As I read of soldiers killed in Afghanistan and President Obama’s dilemma regarding an ongoing policy for American action, the rational pros and cons slip away as I remember a day on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan in 1980.
I was teaching in Bahrain and a visit to Pakistan offered a convenient destination for Christmas vacation. Adding interest was the news which seethed with accounts of Soviet attacks on Afghan villages and the plight of refugees. Pakistan, with financial help from oil-rich Arab countries and the United States, was setting up refugee camps on the plains below the Torkham crossing between those two countries. I wanted to do more than read the newspapers—I wanted to see for myself. My husband had a car in Pakistan and we set out for the border.
We drove across the plains of Punjab, past the thousands of refugee tents, until we reached Peshawar which fit my image of a town on the raw and violent American frontier. Very different dress, of course, but the same ubiquitous guns, small blacksmith shops, horses and wagons (along with many pickup trucks for a modern touch), and streets crowded with an often bearded, rough-looking male population.
We did not linger there, both because of our time limits and the generally inhospitable atmosphere, but set out on the Kyber Pass to Afghanistan. This part of the trip brought back all the images from books on British expeditions that fell to ambushes on this narrow path between overlooking mountains. Seeing occasional small observation posts or forts high on the hills, I could imagine the chill of foreboding British forces must have felt as they moved forward.
When we arrived at the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan late that morning, I met with a scene of chaos. A small guard post containing a Pakistani soldier marked each side of a dirt path about the width of a two lane road. The soldiers were casually smoking while they talked to Pakistani pickup drivers arriving from the refugee camps and seemed oblivious to the steady throng of people entering their country from Afghanistan. The Afghan terrain sloped beyond the post, and I saw an unbroken line of humanity stretching for miles. No vehicles, no horses, no wagons—only people walking.
As they approached and crossed the border, I saw almost all were women with small children. Their faces had a blank look of extreme exhaustion as if they had concentrated simply on moving forward mile after mile for hours. I was particularly struck by one family group: a young woman carrying a baby while two young children clung onto her tunic. She was one of few accompanied by her husband who carried a toddler. When I raised my camera to take their picture, the man shouted at me, so I simply watched as he negotiated with a pickup driver on the charge for driving the family down to the refugee camps.
When an agreement was reached, the pickup, loaded with this family and several others, started down the pass. After boosting his family up into the truck, the man turned and walked into Afghanistan without looking back.
I watched this human drama for several hours, struggling to grasp of concept of a non-existent border. Finally the temptation was too much and I walked past the guard and into Afghanistan. I had walked perhaps fifteen feet when I heard the guard shouting and turned. I didn’t need a translator to know that he was telling me to come back, but to be sure I obeyed, he turned to my husband and shouted at him. So I came back, and my venture into that war-torn nation ended.
I have carried the memory of that day for the decades since. I can still see, in memory, the faces marked by suffering beyond tears, beyond fear of whatever lay behind them, focused only on survival and safety for their children. I am burdened with the knowledge that this was only a few hours of one day, and that the suffering has continued day after day for thirty years.