The Foreign Service Journal, January 2004

t dawn, as our plane entered Northern Pakistan from China, the glaciated Karakoram massif rose abruptly from the sand waves of the Takla Makan desert and we were offered a stunning sunrise view of K-2, at 28,250 feet the world’s sec- ond highest peak. The spindrift blasted from its crest by jet stream winds was a dramatic sight indeed. A desk officer in the Bangkok Regional Diplomatic Courier Division, I was escorting newly-minted diplo- matic courier Bob Hull on his very first mission: securing classified material for Embassies Islamabad and Kabul, as well as Consulate Peshawar. The continued Indian over- flight ban on Pakistan International Airlines meant that PIA’s Bangkok to Islamabad service took a northern route over China at night. This routing ensured that our morn- ing arrival in one of the more challenging parts of the globe would be impressive. Our paired training mission was off to an inspiring start. Our first stop was Embassy Islamabad. From there, we took care of the monthly courier service to Consulate Peshawar, and then headed on to Kabul. On the Grand Trunk Road For an overland diplomatic courier trip, the Grand Trunk Road, the 1,600-mile thoroughfare from Calcutta to Kabul that has bound the Indian subcontinent togeth- er for more than five centuries, is a fine introduction to the challenges of the job. The stretch from Islamabad to Peshawar takes three hours each way and transects an intriguing landscape of dusty minaret-spired villages with bustling markets full of burka-draped women, men attired in shawal qamiz wearing Chitral hats or turbans of varying colors, and the most beautiful multicolored trucks in the world; not to mention camels, horses and donkeys hauling everything imaginable. About halfway to Peshawar the mighty, glacier-blue Indus that drains the Tibetan Plateau and the dust-brown Kabul River originating near the city of the same name merge in a steep, rocky gorge under the mammoth walls of Attock Fort. The fort was first built by the Mughals in the 1600s and is still used by the Pakistan Army to house political prisoners, including former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s husband. This was also where Alexander the Great’s Greeks crossed in 330 B.C. on their march to victory over the warrior-king Porus and his 200 battle elephants at the Jhelum River near the present-day border with India. As we neared Peshawar, the adobe refugee camps that once housed tens of thousands of Afghans were strangely quiet. On my diplomatic courier missions five years ago, the railroad tracks that separate the camps from the trunk road had been seething with humanity. Now, according to the Pakistan media, substantial numbers have returned 64 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 4 K ABUL T RAINING T RIP A DIPLOMATIC COURIER ’ S FIRST MISSION OFFERS PROVOCATIVE GEOGRAPHIC AND POLITICAL SIGHTS . B Y J AMES B. A NGELL A James B. Angell is a diplomatic courier officer in Bangkok, Thailand. He joined the Foreign Service in 1993 and has served in Washington and Frankfurt in addition to a pre- vious tour in Bangkok. His short story, “The Bone Collector,” appeared in the July-August 2001 summer fic- tion issue of the Journal .