The
Saga of an Anguished Afghan
By
ASEEM SHRIVASTAVA
"After the migrant leaves
home, he never finds another place where the two life lines cross.
The vertical line exists no more; there is no longer any local
continuity between him and the dead, the dead now simply disappear;
and the gods have become inaccessible. The vertical line has
been twisted into the individual biographical circle which leads
nowhere but only encloses. As for the horizontal lines, because
there are no longer any fixed points as bearings, they are elided
into a plain of pure distance, across which everything is swept."
John Berger, And our Faces,
My Heart, Brief as Photos
I was biking back to my house
from the grocery store with a friend who is staying with me,
when I glimpsed a short, Nepalese-looking man cycling towards
us. We stopped and started talking. It turned out that he was
a refugee from Afghanistan, visiting a friend in the local area.
(For a few years I have been living and teaching at an international
junior college in the fjords of Western Norway.)
His name (changed here) was
Jamal and he belonged to the Hazara tribe from the highlands
of Central Afghanistan known as Hazarajat. The Hazaras are an
ethnic minority (4-5 million in number, now spread across many
refugee-absorbing countries), descended from Mongols (probably
remnants of Chingiz Khan's invading army) and settled in the
mountains to the north of Ghazni since the 13th century. Some
years ago, the Taliban destroyed the famous centuries-old Buddhist
statues in the region of Bamian (since orthodox Islam forbids
images), which is where Jamal is from. The Bandi-Amir lakes are
close by. Kabul, Bagram, and American presence, are not far.
The Hazaras are mostly Sh'ia
Muslims and have long been a persecuted minority, being a favored
target of the dominant Pushtoon tribes. Since the late 1980s
they have been trying to defend their regional autonomy (traditionally,
always crushed by the Pushtoon rulers in Kabul) under the banner
of Hizb-Wahadat (Party of Unity). As Jamal informed me, the Taliban,
being Sunni fanatics, were particularly harsh on them since gaining
control of Afghanistan after 1996.
When we met, Jamal had been
in Norway for several months. As we got talking he began to narrate
the spine-chilling story of how he got here.
A tormented
past
One would have guessed Jamal's
age at at least 30. It turned out he was about 20 (he did not
know exactly). The lines on his face were testimony to the life-experience
of a much older man. He had had education (in Dari, his own language,
and Persian) till grade 8. He had to suddenly leave schooling
and home 6 years ago under very trying conditions.
For one thing, there was a
serious family feud, involving his family with that of his uncle
(mother's brother) and the latter's son. Jamal's eldest brother
had avenged the killing of their sister (married to the uncle's
son and killed by him) by killing his own sister-in-law, who
was the uncle's daughter. Ultimately, the uncle and his son came
with Kalashnikovs one night and gunned down both of Jamal's elder
brothers, leaving behind little Jamal, his second sister, and
their parents. Soon after, the parents prevailed upon Jamal,
his sister, and her husband to leave the area.
An equally important impulse
for leaving home was the take-over of the region by the Taliban.
Initially, the Hazaras had managed to defend themselves against
a Taliban offensive in the Bamian region. The Hazaras' sense
of desperation is summed up in their proverb: Tang amad, dar
jang amad (He who is cornered must fight). But in September
1998, the Taliban attacked a second time, emboldened by their
capture of Mazhar-I-Sharif, armed this time with far superior
weaponry, helicopters and tanks. The Hazara resistance was crushed.
According to Jamal more than a thousand innocent people were
slaughtered. Many Hazara women were raped. He saw with his own
eyes the slaying of a six-month-old baby. Two of Jamal's cousins
died in battle with the Taliban.
In May, 1999, the Taliban committed
further massacres in the area, killing several hundred people
and consolidating their new-found hold on Hazarajat.
The Taliban considered the
Sh'ia Hazaras to be Kafirs (infidels) and told their own fighters
that the Qatl (killing) of a Sh'ia Kafir will ensure them a place
in Jannat (heaven). The Taliban's ultimatum to the Hazaras was
to leave their "Mazhab (religion), their country, or get
killed." The obvious results obtained.
In passing, Jamal noted the
American hypocrisy of first arming the Islamic fundamentalists
and the Taliban against the Russians and then pretending to destroy
them after 9/11, ignoring all along the humanitarian concerns
of the Hazaras, as also the other innocent tribes of Afghanistan,
victims, first of the Russians, then of the Taliban, and finally,
of US bombing and destruction.
The teenager's
flight into exile
Jamal's land-and-water journey,
without papers and passport, armed with little more than a limited
working knowledge of Persian, from Bamian in Afghanistan to the
fjords of Western Norway, a journey over six years and over a
dozen countries negotiating, in turn, the highlands of
Central Asia, the Baluchi desert, rugged, mountainous tracts
in Pakistan, Iran, Kurdistan and Turkey, before finding extraordinary
means of getting across to Greece and Italy over water, and traversing
Europe before reaching its Northern shores is the stuff
of epic human suffering. It shows just how imperiled, hearty
and brave a creature man is! Jamal came close to death on dozens
of occasions, running scared from army patrols and policemen
on some of them, barely surviving thirst and hunger on others.
Jamal claims that the bulk of the people who leave Afghanistan
in despair never make it to their final destinations and do not
survive to tell the tale.
Over the past century and more,
the West and its corrupt, violent accomplices in the Third World,
have perpetrated monstrous miseries on vulnerable millions across
the globe in the name of higher causes like 'peace', 'freedom',
'democracy', 'modernity' and 'progress'. For millions of beleaguered
migrants like Jamal, it is not the thrill of imperial adventure
chronicled by unjustly famous figures like Gertrude Bell
and Lawrence of Arabia that the human spirit lives. On
the contrary, its strength is stretched to unimaginable extremes
and it endures endless nights of hopelessness. The darkness stretches
longer than a Norwegian tunnel, and only the ones who suffer
know that, unlike the tunnel, it may never end. It is a tribute
to human courage and a testament to Jamal's tenacity that he
is able to smile through the violent cracks of his life.
Jamal's long trek began before
the winter of 1998-99 set in. Along with his sister and her husband,
he escaped from his qasba (small town) in Bamian by night, and
on foot. They had to avoid the eagle eyes of Taliban guards.
A Pathan then picked them up on the highway and brought them
in a sealed truck to Qandahar, from where they managed to get
a ride the next day on another truck to Quetta in South-West
Pakistan. They were saved from Taliban guards by truck-drivers
who concealed them at the back of their trucks under sandbags.
After two months of unsuccessfully
searching for work in Quetta, Jamal, his sister, and her husband
made arrangements with an agent to take them to Iran, which had
been accepting Afghan refugees for sometime. They had to let
go of the little sum of money they had left to pay the agent.
His education cut short in
grade 8 after he left Bamian, Jamal started his professional
life in Teheran. He began working under his brother-in-law who
himself hired his supervision services in construction to a local
contractor. Jamal began by lifting heavy loads, often carrying
sandbags as high as 5 or 6 storeys. On one occasion he fell from
the second floor of the building that his team was working on.
He fell and hurt himself miserably, putting himself out of work
for several months. Since he had no money to get medical assistance,
his knee has got dislocated permanently. It hurts even now and
he is not able to lift heavy loads for too long. For a person
who has few skills apart from his physical ones, it is a far
greater handicap than what one would otherwise imagine.
Soon after turning 16, Jamal
started working separately from his brother-in-law, having picked
up some metal-working skills and carpentry in his spare-time.
He would make doors and windows in people's houses. While earlier
he was earning about 50 Euros a month and giving all the money
to his sister, now he was making up to 150 Euros a month and
being able to save a good fraction of it.
Apart from the minimal fortune
of finding some work Jamal, like other Afghan refugees, was treated
badly in Iran. If he was caught by the police they would invariably
take all the money in his pockets as bribes, since he did not
have any papers. In case he did not have money on him, he would
often get a thrashing.
Beatings of Afghan refugees
are quite common in Iran. Jamal told a number of stories and
the accounts can also be cross-checked with similar reports on
treatment of Afghan refugees in Iran prepared by NGOs in Norway
as also groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
Authorities in Iran became
more stringent with Afghan refugees after 9/11. On one occasion,
two years ago, Jamal, along with some fellow-Afghans, was caught
by the police and taken in a sealed truck to Bazdashka (prison),
where they were asked to lie on the ground next to each other
and beaten with wooden batons by the guards. For one week, 300
refugees were imprisoned in a large hall. They were allowed to
leave the hall only once during the day to have water and visit
the toilet. They were robbed of all money and possessions and
provided with some burnt bread by way of food. There were daily
police atrocities. There was no recourse to justice for an Afghan
in the custody of Iranian police. From the prison they were taken
via Zaidan to Talisiyah near the Afghan border for deportation.
Finally, hungry, thirsty and broke, they arrived at Nimroz on
the Afghan border.
From Nimroz Jamal managed to
make a phone call to his sister in Teheran and received some
money after a few days, with which he could entertain the possibility
of re-entering Iran. Along with some of the other refugees he
was able to find a Persian-speaking Pathan agent who first took
them in a truck to Zabul and from there, in order to stay clear
of the Taliban guards, the agent took them on foot, by night,
to Zaidan on the border with Iran. A Baluchi agent then charged
them 200,000 Tomans (150 Euros) each to take them to Teheran
on a truck, the journey lasting three days. The agent's fee included
the bribes to be paid to the Iranian police, who, Jamal pointed
out, make money from Afghan refugees both ways: first when they
are deported, and then when they try to re-enter the country.
Upon returning to Teheran Jamal
worked for six more months, saved some money and, after advice
from his sister, made plans to make his exit from Iran since
the authorities were getting increasingly severe on refugees
after 9/11. For 450 Euros an agent promised him safe passage
to Turkey.
As Jamal left for Turkey, he
was for the first time completely separated from his family (he
has not seen his sister since). The overland journey from Teheran
to Istanbul took three weeks. Jamal just had a change of clothes,
some food and a bottle of water with him. The journey was through
heavily patrolled areas of Iran, Kurdistan and Turkey. It was
made with the help of a series of interlinked agents. There was
the man with the truck carrying sand. Jamal and his fellow escapees
were hidden under the sand. "How did you breathe?",
I asked him. "They had created tunnels in the sand for exactly
that purpose!" There were five people in the sands. When
they reached the next destination on the way to Istanbul, three
people were unconscious because of suffocation and had to be
revived with water. One of them could not be revived and was
left behind, likely dead.
There were several overnight
journeys on foot over the Kurdish mountains. Some of the migrants
died of cold, according to Jamal. In the villages and small towns
where they would halt for the night, they would often be asked
to stay with sheep and goats in their sheds, so that armies on
patrol would not catch them. On one occasion they stayed at the
house of an agent. There were as many as 80 fellow-migrants
including Pakistanis, Indians, Bangladeshis and Iraqis
staying there, each paying a sum of money to the host.
On several occasions Jamal
and his associates had close shaves with the army or the police,
in Iran as well as in Kurdistan and Turkey.
After a three-week odyssey
Jamal and his fellow-refugees arrived in Istanbul. Unlike the
others who had the money to pay agents to buy passage to Europe,
Jamal was broke and was lucky to find some work soon. He worked
for six months in a leather and rubber goods godown owned by
a Pakistani. The work involved cutting, sorting and arranging
the items. It enabled him to survive and also save a bit of money
to pay for the boat to Europe.
"Why did you want to leave
Istanbul?", I asked him. He replied that the authorities
there were very hostile to Afghan refugees and were unwilling
to give them legal status. There were a number of police atrocities
against them. Jamal himself got beaten up on a couple of occasions.
Moreover, most employers were not willing to hire people from
outside. The risks for Afghans were high. If you got caught without
papers you were deported to Iran and from there to Afghanistan.
Jamal thus had to work on the sly, going to work before dawn
and returning after dark, in order to escape the eyes of the
police. On one occasion when he was caught he was dispossessed
of all his money.
Finally, when he had set aside
enough savings, Jamal managed to arrange for an agent to take
him to Greece by boat. He was told that the crossing would take
5 hours. It took three days and three nights! He ran out of water
on the second day and stayed thirsty for the remainder of the
time. In a boat, no more than 20 metres in length, there were
as many as 40 people traveling, including 12 Afghans, several
Palestinians, Kurds, Iraqis and Iranians.
(During the mostly standing-room-only
crossing Jamal met an Egyptian man who showed anger at Afghans
because he thought they were the same as Al-Qaeda and were jeopardizing
prospects for Muslims across the world. Jamal responded by saying
that as an Egyptian he should know the difference between an
Arab and an Afghan, that in Afghanistan Al-Qaeda drew its recruits
predominantly from the majority Pushtoons and that there are
more Arabs than Afghans in the terrorist group, many of them
from Egypt! In general, Jamal feels that people all over the
world, thanks to American propaganda after 9/11, have wrongly
started thinking of all Afghans as Taliban, when, in fact, ironically,
most Afghans are the victims of the latter. Using a popular Hazara
expression, Jamal says that "the Taliban came and spoilt
their food." He would like very much for the world to recognize
the integrity of his people.)
Hungry, thirsty, tottering
at the edge of survival, Jamal was landed, after 72 hours on
water, in a Greek jungle-swamp. They were received by a local
agent who took four of them to his house at a time, strip-searched
them upon arrival with a knife held to their throats, and demanded
up-front cash before allowing them to stay for the night and
take them to their next destination.
After a couple of days, Jamal
and his new friend Asif, a 16-year-old fellow-Afghan, were put
with a consignment of watermelons in a container-truck headed
for Italy. Apparently, some off-duty policemen saw them being
loaded into the container. While the truck was driving to the
port it was stopped by the customs authorities for an examination.
As luck would have it, the police torches showed Asif concealed
under the watermelons, though Jamal escaped notice. Asif was
hauled out of the truck, after which Jamal merely recalls a loud
sound of screeching brakes and a crash. He was told later that
Asif had been killed in the accident. He said he was afraid for
his own life and was unable to know the real truth about Asif's
death. He will never know, he said.
Upon reaching the port at night,
Jamal was escorted out of the container by another agent and
shown the way into a waiting boat, where he joined dozens of
other potential immigrants en route to Italy. Once again, the
boat proved to be very heavy on a stormy sea and Jamal claims
that several people on the boat were thrown out on the water
to drown, or simply shot by the agents after being offloaded.
After a 30-hour ordeal, through
which Jamal went hungry, they arrived, again during the night,
at a deserted shore which, they were told, was Italy. There was
no agent to guide them from here. They were merely shown the
direction to the nearest village. So, with barely a few belongings
on their shoulders, Jamal and two others began their trek on
the European mainland. A policeman who encountered them on the
way turned out to be a rare piece of good fortune, managing to
explain to them in an alien tongue that they could spend the
night at the morgue in the village and then walk three kilometers
in the morning to the small town nearby which happened to have
the closest train-station.
They did as they were told.
Next morning they walked the three kilometers in the rain. Their
luck seemed to have run out when they were asked for documents
by two Italian policemen. Upon finding out that their captives
had no papers, the policemen took pity on their wet, frozen condition
and instead of taking them to jail, told them how to get to Rome.
Not having the requisite amount
of money they managed to get on to the train to Rome, but without
a ticket. Through sheer pluck they evaded the train-conductors
and made it to Rome. They had the address of a park where some
of their compatriots were apparently "staying." They
found them after a day's effort, and finally got some food to
eat.
Two weeks in Rome was Jamal's
baptism in Europe. He had various adventures but he managed to
evade the cops, thanks to a rapid acquisition of survival skills
perfected by his fellow-Afghans.
Jamal made contact with his
sister in Teheran again and got her to send him some money. Then,
he and two others made a plan to travel towards Norway, since
he had heard that they take the best care of Afghan refugees.
They bought a train ticket to Paris, so this time there was no
fear of being checked, though they did not have any other papers.
Paris was cold and wet and
they lay down, once again without blankets, in a park at night.
Next day they made contact with some Afghan refugees in the city
who put them in touch with a Persian-speaking Kurdish agent.
For a sum of 600 Euros (all of Jamal's savings, sent to him in
Rome by his sister), he agreed to take Jamal to Oslo and his
traveling companions to Copenhagen and Stockholm.
After spending a week in Paris,
they took trains and buses, and on one occasion found themselves
concealed at the back of a station-wagon! Jamal does not know
exactly which countries he was taken through. But his agent informed
him that he went through France, Luxemburg, Belgium, Germany,
Denmark before he reached Stockholm and was put on the bus to
Oslo.
He arrived alone in Oslo late
at night with 50 Norwegian Kroners (6 Euros) in his pocket. He
was met by a Kurdish man who immediately took him to the police
station to get him registered as a fresh seeker of refugee status.
They finger-printed him and took him to a refugee camp. He was
interviewed there and after 4 days, sent to a larger refugee
camp. He spent 40 days there and was well looked after, after
a very long time.
Right now, Jamal lives at another
camp (he asked me not to name it). He is given 2800 Kroners (325
Euros) a month by the Norwegian authorities for his upkeep while
he awaits the decision on the legalization of his status.
He casts a cynical eye on Afghanistan
after the "end" of the Taliban. He says that the Mullahs
still hold the reins of power, only this time (as before 1990)
they are with the Americans. He dreams of resuming and completing
the education which was rudely interrupted 6 years ago.
Jamal and
Afghanistan: Which way now?
No other country has been savaged
by the three most potent fundamentalisms of our time, namely
the Communist, the Islamic, and the capitalist. First, the declining
Soviets invaded and ravaged the country and ran it from 1979
to 1988. Then the most rabid Islamic fundamentalists, in the
shape of the Mujaheedin and the Taliban, armed by the CIA to
battle the Soviets, pillaged the land and its people. Hundreds
of thousands were killed. Osama Bin Laden was created by American
policies.
Finally, after the Soviet withdrawal
and the end of the Cold War, American interest in Afghanistan
and its warlords has centred around negotiations to build oil
and gas pipelines the new "Silk Route" through
Central Asia from the Caspian Sea region through Afghanistan
to Multan in Pakistan, from where already existing pipelines
would carry the oil and gas to waiting tankers in the Karachi
harbour. The powers involved in this 21st century version of
"The Great Game" for regional hegemony the US,
Russia, Iran, Pakistan, and to lesser extents, Britain, China
and even Argentina have been impatiently eyeing the $3-6
trillion oil and gas reserves of the Caspian Sea region.
Under pressure from the oil
companies, especially UNOCAL and AMOCO, the Clinton administration
consolidated its links with the Taliban. Many official exchanges
took place between US administrations and the Taliban, all the
way till negotiations over the oil and gas pipelines broke down
in 2001. In 1996, Clinton's Assistant Secretary of State for
South Asia, Robin Raphael even took a helicopter from Islamabad
to Qandahar to meet with the Taliban high command. It's worth
keeping in view the fact that till their falling out after 9/11,
the Taliban served as America's "pipeline police" in
Afghanistan. Their treatment of women or children never stood
in the way of official American dealings with them. On one occasion
the US even defended the Taliban at the UN.
After 9/11, the US, in a cowardly
show of misdirected retributive justice, began the high-altitude
bombing of an already savaged land. 17 of the 19 hijackers of
the 9/11 aircrafts came from Saudi Arabia. None came from Afghanistan.
But the Bush family's loyalty to Saudi royalty and to Prince
Bandar Sultan (known to the family as Bandar Bush) prevailed
and the Afghan victims of Al-Qaeda (the latter recruited largely
in Sunni-dominated regions like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and
Pushtoon areas of Southern Afghanistan) were subjected to another
round of barbarism, this time in high-tech fashion by the Americans.
Informed observers believe
that America's "war on terror" is, at bottom, not only
a war for continued domination of the Middle East and its oil
(keeping it from the Europeans, the Japanese and the Chinese,
closest competitors in a globalized world), but even more for
Central Asian oil and gas. The area has vast gas reserves and,
as per latest estimates, could have up to 15% or more of the
planet's oil.
The Hazaras, Jamal among them,
only constitute a tiny fraction of the millions of innocent victims
around the globe of fossil-fuel-driven American foreign policies
for continued global hegemony, policies which should themselves
be fossilized if the planet is to survive into the next century.
As I was saying goodbye to
Jamal, I wondered aloud whether we would ever meet again. Giving
me a warm embrace, he said softly "kal ka kya pata, aaj
toh gale mil lein!" ("who knows about tomorrow, let's
embrace today!").
His fate now rests with the
immigration authorities in Oslo who have yet to legalize his
status, without which he does not even get the opportunity to
take the necessary Norwegian classes, get himself the education
he so badly desires and the medical attention he needs to attend
to the problem in his knee (doctors refusing to treat him in
Norway till he gets legalized). His fate also lies, more broadly,
with the Norwegian government which has recently been promoting
"Voluntary Return Programmes", trying to induce refugees
to return to their countries of origin.
Jamal himself remains extremely
grim about the possibility of returning home. He does not know
if his old parents are still alive. He is practically out of
touch with his sister. When asked about the return of peace to
Afghanistan after the American defeat of the Taliban, he responds
"Kaisa aman? Kaun sa aman?" ("What peace? Which
peace?"). He recalled that a Norwegian soldier had been
killed, and one wounded, less than two months ago in a grenade
attack near Kabul itself.
The Norwegian government should
take heed, and if the EU and the UN wish to stem the flow of
refugees from Afghanistan, they need to apply far greater pressure
on the US than they have done hitherto, to change the course
of its policies in the region. The problem has to be tackled
at its root.
The Americans have to take
responsibility not just for the destiny of Afghanistan as it
has unfolded since 9/11 (the US was willing to put 7 million
people, dependent on international food aid, at the risk of starvation
in winter when they began the bombing of Northern Afghanistan
in October, 2001), but for over two decades of problems resulting
from the proxy Cold War conflict that they engaged in with the
Soviets there since the Reagan years. For the first time in
the history of the Cold War, American-armed guerillas (Sunni
Islamic fundamentalists, the original ancestors of the ultimately
victorious Taliban and Al-Qaeda) were firing directly at Soviet
troops. The grand figure of Osama Bin Laden was created to prosecute
American interests in the region, and fight the Soviets with
a CIA-trained army of Sunni Islamic fundamentalist youth, recruited
from countries as far apart as Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and
Pakistan. The US, with the pivotal assistance of radical Islamists,
was hugely successful in its goal of displacing the Russians.
Further, many observers regard the Soviet defeat and withdrawal
from Afghanistan as the key element in the final unravelling
of the Soviet empire. But the long-term legacy of American intervention
for the people of Afghanistan has been little short of catastrophic,
especially after the oil multinationals began to show an interest
in Caspian Sea oil and gas and of building the infamous pipeline.
The barbaric monstrosities of the Taliban notwithstanding, the
Americans wined and dined them all the way till August, 2001,
to negotiate a good deal for the oil companies interested in
Central Asia.
What now? Jamal recalls that
the American-appointed Hamid Karzai was a minister in the short-lived
Mujaheedin government in the early 1990s and was even a supporter
of the Taliban at the time. He is certainly very far from having
the interests of minorities like the Hazaras at heart. Jamal
says that no one in Afghanistan takes seriously the claim of
the Western media and governments that the Islamic fundamentalists
and the Taliban have been eliminated from the country. Karzai
is seen exactly for what he is, an American stooge who will ensure
safe passage for American oil interests. 'Karz' means loan in
Dari and Urdu, and the Hazaras believe that the Americans have
this time taken Karzai on loan from the Afghans, in order to
do their bidding in Afghanistan! The country outside of the small
circle of American light around Kabul is still run by warlords
who get their kicks from Kalashnikovs, either belonging to the
Taliban or the Northern Alliance or one of their supporting groups.
In many parts, thanks to complete lawlessness, women are no better
off than under the Taliban. Rapes are common. Kabul itself, Jamal
alleges, has become prohibitively expensive, affordable only
for American and UN officials and diplomats, whose presence has
spiked all prices and rents.
The Jamals, not the Karzais
and the Khalilzads (architect of Bush's policy in Afghanistan),
are not only the real survivors of a devastated Afghanistan,
but the true heroes of the modern world. For the Karzais and
the Khalilzads, having made their mealy-mouthed deals with the
Americans, life is simple and easy. Not for Jamal: "Whoever
believes that life is simple or easy has not lived", Jamal
says in fluent Urdu, reciting a couplet which now eludes my memory
and which offers consolation to a life almost resigned to exile.
Yet he harbors the soaring hopes of youth. His eyes light up
as he declares with zest: "Mustaqbil mein ek roshan
banana hai" (One has to make a light in the future).
Already fluent in several languages (his native Dari, Persian,
Urdu, spoken Hindi, some Turkish and now learning Norwegian and
English) Jamal still wishes more than anything else to complete
his education.
With wisdom missing nowadays
in men thrice his age, and hugely more educated than himself,
the saddened 20-year-old muses that "there is no hope for
my generation. I have never glimpsed happiness in my life, but
at least the next generation should see some, and we have a role
to play in that." I asked him how he wished to play his
part. "I do not want to become rich. If I can get an education,
I would like to be of some help to the poor children of Afghanistan,
because I know from my own life the conditions under which countless
tens of thousands of children are growing up in the country.
We need teachers, doctors and engineers, not Mullahs, weapons,
American-appointed leaders and what they and the Americans call
peace."
One of the most astute commentators
on Afghanistan and the modern world, the late Eqbal Ahmad from
Pakistan, used to describe the country as a "metaphor for
the world to come." The world had better take heed of his
words, given how prophetic he was in his prediction about the
rise of a once obscure Saudi Mullah called Osama Bin Laden, more
than a decade before 9/11 brought him immortal notoriety.
Aseem Shrivastava, a citizen of India, teaches philosophy
in Norway and can be reached at: mi97ashr@rcnuwc.uwc.org
Weekend
Edition Features for July 31 / August 1, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Kerry:
He's the (Any) One
Merlin Chowkwanyun
Five Questions with Noam Chomsky: "The Savage Extreme of
a Narrow Policy Spectrum"
David Lindorff
The Shame of the DNC
John Chuckman
The
Disturbing Words of John Edwards
Brian Cloughley
All Slam and No Dunk; All Blame and No Responsibility
Christopher Brauchli
"Being Poor is a State of Mind": the Frowning Face
of Compassionate Conservatism
Fred Gardner
A World of Pain
Michael Donnelly
How Big Pharma Bilks the Elderly
David Nally
Genocide in Darfur?
Joshua Frank
Forest Battles Escalate in Oregon
Sam Bahour
Colin Powell and My Grandmother
Diane Farsetta
The IMF and the Indonesian Elections: The Invisible Hand in the
Voting Booth
Harold Gould
Was Iraq a Mutual Charade?
Van Bergen / Stephens
Election 9/11: Surreal Political Theater
Lee Sustar
A New Model for the Labor Movement?
Ron Jacobs
The Lost Art of Hitchhiking
M. Junaid Alam
An Interview with Palestinian-American Rapper, The Iron Sheik
Poets Basement
Albert, Ford, Krieger, St. Clair
Website of
the Weekend
Cross Cultural Poetics
Keep
CounterPunch Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home
/ subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /