The Foreign Service Journal, September 2004

of Foreign Affairs officials responsible for issuing the American journalists entry visas. The relief workers fared slightly better, thanks to the embassy’s strenuous efforts (reflecting how high a priority humanitarian assistance was). The American employees of USAID’s partners who had left at the end of September, were replaced by humanitarian relief workers funded by USAID. One enterprising group of relief workers displaced from Afghanistan closed their field offices in Afghanistan’s Balkh province and flew them- selves to Pakistan; from there, they traveled to the UAE, where they obtained tourist visas to Ashgabat. They planned to work with USAID and the U.N. to deliver relief supplies to the Afghans until the fighting died down and they could return. All’s Quiet on the Afghan Border We were keenly aware of U.N. estimates that as many as 50,000 Afghan refugees might soon be displaced into Turkmenistan, many of them ethnic Turkmen already con- centrated mostly along the border. They had been nomadic tribes that had crossed freely back and forth until the Soviet Union closed the border in the 1930s. But most of our discussions with the Turkmenistanis about organizing relief efforts went nowhere, as every government office was occupied with preparing for the celebrations. However, the government did facilitate a trip we made on Halloween 2001 to assess the situation along the Turkmen-Afghan border — our first journey outside the capital since 9/11. I knew we would be riding in a Soviet-made helicopter that had probably last seen service during the Soviet- Afghan war. The morning I was to go to the airport, I was overtaken with a moment of anxiety. Had the helicopter been maintained since the collapse of the Soviet Union? All this was a long way from being a government lawyer safely behind a desk, looking through the Code of Federal Regulations! My anxiety got the better of me, and I wrote an “if-something-should-happen” letter to my daughter Charlotte, now 3 years old. I tried to tell her everything she might want to know about me and what advice I thought she might need — all in the span of five minutes. Our embassy delegation flew from Ashgabat to a town called Mary to board the helicopter. It looked like a giant bulging insect that had been painted in a mixed desert F O C U S 60 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 4 Above: Trucks line up to receive humanitarian relief supplies. Right: Humanitarian cargo is unloaded for transport to Afghanistan. Bottom Right: Interior of C-17 after offload of food supplies. Below: John Kropf (right) with crew members of the first C-17 relief flight to arrive in Ashgabat, from Charleston, S.C.