BAMYAN, AFGHANISTAN, Nov 4: In a spectacular valley swept by centuries of Silk Road history, the hopes and fears of Afghanistan’s only female governor capture the mood across the country as Western troops prepare to withdraw.
Habiba Sarabi’s hope springs from the transformation of Bamyan province from a place of massacres and oppression of women under Taliban Islamists to one where most people live in peace and young girls flock to school.
It is fuelled by a belief that the historical, cultural and physical beauty of the central province could become a magnet for international tourists whose dollars would help support those gains.
The fear comes from the fact US-led NATO forces that have fought Taliban insurgents for the past 11 years will leave the country by the end of 2014 and all gains could be lost.
“If NATO totally makes the decision to withdraw I am sure a civil war will start,” she told AFP in an interview in her modest office in Bamyan town, where donkeys vie for space on the roads with cars and few weapons are in sight.
Aged 56, she remembers the bloody strife that engulfed Afghanistan in the 1990s following the withdrawal of Soviet troops, when the West lost interest after backing the Afghan uprising against the Russians.
“If they repeat this mistake again it will be a disaster.”
Bamyan is home to the Hazara people, a Shiite Muslim minority, and any chance of a return to power by the hardline Taliban—or even a share in power—is frightening, says Sarabi.
“The Bamyan people suffered a lot during the Taliban. People can remember several massacres in Bamyan and still we have mass graves here.”
If Afghanistan is spared the disaster Sarabi fears, it is not inconceivable that her dream of turning the area between the magnificent Hindu Kush and Koh-e-Baba mountain ranges into an international eco-tourist destination could be realised.
If not for 30 years of war since the Soviet invasion of 1979, it would likely have already drawn travellers seeking new places to ski in winter and fly-fish for wild trout in summer, while rubbing shoulders with the ghosts of Ghengis Khan and Marco Polo.
Bamyan’s physical attractions include the sapphire-blue Band-e-Amir lakes, which rise magically within a jagged, barren mountainscape without a river in sight—now centre of the nation’s first national park.
They lie about 75 kilometres from Bamyan town off a smooth new South Korean-funded highway which winds through canyons and crags of bleached ochres and past a plateau where a new airport is planned. (AGENCIES)
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