The Cave-Dwellers of Bamian

Mohammad Daad discusses election matters outside the cave houses. Picture by Jean MacKenzie

For the cave people of Afghanistan's Central Highlands, the country's impending elections offer more a puzzle than a promise of a better life. News of the September 18 parliamentary and provincial council poll has reached them, but few seem to know what it all means.

Small wonder, for these are some of Afghanistan’s poorest people, whose home is the honeycomb of caves that pits the soaring sandstone cliffs that once housed Bamian's 2,000-year-old giant Buddhas.

Mohammad Daad, a largely toothless, grey bearded 58-year-old, is typical. He has heard of the elections but has no idea what parliament is, even though he, like others, has a voting card thanks to the efforts of local officials.

No candidate has yet come to enlighten him.

Daad is caretaker at one of the two boys’ schools in the town of Bamian, which lies some 240 kilometres west of Kabul. He earns just 1,900 afghanis, 38 US dollars, a month. He has lived in the caves for some 30 years except for the three months he and his family fled deeper into the mountains to escape the pitiless fighting between local Hazara militia and the Taleban.

"I don't know what parliament is," he said, adding when pressed that he would vote for "someone good – someone who looks good".

Unless candidates do brave the perilous paths to canvass the caves, Daad will have to check their looks on posters in the township. He and his family - wife, three daughters and two sons - like everyone else have no radio, television or electricity. And no running water or sanitation facilities either.

Lying some 2,600 metres up in the central highlands, the town is dominated by the towering cliff face, with the huge holes once occupied by the twin Buddhas, and the labyrinth of smaller caves.

Daad says that 350 to 400 families, each with an average of five members, live in the sparse caves which centuries ago were inhabited and decorated by Buddhist monks at Bamian’s monasteries, which lay at a junction on the trade and cultural route between China and India.

Other residents give similar figures for the population scattered in holes in the cliff, which is itself dwarfed by the surrounding mountains that vary from red to yellow shot, with grey and green depending on the light.

It was the monks who carved the immense Buddhas, the bigger one standing 55 metres tall, the smaller one 39 metres.

The Taleban’s first attempt to destroy them using tank fire and rockets failed in March 2001. So they drafted in local people to help finish the job.

"The Taleban troops forced me and the others living in the caves to climb high onto the statues and put white stuff [explosives] into holes in them. Then they shot at them again and blew them up," Daad told IWPR, adding that they were paid the equivalent of one dollar a day to do this.

One of his neighbours, Shakila, although only 20 years old, already has four children and is expecting her fifth shortly. She too knows more about the harshness of cave life than national or local politics. Her husband is unemployed with little chance of finding work.

"I was born in this cave, married here and I will grow old here," she said despairingly, as her children and their young friends pulled at her long, black dress, impatient to go to play in the stream that also provides their drinking water.

"Clinics are very far from us and we can't find cars here," she said. "I gave birth to three of my four children in these caves. I had the fourth at the hospital because it just wasn't possible at home."

The children are brightly dressed and, apart from their runny noses appear at least superficially healthy. They get plenty of exercise: for the young ones, the trek to and from school takes nearly two hours each way, while the older ones manage it in just under an hour.

Some try to take life in the caves philosophically.

Nineteen-year-old Nikbakht and her four-month-old baby live high on the cliff in a cave reached by a steep winding path on which loose sandstone provides only a treacherous grip. "I have to be happy here. I have no other choice," she said, holding baby Sakina close to her.

She was standing in her parents' cave, a four by two metre cavern whose whitewashed walls rise to the slightly arched, rock roof standing two metres high at the centre.

Her father, Mohammad Ayoub, himself only 35, lives here with his wife and five children. "We repatriated from Iran last year and live here because we don't have any other place to live," said Ayoub.

He at least has benefited slightly from the destruction of the Buddhas, whose debris provides him with some work.

Ayoud clears and stores the debris from the shattered large Buddha, blasted into history by the Taleban despite a world outcry. Huge boulders and chunks of rock are all that remain, some manoeuvred onto pallets and now lying at the foot of the niche which once sheltered the statue.

"I am paid 200 afghanis, four dollars, a day, for doing this and that's how I earn my living," said Ayoub.

He has fitted out the entrance to his cave with a wooden frame boasting a glass door and window so that the sun dispels the gloom, at least during daylight. Inside, a brightly coloured, machine-made carpet, a wall-hanging and tin storage boxes topped with blankets and cushions make up most of the family's belongings. A bare narrow strip just inside the door gives space for cooking on a ring powered by a small gas cylinder.

Despite her acceptance of her life, Nikbakht worries about the future. She and her husband, who is jobless, sold all her jewellery when they returned from Iran and have since lived on the proceeds.

Both her room and that of her parents open at right angles onto the same rock platform. Nikbakht's room is slightly larger but equally sparse, with just a flimsy curtain over the entrance. A red carpet, two thick blankets and cushions lie against each side wall. A storage container and a mirror on one wall complete her home.

One metre down from a communal area shared by a neighbour, a dark, narrow tunnel leads into a further small hole in the rocks. This is the stable for the family donkey which each day stumbles up the cliff path, heavily laden with tin containers of water from the stream. Below, at the side of the path, is a frightening drop of several metres.

Seventeen-year-old Rahmatullah, who lives nearby in his family cave, told IWPR of his determination to battle the poverty and ills that afflict people here.

"I go to school and want to become a doctor in the future. And I want to serve all the people who have health problems," said the sixth-grade school student.

As the August evenings bring an early autumn chill, the cave people are preparing for the harshness of winter high in the Hindu Kush.

Outside on parapets or on rough walls by each dark entrance, cakes of dung from donkeys and other animals are drying. Some are shaped like shallow inverted bowls. Others, dung mixed with charcoal, are formed into oblong bricks.

As the snow line creeps down the mountains, portable tin stoves will burn this fuel to provide warmth and cooking. They will also add to the signs of human habitation – the black soot stains that mark the homes of people whom progress forgot.

Wahidullah Amani is an IWPR reporter based in Kabul.