Blair's surreal night in Kabul

The leaders had to fight through cameras and bodies

		By Nyta Mann BBC News Online political correspondent travelling with the prime minister

As the first western leader to enter Afghanistan since the fall of the Taleban, and the first British prime minister ever to do so, Tony Blair's three-hour stopover was undoubtedly historic.

It was also utterly surreal.

Having flown into the Kabul war-zone in a blacked-out Special Forces Hercules, Mr and Mrs Blair emerged into the pitch-black, midnight freeze of Bagram air base and were immediately engulfed in a chaotic scrum of assorted Kabul-based journalists and dignitaries.

UK troops on the base had prior warning of the prime minister's arrival but whatever military precision went into the plan for his first setting-foot on Afghan soil fell apart from the word go.

Chaos

The visit brought first news from home

Hamid Karzai, leader of Afghanistan's new interim government, only just managed to get in his rehearsed greeting and handshake for the Blairs and introduce the ministers he had brought with him before what he hoped would be a dignified ceremony descended into complete chaos.

At one point it was touch and go whether Mr and Mrs Blair and Mr Karzai, the latter dressed in traditional green and yellow silk robes, could fight their way out of the hectic whirl of cameras, lights and bodies that surrounded them.

The close protection teams of the prime minister and Mr Karzai were somewhere in the melee, as were several American senators on their own separate visit to the base.

Across the airbase, as far as could be seen away from the camera crews, half-lit figures loomed - troops mainly, a few of them wearing headlight torches, all of them bristling with weaponry - and military trucks and Land Rovers.

Bugles and swords

Undeterred and just yards away, a traditional Soviet-era Afghan guard of honour complete with cymbals, bugles and Cossack-style sabres struck up an anthem.

The food we get is just awful, too - all boil-in-the-bag at best

Steve Gee, Royal Sqaudron

Somehow the object of all this attention broke free.

Mr Blair's security guards managed to close in and encircle him, while Mr Karzai's guards joined hands to encircle them. It was in this manner that the entire party processed in formal marching step along a length of red carpet that had been rustled up.

Away from the airstrip, the roof of the aircraft hangar set aside for the proceedings had a gaping hole in it, a reminder of how recently Bagram was still part of the front line of the war in Afghanistan.

Along one of the hangar's outside walls, a ghostly line-up of wrecked Soviet MIG aircraft testified to one of the many previous times of war the country has endured.

Cut off

Inside were more heavily armed troops - including American and Germans as well as those from the UK - witnessing with some bemusement the spectacle before them.

They had arrived from mid to late December and so spent Christmas and New Year in the desolate cold of Kabul.

War wreckage is everywhere

Their short-notice arrival and the devastation of the city means they have had no mail, newspapers or anything amounting to contact with the outside world - until the sudden circus of the prime minister's visit.

"You feel completely cut off and it would be nice to know at least a bit of what's going on in the world," said Lance Corporal Phil Baxter, 22, posted to Kabul from the Royal Squadron.

"The only news about anything we've heard is from all these journalists who've come here with Tony Blair. We hadn't heard anything about Gordon Brown's baby before tonight."

From the same unit, Steve Gee, 22, got his notice to be posted to Kabul on Christmas Eve. "I had a rubbish Christmas as my girlfriend was crying, and an even worse New Year's Eve because I came to Kabul," he said.

"The food we get is just awful, too - all boil-in-the-bag at best."

Unsurprisingly, it isn't only news from home that is in extremely short supply. So is everything from heaters to more military equipment. For security reasons no daytime flights can be made into the city, so bringing in more of anything is an extremely slow process.

Meanwhile, at a roughly constructed lectern in a corner of the icy cold hanger, ahead of his address on the future of Afghanistan and the progress of the war against terrorism, with Mr Karzai at his side and ranks of British troops assembled behind him, the prime minister gave his reaction to the news of the death in the UK of his chancellor's baby daughter.

It added an element of domestic tragedy to the international war-zone's surreal event.