Introduction
Unpredictable incidents in life sometime change one’s destiny. This certainly happened on a sunny spring day in 1971 when we first met in the corridor of the Faculty of Science of Kabul University. Ron aged 29, arrived in Kabul driving an old VW mini-van bought from a housepainter in Amsterdam and self-funded, with the goal to study the legendary markhor in the forests of Nuristan in eastern Afghanistan. He was looking for an interpreter and the German faculty members suggested Khushal Habibi, aged 25. Although born and raised in different cultures, we shared a mutual love for the wilderness and an earnest resolve to embark on a sojourn full of unknown potential. We immediately felt at ease with each other and started to make preparations for the journey together with Ron’s colleague, Tony Long, a free-lance nature writer.
Ron had recently finished three years of post-doctoral research on bighorn sheep and mountain goats in Banff National Park in Canada on a fellowship grant from the Environmental Sciences Centre (ESC), University of Calgary working under Dr. Valerius Geist, the foremost wild sheep biologist in North America. Ron had come to Canada after finishing his PhD at the University of Alaska in Geology and Paleontology, entered a new research field in Wild Ungulate Ecology and Behavior in Canada, and was really undecided about what to do in the future, but knew he wanted to travel and see some of the world before settling down to a permanent job. Just after completing his research, a friend offered him a job for the summer as a crew member on a small four-man commercial boat based on Kodiak Island seine fishing for salmon off the coast of Katmai National Park in Alaska. The money he made fishing set him up for his travels, but before leaving for Europe, his director at ESC, Dr. J.B. Cragg, encouraged him to have a goal at the end of his travels, knowing that after months of travel Ron would need something concrete to look forward to. Ron then wrote a short proposal to work on markhor in Nuristan as it sounded like another interesting venture where he could apply his newly learned research skills; he received the recommendations of Drs. Cragg and Geist and took a flight to London just before Christmas 1970.
While there he looked up Tony Long, a free-lance writer who had used some of Ron’s work on bighorn sheep in a forthcoming book. Tony asked if he could later join Ron for the markhor project in Afghanistan. Tony had become bored rewriting other peoples’ work for popular publications and was anxious to experience a bit of the wild himself.
Ron left London for Amsterdam, bought an aging VW van and fixed it up as a traveling caravan and spent a few months driving through Europe, camping in his van and staying at youth hostels. Ron met people at WWF/IUCN Headquarters in Morges, Switzerland, and the technical director of FAO’s Forestry Department in Rome who knew Dr. Cragg well and gave additional written endorsements to the Afghan authorities to support Ron’s research proposal. Months later, Ron and Tony met in Athens and traveled overland together picking up a young British actor who happened to be hitchhiking in Yugoslavia and continuing across Turkey and Iran in somewhat of the hippy-world-traveler traditions of the day, quite an adventure in itself. Arriving in Kabul, Ron presented his papers to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but was told it would take two to three months to review and assess his proposals. That was indeed a disappointment but Tony decided to stay on in Kabul to enjoy some tourist travel in Afghanistan; Ron and Mike (the actor) headed for Nepal carrying rucksacks and traveling by local transport, they made it to Everest and visited base camp where one of Ron’s friends was climbing on the international expedition then in progress.
Kabul City
Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, is a bustling metropolis surrounded by the Koh-e Baba mountains. The history of Kabul dates back some 3000 years during the time of the Median empire before being conquered by the Achaemenid empire. It was the center of Zoroastrianism followed by Buddhism and later Hinduism before the advent of Islam. In the Rig Veda (Vedic Sanskrit hymns) it has been mentioned as an ideal city, a vision of paradise set in the mountains. Local architecture has not changed over the eons with flat-roof mud houses making up the majority of the population.
Back in Kabul after two months “on the road” they found that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had approved their plans for Nuristan, but it was necessary to secure travel permits from the Ministry of Interior. At that point, Ron realized they needed an Afghan traveling companion, so he went to the University of Kabul to see if they could find a willing, competent student to accompany them. He found Khushal Habibi.
Khushal had been a roving student since he was in high school and had traveled over most of Afghanistan’s mountains and deserts, visiting some of the remotest corners in buses and lorries and at times on his motorcycle. He had tasted the cantaloupe-size water melons of the northern plains of Dasht-e Laile, after a harsh waterless ride in the back of a Russian Gaz lorry; had seen dora bazi (a form of horse racing in which each rider whips his opponent) played in its most rustic form on the desolate plain of Chakcharan; met boars in the Hari Rud valley, swum in the supple water of the Konar River and made a resolution to climb the Paghman mountain visible from his hospital bed while recovering from appendicitis surgery and to touch the snow-clad peak. His first taste of nature was a hike through the hills of Bamiyan in the middle of the night to find the lakes of Band-e Amir. After traveling in moonlight most of the night with two classmates from the technical school he was attending he was mesmerized to see the deep blue waters of the lake at the break of dawn. As the three young travelers sat on the cliff overlooking the lake its color changed from dark to an azure blue in a matter of minutes, and the face of the lake mirrored tranquility as the sun rose into the valley. This experience instilled in him a deep love for nature and an urge to study biology rather than pursue a career in engineering. After graduating from high school he worked for theKabul Times, traveling whenever the opportunity arose and then joined the Faculty of Science of Kabul University to follow studies in biological sciences. Meeting Ron created an opportunity to observe and study wildlife not just from the confines of the classroom, but in the natural settings of their ecosystem and to experience the hardships of traveling to their habitats, interacting with them and learning about the complexities of nature.
Ron and Tony had been staying in a small tourist hotel in Kabul’s Shar-e Naw district, the haunt of hippies and world travelers, cheap accommodations, a great bazaar, good local food and plenty of entertainment. A young man, barely into his 20s, Kazim Ali Kamberi, was employed at the hotel as a waiter and houseboy having left his home in a remote village in Ghazni province some years earlier to try to eke out a living in the city. He never really mentioned his parents, but had an uncle who lived in Karte Sakhi, one of the Hazara districts of Kabul. He invited Ron and Tony to meet his relatives on his single free day of the week. His uncle was a small-time carpet dealer, and we were welcomed and dined by the family. Kazim, a happy-go-lucky lad, spoke English quite well, self-taught and well-practiced with tourists, and as it neared time for us to leave Kabul, we asked if he would join us to do the cooking and to care for the camp as we knew he hated working for his employer who treated him poorly. He immediately quit his job, and we all moved to another hotel for our remaining days in the city. It was a good move for him and us, as Kazim became a willing travel companion, an acceptable cook and quite resourceful and street smart. Over the years, his keen eyes would be able to spot game just as well, if not better than Ron, and we were good friends in no time at all.
After some days of preparation we secured a travel permit from the government and set off in the VW van for Nuristan. The road into Nuristan soon turned into a sea of mud, and we were forced to turn back. Ron then decided to visit the office of the Afghan Tourist Organization to see how we might salvage the expedition and to seek their advice for an alternate site. He met with Ali Sultani, the friendly vice-president of the ATO, who subsequently arranged a meeting with Sultan Mahmoud Ghazi, the president of Civil Aviation and Tourism, who was well traveled in the country with a known appreciation for Afghanistan’s wildlife. Ron showed Messrs Ghazi and Sultani some fine black-and-white photographs of his work on bighorn sheep and mountain goats which led them to suggest that we try for the Pamirs and a study of the famous Marco Polo sheep and Siberian ibex that inhabited this remote area of the country. The ATO had a tourist hunting program for Marco Polo sheep in the Big Pamir which had been ongoing for several years and our work there could benefit their program. And so it was agreed.
The high Pamirs are located in the Wakhan Corridor, a restricted travel area as it bordered the former Soviet Union, China and Pakistan and we needed to secure clearance from Afghan authorities before any travel could be undertaken. Undaunted, we composed a polite letter to the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr. Rawan Farhadi, and Ron secured a few minutes at the end of a day to meet him. Ron presented the letter to Dr. Farhadi, which was quickly read, with his answer, a flat refusal. As Ron was leaving his office, the deputy minister just happened to ask who would have accompanied him on the expedition. Ron mentioned Khushal Habibi, and the minister told him to sit down again. Khushal’s father was an academic, the foremost historian in the country at the time, and a colleague of Dr. Farhadi, himself an academic. Knowing the family well, he authorized our travel without hesitation. That was surely fortuitous! It was the key that unlocked the beginning of our journeys together in Afghanistan and opened the door to a close friendship we have continued to share throughout our lives.
Over the years, our journeys into the hinterland were often to remote parts of the country, close to international borders, and we had to obtain special travel permission from the ministries of Foreign Affairs and Interior every time we traveled. The difficulty of obtaining travel documents decreased when the officials at both ministries came to know us better and realized that we were serious professionals who contributed to conservation development and were not just out for a “joy ride.” Money, however, remained a major constraint during the first year of our travels as we were self-funded and our available resources were limited. Our financial woes were exacerbated by an overloaded VW van which had neither the capability of traveling well on Afghan roads nor was designed for such a purpose. Being our sole means of transport on this first ambitious trip to the Pamirs, we prepared the VW the best we could, with an iron plate welded under the oil pan; we tuned up the engine until it purred and bought plenty of spare parts and extra tubes and tires. We put that vehicle to unrivaled tests until it finally broke down in the beautiful setting of Ishkashem, at the entrance to the Wakhan Corridor. That’s a story in itself which will be told in a following chapter.
In many respects, we were lucky to survive our first trip together into the Pamirs, complicated as it was by financial woes and our inexperience of the land and its people. But soon our fortune began to change. The report of our findings in the Pamirs resulted in Ron being contracted as wildlife advisor to the Afghan Tourist Organization for the truly princely sum at that time of $100 per month (ministers and governors earned $100 a month), a position he held for some three years. During that time, we worked together often on reconnaissance wildlife surveys all over the country, accompanied by guides and personnel of Afghan Tour, the arm of ATO directly engaged with tourists. Throughout this time Kazim Ali continued to work with us, but we lost track of Tony Long soon after we completed our first trip to the Pamirs.
Afghanistan has always been rich in wildlife resources, but when we began to lay the foundations of wildlife conservation development there was little knowledge of the subject. The initial focus of our reconnaissance studies was to gather information on the distribution and ecology of the five species of Caprini (wild sheep and goats) that inhabit the mountains in different parts of the country. Our aim was to assess the wildlife in their remote natural habitats, study the relationships of nearby local peoples to the environment and gather as much scientific data as possible. All this was used in our efforts to convince the Afghan government and international agencies to make a serious long-term commitment to conservation development and among other things, to conserve targeted wildlife species and their habitat so that local people in these areas could directly benefit from sharing revenues derived from sustainable utilization of their wildlife through tourism and hunting programs.
Throughout this time, Ron kept in constant contact with people at the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in Switzerland, and FAO in Rome to apprise them of the ongoing conservation work in Afghanistan. This eventually prompted these organizations to send consultants to Afghanistan to assess progress and determine how best to assist. The UN mission in Kabul had also been tracking our work. Together with the Afghan government, these international organizations worked out a strategy for assistance which first led to bridging grants from the WWF for more work in the Pamirs and the Ab-e Istada and Dasht-e Nawar wetlands in Ghazni Province. During this time Ron completed a project document for formal UN assistance to support a five-year project entitled “Conservation of Wildlife Resources in Afghanistan.” The project was eventually approved and initiated in 1973 under the Department of Forests and Range at the Ministry of Agriculture with the continued cooperation of the ATO, and Ron as the team leader. This was the first-ever wildlife conservation project created in Afghanistan with a major goal of protecting wildlife on a scientific basis through the establishment of national parks, nature reserves and wildlife sanctuaries. We had come a long way since that first trip to the Big Pamir.
As the development community in government and international circles in Kabul learned about the ongoing work, much interest was generated that brought about invitations to give talks and slide shows to many different groups which afforded us opportunities to share our experiences with others. No sooner had the project taken a firm foothold when on July 17, 1973 the first political upheaval took place in the form of a coup d’etat. The political change meant a rapid overhaul of the government several times within a short period of four years. With the changes in the cabinet and the appointment of new ministers, setbacks took place but the project continued. After yet another coup in April 1978 the project had to be closed down due to insecurity in the provinces.
Before the demise of the project, we took consolation in the fact that between 1973 and 1978 six project sites had been declared protected areas by the Afghan government which included one national park (Band-e Amir), two wildlife reserves (Pamir-e Buzurg and the Ajar Valley), and three waterfowl sanctuaries (Ab-e Istada, Dasht-e Nawar and Kol-e Hashmat Khan). Nine additional sites were listed as proposed protected areas by the World Conservation Monitoring Center in the U.K. Since then, little information has come to light about the status of the country’s wildlife, but along with all the human suffering in Afghanistan over the past 25 years, the damage to the environment and the country’s innocent wildlife is most reprehensible and lamentable. It is our sincere hope that the publication of this book will instill a new awareness for environmental protection and wildlife conservation in Afghanistan, so that once more others might travel in our footsteps in this beautiful and rich land to share and enjoy what were for us the most memorable experiences of our lives.
