On one of my trips to Kabul I encountered a similar crowd crush to get inside the terminal, supplemented by customs officials shaking down a colleague.
Meanwhile, officials in Mobile are preparing a cruise terminal that has not been used for a year to help passengers go through customs after their ordeal.
"It smells like a dead body, " the customs officer told me, as we opened a crate of smuggled ivory in the cargo terminal at Bangkok airport earlier this year.