170 Chapter Five
and would not be able to complete construction in time. It accused Sovtorgflot
of misleading it about the costs involved in serving pilgrims, and also raised the
issue of disease. The commissariat’s letter stressed that they had no way to pro-
tect themselves against epidemics brought into the country by pilgrims, so they
“must strenuously protest the organization of transit pilgrims through Kazakh-
stan’s borders this season.”^42
Sovtorgflot’s agent in Afghanistan, Ali Akbar Kamalov, reported serious
problems working with Soviet authorities. Although promised their help in
organizing hajj transport, Kamalov found many uncooperative. Traveling to
Ashkhabad (in today’s Turkmenistan) in late spring 1927, he found that only
the railroad authority had made preparations to receive pilgrims from Persia
and Afghanistan. He learned that the Persians had no idea that the Soviets were
planning transport for the hajj, and knew nothing about how to buy tickets or
which routes to follow. He informed the OGPU of this, and was sent by them to
the border town of Kushka to meet with Yahya Mamedov, Sovtorfglot’s agent in
Persia, and make arrangements. Kushka was a former Russian military outpost
and the southernmost point of the USSR, on the border between the newly cre-
ated Turkmen SSR (Turkmenistan) and Afghanistan. It was also the closest
railway station for Afghans: the tsarist regime in 1901 had built a new branch
that connected Kushka to the Merv and the Central Asian railroad, as part of
its efforts to extend influence into Afghanistan. Kushka and its rail station lay
along the main route used by Afghans to enter now-Soviet lands.^43 While in
Kushka, Kamalov conducted talks with local officials from the Commissariat
of Health and railroads, to organize services and facilities for pilgrims. He also
found a local caravanserai that could be used as a khadzhikhane, where pil-
grims could stay for as little as fifty kopecks a night. But in Kushka he also
learned from local authorities that the hajj campaigns in Persia and Afghani-
stan had “collapsed.” Kamalov blamed this on Seid Kerim, his fellow Sovtorg-
flot agent in Afghanistan, whom he accused of failing to advertise the fleet’s
services, and acting “indifferent” toward the hajj transport. Dejected, Kamalov
returned to Tashkent to deliver the bad news to Sovtorgflot authorities there.^44
The problems Kamalov reported had much to do with poor communication
and planning among Soviet authorities, and between Moscow and its emerging
internal republican governments. As of March, with the hajj traffic due to start
in May, Turkmenistan’s Commissariat of Health still had not set up planned
border quarantine stations or medical stations for pilgrims in Kushka and Ash-
khabad, because it had not received the 25,000 rubles that Gosplan (the State
Planning Committee in Moscow, responsible for central economic planning)