands doing the most damage knew exactly what they were looking for, taking specific items and leaving behind air conditioners, furniture and other valuables.

Museum staff plans to estimate which artifacts are missing and how many. Iraqis walk up to soldiers and give them artifacts in the street. A lot of people are working toward getting those things back and with some degree of success. Coalition forces were blamed for not keeping a closer watch on the museum in the first place. The military had not anticipated looting on this scale. Damage would take years to repair, trying to reassemble everything. There's thousands of thousands of desk drawers and filing cabinets of files and pictures dumped on the floor.

Iraq museum assembles list of lost treasures

LOOTING PROBE LAGS AMID SUSPICIONS THAT LEADERS WERE LINKED TO SADDAM

BAGHDAD With a week to go before leaving Baghdad the chief investigator of Iraqi National Museum looting released a list of 38 missing items including a 5,000-year-old Sacred Vase of Warka and a 4,000-year-old statue from the Old Babylonian period. Hundreds of museum workers returned Saturday and Sunday for a $20 emergency payment to tide them over until payment of their salaries resumes, investigators said the probe had been hampered by suspicions that the museum's top leaders had ties to Saddam Hussein. Affiliation and perceived affiliation with Saddam hindered investigation. Museum issues echo similar concerns about corruption throughout Iraq as new political leaders, interim government officials and others talk of "de-Baathification" and how to repair a patronage system loyal to Saddam's Baath Party for almost 25 years. The museum's administrative offices are stripped bare, a scene of absolute wanton destruction. Every single office, the door is kicked in, the desk is turned over, display cases are smashed, papers are strewn everywhere, videotape is pulled out. Most of the anger was manifested in the administrative offices and not in the museum.

Many of the workers, already unhappy at not being able to enter the museum in recent weeks to collect wages, insisted that some of the museum's deputy directors were the only ones with keys and were therefore suspect, because the thieves opened a safe without damaging it. The workers also charged that the brother of one of the museum deputy directors was Saddam's minister of higher education and scientific research. People inside now are responsible for stealing these things. We don't want to cut off any avenues of investigation, primarily recovery. People come forward telling us that they're turning this over to the U S forces for safekeeping for ultimate return to the Iraqi people, and they specifically tell us they are not turning this stuff over to museum staff. They told us this time and time again. Among the more significant items returned are two slender vases from about 3000 BC and a red ocher vase 5000 BC.

Still to be recovered or accounted for are treasures such as a necklace of agate beads, a marble statue of a goddess holding a palm frond and a decorated wooden door from the 1100s. Museum surveyor Alaa al-Dabakg eyed the broken glass and dusty corridors as he came to pick up a crisp $20 bill from the museum's payroll manager to permanent museum workers with identification, enough pocket money for 10 days. Workers must return regularly to sign their names to show they're still interested in getting their jobs back. It doesn't bother them to come every day or every week to sign. They're home with nothing to do.

Photographer's Afghanistan Odyssey

Assigned to cover the war on terrorism, Mercury News photographer Len Vaughn-Lahman and Knight Ridder reporter Drew Brown crossed northern Afghanistan toward the front lines. In the monthlong journey they learned more than daily war statistics.

Between the rest of Central Asia and the Afghan war are two routes: a 1300s river crossing and a $2,700 seat on a Northern Alliance helicopter to Kabul, with a week long waiting list. We choose the river. The Amu Darya River forms the northern border with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, a churning chocolate artery no bigger than the American River near Sacramento. Where it snakes along the Tajikistan border, $400 will float a journalist across the water. Army Ranger turned journalist Drew Brown and I cross the river on a metal barge guided by a cable. Ahead are the endless sands of Dasht-e Qal`eh, 3 hard travel days by jeep at nearly $1,600 per person through countless natural and explosive road hazards.

The most insidious enemy was quick upon us, soon to become our primary adversary. As fluid as smoke, as abrasive as the sands that give it birth, the desert dust knows no barriers. It invades nostrils and mouths, jamming sinuses with pain. Mechanized objects begin slow self-destruction. The day is sunny but the air is opaque, churned to the consistency of ready-mix concrete with the passing of a vehicle. We feel trapped in an elaborate video game as we rattle down the rutted ditch that serves as the road to Taloqan. It's the 1300s with rocket launchers, old jeeps and enormous gates to mark fiefdoms.

Warlords pop up from nowhere to command bribes. We find a street-smart local fixer for several hundred dollars a day to translate this techno-feudal world into a navigable society. He will help protect us. Afghanistan has no banks. We carry rolls of cash. We buy gasoline from cans, ladled by roadside dealers into smaller one-liter measuring cups. I insist, through a translator, it be poured through gauze to filter out rust and other solid debris. I use a clean gauze filter, holding the gauze in my teeth while filling our 50-pound electric generator, the crucial power that links us to the modern world. A group of men laugh. I ask our fixer to explain. The material I chose from the market as a filter is a feminine hygiene product for the few women who can afford such a monthly luxury.

In Taloqan
Gen. Mohammad Daoud Khan, commander of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, set up headquarters in Taloqan. He has Kunduz in his sights. Fixer Abdul Rahman Karimi is euphoric at his homecoming. He hasn't seen his brother or his hometown for several years. He was a gynecologist when the Taliban exiled him for practicing a forbidden medical discipline: treating women. His brother, 53, looks 70. Already considered an elder in Taloqan, he's lived 7 years past the average life expectancy of 46. We share cough drops and tea. The cost of food and supplies skyrocketed with the sight of so many Western journalists carrying cash. We ask family members to shop for us to avoid the surcharge. Abdul's brother feeds us eggs and tea. We sleep in coats, hats and gloves inside sleeping bags on a dry mud floor. We emerge from our one room only with permission so the women of the house have enough time to hide. Our privacy is breached nightly by curious nephews. The Macintosh and digital camera are too much to resist.

The next day we move farther toward the front. We stop outside Talogan's boundaries, where the Taliban retreated just weeks before. There's a military graveyard. Tombs are marked with festive-looking flags, tin hands on sticks, metal cones, strips of cloth spinning in the wind on poles above mounds of parched earth. I see a woman approach, the first woman to try to talk to me, and in daylight. She gestures, I guess protesting my photographing the grave of her husband or son. She begins to wail. I work, walking farther away. Suddenly a second, smaller figure appears, a frantic boy on a bicycle. Shouting in English, "Mined!" he waves both ways and points at the red-painted rocks around the cemetery's perimeter, the Afghan sign marking known land mines. I didn't see them in the thick dust. Then, for once, the dust becomes my friend. Carefully, I follow my own footprints back out through the dust, my heart pounding.

The road to Kunduz
Taloqan's calm changed the day Gen. Daoud launched a strike against the Taliban for Kunduz, about 30 miles away. Cleansed of the Taliban but without its civilizing occupying army Taloqan is without its police force. Bandits take advantage of the void, attacking the rented house of Swedish TV journalists, killing one. We decide the danger of robbery is greater than shrapnel and press on to Kunduz. Hours later we see the trail of the Taliban on the run: houses evacuated with stoves still burning, manuals for bombs left behind, a corpse in the street, wounds still fresh. Victorious troops move with cheers ahead in the streets, even as a bereaved father moves his son on a cart to a hospital. Kunduz fell without a blood bath. There are rumors of a prisoner revolt at Qala-e-Jhangi outside Mazar-e Sharif. We head there by jeep.

At the 1800s fort with a maze of tunnels, Taliban soldiers make a last stand while the Northern Alliance lobs artillery explosives into a basement window to remove what we're told are one or two holdouts. Northern Alliance ordnance is a deadly homemade hybrid. Troops removed warheads from artillery rounds and banged out the firing pins with a hammer and screwdriver. The hole is stuffed with broom whisks, soaked with kerosene and lit like a huge firecracker. The concussion causes nosebleed. We're certain no one could survive. We walk around the prison building when soldiers quit. The next day, after we've left, an American-born Taliban soldier and some 80 Al-Qaida cohorts crawl up from the dirt. I probably stood over John Walker of Marin County 24 hours before he emerged.

In Mazar-e Sharif, scene of many war turnovers, betrayals and massacres, the sense of history is a bizarre mix of recent and ancient enmities. Women still wear the burqa, the head-to-toe gown with a fabric face mask reminding me of a beekeeper's protection. As they walk, Western heels protrude from beneath their dusty hems. Better sure the Taliban is not returning before uncovering. Airdropped U S humanitarian daily rations are for sale in the bazaar for 30 cents each. There's no native language on the packages of 3,000-calorie meals. Most people don't understand they are food. The outline of a fork or spoon is an alien concept because Afghans eat with their hands.

Mazar-e Sharif is the size of San Jose, with no ambulances or emergency medical care for the public. I feel a Taloqan-style sense of unease on the streets when the armies move on. I suffer the flu, sinusitis, the diesel smoke of the room stove at a hotel with no power and only one non-flushing toilet for 6 rooms. Abdul finds me some Irish cough syrup with codeine in the bazaar and laces my tea for a day while my fever climbs. I think I have plenty to complain about until I see a 7-year-old with a cold twice as bad, wearing rubber overshoes with no socks. In his best English he says, "Good evening." Abdul gives him what's left of the cough syrup.

Termez, Uzbekistan
News reports shift south. Our visas have only days left. We have orders to move on. Another barge floating in the Amu Darya River, this one Uzbek, is in the shadow of the Friendship Bridge, again moving food into Afghanistan. We plead permission to cross with the help of the U S Embassy. The Uzbeks reluctantly agree, taking exception to one of our party. Abdul is an Afghan with an Uzbek green card, not an American journalist. The hardened border guards deny him entry to his old life, his wife and baby, his home of 6 years. We stand helpless. If we get off the barge in solidarity the border guards will leave us all behind. Abdul does not wait for us to fail to be the brave Americans of Hollywood movies. He hands me a note for his wife and son, 6, and turns swiftly from us. I think of Abdul often now, trying to cross the border into Turkmenistan or Tajikistan anywhere allowing him a roundabout way home, probably spending half his wages in bribes and gas. He goes with my hat and gloves and an enduring respect beyond measure.