Victory Point - Ed Darack [7]
Shaded relief map of Afghanistan
Extremes of land and sky aside, vegetation has managed not only to cling to the harsh slopes of the Hindu Kush, but to actually thrive—but only at certain altitudes. Over five thousand feet below where the Marines had begun their journey just hours before, nobody could mistake the environment as classic desert. But they’d now penetrated to an elevation of nearly eight thousand feet, a zone of thinner air and greener surroundings. Because precipitation typically increases with altitude, the upper Chowkay and other ridges and valleys of the Marines’ area of operation bear witness to a broad spectrum of plant life, from swaths of grasses and ferns to low thorny shrubs, juniper trees, lush Himalayan deodar cedar, and soaring pines—vegetation both the Marines and their adversaries could, and did, use for cover, and that has been extensively harvested, through legitimate logging operations, but also for illegal transport into neighboring Pakistan.
In addition to woodcutting, the villagers who live in the Chowkay and surrounding valleys and mountainsides grow and harvest a variety of crops, including corn, wheat, rice, okra, spinach, onions, potatoes, and even opium, a crop traditionally used in the Hindu Kush as a cure-all, but also for profitable export. The locals also raise chickens and run goats and occasionally sheep throughout their mountainous home. On their trek up the Chowkay, the grunts marveled at the locals’ ability to maintain their lives on “the edge of the world.” As they passed through tiny enclaves of humanity, the Marines stared in disbelief at chickens and goats mulling around on the roofs of homes—homes built of rock straight out of mountain faces. From more than a hundred yards distant, a quick glance at these houses often deceives an onlooker into “seeing” them as just more large boulders clinging precipitously to the side of a harsh slope.
To raise their crops, the locals have excavated deeply cut terraces, the edges of which serve as on-ramps, off-ramps, and in some places, extensions to regional trail systems, the sole logistical network in the upper reaches of the area’s valleys and ridgelines. With only one motorized vehicle per fifty people in the Kunar province (with most of these concentrated in the provincial capital of Asadabad), and with the terrain too steep in most places even for horses to negotiate, people simply walk, sometimes using donkeys for excess cargo.
During their Afghan tour, the Marines of ⅔ pushed high into the remote nooks of this otherworldly landscape, encountering people who had never before seen an outsider. Westerners often have trouble understanding the people of Afghanistan upon first researching this part of the globe, and the Marines proved no exception. But unlike most who study Afghanistan, the Marines would travel there, live there, melt in with the people there, and most importantly, help shape the future of Afghanistan.
So much of what we know of the place called Afghanistan—the region, the people, the history, the conflicts—comes wrapped in ambiguity, even confusion. To this day, many who live within the nation’s borders not only refuse to acknowledge Afghanistan as a country, they don’t even recognize the concepts of nation-states, discreet international borders, and national sovereignty.
Archaeologists have unearthed evidence suggesting that Afghanistan’s human history stretches more than ten thousand years into the past. The suspected earliest denizens of the land that would become Afghanistan, the Ashvakas, lived in a region today known as the Afghan provinces of Nuristan and Kunar and