US dollar smooths rugged way over the old silk road

The border guard in the emerald green uniform shook his head.

Bekobod was not an international crossing point. We would have to go back to Tashkent. "Give him $50," our driver whispered. Minutes later we were stopped by a second guard, whom we mistook for a Tajik. He too was an Uzbek, though wearing bright yellow and brown camouflage, and he too wanted a crisp $50.

A colleague on the Paris-Tashkent flight and I decided to share the cost of a car and driver to Dushanbe, but we didn't realise how costly it would be. When we reached the third border guard, I commented on his US-issue "chocolate chip" combat fatigues. "I'm an American boy," the Tajik grinned, baring a mouthful of gold teeth.

That was when it started to get unpleasant. Two unsmiling Tajiks - in yet another variety of green camouflage and with pistols at their hips - ordered my colleague into their cinderblock hut and clanged the metal door shut. I suddenly remembered my Paris travel agent reading the Quai d'Orsay advisory to me. She could not sell airline tickets to Tajikistan "in view of the instability in the country, including the taking of hostages".

While I was wondering what to do if the French correspondent was kidnapped, the border guards demanded to see his Uzbek currency declaration. The Uzbeks, Tajiks and Afghans have caught on to the fact that the journalists swarming into their countries in anticipation of US military action carry large amounts of cash. The old silk road across central Asia is bandit country - and most of the bandits wear uniforms.

The two guards split the pile of $100 bills and started to count them. "How much do you want?" my friend wisely asked, in the hope of preserving at least some of his reporting budget. Fifty dollars each, they answered. We left quickly, but seeing more uniforms ahead wondered if it was harder to go forward or go back.

In the end we pressed on to Dushanbe, a 12-hour drive on a rutted dirt and asphalt track, through jagged, 3,000-metre peaks and cliffs with drops so sheer I had to close my eyes for long stretches. Our old Lada broke down twice in this wilderness, and I noticed the taxi's licence plate holder. "In God We Trust" it said, in English.

It was a joy to arrive at the former Soviet Intourist Hotel in Dushanbe, despite the omnipresent smell of cockroach powder, 10-minute wait for the lift and dysfunctional telephones and plumbing. Another vestige of the former Soviet Union is the dejou rna∩a or floor key lady. In the old days, she recorded every coming and going for the KGB. These days, her main concern is the Afghanistan-bound journalists who filch hotel towels.

Tajiks call the policemen who ply the leafy boulevards of Dushanbe BDAs - which stands for "Give some money to your brother" in Tajik. The average Tajik earns less than $20 a month, but a police shake-down can cost up to $100.

Local drivers and interpreters have more than doubled their fees since the influx of journalists started soon after September 11th. The Tajik foreign ministry requires that every reporter obtain a Tajik press card (price: $40), though it serves no purpose. They've issued over 500.

The next step is the Afghan Embassy, run by the mainly Tajik United Front, where hundreds of journalists are clamouring for a lift on a clapped-out former Soviet Mi-8 helicopter to the Front's enclave in northern Afghanistan - and the chance of an encounter with a Taliban MiG. The rebels have few choppers, and they need them to resupply their seven "pockets" of territory, with which they have no contact by land. The television networks, with their thick wads of cash, take priority.

So like the characters in the film classic Casablanca, we wait, and wait, and wait. From dawn until dusk, on a parking lot outside the Dushanbe military airport. Your correspondent almost made it onto a flight yesterday, but a sandstorm descended over northern Afghanistan and Tajikistan, coating everything in reddish dust.

At the United Front's military headquarters at Hoza Bahuddin, they told us, the dust was "so thick you can't see your hand". Poor Afghanistan has waited 24 years for the world to sort out its problems, so perhaps we should be patient. Sadly, central Asia is rich in potential conflicts. Tajikistan called off its own civil war of three years only after the Taliban came to power; the Tajiks were afraid the Taliban would gobble them up if they didn't stop fighting each other.

And any resident of Dushanbe will tell you he's got an axe to grind with the Uzbeks. The Soviets gave the magnificent ancient city of Samarkand to Uzbekistan in the 1920s, and the Tajiks would like it back.