For citizens going into battle against Afghanistan's officialdom, the warren-like building across the road from the headquarters of Kabul's police chief is a one-stop shop for every document they could need.
From their tiny cubbyhole offices, an army of typists can run up everything from marriage certificates to CVs and job-application letters. Also available, for several hundred dollars more are Taliban death threats, the special chits also known as "night letters" that can be a passport to a new life in the West.
"We can write whatever you need," a young clerk said. "For example, we will mention you work in a government department, your job title and salary. It will say, ‘If you don't leave your job by this date, we will come and kill you or put a bomb in your house.' Or we can say you are working with US forces."
For a large number of Afghans, such a purchase is just the first of many expensive outlays on the high-risk road to a new life in the West. Buyers hope the document will persuade immigration officers many thousands of kilometres away to give them asylum in Europe or Australia. The document is one part of a growing and lucrative business in smuggling a tide of mostly young, unaccompanied Afghan males overseas.
One people smuggler was happy to talk business after a perfunctory introduction in a car next to a police checkpoint in Kabul. He said two factors were driving a boom in his business: the rising fear among some Afghans for the future of their country and the existence of a class of well-off professionals who can afford his huge fees.
The Afghan government recently reported that about 50,000 Afghans cross illegally into Greece every year, a country which is both on the outer reaches of the Schengen zone and relatively easily reached from Turkey.
Smugglers offer different packages, depending on what people can afford. By far the most expensive option, often in excess of $20,000 (Dh73,400), involves the elaborate forgery of European passports, or tinkering with legitimate ones, which allows his wealthiest clients to fly directly to their target country. "Eighty per cent of my customers go on a fake passport to Britain," confides a smuggler in the eastern city of Jalalabad. "If you have money, everything is possible, because we have contacts in Western countries who make them for us."
A high proportion of his customers choose to fly from Islamabad and travel under fake Pakistani passports. "We have people at the airport who make sure they will get through customs," he said. "The deal we have is that once the customer is on the flight, he has to pay. When they get to the United Kingdom they are on their own. We tell them to lose their documents when they arrive and go to the police at the airport."
He oversees the departure of about 15 people a month by flight. He also assists about 100 people each month who can only afford to travel by land, a figure that quadruples in summer, when the mountain paths between Iran and Turkey are less treacherous.
That was the route tried by Mohammad Nasim, a 21-year-old who decided to leave his country after his brother was killed by a bomb in Kabul. His ultimate destination was the UK, but he only got as far as the Greek border after walking over the mountains from Iran into southeast Turkey. About 40 other Afghans were in the group walking under cover of darkness along mountain tracks. With fake passports they then travelled by car to Istanbul, but the expensively acquired documents failed him when he tried to cross into Greece.
"I was just unlucky when they checked my document on the computer," Nasim said.
He was deported back to Iran, where he was kidnapped by a criminal gang before being allowed to return to Kabul after his family paid a ransom.
Becoming victims of such criminality and exploitation is a constant risk. The situation for marooned Afghans in Greece is so bad that the Afghan government plans to open an embassy in Athens to help deal with tens of thousands whose dreams of moving deeper into Europe have turned into a nightmare of limbo with no money or papers. Their plight is often made all the worse by smugglers who keep their passports until they are paid in full.
For a passage to Australia, another popular destination, the Jalalabad-based smuggler said he offered an all-expenses-included trip for $11,500. Like others in his trade, he recommends Australia, promising it is a soft touch on granting asylum.
"Australia gives citizenship if you have a good story," he said. "I am sure that after spending six months in a [processing centre] in Australia you will get citizenship if you do not lose your temper and have warning documents from the Taliban."
Mohammad, a 30-year-old mechanic from Parwan province, wants to leave because he thinks he will escape poverty only if he could work in Australia. But as an ethnic Hazara, he is also concerned that the future may see the return of the Taliban. The movement orchestrated the slaughter of Hazara men in the city of Mazar-e-Sharif in 1998. "I am worried," he said, pointing off into the distance at the wall of snow-capped peaks that surround the Afghan capital. "The Taliban are behind those mountains; they can come tomorrow or the day after."
