Tornado Alley (PROG)

[StephanieVanbryce]

Prior to the events of the early thirteenth century, there was an extensive urban civilization in the southern desert of what is now Afghanistan, particularly in the basin of the Helmand River. Many years of irrigation slowly gave way to salinization, and decline had begun, when a boy was born two thousand miles away near Lake Baykal. He rose from extreme poverty to gradually unite the tribes of the steppes into a seemingly invincible army. Following their brown-haired, grey-eyed, charismatic leader, these armies could travel for days without stopping, sleep in the saddle, and live on milk from the mares on which they rode. Within a generation, Ghengiz Khan had conquered the largest empire in recorded history, two-thirds of the population of Central Asia lay dead, and cities like Farah were ruins.

The Mongols with their horse herds were masters of mobility, and with this military advantage they swept all before them. Their stated aims were to eliminate potential enemies and to open the trade routes to free trade. They made freedom of religion the policy in conquered areas, and in so doing they undermined the authority of religious institutions that could compete with their authority. They destroyed entire cities and every living thing in them in order to terrorize others into submission, just as modern barbarians from the fringes of the civilized world have done. They fought wars on an industrial scale, preferring to divert rivers or defoliate wide areas, when doing so would save the lives of their own soldiers. They fought with superior weapons, killing their enemies from a safe distance. The open trade routes brought the Black Death, and plague haunted Europe and the Muslim world for centuries.


Ruins at Farah

Farah, Afghanistan, April 1978, 35 mm Nikon, 85 mm Nikkor lens, Kodacolor film, Dye transfer print 1985, �Luke Powell, 1996.