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Start familiarising yourself with modern Afghanistan’s political and strategic history and you won’t take long to realise that it is an unfortunate country. Made up of the extremities of three regions (Central, West, and South Asia) and three civilisations — the Chinese, the Indic and the Persian-Islamic — its people have struggled, almost without a break, to build political unity in the face of divisive forces much too overwhelming even for their very hardened will. Its crossroads-like character forces ethnic groups quite distinct from one another to learn national coexistence the hard way. Its terrain makes it one of the most difficult places in the world to secure and govern. Great powers have scarcely left the country in peace, playing geopolitical games that are easily romanticised in distant imperial capitals and literature but that have killed and maimed generations of Afghans and counting.
For nearly four decades, war and destruction have wrecked Afghan lives, creating a colossal humanitarian disaster that is still unfolding. Fifteen years after the Taliban were ousted from Kabul, and a year after western military drawdown, battles, some bloody and others equally nasty, are being fought hard on several fronts.
All this has been happening to a people who don’t deserve any of it; who, in fact, deserve universal gratitude for keeping their humanity alive when they have few reasons to do so. It is this that makes the Afghan story terribly unfortunate. The way to make sense of the Afghan condition, I discovered in Kabul, is to struggle with it in your own way and let the empathy that this suffering generates in you guide you. And in Kabul, you see suffering in many forms.
Mind’s games in Kabul
There is no natural reason for Kabul to be thoroughly ugly. Wedged in a sprawling valley between the lower, dusty reaches of the lordly Hindu Kush, the city could unleash great aesthetic splendour on its residents if only its structures were designed in peace and with elevated imagination. But war has disfigured its landscape. Filth and dust, structures built to withstand bombings, blank facades, and hillocks occupied by squatters never leave your sight as you drive on its congested streets. The further away from VIP areas you move, the greater the ugliness becomes.
The real ugliness of Kabul is not seen, though, but felt. Suicide-bombings have changed Kabul’s vibes. People can’t trust one another and interpersonal relations are unstable. Because not one but several intelligence agencies operate in the city, you can never be sure if the person you are talking to is just who he claims he is.
Not that you are trusted yourself. You start a conversation with someone and you tell them you are researching the war and Afghanistan’s relations with India. They can’t make out if you are Indian or Pakistani. You speak Hindustani with them. They ask you questions about India — Bollywood, Delhi, Lajpat Nagar, and the sort. You think you’ve struck a rapport and feel good about making the human connect. Ten minutes into the conversation, they say, “ Chalo sir, ab toh bata do ke Pakistan mein kahaan se ho .”
You want to walk the streets to take in the city so you ask your local friends for safe areas to walk in. “All areas are, and none is. It depends on your luck. If you are lucky, you won’t be shot at or mugged.”
A day before I am to leave, a suicide-bomber kills six American soldiers near the Bagram airbase outside Kabul. I visit a few high-profile government offices during the day and later a friend drives me around the city after dinner, pointing out places recently targeted by Taliban attackers. Thirty minutes after I return to my hotel room, Shahid bhai, the bearer from Allahabad in my very own UP, comes with news of rockets attacks.
Three of these landed near places I’d visited earlier in the day. “ Yeh saaley aisei hain , kabhi bhi rocket phaayar kar dete hain . Par aap phikar nahin karein . Hotal seph hai , aur raat mein toh hum dyuti par haiye hain .” I enjoy Shahid bhai’s Allahabadi Hindi, but his assurances don’t help.
The hotel’s front office asks you to carry your passport with you at all times, be watchful, not eat at unguarded restaurants, and not get chatty with strangers. “It is not safe for foreigners, and Indians are a target too. But don’t worry, sir, the security people will not bother you once you show them your Indian passport.”
These restrictions mess with my head. I feel boxed in. In this urban warzone of concrete boxes, you move from one box to another to breathe without concern. Each box — a university campus, a ministry complex, a hotel with five layers of security, or a mall — is a zone of relative peace. You are exposed out in the open to danger whose face you haven’t seen. This is all very new, and before long, I realise that I’m battling my rationality.
That’s what Kabul’s insecurity does to you — it sets up a battle between you and your thoughts. You don’t know which street is safe to what extent and for how long. You stand at a crossroads for sunlight on a chilly winter morning and your mind says you might be standing out in the crowd. You step outside the hotel for a stroll after dinner, it is about 10, and the security guys with Kalashnikovs never really take their eyes off you.
Is an aimless movement of the limbs suspicious? You wonder. As you approach a senior ministry complex, you take your freezing hands out of your blazer’s pockets to disarm the guards at the gate. After sundown, your Afghan friend wants to take you to a hillock visited by Kabul’s young and rebellious. He insists this will change your image of life in the city. You trust him, but you cannot defy your instincts.
Initially, this constant battle between your habits and instincts exhausts you. Then frustration sets in. But, before long, you begin to adjust. Assessing risk becomes a function of intuition. But you always know that there are only a few wrong moves between you and serious bad luck.
Living with fear
What is it like living with acute fear? Kabul residents have learnt to get on with life amidst terror and turmoil but they haven’t lost their decency and sensitiveness. The spunky Shaharzad Akbar, Afghanistan’s first woman to study at Oxford who heads Open Society Foundation’s Afghanistan office, told me that every attack makes her run for her two-year-old nephew. When a shootout or a series of explosions erupt, she hugs him and covers his ears with her hands until things quieten. I have, several times, imagined doing that. Each attempt has left me disturbed.
“It is the women and the elderly who suffer the most,“ said Abdul Waheed Wafa of the Afghanistan Center at Kabul University. “Fear prevents them from stepping out, and they become imprisoned in their own homes. My family hasn’t taken a picnic in years. My old father has taken to watching football to keep his sanity.“ For Hamid Shalizi of Reuters, calling his family, which lives overseas, at least thrice daily is necessary to make sure they aren’t anxious. Like Wafa and Shalizi, countless Kabul residents have found ways to remain functional while knowing full well that the next attack on the city is always imminent. Sound sleep is rare but tired faces aren’t.
The besieged state
Afghanistan’s chief troubles stem from its security forces having to defend the fledgling state against the Taliban, the Islamic State and other violent extremists. After ousting the Taliban in late 2001, the West created a security and economic scaffolding for Afghans to construct a new polity in which all its ethnic groups — Pushtuns, Hazaras, Tajiks, Uzbeks and others — found representative stakes. That scaffolding is effectively withdrawn as Afghans have become responsible for their own affairs over the past year.
Against the background of western exit and exposed security forces, the Taliban, a very motivated force with an estimated 60,000 fighters and, reportedly, all manner of support from Pakistan’s strategic establishment, have smelled blood in their quest to overthrow the government. They have captured territory and increased suicide-attacks on Kabul, the country’s nerve centre. In October, they attacked and held Kunduz city for a few days — a major embarrassment for the Kabul government — before being flushed out, and are fighting to control territory in Helmand province.
As winter intensifies and fighting in the countryside becomes difficult, they have stepped up attacks in urban areas: in recent weeks, they have carried out deadly attacks in Kandahar and Kabul, killing dozens of Afghan and foreign civilians as well as international troops. At the same time, IS fighters have been gradually exploiting weak security to set up base in Nangarhar province. There is palpable danger that Afghanistan will again descend into a patchwork of violent territorial groups fighting one another as well as the legitimate state. Nevertheless, argues the brilliant strategist Davood Moradian, “The foundations of a modern Afghan state have been laid. You can see that we are taking hits practically every week. But we are able to cope. There is enough will at all levels to see the state survive and built up.”
For the moment though, the state is effectively besieged. Things are made worse by a miserable economic situation and political factionalism. Western military presence had created a war-cum-reconstruction economy. With disengagement, hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost, breeding resentment against President Ashraf Ghani’s government and forcing about 150,000 Afghan youth to migrate to Europe. The government hopes its new jobs programme will stem the tide and lessen resentment.
But this is a government whose expenses are substantially met by international aid. Politically, the National Unity Government (NUG) is divided between two men — Professor Ghani and Dr. Abdullah Abdullah (the “parallel president,” as a senior advisor from his camp described him to me) — and their two factions have reportedly divided the entire governmental realm — from portfolios and office spaces to the diplomatic corps — staffing them with their people. “The NUG’s design makes it inherently inefficient,” thought a western analyst who has spent long years in Afghanistan. Several Afghans, ordinary and extraordinary, are frustrated with governmental infighting and corruption in the face of colossal external challenges. Much of this frustration is with Ghani.
Professor President
Ghani is a rare Afghan leader because he has neither fought wars, civil or uncivil, nor is he charged of corruption. A western-trained anthropologist and former World-Banker, he has thought deeply about rebuilding wrecked states like his own. As President, he has split opinion sharply in Kabul. For his supporters, he is a champion of meritocracy who is undercutting the politics of patronage and personal alliances through which his predecessors ruled and kept the country together. For detractors, he is way too sophisticated for an essentially tribal society. Give them an opportunity and the floodgates of criticism open. A strategic analyst from the rival camp: “He is a patriot but not a politician and you need a politician to keep this country together.” A senior Afghan journalist: ‘He thinks in English and translates into Dari and Pashto… common people cannot understand his academic language.” A western journalist: “His qualifications are that of a central banker. He doesn’t seem suited for presidency.” A political analyst: “He sees problems with everything traditional and wants to change it all — from governance to public culture to foreign policy — at once. He acts like Obama but this isn’t America.”
To understand the context for such criticism, consider that Ghani has compared politics to “bricolage”, a term that delights postmodernists. And at the Heart of Asia meeting in Islamabad recently, he described terrorism as a “sociological system”.
Apparently, according to Kabul-talk, Ghani is rude to his ministers, thinks poorly of most of his officials, doesn’t value the advice he receives, and does almost all the thinking himself. I’m not surprised: the man has written a treatise on fixing failed states. Besides, as dozens of Global South leaders exemplify, eloquence breeds arrogance as the polished meet the unsophisticated. “He is quite like your prime minister, you know,” a United States–trained academic drew the parallel in an accent that seemed recently acquired. I still don’t know my response.
It is likely that Ghani wants to achieve the impossible. “At the heart of his vision is a complete reorientation of Afghanistan,” thinks Nader Nadery of the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit. Geography won’t stop shaping Afghanistan’s destiny, and neither would external actors stop taking interest in its affairs. A weak state is an invitation to predators like no other. So Ghani is inviting great and not-so-great powers — Iran, China, Pakistan, the Central Asian states, and India — to rebuild the Afghan state.
“It’s his way of positively locking them in the country so that they do minimum mischief,” a senior official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs suggested. The strategy will not work unless Pakistan comes on board, a goal for which Ghani has staked a lot, suffered loss of face, but hasn’t stopped trying.
“Pakistan, doshman”
In Kabul you discover what it is for a neighbour to be viscerally disliked, perhaps even hated, and what that tells you about that neighbour’s worldview. “Pakistan, doshman,” cried the wild taxi driver upon discovering my nationality, his rash driving scaring me no end on my first evening in Kabul. His sentiment was echoed to me, and with equal intensity, by people from different walks of life. Afghans are convinced that their blood is spilled in plots hatched in Pakistan. As one of them, in Hindustani learnt from Indian TV soaps and films, told me: “ Kaam kisi aur ka aur naam talib ka [effectively, the Taliban work for someone else].”
The military establishment in Rawalpindi runs an empire of extremist violence in the regions divided by the Durand Line and every target of the Taliban is an imperial outpost at war. It effectively controls the Taliban, by virtue of which it holds the reins to Afghan stability. This sort of influence gives the Pakistan military its much-craved ‘strategic depth’, which it uses against Indians and Afghans — to consistently fatal effects in the latter’s case. Military mischief is never in short supply as Rawalpindi keeps reminding Afghanistan of its upper hand: Pakistan’s defence minister recently stated they will get the Afghan Taliban to ensure security of the TAPI gas pipeline within Afghanistan.
Given all this, Ghani has sought to engage Pakistan to deliver on the Taliban even as the move has angered his colleagues in politics and his security officials. Rahmatullah Nabil, the country’s spy chief, resigned protesting Ghani’s reach-out to Pakistan days after the Heart of Asia conference in Islamabad in December, 2015. Officials close to Ghani say he is aware that it is difficult to get Pakistan to change course, but he wants to give it a real chance by pursuing Pakistan consistently and aggressively. If nothing else, his efforts would have exposed Pakistan’s support to terror and violence to the world. “Is that strategy?” I asked Moradian. “I’m not so sure,” he responded. Regardless of the strategic dynamics, if Pakistan’s military doesn’t care about popular sentiments of its second most important neighbour, then the political establishment in Islamabad needs to seriously think about their country’s prospects.
“Hindostan, dost”
The goodwill that India and Indians have among Afghans is insane. The next two words of the wild taxi-driver were “Hindostan, dost”. Afghans devour Indian films and TV serials without subtitles or dubbing and learn Hindustani in the process. Once they ascertain you are Indian, they shower you with love you know you don’t deserve and cannot be grateful enough for.
On a freezing but picturesque evening, I clicked pictures of the new Afghan parliament building from the mound on which stands the bullet-studded Darul Aman Palace, a painful reminder of the Afghan wars. Built with Indian assistance, it was inaugurated by the Indian Prime Minister late last month. As I got done, a couple of intelligence guys came over to us and got into an argument with my Afghan friend about the pictures. They wouldn’t trust him that I was Indian and that the photos were for academic purposes. A few tense moments later, during which they checked my passport, my visiting card, and spoke over the phone to their immediate boss, they apologised for causing me discomfort. “This building is your gift to us. I deeply love Amitabh Bachchan [the Khuda Gawah connection?]. I am sorry, but please delete the pictures as taking photos is not allowed for security reasons,” said the senior guy in Dari, which my friend translated for me. I was happy to lose the pictures.
In the street opposite the Shahr-E-Naw park in downtown Kabul is a shop that sells naan and loudly plays Hindi film songs for the passers-by. Pakeezah and Muqaddar Ka Sikandar could be its owner’s favourite albums. If you visit Kabul, I urge you to stand close to the shop for a while and take in that music. Standing there, I thought of the Taliban’s ban on, and the Afghans’ love for, music, and realised that the bonds music forges between two societies can be deeper, stronger and longer-lasting that those built by politics. Hindi film music is the latest scribble on the civilisational palimpsest the two countries share. Afghans have shown great maturity by not letting the anti-Muslim vitriol emerging from pockets within India spoil their perception. They understand it as part of India’s messy democratic politics.
To be fair, Indian governments have balanced strategic interests and humanitarian concerns in Afghanistan and been smart on symbolism. Among India’s gifts are Afghanistan’s ‘largest flag’ and its parliament building. These symbols of unity and democracy stand as a reminder of India's values and goals in that country, even though those in Afghanistan are fully aware of India’s strategic interests.
There is an expectation among sections of influential Afghans that India will become bold in bilateral relations and make Afghanistan’s security a red-line of its own national interest. While that is neither possible nor desirable, Indians can help Afghanistan, and themselves, by ensuring inter-community peace and social harmony within India and continuing to welcome Afghan visitors with warmth. And it would help if the low comments about Muslims in India cease immediately. These sound-bites are played over and over again in the terror camps of Pakistan to produce anti-India rage. That rage is directed against Indians and Afghans in the two countries.
The author's Kabul trip was funded by the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR).
