Dying ambitions

On a purely personal and selfish note, I feel extremely cheated that yet another place that is on my “must visit” list has turned into a war zone. As a teenager I read an epic novel called The Horsemen by Joseph Kessel. The story of the brave players of buzkashi, the national sport of Afghanistan, etched itself into my imagination. It requires extraordinary skills as a horseman and is played in the magnificent steppes territory, possibly one of the most beautiful wildernesses on earth. I learned from that novel how fearless and formidable the Afghani people are. If today’s war strategists had read it too they might have thought twice of getting involved there. I also fell in love with the geography, as described by the author.

Not so long afterwards, I read another book that reinforced my unconsummated love for that part of the world. Eric Newby was a great British travel writer whose, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush must be one of the best, funniest travelogues ever penned. I found a signed copy on my bookshelf a few days ago. I had no memory of having met the author, whom I admire greatly, but the image he drew with his words has lived on vividly in my mind. Back in the 1950s he decided to climb the Hindu Kush mountains, near Pakistan in the extreme northeast of Afghanistan with passes of 15,000 feet. It took him through places that I promised myself to visit, starting with Kabul. Sadly, it looks as if there will now not be a safe time there to realise that dream.

Yemen is another country that excites the imagination but which has been demoted to my “hold” list. Because of its strategic location at the south-western end of the Arabian peninsula where the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean meet, it is an important trade and maritime axis that has changed hands many times over the centuries. But its modern litany of civil war, unification between north and south Yemen, followed by secession and revolution, kidnappings and suicide bombers has made it unsafe for visitors. Its capital, Sana’a, however, said to be the most continually inhabited city in the world and a UNESCO World Heritage site, has the most exquisite architecture, at least from the photos I have seen. Densely packed, elegant, formal 17th century buildings, several stories high and made of stone, bricks and plaster in geometric patterns, lie closely packed inside a protective city wall, made of mud.

Slowly, many of the mysterious places of the Middle East are dropping down my list. Names to conjure with such as Aleppo, Damascus, Homs in Syria, and Baghdad, Ur, Basrah, Babylon in Iraq are now associated with terrible events. I think back and the safest time to have travelled to many parts of the region in the last 30 years, ironically, would have been during periods of dictatorship and military rule when if the visitor just kept their nose clean it would have been possible to travel with more ease. The entire region from north to south, east to west is in constant turmoil and current events in Syria hold promise of more long lasting trouble that would further unsettle the entire area.

To the uninformed observer it seems bizarre that president Assad would dig his heels in and turn his guns on his own people, when he has seen the strongmen of Libya, Egypt and Iraq get toppled and death ensue. Assad’s acts against fellow Syrians are reprehensible, but who are the people? He knows Kofi Annan is right. It is clear that there are many factions and they are being assisted by external elements. Russia’s involvement with Syria goes back many decades and in the region far longer. The USA has admitted, according to the New York Times, to “increasing aid to the rebels and also to being “in talks with officials in Turkey and Israel over how to manage a Syrian government collapse”. China and Britain are part of the chess game, and the exiled Syrian Moslem Brotherhood (Brotherhood now in power in Egypt), is apparently funding arms to the rebels. But it is the Iranians who everyone is focussed on for the threat Iran poses to Israel. And then there are al Qaeda and Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately, it can only get much worse.