Word: chaman
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...Chaman, on the border with Afghanistan. The border between Pakistan and the Taliban is supposed to be sealed tight. But it's only the refugees, fleeing the U.S. air attacks on Kandahar, who are being stopped by the Pakistanis from getting through. It seems these Afghans have lost faith in the accuracy of our "smart" bombs after one of them crashed through a warehouse belonging to the International Committee for the Red Cross in Kabul, even though a huge red cross was painted on the roof...
...Chaman border, tribal leader Achakzai listens to a village cleric oozing messianic praise of the Taliban. When the mullah gathers his robes and exits from the dark, carpeted room into a courtyard of flies and the blinding white light of the desert, Achakzai says with a grin: "Once the Taliban falls, that mullah will be cheering the return of Zahir Shah." Loyalty is something the Taliban can no longer count on among all its fellow tribesmen...
...Quetta Miraculously, I get permission to travel to Chaman, the last Pakistani outpost before Afghanistan. The border is no more than a chain. Rafiq Ahmed, a mustached Pakistani youth in his mid-twenties, hovers uncertainly, unsure whether he wants to cross into Afghanistan. "My elder brother left home to join the Taliban," Rafiq says. "I must find him and bring him back home before he is killed." But Rafiq has fears about his quest. He's worried he'll be beaten by the Taliban for not having a beard, or dragooned into fighting for them. Swallowing hard, he finally crosses...
...swiftly, Barasna and her family made it across the border to Pakistan. They were among the lucky ones. A few days later, Islamabad sealed off the frontier crossings, to block any new wave of refugees trying to get in before an expected U.S. attack against terrorist targets. At the Chaman frontier post southeast of Kandahar, and at Torkham, about 600 km north in the Khyber Pass, there were scenes of panic. When Afghans started crawling through the barbed-wire fencing, the Pakistani police attacked with whips and clubs, herding frightened families back across the border like dumb cattle. Some enraged...
...Afghans are willing to wait until the bombs fall before they dash to safety. The border crossing at Chaman, for one, could hardly be in a more inhospitable place. On one side lies Afghanistan, where the hazy, distant hills gleam strangely, as if the earth were glazed by the heat from Pakistan's 1998 nuclear test on its side of the border. There are only a scattering of thorny shrubs on the landscape. A few Pakistani frontier guards use stubby whips to hold back a tide of gaudily painted trucks, donkey carts loaded with gnarled metal scraps (about all that...