Kabul Stories

Kabul is still on a war footing, at least as far as the British military is concerned. While the Americans, Germans and others happily fly in and out in daylight, the Royal Air Force insists on taking off and landing only in the hours of darkness, with lights off and pilots wearing night-vision goggles.

Necessary or not, it added to the thrill of being on the flight deck of the Hercules as we crossed the Afghan border. Through the special glasses the darkness dissolved, and the green outlines of Tora Bora (last known location of one Osama bin Laden) could be distinguished. I had been asked to report anything untoward, and drew in a breath as a bright streak shot across my field of view, only to realise it was falling, not rising: I had seen a meteorite.

In the back of the plane was a group of four Scottish businessmen and one businesswoman who had been invited by the Ministry of Defence to meet their employees, currently serving with the Territorial Army in Afghanistan. It was hard to know what they found more alien – the dusty, shattered, mine-ridden landscape of Kabul, or the sight of their workers in uniform.

"How does it feel to be in the army?" Cameron Aitken asked Trevor Cockerel, in one life a yard supervisor in his timber business near Glasgow, but in the other a corporal in the 51st Highland Regiment, responsible for protecting the British base in Kabul. "It's all right once you get used to being treated like an eight-year-old," was the ironic reply, only for his boss to tell him: "I contacted your mother before I came out. She's worried about you."

Apparently, Corporal Cockerel also has trouble getting some people back home to treat him as a grown-up, and he is 32. Most of the squaddies, however, were barely in their 20s, while their bosses were usually old enough to be their parents, lending the encounter something of the atmosphere of visiting day at a boarding school.

The looming war in Iraq has brought the biggest mobilisation of military reservists since the Second World War, and the MoD is having to work hard to maintain support among the business community. One of its arguments is that employers benefit from the skills and added confidence that the Territorial Army can impart, and several people on the trip seemed to agree. Colin Watt, 43, a manager for a chain of garden centres where 21-year-old George Cameron sells aquariums, said: "George has become more confident. He's coming back to a better job." Mr Aitken also felt Mr Cockerel would be ready for more responsibility on his return.

Pat Hayden, the only woman in the party ("My age? Just say I'm too old to be in a war zone. All right, over 50") owns a hides and skins business with her husband in Inverness, where 19-year-old Ewan Harper is one of their eight employees. "I've definitely noticed a change in him," she said. "He used to be very quiet – talking to him was like drawing teeth – but this has really brought him out. We had a nice chat."

The experience of living in one of the most deprived countries in the world is enough to make anyone grow up fast. "After this I'll never take anything for granted again," Lance Corporal Ewan Morley, in civilian life an architectural assistant in Glasgow, told me as we investigated the remains of the former royal palace at Darulaman.

One of the pitfalls for the first-time visitor to Kabul is imagining that all the devastation was caused by the Taliban, American bombing after September 2001, or the war against the Communist regime which fell in 1992. Not so: nearly all of it happened in the four years when the mujahedin warlords were fighting over the city, and stopped as soon as the Taliban kicked them out in 1996.

In 1994, when I was last here, hashish-dazed fighters were taking potshots at each other across a deserted Jadi Marwand, the main shopping street.

Now there is at least one new building amid the ruins, the market stalls are thronged once more, and here and there among the burkas you see the odd unveiled female face.

It is progress, up to a point – but elsewhere in Afghanistan the warlords are back. Only the Jocks and their international colleagues are keeping them out of the capital.