The border "control" between Chaman, in Balochistan, and Spinbaldak, in
Afghanistan, was a joke (and remains so to this day); a monster frat party
drenched in endless cups of green tea. Everybody knows everybody else. Up to
400 trucks and lorries used to cross the border every day. Most of the Bedford
and Mercedes trucks were stolen - with fake license plates. There was no
invoice for anything inside them. The drivers would have crossed as many as six
international borders with a fake driver's license, no road permit and no
passport. Nobody paid customs or taxes of any kind.
Obviously, this was not a recommend spot for Westerners. We
were met with accusations of being "UN spies". Only after a handful of
altercations in Urdu were we "adopted" by some clans - who immediately started
to peddle their wares. I could have bought a Toyota Corolla 92 for only $3,000,
a Nihonkkai Japanese fire truck for less than $5,000, a Toyota Land Cruiser 96
for $10,000 or a Yamaha bike as good as new for only $700.
Abdul Qadir Achkazi was a key figure in the family of a terribly influential
local warlord. He was a cosmopolitan - he'd been to Tokyo, Singapore, Dubai and
had a "martyr" bother in the anti-USSR jihad. Reclined on a cushion over the
dusty carpet inside his container office, serving the umpteenth cup of green
tea, he laid down the free-trade law.
All this stuff came by ship from Yokohama to Bandar Abbas in Iran, via Dubai in
the United Arab Emirates. The transport of a container full of dodgy goods was
$4,000, maximum. In Bandar Abbas, the container paid a harbor tax. From Bandar
Abbas, it crossed the Iran-Afghan border and arrived in Spinbaldak on top of a
lorry. Entering Afghanistan, the importer paid the Taliban up to $7,000 in
taxes per container, or $3,000 if these were toys. For each imported Toyota,
the Taliban got a cool $1,000. From Bandar Abbas to Spinbaldak, transport
expenses would run to $600, paid before entering Herat - the Taliban's golden
goose.
Abdul told me that all clients in this free-trade special were Pakistanis. And
almost all traders had double nationality. Best-sellers at the time were
cassette players, CDs and computers (nowadays it must be iPhones).
The absolute majority of traders confirmed that most deliveries were in Quetta
- but they could deliver wherever the client wanted; after all they controlled
their own transport networks. In this case, there would be an extra of 30%. If
the merchandise was apprehended by police, the client would get all his money
back. But anyway in Spinbaldak, as Abdul said, "Everything is legal. There's no
Taliban interference because all taxes have been paid." In front of a container
selling a pile of good old Sony Trinitrons, a group told me, "We fought the
Russians. Today we support the Taliban."
The border with Iran, in Islam qila, a wasteland battered by endless sandstorms
worked in the same register. Iranian lorries got rid of their containers,
immediately lugged on to Afghan trucks that inevitably would fall prey to the
sandstorms. The layout of Afghan "customs" was a row of transportation
companies' offices. Faced with a few questions, the Iranian officials were as
polite as a mortal Pasdaran enemy of still living Saddam Hussein.
It was only in 2000 that Pakistan actually woke up to the billions of dollars
in taxes it was losing in this free-for-all. The informal economy at the time
was 51% of gross domestic product (not much has changed). Smuggling was - and
remains - an immense network trespassing Central Asia, Iran and the Persian
Gulf (that's one of the reasons why sanctions against Iran will never work).
Already in 2000 it was pure wishful thinking to believe that powerful tribal
lords could not live without Pakistan - to which they were and remain
interlinked by trade and property they bought outside of the tribal areas.
Tribal chiefs raved about this huge, illegal duty-free corridor - and they
still profit from it.
The porosity of Pakistan's borders - from the Khyber pass to Balochistan -
benefited the Afghan mujahideen during the anti-USSR jihad, but at the same
time allowed the infiltration all across Pakistan of the Kalashnikov culture.
The Hindu Kush as much as the Durand Line, natural or human barriers, nothing
has prevented a continuous flux of horrors to flow from Central Asia to South
Asia.
So what was the purpose of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan? Well, I did
learn that Talibanistan was conditioned by three "values": war, trade and pious
morality. The Taliban did manage to recreate in almost the whole country the
mindset of a madrassa.
Those taxes over free trade filled their coffers. And an internal jihad -
against Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras - justified the regime. The legitimacy of the
state and politics was absolutely zero; that is, any notion of citizenship or
freedom was also absolutely zero. Only belief and obedience were legitimate.
Ten years later, I still think this is a demented, (non)political experiment
for the history books.
Well, we finally hit the Balochistan border, between pyramids of multinational
tires and a traffic jam of donkey carts piled up with stereos. The Taliban
control post was a small, fly-infested room. The official was asleep. When he
awoke, he asked for exist visas. We improvised – showing him a letter from the
Foreign Ministry in Kabul. It took him an eternity not to read our letter. But
he eventually stamped our passports. We hit the main street like Gary Cooper in High
Noon. A black-turbaned Taliban passed by. I couldn't resist; "Welcome
home." We grabbed a Mad Max cab and burned rubber in the dust of this
7th-century black hole - and the time-machine brought us back to the year 2000.
Where's my refugee Buddha?
"Oh, I have Buddhas from Bamiyan."
The news - as cool, calm and collected as a Taliban rocket launch - took a
while to sink in. The Cousin of the Mine King of Balochistan was still smiling.
We had been in Quetta, frontier capital of the Pakistani side of Balochistan,
only for a few hours.
In Afghanistan, we had been arrested (twice), menaced with a trial by a
military court, accused of being UN spies. We were exhausted, and as far as
Bamiyan was concerned, frustrated. Taliban officials in Kabul had denied us a
visa do visit Bamiyan, allegedly because of "security reasons". At the time I
lived in Buddhist Thailand. Apart from trying to understand what makes a warped madrassa
worldview tick in the beginning of the Third Millennium, I had always longed to
see the Bamiyan Buddhas.
But I never made it to Bamiyan. Instead, Bamiyan came to me.
At the Quetta Serena Hotel - a plush compound straight from Santa Fe, New
Mexico - the Cousin of the Mine King showed up in style: chauffeur-driven in a
Toyota Hi-Lux. This could only foment our paranoia: Toyotas Hi-Lux constituted
the entire Taliban motorized Walhalla, and when we were arrested by the
religious police in Kabul stadium in the middle of a soccer match for (not)
taking photos, we were taken to interrogation in the back seat of a Toyota
Hi-Lux. But the Cousin of the Mine King had other plans.
"Let's go meet some nomads."
A few hours later, we were in a tent sipping tea with a family of Balochistan
borderland nomads. Compared to the destitute Ghazni nomads we had seen in
Afghanistan, fleeing from the worst drought in the past 30 years, these ones
were positively de luxe. The head of the family even tried to sell me a falcon:
customers from the United Arab Emirates were snatching them at the time for as
much as 1 million rupees.
The head nomad reveals himself to be an Afghan trader in the Punjab. His take
on Afghanistan is extremely self-assured: the Taliban are falling apart, and
the country has now split into three factions. All of them are responsible for
the widespread destruction, as much as the whole population.
Back in Quetta, after the nomad warm-up, we are taken through a mud-brick
labyrinth to a house in the middle of a desert wasteland. Kids swarm in the
dusty "streets". One of them disappears inside a shack and emerges with a
statue. And another. And then another. We are now contemplating the private
collection of the Cousin of the Mine King. It features astonishing
Greco-Buddhist boddhisatvas, hellenic arhats with their ribs protruding, and
even part of a frieze. Some could be 3rd or 4th century, some even older. They
are all pre-Bamiyan Buddhas.
The Cousin of the Mine King is naturally evasive. He would love to sell his
collection to a Western museum - but can't get it out of the country. The
Guimet Museum of Asian Arts in Paris had recently reopened after lavish
restoration work worth $50 million; they would kill for this "private
collection". He "obtained most of the statues from the Bamiyan valley". Some of
them "came from the Kabul museum". The methods were effective: "We just went
there and took them".
With the boddhisatvas still in our minds, the Cousin of the Mine King take us
to meet the Great Man himself. We are ushered into his living room, decorated
with a silk Qom almost the size of a tennis court, and worth the gross domestic
product of whole Afghan provinces. The Mine King is a Baloch from the
borderlands - a member of the Sanjirani tribe. He controls coal, onyx, marble
and granite mines. And he goes straight to the point.
"Afghanistan is a tribal society. We should leave it like that." For him, the
only solution for the country would be the return of King Zahir Shah: "But that
was already proposed in the early 1990s. Now itดs too late." The Mine
King regards the Taliban as "very nice people". But he worries about the
future, considering the vast amount of weapons in the country: "If there is a
total collapse in Afghanistan, the ashes will be coming straight to Pakistan"
(how prophetic was he, 10 years ago?)
The Mine King waves us goodbye, dreaming of enjoying New York City nightlife.
Then a few months passed. I always thought that somewhere in the wasteland
outskirts of Quetta, a few Afghan Buddhas were still sleeping half-buried in
the sand. Then in March 2001 I knew for sure they had escaped the fate of the
Bamiyan Buddhas, bombed to ashes by the Taliban. But as the Mine King himself
remarked, these ashes, brought by the winds, headed straight into Pakistan.
Ten years ago, and even by March 2001, not many people were fully aware that a
geopolitical New Great Game was already unraveling in Central Asia. The Taliban
were - and remain - just one of the (minor) players. They could obliterate
Buddhist art that predates Islam itself. But Buddhism teaches us that
everything is impermanent.
Ten years ago the Cousin of the Mine King could be the target of a few
accusations; a few months later, he could be seen as a man who saved a
significant part of the world heritage from the Taliban smashing orgy. And more
impermanence: considering Central Asian volatility, the bombers themselves,
sooner rather than later, were reduced to ashes in the New Great Game.
Or were they? Ten years later, they seem to be stronger than ever. Against all
the firepower of the US and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, they seem
to believe they may even get their Talibanistan back. General Petraeus, go back
to the future and eat your heart out.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
