The Taliban’s Avalanche Forecaster

On the crumbling edge of Afghanistan’s River Panj, a clean-cut, unassuming avalanche mitigation expert named Doug Chabot stood alone, staring at the water. It was June 2021, and the river ran broad, swift, and frigid, fed by the melting snows of the mighty Hindu Kush mountains, where peaks rise to twenty-five thousand feet in natural strongholds of glaciers and stone. In the previous weeks, Chabot had traveled widely through the region, wearing a traditional shalwar kameez and newly grown beard, and in the remote mountain villages of northern Afghanistan the locals had welcomed him warmly. He was there for a simple reason: to prevent avalanche deaths.

Then, suddenly, provincial districts nationwide came under attack. Local governments were falling. Two days earlier, a city where he had recently stayed was overthrown. If captured, he would surely be considered an American spy and tried in sharia court, if not summarily executed. The simple had become complicated. The opposite shore, Tajikistan, was a world away. Chabot stared again