The AFP reports on what things are like in Naray District of Kunar, right along the border with Pakistan:
Barikowt bridge in isolated northeastern Afghanistan is only a few miles from a coalition military base, but it takes a convoy of army vehicles more than an hour to reach it.
New armoured vehicles brought in by the US military to deal with roadside bombs and ambushes in this area of Kunar province crawl along the mud-and-rock track, jolting violently over potholes.
The huge trucks barely fit the narrow road traversing mountains near the Pakistan border, the body work almost scrapes the rock face and the tyres grind perilously close to the cliff plunging down to the Kunar river.
This is the level of security needed to travel in this volatile district to check on the construction of the bridge, one of the development projects funded by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
Boy, doesn’t that sound familiar. But it is important to realize just how difficult the work in Kunar can be. The AFP reporter might have wanted to contact someone like Harry Rud before declaring civilian aid agencies a non-presence there, but the challenges posed by such an operating environment cannot be understated. In fact, there is every likelihood that all that development talk is years too early, if security is so bad it can barely take place.
But while we’re discussing this area, and the violence westerners face there, what of the people themselves? Who actually lives there?
It’s the million-dollar question. If you know who live in a given area, you are halfway toward being able to convince them to join your side—in this case, the Government of Afghanistan. At best, only generic statistics and demographics about the area are known: probably around 25,000 people in Naray, probably more than half of them are Pashtun. Who are the rest? Let us consult Richard Strand, who is easily the U.S.’s foremost expert on Nuristan.
According to his ethno-linguistic maps, in the general area are probably various Nuristani ethnic groups: the Kom, the Kshto, possibly the Kalasha. These are all fabled peoples thanks to their tangled history with the Amir Abdur Rahman, and their forced conversion to Islam at the end of the 19th century (and quite a literature exists on their history and culture, though the majority of it is tied up in old dissertations and decades-old essays by legends like Max Klimberg, Lennart Edelberg, and Schuyler Jones).
All except one group of Kalasha who still live in Chitral. When the Chitral river crosses the border from Pakistan to Afghanistan, it becomes the Kunar River, which is a major transportation and communications corridor in this part of the country (it is also heavily cultivated). The Kalasha of Chitral seem to be in deep trouble, as their culture is slowly dying out and the last polytheistic culture in the region is in danger of disappearing forever.
As Richard Holbrooke recently lamented, we know a pitiful amount about Afghanistan’s people. It is primarily our own fault, too—years spent ignoring the country, putting the war on autopilot, letting it destroy itself… all that is now haunting our efforts there. There is no easy way to make up for seven lost years, apart from sweat, tears, and, tragically, blood.
Related: Tour the Kalash of Chitral, visiting the super-sexy Dir Valley (tangent: Keiser’s book is very good) along the way. That is actually very tempting. Anyone want to join me?
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
For information on reproducing this article, see our Terms of Use
