Afghanistan Before the Russians

There were plenty of Russians in Afghanistan when my wife and I arrived there in the early 1960s for assignment with the Afghan national airline. We saw Russian civilians on the streets every day, trudging to work in their rumpled suits and broad-brimmed World War II model hats. Afghanistan was then one of the few countries in the world in which both the USSR and the USA had competitive aid programs. About 2500 Russian families lived and worked in various parts of Afghanistan, versus 500 American families concentrated in Kabul and Kandahar. But that was not all; the UN and 22 nations vied with each other in providing technology transfers to rush the Afghans from the 15th century into the 20th. Evidence of this was everywhere. Smoking Russian diesel trucks and tiny Moskva taxis were nearly as ubiquitous as the Afghan donkeys. Also plying the streets and byways were Mercedes buses delivered to broad through Iran and International Harvester trucks shipped disassembled from Australia. All made do with the low-octane gasoline from the USSR.

Much of the technological progress merely scratched the society's surface, however. Ruth and I came to Kabul directly from twenty years in New York City and faced the culture shock immediately: There was no subway, no Broadway, no Carnegie Hall, no daily New York Times, no rare meat, no kitty litter. Actually, many of these things did come to us -- in a fashion. The Joffrey ballet, Lilli Kraus, and Duke Ellington all made stops in Kabul. The Sunday NY Times even arrived by air on Wednesday. One visitor brought along a Kansas City loin of beef in his luggage. But modern Kabul was not.

Kabul is a dusty oasis in a desert of nearly barren mountains, a place where all the streets are lined with high mud walls. Set in a valley at 6000 feet above sea level, it is surrounded by peaks that rise up 16,000 feet only ten miles from the runway of the international airport.

On our arrival, our airplane taxied past the unfinished marble Russian designed terminal and came to a stop at a low shed where a crowd in mixed Afghan and Western dress had gathered. On the other side of customs, an American voice greeted us with, "Boy, am I glad to see you!" That was our welcome from my predecessor.

A twenty minute drive brought us to a solid gate in one of the high walls. The gate was opened by a slim brown man in his late twenties wearing a trim western suit. So we first met Abdullah, our bearer, ruler of our household for the next 30 months. Across a flagstone court stood a two-story house with pastel walls and a metal roof, set in a broad garden abloom with flowers and lined with poplars and fruit trees. One tall fir made a centerpiece in the green lawn. This was the house that was to be our home for our stay in what we soon came to think of as Never-Never-Land. The garden, lighted in the evening by kerosene lamps on poles, became the scene of social events the likes of which we were never to see again.

At the office, we had thirty Americans and an Afghan and Indian staff of seven hundred. Each American had an Afghan counterpart or one or more candidate counterparts. Eventually Afghans replaced all the American and all but a few of the Indians. Almost alone among Afghan institutions, the airline functioned 24 hours a day, seven days a week. American and a skeleton Afghan staff ran the line on Fridays, while on Sundays Afghans ran the line alone. The ticket office was open normal business hours; the airport was staffed for flight activity. Communications was staffed around the clock. Because telephones were few among the staff, most off-hours notifications were handled by messenger.

Living there had its inconveniences, of course, that one had to get used to. Tap water in our house was okay for washing but not drinking. It came from a shallow well in our own garden. For drinking water we had to go to the deep well at the Embassy. Some people advised boiling even that, though we did not. Fresh green vegetables had to be washed in clorox or a solution of potassium permanganate. Some people boiled the lettuce, which did not exactly create a great salad. Then there was a regular string of hot to b renewed every six months. Exit and re-entry visas had to be obtained for each trip out of Afghanistan. Advance notice had to be given for each trip outside Kabul. We did all these thing, and they became routine.

Our house was of solid construction with thick mud walls that kept the place cool in the summer and held whatever heat there was in winter. We had no central heating; the house was heated in winter by a fireplace and kerosene stoves. We had Russian stoves in two rooms (a kind of radiant heated wall) but did not use them because of the fire hazard. They had a tendency to set the whole wall on fire. The walls looked fire-resistant, but the mud-mixed-with-straw construction burned readily, like dried peat. Climate was much like eastern Washington, very dry and hot in summer, and very frigid in the winter. But on the high desert the summer heat (over 100 at midday for three months) cooled readily to the 60s after sunset, so we slept under blankets year-round. Electricity was adequate, so we used electric blankets to keep warm in our unheated bedrooms. Afghan homes without electricity and little fuel could get very cold indeed. The theaters did not have any heating either; when the Joffrey Ballet came for its visit portable kerosene heaters from all over the American community were borrowed to make the stage bearable for the dancers.

Our social friends came mostly from the international community but included a number of Afghans--particularly those who played bridge, a game to be recommended for Americans who aspire to work abroad. Our immediate neighbors were all Afghans. Americans were scattered throughout the city rather than being concentrated in a compound like the Russians and the British. We drove about freely and walked freely in our own neighborhood at all hours without concern. Nor did any incident occur in our era which gave grounds for concern.

We knew a few of the Russians; the Air Attache, the Aeroflot manager, the Russian meteorologist who was attached to the UN mission, a few of the embassy staff who belonged to the International Club. Of the other eastern bloc missions, only the Czechs mingled freely. The mainland Chinese had an embassy, but they kept to themselves. I dropped off a card every year, but there was never any response.

As for the rest, we had (besides Americans and Afghans) reciprocal calls with British, Canadians, French, West Germans, Italians, Swiss, Austrian, Dutch, Spanish, Mexicans, Indians, Iranians, Saudis, Turks, Swedes and Australians. When we first arrived in Kabul the Afghans and the Pakistanis had severed diplomatic relations, but eventually that was resolved and one day a PIA executive came by with this commercial attache in tow. There we were, off in the middle of Shangri-La with our own little United Nations. My wife will never forget the evening when seven ambassadors and their wives graced her living room for dinner and bridge. Black ties and champagne in the desert!

Once we were settled in, a typical day would begin at cockcrow, a sound we had not heard in New York City. Soon after, we would hear the call of the muezzins for the faithful to come to prayer at mosques all over the city. Abdullah would prime the pump to fill the water tank for showers and cook would get the coffee started. At 7:00, breakfast would take place, and Abdullah would report the news as broadcast on Radio Kabul. At 7:30, Ismail -- my A.I.D. driver -- would arrive with the station wagon and we would set off to pick up my ride pool, reaching the office at eight. Most days I came home for lunch, frequently with a business guest or two. Generally I was home at the end of the day by five. In the summer that gave time for a set of tennis at the International Club before cocktails two or three times a week. Then home to clean up and find out whether we were dining in or out.

Music for the evening came from LP records. Those were years before prerecorded tapes and cassettes were generally available, but many of the Kabul residents made their own. Dusty Kabul was hard on records, so taping kept the originals in pristine shape. A new album from home would make the rounds and soon you could hear your own record whenever you dined out. Only last year friends of ours in Maine played for us their tapes of our 'Music From LIFE' album that they had made in Kabul twenty years ago. They were as fresh and clear as ever; the records were long since worn out.

Thursday evening was the equivalent of Saturday, the eve of the Moslem Sabbath. A regular event was duplicate bridge at the U.S.A.I.D. Staff House, attended by players from all nations. My wife and I picked up a few fractional master points there in our time. Most other events were likewise home grown. KADS (Kabul Amateur Dramatic Society) put on journeyman performances of 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' and 'The Three Penny Opera.' The Kabul University drama group did a provocative version of 'Macbeth' in Persian. For live music we had our choice between Afghan combos on their traditional instruments and a pretty good jazz group recruited from among Peace Corps volunteers.

Fridays and Sundays were opportunities for reading the previous Sunday's New York Times, golfing on the hard fairways and sand greens of the Kabul Golf Club, and taking day trips out to the countryside. There were many good short day trips. One of the most spectacular was a drive through the Kabul Gorge, where the Kabul River cut through the mountains and dropped 3000 feet from the Kabul Valley to the Jalladabad plain, the citrus belt of Afghanistan, easily done in a day. Paghman was a wooded mountain resort less than an hour from the city. After the Russian-designed Salang pass tunnel was completed it was possible to cross to the north side of the Hindukush Mountains and return in a day. That was a special treat for fishermen, as only the streams in the north were stocked with trout, German brown trout planted in the 1920s in the days of King Amanullah.

As part of my work with the Afghan airline, I visited every commercial airport in the country. The airline maintenance base was in Kandahar, 400 miles southwest from Kabul, in the Helmand River Valley There the Helmand Valley Authority was developing a major flood control and irrigation project to restore the fertility of an ancient Asian granary. Another airline route led 400 miles further west to Herat, home of the 11th century poet Ansarli. To the north, a daily (weather permitting) DC 3 crossed the Salang Pass at 16,000 feet between peaks of the Hindu Kush to the cities so Kunduz, Mazar-i-sharif and Maimana near the Russian border. I made the flight one day when a gas well fire outside the 3000 year-old ruins of Balkh lit the sky like a beacon. That was a Russian project and the fire was out of control for six weeks. In the winter when the mountain passes were closed we also flew to Khost, 100 miles southeast on the Pakistan border. Flying there, we usually had to buzz the airport to chase grazing camels off the runway.

Epilogue

Our departure was just a few days later in the year than that of the ill-fated 19th century British army -- massacred at Gandamack on January 13, 1842. Our fate was much kinder than that. We had a fine paved road all the way and only a passing wave from the Afghan border guards. Our route was the new Kabul river gorge road, not in existence in 1842. In three hours we were in Jalalabad -- where the sole survivor of Gandamack had finally reached safety. Three more hours brought us across the border at Landi Kotal, through the Khyber Pass, and into the lush green of the Vale of Peshwar.

In the next ten years, we made three visits back to Kabul -- the last time lingering for six weeks in the new Intercontinental Hotel, perched high on the ridge that divided the city. Afghanistan was now a republic and another new constitution was in the works. Some of the young Afghan co-pilots we had known were now grizzled jet captains. The water projects on the Heimand and Kabul Rivers had made the desert bloom and Afghanistan was now a net exporter of grain. Mounds of potatoes, onions, and melons were piled high in the food bazaars.

The people in the bazaar seemed unchanged, still a mixture of Pushtuns. Hazars, and Tajiks, some in Western dress but the majority in turbans and regional costume. Nomads and their flocks still trekked north in the spring and south in the fall. But there was a sense of unease that we had not felt when we lived there. A former neighbor still in residence invited us to dinner and told us some of the under-currents.

Political murders were occurring.

Within three years would come the Taraki coup and in its aftermath the bloody struggle between the Parcham and the Khalq wings of the Communist Party.

And then, in December 1979, came the Russians.