FOOTLOOSE
Notes from a walled city
RAKSHANDA JALIL
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Kabul is a city under siege, with enemies within and without, disconnected from the rest of the country.
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Photo: AFP
A long winter ahead: Troubled times for Kabul.
The Air India flight to Kabul is half empty; it has only a smattering of aid workers and motley service providers. The Kabul International Airport is small and empty too; it has more helicopters than aircraft and more UN planes than international air
liners. The horror and devastation visited upon poor benighted Afghanistan is very much in evidence in its shattered capital. While there is a great deal of rebuilding and construction activity everywhere, the city is still under siege. The enemy lies within. The fear of abductions hangs heavy and the newest terror tactic are walking human bombs — young and impoverished men from rural areas induced to wear jackets laden with explosives, made to walk into crowded areas where they can wreak havoc and do maximum damage while someone somewhere sets them off with a hand-held remote.
We arrive in Kabul the day after the Indian national held captive in Herat has been released. Here to attend a seminar on Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan to mark his 20th death anniversary, we also tie up with the Regional Studies Centre to establish an Afghan Studies Centre at the Jamia Millia Islamia. Being hindi, we are dostum at large and wearing a sari I am constantly being quizzed about Tulsi who seems to have a near-manic fan following among Afghan women. India clearly is top of the pops and not merely due to the popularity of its Hindi films and television soaps. Indian aid is helping build roads, setting up hospitals, drafting the Constitution, even building the Parliament.
Relevance of Frontier Gandhi
At the seminar, speaker after speaker urge the nation to heed the words of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, “the hero of non-violence”, known to us as Frontier Gandhi, and revered by Pakhtuns as Bachcha Khan. This gentle giant stands tall among his countrymen for creating a sense of Pakhtun identity that had dignity and confidence, and yet was inclusive of a larger worldview. The irony here is unmistakable: that a country ravaged by internecine warfare for over four decades where the army is the single largest employer should so adore a man and uphold his teachings as the only way to bring about lasting peace. While it is heartening to see that the forces of sectarianism have not mowed down this tall poppy of the Indian freedom movement, it is disconcerting to be told that the Congress, never one for referendums, showed indecent haste in taking a referendum in the North West Frontier Province and thus abandoned the Khudai Khitmatgars to their fate!
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Sitting in a sun-dappled patio under a grapevine festooned trellis, the sense of the surreal is very strong. The surrounding tables are filled with foreign aid workers chattering in a Babel of tongues. The table is groaning under the weight of an over-priced but very authentic Lebanese meal. The tinkling of the fountains is muted by the Arab music wafting from discreet speakers. We have reached this oasis of tranquillity after crossing three metal gates, each manned by private militia in full military gear dressed for combat. The restaurant itself, located in the tony Wazir Akbar Khan neighbourhood, looks like an army barracks from the outside; it has high compound walls topped by barbed wire and has no windows, nothing in fact to give any clue as to what lies behind its faceless walls. The price for culinary adventures is clearly high in Kabul.
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The Bagh-e-Babur is clearly every Kabuli’s pride and joy. With its awe-inspiring vista and clear-cut symmetrical grounds and flowing water channels, this 16th century garden is a pre-cursor of the Mughal style gardens found in Lahore, Srinagar and Delhi built by the later Mughals. Though first buried in Agra, Babur’s body was taken, according to his instructions, to his favourite spot on a mountainside overlooking the city of Kabul sometime in 1540. In 1607, his grandson, the emperor Jahangir, paid a visit to Kabul and ordered a handsome marble tombstone and an elegant pavilion to be built south of the grave enclosure. His son, and Babur’s great-grandson, Shahjahan, visited Kabul in 1639 and added a marble mosque to the now-handsome complex.
An oasis
Years of neglect had made it woefully run down. Painstakingly restored by the Agha Khan Trust for Culture, under the supervision of a bright young conservation architect from India — Ratish Nanda — the restored garden is a delightful oasis of serenity. Green young saplings have been planted to replace the mighty chinar trees that were chopped down for firewood. Grass grows again in the gardens that had been taken over by civilians displaced during the wars. And the fountains and water channels gush once again with clear water. Babur’s grave lies open to the sky behind delicately carved marble screens. Bird song wafts from the trees and mingles with the happy sounds of children playing and families picnicking on the grass.
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The Kabuli men and women we meet are a far cry from the Kabuliwallah of popular Indian imagination. While each has a story of personal sorrow or loss to narrate, and a great many speak fluent Hindustani picked up during their years in Pakistan (in most cases in refugee camps), their spirit is undaunted and unharmed. Keen to re-build their broken country, they are nevertheless wary of all outside help. An editorial in Afghanistan Times goes so far as to proclaim that the only way to deal with the abduction menace is to stop giving top jobs to foreign nationals and to employ only Afghans! Lutfullah Mastkhil, a sharp, savvy and cynical young journalist, is trenchant: the Karzai government has not done enough, the process of nation-building is too slow, the corruption is way too rampant, the Taliban are forever regrouping and re-arming themselves. He recounts the Afghan dream of reclaiming “their” lands all the way from the Amu Darya to the Indus and how Pakistan will never let peace prevail because a “strong Afghanistan means no Pakistan”. “The sharp difference between Kabul and the rest of Afghanistan needs to be lessened, or it will destroy Kabul,” he warns. Kabul, we are told repeatedly, is not Afghanistan. It is another country out there.
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Overheard a wireless conversation somewhere in a field awash with pink and white opium poppies, a military man is asking a Taliban soldier: “What is the difference between who is killed and who is martyred?” The answer: “Those whom we kill are martyred; all others who die go straight to hell.”
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