St. Louis Post-Dispatch
October 21
his ancient city across the Amu Darya River from Afghanistan is viewed
by
humanitarian relief specialists as critical to protecting an estimated
4
million to 5 million Afghans on the other side who are at risk from
war,
drought and winter's rapid approach. Termez has it all: the only bridge into Afghanistan for hundreds of miles, a well-developed river port, good roads and rail links for delivering the thousands of tons in relief supplies that experts say will be needed in the next few weeks.
What Termez lacks is a commitment from the authoritarian government of Uzbekistan, a key new ally in America's war against terrorism, to open up this border for shipments of humanitarian relief.
A spokesman for Uzbekistan's foreign ministry appeared to give such a commitment Thursday, declaring that the government would permit shipments to pass across the Termez bridge. But he said no shipments would take place until there was assurance of safe conditions on the Afghan side of the border. According to local officials interviewed here Friday, that could mean months of additional delay.
United Nations agencies have dispatched a trickle of trucks -- six as of Friday afternoon -- in hopes of establishing a presence in Termez. Senior U.N. officials plan to travel early this week to Uzbekistan's capital, Tashkent, to press their case for a decision on Termez from Uzbekistan's strongman ruler, Islam Karimov.
Earlier this month, Karimov became the first leader of an ex- Soviet republic to join the U.S. alliance, pledging to give the United States access to Uzbek air bases and air space for use in humanitarian relief. The promised help quickly turned military instead, with an estimated 1,000 soldiers of the Army's 10th Mountain Division setting up operations inside Uzbekistan.
Yet Uzbekistan has not permitted, at least so far, the shipment of even one truckload of food, blankets, tents or other humanitarian relief.
Officials here say that it's a matter of state security. Uzbekistan itself is at risk from Islamic extremists, they say, pointing to terrorist attacks in Tashkent in February 1999 that killed about 200 people. The bridge and port here have been closed since 1998. An electrified fence runs along the entire 85-mile border between Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, and Uzbekistan has planted land mines along its border with Tajikistan.
In an interview Friday, Termez Mayor Abduraim Choriev said he foresaw no possibility of the bridge or port opening anytime soon. "They can open the bridge only when the war is over," Choriev said. "To open it before the war is over would be very dangerous for us."
Choriev dismissed speculation by representatives of international organizations here that the bridge and port might be reopened if the U.S.-backed northern alliance wins control of northern Afghanistan from the Islamic extremist Taliban forces that control most of the country.
"It doesn't matter to us if the northern alliance has taken half of Afghanistan," Choriev said. "What matters to us is that the war be completely over and the Taliban destroyed. Only then can we open this bridge."
In the meantime, the half-mile "Bridge of Friendship" - the one that the Soviet Union built during its invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s and over which its defeated soldiers returned home - remains strictly off limits.
So does Afghanistan itself, barely visible across a no man's land of windblown earth patrolled by soldiers and bracketed by wooden watchtowers that sprout from fields and above the streets of mud- brick villages.
The electrified fence runs just behind the city zoo, where a couple of boys practice their jabs, incongruously, on a sack of crystallized asbestos. On the other side of town it hugs the edge of the al-Hakim Mausoleum, a 15th-century mosque and monument to a 10th- century leader.
U.N. officials here say that Termez's isolation will have to end, and soon, for critically needed supplies to get to people in need before winter sets in.
"We are pushing to get this opened as fast as possible," says Anwar Kholbaev, local representative for the U.N.'s Office for Coordinating Humanitarian Aid. He dismisses the food drops into Afghanistan from U.S. military aircraft with a barnyard obscenity.
"It's propaganda only," he says. "It will not help."
Geographical imperativeThere is little evidence of an imminent large-scale relief operation at the U.N.'s headquarters just outside Termez. The three-story concrete building was the first U.N. field office ever opened in the former Soviet Union. That took place in 1989, just after the last Soviet army troops crossed the bridge in defeat from Afghanistan.
This past week the building was virtually deserted. The U.N.'s office for humanitarian aid has just two staff members here, as does the U.N.'s World Food Program. The U.N.'s High Commissioner for Refugees and UNICEF each have three.
Playing a senior coordinating role is Peter Bojilov, who arrived a week ago to direct the food-program office. He knows the area well, having served as the program's representative here from 1995 to 1999. He oversaw deliveries from here until 1997. That's when Taliban forces took control of Mazar-e-Sharif, a key Afghan city and airfield that is just 55 miles south of Termez. Uzbekistan responded by closing first the bridge and then, in 1998, the port.
Bojilov explains why the Termez connection is so important.
"Everyone knows that this is a great logistics place," Bojilov said. "It's easier and cheaper than anyplace else, with the easiest access to Mazar-e-Sharif and to eastern Afghanistan. The warehouse facilities are already here and the roads, railroads, airport and river port give us a lot of possibilities."
After operations here shut down, the international agencies began supplying the region around Mazar-e-Sharif from neighboring Turkmenistan, which meant supply lines 375 miles long along often wretched roads. Turkmenistan's transport network doesn't compare to that in Uzbekistan and neither does its ability to supply the sort of goods needed for relief.
Tajikistan is the next country east from Uzbekistan and its 815- mile border with Afghanistan is much longer. But getting supplies to the most likely river crossing for eastern Afghanistan, in Ishkashim, requires a tortuous trip hundreds of miles long on unpaved roads through some of the country's highest mountain passes.
How many Afghans will be in urgent need of help this winter?
"There are several scenarios," Bojilov replied. "The worst is that we will be confronted with some 7.5 million refugees, both internal and external. Perhaps 4 to 5 million of them will be in northern Afghanistan."
Bojilov said he was optimistic that Uzbek officials would move quickly to open the border, especially in light of reports in recent days that anti-Taliban forces were close to victory in Mazar-e- Sharif.
But Bojilov's own schedule suggests that no decision is likely in the immediate future. He left Termez on Thursday for what he described as a seven-to-10-day trip to visit food-program operations in Kyrgyzstan.
Stranded Afghans waitThe wait for help, for decisive military action - even for news - is especially hard on Termez's small community of Afghan refugees.
Mohamad Naim, a former government official in Mazar-e-Sharif, escaped from Afghanistan three years ago and now runs a meat stall in Termez. Many family members got out with him: his wife, their four children, his three sisters and their children. All 14 of them now share a single apartment.
He left his parents and brothers behind, an hour's drive south in peaceful times but now a world away. He got word of his mother's death two years ago by way of international workers in Turkmenistan. He has heard nothing since the U.S.-led bombing campaign began on Oct. 7.
"Every Afghan person here," he said, "carries such pain in his soul."
Naim's nephew is 15-year-old Rhotib Karimov, a slim youth with a fuzzy smear of mustache who wears an Adidas jacket. The boy's father, a journalist, was killed by the Taliban six years ago in Mazar-e- Sharif. Rhotib says he worries about the fate of his relatives left behind but says there's nothing he can do about it here. As for politics? "I don't know," he shrugs. "I am little."
Naim said that his sisters had all received preliminary approval to go to the United States as refugees. But it has been five months since they have had any information from U.S. officials, and the family now fears that it is caught in the slowdown in processing immigrants after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.
"George Bush always says on television that he will help the Afghan people with food and clothes," Naim said. "But we live here, and where is the help? Perhaps you could put this question in your newspaper: How long must we wait for help?"
Naim quickly adds that he supports the U.S.-led military action against the Taliban. The United States and its allies, he said, "are the only persons in the world who can change our lives."
Living with paradoxAfghan refugees in Termez number fewer than 100, the barest trickle compared to the thousands crossing over into Pakistan in just the past few days.
One barrier is the mighty Amu Darya, a river that has marked a major boundary of Central Asia since the days of Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan and Tamurlane. But this is a place of man-made barriers, too.
Islam Karimov ran this country as a personal fiefdom under Soviet rule, and independence in 1991 brought changes that were mostly cosmetic. Opposition parties are still outlawed here, for example, and there is no free press. Internet connections to the outside world are all funneled through government censors.
The State Department's human rights report says Karimov's government jailed about 5,000 people after the February 1999 terrorist attacks in Tashkent. Most of their trials were held in secret and international observers were barred. Prime targets for the crackdown were members of Islamic groups, including several that have pressed for nonviolent political change.
One of the more repressive exercises in jurisprudence took place here in Termez. In March 2000, 48 alleged members of the Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahir were convicted of unspecified crimes against the state and sentenced to terms averaging between 15 and 20 years. The judge who presided in the case appointed the police investigator who developed the prosecution's case as defense attorney for six of the accused, according to a report by the State Department.
Residents interviewed here this week said they knew nothing of that case, and none voiced criticism of Karimov. There was broad support for the military alliance he has struck with the United States and for doing what was necessary to keep Afghanistan's troubles safely at bay.
Local officials said they were focused less on the question of opening the border than on preparations for celebrating the 2,500th anniversary of the city's founding. At least 300 workers are putting in round-the-clock shifts, racing to complete a museum, theater and park that are scheduled to open Nov. 10 as part of the city's commemoration.
"Our president has good relations with the U.S., and I am very glad," said Khamid Jaborof, a retired engineer. "Anything that the U.S. wants to do, I support," he added. "I'm with America. And I'm very glad that Uzbekistan is helping your motherland."
Jaborof lived in Afghanistan for four years during the 1960s, a time when the country was no less poor than today but at peace. The United S tates and the Soviet Union competed then on aid projects. It was the first time he got to know Americans, Jaborof said, and the experience cleared away the stereotypes he had been taught in Soviet schools.
He wishes the two countries had found common cause in Afghanistan a decade ago, when the Russian army retreated and the United States cut off the support it had given to mujahedeen freedom fighters who battled the Russians as America's proxy for a decade. "If the great countries of the world had helped Afghanistan then we wouldn't have this trouble today," he said. "When the people of Afghanistan needed help, no one came."
Jaborof said he does not believe that Karimov's repressive policies against some Muslims will make Uzbekistan a victim of Islamic extremists. What matters most to average Muslims here is that they are far freer to practice their faith today than they were during the Soviet era.
He cited the example of his wife, Ikbol, a devout Muslim who two years ago made the haj to Mecca, the pilgrimage to Islam's holiest site that the faithful hope to complete before death.
"Under the Soviets we did not even know what the pilgrimage was," he said. "Today every year there are 3,000 to 4,000 who go - anyone who can afford the journey."
But Jaborof said he did not accompany his wife and has no plans for a haj of his own.
"You see, I have never believed in God," he says, smiling across the garden at his wife of 53 years. "In our house there are two sides," he adds. "It makes for very interesting conversation."