A dodgy goat kebab in Nepal saved Wassim Mahmoud’s life. On September 11, 2001, he was still recuperating at his home in Stratford-on-Avon when he turned on the TV set and like the rest of the world watched in horror as first one then two planes flew into the World Trade Centre in New York. Only then did he realise that he had been booked on American Airlines flight 77, which minutes after crashed into the Pentagon building in Washington DC. Watching the same epoch-defining pictures was Abi Brooke, precociously-talented rising star at San Francisco’s KTVU television station in San Francisco. She and the rest of the world’s media went into overdrive in an attempt to communicate the sheer immensity of what was the flash-point for George Bush’s infamous War on Terror . Only later did she listen to the messages left her by her Iranian boyfriend. He was desperately trying to contact his younger brother, who had just started work as a waiter in the Restaurant at the Top of the World in the Twin Towers. Half way around the world Manocher Izzatyaar and his friend Jamshed sat huddled in a dark room in a run-down part of Kabul in Afghanistan. By watching the same unfolding drama on an improvised, home-made TV set, they were breaking one of the cardinal laws of the ruthless Taliban regime and risking almost certain death. Across the border in Pakistan Farida Karim, Afghan fugitive and exile, took out again an innocuous-looking floppy disc and a half-started letter to George Bush beseeching the world’s most powerful country to intervene and save Afghanistan from the ravishes of the cruel and despotic clutches of the Taliban. The events of 9/11 changed all their lives and brought them together to set up and operate Good Morning Afghanistan, the country’s first free radio station. This is the account of their unique story and what was achieved in the chaos that followed the overthrow of the Taliban. Gun-toting US marines, roaming gangs of Afghan fighters and a total lack of electricity and equipment are just the most immediate hurdles facing the intrepid team. Good Morning Afghan is a fast-paced mix of humour, bathos and heartbreak that breathes life into the dry news bulletins that accompanied the fall of the Taliban regime. The reader is assaulted with the sights, sounds and above all the smells of downtown Kabul in the months that followed the US invasion. It is also a chillingly authentic call to arms against the Taliban and their extremist suppression of the Afghan people. Five years on with British troops battling a resurgent Taliban in the southern provinces of the country, it is a powerful reminder of why the West is still engaged in this barren but beautiful North-West frontier. - Andy Home - author Siberian Dreams .
