“Five minutes after nine,” grunted Sarfraz, glaring at the clock on his cell phone. “Too bad we cannot ring up Mr. Siddiqi.”
Too bad, indeed—Mr. Siddiqi would have been a big help right then. A small, elegant man who dressed in gray woolen pants with Russian-style business shirts and a slim gray ties, Mr. Siddiqi had been the boss of the Kabul airport’s control tower for over three decades, and during this time anyone who happened to have his cell phone number—which is to say, anyone who had taken the trouble to pay a visit to the control tower and have a cup of tea with Mr. Siddiqi—only needed to give him a ring if they were running late and he would make every effort to hold their plane. The fact that Mr. Siddiqi was now taking an extended vacation was creating all sorts of problems for people like me and Sarfraz, who insist on doing everything at the last minute.
“You know, we’re about to miss this plane,” I said. “Maybe we should call and find out—”
“—what Wakil is up to?” interjected Sarfraz, completing the thought. He was already dialing Wakil’s cell phone to demand an update on his whereabouts. Several seconds into our Pashtun colleague’s report, Sarfraz’s face darkened with anger.
“Chai? Chai?!”
He listened for another beat, and then the yelling started.
“What are you doing sitting down sipping chai?! This is not the place for Three Cups of Tea right now! Get outside the airport—immediately!”
The taxi was now swerving between a clutch of donkey carts and a line of battered minivans that were clogging the road through a high-rent diplomatic district where the Indian government was hoping to build a new embassy to replace its old facility, which had been destroyed by a suicide bomber only six weeks earlier. Meanwhile, the yelling continued.
“Have our tickets ready! Have a porter standing by for the bags! Tell security to let us through!”
We braced as the taxi whipped in a half circle around the Afghan Air Force MiG fighter jet mounted to a concrete pedestal that marks the entrance to the airport, and seconds later the driver screeched to a halt before the front stairs, where Wakil found himself subjected to the double-barreled misery of being excoriated simultaneously on the phone and in person by Sarfraz.
“Make sure this guy counts our bags! Pay the taxi driver! And when you’re done with that—” Sarfraz was already disappearing through the entrance, so his final instruction was flung over his shoulder like a handful of loose change “—start making a dua for us!”
I snapped a quick salute to Wakil, who had cupped his hands in front of his chest and was offering a prayer to Allah to keep us safe in our travels, and shuffled off behind Sarfraz, who had been stopped by a security guard.
“What is your destination?” demanded the man.
“Dubai,” replied Sarfraz and kept moving.
We raced down a hallway, out a door, and across an open-air courtyard, where another group of guards stopped us with the same question.
“We are going to Herat,” declared Sarfraz as we swept past them and entered a second building.
“Wakil is coming along nicely in his training, no?” I asked as we flung our bags onto a conveyor belt feeding into the first of several scanning machines.
“I am much angry with him right now,” replied Sarfraz before adding, grudgingly, “but he is improving, day by day.”
Behind the scanning machine stood a pleasant man wearing a short-sleeved white shirt and tie. “And where are you two gentlemen flying to this morning?” he inquired.
“Kandahar!” said Sarfraz as he patted his vest pockets and stole a backward glance to confirm that we had not accidentally dropped a stray wad of cash worth the combined annual salaries of fifty Afghan schoolteachers.
Finally we reached the airline desk, where I handed our tickets over to a young woman wearing a black head scarf. Glancing at the slips of paper, she smiled apologetically.
“I am sorry to inform you that the flight to Faizabad has been delayed and will not depart until this afternoon.”
Shortly after Sarfraz and Wakil had conceived the idea of laying down a line of girls’ schools through the heart of Taliban country, the CAI’s most-remote-area project director had decided to take Wakil under his wing and put him through an aggressive training regimen in the finer points of being Sarfraz Khan. Unlike the patient mentoring of the “style school” that I had undergone with Sarfraz for many years, the boot-camp tutelage to which Wakil was subjected mostly consisted of Sarfraz waving his arms in the air and shouting at him over a seemingly endless litany of infractions that included, among other offenses, failing to keep his cell phone on at all hours; tipping strangers off to his travel plans; neglecting to switch cars and drivers with sufficient frequency; and the worst category of sin—sitting down, sleeping, eating lunch, or any other form of unproductive activity that met Sarfraz’s definition of loafing.
Although these methods appeared harsh, beneath all the yelling and the abuse resided a keen awareness of the dangers to which Wakil was exposing himself as the point person for our work in the Pashtun-dominated parts of Afghanistan. In his heart, Sarfraz knew that Wakil was taking greater risks than any of us, and he was terrified by the possibility that Wakil’s activities on behalf of girls’ education might eventually get him kidnapped or killed.
Although Sarfraz would never have told Wakil this directly, his protégé had been making marvelous progress. In addition to monitoring the school at Lalander and keeping his string of projects moving along in Kunar and Nuristan, Wakil had kicked off a host of other CAI initiatives. By the fall of 2008, he had started up a women’s computer-training center outside Kabul—which within a year boasted more than a thousand students—and had put together a land mine-awareness program designed to be incorporated in all of our Afghanistan schools. His most astonishing achievement of all, however, took the form of a single piece of paper.
Thanks to the fact that Sarfraz and I had been unable to make any headway with the federal bureaucrats of Kabul, the CAI still did not have an Afghanistan NGO registration. This had not presented a problem during the early phase of our involvement because we enjoyed the full support and permission of the local authorities in the communities where we worked. But as our operations expanded, the costs of not being official were becoming more apparent. Without a license, for example, we could not keep a post-office box or open a bank account anywhere in the country, which made it extremely difficult to move money from one place to another. (For several years, Suleman Minhas had to drive from Islamabad to Peshawar and hand over a bag containing anywhere between twenty thousand and fifty thousand dollars in cash to Wakil or Sarfraz, who would then drive it through the Khyber Pass to Kabul.) Without the proper registration, we were also prohibited—except during emergencies—from flying between Kabul and Faizabad with the Red Cross, the United Nations, or PACTEC (a volunteer outfit that specializes in flying humanitarian workers around Afghanistan). As the intensity of the Taliban insurgency increased from 2004 to 2008, the drive from the capital to Badakshan was becoming riskier with every passing month.
In short, it was time for us to get our paperwork in order, and that summer Wakil had resolved to succeed where Sarfraz and I had failed.
With the help our friend of Doug Chabot, Wakil put together a sixty-page NGO application in English, and Dari and flung himself into the mission of pushing this document through the required channels at the Ministry of Economy, the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. During the course of almost seventy meetings, he was subjected to a host of petty humiliations and absurdities. The several dozen officials who reviewed his packet discerned many problems that included failing to submit separate applications for permission to build new schools and to rebuild damaged schools; failing to sign each form with a signature that exactly matched the signature on his passport; failing to include the word “Afghanistan” at the bottom of his local address in Kabul; failing to clearly state in the CAI’s bylaws tha
t our Afghan employees do not have to report for work on government holidays; failing to obtain a proper letter of authorization from a bank attesting that he had paid the one-thousand-dollar NGO registration fee; failing, once the proper letter of authorization had been obtained from the bank, to complete an additional form specifying that day’s international exchange rate; and so on.
These requests were not impossible, but the solution to each problem cost Wakil several hours or days. As he threaded his way from the office of one bureaucrat to the next, he often found himself dashing across town to get a signature from someone in a different ministry or popping into the street to have photocopies made by one of the men who had a photocopy machine on the sidewalk, then running back to discover that the office that had sent him on the errand was now closed. The entire ordeal took almost a month, and he kept his cool throughout the whole process, until the final day, when he was informed that the license could not be handed over until it had received one final seal—the stamp for which had been locked in a cabinet, and the man with the key had already gone home.
“Come back tomorrow and you will have your license,” he was told.
Wakil was due to leave for Kunar the very next day. Returning to the ministry was not an option—but standing and screaming at the top of his lungs was.
“WHAT DO YOU WANT?” he bellowed. “ARE YOU ASKING FOR A BRIBE IN EXCHANGE FOR DOING YOUR JOB? IS IT MONEY THAT YOU WANT? FINE—HERE, I WILL GIVE YOU YOUR MONEY!”
People began emerging from their offices to see what was going on.
“I HAVE BEEN HERE ONE MONTH!” he continued. “WE ARE BUILDING SCHOOLS FOR MY COUNTRY AND YOURS! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?! I AM NOT LEAVING WITHOUT THIS PAPER!”
Eventually, someone produced a key to the filing cabinet and the piece of paper was handed over. When Wakil reached the sidewalk, he took a picture of the license with his cell phone and sent it off to Sarfraz and me.
We were extremely impressed.
Wakil’s bureaucratic victory had moved our operation to a new level. The hundred thousand dollars now riding in the pockets of Sarfraz’s vest and mine had been withdrawn from our brand-new Central Asia Institute account at the Habib Bank, and our seats on the Faizabad plane had been purchased after the agent confirmed that our names were on the list of authorized NGO representatives.
After several hours inside the air-conditioned shipping container that served as PACTEC’s departure lounge, we shuffled up a narrow set of folding steps, ducked through the door of a twelve-seat twin-turboprop Beechcraft, and slowly taxied past a line of aircraft that offered a visual index of Afghanistan’s current economic and political crisis. Squatting on the tarmac was an Airbus A310, a gift from the government of India intended to help rebuild Ariana’s decimated fleet of planes, which was slowly being dismantled for its spare parts because the Afghan government lacked funds for the plane’s maintenance costs. Beyond the Airbus was a collection of white and blue helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft used by the UN and the roughly two dozen international aid agencies that were scrambling to provide the basic services—health care, road construction, communications, and education—that now lay beyond the capacity of Afghanistan’s beleaguered federal ministries. About two years earlier, the UN Security Council had warned that due to a combination of violence, illegal drug production, poverty, and dysfunctional government, Afghanistan was in danger of becoming a failed state.
As the Beechcraft took off and roared north toward Badakshan, I reviewed our agenda for this trip in my mind. It had been eight months since my last visit, and during that time Sarfraz had completed nine schools in the Wakhan, with three more projects in the works. This visit would offer a mix of inspection tours, bill-paying sessions, and meetings to discuss new projects. The itinerary called for us to land in Faizabad and head into the Wakhan until we reached the end of the road at Sarhad. From there, Sarfraz would continue proceeding east on horseback until he got to Bozai Gumbaz, where a crew of masons from the Charpurson Valley had begun smashing boulders into the smaller stones from which the foundation of the Kirghiz school would eventually be built. Meanwhile, I was supposed to turn around, make my way back to Kabul, and catch a flight to Britain, where I was scheduled to give a talk to a packed house at London’s Asia House and later make an appearance at the Edinburgh International Book Festival with my children.
That was the official plan. The secret plan, however, was for me to accompany Sarfraz all the way to Bozai Gumbaz and still make it to London and Edinburgh. A ten-day sortie from Kabul to the far end of the Wakhan and back was almost impossible, but I was determined to set foot in the Pamir. More than anything else, I needed to see, with my own eyes, the home of the Kirghiz people who had first drawn us into Afghanistan.
One hour later, the Beechcraft skimmed over the brown hills surrounding Faizabad, slammed onto a steel runway constructed by the Soviet military, and rolled toward a crumbling one-story building. As we coasted to a stop, I glanced out the window and noted that the plane had been surrounded by three green Ford Ranger pickup trucks containing a dozen men armed with Kalashnikovs.
The leader of the gunmen, a man with dense black eyebrows and a precisely razored beard that was just starting to go gray, was none other than Wohid Khan—the head of Badakshan’s Border Security Force (BSF) and the man responsible for hosting the midnight supper on the eve of the Baharak riots back in the fall of 2005 where I had first met Abdul Rashid Khan and drawn up the contract for the Kirghiz school at Bozai Gumbaz. Now forty-two years old, Wohid Khan had begun fighting the Soviets at the young age of thirteen, and like many former mujahadeen whose schooling had been cut short by war, he revered education and saw it as the key to repairing the damage of nearly three decades of fighting. He was passionate about female literacy and building schools for girls—and along with his fellow mujahadeen commandhan Sadhar Khan, he had become one of our most important allies in the Wakhan.
Upon receiving word of our arrival, Wohid Khan had raced from Baharak to Faizabad in order to provide Sarfraz and me with the honor of a high-speed escort, a gesture of his friendship. He had also notified the local education authorities, who were eager to see us again. His green pickups—which boasted extended cabs, nine-foot antennae, and an assortment of weaponry including a shoulder-held rocket launcher and a .50-caliber machine gun bolted to the bed of the lead truck—represented a rather dramatic change from the battered minivans and decrepit jeeps to which Sarfraz and I had become accustomed.
We roared out of Faizabad, dragging a cloud of dust behind us. The bed of each truck held three armed soldiers, their faces wrapped with scarves to protect them from the dirt and grit, the barrels of their Kalashnikovs wedged tightly between their knees. The driver of each truck was under standing orders from Wohid Khan to push his rig as fast as the horrendous, unpaved roads would allow—forty-five to fifty miles per hour. Speed was essential because Wohid and his 320 men were responsible for patrolling 840 miles of territory where the Wakhan abuts the edges of Pakistan, Tajikistan, and China—and as the only authority in this area, they often found themselves saddled with responsibilities that extended far beyond the normal duties of border agents. These could include delivering emergency food to starving communities in winter, taking sick villagers to the hospital, fixing broken trucks, retrieving lost camels, resolving local disputes, and a host of other problems. Two weeks earlier, for example, the BSF had been called to respond to a tragedy that represented the first major setback for our Kirghiz school project.
Earlier that spring, after some extensive canvassing, Sarfraz and the local maarif (education director) had managed to locate two Turkic-speaking teachers in Faizabad who were capable of providing instruction to the children of the Kirghiz. They hired both teachers, then arranged transportation for the men and their families from Faizabad to Bozai Gumbaz, where we were planning to set up a temporary tent school until the permanent structure was completed. About halfway into the Wakhan, near the village of Babu Tengi, th
e pickup that was carrying the two teachers, their wives, and their four children attempted to shoot through a section of runoff late in the afternoon, when glacier melt is at its highest. The truck became stuck in the middle of the swiftly rising Oxus River, forcing everyone to clamber onto the roof as the water swirled around the vehicle. By the evening, they were prone on top of the cab, clinging to the doorframes and screaming for help. As darkness fell, the driver and one of the families were swept away and drowned. The other family spent the rest of the night balanced on the roof of the truck with their legs in the water as the vehicle rocked back and forth. When word of the incident reached the BSF, Wohid Khan and his men rushed to the site of the accident and managed to pull the remaining survivors to safety.
One of Wohid’s primary duties was keeping open the Wakhan’s sole road, which serves as a crucial artery not only for his own team but also for the flow of flour, salt, cooking oil, and other staples that are hauled into the most remote communities of the Corridor all summer long to enable these isolated settlements to survive the six-month winter when the roads are sealed with snow. Khan’s refusal to tolerate unnecessary impediments became evident one afternoon when, upon encountering a truck stopped in the middle of the road that was blocking several vehicles behind it, the commander got out and walked up to the man working on a broken wheel.
“Driver or mechanic?” he asked.
“Driver,” the man replied.
After smashing his fist directly into the man’s face, Wohid delivered a reverse swing kick to the driver’s solar plexus, knocking him to the ground. Leaning over the man, he told him to finish fixing his axle and never to come back to the Wakhan. Then he got back in the Ranger and we lurched forward and resumed our journey.
We spent the next two days bashing though arroyos, splashing across streams, and blasting through small villages, twisting and wrenching and pounding the trucks as we penetrated further into the most obscure and forgotten corner of Afghanistan. After reaching Baharak and stopping to pay our respects to Sadhar Khan under his walnut tree, we continued heading east. The road threaded through a series of rocky gorges until it reached Zebak, a flat, emerald green valley with a darkly braided delta that bore a vague resemblance to the tundra of northern Scandinavia. From there, the road headed northwest into a barren area of reddish gray rock littered with the wreckage of disintegrated Soviet T-62 tanks. Several miles beyond lay the town of Ishkoshem, which we reached early in the evening of our second day.