Stuck in a pre-industrial age

During the war in Afghanistan, when the rebels used two-way radios and landlines did not work, satellite phones were key for reporters and warlords, writes Ian Traynor

The offer was too good to turn down even if Guardian accountants were bound to raise their eyebrows when the bills came in.

After several weeks of sleeping bags in a house in Afghanistan's Panjshir valley with no hot water and a mud latrine at the end of the garden shared by scores of journalists, we were dirty and tired.

Commander Basir of the Salang invited us for a hot shower and dinner at his villa. "Don't forget to bring your satellite phone," he quipped merrily after giving us directions.

The Taliban were still hanging on to power in September last year. Basir, now wearing a proper uniform and installed in the defence ministry in Kabul, was a rebel warlord marshalling the anti-Taliban resistance in the Salang mountains north of the capital.

Two-way radios were the main mode of communication for the rebels. The landlines for the phone system did not work. Mobiles were a fantasy in a country that had never progressed to the railways. So the satphone was a godsend and the key piece of kit for reporters and warlords, and later for the US troops.

We made our way that evening to Basir's lavish villa, luxuriated under hot running water before enjoying a slapup meal. Basir himself disappeared into an adjoining room and spent the next 90 minutes on the satphone to Iran, to one of his wives.

But in the 95% of Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban, the possession of a satphone was a death sentence, a clear sign that the owner was working for the enemy. Which was probably true.

In advance of the bombing campaign last October, several of the Taliban's opponents, now in government, were supplied with satphones by the Americans and sent into the country to spy and target-spot for the bombers. The latest models, like early model mobiles, became increasingly common.

When Kabul fell and was inundated by troops, journalists, and aid workers, the satellite phone became ubiquitous and locals would constantly pester you to use the phone - to call girlfriends in Dushanbe, fathers in Peshawar, or long-lost cousins in Iran.

In Afghanistan, for the first time in its brief history, the satphone became a symbol of all things western in a country still stuck, in many regions, in the pre-industrial age.