VZCZCXRO3002
OO RUEHDBU RUEHIK RUEHYG
DE RUEHBUL #3683/01 2291231
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
O 171231Z AUG 06
FM AMEMBASSY KABUL
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 1991
INFO RUCNAFG/AFGHANISTAN COLLECTIVE
RUCNIRA/IRAN COLLECTIVE
RHEHNSC/NSC WASHINGTON DC
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHINGTON DC
RHEFDIA/DIA WASHINGTON DC
RUEKJCS/OSD WASHINGTON DC
RUEKJCS/SECDEF WASHINGTON DC
RHMCSUU/JOINT STAFF WASHINGTON DC
RHMFIUU/HQ USCENTCOM MACDILL AFB FL
RHMFIUU/JICCENT MACDILL AFB FL
RHMFIUU/COMSOCCENT MACDILL AFB FL
RUEATRS/DEPT OF TREASURY WASHDC
RUCNDT/USMISSION USUN NEW YORK 2756
RUEHNO/USMISSION USNATO 2904
RUEHGV/USMISSION GENEVA 6234
RUEHUNV/USMISSION UNVIE VIENNA 1583

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 05 KABUL 003683 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS, SENSITIVE 
 
STATE FOR SCA/FO (DAS GASTRIGHT), SCA/A, S/CRS, 
SCA/PB, S/CT, EUR/RPM 
STATE PASS TO USAID FOR AID/ANE, AID/CDHA/DG 
NSC FOR AHARRIMAN, KAMEND 
OSD FOR BREZINSKI 
CENTCOM FOR CG CFC-A, CG CJTF-76, POLAD 
REL NATO/AU/NZ/ISAF 
 
E.O. 12958 N/A 
TAGS: PREL PGOV PTER AF
SUBJECT: PRT/KUNDUZ - PRT/KUNDUZ: VISITING THE 
REMOTE DISTRICTS OF NORTHERN BADAKHSHAN BY WAY OF 
TAJIKISTAN 
 
KABUL 00003683  001.2 OF 005 
 
 
(SBU) SUMMARY: :  PRToff and political assistant 
made an unprecedented trip to the Nusai district of 
Badakhshan province August 5, becoming the first 
members of any PRT to set foot in what is one of the 
most remote and isolated districts in Afghanistan. 
Nusai, located at the northern tip of Badakhshan 
province, cannot be reached by vehicle from 
Afghanistan, but thanks to a two-year-old bridge 
built by the Aga Khan foundation over the river 
Pyanj, the district is accessible from Tajikistan. 
While appreciative of the bridge and the economic 
opportunities it offers (including a weekly joint 
bazaar), officials in Nusai are desperate for a road 
that will connect them to the rest of Afghanistan. 
PRToff and political assistant also visited Shighnan 
district, located in northeast Badakhshan, August 6 
via another Aga Khan-built bridge from Tajikistan. 
Unlike Nusai, Shighnan is already connected by a 
road to the provincial capital of Feyzabad, but 
because of winter snowfall, the road is only open 
three months per year.  Shighnan officials boast 
that their district, dominated by Ismaili Shias, is 
one of best educated in Afghanistan.  Burqas are 
unknown in this district, where women dress much 
like their counterparts across the river in 
Tajikistan.  END SUMMARY. 
 
HARD TO GET THERE FROM HERE 
--------------------------------------------- --- 
 
¶2.  (SBU) Nusai, a district of 24,000 located at the 
northern tip of Badakhshan province bordering 
Tajikistan, is completely inaccessible by vehicle 
from Afghanistan.  The only way to reach Nusai by 
vehicle is from Tajikistan (near the town of 
Kalaykhum) via a one-lane suspension bridge over the 
Pyanj River built by the Aga Khan foundation two 
years ago.  As a result, no member of PRT Kunduz or 
Feyzabad had ever visited this district before. 
When Afghan officials visit (as Badakhshan Governor 
Majid did a few months ago), they come by 
helicopter.  The neighboring northern districts of 
Maimai (also known as Darwaz Bala) and Shukai are 
even more isolated, as there is still no road 
connecting them to Nusai or any other part of 
Afghanistan.  The only way to get to and from these 
mountainous districts is by walking or riding a 
donkey.  The locals report that it is a 10-day walk 
south overland from Nusai to the provincial capital 
of Feyzabad along a trail that is impassable several 
months a year due to heavy snowfall.  The only way 
to get to Feyzabad during those months is to follow 
a rougher and longer path that runs along the Pyanj 
River. 
 
¶3.  (U) Shighnan, a district of 34,000 located along 
the northeast border of Badakhshan province, has a 
road connection to Feyzabad, but this road is open 
only three months a year.  PRT Feyzabad visits the 
district regularly during this time, but the 
district is effectively cut off from vehicular 
traffic from Afghanistan the rest of the year.  As 
in the case of Nusai, the only year-round vehicular 
access to Shighnan is from Tajikistan (near the city 
of Khorog) via a one-lane suspension bridge over the 
Pyanj River built by the Aga Khan foundation five 
 
KABUL 00003683  002.2 OF 005 
 
 
years ago. 
 
¶4.  (U) The district centers of both Nusai and 
Shighnan -- where the district manager and chief of 
police have their offices -- are located along the 
Pyanj River, within just a few kilometers of the 
bridge crossing points.  This made visiting each of 
the two districts from Tajikistan a relatively easy 
day trip. 
 
JOINT BAZAARS AT THE BRIDGES 
--------------------------------------------- --- 
 
¶5.  (SBU) The bridges built by Aga Khan to connect 
these remote Afghan districts to Tajikistan have 
certainly reduced their isolation and opened up new 
possibilities for trade and commerce.  There are, 
for example, joint bazaars on the Tajik side of both 
bridges at least once a week.  Afghans can cross the 
bridges and buy and sell items at the bazaar without 
a passport or visa, although they are restricted to 
the bazaar area.  According to officials in Nusai, 
Afghans must pay a small fee to cross the bridge 
there.  The fee is supposed to be a fifth of a 
Tajiki Somoni per person (about 6 U.S. cents), but 
Nusai officials told PRToff that the Tajiki border 
guards usually charged a full Somoni (30 U.S. 
cents). 
 
¶6.  (SBU) PRToff arrived at the bridge to Nusai on a 
Saturday morning, the day of the weekly bazaar, and 
found a lively market with a significant number of 
Afghan shoppers, including Nusai District Manager 
Abdul Raqib Nawid and Police Chief Marza Kareem. 
Nawid opened his wallet, revealing that most of the 
money he carried these days was Somonis rather than 
Afghanis.  Kareem said about 200 to 250 Afghans 
cross the bridge each week to shop at or sell goods 
at the bazaar.  Both complained, however, that many 
staples are not available at the bazaar, including 
diesel, cotton and flour.  Therefore, they must be 
bought in from Feyzabad by donkey.  Not 
surprisingly, prices are extremely high in Nusai and 
Shighnan, even during the summer, when access to 
Feyzabad is relatively good.  PRToff found, for 
example, that melons in the Shighnan market cost 90 
Afghani each (about $1.80), or more than three times 
as much as they cost in Kunduz. 
 
¶7. (SBU) While offering great potential, the joint 
bazaars are still largely one-way affairs: the 
Tajiks are selling and the Afghans are buying, but 
not vice versa.  The Afghans simply do not produce 
much of anything that can be sold at the bazaars. 
Most residents of these districts are subsistence 
farmers, literally living on the side of a mountain 
with very little arable land on which to grow crops. 
They cannot grow enough food to feed themselves, 
much less produce excess for selling at the bazaar. 
Aga Khan agricultural specialists are encouraging 
local farmers to grow fruit and nut trees, which are 
more suited for the arid and mountainous terrain 
than traditional crops like wheat, but such orchards 
are still not widespread.  Unfortunately, there is 
no rug or other handicraft production in these two 
districts.  Officials in Shighnan said that most of 
 
KABUL 00003683  003.2 OF 005 
 
 
the goods that Afghans sell at their joint bazaar 
are Pakistani products brought from Feyzabad -- 
teapots, fabrics, TVs, videotape players.  Because 
there are generally no custom duties on the items 
Afghan sell at the bazaar (as long as they do not 
bring large quantities of goods), the Afghans can 
apparently sell these goods at a lower price than it 
costs Tajiks to import them directly from Pakistan. 
 
¶8.  (U) Officials from both districts complain there 
are no joint bazaars on the Afghan side of the 
bridges, but until the Afghans have something 
substantive to sell, there seems to be little point 
in actively pursuing that.  Nonetheless, the German 
development agency GTZ plans to build a small market 
on the Afghan side of the bridge at Shighnan so that 
the weekly Saturday bazaar can be alternated between 
Afghanistan and Tajikistan.  At the Ishkeshem border 
crossing, which lies about 100 kilometers south of 
Khorog/Shighnan, the dilemma about where to locate 
the bi-weekly bazaar has been resolved by holding it 
on an island in the middle of Pyanj river, a no- 
man's land which belongs neither to Afghanistan nor 
Tajikistan. 
 
DESPERATE FOR JOBS AND ROADS 
--------------------------------------------- ---- 
 
¶9. (SBU)  Due to the lack of jobs and economic 
opportunities in their district, officials in both 
districts said that many men leave their families 
for months at a time to work as unskilled laborers 
in nearby provinces, or even as far away as Iran. 
In Nusai, officials estimated unemployment at 90%. 
While officials appreciate the bridge link to 
Tajikistan as a short-term way to relieve the 
isolation of their districts, they desperately want 
to be linked to the rest of Afghanistan via roads 
that are open year-round.  They believe that this is 
the key to helping solve many of their economic 
difficulties.  They also believe that they have not 
received their fair share of attention from the 
international community or from donors because they 
do not grow poppy or present any serious security 
problems.  Nonetheless, they acknowledge that they 
have received significant assistance from the Aga 
Khan foundation (i.e., a clinic, professional 
training, reforestation, irrigation canals, etc.), 
much of which is funded by GTZ.  PRToff did not have 
an opportunity to venture very far by vehicle into 
either district, but found that the main road in 
each district center was little more than a deeply 
pitted jeep track that mostly ran along the Pyanj 
river, with steep grades in some places exceeding 
25%.  In other places, the road was completely 
inundated by the river, making passage by anything 
less than a high-clearance, four-wheel-drive vehicle 
impossible. 
 
SHIGHNAN'S ISMAILI CULTURE 
--------------------------------------------- 
 
¶10.  (U) The population of Shighnan consists mainly 
of Ismaili Shias, who have a reputation for 
religious tolerance and for putting a high value on 
education.  The most obvious manifestation of the 
 
KABUL 00003683  004.2 OF 005 
 
 
Ismaili culture is that women in the district 
generally do not wear burqas.  Women seen walking on 
the streets of the district center of Shighnan wore 
long, brightly colored dresses, very similar to 
those of their Tajik counterparts just across the 
Pyanj river.  Unlike in most other parts of 
Badakhshan, they made little or no attempt to hide 
their faces from passers-by. 
 
¶11.  (U) But what Shighnan District Manager 
Zainullabudin was most proud of was the level of 
education in the district, which has 12 high schools 
and a teaching training center.  He claimed that 85% 
of the adult population was "educated," i.e., that 
they could read and write.  If true, that would put 
Shighnan far above the average literacy rate for 
Afghanistan.  Unfortunately, many of the schools in 
Shighnan, which were built by the local community 
decades ago, are in a bad state of disrepair due to 
old age.  The district manager took PRToff to one 
high school, originally built 58 years ago, in which 
the roof has collapsed in several places due to 
rotted support beams.  Tents have been erected over 
the building to protect students from the elements. 
The school has no desks or chairs, so students must 
sit on the floor.  (Comment: While it is not unusual 
for primary school children in Afghanistan to sit on 
the floor, many Afghan high schools have desks and 
chairs for older students.)  While acknowledging 
some emergency financial help from PRT Feyzabad for 
fixing this and other schools, Zainullabudin said 
far more assistance is required. 
 
GETTING TO THE BRIDGES 
-------------------------------------- 
 
¶12.  (U) It took several weeks and the generous help 
of Embassy Dushanbe to organize this trip, given 
various Tajik requirements.  Not only does one need 
a multiple-entry Tajik visa, but also a special 
permit to enter the Gorno-Badakhshan region, where 
the border crossings are located.  The so-called 
GBAO permit is a hold-over requirement from the 
Soviet period when this was an autonomous region. 
Both the multiple-entry visa and GBAO visa are only 
issued by the MFA in Dushanbe and they must be 
applied for weeks in advance of departure.  The 
first crossing point (into Nusai) is some 420 
kilometers east from Dushanbe, an all-day drive. 
The last part of this drive runs directly along the 
Pyanj river, which forms the border between 
Tajikistan and Afghanistan for several hundred 
kilometers.  The second crossing point (into 
Shighnan) is a further 240 kilometers along this 
same road.  At the narrowest parts of the Pyanj 
river, Afghanistan is literally only a stone's throw 
away.  One can plainly see the low-slung, flat- 
roofed mud houses so characteristic of rural 
Afghanistan and can wave to people on the other 
side. 
 
¶13.  (U) The border along the Pyanj offers a 
striking juxtaposition between Afghanistan and 
Tajikistan.  On the Tajik side of the river is a 
paved road (albeit in very bad condition in many 
parts) with omnipresent electrical poles and wires 
 
KABUL 00003683  005.2 OF 005 
 
 
along its entire length.  On the Afghan side of the 
river, there is no road or electrical lines, but 
rather only a thin, but distinctive dirt trail that 
winds along the cliffside. 
 
¶14. (U) Typically, we crossed the border into 
Afghanistan in the morning and returned to 
Tajikistan in the afternoon before the border post 
closed at 4 or 5 p.m.  One of the biggest and 
unexpected challenges each morning was obtaining 
diesel for the two vehicles.  Gas stations were few 
and far between in this area of Tajikistan, and most 
did not sell diesel.  At Kalaykhum's single gas 
station, the attendant told us he had only 50 liters 
of diesel to sell, which he dumped into the tank 
from an assortment of different containers including 
a two-liter plastic soda bottle.  In a typical scene 
in Khorog, we came across a fuel truck parked along 
the side road, selling gas directly to motorists. 
While the truck had no diesel (only regular 
gasolene), we were directed to a nearby house where 
we could buy what we needed.  In Ishkeshem, we found 
out that quality of diesel sold in the bazaar was 
very poor, so we ended up buying 70 liters from the 
private stock of the local Aga Khan foundation 
office.  As it turned out, we need not have been so 
worried about buying gas before the crossing into 
Afghanistan at Ishkeshem.  The Afghan town of the 
same name just on the other side of the border had 
two brand-new filling stations within 200 meters of 
each other, both with plenty of diesel to sell. 
 
COMMENT 
--------------- 
 
¶15.  (SBU) The military component of PRT Feyzabad is 
very active in doing long-range patrolling 
throughout Badakhshan and it regularly visits most 
districts in the province.  However, the extreme 
remoteness and terrain of the northern districts and 
the lack of a road severely limit the ability of the 
military to access this part of the province.  This 
August 5-6 trip to the northern districts via 
Tajikistan is an excellent example of how the 
civilian component can complement the military 
effort and provide value-added to the PRT's mission. 
End Comment. 
 
NEUMANN