Killer landslides !

Gulnesa Beg the only girl to survive a landslide in a village of 750 people in the remote Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan. The  monstrous landslide  killed over 350 residents, mainly women and girls. Gulnesa is with her Father, her only relative to survive. Photo: Bob McKerrow.

On Wednesday 15 June 2010 an earthquake in West Papua, Indonesia, triggered a landslide that engulfed and killed 17 people travelling in a bus. It brought to mind the worst landslide I have seen which occured in Afghanistan in 1996. Here are the notes from my diary on that tragic day.

Recently I accompanied Abdul Basir on a difficult field trip to the mountain village of Qarluk in Badakshan. It took us four days to reach this village from Kabul by plane, landcruiser and the last day on foot or horse. The village of 750 people in the remote Hindu Kush had been hit some days before by a monstrous landslide that killed over 350 residents. All except three of the women in the village had been killed, along with a number of children, as they were in their homes while male members of the household were out tending animal and crops. The killer landslide silently swept down the hillside engulfing the whole village. Gulnesa Beg, the only girl to survive, was picked up by a dust and mud cloud, and hurled to safey, breaking her arm as she fell.


As we arrived in Qarluk, the survivors of the landslide, mainly men, were huddled together in an atmosphere of grief and bewilderment. Basir and I hugged them one by one and then he spoke to them with compassion and dignity. He told them that we in the Red Cross Movement were grieving with them and that they must take heart. Basir, in his humble way, gave those men hope at a time when their whole lives had been plunged into darkness and despair.

The men who survived the landslides sit outside their tents. The village covered in mud is the light flatish area to the left of centre in the photo, Photo: Bob McKerrow

The next day, after distributing relief supplies to each surviving family, Abdul Bashir mounted a borrowed horse and rode over a high mountain pass to two other villages in the next valley of Teshkan, where 7,000 people were under threat from a tottering mass of rock and mud high above their homes.

Abdul Basir (left), Zalmai my interpretor (centre), and village chief (right),  riding over Teshkan Pass in Badkhshan Province in Afghanistan. Photo: Bob McKerrow

Basir gave the village leaders support and encouraged them to evacuate immediately. Then he walked two hours along a path on the precipitous mountainside before regaining the track and his horse.

Land or mudslides are killers, especially in mountainous lands where over-grazing, improper terracing, inappropriate irrigation and,  deforestation, are destroying the natural run off of water. These modified mountain water catchment areas, are further being affected by climate change. Villages perched on steep hillsides, run the risk of slumping, or being hit by l;andslides, as sub-terrainean water courses destablise hillsides. Often an earthquake is the trigger.

"Increasing rainfall intensities and frequencies, coupled with population growth can drastically increase landslide-associated casualties, especially in developing countries, where pressure on land resources often lead to slope cultivation and slope agriculture which are very much prone to landslide disasters," according to the International Consortium on Landslides (ICL), United Nations University, Kyoto University and UNESCO scientists

The high Hindu Kush mountains of Badakhshan from Teshkan Pass. Photo: Bob McKerrow

Almost 100 experts from 14 nations, representing scores of global institutions and governments, gathered at UN University in Tokyo January 18-20 in 2005  to set international priorities for mitigating human and financial landslide losses and to promote a global network of International Programmes on Landslides.


The meeting marks the first anniversary of the landmark UN World Conference on Disaster Reduction in Kobe, Japan.

Asia suffered 220 landslides in the past century – by far the most of any world region – but those in North, Central and South America have caused the most deaths and injuries (25,000+) while Europe’s are the most expensive – causing average damage of almost $23 million per landslide.

And experts attending the Tokyo conference warned that climate change-related increases in the number and intensity of typhoons and hurricanes will produce in tandem a rising danger of landslides in future.

"Increasing rainfall intensities and frequencies, coupled with population growth can drastically increase landslide-associated casualties, especially in developing countries, where pressure on land resources often lead to slope cultivation and slope agriculture which are very much prone to landslide disasters," according to the International Consortium on Landslides (ICL), United Nations University, Kyoto University and UNESCO scientists organizing the three-day international meeting on landslide prevention and damage mitigation.


Climate change may promote landslides in other ways as well. A December landslide that claimed 60 lives in Yemen was blamed on mountain boulders shifting due to changes in temperature. Other landslide inducements include earthquakes, volcanic eruption, poorly planned developments, and mining.

Among natural disasters, landslides are the seventh ranked killer, after windstorms, floods, droughts, earthquakes, volcano and extreme temperature, claiming 800 to 1,000 lives on average in each of the last 20 years. An average of 940 people annually were killed by landslides in the decade 1993 to 2002, most of those victims from Asia.

Large-scale landslides along coasts or in oceans can cause tsunamis; the deadliest on record was caused by a landslide in the Unzen volcano in 1792 which killed 16,000 Japanese, due to landslide debris and the resulting tsunami. Landslides occurring at the top of a volcano can trigger eruptions, most famously that of the USA’s Mount St. Helens in 1980.

Landslides also threaten some of the world’s most precious cultural sites, including Egypt’s famous Valley of the Kings, home to the Pharaohs Tombs; Lishan China, site of the Huaqing Palace, built in the Tang dynasty (618-907); and Machu Picchu, Peru, the mountaintop fortress city of the ancient Incas.

"While all regions experience landslide disasters, the harm they cause is most acute in developing countries, where the knowledge base required to identify landslide prone areas is often either non-existent or fragmentary," says Badaoui Roubhan, Chief of the UNESCO's Disaster Reduction section.

Expeditions and climbs in the Hindu Kush - Afghanistan

John Tinker (l) and Ian Clarke with Mir Samir in the background. The route they attempted was a ridge on the face just to the left of centre to the left of a small avalanche in a snow gulley: Photo: Bob McKerrow

FROM THE AMERICAN ALPINE JOURNAL 1995

Mir Samir and ascent of P500. After years when it was too dangerous to enter the mountains of Afghanistan, New Zealander Bob McKerrow and Englishmen Ian Clarke and Jon Tinker headed for Mir Samir in the Hindu Kush. McKerrow is head of the International Red Cross in Afghanistan and Clarke is a former Royal Marine, now head of the Halo Trust mine clearance organisation in Afghanistan.

Clarke and Tinker in a burned out tank at the Salang Pass. Photo: Bob McKerrow

Tinker has worked in the country a number of times in the last seven years.The three climbers set out from Kabul on September 23, 1994, acclimatizing near the Salang Pass before setting out for Parian in the upper Panjchir.

The start of the Mir Samir trip. Two horses with supplies are watched by a gunner protecting the valley. Photo: Bob McKerrow

We spent a few night in the Panjcher valley. This trigger-happy commander put us up fo a few nights free. Photo: Bob McKerrow

There four horses were hired to carry food and equipment up the Chamar valley to base camp at 3,400 m. Clarke's skills were put to the test when the saw air-dropped scatterable anti-personnel mines.


Tinker with parts of land mines which we found scattered through the region. Photo: Bob McKerrow

Bob McKerrow (l) with John Tinker at Base Camp on Mir Samir. Photo: Bob McKerrow

They established a high camp at 4,300 m on September 29.Because of the deep snow, the two Englishmen made slow progress the next day to bivouac at 4,900 meters on an unclimbed snow route on the southwest face of Mir Samir. On October 1 they made a summit attempt.but unseasonable deep snow turned the back at 5200 meters, some 600 meters from the summit.

< The donkey that carried our supplies in and Mir Samir in the background. Photo: Bob McKerrow


While Clarke and Tinker were climbing Mir Samir, McKerrow climbed an unclimbed peak at approximately 5000 metres, a prominent feature when viewed from the Chamar Valley. (end of article from American Alpine Club Journal, 1995.) I couldn't resist putting the photo of Eric Newby taken on their attempt on Mir Samir in 1956 and an extract from his obituary in the New York Times, October 24, 2006.

Fifty years ago, in the summer of 1956, Mr. Newby set out on the trip that would make him famous: a voyage by station wagon, foot and horseback to climb Mir Samir, a 20,000-foot peak in Nuristan, a wild region in northeastern Afghanistan. The fact that he had never climbed a mountain did not deter him in the slightest.

Mir Samir. Photo: Bob McKerrow
Mr. Newby chronicled the trip in “A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush,” published in Britain by Secker & Warburg in 1958 and in the United States by Doubleday the next year. As in all his work, the narrative was marked by genial self-effacement and overwhelming understatement.

Bob McKerrow reading some pages from Eric Newby's A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush to children whose Grandfathers helped Newby. We retraced a large part of their journey, Photo: Bob McKerrow


Reviewing the book in The New York Times Book Review in 1959, William O. Douglas, a noted travel memoirist who by day was a justice of the United States Supreme Court, called the book “a chatty, humorous and perceptive account.” He added: “Even the unsanitary hotel accommodations, the infected drinking water, the unpalatable food, the inevitable dysentery are lively, amusing, laughable episodes.”


Here is the article I wrote on various climbs in Afghanistan.

No foreigners have climbed in Afghanistan since the Soviets arrived in late 1978. I had heard about the passes and valleys strewn with land mines so it was with some trepidation I embarked from Kabul in October 1994 on what was probably the first expedition into the Hindu Kush for at least 17 years.
Roads in the Hindu Kush are difficult to negotiate in winter. We are heading up to the Salang Tunnel which is the only tunnel through the Hindu Kush. Photo: Bob McKerrow


I travelled with two British climbers, Ian Clarke and John Tinker, to the Chamar valley for an attempt Mir Samir, a peak made famous by Eric Newby in his book, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush. Tinker was fresh off an ascent of Everest by a new route on the north side and Clarke was head of a British Mine clearance organisation in Afghanistan and was a necessary companion as the area had received large amounts of small scatterable mines, dropped from Soviet aircrafts to prevent the freedom fighters crossing the mountain passes.

Having lunch at our base camp with a bunch of Pashtoon soldiers returning from just being released from prison in the north, to their home in the east of Afghanistan, a journey of 400 km through remote wild mountain areas. John Tinker left, and Ian Clarke 3rd from left. Photo: Bob McKerrow

Our safety was dependent on his knowledge of mines and where battles had taken place. Tinker and Clarke attempted an unclimbed face on Mir Samir and got surprising high considering the unseasonably soft snow that had fallen.

The mountains to the extreme left of Mir Samir at the head of the Chamar Valley. Photo: Bob McKerrow

While the others were attempting Mir Samir, I climbed an unnamed peak around 5000 metres and looked over to the enticing mountains of Nuristan, formerly Kafirstan. We explored a number of neighbouring regions with the hope of returning to do further climbing. .In June 1995 I did another trip was Clarke, crossing from the Panjcher valley to southern Badakshan by way of the 4260 m Anjuman Pass.

Early 1995, Ian Clarke and I did another trip over the Anjuman Pass on a journey towards the Wakhan Corridor. Photo: Bob McKerrow

It was a unique opportunity to explore this spectacular part of the Hindu Kush and check routes on the major peaks in the area ranging from 5900 to 6500 metres.

A rather dubious group we came across. Photo: Bob McKerrow

One of the best peaks in the area in Kohi Bandak. The highlight of the trip was when returning back over the Anjuman Pass when at about 3400 metres in high alpine pastures we met about 50 Kuchi (nomad) families on their annual journey to this area. Some were on the move, other camping in their black, low-slung goat hair tents. We passed strings of camels with babies and young children with intricately embroidered bonnets, tied on the backs.


Camped at a lake on the northern side of the Hindu Kush. We crossed by Kotali Anjuman, the low pass on the right. Photo: Bob McKerrow


Kuchi nomads wending their way through the Hindu Kush.

Young girls with page-boy style hair cuts, flashed their shy blue eyes at us as we passed.

We stopped in tents to share pots of tea and watched how they cared for their animals. Young goats were inside the tent, sheltering from the hot sun, women tenderly carried young lambs in their arms, and an old lame sheep, rode past on the back of a camel. Over the hillsides women and children were gathering alpine herbs, wood, leaves and wild vegetables. Nearby an old women was weaving a carpet. This is what the mountains of Afghanistan are about, tough friendly mountain people who have a symbiotic relations with the hills. They name their children after the mountains, names such as ‘Kohzad’, meaning of the mountains.


Kuchi nomads on the move.

Despite the warmth of the people, many disasters befall them. Thousands are killed annually by avalanches and landslides. In late March word reached Kabul that a massive landslides had hit the village of Qarluk, situated high in the mountains of Badakhshan.
I was part of a Red Cross survey team that walked and rode by horse to the site. The whole village had been engulfed killing 350 people, all women and children. The landslide occurred at 11 am when the men and boys were out in the fields and the women. We arrived to find only one female survivor, 11 year old Gulnesa Beg, her arm broken in two places and with her good arm, hugging her father. A whole village wiped out by nature. Here we spent weeks running a relief operation to assist during the emergency phase and started helping these rugged Hazara people put their lives back together again.
In August this year, the highlight of my time in Afghanistan was a trip to Nuristan, the legendary 'land of light'.

> Parun Valley, Nuristan. Photo: Bob McKerrow

The Afghan Red Cross is establishing a medical clinic in the Parun valley and I went with our medical staff. Nuristan hugs the southern side of the Hindu Kush and is been isolated from the rest of the country. Six main valleys make up Nuristan each with their own language and for four to five months of the year, the mountain passes in and out of Nuristan are blocked. In is an area where snow panthers, wolves and fox thrive in forests almost untouched by human hand, this is paradise on earth. These blue-eyed and sometimes blond haired people claim they are either descendants of the original Aryans, while others say they are descendants of Alexander the Great. In 1895 they were forcibly converted to Islam and even today their are remnants of their former pagan past. Nuristani villages cling to mountain sides, sometimes perched on peak-tops. a legacy of the past to avoid invaders. Like the mountain Ta jiks, the Nuristanis are true mountaineers. In 1889 George Robertson the author of the book ‘Kafirs of the Hindu Kush’, described the Nuristanis as" 'magnificent mountaineers<-"' because of their mountain skills, fitness and agility.< >
Skiing near the Salang Pass. Photo: Bob McKerrow

The northern entrance to the Salang Tunnel and the men who keep the road open. February 1996. Bob McKerrow

A soldier we met on the way. Photo: Bob McKerrow


Mckerrow and Tinker sorting out gear at Base Camp. Photo: Bob McKerrow

The writer sitting on an old Soviet tank. Photo: Bob McKerrow

Our last climb in Afghanistan

Various Short Walks in the Hindu Kush

A photo kindly provided by the successful Noshaq 7492m Expedition in 2000.

My affair with the mountains of Afghanistan started in 1976 when I first visited the country to work for the International Red Cross in villages destroyed by earthquakes in the Hindu Kush. In 1993 I got the chance to work again in Afghanistan and have almost been there two years. During this time my work with refugees, displaced people and victims of natural disasters have given me the privilege of crossing many major passes and criss-crossing the Hindu Kush on numerous occasions and spending time in the lesser, but equally spectacular ranges. Most climbers have heard of Afghanistan's Hindu Kush but some of the lesser known ranges, between 6500m and 3000m, provide some of the most spectacular scenery and is home to hardy mountain people.


Mountains dominate the landscape of Afghanistan and these massive ramparts have shaped the lives, culture and the minds of the Afghans for thousands of years. People and carpets are named after mountains, poets write about them, artists paint them, legends abound and grow and conquering Kings fell homesick for their grandeur and beauty.

Mountains cover 653 000 sq. km and dominate the central and eastern parts covering 75% of the country. It is a land-locked country lying between 29o 35' and 38o 40' northern latitude and between 60o 31' and 75o 00' eastern longitude on the mountainous and desert areas where the Iranian plateau borders with the mountainous systems of central Asia.

Afghanistan is bounded on the north by the Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan (2380km), on the north-east by China (96km) and India (102)km, on the south and east by Pakistan (2310), and on the west by Iran (925 km) Afghanistan is roughly quadrilateral in shape, with the long finger called the Wakhan stretching east wards, bounded by Russia, China, Pakistan. The mountain systems are quite complex and erratic, but generally run north-east to south-west.

At the feet of these great mountains ranges civilisations were born, nurtured shaped or dramatically changed. The mountains were the birthplace of great religious thinkers and philosophers. Zoroastrianism and Brahminism owe their origion to Afghanistan and the two religious classics, the Rigveda and Avesta were written here. Buddhist monasteries, many carved out of solid rock, are scattered through the mountains. With the coming of Islam, it wasn't long before the mystical Sufi's with their Islamic-influenced spiritual and poetic philosophy, came from Iraq to the mountains of Afghanistan, where it was strengthened further.

The mountain passes of Afghanistan have echoed to the tramp of would-be conquerors on the march between the barren steppes of Asia and the fertile plains of India - Alexander, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, nineteenth-century British mule trains and twentieth- century Soviet tanks. The Hindu Kush is a land with a history of violence; a land of startling colours, strong passions, fierce independence where the mountains have shaped the people.

But it was travellers like the Chinese Buddhist pilgrims Fah-Hian and Sung-Yun in the 4th century, Marco Polo in the 12th and Ibn Battuta in the 13th century, who left behind records of their travels with quite remarkable detail of the mountain passes, the mountains and the people and popularised this ancient land.

Later came a more recent era, the 18th and 19th centuries, an era where madness was considered close to Godliness and there are plenty of examples of eccentric European travellers like the intrepid Alexander Gardiner in his tartan jacket and trousers who courted Kings, Kafirs and Khans and the English religious zealot Wolff who walked naked from Bamian to Kabul, a trip of a week or so.

No one has described this part of the world (Hindu Kush) better than W.K. Fraser-Tytler, a former British minister to Afghanistan. he wrote, "a wild desolate country of great peaks and deep valleys, of precipitous gorges and rushing grey-green rivers; a barren, beautiful country of intense sunlight, clear sparkling air and wonderful colouring, as shadows lengthen and rocks turn gold and pink and mauve in the light of the setting sun."

No foreigners have climbed in Afghanistan since the Soviets arrived in late 1978. I had heard about the passes and valleys strewn with land mines so it was with some trepidation I embarked from Kabul in October 1994 on what was probably the first expedition into the Hindu Kush for at least 17 years. I travelled with two British climbers, Ian Clarke and John Tinker, to the Chamar valley for an attempt Mir Samir, a peak made famous by Eric Newby in his book, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush. Tinker was fresh off an ascent of Everest by a new route on the north side and Clarke was head of a British Mine clearance organisation in Afghanistan and was a necessary companion as the area had received large amounts of small scatterable mines, dropped from Soviet aircrafts to prevent the freedom fighters crossing the mountain passes. Our safety was dependent on his knowledge of mines and where battles had taken place. Tinker and Clarke attempted an unclimbed face on Mir Samir and got surprising high considering the unseasonably soft snow that had fallen. While the others were attempting Mir Samir, I climbed an unnamed peak around 5000 metres and looked over to the enticing mountains of Nuristan, formerly Kafirstan. We explored a number of neighbouring regions with the hope of returning to do further climbing. .In June 1995 I did another trip was Clarke, crossing from the Panjcher valley to southern Badakshan by way of the 4260 m Anjuman Pass. It was a unique opportunity to explore this spectacular part of the Hindu Kush and check routes on the major peaks in the area ranging from 5900 to 6500 metres. One of the best peaks in the area in Kohi Bandak. The highlight of the trip was when returning back over the Anjuman Pass when at about 3400 metres in high alpine pastures we met about 50 Kuchi (nomad) families on their annual journey to this area. Some were on the move, other camping in their black, low-slung goat hair tents. We passed strings of camels with babies and young children with intricately embroidered bonnets, tied on the backs. Young girls with page-boy style hair cuts, flashed their shy blue eyes at us as we passed. We stopped in tents to share pots of tea and watched how they cared for their animals. Young goats were inside the tent, sheltering from the hot sun, women tenderly carried young lambs in their arms, and an old lame sheep, rode past on the back of a camel. Over the hillsides women and children were gathering alpine herbs, wood, leaves and wild vegetables. Nearby an old women was weaving a carpet. This is what the mountains of Afghanistan are about, tough friendly mountain people who have a symbiotic relations with the hills. They name their children after the mountains, names such as ‘Kohzad’, meaning of the mountains.

Despite the warmth of the people, many disasters befall them. Thousands are killed annually by avalanches and landslides. In late March word reached Kabul that a massive landslides had hit the village of Qarluk, situated high in the mountains of Badakhshan.
I was part of a Red Cross survey team that walked and rode by horse to the site. The whole village had been engulfed killing 350 people, all women and children. The landslide occurred at 11 am when the men and boys were out in the fields and the women. We arrived to find only one female survivor, 11 year old Gulnesa Beg, her arm broken in two places and with her good arm, hugging her father. A whole village wiped out by nature. Here we spent weeks running a relief operation to assist during the emergency phase and started helping these rugged Hazara people put their lives back together again.

In August this year, the highlight of my time in Afghanistan was a trip to Nuristan, the legendary 'land of light'. The Afghan Red Cross is establishing a medical clinic in the Parun valley and I went with our medical staff. Nuristan hugs the southern side of the Hindu Kush and is been isolated from the rest of the country. Six main valleys make up Nuristan each with their own language and for four to five months of the year, the mountain passes in and out of Nuristan are blocked. In is an area where snow panthers, wolves and fox thrive in forests almost untouched by human hand, this is paradise on earth. These blue-eyed and sometimes blond haired people claim they are either descendants of the original Aryans, while others say they are descendants of Alexander the Great. In 1895 they were forcibly converted to Islam and even today their are remnants of their former pagan past. Nuristani villages cling to mountain sides, sometimes perched on peak-tops. a legacy of the past to avoid invaders. Like the mountain Ta
jiks, the Nuristanis are true mountaineers. In 1889 George Robertson the author of the book ‘Kafirs of the Hindu Kush’, described the Nuristanis as" 'magnificent mountaineers<-"' because of their mountain skills, fitness and agility.
In my office is in Kabul, situated at 1800 metres I am so often distracted from my work by the surrounding mountain ranges that soar to just over 4000 metres. On Friday, the only day off during the week, it is possible to climb among the various 4000 metres peaks in the Paghman range from where you get spectacular views of the Hindu Kush and Hazarajat area. Climbing 4000 metre peaks in a day makes living in Kabul a joy. Also for the enthusiastic skier, a two hour drive takes you to the Salang Pass at 3,878 metres an excellent ski-mountaineering area. My good friend Ian Clarke the mine clearance expert gives the opinion that when the area is likely to have land-mines, if it is covered with snow, and you are on skis, it is almost impossible to trigger of a mine as the body-weight is evenly distributed. Clarke did a lot of telemark skiing in the area between 1993 and 1995 in the Salang Pass are before taking up a ski-instructors job at Cadrona, near Wanaka, for the New Zealand winter of 1995.

Mountain Roadman

Here is a poem from my book on Afghanistan about a mountain roadman. I met this man at about 3,800 metres in the Hindu Kush mountain building a high mountain road with an old and worn shovel. It moved me greatly. Bob

Mountain Roadman

Flesh against wood and metal
His mettle against mountains of rock
Now broken in body and spirit
He who carved these roads aloft

His face was as worn as his shovel
Building roads in the Hindu Kush
And his ageing back bent double
From all the boulders he'd pushed

His reward but a sear of flour a day
Received humbly in callused hands
As he prays, "Allah O Akbar"
His reward can't be in this land

Anjouman, Badakhshan, June 1995

It is published in my book, Mountains of our Mind - Afghanistan, published by tara press, New Delhi. The book can be purchased through the website www.indiaresearchpress