Alexander the Great had just led his armies to victory in India when he decided to take a shortcut back to Babylon through the Gedrosian desert.
Some 30,000 men followed him into the blistering wasteland, where Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan now meet. Fewer than half emerged alive from what was then – and still is – the most dangerous corner on Earth. The rest perished from starvation, thirst and heat exhaustion.
Since Alexander’s misfortune in 324BC, the merciless dustbowl has gained a reputation as a place to be avoided at all costs. And this week, a new and deadly danger emerged there – an exchange of missile fire between Iran and Pakistan in a region already teetering on the brink of all-out war.
Iran claimed it was targeting rebels on the Pakistan side of the border. Pakistan replied with rockets aimed at rebels in Iran. The once-deserted region is no longer uninhabited, but remains an ungoverned hideaway for smugglers, kidnappers and terrorists.
Governments in Kabul, Karachi and Tehran see the Baluch people now living there as traitors and separatists and the region is regularly the cause of tensions and disputes between the three countries. The few Westerners who have ventured into the territory describe it as like something out of Mad Max – a post-apocalyptic desert controlled by armed gangs and desperate people.
On the Afghan side, Nimruz province is in the grip of drug lords such as Haji Juma Khan. His gang, described by the US as “the world’s top traffickers”, ran a vast empire while paying the Taliban for protection with drugs and weapons.
The area is also known for kidnappings. Many outsiders come to the area with the intention of fleeing the country, and with money to pay the people smugglers. Journalist Sune Rasmussen once heard how the kidnappers of one businessmen gave him a tube to breathe, then buried him in a hole. By the time his family had paid the ransom, he was dead.
An employee from the International Organisation for Migration described the fear and paranoia among non-Baluch people living there. “The more friends you have, the more problems you have. You can’t trust anyone here.”
Since the Taliban reclaimed power in Afghanistan, thousands more have been arriving in the region, desperate to flee despite the dangers that await them. And since Iran started cracking down on refugees, there have been increasing reports of Afghans shot and killed by border guards.
In May 2020, Iran reportedly stopped a group of 50 migrants and ordered them all to jump into the Harirud river that flows back into Afghanistan. Some 23 drowned, pushing tensions even higher. Wahid Qatali, governor of Afghanistan’s Herat province, said: “Our people, who you put in the river, were not Osama bin Laden. One day we will settle this.”
Meanwhile, the oppression of the Baluch people living Iran and Pakistan is often just as brutal. In 2016, Iranian vice president Shahindokht Molaverdi claimed that “every single man” in a Baluch village on the Iranian side of the border had been executed over drug-related offences.
She added: “Their children are potential drug traffickers as well, as they will want to seek revenge and provide money for their families. We do not support these people.” Over the Pakistan border, too, violence has caused at least 15,000 to flee the area.
In the last decade thousands of Baluch have disappeared, allegedly abducted by security forces, their tortured bodies appearing days later in what has come to be known as the ‘Kill and Dump Policy’.
On Tuesday, Iran claimed the target of its strikes into Pakistan’s Baluchistan province was separatist group Jaish al-Adl, or Army of Justice – an ethnic Baluch Sunni militant group. Two children were killed.
Iran claimed it had “only targeted Iranian terrorists on the soil of Pakistan” – a reference to the troublesome Baluch, whose people inhabit both sides of the border. Two days later, Pakistan launched retaliatory attacks, saying it hit “terrorist hideouts” on Thursday. Five adults and four children died.
Another uptick in violence between Iran and Afghanistan came to a head last May when gunfire was exchanged, leaving several border guards from both sides dead. Anthropologist Thomas Barfield, of Boston University in the US, said the Baluch lands are seen as strategically important.
He added: “In Pakistan the Baluch have been fighting for independence for 20 years, with insurgents finding shelter on the Iranian side. Iran, on the other hand, mistrust the Baluch because they are Sunnis not Shias. In Afghanistan, the Baluch traditionally smuggle drugs and arms, and now people.
“Iran is one of the biggest consumers of opium in the world and the Baluch are sitting on the border between them and one of the largest opium producers.”
There are other reasons why the land is so disputed. Pakistan recently built a major port in Baluchistan with the help of the Chinese, and Chinese convoys have been attacked by militants. A lot of Pakistan’s natural gas also comes from Baluchistan. Meanwhile, Iran has constructed a road from the port of Chabahar to the Afghan border. Before, Pakistan had a monopoly on freight to landlocked Afghanistan.
Perhaps the greatest concern, though, is water. Iran and Afghanistan are engaged in a decades-long dispute over the Helmand River, on which Iran depends for irrigation and whose watershed is located in the Baluch’s remote Afghan territory.
The Taliban are already starting to build dams to keep all the water for themselves. So more than 2,300 years since Alexander realised his greatest mistake, the world’s scariest corner remains just as dangerous…and certainly not a shortcut to anywhere.