In Kabul on Sept. 11
'Like being at the center of a vortex, blind to what was careening around you': the AP's KATHY GANNON shares what it was like to be in Afghanistan on 9/11.
A World Food Program distribution point in Kabul, Afghanistan, 10 days after the attacks. (AP Photo/Amir Shah)
Osama bin Laden in a TV image broadcast on Oct. 7, 2001. (AP Photo/Al Jazeera)
It was just 6 p.m.
I had been in Kabul for nearly a month covering the Taliban trial of Christian aid workers -- two of them Americans -- who had been accused of proselytizing, a crime in Afghanistan.
The phone rang.
It was Sally Jacobsen, then the AP's international editor. Two passenger planes had hit the World Trade Center towers.
In Taliban Afghanistan, televisions were banned so we couldn't see what was happening in the U.S. It was like being at the center of a vortex, blind to what was careening around you.
We had only a radio. On the Pashtu language service we heard that a third plane hit the Pentagon. It was unbelievable.
A few minutes later Amir Shah, my colleague and friend, ran upstairs. There was a fourth plane and no one knew where it was heading, or what its target was -- maybe the White House. Without pictures everything was left to our imaginations.
We eventually went out in search of reactions. The parents of the Christian aid workers were at the United Nations Club, the only place in all of Kabul with a TV. For the first and only time over the next four days, I saw the images of the planes hitting the towers. It was almost too difficult to get my mind around.
In the streets of Kabul, people were whispering. Many didn't know what the World Trade Center was, many others didn't even know where New York was, but everyone knew from the radio that something terrible had happened to the United States.
They were familiar with war and death and, without exception, everyone I spoke to was sad for the U.S. and for those who died in the attack.
As I interviewed someone, a plane roared in low. Everyone screamed and ran. It was just a scare -- no bombs dropped that evening.
But Afghans knew Osama bin Laden was in their country. They knew they would be at the center of the storm that raged on the other side of the world.
"I'm afraid my country will burn," Amir Shah said. He was right.
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MORE ON SEPT. 11
For more stories related to the fifth anniversary of the attacks, look at asap's special report Living with 9/11.
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Kathy Gannon, an AP special correspondent, was stationed in Kabul, Afghanistan as the AP's Afghanistan/Pakistan bureau chief on Sept. 11, 2001.
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