Now you see it, now you don’t

An Indian reporter’s journey to Kabul has all the trimmings of surrealistic drama

THAT Kabul has become a common dateline creates the illusion that it has become accessible. It has not. An Indian reporter’s journey to Kabul has all the trimmings of surrealistic drama.

If all Western journalists have reached Kabul almost at will why must Indian journalists make such a song and dance about reaching Kabul? Simple. Pakistan will give visas to all and sundry but not to an Indian journalist. And Pakistan remains the easiest route.

There are three Uzbek air flights a week between Tashkent and Delhi but Uzbekistan’s Islam Karimov insists he is playing such a sensitive game navigating between Russia and Washington that large tracts have become inaccessible to journalists ever since he allowed a sizeable base for the Americans at Khanabad. For such reasons, plus a complicated equation with Afghan’s Uzbek Deputy Defence Minister, Karimov has kept the Friendship bridge at Termez closed to civilian traffic to Mazar-e-Sharif.

So you search for a flight to Dushanbe, capital of Tajikistan, from where, the Indian ambassador has assured you, there are Russian relief planes and helicopters taking off each day. But there is no direct flight to Tajikistan, so you return to Delhi to catch the once-a-month special cargo flight to Dushanbe leaving Friday.

The ambassador has overlooked the fact that the weekend is followed by another holiday on Monday. A helpful Tajik Foreign Office man assures me that a ‘‘helicopter may leave on Wednesday.’’ He mumbles something about payments to be made to the Russian pilots.

The lobby of hotel Tajikistan, Dushanbe’s fanciest hotel, is cold, the large TV screen providing the only relief, blaring MTV dance and song sequences which a battery of six receptionists watch from behind their counter. The most attractive among them, Firoza, blows a sharp whistle to keep residents out of her line of vision everytime a Salman Khan sequence comes up. ‘‘I love him’’ she swoons.

Upstairs, on the sixth floor, about 25 American officers are holding a strategy session in the lounge supervised by an old Soviet-style babushka. The leader, a counter intelligence officer, takes an interest in our unsuccessful bid (so far) to reach Kabul. He says he is off to Kuliab, the airbase being used by the Americans. Since Kuliab happens to be the district of Tajik strongman Emomaly Rakhmanov, the deal is clearly a US-Tajik affair. ‘‘If Putin thinks he can strike deals with the US on our behalf, he is mistaken’’ says a Tajik strategic scholar. ‘‘We can strike our own deals’’.

This language is strong considering that the Russian 201st motorised Rifle Divi- sion is headquartered behind our hotel. A brigade is scattered around Kuliab and the border with Afghanistan. Is it Russian-US co-existence or is Mos- cow slowly, in calibrated measure, being eased out?

By now my former cameraman Kabir Khan has located me at the hotel. ‘‘Welcome to the dead end’’ he says with humour which sounds black considering that this is the fifth day in Dushanbe without any exit routes in sight. ‘‘We have to pay $ 1000 each to the foreign office to catch the Russian helicopter’’ Kabir says. But the ambassador has spoken to his counterpart. ‘‘Ask your journalists to be at the airport at 10 am’’ comes the word from the Russian embassy.

The Russian helicopter, loaded and ready, lifts our spirit. Then two Tajik border security guards walk towards the helicopters flashing their golden teeth in a threatening sort of way. ‘‘We cannot fly’’ the Russian incharge of the flights says ‘‘because they say we don’t have the permission’’.

‘‘Is it because we did not pay $ 1,000 each to the foreign office?’’ I ask the group of about 15 crestfallen journalists. I am desperate. Kabir, his colleague and I hire a four-wheel drive and are on our way to the Tajik-Afghan border, 300 kms away.

‘‘Two Tajik cops grounded Russian helicopters on an airport which the Russians managed until last month’’ Kabir cannot believe it. ‘‘And this despite that a Russian division is permanently stationed in the country’’.

It begins to snow. The last stretch of the journey towards the Amur Darya is slush through which the four wheel drive barely makes it. There is no barge to cross the river. It is Friday and the Russian immigration officials have decided to take a long weekend.

We drive all the way back to Dushanbe, catch a flight to Khojand in the Farghana valley after paying $ 100 to the ticket cashier. At Khojand, a policeman takes me up four flights of steel staircase to a room resembling a torture chamber. He wants $ 100. After a 90 km taxi ride to another Tajik border post, four officers surround you. Another $ 100.

Islam Karimov’s Uzbekistan may be a dictatorship but the smooth passage through customs and immigration was a huge relief from the venal anarchy of Tajikistan. ‘‘Don’t blame the Tajik people’’ my Uzbek taxi driver says on the drive from the Tajik border to Tashkent. ‘‘Too many American journalists have been this way spending thousands of dollars for smooth passage’’.

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