Brave Bak was my protector. Now we owe him hope – and freedom

HEADS throbbing through lack of oxygen and limbs leaden with exhaustion, we trudged towards the 14,500ft summit of the Anjuman mountain pass. But one smiling figure – remarkably showing no sign of altitude sickness – darted between us, offering words of advice and support.

It didn’t take long for me to conclude that Bakhtiar Shoresh – or Bak, as I knew him – was exactly who I needed beside me in Afghanistan as I reported on the American-led mission to oust the Taliban and exterminate Al Qaeda after 9/11.

Our hazardous journey across the Hindu Kush in October 2001 was punctuated by regular stops for prayer. Each time, I saw Bak – dressed in a keffiyeh scarf and black leather jacket over his shalwar kameez – talking animatedly with drivers, guides and soldiers heading for the valley. As the son of a brave fighter from the Panjshir Valley, he knew them all – the perfect translator and ‘fixer’ for a Western journalist.

By then, Bak had seen 23 years of war in his homeland. Little could he have imagined that he would see 20 years more.

I signed him up on the Anjuman Pass to work exclusively with me for The Mail on Sunday. For the next six months, he was my companion, protector, facilitator and guide.

With besieged Kabul unreachable, we camped in Jabal Seraj, a town about 50 miles from the capital. Sleeping on concrete floors without electricity, we watched the US-led aerial blitz of his home city.

‘The Taliban have been living in my house. It might be completely destroyed now,’ he said. ‘My father needs me to be strong enough to go and find out.’

Later, I was with Bak when he heard that his father, a senior commander with the Northern Alliance which fought against the Taliban, had been killed in a helicopter crash. Instantly, this young, devastated man assumed the mantle of head of his extended family across his benighted country.

The small part that I – along with the MoS – played in the safe evacuation of Bak and his closest relatives last week feels like the least we could do in return for the protection that he provided during those nerveracking months.

During our time together in Afghanistan, we spent hours discussing our starkly different

‘A life of invasions and brutal executions’

lives. On one occasion, I told him an interview that he had helped arrange and that I had conducted with an Afghan political leader was not being published because George Harrison had died and there was a shortage of space in the newspaper.

Bak had never heard of George Harrison or The Beatles. His life had been invasions, tank fire, aerial bombardment and brutal executions.

As he completes a period of quarantine in a hotel near Heathrow, it may not feel like freedom to Bak and his family just yet.

But they are the lucky ones whose future finally promises peace and freedom.