He was a Japanese doctor who went to treat leprosy and ended up irrigating 16,000 hectares of Afghan desert. Afghanistan called him Kaka Murad — "Uncle Murad."
Few foreigners have ever been mourned in Afghanistan the way Dr. Tetsu Nakamura was. When he was assassinated on December 4th, 2019, the president helped carry his coffin, an airline painted his face on a plane, and vigils were held across the country. Afghans didn't call him by his Japanese name. They called him a relative.
Nakamura spent roughly 35 years in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He started with leprosy patients and refugees, one at a time. He ended by turning a place called the Valley of Death green. In between, he kept discovering that medicine alone couldn't cure the illnesses he was treating — so he taught himself civil engineering rather than walk away. He studied a 1790 Edo-era weir from his own home region in Japan, drew up plans, and operated the excavator himself. His canals now feed an estimated 600,000 people.
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