On different occasions I have heard both Wakil Azim Jan and Asel Din Kan assert that they were the first to propose that a road be built… One version is that about 1960 Azim Jan got the idea that a motor road in the [Waigal] valley would be an advantage for the Kalashum people… He met with a lukewarm response and dropped the idea.
Three or four years later Asel Din decided that what the [Waigal] valley needed was a good road. When next he went to Kabul he discussed the idea with influential Nuristanis in the Afghan Army and got their support. Thus encouraged, he petitioned the King to have the road made and received an encouraging reply. But when he returned home with this news, he got a mixed response from Kalashum elders. On the whole, they were against his action. They asked him, “Why didn’t you discuss this plan with us before going to Kabul?” In the words of one informant, “because they had not been consulted, they opposed the road idea.” The main opposition came from Wakil Azim Jan and his supporters.
—From Men of Influence in Nuristan by Schuyler Jones, 1974 pp. 255. There is no larger point to be made here, not even about the roads meme, merely that a) roads have always been an important issue to Afghans of all stripes; and b) personalities can always get in the way and inspire fracture or even, as we see much more now, violence.
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1801 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust
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