From Ground Zero to Afghanistan

Journalist Steven McKenzie went to New York in the wake of the attacks there and later to Afghanistan - the focus of the subsequent War on Terror. Here, he recalls his experiences five years on.

The first thing I noticed about Ground Zero was the dust.

The air was full of it, although I was there two months on from the September attacks.

Clouds of fine grey dust swirled up from the site, over a wire security fence and into the street.

Firefighters run to the area of the destroyed World Trade Centre

It coated my clothes, back of the throat and drifted into my eyes.

T-shirts hanging in a shop window display across the street from where the Twin Towers had once stood were furred in a deep layer of fine grey dust.

Ground Zero could only be glimpsed from the street through gaps in the fence.

People crammed into these spaces to take photographs of the scene.

Later, I attended the funeral of one of the city's many firefighters who had died trying to rescue people from the World Trade Centre.

Durrell Pearsall, 35, had been a member of New York's Fire Department Pipes and Drums.

A red fire truck carrying his coffin was escorted down Fifth Avenue to St Patrick's Cathedral by dozens of kilted pipers.

Fittingly for an American who had had great fondness for Scotland, his coffin was laid to rest in the city's Holy Rood cemetery.

Selection of photographs

At the graveside a handful of his fellow band mates cracked open a bottle of whisky and poured it over his casket in a poignant salute to their friend.

Mourners gathered at Hempstead Country Club for the wake.

A selection of photographs of Durrell was projected on to a screen as the Foo Fighters' song There Goes My Hero played in the background.

Amid the reminiscing, there were grumbles about Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's decision to scale down the number of firefighters allowed to keep searching for body parts.

There was some chat about clashes with police following the mayor's order, but it did not take long for talk to turn to the War on Terror.

Children playing in Kabul

I was soon dispatched to another place at another time - it was Kabul, Afghanistan where the clock was ticking towards the city's night-time curfew.

Photographer Alasdair MacLeod and I had just found out that an Afghan we hired as a driver had deserted us.

Standing outside the gates of a Nato International Security Assistance Force base, we decided to find another way back to our hotel rather than admit to our embarrassing situation to the military.

It was the foolhardy decision of new boys to one of the most dangerous places on earth.

Only a few months earlier, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl had been abducted in neighbouring Pakistan.

Between us and a road where we hoped to flag down a taxi was a Northern Alliance checkpoint.

It was manned by a gang of Afghan teenagers armed with AK47 assault rifles almost as big as themselves. They were under the command of an older man.

Instructing us with the wave of a rifle barrel, he had our rucksacks searched and then he demanded money for transport to get us back to our hotel.

Passing interest

As the officer's demands grew increasingly excessive and insistent, Alasdair flagged down a taxi and we dived in.

We were relieved to see the lights of the hotel shining in the darkness 15 minutes later.

By day, Kabul was vibrant and it felt safe enough to walk around.

International Security Assistance Force troops

The city's residents regarded convoys of heavily-armed Isaf troops with little more than passing interest.

For many Afghans, Nato's presence was just another in a long line of military interventions in their country.

One day, on the road to an Isaf base several hours drive outside Kabul, we saw evidence of those past conflicts - rusting hulks of blown up Soviet tanks and buildings riddled with bullet holes.

The base itself was a jump off point for British and American troops to get into the mountains, which surrounded the site like the jaws of an iron bear trap.

Standing amid a city of khaki tents and the din of helicopters, it was a world away from Manhattan and the US.

But the events of September 11 had linked the distant countries forever.