Chris Burns: Dodging bullets, flies along the front

Chris Burns

By Chris Burns
CNN Frankfurt Bureau Chief

It sounds like an angry wasp streaking past me. I wish it were. The gunshot rings out just after we did a live shot on the roof of a mud hut, surrounded … by the Taliban. The bullet just misses. We hit the deck and wait. As the minutes tick by without another shot, we build enough confidence to pull our gear behind a wall and carry on.

But the fighting is far from over along the front north of Kabul. Airstrikes blasting at Taliban positions around us, a Taliban mortar landing a hundred or so meters away, and Northern Alliance Katushya rockets firing back. Taliban rockets hit a town nearby, killing two people on the same street we filmed just days before.

As the sun sets over the Shamali plain, the live shots become increasingly risky. The light we used for my face is becoming a potential target for the Taliban on the mountain nearby. Time to wrap it up.

After a tense, suspenseful day, it's back to the guesthouse -- bucket showers, gas lanterns, lots of rice and little else to eat, attacked not by the Taliban but by legions of flies. But we grin and joke and turn up the CD player. Home is where the crew is, and the camaraderie makes it liveable.

What makes it most gratifying to be here is the chance to put human faces on this human -- and tragically photogenic -- disaster called Afghanistan. How people have lived with war for more than two decades, how much they yearn to live without it, how much they'll need the world's help to break their cycle of misery.