Crossing the Oxus River

Crossing the Oxus River

P.K.Ghatak, MD

No 5.

We are heading toward the Afghan Uzbek border. After five days of confinement in a cellar due to an armed struggle between two parties in the Afghan civil war, we are happy to leave behind Afghanistan. The Oxus River lies ahead. At present we are passing through a desert. Small sand dunes and rocky hills are all around us, and here and there soldiers with full battle gear are stationed along the road, but they are not tense; some of them waved at our UN convoy and some of them even smiled.

Allan, pointing the road ahead of us, told me, “This is the road Alexander the Great took to cross the Oxus River.” Allan is an Alexander buff. He is an Irishman, a mid-level executive of an international company, who was stationed in Paris when he volunteered.

I said, “why go north when India is to the east from here”.

He said, “that came later. Alexander was on the heels of Bessus, a confidant of the Persian King Darius. Bessus stabbed Darius and left him on the roadside to die; put the crown on his head and declared himself the emperor. When Alexander got the news, he was furious; after all, Darius was a great emperor and deserved respect even at death. At that time Alexander was in a place in Afghanistan known now as Herat. He could have gone straight east to Sogdiana where Bessus fled, that would have been a shorter distance, instead, he went south to Kandahar and then to Kabul. He crossed with his cavalry the mightily Hindu Kush Mountain during a snow blizzard; then marched through this desert and crossed the Oxus River at a place, where we now are heading for.” He added, “We call him Alexander the Great but in fact, he was a butcher. Anyone dared to put up a resistance, he attacked them with absolute brutality and after his victory, he would gather all the citizens, from royalties to the poppers and order his army to butcher them all including children and women. He spared none and left the dead and dying on the field for everyone to see. The word got around fast. Most of the rulers of this territory simply surrender to him without a fight.”

Our driver Hussein, a history teacher in Mazar before the war, was listening. He said, “two other important Amu Darya crossings took place here. (Afghans call the river by that name). Those also profoundly changed the history of this country. He continued, “in 643 AD the 2^nd Caliphate Umar ordered his trusted general, Ahnaf bin Qais, to conquer Sassanid Persian Empire. Ahnaf crossed the Amu Darya near here and defeated Emperor Yazdegerd lll and took the Khurasan province of Sassanid and converted our forefathers to Muslims from Buddhists. Yazdegerd fled to China. Balk was the capital of Khurasan; it is near Mazar which you know all too well and I bet you will never forget Mazar in your lifetime”.

I asked him, “when did the 3rd important crossing take place?”

Hussein said, “you all know that; the Soviets crossed the river here when they occupied Afghanistan. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan there was no resistance in this region because the local commander forged an alliance with the Soviets; and when they left Afghanistan, the Soviets gave him their entire stock of Aircraft, helicopters and other war machinery and this commander became the strongest warlord in Afghanistan. And the other warlords did not dare to attack him. We did not see any fighting until this one. You have suffered a lot during these 5 days. I thought it was a miracle that all of you came out unscathed from this ordeal.”

We remained silent, and then I said, “as far as I see it, the most important crossing of the Oxus River has not happened yet: it will take place when we cross here safely”. Then I laughed and all of them joined me in a burst of hearty laughter.

We are now in the heart of fortified Hazareh Cantonment. Every building, from the roof to the front gate, is adorned with military hardware. Soldiers are serious-looking and professional. We are waiting at a checkpoint for about ½ hours. A UN official who is accompanying us and a senior member of our group has gone to pay a courtesy visit to the chief commander. They carried with them a heavy box loaded with “goodwill care packs”.  We have resumed our journey upon their return and are moving toward the Afghan-Uzbek Friendship Bridge - a gift from the Soviets to the Afghan people.

The approach road leading to the bridge is heavily fortified.  Heavy field guns, anti-aircraft guns, and concrete bunkers are placed along the road all the way to the bridge. We are now crossing the all-steel bridge without stopping. The bridge has railway tracks in the middle separating the roadway one on each side and a pedestrian walkway on one side of the roadway. We have now parked our vehicles in a parking lot which is right on the riverbank. A signpost says this part belongs to Afghanistan; Uzbekistan begins at the other end of the parking lot. The immigration/ customs office is just across the parking lot. The UN officer, after collecting our passports, visa applications, and photographs has walked over to the office building.

We are waiting in our vehicle, thinking it is just a formality to get our passport stamped and enter Termes, Uzbekistan; but we are waiting and waiting. Our vehicles are not equipped with car heaters; we are beginning to feel the chill of January cold. I got out of the vehicle and began walking briskly, then jumped around to get the chills out. Here, I can see we are at the top of a hill and the riverbed is way down. The whole valley of Mazar lies in front. The water level of the river is low; the water is flowing gently, with tiny ripples now and then, reflecting the bright golden sun rays.

The Oxus River starts her 1500 mile journey from the glaciers of the Pamir, gets a heavy load of melted snow from the Hindu Kush Mountain. It journeys west, then north/ northwest to Kyzyl Kum desert, a land between the Aral Sea and the Caspian Sea. In ancient times, it emptied in the Aral Sea. In 985 AD a massive Gurganj dam was built across the river, diverting the river water for agriculture; and the region flourished. Another tyrant, Genghis Khan, occupied this land and in 1221 AD he leveled the dam flat to teach the people a lesson. Since then, the river had not made up her mind: at times she emptied in Caspian and other times in Aural Sea.  The Soviets built a number of dams along the course of the river, vastly expanding the irrigated land and introduced large scale cotton cultivation.  Now, as the Oxus flows further north, she hardly makes any headway and dies in the sand dunes of Turkmenistan. What an inglorious death of a mighty river!

We have been detained at this cold windswept hilltop for nearly 3 hours.                

There is no trace of our UN officer. I am jogging along a grassy path, just to keep myself warm. I can see 18 feet tall 50 feet wide barbed wire fence, running along the river edge all the way as far as I can see. Several posters are nailed to the fence displaying the international symbols of live-high-voltage electric lines, landmines, and other hazards: warning people not to come near the fence.  When I went near the barrier, several pieces of clothing hanging from the barbs came to my view. I do not know how many people were blown to pieces by landmines in their attempts to cross the border, or the wind simply has blown the pieces there.

The UN officer, presently, is coming out of the building and he is waving at us.  Now, we are crossing the parking lot and entering Uzbekistan. Our crossing of the Oxus River is now complete.

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