A region of soaring mountains, rare languages and isolated tribes, Nuristan in north-eastern Afghanistan has long held a special fascination for writers and hardy travellers. A British colonel in 1910 described it as "more impracticable than either of the poles," and in recent years, the United States army has learnt that the area's formidable reputation is well-deserved.
Just 12 kilometres (7.5 miles) inside the provincial border, a convoy of US military vehicles comes to a halt on a rocky, winding track. "It takes an act of God to get us to go further," says Captain Matthew Frye. Any advance into Nuristan beyond the Gondalabuk bridge brings guaranteed rocket and gun attacks from insurgents who use the rugged terrain and their local knowledge to keep the US soldiers away.
The only permanent US military presence in Nuristan is now at Kalagush in the south-west corner of the province. One US post, Camp Keating, was established in the mountains near the border with Pakistan in 2006 to disrupt insurgent safe havens and to tackle smuggling. It was abandoned last October shortly after eight soldiers died when 300 militants nearly overran the camp - though its closure was already scheduled as part of the US's "drawback" policy.
The military's bruising experience in Nuristan would have come as little surprise to the handful of Westerners who had previously ventured there. Eric Newby's classic travel book, "A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush", tells of his testing expedition to the region in 1956 when he had a chance meeting with legendary explorer and author Wilfred Thesiger.
Newby described a particular high ridge as "one of the lonely places of the earth with all the winds of Asia droning over it, where mountains seemed like the bones of the world breaking through". Such awe-stuck sentiments are now shared by many in the US military.
They accept that it is impossible to ensure Nuristan is free of Taliban and al Qaeda militants, and they are implementing General Stanley McChrystal's new strategy of concentrating instead on population centres. "It could appear to be a safe haven for the bad guys," admitted Major George Hammar, the acting commanding officer at Camp Kalagush.
"This is difficult country, with no roads, and it is back-breaking to patrol through on foot. "Nuristani people are sceptical of outsiders. They haven't ever seen Americans, and no Westerners since they threw out the Soviets in the 1980s." Afraid to go out of their houses. Nuristan is still celebrated for its fierce resistance to the Soviet occupation, and retains a strong identity separate from the rest of Afghanistan.
Rudyard Kipling, when looking for the ultimate remote and mysterious setting, used the region for his 1888 short story "The Man Who Would Be King," which was made into a film starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine. Known as Kafiristan ('land of unbelievers'), it was renamed Nuristan ('land of light') when converted to Islam from paganism only in 1896. Today, the US-led international coalition is trying - as it is across war-torn Afghanistan - to fund development schemes and promote local government structures in Nuristan through a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT).
But security is too dangerous and transport too difficult for the PRT to operate in most of the province. Compounding their problems, several officials confirm that relations between the coalition and Nuristan's governor Jamaluddin Badar have completely broken down over allegations of corruption and months of unpaid police salaries.
"We withdraw investment in places we cannot go," said US Commander Russell McCormack, head of the PRT. "In one month, we cancelled 3.5 million dollars in schools because we could not go to the sites to verify what was happening to the money, but I am passionate about helping the people who deserve help."
The US efforts will struggle to produce any results, according to Richard Strand, an American academic widely considered to be the world's leading expert on Nuristan culture and society. "The Taliban frankly have taken over the eastern side," he told AFP from Arizona. "My old Nuristani friends tell me it is real tough for people like them who don't agree with the Taliban. They are afraid to go out of their houses."
No easy answers in a land of myths and legends. Strand, who lived in a village in east Nuristan in the late 1960s and has visited regularly since, is reputedly the only Westerner to have ever mastered the province's five distinct languages. He speaks all of them to some extent and specialised in the Kamviri language of the Kom tribe, which numbers fewer than 10,000 people.
Strand also dashes one of Nuristan's most enduring legends: that its people - some of whom have red hair and pale skin - are descendants of Alexander the Great who conquered the region in 327 BC. "Total bunk," Strand said, pointing out that the people now known as Nuristanis moved into the mountains several hundred years after Alexander's invasion.
"Their appearance is probably due to being an isolated strain of people who have not bred much with others," he said. Strand's expertise in Nuristan is unique, and the US government has sought his advice in its search for a resolution to Afghanistan's turmoil. But he says he can offer only realism, not answers.
"It's a joke, and I hate to say that because I really feel for these soldiers," he said. "They control one stretch of road (at Kalagush) for a few miles up and down, and that's it. If they make a foray further, they get their teeth kicked in. "The truth is that they can't get to where true Nuristanis live at all."
Strand has identified a long-term growth of Taliban and al Qaeda influence in the province - which he blames on extremist leaders in Pakistan, where many Nuristanis fled during the 1979-89 Soviet occupation. "In the years since, a certain number of younger people were totally bamboozled by radical Pakistani mullahs," he said. "My elderly Nuristani friends often use the term 'brain-washed'.
"I have visited these refugee camps in Pakistan where Nuristanis stayed, getting 15 hours a day of propaganda over the mosque loudspeaker telling them what rotten people we Kafirs (non-believers) are." Nuristan may be a romantic wilderness to outsiders, but it is a painful reflection of the human condition today, says Strand. "It was never easy to live there, but it is gorgeous and I always loved the place," he said. "Right now, their culture and society are being destroyed by the fundamentalists."
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