Raddatz: Journey to Bin Laden’s Old Compound

ABC News’ Martha Raddatz reports: I have been traveling in Afghanistan for the past few days with the US military. But today producer Richard Coolidge and I left the military base and went into Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistani border, where we linked up with Dr. Dave Warner, a civilian doing humanitarian work here. He gave us three choices in terms of what we wanted to see today: A) A school he helps support where the desks have been moved to the roof so the school rooms can fit more students (3200 at last count).
B) The compound where Osama bin Laden used to live which has a big hole through the center from a missile strike.
C) A remote village that we would access by crossing a river on a makeshift raft of inner tubes and sticks to deliver notebooks and pens to a remote village of nomads. I chose "all of the above." Dave Warner made it happen. I am convinced Dave Warner could make anything happen. Click here to see pictures from our trip in Jalalabad. Dr. Warner is not your average San Diego physician. He also has a PhD in neuroscience,  his hair falls well below his collar and for the last seven years he has attended the "Burning Man" festival, an annual art event and temporary community in the Nevada desert. He started coming to Afghanistan in 2004 and has returned two or three times a year. Like the young people (mostly graduate students) he works with here in Jalalabad all pay their own way. They live in a guest house called "the Taj," where the rooms are spartan yet comfortable.  Amy Sun, a brilliant graduate student from MIT told me tonight that she no longer turns on the heat in her apartment in Cambridge so she can save money for the airfare to Afghanistan. The work she and others  are doing for the people of Afghanistan is nothing short of amazing. They are providing internet support to schools and  hospitals and helping Afghans use and enhance their own talents to help their individual villages. I’ll tell you more about that when I file my stories for World News. But back to today. We started at the school, driving there with a few armed men in the car. As we approached we could see the jumble of desks on top and the name painted brightly on the front. The school’s name seemed as out of place as the rooftop desks. It is called  "The La Jolla Golden Triangle Rotary Club High School."  San Diego, California  is a "sister city" with Jalalabad. The relationship was started after 9/11 by members of the La Jolla rotary club in San Diego County as a way to promote peace. Thus the name. And thus, Dr. Warner’s involvement. When we arrived, the kids and teachers mobbed Dr. Warner to talk about the progress made at the school, and also needs they still have. When we took a rickety ladder up to the roof to see the piles of desks (they have no trash pickup here so it seemed the most out of the way place to put them) we saw a compound less than a mile away. On one of Warner’s visits to the school in recent months an Afghan man asked him nonchalantly , "Do you want to go to Osama’s house?"  Dr. Warner said quickly, "Uh, not if he’s home!"   In fact it has been a long time since Bin Laden has been home, but it was eerie to see it. Bin Laden moved to Jalalabad in 1996 with his three wives and many  children. It’s clear the US was aware he once lived here, because a missile fired in October 2001 took out a good chunk of the inside. It is the only structure in the area hit by missiles that had not been repaired. We didn’t linger. We had to make it to the river before sundown. With bags of notebooks and pens, we headed for the rafts. Two small boys were there to help us cross the river that would leave us centuries behind. My raft was handled by an eight year old boy, paddling with a shovel, who spoke no English but had no trouble bossing me around and shouting at me if I shifted my weight in the slightest. Richard and Dr. Warner were in the raft behind me.  I didn’t want to fall into the muddy waters anymore than the boy did, but the view was so stunning I couldn’t help turning around.  Deep caves were carved into the rock , and villagers were rushing to the shore on the other side to greet us. Once we arrived Dr. Warner gave me a pile of the notebooks to hand out to the little girls, and he distributed them to the boys. On his last visit to this village he asked the elders what the children wanted, and the answer was notebooks. We might as well have been handing out gold. After about an hour in the village we headed back. Dr Warner said, "I can spend three weeks in Washington and get two lines in a policy paper, I can spend one day here and help one hundred children. What would you choose."  Warner returns to the US this weekend, but he will be back.