The patchwork quilt of the Shomali plain

A view from the top: verdant valleys dot Afghanistan’s arid expanse

Climbing from Kabul’s airport, with its wrecks of Soviet warplanes and uncleared minefields, our Hercules skims low across the villages of the Shomali plain. Each homestead is a mud-walled fortress where families live their medieval ways in safety. Peering down from the cockpit, we see: livestock and fruit trees; a water well; austere quarters; small children playing happily in the morning sun. Then we sweep away past settlements and green vines far to the east, across a barren expanse and towards the Kabul River Gorge, which drops through crevases from Kabul’s 6,000 ft plateau to the approaches of Jalalabad and Pakistan.

In a slow arc, the aircraft banks, lumbering away from its eastern route. The left wing tip touches an arid landscape where kuchi tribesmen camp in tents, camels grazing on desert grass, nomad boys tending lifestock. Across a bluff, our engines startle a thousand goats. Separated from the herdsman, they bolt into a barren expanse, black dots against the sand. Far away a dust twister rises in the morning warmth. On a hillside an abandoned village. Its broken walls and abandoned towers are sad legacies of the wars that have ravaged Afghanistan.

Nestling between low hills, we come across a verdant valley full of vineyards, a contrast to earlier barrenness. This rich land once supplied India with apricots and raisins. But its fruit trees were cover for mujahidin rebels ambushing the Soviet invaders. So one by one the orchards were levelled. Later, the mujahidin hid in irrigation ditches and ancient underground waterways, destroying Soviet helicopters and tanks with their Stinger missiles and rocket-propelled guns. So the ancient irrigation system, too, was destroyed.

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Later there was more destruction as the Shomali Plain became the battleground between Ahmad Shah Masud and the Taliban. Military advantage shifted north, towards Masud’s Panjshir, then south again, towards the capital. The two sides mined villages and fields as they manoeuvred, making the place uninhabitable. People fled villages in hordes, tramping south to the rubble of Kabul or to camps in distant Pakistan and Iran.

After the wars came the de-miners. The Halo Trust and others painstakingly removed thousands of landmines. The watercourses have been repaired, Shomali villagers have drifted back, and vineyards again prosper. Gnarled vines, once seemingly dead, revive with the life-giving water.

There is a stir in the cockpit. Our plane leaves its treetop path on a steep climb to 22,000 feet and the stark Hindu Kush. To our left, tiny in the foothills, Istalef, where medieval potters traded and a royal orchard once cultivated the fruits of the world. Village and nursery alike were destroyed in Afghanistan’s endless conflicts. But one or two of the old potteries are reviving, and a wizened king who knew gentler days still dreams of restoring his horticulture. Below, sprawling over miles are abandoned Soviet tanks, rusting on rocky hillsides. This is Charikar, northern gateway to the capital and the strategic key to the Panjshir.

Through clear skies, the Hindu Kush looms majestically before us. We are bound for snowy mountain wastes, and the great northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif lying beyond.

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The writer was the first UK ambassador to Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban. He served in Kabul in 2002 and 2003