100 Places You Will Never Visit (22 page)

The royal chronicles of Ethiopia, which were written in the 13th century and undoubtedly served as propaganda for the reigning dynasty of that time, hold that the Ark came to Ethiopia with Menelik, said to be the son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. The story tells that a forgery of the Ark was left back in Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem, where it was presumed destroyed after the Babylonian sack of Jerusalem in 586 BC.

Meanwhile, the city of Axum became the focal point of the Kingdom of Axum, which was a leading regional power from the mid-second century BC to the tenth century AD. To this day, huge granite obelisks, the tallest single pieces of stone quarried and raised in the ancient world, tell of just how important the area was. If the Ark really was in Ethiopia at this point, Axum would have certainly made a suitable home.

ANCIENT CITY An aerial view of Axum, a commercial powerhouse from the fourth century BC to the tenth century AD. Steeped in history, it is dotted with areas of archaeological interest and is particularly famed for its huge obelisks known as stelae.

The Axumite king Ezana converted to Christianity in AD 331, and had the first Church of St. Mary built some 40 years later. According to tradition, the Ark remained at Axum until the 16th century, when it was hidden after the city came under Muslim attack. It was returned in the following century, and in 1965 Ethiopian leader Haile Selassie (reputedly a descendant of Menelik) had the current treasury built to house it. Of course, there are plenty of people who do not believe that the treasure at Axum is the real Ark at all. Alternative theories about its location abound. These include a cave in Mount Nebo in Jordan, Chartres Cathedral or the village of Rennes-le-Château in France, Temple Herdewyke in England, the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome and the Dumghe Mountains of South Africa. The Indiana Jones movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, meanwhile, proposes that the Ark found its way to Egypt.

We will probably never know for certain whether Axum is home to the true Ark of the Covenant. What is more certain is that the contents of the treasury are considered sacred by vast numbers of people, and no one has yet provided conclusive proof that it is not the true Ark. But your chances of gaining access to the treasury to check for yourself are negligible, even if your name is Indiana Jones. The best we can hope is that one day Ethiopia’s fraught political climate will have stabilized to a point where the treasure can again be released for occasional public processions.

1 HOLY RELIC This illustration from the 1728 Figures de la Bible (published by P. de Hondt of The Hague), shows the Ark of the Covenant in a depiction of the erection of the Tabernacle and the Sacred Vessels, as described in the biblical Book of Exodus.

2 SACRED HOME A deacon of the Axumite church holds a sistrum (a type of musical instrument) in front of the treasury said to contain the Ark of the Covenant. The treasury is attached to the Church of St. Mary of Zion, believed to have been established in the fourth century.

76 Fordo uranium enrichment plant

LOCATION Qom Province, northern Iran

NEAREST POPULATION HUB Qom

SECRECY OVERVIEW Operations classified: uranium-processing facility at the center of international concern.

The nuclear facility at Fordo is built into a mountainside, not far from the sacred city of Qom. Iran only admitted to the facility’s existence in September 2009, insisting that it was purely for civilian uses. The international community’s fears that its purpose was not necessarily peaceful were seemingly confirmed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in January 2012.

That month, the IAEA announced that the plant had begun production of uranium enriched up to 20 percent, which is regarded as a milestone on the journey toward weapons-grade enrichment. Iran, meanwhile, holds that its enrichment program is guided not by the quest for nuclear weapons (a US intelligence report in 2007 concluded that its previous nuclear armaments program ceased in 2003) but that enriched uranium is needed for fuel in research reactors and in the production of cancer-fighting isotopes.

Western intelligence agencies had first identified the Fordo facility in September 2009, at which point Tehran admitted that its construction had been underway since 2007 (though the IAEA subsequently suggested a more likely date of 2006). To fulfill its duties to the IAEA, Tehran should have volunteered details much earlier than it did.

Carved into a mountain (thus reducing the possibility of damaging air strikes), the facility is heavily fortified and located close to military installations armed with anti-aircraft defenses and weapons silos. Iran claims these are necessary precautions to protect a legitimate project from US or Israeli attacks.

The nearby settlement of Fordo is claimed by some to have lost a greater percentage of its population than any other village during the war with Iraq that raged from 1980 to 1988. Quite what its inhabitants make of being at the center of a new dispute with such militaristic undertones can only be imagined. Fordo lies about 30 kilometers (19 miles) north of Qom, itself about 150 kilometers (90 miles) southwest of Tehran and one of the principal places of learning for Shi’a Muslims, as well as an important site of pilgrimage.

Iran’s nuclear program has been used alternately as a threat and a bargaining chip in the long-running war of words between Tehran and the West. While the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had previously told IAEA inspectors that Fordo was intended to produce uranium enriched to 5 percent (a level commonly used in nuclear power production), it announced in June 2011 that it was working on 20 percent enrichment, taking over enrichment previously undertaken at the Natanz plant in Isfahan Province.

Fordo is one of a number of sites within the country causing concern to the wider world. Others include the Bushehr power station (begun in 1974 as a joint project with West Germany, abandoned after the Islamic revolution of 1979, but revived in the 1990s with Russian assistance), a heavy water plant at Arak (scheduled to operate from 2013), a uranium mine at Gachin (opened in 2004) and, perhaps most ominously, an area of the Parchin munitions center identified as a possible nuclear weapons development lab.

HIGH STAKES Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (third from right) received a tour of the nuclear power plant at Bushehr in 2006. Since coming to power in 2005, Ahmadinejad has fiercely defended Iran’s right to run a peaceful nuclear power program.

Suspicions over Iran’s nuclear intentions have been heightened by the country’s reluctance to cooperate with the IAEA’s program of inspections, to which it is obliged to submit as a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In November 2011, the IAEA reported that Iran had undertaken work “relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device,” though it stopped short of confirming whether or when the country would be capable of producing a working bomb. As a result of its refusal to comply with IAEA rules, Tehran has been hit by a variety of sanctions imposed by the UN, the US and the EU.

Intermittently, Iran has claimed no interest in developing nuclear weapons capabilities, insisting that it is merely exercising its legal right to develop a nuclear program for civilian use. Ahmadinejad, never one to shy away from a scuffle with the West, has been quoted as saying: “We do not need an atomic bomb. The Iranian nation is wise. It won’t build two atomic bombs while you [the US] have 20,000 warheads.” Elsewhere, Iran’s spiritual head and Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has reportedly issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons.

But like North Korea, Iran has realized that retaining some mystery about its nuclear capabilities can serve as a useful bargaining chip at the international negotiating table. And what better way to retain that air of mystery than by hiding key facilities inside mountains?

1 NUCLEAR TESTING This image from DigitalGlobe’s QuickBird satellite shows the state of the Fordo site in 2009, with several tunnel entrances clearly visible.

77 Tora Bora cave complex

LOCATION Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan

NEAREST POPULATION HUB Jalalabad

SECRECY OVERVIEW Access restricted: fabled cave network used by Osama bin Laden.

The caves of Tora Bora shot to the attention of the world in 2001, when they became the focus of US attacks against Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban and Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda. After a ferocious battle, bin Laden somehow evaded the grasp of US forces and dodged capture for a further ten years. Tora Bora itself became the subject of rumor, myth and confusion, often serving to disguise the truth.

The Tora Bora caves were formed naturally by water running through the limestone of the White Mountains in eastern Afghanistan. The range rises to over 4,000 meters (13,100 ft), its terrain often steep and its peaks snow-capped. In the 1980s the caves, which lie within easy reach of the Pakistani border, served as a labyrinthine base for the mujahideen insurgents fighting against the Soviet occupation of the country, which had begun in 1979. The rebels extended the complex using money supplied by the CIA, and it was during this time that bin Laden first became familiar with them. It was said that he later used some of his own vast personal wealth (as well as his expertise as a civil engineering graduate) to have them enlarged and upgraded beyond recognition.

After the September 11 terrorist attacks on America made a massive retaliation inevitable, bin Laden withdrew into this secret complex, apparently with a sizable army of Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters. In early December 2001, two months after the beginning of the Allied air campaign, a force of Afghan Northern Alliance fighters backed by small numbers of US troops began a ground assault on the caves. By that time, Tora Bora had already been subject to several weeks of bombardment and aerial attack. The fighting was hard, and dragged on for several more weeks before bin Laden’s men were dislodged. He is believed to have left the scene sometime around December 16. In 2009, a US Senate Foreign Relations Committee concluded that the Battle of Tora Bora represented a prime opportunity to capture bin Laden, and that if the assault on the caves had been better coordinated, he might not have remained free until 2011.

SHOCK AND AWE A phalanx of Afghan anti-Taliban fighters look on as plumes of smoke rise during US bombing raids on Tora Bora in December 2001. The US assault made use of devastating BLU-82 “daisy cutter” bombs, but despite the intensity of the attacks, Osama bin Laden was able to escape capture.

At the height of the battle, the Western media made some extraordinary claims about Tora Bora, which was frequently described as “impregnable.” London’s reputable Times newspaper, for instance, produced a schematic of a veritable mountain fortress. The blueprints showed a base worthy of a James Bond villain, replete with a hydroelectric power station, wiring for lights, power and ventilation, offices, bedrooms and communal rooms, underground armories and secret exits guarded by booby-trapped steel doors. In other publications, there were descriptions of tunnels large enough to drive tanks through. On sober reflection, it seems as though news editors had given their journalists and graphics departments free range to exercise their imaginations, just as long as they came up with something engaging to print alongside the images of war.

What the US–Northern Alliance forces eventually found inside the caves seemed to bear little resemblance to the media flights of fancy. This was no slick underground lair—instead there were bunkers hewn roughly out of the mountain, sometimes propped up with bits of wood and often barely big enough for a man to stand upright. The floors were covered in mud and rubble (and there were none of the smooth plastered-walls some had suggested). Remnants of ammunition (some live, some spent) were strewn about here and there.

How many fighters had been encamped inside Tora Bora was not obvious, but it seemed unlikely to have been the thousands of well-armed warriors that had been speculated about. There was no mass capture of Al-Qaeda belligerents, and some observers began to whisper that perhaps the whole concept of an Al-Qaeda organization in the traditional sense was misjudged. When Donald Rumsfeld, the US Secretary of State for Defense, was presented with the imagined plans of Tora Bora during the battle, he had commented: “There’s not one of those, there are many of those.” It turned out that only his first clause was correct.

As of 2010, NATO troops were still fighting insurgent forces within Tora Bora but this time they were not under the illusion that there was a 21st-century fortress inside. It remains something of a mystery as to how the world’s media could have got things quite so wrong in 2001 : it could be argued that it was an early symptom of a War on Terror which, like the Cold War that preceded it, was often characterized by supposition, paranoia and myth.

1 HOME ADVANTAGE This satellite map gives an indication of the rugged nature of the terrain on the Afghan border. Some have blamed US reluctance to commit troops to fighting in this inhospitable landscape for Osama bin Laden’s 2001 escape.

2 CHASING SHADOWS A glimpse inside Tora Bora during 2004. When Western forces searched the complex in the aftermath of the Battle of Tora Bora, they found little evidence of the futuristic underground complex that some speculated bin Laden had constructed there.

78 Diego Garcia

LOCATION Chagos Archipelago, Indian Ocean

NEAREST POPULATION HUB Malé, the Maldives

SECRECY OVERVIEW Access restricted: island home of extensive US military operations in the Indian Ocean.

Officially a British Indian Ocean Territory, Diego Garcia has served as a strategically-important base for US military operations since the early 1970s. Although the island now operates as a de facto US territory, the Chagossians who inhabited it until the arrival of the Americans continue to fight for their right to return. In the meantime, no one except for approved military and support personnel is permitted entry.

Lying in the Indian Ocean south of the Maldives, Diego Garcia is an atoll—a coral island enclosing a lagoon—with a total area of 174 square kilometers (67 sq miles). It is named after Diego Garcia de Moguer, a Spanish sailor believed to have sighted the island in the 1550s. However, it remained uninhabited until the French established a settlement here in the late 18th century. It briefly fell under the jurisdiction of the British East India Company before the French claimed it back, using it as a leper colony until 1793, when the first coconut plantation came into operation.