Travel

Education

Photography

About

Editorial

Fun

To Afghanistan

In August 1998, as you may recall, the United States bombed training sites sponsored by Osma bin Laden within Afghan territory. As a result, a UN worker was killed in Kabul, and no US diplomat has been to Afghanistan since then.  Recently, a member of the US Consulate in Peshawar had to go to the Afghan border to assist some American citizens returning to Pakistan after a number of months doing relief work inside Afghanistan. Victoria accompanied this diplomat to the border-crossing at the western base of Khyber Pass.

This is the same drive up Khyber Pass that Victoria and the boys took in February,  however, instead of stopping at the look-out at the top, we continued down the steep, curvy, ill-maintained, road to the Afghan border.  In places the road was washed out and we had to drive down the dried-out wadi, or stream-bed.  At the border was a small village, and a building that must have stood there since before the British left, overlooking the actual border, marked by a metal gate and a coiled barbed wire barricade.  We proceeded into that building, where the diplomatic business of the day was attended to.

We took tea in a sitting room looking out upon the crossing. Dozens of children passed back and forth through the border without any passport formalities. They carried bags filled with hard curved items, perhaps old oil tins being taken into Afghanistan for reuse. Others, grown-ups, carried large pieces of scrap metal into Pakistan. Later we found these cut beams and engine casings sitting in the passport office yard, apparently confiscated. A sign at the border gate said that we were at the Pakistan frontier, and that only persons who had completed passport formalities could pass the sign. Yet the only persons who seemed to take notice of the passport control formalities on either side were the foreigners and the truck drivers. 

On the other side of the border gate stood a small bus-stop like shelter, which, we were told, housed the Taliban passport control officials. We were told that the Taliban would object to photographs being taken, and they did.

We walked up a bluff overlooking the Afghan village.  We expressed an interest in setting foot in Afghanistan, and our escorts insisted that the edge of this bluff was in fact Afghan territory, so we all dutifully stepped into the area that they indicated.  Then we stood and watched as men in the Afghan village continued to prepare items to be smuggled into Pakistan.

Boys shadowed us during our sight-seeing stroll.

Taliban passport control.

Readying contraband for smuggling.