People-smuggling worldwide is a $4 billion-a-year industry, nearly as profitable as drug and arms trafficking. And no country has a deeper history of smuggling of all sorts than Afghanistan. Contraband televisions, gasoline, opium, AK-47s, as well as illegal migrants: all are ferried along remote trade routes that date back centuries. Western officials are just beginning to appreciate the dimensions of the problem. “Now we’re seeing illegal immigration as a terrorism concern,” said a foreign diplomat in Islamabad. “Even people who emigrate legitimately–doctors, lawyers, computer engineers–could have terrorist links. What about all those unknown people being smuggled in, who haven’t gone through controlled procedures?”
“Controlled procedures” don’t fit the ethos in places like Peshawar, a haven for guerrillas, spies and religious zealots on the Pakistani frontier with Afghanistan. Peshawar’s mazelike bazaars are home to some 30 people-smugglers, and innumerable forgers who operate out of innocuous-looking portrait studios and photocopy shops. Shady middlemen find corrupt diplomats willing to sell visas, which are available for China, Dubai, Thailand and Ukraine (those for Ukraine go for $4,000–up from $2,500 prior to Sept. 11).
How hard is it to navigate this system? Last week I obtained a complete set of fraudulent Afghan documents. The process was easy. First I had to get passport photos taken of myself looking vaguely Afghan. The ruling Taliban militia generally forbids photographs showing human images, but as a practical matter, Taliban officials also acknowledge that a travel document showing a woman covered head to toe in a burqa will not pass muster at immigration counters. So they make an exception for passport photos. At a dingy studio in the Kissakhani Market–the Bazaar of the Storytellers–I sat for portraits dressed in a loose-fitting Pakistani outfit with a dupatta, or shawl, over my hair.
The photos were handed over to my “agent,” and a set of fraudulent documents ordered up. Now I was “Mariana Ali” from Bamian province, where many Afghans look vaguely Chinese. A genuine Afghan passport with my photo in it cost $275. Backup papers included a Kabul ID card ($56), a birth certificate ($8) and a driver’s license ($9). Then came two additional documents to support my plea for asylum in the West: a bright red membership card for the now-defunct Afghan Communist Party, and a letter from Taliban intelligence summoning “Mariana Ali” for interrogation. The letter demanded that she stop secretly teaching girls English, and that she bring all of her students’ documents to the police. “These will get you asylum,” promised my agent’s helper, who explained that Taliban repression has been particularly harsh on ex-communists and anyone caught trying to educate females.
The smuggling network even includes an escrow-type system designed to protect illegal migrants from losing their money if a journey ends in failure. A “client” pays the full amount of his or her trip to an illegal hawala money dealer, who holds the funds until the migrant arrives at the appropriate destination. Only then is the smuggler paid in full. If the operation fails, the intermediary keeps the money and the “travel agent” tries again to get his client to the proper destination.
Bin Laden’s network has been spiriting people around the globe for decades. Malaysia offers one possible transit route: the government there allows Muslims from Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Middle East to enter without a visa on “social visits” for up to six months. Another route runs through Iran and Turkey, and Bosnia is a well-established smuggling hub. Bin Laden’s followers can even cross the front lines in the Afghan war to get into Tajikistan or Uzbekistan, then onward to Ukraine and Europe. They simply pay a premium to a people-smuggling agent from the enemy Northern Alliance. “It’s a way for the Northern Alliance to build its war chest without even fighting,” says a Peshawar agent.
The Sept. 11 attacks–and increased vigilance on the part of Western immigration officials since then–have put a crimp in the Afghan people trade. In Peshawar, standard rates have jumped. A trip to London, the destination of choice, used to be nearly $18,000; to the United States, $21,000; to Germany or Australia, $13,000. But since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Pakistan’s people-smugglers are wary of moving their clients for fear of getting caught. They’re charging more than $24,000 for an illegal trip to America, and there’s a long wait to get anywhere.
And what about bin Laden, who may be in the market for a trip out himself? Smugglers I interviewed in Peshawar say that for someone as infamous as bin Laden, plastic surgery would be required. But they insist it’s doable. The trip would just cost a lot more than the usual fare.
