What Afghanistan
Has To Teach
By Aseem Shrivastava
16 September, 2005
Countercurrents.org
(This is the second part of an essay published in the columns of Counterpunch
a year ago. In the first part I had related the story of an Afghan refugee,
Jamal, who journeyed perilously from Afghanistan to Norway over a period
of 6 years. You can read the first part at http://counterpunch.org/aseem08072004.html)
"People everywhere, under very different conditions, are asking
themselves - where are we? The question is historical not geographical.
What are we living through? Where are we being taken? What have we lost?
How to continue without a plausible vision of the future? Why have we
lost any view of what is beyond a lifetime?"
- John Berger, "Written
in the Night" (2002, before the US invasion of Iraq)
If
there are any heroes in our modern world, Jamal is surely one of them.
True heroes are
usually unsung. Their daring deeds are hidden from the eyes of the world.
Nor do they care much for appearances. It sometimes takes a Dostoevsky
to make us notice and celebrate the pluck and courage of ordinary humanity.
That too after the great writer has been canonized after his death and
taught decades later by tweed-jacketed professors with long prefixes
to their titles.
Most readers of
this article would not have been able to negotiate the terrain that
Jamal has. No one with a law-abiding baggage of respectability
would even consider making so many border crossings without the requisite
papers. Nor would we have to.
Our privileges guard
us from the need to put our courage to the test. So the huge cowardice
of privileged classes globally goes undetected and we
carry on living within the apparently secure cocoons of civilization,
freedom or some other laudable label, our rationalizations
of the rotten world unchallenged.
People like Jamal
are infinitely more imperiled. History has prepared them differently.
Living deep under the boots of assorted rulers, they have always had
to scrounge the stingy earth to survive. As children they had learnt
to evade Russian bullets. Thereafter, the marauding mobs of the Taliban
came after them. And they fell from that frying pan into an American
fire. They were soon seeking shelter from surgically guided smart bombs.
Finally, when they could not shoo themselves away from those either,
and their homes had been reduced to rubble, their brothers and sisters
killed or maimed, their livelihoods lost, they had to learn to bribe
petty officials and agents, bow before jailers and police officers and
endure their wanton violence, in order to earn their passage to safer
lands. Where they are often met with indifference, discrimination, racism
and an absence of empathetic understanding that only a certain degree
of civilization and remoteness from lifes harsher
realities can confer on the human spirit. There are of course
redeeming acts of kindness, like the one that saved Jamal in Italy.
The question is whether they are enough to change the prospects of the
hundreds of millions who live through predicaments similar to Jamals.
To constantly be able to evade the snare of the law and to not take
the daily slurs, insults and humiliations dealt to them by authority
to heart constitute the art of patience and restraint that people like
Jamal have had to master not for any goal more ethereal than
the mere task of everyday survival for themselves. Their lives are obstacle
courses from one end to the other, the hurdles they have to negotiate,
having been put in their path by civilization.
Jamal dreams of
working one day for the welfare of the children of Afghanistan. He longs
to see them healthy and educated.
No "compassion
fatigue" there. I realized as I heard Jamal that there was no divergence
in his mind between his interests and those of his people.
Nowadays, in the
age of false individualism, one hears more and more, from young and
old alike, the tiring drumbeat of justifications for self-interest.
The young celebrate their narcissism on TV screens, while many university
professors and intellectuals are busy carving elegant theories drawn
from specious science, holding up selfishness as one of the great virtues
of humanity, a gift without which it could not have evolved as
poor students of Darwin would have it to this stage of moral
perfection.
So, to meet Jamal,
of multiple bereavements, and kin to chronic conditions of pain, deprivation
and insecurity, and to hear him speak from the depths of his abundant
heart about his wishes for the children of Afghanistan, was a breath
of fresh air in the stench that consumer civilization has become today.
What is remarkable is that he, unlike so many immensely more privileged
than him, has not forsaken his dreams in the face of the harsh realities
that the world has rudely flung in his face. On the contrary, he is
carried by a hearty spirit about realizing at least some of his hopes
during the time allotted to him.
Is Jamal shooting
darts in the dark at a board that does not exist? Or can his efforts
in a world as hopeless as his bring a smile to his face some day? Whether
this would happen depends crucially on how readily he will be able to
make the return journey back to Afghanistan some day (should he wish
to). It also assumes that the journey would be worth making, which in
turn would be contingent on whether the coming elections change the
fortunes of his country. It also assumes that American bombs would stop
raining on them in the future.
Conduct this thought
experiment. Jamal traversed a dozen-odd countries "illegally"
to make his solitary way to Norway. Do state boundaries mean anything
to someone who finds himself hunted wherever he goes? What changes would
the world have to go through before he can make the return journey legally,
and, importantly, not against his will?
Dream for a second.
A planet without national boundaries, a "borderless world"
would surely make that possible. But such a utopia is all too simplistic
for a civilization which is founded on bureaucracies that thrive on
making human lives complicated. (The British government spends 2 billion
pounds a year to control immigration.) It implies, after all, no less
than the death of the world system of nation-states, if not that of
the state itself as a human institution of long and hoary standing.
Too much stands in the way of such a momentous change in human affairs.
But when, if not
in the brave new world of globalization, rife with tall talk about the
shrinking global village, are we entitled to express such a dream? Global
environmental crises make such a vision imperative to embrace. The technology
available today makes it possible to realize the dream. Even the impending
fiscal crises in rich countries (on account of rising social security
payments for ageing populations) in decades to come point towards the
desirability of free movement of labor across the surface of the globe.
If human hearts are willing.
However, short of
this vision of planetary freedom there are others that one can contemplate.
Reduced to dimensions
of worldly pragmatism, the issue boils down to the following priority:
How soon will the world be ready to allow an Afghan passport-holder,
with an obviously Muslim name, to travel freely and unhampered, to any
country of his choice, much like a citizen from a rich Western country
already does? How many Abu-Ghraibs and Guantanamos, not to speak of
the secret torture chambers in countries as different and far-flung
as Saudi Arabia and Colombia would have to be closed down before that
can happen?
To solve Jamals
problem is to solve the problem of the modern world. It is to recall
the promises of liberty, equality and, importantly, fraternity
made at the dawn of modernity. It means, among countless other
things, to demand that the war on terror be called off, since it is
an escape from the quest for a just, global peace.
Even today
especially today one has to start with the humbling recognition
that the ideals in the name of which every revolution of the modern
world since the French has been fought, today lie all but buried under
the caked capitalist earth. The perversion and final destruction of
communism means that one has to resume our struggles with baby steps
today. The self-appointed guardians of democracy have succeeded in making
everyone forget that freedom was not handed out on a platter to commoners
and working people by the kings and queens of feudal Europe. The evangelists
of democracy today have perpetuated the amnesia that makes people think
that democracy was not resisted tooth and nail before a semblance of
it was finally granted, that in the US for instance, African-American
people won their voting rights after prolonged struggle only 40 years
ago.
A common predicament
Since meeting and
listening to Jamal last year I got to know several other Afghan refugees
living in Norway. We became friends. We cooked and ate together. We
would often listen together to songs from Bombay films. They helped
me pack my house when I had to move from Norway at the end of this summer.
Their stories were all too similar to the one I had heard from Jamal.
Lives lived in the shadows, dodging cops and guards both by night and
by day wherever they have been - Pakistan, Iran, Russia, Turkey, Greece,
Italy, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden. Each
one had been cheated by agents and has had to bribe officials. The loss
of loved ones haunts their hearts, even when they have been chased by
thirst and hunger.
Norway is a relief,
though they continue to be mistaken for Al-Qaeda as soon as their Afghan
origins are disclosed. While they are not exactly asked to prove their
bona fides, a certain distance quickly develops precisely with the people
who get close to them in the first place. Yes, there is food and drink,
and television. Even if you know it hides and lies, it is still good
fortune to have a window into the world outside. They learn Norsk while
they earn small wages as helpers at local establishments. There is the
prospect of a job after these internships, hopefully in Oslo or Bergen.
Only then might the thought of "starting a family" arise.
To dream is to live.
What is remarkable about each one of them is that, like Jamal, they
haven't surrendered the courage that allows them to dream. There is
going to be life in the future. The world is not ending. But it will
endure not because today's rulers will ensure that it does, but despite
them. Yesterday, four days before the first elections to the Afghan
National Assembly and the Provincial Councils, I called and spoke to
them. How was it going to be in Afghanistan now? One of them had just
been watching BBC: "This is going to be a democracy only in name.
The great powers will continue to run Afghanistan as they always have.
They will each back their men in Parliament. Yesterday's murderers and
thieves will be tommorrow's leaders. But at least people will be getting
into the habit of voting." And what then, I persisted. "America
will have to leave one day, like the Russians had to. Katrinas will
remind them of their priorities. For Afghanistan the story is far from
over. You know, in Kabul musicians have resumed playing and singing."
Immediately after talking to him I happened to read two interviews that
the BBC has recently done with musicians in Kabul. I also found out
that a young film-maker, after getting trained in Bollywood has returned
and made the first commercial film since the fall of the Taliban, "Spring
of Hope".
Elections and the
future
I have also been
reading reports from Afghanistan filed by observers at UNICEF and Human
Rights Watch.
The country is recovering
from a quarter-century of bloodletting. Tank shells, bomb craters and
bullet holes mark the landscape. Red Stones warn against uncleared minefields.
Of the estimated 100 million anti-personnel landmines that lie unexploded
somewhere on and under the earth, 5-7 million are in Afghanistan. One
for every four people living there. (Or shall we say one for every four
personnel living there? The truth is that the bulk of deaths from landmines
are precisely not personnel deaths.)
Thousands of child
soldiers have been demobilized. 5.5 million students are back in school,
playing volleyball, learning carpet-weaving or some other marketable
skills. In one village, people with their bare hands have built a school
for their children. Doctors, nurses and medical attendants all over
the country continue to work with sacred dedication.
Human Rights Watch
reports that the parliamentary elections are being held in an atmosphere
of great fear. 582 of the 5800 candidates are women. But images of their
faces cannot be displayed for publicity and information on billboards.
(In Kabul the most popular candidate appears to be a "woman in
yellow".) They are constantly being threatened, both by the Taliban,
who have made a vigorous comeback in the southern and eastern parts
of the country, and by the commanders and warlords, most of whom are
themselves candidates in the election, having enriched themselves from
the growth in the poppy economy during the past few years. The Taliban
executed a woman last month because she was taken to be an American
"spy".
My mind returns
to my Afghani friends in Norway.
Here are people
who have continued to fight with their backs to the wall. When human
brutalities have hurled them face down to the earth they have sneaked
a view of the clear blue sky above and behind them, mustered the faith
to slowly stand up, dust their clothes and walk fearlessly towards new
unknown horizons. These are new horizons not just for them but for all
humanity. With their very lives and attendant harsh choices they wordlessly
challenge the reigning mythologies of modernity. How far do the promises
of liberty and prosperity extend? Who is in and who is out of their
range? What happens to those who are left outside? Does the West still
remember the French revolution and the Enlightenment?
They have not had
the opportunity to read history. Their learning is all unlettered, drawn
from the pains that have left residues on their faces. But their innate
vitality is fierce and unmistakeable. Life is never bleak to them. Having
never suffered any loss of reality, they know nothing of anxiety and
depression. They have no fear of suffering. They have never had time
or opportunity to consider themselves desperate. The engines of necessity
and its child, raw hope, have pulled them from one point in their journeys
to the next.
The most remarkable
quality that I recognized in them was a resilient dignity that makes
them stubbornly unwilling to put the blame for their misfortunes on
others. They know nothing of self-pity. When the case for it - given
the gruesome barbarity inflicted on them in rapid succession by the
Soviets, the Taliban and the Americans - is so easy and obvious, they
refuse to pin the ultimate responsibility anywhere except at their own
doorstep. "We have been divided too long among ourselves and have
for decades betrayed our own people. Afghan people - whether they are
Pashtoons, Hazaras, Uzbeks or Tajiks - have shared the same fate, even
when we have imagined it to vary from one tribe to the next", one
of them said.
The coming elections
may ultimately pave the way for the unity that has been missing from
Afghan history.
There are many candles
being lit in the emergence from decades of darkness. There is the courageous
21-year-old editor of one of the two dailies that are published from
Mazhar-e-Sharif, who is writing columns asking for the government to
ensure the security of candidates and the integrity of the electoral
process. A Koochi nomad in Eastern Afghanistan is arguing for greater
representation of the interests of the nomads in the National Assembly.
Sabrina Sagheb is a member of the national basketball team. She has
lived the first 23 years of her life in Iran. At the age of 24, she
is the youngest candidate to stand for the national elections. She campaigns
without the security of bodyguards. She is in fact the "woman in
yellow" whose posters are all over Kabul.
UNICEF reports that
an ex-military commander wishes to turn his soldiers into carpenters.
There are Mullahs who are defending women's right to health, Councils
of Elders that have been encouraging women to register for voting. Despite
open threats from the Taliban, plenty of women are standing for the
elections. The fact that 25% of the seats are reserved for women means
that after the elections there will be a higher fraction of women legislators
in Afghanistan compared to the proportion in the US (15%) and the UK
(17%), the presumptuous guardians and prosyletizers of democratic faith.
There is more than
just irony in that statistical comparison. It underlines the remarkable
courage that Afghani people, especially women - supposedly paralyzed
by the customary burkhah - have shown in their struggles against multiple
oppressions. There is in the making here a possibly different trajectory
of modernity from the tyranny of corporate consumer society that hides
behind lofty, age-worn slogans, hegemonizing every society that it can
and brutally desecrating and pulverizing those it cannot. Some time
will need to pass before it starts becoming clearer that the American
dream will have to contend with more sustainable, egalitarian and universal
visions for the future of our beleaguered species.
Aseem Shrivastava is a free-lance writer. He can be reached at [email protected].