Views from across..
Cry, the beloved Afghanistan!
Roedad Khan
Asia is a single body made up of water and earth
In it the Afghan nation constitutes the heart
Peace there means peace in Asia
War there means war in Asia
Surely, to no nation has fate been more malignant than to Afghanistan. The political testament Amir Abdul Rehman left to his successors in 1901 has not lost its relevance to this day. “Afghanistan”, he said, “is a country that will either rise to be a strong, famous kingdom or will be swept altogether from the earth.” Almost 100 years after Abdul Rehman’s death, the fate of Afghanistan, once again, hangs in the balance.
After nine years of occupation the last Soviet soldier left Afghan territory on Wednesday, February 15, 1989 at 11.55 am. General Boris Gromov, a Hero of the Soviet Union and commander of all Soviet forces in Afghanistan, walked across the Steel Friendship Bridge to the border city of Termez in Uzbekistan. “There is not a single soldier or officer left behind me,” Gromov told a TV reporter waiting on the bridge. “Our nine-year stay ends with this.” “The United Nations negotiated the Russian exit,” said The Times on April 27,. “Its job is now done. The world has no business in that country’s tribal disputes and blood feuds”. Americans walked away from Afghanistan. The rest of the world also forgot it and abandoned the Afghans to their fate.
Twenty-one years of unremitting war, including nine years of Soviet occupation, had left Afghanistan a country of ruined cities, war vets, amputees, young widows, orphans, torn-up roads and hungry, starving people. The Taliban, an ideological militia, who still rule 90 percent of the country, were desperately trying to restore law and order and consolidate their conquest. Since their dramatic appearance at the end of 1994, they had brought relative peace to the country. Their capture of Kabul in 1996 virtually terminated the civil war in which over 50,000 had died. Over 10,000 buildings were destroyed in Kabul alone. They removed all roadblocks erected by warlords between Torkham and Kabul, and between Chaman and Kandahar. They opened up communications. Commerce began to flow. The irony is that, despite all these achievements, only three countries, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Pakistan recognised Taliban rule. The rest shunned the government because it was politically unacceptable to them. The wrong side had won the Great Game.
In the past, to ensure the survival of Afghanistan as an independent entity and a buffer between two rival empires, Amir Abdul Rehman had crafted a foreign policy aimed at keeping a certain balance between his mighty neighbours. It was a rational, consistent policy dictated by geopolitical realities, the constant of which was preserving Afghan independence. With the exit of the British from Asia, that balance was upset. No other outside power ventured meaningfully to replace Britain. Pakistan was, and is, too weak to play a decisive role in Afghan affairs. The Soviets agreed to withdraw but only when US weaponry and Afghan bravery raised the costs for Moscow. Even then, it look six years of diplomacy to give the Russians a way out. Ironically, it was the withdrawal and subsequent demise of the USSR in 1991 that placed Afghanistan, at the mercy of the US, now sole superpower.
After a decade of total neglect, Americans re-discovered Afghanistan. With the Soviets gone, it was their turn to intervene. On October 7, the US launched a powerful attack on Afghanistan in retaliation against Osama bin Laden for the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. The Taliban had not met US demands to turn over Osama and his Al-Qaida. “Now”, President Bush declared “the Taliban will pay a price. We are supported by the collective will of the world. We will not falter. We will not fail.” With daily air strikes, involving cruise missiles and attack aircraft, pounding their cities, the Afghans braced themselves to face the full might of the US. After one of these strikes, I saw on TV, a vast smoky pall hanging over Kabul. One exhausted fireman could be seen struggling to bring the fire under control. The amazing part is the cheerful fortitude with which ordinary Afghans are seen doing their jobs under nervewracking conditions. “Everything seems”, as Goethe said, “to be following its usual course because in terrible moments in which everything is at stake, people go on living as if nothing was happening”. In the heaps of rubble that were once homes, all you could see was a beam or two, one Afghan chappal and a few crushed pots. Watching these images on TV, day after day, night after night, I realized the human character can stand up to anything, if it has to. Grim, defiant, dogged and serviceable, the Afghans adapted to this new life, with all its terrors, jolts and jars. And I felt deeply, with a spasm of mental pain, the strain and suffering being borne by the poor people of Afghanistan. How long would it go on? How much more would they have to bear? What were the limits of their vitality? How many more innocents have to die?
Meanwhile, the lush green Margalla Hills above Islamabad, the pleasant fields at their foot, people going casually about their business, seem far removed from the shattered cities of Afghanistan, the gutted buildings and stricken people. Instinctively, we turn aside from the killing fields over the border. Yet instinctively also, we know we are not isolated from these suffering people. Try as we will, we cannot brush away the pitiless picture of their destruction or escape its profound effects upon our world. As long as we don’t feel ashamed to be alive while innocent Afghans are being killed, with our “logistical support”, not guilty, sick, humiliated because we were spared, we will remain what we are, accomplices by omission and commission. To watch this folly, to wait for the catastrophe, which one cannot prevent, fills me with choking impotent despair.
The Bush Administration has convinced itself that the US cannot address the problem of international terrorism by simply taking out Osama. At the very least, the US, so the argument goes, will have to destroy the Taliban setup and clear the ground for a transitional authority headed by ex-King Zahir Shah. This is easier said than done. Even if the Taliban are driven out of the cities, they and their supporters would not simply disappear. They would fight a long guerrilla war from the mountains against foreign troops and would paralyze the puppet govenrment formed and sustained by the invader. A wide array of Afghan factions, convinced that the Taliban will be dismantled by the US strikes, is embroiled in a struggle for places in a future government. In a country with internal fractures, bordered by nations with conflicting interests, bombed and battered over the years by many of the same people now seeking to regain a share of power, common ground is elusive. People who hope Zahir Shah, with US support and in conjunction with the UN, would play a critical role in calling a Loya Jirga and forming a broad-based government, are unaware of the reality of the Afghan situation and betray ignorance of the psyche, spirit and soul of the Afghan nation.
Be that as it may, it is the question of political succession, which has bedeviled the entire Islamic world since the death of the Holy Prophet (PBUH), that will be the most intractable of all the problems facing the decision-makers in post-Taliban Afghanistan. One of the principal causes of the instability of Muslim rule, past and present all over the Islamic world, is the absence of a law of succession, which inevitably led to uncertainty, civil wars, wars of succession throughout Islamic history. Theoretically, no Muslim is disqualified to rule his country and his title to rule is as good as anybody else’s. However, one of the lessons of Islamic history is that title to rule is in direct proportion to the length of the contender’s sword and the sharpness of its blade. Therefore, the question who will rule Afghanistan will be decided on the battlefield, not the conference room. The only force which established its authority and restored tranquility in Afghanistan is the Taliban. The fall of Taliban will inevitably plunge Afghanistan irretrievably into chaos. It will be the end of whatever order still prevails in that unfortunate country today.
Robert McNamara, the brilliant Defence Secretary to Kennedy and Johnson, helped lead the US into Vietnam. McNamara believed the fight against communism in Asia was worth the sacrifice of American lives, and yet he eventually came to believe the US had stumbled into a war, in which it had lost over 58,000 men and women, that was unnecessary and unwinnable. “I want”, McNamara wrote, “Americans to understand why we made the mistakes we did, and learn from them...the ancient Greek dramatist Aeschylus wrote, “the reward of suffering is experience”. Let this be the lasting legacy of Vietnam”. Their hindsight was better than their foresight. With painful candor and heavy heart, McNamara concedes that the adage applied to him and his generation of US leadership. Will McNamara’s successor ever confess error and explain how they stumbled into the war in Afghanistan and how all the best and the brightest in America went wrong, horribly wrong.
How will history judge US military involvement in Afghanistan, a devastated, ravaged, country of demolished cities, starving and hungry people? It will certainly not go down in history as America’s finest hour. Are Americans, once again, on the wrong side of history? Doesn’t it reflect their profound ignorance of the history, culture and politics of Afghanistan and the complex personalities and motivations of their leaders? Are Americans destined to fail, once again, to recognise the futility of trying to wage a modern war on an ancient civilisation that formed its identity by repelling invaders? Are they destined to fail once again to recognise the limitations of modern, hi-tech military equipment, in confronting unconventional, highly motivated Islamic movements? Are Americans not naive to believe that the war they are fighting is for democracy and freedom when most of their Islamic coalition partners are either military dictators or thoroughly corrupt, discredited civilians despots hated by their people?
This is perhaps the biggest crisis Pakistan ever faced since 1971. President Musharraf is pursuing a policy of a most decided character and capital importance. He has his own strong views about what to do. He has his own values; his own angle of vision. No one impugns his motives. No one doubts his convictions, patriotism or courage. Besides all this, he and he alone has the power to do what he thinks best. He has to take full responsibility for taking the course in which he believes. Is he following the right course? Final judgement can only be recorded by history.
Bismarck once remarked that asking him to pay attention to political and moral principles while conducting foreign policy was like asking him to walk through a dense forest with a 12-foot pole between his teeth. President Musharraf is in a similar unenviable situation. One thing is clear. The decision to facilitate the US bombing has very little popular support and has aroused anger and resentment. And if hands raised in prayer in thousands of mosques throughout the the country are also pointing in accusation, the government has itself to blame and must pay heed. It is a terrible thing to look over your shoulder when you are trying to lead your people in a national crisis—and find no one there. The cup is full. Let us not make it overflow. |
