Peshawar
Somewhere between the Hindu Kush and the Arabian Sea
I took these photographs during a two-week trip to Peshawar, Pakistan, nineteen years ago in November 1996.
At the east end of the storied Khyber Pass, this rough-edged trading town has been taken and retaken for millennia. The name Peshawar originated in the Moghul-era and means ‘frontier town’ which it definitely still is — much as it was when Alexander the Great ventured into this part of Central Asia in 327 B.C.
I visited Peshawar during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the month of total sunrise-to-sunset fasting. Most food shops and restaurants (except at tourist hotels, bus and train stations) are closed until sunset. The chorus of a muezzin calling from the nearby mosques signals the end of each day’s fasting.
Embracing some of Asia’s most impenetrable mountains and intractable peoples, Peshawar through history has been held by Persians, Afghans, and Arabs, and has been a Buddhist and Islamic center of learning.
It was also from Peshawar that Osama bin Laden led his mujahideens in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and where al-Qaeda began taking shape. The Taliban since the late 1990s has attempted to occupy the city in efforts to more decisively control northwest Pakistan.
Peshawar exudes more charm than any city in Pakistan, except possibly Lahore.
The region was the hub of both the CIA and the ISI’s covert war on the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Embracing some of Asia’s most impenetrable mountains and intractable peoples, this region of Pakistan is home to the world’s biggest autonomous tribal society, that of the fiercely independent but conspicuously hospitable Pashtuns.
Charas (above) is the name of hashish that has been hand-rubbed directly from the cannabis plant. The most popular and sought after form of charas is produced in the tribal areas of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan.
Millions of Afghans fled their nation after the Soviet invasion in 1979 and civil wars that followed.
After the US-led invasion in 2001 that ousted the Taliban, about 5 million Afghans settled in Pakistan.
The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has repatriated 3.3 million Afghans since 2002, including 120,000 from Pakistan in 2008, but some two million registered Afghan refugees remain in Pakistan. The number of unregistered refugees is unknown.
All images: Alan Dejecacion
Alan Dejecacion is a photographer based in southern California. Follow him on Flickr, Twitter and Instagram.
Dejecacion’s street photography featured on Vantage in July, 2015 — The Street Is a Theatre, Admission Free.
