I jumped out of the ambulance, causing everything to stop, foreign women being rare in these parts, when suddenly an army jeep drove up. Inside were two Pishin Scouts, members of one of the regiments of the paramilitary Frontier Corps originally set up by the British to control smuggling and the border. They got the trucks moved, and one of the officers, Captain Mubashar, gallantly came to my rescue. ‘I will take memsahib in my 4x4,’ he said.
On the way he told me they had spent the night before on foot patrol in the mountains, looking for al Qaeda. It was very difficult, and so far the Pishin Scouts had caught just four Arabs. ‘It’s a very long and porous border and they still have lots of money to pay locals,’ he explained. ‘What about Taliban?’ I asked. Had he seen them coming across the border when Kandahar fell? ‘They have switched from black turbans to white and are tricky to spot,’ he laughed.
Captain Mubashar told me that before 9/11 the Scouts’ main work was stopping smuggling. When I admired a particularly elaborate painted truck, jingling with chains, he said, ‘Behind the rose is a thorn.’ He explained that the intricate paintings and metalwork often hide cavities in which contraband is hidden – sometimes opium, but also imported Japanese electronics, or just cloth or fruit to avoid duty. Some trucks have as many as twenty cavities. ‘Once I saw a truck of goats which didn’t look right,’ he said. ‘The goats looked too tall.’ When he opened the truck he found it had a false floor, with a whole level below.
Captain Mubashar and his colleagues had been so successful in catching smugglers that the previous year they had sent 550 million rupees in duties and fines to the federal government. But the local tribesmen were furious, and revolted, blocking the road and killing three soldiers. ‘It’s the only industry,’ he explained. ‘There are no factories, and nothing grows, even the apple orchard dried up, so everyone smuggles, even children of five or six have contraband in their pockets.’ In the end they decided to turn a blind eye to the small stuff. But he admitted they had little success in intercepting drugs. ‘They are transported over the mountains on unmanned donkeys which are trained to be terrified of anyone dressed in dark clothes.’ The Frontier Corps wear charcoal shalwar kamiz. ‘They run like mad when we come.’
In Captain Mubashar’s view, the lack of alternative sources of income, combined with the area’s traditional hostility to foreigners and the Pashtunwali honour code, which means strangers must be protected, made it extremely unlikely that any local would cooperate in handing over Taliban or al Qaeda.
I heard the same in the scruffy border town of Chaman, where he left me with Nasibullah, the head of the levies, the local tribal force set up in British times. Nasibullah was sitting in a room with walls painted baby pink with a bottle-green stripe all the way round and dominated by a vast Sony TV which looked suspiciously like the smuggled goods in the trucks we had passed. Around him, their eyes glued to the screen, was a gaggle of men with orange henna-stained beards. Also on the wall were three gilt-framed black-and-white photographs – Nasibullah’s late grandfather, first head of the levies; his father, who came next; and himself. ‘You Britishers created us, then left us orphans,’ he said.
Pashtun hospitality dictates that no visitor can leave without food, however much of a hurry they might be in. A servant laid a plastic cloth on the floor then brought in huge, steaming bowls of fatty lamb and a foot-long strip of stretchy nan bread. A plastic jug of water and a dirty towel were passed around for us to wash and dry our hands. The men then began to tear off the bread and scoop up the meat, eating lustily, with loud smacking noises. I tried to avoid the gristle and globules of fat, and to make it look as if I was eating more than I was, something I had perfected after years of practice.
Nasibullah told me that his uncle was head of the Achakzai, one of the tribes that straddles the border. I asked if they thought of themselves as Pakistanis or Afghans. ‘We’ve been Pashtuns 5,000 years, Muslims 1,400 years, then Pakistanis just fifty years,’ he replied. ‘You Britishers with your Colonel Durand divided our tribe. The real Afghan border should be a hundred kilometres south of Quetta, not this fake line of Durand.’
He told me that his men had arrested three al Qaeda they had found being treated in the local hospital and taken them to the authorities in Quetta, but later heard they escaped. As for Taliban, he said that Abdul Razzaq, the Interior Minister, and other senior Taliban were sheltering in the local madrassa run by Abdul Ghani, deputy to Maulana Fazlur Rehman, head of one of Pakistan’s main religious parties, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JuI).
What about Osama bin Laden? ‘As long as he stays in our tribal areas he will not be found, because he is protected by Pashtunwali,’ he replied. But the Americans had announced a $25 million reward. Wouldn’t that tempt people? I asked. ‘That doesn’t matter, because most people think he was fighting for Islam,’ he said. ‘Anyway, it’s too much money. Nobody here understands what that means. They would have been better off offering a herd of goats.’
The last few miles to the border were full of people selling things by the wayside. An old man with an emerald-green turban and a long white beard was crouched on his haunches the way Pashtuns seem to be able to sit all day, with a cockerel in each hand like balancing scales.
It was almost dark when I finally reached the border post. There was a stream of bearded men blatantly walking to one side of it rather than through. Inside, a white-haired man was sitting at a desk. He looked relieved to see me. ‘Ah, Christina Lamb, I have been waiting for you,’ he said, unfolding a typed carbon copy, headed ‘Deletion of Mrs Christina Lamb from Exit Control List’. ‘I was worried you would slip over my border and I would lose my job of twenty years.’
The first thing that went wrong with my plan to sneak back into Quetta was that the new border office in Spin Boldak on the Afghan side tried to take all my money in bribes. The passport office consisted of a group of men lounging on cushions in a smoky room, drinking green tea and inventing ways to extract money from the few people who passed through legally.
‘$200 by order of the Governor for security,’ demanded one of them.
‘I don’t need security,’ I replied.
‘It is not a choice.’
‘$200 for a car,’ came next.
‘I’ve already got a car,’ I protested.
‘It’s for the security guards,’ was the reply.
‘Also $50 entry fee by order of the Foreign Ministry.’
‘I already have a visa,’ I pointed out.
‘That’s for Afghanistan, not for Kandahar.’
‘I’m a journalist, and this is not giving a very good impression of the new Afghanistan,’ I said in exasperation.
This prompted some heated Pashto discussion which I could not follow, but I assumed they were reassessing their extortion. I was wrong.
‘Journalist. $100 for press,’ said one of the men. ‘If you have camera and phone there will be more charges.’
‘What? Where is this written?’ I began to lose patience. ‘Look, I’m a friend of President Hamid Karzai, and I don’t think he would be very happy you are making up all these charges.’
They laughed heartily. ‘Karzai, who is he?’ said one.
It all took so long that when I finally got back outside my driver had disappeared. ‘He’s a hashish smoker and gone to the place where they smoke hashish,’ the guard told me helpfully.
No wonder most people just wandered to the side of the border posts. If Afghan democracy came with endless shakedowns I began to understand why people had initially welcomed the Taliban.
Back in Quetta, this time hidden under a burqa and staying in the curtained-off purdah quarters of a friend’s