Pure water of Lake Sarez holds Tajik horror

LOCAL SHEPHERDS taking donkey loads of EU aid up to the high pastures above Sarez lake race up in 4 or 5 hours, but it took me all day to get there. A thin path leaves the valley floor and climbs up the side of the rubble dam, hugging the junction with the mountainside. The dam chokes the valley with a huge turbulent mass of rock and rubble - 4 kilometres wide and covering 15 square kilometres. Walking up it is shattering.

Nothing quite prepares you for the sight of Sarez Lake. It appears quite suddenly from behind the shattered moonscape, a shimmering, vibrant almost unnatural blue. Steep cliffs plunge straight into the water, and it is completely barren. Above the dam, a giant scar marks the spot where the mountain fell away and dammed the valley.

On a cold February night in 1911, the village of Usoy was wiped out when the huge landslide - triggered by an earthquake - filled the valley to a depth of 800m. 180 people died that night. Within days the blocked river began to fill behind the new dam - eight months later the village of Sarez went under, and the lake got it's name.

If Sarez bursts its dam, the death toll will be in the tens of thousands. A 70 metre wall of water would sweep down the Bartang valley, carrying dozens of villages away. The flood would smash into Afghanistan at the T-junction where the Bartang joins the Pyandzh (known to history as the Oxus) - the main river through this part of Central Asia, and also the border with Afghanistan.

Aid workers in Khorog, the regional capital, (luckily upstream of the danger zone) reassure themselves that there have been numerous earthquakes in the Sarez area, before setting off up the valley. It is a favourite assignment - the potential danger notwithstanding.

Below the dam the river winds for more than a hundred kilometres, hemmed in by bare, honey coloured cliffs which soar towards snow capped 6,000 metre peaks. Strung along the valley floor are a succession of pretty villages, oases of vivid green amid the austere grandeur of the mountains. Each village is surrounded by fields - lush green at this time of year - irrigated from long channels which hug the hillsides, bringing meltwater from the mountains. Shepherds take sheep and goats up side valleys to high summer pastures.

Everyone in the valley knows about the danger lurking at the top of the valley, but they appear phlegmatic. There is nothing they can do to stabilise the dam. The inhabitants of the original Sarez village were resettled before the flood waters reached them.

But the extremely rugged mountain territory does not have the capacity to absorb thousands of displaced farmers from the land downstream from the lake.

The villagers are stuck where they are. All they can do is pray that their misfortune ended with the 1911 earthquake. If their luck fails, the outside world will hear much more about their fate than the unfortunate inhabitants of Usoy 87 years ago.