The U.S. missiles that fell from the sky in Afghanistan yesterday landed far from Inquirer correspondent Andy Maykuth.
The threat to his day came from officials on the ground in northern Afghanistan, who were reportedly taking journalists’ passports.
The veteran reporter steered clear of those who would expel him. Instead, he drove deeper into the country, taking a road to the Panjshir Valley, where the ground clash between the northern alliance and Taliban forces was most likely to occur.
Along the way, on the main resupply road, he saw four trucks filled with soldiers headed toward the valley. At a roadhouse, he watched a few soldiers huddled around a shortwave radio, listening to news reports on the BBC that the U.S.-led air war had begun.
Maykuth is at the vanguard of The Inquirer’s war-coverage team, journalists put in place since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He has been reporting from Afghanistan since Sept. 30.
The foreign correspondent has found that the primitive conditions – cliff-hugging roads; no phone lines or credit cards, and limited electricity – present many challenges to reporting in a country torn by war for 23 years.
To send his dispatches back to the paper, he uses a laptop computer and a battery-powered phone that he aligns with a satellite flying 32,000 miles above the equator. After establishing the link, he can send stories; catch up on e-mail, and download wire stories.
Back in the world of modern conveniences, foreign editor Paul Nussbaum is betting on Maykuth’s ability to surmount any obstacles to getting his reports out of Afghanistan.
“Andy could file off a dishwasher,” Nussbaum said, exaggerating just a little.
In this case, a shortwave radio, the laptop and the 14-pound satellite phone are the basic equipment.
Maykuth, 43, is accustomed to working conditions that would be uncomfortable for most people. From his base in Johannesburg, South Africa, for the last five years, he has traveled throughout Africa – Sudan, Congo, Somalia, Sierra Leone – and to Pakistan.
“A huge amount of doing a story is the logistics,” Maykuth said.
Jumping through hoops is part of the job, too, as shown by his dealings with bureaucrats in Tajikistan, his last stop before Afghanistan. Here is what he wrote in a memo to editors:
“I spent the day waiting in queues and being polite to bureaucrats who seemed to get satisfaction only from frustrating others.
“It took us an hour to get into the Foreign Ministry office to sort out accreditation. Of course, they were unimpressed with the Tajik visa I got from the Russian consulate for $250 in South Africa and made me buy a new one. The price: $140. The press accreditation was an additional $40. The guy who issues the press card wanted $15 more to get it done by 2 p.m. Otherwise, it would take all day.”
Two days later, Maykuth flew in a cargo plane into northern Afghanistan.
As the U.S. military buildup was taking place over the last four weeks, The Inquirer, like other big papers, was drawing up war-coverage plans.
One of the first steps was to create a desk responsible for coordinating all the stories produced by the paper. Nussbaum and Karen Funfgeld, an assistant managing editor, lead the effort.
The Inquirer is working closely with the Knight Ridder Washington bureau, which is coordinating war coverage for the chain.
Twelve journalists, including some from The Inquirer, the Detroit Free Press, San Jose Mercury News and the Miami Herald are in strategic positions overseas.
For Maykuth, one of the main questions on his mind last week was the length of the pending military clashes.
“The big concern is how long this is going to go on. We’re looking at a brutal winter,” he said. “We’re not prepared for subfreezing weather.”
