By Peeyush Sekhsaria
At Tashkent, the Uzbekistan capital we
board an amazing Soviet era YAK 40 (Yakoliv) for Termez. The plane smells of
Vodka and has a public bus feel to it. No need to be careful about overhead
luggage falling on to your heads, the Yak 40 has its total luggage space (both
hand and check in baggage) at the back. You enter in from the tail. The pilot
enters from the back after all passengers have boarded, you stand up in respect
and sit down only after he has taken to his cabin.
I am a little tensed up, but ease up when
I see an Uzbek women sitting across the aisle smiling and dozing. The Yakoliv
has taken its evening dose of Vodka for it has a rather drunken way of taking
to the airstrip and I joke with Thierry (my professor whom I am accompanying on
an Expert Mission for UNESCO) about the need for checking the tyre pressures.
It has been a tiring flight from Paris to
Tashkent and I doze off to wake up as we land with a start at Termez. I am relieved
to get out of the Yakoliv and breathe in the evening air. The waiting hall
welcomes us with a Mumbai film starring Sunil Shetty, Sharmila Tagore and
Akshay Kumar, all of who are speaking flawless, highly emotionally charged
Uzbek.
Sanjar our right hand man at Termez
speaks perfect Yankee English. He was part of student exchange programme in the
USA during the era of Uzbek USA friendship (an immediate post Soviet Union
period that did not last very long). He tells me that his wife, mother and sister
are addicts of “Mahabharatha” & “Krishna”, highly popular soaps on Uzbek
state television. Amitabh Bachan, Mithun Chakrabarty he pronounces in his Uzbek
accent and the girls, they are in love with Shahrukh Khan!
My Indian passport attracts a lot of
friendly attention at the airport. A lot of Indians in films and on television
but never a real Indian!
At Termez we are being put up at the
UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) centre. This centre owes
its existence to the strategic location of Termez. It was from here that the
Soviet Union launched its Afghan invasion.
The most remarkable thing about Termez is
that it had nothing remarkable! Just an amusing Soviet era hang over. But looks
alone are misleading for Termez in itself actually is a long and illustrious
epic story. “A veritable chameleon city, a political and cultural chameleon,
changing its role, religion, alliance and even location”. This extraordinary
character of Termez is no accident. It owes its existence to an island in the
mighty river, “Amu Darya”.
The Amu Darya (Oxus) has its source in
the mighty Hindukush, traverses the high Pamir plateaus of Tadjikistan, flows
to form the frontier between Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, continues to flow to
define the ancient frontiers between the Persian and the Turk worlds, feeds the
Oasis of Khorzem and finally disappears into the rests of the Aral Sea after a
1437 km long journey.
To this river that is over a kilometre in
width an island provided a privileged access point. This island alone played
the defining role of the south north silk route that came up from Afghanistan
through Bamiyan, Mazar e Sharif, crossing the mighty Amu Darya at Termez and
then bifurcating to move on further north.
So depending on the epoch and with a
little imagination and mixing up one can visualise at Termez, Buddhist monks
discussing philosophy with Mughal conquerors, Greek guards seeing the arrival
of Soviet tanks, traders from Bacteria with double humped Bacterian camels
negotiating with AK 47 clad Afghan traders. The bridge across the mighty Oxus
at Termez, is interestingly called, “The Bridge of Friendship” All along recent
history this bridge became the border and the border re-became the bridge. And
even though present day Termez may have only its nondescript character to
offer, it was here in the recent histories of this land that the British and
Soviet empires faced each other in dangerous strategic game plans and it was
finally here that the Russians found the permanent frontier they had been searching
for. Here on the northern banks of the Amu Darya the Soviet empire came to its
logical end. And it was here on these famed northern banks that I was part of a
team working on the restoration of an
ancient Buddhist monastery.
Beyond the Amu Darya, far into the
horizon, in the haze of an approaching winter with the winds that raise the
dust I can make out the outlines of Afghanistan. The Afghan banks of the Amu
Darya look greener and the mountains rise into the sky, both defying the times.
This silent haze is interrupted by the occasional rat a tat of machine gun
fire, spats between the Uzbek army and their Afghan counterparts, awkward
remains of a recent past. It was in 1979, just 27 years ago that the Soviet
army launched its Afghan invasion from Termez. The now calm Termez airport
would have been the bristling with Soviet military and transport aircraft. And
it was even more recently post 9 11 that the allied forces launched their chase
of the Taliban and Bin Laden from Termez. A task still far from accomplished.
The German armed forces in Afghanistan still receive logistic support from the
Termez airport, an airplane marked “Bundeslika Republic” that seems permanently
stationed at the airport bears testimony to that.
Military transport aircrafts and
helicopters are lined outside a huge aircraft shelter, as if waiting for the
times to change, for this uncomfortable calm to turn to turmoil.
I was in Termez on an
UNESCO Expert Mission on the Restoration works being carried out on the
Buddhist Monastery of Fayaz Tepa. History has no respect for present day geo
strategies and Fayaz Tepa, on the ancient silk route lies just out side the
electrified barb wired no mans land
(international zone) on the Uzbek side. Remains of army radars on raised
mounds just next to the ancient Buddhist site are no mere coincidence but a
result forces that are as old as the island on the Amu Darya and forces that
are still more than active in the present age. An ancient Buddhist monastery
and high security military radars, aloof neighbours in a peaceful coexistence.
These mounds also happen to be the best view point for the site. Not very far
from Fayaz Tepa is another archealogical site well within today’s no mans land,
an international team carries out excavations there. No photos of the Afghan
border, of the antennas, of the barbed wired, of the no mans land.
We meet the Uzbek archaeologist that
continues to excavate Fayaz Tepa and comes up with new finds. He has found
pottery with the Pali script on it and asks me if I can read it, he is
disappointed when I, an Indian tell him that I cannot. He has made some finds
that seriously question the date to which this monastery is presently assigned,
it could actually be dated to over two centuries earlier, making it a BC dated
monastery. But archaeology is a highly meticulous science and it will be some
time before he can even officially table such a probability.
Our other colleague, a French architect
posted here full time speaks of Afghanistan and Mazar e Sharif. With his UN
diplomat identity card and the Toyota four wheel drive that takes him less than
two hours to get there, he talks of the impossible market that is Mazar e
Sharif. Where everything is for sale; tanks, rocket launchers, you name it and
somebody will find one for you. The UNESCO Tashkent office with whom we are
doing this expert mission has a project there and soil samples from the greener
banks of Afghanistan have been brought over for testing. Sun dried adobe bricks
have to be fabricated and tested. I carry out a battery of simple but defining
tests on Afghan soil at 2 kilometres from Afghanistan and at a few 100 meters
from the barbed wire fence.
It is the last day at Termez and I arrive
on site to find strong cold wind blowing across laden with dust. Conditions are
so bad that work is stopped and recently restored walls covered with cloth that
is tied down against the wind.
Noticing my grimacing face expression the
local contractor yells across the wind, “Afghani, the wind is called Afghani”
The Afghani is the furious cold wind, laden with dust that blows down the
Afghan mountains, across the Amu Darya and sweeps up the plains on the Uzbek
side of the Amu Darya to make life impossible.
I had just tested Afghan soil the earlier
day and found just one of them good enough for the fabrication of adobes and
today it is the cold wind full of Afghan air and fine dust that is testing
me.
We pack and return to the UNHCR centre. I
have some free time thanks to the 'Afghani' and use it to talk to some of the
staff hanging around at the UNHCR centre.
Termez, not surprisingly is the launching
pad for convoys of the United Nations Food Programme that supplies food to the
war affected Afghanistan. I have got friendly with the skeletal staff that
operates from here. At the height of the conflicts this centre had seen busier
days. One staff member of the Food Programme tells me that he has something to
show me and fishes out what resembles an expensive biscuit packet. A closer
look reveals glucose biscuits packed in a neat cream coloured pack, with a
bright Indian flag printed on it and a prominent message saying, “Gift from the
people of India”
So Termez saw Buddhist monks, Mughal
conquerors, Russian soldiers, served as the frontier between and the bridge
across, defined the silk route, was the launching pad of Afghan invasion by the
Russians and then by the Western forces, as the logical end of the Soviet
empire and believe it or not it also serves as the launching pad of the “Gift
from the people of India” to our Afghan brothers.
How closer could I get to Afghanistan? I
ask for a glucose biscuit packet to keep for posterity.
