Border Hopping

Jalal­abad sits at the crux between cen­tral and south Asias, tucked into the moun­tains near the Kyber pass- the famous gate­way to the Indi­an sub­con­ti­nent. The peo­ple here are Pash­tuns, and their tribes strad­dle the polit­i­cal bound­ary between Pak­istan and Afghanistan. I’ve heard ref­er­ence sev­er­al times to “Pashtunistan,” a coun­try that exists in only a cul­tur­al con­text, encom­pass­ing all the Pash­tun peo­ple from both sides of the board­er. The red line on the map was drawn when British India pushed north into Afghan ter­ri­to­ry and the Afghan King ced­ed that land. How­ev­er, the bor­der has always been flu­id- many Pash­tuns grew up par­tial­ly in Pak­istan and trav­el between Jalal­abad and Peshawar reg­u­lar­ly. Thou­sands of Afghan Pash­tuns moved east­ward dur­ing the Sovi­et inva­sion or dur­ing the Mujahideen fought civ­il war that fol­lowed or when the Tal­iban gov­ern­ment seized pow­er.  They still have rel­a­tives there, who speak the same lan­guage and fol­low the same Pash­tun­wali code of ethics and hon­or. I’ve been told that Pash­tun peo­ple don’t even need a pass­port to cross the board­er over the Kyber pass. Haz­zaras and Tajiks will be has­sled and need prop­er doc­u­men­ta­tion. Pash­to speak­ers who look the part get waved in. Polit­i­cal­ly we are in Afghanistan but cul­tur­al­ly we’re slip­ping into Pakistan.

The maximum borders of Pashtunistan (shadowed in blue) and the Durand Line border in red.

- from Wikipedia Pash­tunistan

Merry Christmas from Jalalabad

This is Dave. He’s our trib­al elder here at the Taj Guest­house — Malik Dave. He runs the Syn­er­gy Strike Force, which Peretz and I are now part of. He’s a US tank gun­ner turned MD PhD turned hip­pie-human­i­tar­i­an aid-tech guru. He’s respon­si­ble for the flex­i­ble, organ­ic nature of the projects we work on and gets batch­es of mon­ey to make them hap­pen. Last night at our bar (the only bar in East­ern Afghanistan) he decid­ed to take a hol­i­day pho­to to share will all our friends back home. Says Dave: Hap­py Hol­i­days from Jalal­abad, where the San­ta Surge took them by surprise!

Panorama of Jalabad Valley

Panora­ma of the val­ley where we are liv­ing, tak­en from the top of a Bud­dhist bur­ial mound. You can see the Kab­ul riv­er in the dis­tance with the caves Osama Bin Laden lived in when he first came to Afghanistan behind it.

Take me for a ride in Kabul

This is footage I shot out of a taxi win­dow while the boys and I were in stop and go traf­fic on Tai­moni Street, head­ing for Pajh­wok news.