Hekmat the smuggler and I sat among a group of men in a wood-walled hotel room in Ishkashim, a town in Badakh-shan province in the far north of Afghanistan. The room's balcony took in a breathtaking view of the river Amu, which shimmered in the sunlight beneath the Pamir mountains. The Amu, also known as the Oxus, is the greatest river in central Asia, and for several hundred miles its upper reaches mark the border between Afghanistan and Tajikistan to the... (GunPolicy.org)