STREETS OF TERROR the road and headed for Peshawar. This made in the local gun factories.
the road and headed for Peshawar. This
My first hint that terrorism could explode
onto the world scene came in 1995 during
my stay along the border of Pakistan and
Afghanistan. I was there to survey some
oil and gas leases for my company, but
saw much more than my research or the
guidebooks had prepared me for.
My plane set down on an isolated runway
in Karachi, the major port city on the
southern coast of Pakistan. I was
immediately filled with a sense of dread. It
was pitch black and sweltering as they
loaded us onto the bus with no lights or air
conditioning. In the still air, I could hear
the voices of angry people shouting in the
distance. Gradually the voices grew louder
and suddenly the bus was surrounded by a
mob climbing all over the vehicle.
Without warning, the bus began to move
and I was afraid it would be toppled at any
moment. To my surprise, the bus picked
up speed as the crowd ran faster and faster.
The crowd pushed the bus for nearly a mile
until it finally came to a stop in front of the
terminal. I asked the bus driver if that sort
of thing had happened before and he said,
“ Every time sir, the motor has not been
running in more than five years,”
I retrieved my luggage and tried to hail a
taxi. After a while, an official came over
and told me I wouldn’t be able to find a
taxi after dark. He said, “It's not safe to
travel into the city at night because the
government does not control the region.” I
was shocked. Pakistan is known for being
practically a monoculture of over 100
million Muslim citizens where nearly half
the people are under 15 years of age. Here
I was in Karachi, the largest city in the
country with a population of over 10
million people and the government could
not maintain control after the sun went
down? Gradually, the combination of rival
gang wars, political assassinations and
terrorist bombings has made the city
practically unlivable. I quickly moved
back into the terminal and remembering
my anti-terrorist briefings for foreign
assignments, located the solid structural
support beams furthest away from the glass
windows. There I stayed huddled against
the pillar till the sun rose.
The next morning I took a taxi to my hotel.
I stepped out of the brightly colored Volvo,
which looked like a love bug had collided
with a Mardi gras float. I heard gunfire in
the distance and the driver yelled at me to
get inside fast “the metal rain is falling.” I
rushed inside and asked the hotel clerk
about “metal rain.” He looked
embarrassed and replied, “There is nothing
to worry about, sir. Ever since the TV
stations began broadcasting scenes of
protests showing people shooting their
guns into the air, the young people have
been celebrating their victories with
machine guns. After a while, the bullets
fall to the ground.”
“Is it dangerous?” I queried.
“Not for you, sir. The bullets usually fall
far from the guns, but sometimes a child is
hurt or killed when a bullet falls.”
made in the local gun factories. Some sold
I couldn’t imagine what it must be like to
grow up facing random death from the sky
at any moment. Wasn’t there a children’s
story about the falling sky? Perhaps it was
just their version of our cold war mentality
when a nuclear holocaust could descend
upon us without warning.
Naturally, I got out of Karachi as quickly
as I could and headed for Islamabad, an
oasis of opulence in a desert of discontent.
The capitol city actually looks more like
Washington, D.C. than Pakistan. Built in
the 1960’s, it is a showplace of extravagant
embassy rows and expansive central
squares. With a population of about a
quarter million people there is room to
breathe for the many foreign diplomats,
and government bureaucrats who have
made this their temporary home. Along
with the many fabulous mansions there are
also some spectacular attractions, none so
impressive as the Shah Faisal Mosque.
Built from donations by the Saudis, it is
one of the largest Mosques in the world.
Capable of holding 15,000 worshipers
inside and another 85,000 in the courtyard,
this sweeping edifice resembles a ghostly
tent anchored at the corners by four huge
rocket-like minarets each towering 300 feet
high. [In hindsight, this magnificent
structure was probably built by the family
of the “Evil One” Osama bin Laden whose
engineering company made their reputation
building mosques and fortified bunkers in
this part of the world.]
In sharp contrast to the splendor of
Islamabad is the twin city of Rawalpindi,
where I stayed for months. This chaotic,
sprawling mess of an overgrown village
has a population numbering somewhere
between three to five million people. The
traffic signals rarely work and intersections
are frequently jammed either by busses,
which refuse to give way or by Brahma
bulls that roam the streets with impunity.
When I arrived, I stopped to visit an old
friend who had recently been stationed in
town. I was casually commenting about
the noise in the streets when he exclaimed,
“You should have damn well heard it last
week!” He said an armory had exploded
sending ammunition, debris and shrapnel
for miles. He pointed to the window, “You
see you that pile of scrap metal down there
on the street, last week it was a new
Mercedes.” [As far as I know, it was never
discovered whether the explosion was the
result of internal sabotage or terrorists.]
While I was there a local cinema caught
fire and burned to the ground. Hundreds of
people, including many children were
killed. It seems that an extreme
fundamentalist group had decided that
movies were not "Islamic" so they
barricaded all of the doors and windows
from the outside and then set fire to the
building. I doubt that Mohammed would
have been pleased and, of course, the
culprits were never found.
When the chance came for me to travel out
of the city, I jumped at the opportunity.
Some Pakistani colleagues of mine were
driving to the Northwest Frontier Province
(NWFP) to do some reconnaissance and
they invited me to tag along. We got on
rough and rugged Afghan border town is at
a distance about 100 miles west of
Islamabad, but worlds away. Along the
route we talked about the chances of
finding oil and gas along the foothills of
the mountains. They told me that we
would need an army just to protect the
operations even with the proper
government permits. I soon learned the
reasons why.
The closer we got to Peshawar the more
the scene changed into a hostile and barren
moonscape. Along the highway were
increasing numbers of giant warehouses. I
counted more than 50 of these massive
pentagon-shaped buildings, but I saw no
people or trucks or movement of any kind.
Seeing the puzzled look on my face, my
friend just said food. Later, he went on to
explain that over two million Afghans
refugees came across the border during the
Russian invasion in the late 1970’s and
settled in more than 200 refugee villages.
Most did not even have enough money to
buy a week’s worth of groceries and most
were woman and children. So the Saudi’s
took pity on them and sent hundreds of
millions of dollars in aid for food and
clothing. [Osama bin Laden’s family was
well known for their generous aid to these
refugees. Of course, later these same
refugee camps were targeted as prime
recruitment posts for terrorist cells.] My
friend said, “At first we welcomed the
refugees as our Muslim brothers fleeing
from religious oppression. But as time
wore on, more of the low-paying jobs went
to foreigners.”
“More importantly,” he emphasized, “some
of the immigrants brought heavy weapons
with them and sowed the seeds of
insurrection and many had been already
been trained in terrorist tactics.” He
further said, “The border with Afghanistan
has begun to blur and violence has become
an everyday occurrence in Pakistan.”
When we reached the 2000-year-old city of
Peshawar, I found most of the men were
heavily armed and they all kept a watchful
eye on intruders like me. Their ancestors
had faced the Persian hordes and the Greek
armies of Alexander the Great. They faced
the Iranians, Huns, Arabs, Turks, the
Mongols under Genghis Khan and more
recently the Chinese and Russians. They
were not about to be timid or fearful about
Americans in their midst. I was told that if
you were taken for the enemy and shot in
the territory, the Pakistani government
assumed no responsibility. Not a very
comforting thought as I strolled these
terrifying streets.
The Peshawar Bazaar lived up to its name
because never has a more strange, diverse
and twisted economy flourished in one
marketplace. In other souks (traditional
Arab markets) the streets are crowded with
specialty shops selling basic items with
lots of pots and pans, rugs and jewelry.
The shopkeepers sit inside, making deals
while the children polish the wares and
make tea. To my astonishment, in
Peshawar, many of the shops were devoted
entirely to the sale of weapons mainly
only knives or guns while still others
concentrated on heavy weaponry like
machine guns, grenades and rocket
launchers. My companions explained that
local craftsmen had maintained primitive
foundries in the mountains for centuries
and now they had the skills to exactly
duplicate any weapon. We saw Russian
style Kalashnikov rifles and Uzi sub-
machine guns, some locally made, but
duplicated with such precision the serial
numbers were copied. It is said when the
Russians moved into Afghanistan in 1979,
the CIA began sending aid in the form of
experts, materials and even small missiles
to the border to combat the Russian troops.
Since that time, about 150,000 Russian
troops have died and more than two
million Afghans have been killed. I asked
if there were still any missiles around after
the Russians withdrew in 1989 and he
replied, “They are still available for the
right price!”
In one of the shops, sitting in the middle of
this arsenal, was a boy about 10 years old.
He was cleaning and polishing the
weapons while his father was furiously
negotiating with a customer. Suddenly the
man picked up a rifle, sighted it near the
horizon and fired a shot. Amazed, I ran
back into the street, but no one took any
notice of the test round. Apparently it is
common practice for customers to try out
the merchandise before a purchase. As I
looked back the young boy continued
polishing his father's wares. I wondered
what a boy in that environment would
grow to become. [Now that insanely,
fearless terrorists have spread across the
globe, I guess we all know the answer.]
As we passed under the gate leading out of
the city, it was like traveling back in time.
About ten miles from Peshawar we entered
the Khyber Pass, a 35-mile treacherous
corridor that is the major conduit into
Afghanistan. The forbidding and
threatening landscape was right out of the
tales of Rudyard Kipling.
An ideal place for an ambush, the Khyber
Pass varies in width from 15 feet to nearly
500 feet; it's walled by cliffs that soar 1000
feet on both sides. These cliffs are only
climbable in a few places. It took the
British over 40 years to build a road and
railway through the pass in the early
1900’s to carry men and munitions. They
built many small forts on the cliffs, which
are still visible, in a futile attempt to
protect the pass. They were determined:
During the Afghan wars about 150 years
ago, British troops were granted safe
passage out by the Afghans, but then they
were ambushed and more than 15,000
British and Indians were slaughtered. [It is
impossible to conceive of our American
boys someday being forced into this death
trap.]
The pass is bounded on the north by the
western extension of the Himalayas, the
Hindu Kush (or Hindu Killer) where 35
peaks reach above 20,000 feet. In the
mountains is a maze of trails and paths
where goods and weapons were smuggled
across the border by a constant stream of
hundreds of black marketeers. The region
is inhabited by the warlike Pathans, who
live in NWFP and the adjoining areas of
Afghanistan. They now number about 17
million, making themselves a race apart, a
chosen people, and no one has ever
managed to subdue them. The Mughals,
Afghans, Sikhs, British and Russians have
all suffered defeat at their hands.
our governments sometimes treat them as
insects. We forget that they are a proud
people with a defiant heritage that spans
thousands of years. This September 11, I
watched in horror with the rest of the world
as our glass houses tumbled to the ground.
I knew then that we in the civilized world
are going to be dealing with our perception
of angry, stinging ants for a very long time.

I could see that caves had been dug into the

dry, rocky hillsides, and people were living
in them. Nearby a network of terrorist
training camps existed. Locally, it's the
Pathan tribesman who are recruited, having
survived nearly a decade of war and
starvation and able to thrive in the rugged
terrain under the most extremes
temperature conditions in the habitable
world. [I am reminded how our own
marines train for future combat by
dumping green recruits into the snows of
Maine for a few days and expecting them
to survive without supplies. Our soldiers
are subjected to months of intensive
training. ] The Afghan people have been
training and fighting under impossible
conditions for centuries. It has been said
that, “Afghanistan is a land which cannot
be defeated and where survival is the only
victory.”

When we reached the Afghan border, we

were overwhelmed with the conditions of
poverty. Many of the children were
obviously malnourished and some
appeared near death. This is a country
where only about ten percent of the land is
suitable for farming, but two thirds of its
25 million people is supposedly engaged in
agriculture. This doesn’t provide much
food for locals. These people have an
average life expectancy of 48 years. These
days the women are prohibited from
getting an education or working and have
been stoned for being in the food market
without a chaperone. Currently, less than a
third of the population can read or write in
either of the two official languages. I had
no idea at the time that the dreaded Taliban
were taking control of the country and
would become the government in the next
year. When we had seen all that we could
stomach, we turned around and headed
back to Islamabad and civilization.

In a few more weeks I headed for home.

We would not be drilling any wells near
the border, but some were foolhardy
enough to try. As I looked back on the
mountainous terrain marking the porous
border between Afghanistan and Pakistan,
I felt that the future of our countries were
inextricably linked. They were inescapably
caught up in the rigid struggles of the past,
while we were blindly racing for a
technological future. A collision was
inevitable.

In 1998, when I watched CNN pictures of

U.S. cruise missiles slamming into the
Afghan terrorist camps only a few miles
from where I had been, I was reminded of
an old Arabic saying, “Never step on an
anthill with bare feet.” This is equivalent to
our own people saying, “People who live
in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”
These people are certainly not ants, but
because our technology is so far advanced