Kabul calling

It may or may not be an entirely apocryphal story: Prime Minister Charan Singh, on hearing about the landing of the Soviet troops at Kabul in December 1979, asked: “Afghanistan? Isn’t that a country near Russia?” He was right, of course. But it is not far from India either — just 500 kms with only Pakistan in between. After Moscow’s invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, the country became familiar to even remote Indians. The American bombing has now dinned the name into their heads. They have been eagerly following the decline and fall of the Taliban empire.

The question that is being increasingly asked in India is whether the air of secularism, which has begun to blow in Afghanistan, will last. There is no reason why it will not. The Afghans, owing allegiance to many tribes, have been free from communal rancour. Hindus and Sikhs have always lived in peace and harmony in Afghanistan. Till the coming of the Taliban, there had been no instance of discrimination against them.

Another reason for the Afghans to rise above communalism was the influence of the communists. They had two parties, Parcham (banner) and Khalq (people). Both quarrelled between themselves. But they gave no quarter to the mullah and the maulvi. It was the Soviet Union’s occupation that gave a bad name to communism. Religious zealots exploited Afghanistan’s slavery to gain ground.

America saw in the situation a great opportunity to hit at the Soviet Union. That Islamabad helped Washington to do so is well known. The rest is history — how the Soviet Union crumbled under the weight of the expensive and unpopular war. Once Washington achieved its purpose it lost interest in Afghanistan, leaving it to become a den of fundamentalists. In fact, America helped in the birth of the Taliban so that Russia would never come into the picture again. But all America’s chickens came home to roost later. It was not at all surprising that the same Taliban hit the Americans in their own country. In fact, it was inevitable. If you sow the wind, you will reap the whirlwind.

Coming to the present, the story of Afghanistan is the story of a pawn in the game of chess between the Soviet Union and the US. Now that the world is unipolar after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, it is America which is guiding Afghanistan. But it should be careful not to give the impression that it is dictating. The Afghans are a very proud people and they will rise against America if they feel that they have been subjugated. They may tolerate the UN (peace keeping force) till the reconstruction of the country but not beyond. The sooner the foreign troops leave Afghanistan the better. Kabul fell to the alliance forces one day after some 500 men and women from South Asia adopted a statement on the sovereignty of Afghanistan. They said that the country was “a direct concern to all people in South Asia because historically and culturally Afghanistan has for ages been part of the region.” They also made the demand for the entire South Asian region to settle their affairs in their own way.

What the world has to worry about now is not the Taliban but Talibanisation. Those who have become Tabligis (preacher) and jehadis have not changed overnight. They have acquired an ideology of fundamentalism. Ideologies take a long time to wear off. There is no reason to believe that they have given up their faith and their belief. They have been defeated. So they are lying low. They may constitute themselves into another force. They may continue to cherish what they have imbibed. The situation in Pakistan is no different, whatever President Pervez Musharraf may have said in his recent speech. The way in which the liberated Afghanistan behaves may be the right answer to Talibanisation. If the old atmosphere of pluralism returns — it has in Kabul and the areas around — Talibanisation will begin to disappear.

The history of Afghanistan, going back to centuries, testifies that communalism or parochialism has never thrived in the country. The Rig Veda, the oldest book of the Hindus (1500 BC), mentions the area. The hymns refer to two rivers: Kubha (Kabul) and Suvastu (Swat); the Suvastu flows through Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province. Balkh (Bactria), a province of Afghanistan, is also mentioned in most Aryan legends. The Avesta too carries a reference to what is now Afghanistan. The earliest religion of the country mentioned is Mazdean, with a cult of two divinities, Ahuramazda and Mithra, associated with numerous devas (gods). Through the same road, Buddhism travelled from India to Afghanistan, in the shape of messages which Emperor Asoka spread following his conversion to Buddhism. Two of Asoka’s main edicts, written in both Greek and Aramaic, have been discovered in Kandahar.

New Delhi had friendly relations with Kabul till the Taliban came to the scene some seven years ago. India may not be able to erase the stigma of having abstained at the UN on the condemnation of Moscow in 1979. Still the wholehearted support to Afghanistan in its efforts to rebuild itself economically and politically may get us back part of old goodwill. There is no doubt that liberalism will be in ascendancy even if fundamentalism does not lose its total appeal. Islamabad, which used fundamentalism as part of its policy, has come a cropper. The Taliban was the propeller of that policy and they stand rejected. Pakistan’s interest in Afghanistan was strategic, not religious. The idea was to have access to the Central Asian Republics through Afghanistan. Islamabad began to give shape to the plan when the republics seceded from the Soviet Union.

Washington is wrong in establishing its base in Afghanistan. It is sure to come to grief as Russia did. Neither China nor Russia will look at Washington’s presence in Afghanistan kindly. In fact, America’s doings in Afghanistan may bring the two closer together. India is too embroiled in its estranged relations with Pakistan but it is also against America’s presence in the region. Islamabad may tolerate Washington because of its enmity with New Delhi. The Pakistanis are closer to America today than ever before.

Kabul, as the days go by, will depend more and more on New Delhi than on Washington or Islamabad. The latter is being mistrusted because of its past relations with the Taliban, a hated lot in Afghanistan. America is being treated as the Soviet Union was at one time: a necessary evil. The younger group, which will increasingly count in Afghanistan, is favourably disposed towards India where some of them went to college and where they had the families living during the Taliban days. Afghanistan has suffered from violence, deceit and treachery, murder and massacre. Its future will depend on how determined are the various sects of Afghans to fight for freedom against every odd. They have proved their mettle in the past. All are watching them keenly — and with prayers.

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