Afghanistan's recurring nightmare
By the BBC's Lyse Doucet in Pakistan
Friday, 9 November, 2001, 15:07 GMT
This week I heard that an American missile may have hit Kabul's domed white palaces of Bagh i Bala, and it made me stop awhile to remember this exquisite place, now battered and broken.
The story of the dreams it inspired is a story of Kabul itself. In the late 19th Century, Bagh i Bala - meaning high garden in Persian - was a summer palace, a romantic retreat for the Afghan king.
Lately it seems to have become an arms depot for the ruling Taleban.
A decade ago, Bagh i Bala fired the dreams of a friend we called big Sharif. For many years he was the front desk manager at the Intercontinental Hotel, a drab concrete block just next door.
He was known as big Sharif, because the younger, or little Sharif, was the telephone operator there.
Shattered dreams
In 1992, when Kabul's old communist regime fell to Afghan Mujahedin forces, big Sharif was ecstatic - peace had finally come.
And to confirm his hope, he ordered new dishes for Bagh i Bala - before the war the King's playground had been turned into a magnificent restaurant and now its glory looked set to be restored.
As we sipped green tea laced with cardamom, big Sharif carefully cradled one new plate in his lap - a piece of china, like his dream, could so easily break.
It was just the dream of a hotel manager, although in Kabul it was extraordinary.
But the ambitions and egos of Mujahedin warlords proved to be far greater.
Big Sharif died before the dishes came when a rocket slammed into the hotel as commanders fought among themselves from one neighbourhood to the next.
Bagh i Bala managed to remain standing although many of the city's other majestic palaces did not.
Contested capital
In-fighting among the Mujahedin paved the way for the Taleban who roared into Kabul in 1996 - again raising hopes of peace among Kabul residents, only to have them dashed.
Now, yet again, there's much talk of the fall of Kabul. And there is an eerie echo of that time before Taleban and Mujahedin rule, when Kabul was run by Soviet-backed forces.
In the winter of 1988 and 1989 - when I lived in the capital - all the world's eyes were also on Afghanistan. Then Kabul was a pivotal prize in the Cold War.
But once the last Soviet soldier left, the world's attention turned elsewhere, leaving Afghanistan to its warlords, the meddling of neighbours, and a legion of foreign Muslims - including, of course, Osama Bin Laden.
Now Afghanistan is back in the eye of a storm because of a global war against terrorism. This time, Western leaders say they are here for the long haul, that Afghanistan will not be abandoned.
This is what Afghans, exhausted by war and drought, hoped would be the silver lining in the very dark clouds of the 11 September attacks - another chance to put things right.
Last chance
This time, the stakes are much higher. Many Afghans fear this is the last chance for a country now on its knees. But as the bombing drags on, the Taleban dig in, the casualties mount, and the mood darkens.
Many Afghans now ask how long the bombing will continue. Why wasn't more time given to political moves to oust the Taleban? That was the call of a former Mujahedin commander I had known for many years.
Abdul Haq had warned the West that military action could backfire and would only strengthen the Taleban.
The lesson of Afghanistan, he told me last month, was that its easy to go in, but hard to get out. The Soviets - and the British before them - learned that, so too would the Americans.
Tragically, when he went in himself to encourage Afghans to fight against the Taleban, he was captured, brutally tortured, and hanged from the ruins of a Kabul house destroyed by American bombs.
When we last met in Pakistan, the burly commander with the winning grin had outlined his plans to form a new broad-based Afghan government without a shot being fired.
I said I wanted to believe him but, again, there was that strange feeling of having been here before.
In 1988, Abdul Haq was called the Commander of Kabul and from an operations room in northwest Pakistan, he had with the same confidence and enthusiasm displayed the maps and plans for imminent Mujahedin victory.
He advised me not to go to the capital. But I lived for nearly a year in Kabul on the fourth floor of the Intercontinental Hotel - Bagh i Bala was just beyond my window.
Cycle of despair
And every evening, as the sun dropped behind the hills of what was even then a city damaged and drained by war, a young Afghan soldier played his flute right outside Bagh i Bala's door.
A simple haunting tune, it punctuated the twilight, and for a moment cut through a loud din of voices playing in everyone's mind - everywhere, outside Kabul, were warnings the city was about to fall. One Western embassy after another pulled out.
But it took three more years of war and suffering, and that only led to more years of war and pain. And now the world is beginning to accept that the fall of Kabul will not come so quickly or easily this time.
Afghan commanders and politicians - both those in opposition and in power - have their own interest and ambitions.
A long-suffering people know their history unfolds in unexpected ways, and over the decades hopes and dreams have more often given way to fears - the shattered mirror-clad walls of Bagh i Bala at least reflect that. |
