PRT/KUNDUZ - PRT/KUNDUZ: VISITING THE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 05 KABUL 003683

SIPDIS

SIPDIS, SENSITIVE

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E.O. 12958 N/A
TAGS: PREL PGOV PTER AF
SUBJECT: PRT/KUNDUZ - PRT/KUNDUZ: VISITING THE
REMOTE DISTRICTS OF NORTHERN BADAKHSHAN BY WAY OF
TAJIKISTAN

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(SBU) SUMMARY: : PRToff and political assistant
made an unprecedented trip to the Nusai district of
Badakhshan province August 5, becoming the first
members of any PRT to set foot in what is one of the
most remote and isolated districts in Afghanistan.
Nusai, located at the northern tip of Badakhshan
province, cannot be reached by vehicle from
Afghanistan, but thanks to a two-year-old bridge
built by the Aga Khan foundation over the river
Pyanj, the district is accessible from Tajikistan.
While appreciative of the bridge and the economic
opportunities it offers (including a weekly joint
bazaar),officials in Nusai are desperate for a road
that will connect them to the rest of Afghanistan.
PRToff and political assistant also visited Shighnan
district, located in northeast Badakhshan, August 6
via another Aga Khan-built bridge from Tajikistan.
Unlike Nusai, Shighnan is already connected by a
road to the provincial capital of Feyzabad, but
because of winter snowfall, the road is only open
three months per year. Shighnan officials boast
that their district, dominated by Ismaili Shias, is
one of best educated in Afghanistan. Burqas are
unknown in this district, where women dress much
like their counterparts across the river in
Tajikistan. END SUMMARY.

HARD TO GET THERE FROM HERE
-------------- ---


2. (SBU) Nusai, a district of 24,000 located at the
northern tip of Badakhshan province bordering
Tajikistan, is completely inaccessible by vehicle
from Afghanistan. The only way to reach Nusai by
vehicle is from Tajikistan (near the town of
Kalaykhum) via a one-lane suspension bridge over the
Pyanj River built by the Aga Khan foundation two
years ago. As a result, no member of PRT Kunduz or
Feyzabad had ever visited this district before.
When Afghan officials visit (as Badakhshan Governor
Majid did a few months ago),they come by
helicopter. The neighboring northern districts of
Maimai (also known as Darwaz Bala) and Shukai are
even more isolated, as there is still no road
connecting them to Nusai or any other part of
Afghanistan. The only way to get to and from these
mountainous districts is by walking or riding a
donkey. The locals report that it is a 10-day walk
south overland from Nusai to the provincial capital
of Feyzabad along a trail that is impassable several
months a year due to heavy snowfall. The only way
to get to Feyzabad during those months is to follow
a rougher and longer path that runs along the Pyanj
River.


3. (U) Shighnan, a district of 34,000 located along
the northeast border of Badakhshan province, has a
road connection to Feyzabad, but this road is open
only three months a year. PRT Feyzabad visits the
district regularly during this time, but the
district is effectively cut off from vehicular
traffic from Afghanistan the rest of the year. As
in the case of Nusai, the only year-round vehicular
access to Shighnan is from Tajikistan (near the city
of Khorog) via a one-lane suspension bridge over the
Pyanj River built by the Aga Khan foundation five

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years ago.


4. (U) The district centers of both Nusai and
Shighnan -- where the district manager and chief of
police have their offices -- are located along the
Pyanj River, within just a few kilometers of the
bridge crossing points. This made visiting each of
the two districts from Tajikistan a relatively easy
day trip.

JOINT BAZAARS AT THE BRIDGES
-------------- ---


5. (SBU) The bridges built by Aga Khan to connect
these remote Afghan districts to Tajikistan have
certainly reduced their isolation and opened up new
possibilities for trade and commerce. There are,
for example, joint bazaars on the Tajik side of both
bridges at least once a week. Afghans can cross the
bridges and buy and sell items at the bazaar without
a passport or visa, although they are restricted to
the bazaar area. According to officials in Nusai,
Afghans must pay a small fee to cross the bridge
there. The fee is supposed to be a fifth of a
Tajiki Somoni per person (about 6 U.S. cents),but
Nusai officials told PRToff that the Tajiki border
guards usually charged a full Somoni (30 U.S.
cents).


6. (SBU) PRToff arrived at the bridge to Nusai on a
Saturday morning, the day of the weekly bazaar, and
found a lively market with a significant number of
Afghan shoppers, including Nusai District Manager
Abdul Raqib Nawid and Police Chief Marza Kareem.
Nawid opened his wallet, revealing that most of the
money he carried these days was Somonis rather than
Afghanis. Kareem said about 200 to 250 Afghans
cross the bridge each week to shop at or sell goods
at the bazaar. Both complained, however, that many
staples are not available at the bazaar, including
diesel, cotton and flour. Therefore, they must be
bought in from Feyzabad by donkey. Not
surprisingly, prices are extremely high in Nusai and
Shighnan, even during the summer, when access to
Feyzabad is relatively good. PRToff found, for
example, that melons in the Shighnan market cost 90
Afghani each (about $1.80),or more than three times
as much as they cost in Kunduz.


7. (SBU) While offering great potential, the joint
bazaars are still largely one-way affairs: the
Tajiks are selling and the Afghans are buying, but
not vice versa. The Afghans simply do not produce
much of anything that can be sold at the bazaars.
Most residents of these districts are subsistence
farmers, literally living on the side of a mountain
with very little arable land on which to grow crops.
They cannot grow enough food to feed themselves,
much less produce excess for selling at the bazaar.
Aga Khan agricultural specialists are encouraging
local farmers to grow fruit and nut trees, which are
more suited for the arid and mountainous terrain
than traditional crops like wheat, but such orchards
are still not widespread. Unfortunately, there is
no rug or other handicraft production in these two
districts. Officials in Shighnan said that most of

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the goods that Afghans sell at their joint bazaar
are Pakistani products brought from Feyzabad --
teapots, fabrics, TVs, videotape players. Because
there are generally no custom duties on the items
Afghan sell at the bazaar (as long as they do not
bring large quantities of goods),the Afghans can
apparently sell these goods at a lower price than it
costs Tajiks to import them directly from Pakistan.


8. (U) Officials from both districts complain there
are no joint bazaars on the Afghan side of the
bridges, but until the Afghans have something
substantive to sell, there seems to be little point
in actively pursuing that. Nonetheless, the German
development agency GTZ plans to build a small market
on the Afghan side of the bridge at Shighnan so that
the weekly Saturday bazaar can be alternated between
Afghanistan and Tajikistan. At the Ishkeshem border
crossing, which lies about 100 kilometers south of
Khorog/Shighnan, the dilemma about where to locate
the bi-weekly bazaar has been resolved by holding it
on an island in the middle of Pyanj river, a no-
man's land which belongs neither to Afghanistan nor
Tajikistan.

DESPERATE FOR JOBS AND ROADS
-------------- --------------


9. (SBU) Due to the lack of jobs and economic
opportunities in their district, officials in both
districts said that many men leave their families
for months at a time to work as unskilled laborers
in nearby provinces, or even as far away as Iran.
In Nusai, officials estimated unemployment at 90%.
While officials appreciate the bridge link to
Tajikistan as a short-term way to relieve the
isolation of their districts, they desperately want
to be linked to the rest of Afghanistan via roads
that are open year-round. They believe that this is
the key to helping solve many of their economic
difficulties. They also believe that they have not
received their fair share of attention from the
international community or from donors because they
do not grow poppy or present any serious security
problems. Nonetheless, they acknowledge that they
have received significant assistance from the Aga
Khan foundation (i.e., a clinic, professional
training, reforestation, irrigation canals, etc.),
much of which is funded by GTZ. PRToff did not have
an opportunity to venture very far by vehicle into
either district, but found that the main road in
each district center was little more than a deeply
pitted jeep track that mostly ran along the Pyanj
river, with steep grades in some places exceeding
25%. In other places, the road was completely
inundated by the river, making passage by anything
less than a high-clearance, four-wheel-drive vehicle
impossible.

SHIGHNAN'S ISMAILI CULTURE
--------------


10. (U) The population of Shighnan consists mainly
of Ismaili Shias, who have a reputation for
religious tolerance and for putting a high value on
education. The most obvious manifestation of the

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Ismaili culture is that women in the district
generally do not wear burqas. Women seen walking on
the streets of the district center of Shighnan wore
long, brightly colored dresses, very similar to
those of their Tajik counterparts just across the
Pyanj river. Unlike in most other parts of
Badakhshan, they made little or no attempt to hide
their faces from passers-by.


11. (U) But what Shighnan District Manager
Zainullabudin was most proud of was the level of
education in the district, which has 12 high schools
and a teaching training center. He claimed that 85%
of the adult population was "educated," i.e., that
they could read and write. If true, that would put
Shighnan far above the average literacy rate for
Afghanistan. Unfortunately, many of the schools in
Shighnan, which were built by the local community
decades ago, are in a bad state of disrepair due to
old age. The district manager took PRToff to one
high school, originally built 58 years ago, in which
the roof has collapsed in several places due to
rotted support beams. Tents have been erected over
the building to protect students from the elements.
The school has no desks or chairs, so students must
sit on the floor. (Comment: While it is not unusual
for primary school children in Afghanistan to sit on
the floor, many Afghan high schools have desks and
chairs for older students.) While acknowledging
some emergency financial help from PRT Feyzabad for
fixing this and other schools, Zainullabudin said
far more assistance is required.

GETTING TO THE BRIDGES
--------------


12. (U) It took several weeks and the generous help
of Embassy Dushanbe to organize this trip, given
various Tajik requirements. Not only does one need
a multiple-entry Tajik visa, but also a special
permit to enter the Gorno-Badakhshan region, where
the border crossings are located. The so-called
GBAO permit is a hold-over requirement from the
Soviet period when this was an autonomous region.
Both the multiple-entry visa and GBAO visa are only
issued by the MFA in Dushanbe and they must be
applied for weeks in advance of departure. The
first crossing point (into Nusai) is some 420
kilometers east from Dushanbe, an all-day drive.
The last part of this drive runs directly along the
Pyanj river, which forms the border between
Tajikistan and Afghanistan for several hundred
kilometers. The second crossing point (into
Shighnan) is a further 240 kilometers along this
same road. At the narrowest parts of the Pyanj
river, Afghanistan is literally only a stone's throw
away. One can plainly see the low-slung, flat-
roofed mud houses so characteristic of rural
Afghanistan and can wave to people on the other
side.


13. (U) The border along the Pyanj offers a
striking juxtaposition between Afghanistan and
Tajikistan. On the Tajik side of the river is a
paved road (albeit in very bad condition in many
parts) with omnipresent electrical poles and wires

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along its entire length. On the Afghan side of the
river, there is no road or electrical lines, but
rather only a thin, but distinctive dirt trail that
winds along the cliffside.


14. (U) Typically, we crossed the border into
Afghanistan in the morning and returned to
Tajikistan in the afternoon before the border post
closed at 4 or 5 p.m. One of the biggest and
unexpected challenges each morning was obtaining
diesel for the two vehicles. Gas stations were few
and far between in this area of Tajikistan, and most
did not sell diesel. At Kalaykhum's single gas
station, the attendant told us he had only 50 liters
of diesel to sell, which he dumped into the tank
from an assortment of different containers including
a two-liter plastic soda bottle. In a typical scene
in Khorog, we came across a fuel truck parked along
the side road, selling gas directly to motorists.
While the truck had no diesel (only regular
gasolene),we were directed to a nearby house where
we could buy what we needed. In Ishkeshem, we found
out that quality of diesel sold in the bazaar was
very poor, so we ended up buying 70 liters from the
private stock of the local Aga Khan foundation
office. As it turned out, we need not have been so
worried about buying gas before the crossing into
Afghanistan at Ishkeshem. The Afghan town of the
same name just on the other side of the border had
two brand-new filling stations within 200 meters of
each other, both with plenty of diesel to sell.

COMMENT
--------------


15. (SBU) The military component of PRT Feyzabad is
very active in doing long-range patrolling
throughout Badakhshan and it regularly visits most
districts in the province. However, the extreme
remoteness and terrain of the northern districts and
the lack of a road severely limit the ability of the
military to access this part of the province. This
August 5-6 trip to the northern districts via
Tajikistan is an excellent example of how the
civilian component can complement the military
effort and provide value-added to the PRT's mission.
End Comment.

NEUMANN