PM'suseful Kabul visit
Men, Matters, Memories

By M L Kotru

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Kabul visit has by all accounts been a useful one. I say useful because it was not one of those visits which keeps you gussing about the outcome. It was useful to the extent that it was long overdue. Its significance lay in telling the present rulers in Kabul that India continues to be a friendly, reliable neighbour, one that would wish to do much more to strengthen bilateral relations but for the Pakistani obstinacy that will not permit normal overland travel between the two countries. Rightly or wrongly Pakistan has always suspected any attempts by New Delhi to have a lively friendly relationship between the two countries.

One reason, with some historical background, that comes to mind could be nearly the total identification of the Pushtoons on the Pakistani side of the Pak-Afghan border with the Indian freedom struggle, with the mighty Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan working in tendem with Gandhiji. Not for nothing was Ghaffar Khan called the Frontier Gandhi and his Red Shirts or Khudai Khidmatgars, as he preferred to call them, seen in the vanguard of the fight against British imperialism in the then North Western Frontier Province.

Again, not for nothing was it that the Frontier Gandhi felt that the Congress leaders of the day, Gandhi and Nehru included, had betrayed the Pushtoons at the time of partition.

Many decades after freedom I recall calling on Frontier Gandhi, reverentially referred to by his beloved people as Badshah Khan, in Jalalabad in Afghanistan. He was living there in self-exile. I saw the massive six-feet plus frame, rendered frail by years, spread out on a large-sized cot in the forecourt of his home-in-exile, as I recall my visit. I see the tough rugged features of the now tired frontiersman which I was lucky enough to have seen earlier, too, when he was younger and sent to visit Srinagar by the then Congress Party. I remember thousands of Kashmiris running down the Residency Road, the city mainstreet then, slowing down the peace of his motorcade to a crawl. I see Mohammad Yunus, then a very young handsome man, and Gen. Shah Nawaz of INA fame, standing on the running board of the vehicle (I don't know whose car it was) very much like the Black Cats of today. All that belongs to the past.

A visit to Jalalabad was hardly on my schedule in the dark days of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. I had stayed in Kabul for some ten days, made quick forays, past Soviet tanks and soldiers to as far as Herat and Ghazni. The year was 1979 and a freeing December it was when I landed in the country's battered capital. On the fifth day of my stay while I was talking to Anwar Malik, who was the Indian Airlines Station Manager in Kabul, about the mujahideen struggle against the Soviets, he suddenly posed the question: Wasn't I calling on Ghaffar Khan? I was not sure, I tld him, whether I would be able to make it.

Anwar Malik was an unusually forthcoming man-- he rose to be Deputy Commercial Director of IA, if my recall is right, and repaired to his farm in UP on retirement. He offered to hire a taxi yes, there were few dare devils in Kabul then who would venture a journey outside the capital on the road leading towards Pakistan. This was quickly done and 'Malang', the name the driver insisted I call him by, suggested an early morning drive. Anwar meanwhile had told me that if I had any problem meeting Badshah Khan I must contact Yahaya Khan, a peon at the Indian consulate. (Avoid the Consul and his other staff, I was told and how right Anwar Malik was judging by the hostility of the latter when I reached Jalalabad.

Anyway, in Jalalabad Yahaya sat in my taxi, exchanged a few words with Malang and pronto we were outside Ghaffar Khan's lodgings.

A suspicious welcome by one of his relatives, a doctor, and I was ushered to the bed-side of the great man lying on the big cot, taking in the sun on a wintry afternoon. His eyes brightened temporariy when I told him that I was from Delhi and had first seen him in my student days on his visit to Srinagar. There was little bitterness in his tone, only disappointment that his friends of the freedom struggle had let him and the Pushtoons down. That said I raised the question of his alleged support to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The alleged statement had upset many.

The great Khan raised his voice a little and countered ''I have spent all my life preaching ''adam-etashadud'' (non-violence and peace) how can anyone imagine that I will support 'tashadud' (violence)''. At the personal level he admitted though that as someone who was offered shelter by the rulers of Afghanistan he had considered ''Amin's problems with a whole lot of US Saudi backed subversives which had perhaps forced the then Afghan President seek help from the Soviets''. For the rest he refused to see himself endorsing violence either by the Soviets or the American-Saudi Pakistan-backed mujahideen. It was unthinkable, he said. Badshah Khan's doctor was sitting next to the great man and told me on the way out that it was good that I asked the question but it was a rude one. ''Can you imagine, Baba can even today raise half a million Khidmatgards on either side of the border. Yes, believe you me''.

On the way back to Kabul the irrepressible Malang asked: ''Bolo yaar, tu iss jang ke mahoul main yehan kyun aya? Sirf Bachha Khan se milne ke liye? My answer being in the affirmative helped me during the rest of my stay to scour hitherto unknown areas of Kabul and its surroundings bring home to me the havoc which the Soviets and the mujahideen had wrougth on the country.

The mujahideen were, of course, adored by the people then and any wrong-doing by them therefore overlooked.

A couple of years later and on another visit to Kabul the Taliban had spread their net and my sources pinpointed on the ground and on maps the places where the Pakistani ISI was helping strengthen the Taliban and their cause.

I don't imagine things now on the ground in Afghanistan would have changed much. Never mind the affability or even competence of Hamid Karzai and his Government. The reports I have read of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit amply illustrate that Karzai's writ does not run even in parts of Kabul let alone the rugged landmass that constitutes the country, given its numerous warlords, the poppyfields and more importantly a resurgent Taliban. American musclemen are, according to most reports from Kabul, far more numerous than the men they ostensibly protect. The musclemen, mind you, are a distinct commodity from the regular multi-national force.

Bengladesh crisis pose threat to India

By Arup De

Events in Bangladesh are unfolding almost like a Greek tragedy. The nation born in 1971 with the blood and sweat of the Indian army and Mukti Bahani is facing a crisis of identity. The poverty stricken country is in the grip of Islamic militancy. It is hard to believe that out of 63 districts 62 had simultaneous bomb blasts in which 52 people were killed. It was the handiwork of Islamic militants trained and supported by the ISI of Pakistan. Begum Khaleda Zia’s regime is now forced by the circumstances of its own creation to take embattled positions so as to preserve what Bangladeshis have already gained.

The CIA’s latest report on terrorism released on July 11 reveals that Bangladesh has become the breeding ground for terrorism only next to Pakistan. There are 11 terrorist training camps, and the Khaleda Zia government is extending overt and covert support. The Bangladesh army is looking after the training programmes. The government has also set up 11,232 madarras for Islamic studies funded by West Asian countries. Some funds are being channelled for such studies by al-Queda through hawala sources. These Islamic seminaries are breeding ground for giving birth to future terrorist groups. The US government has time and again expressed its "displeasure" as terrorist groups are being groomed by Khaleda Zia government.

What is the purpose and motive behind promoting terrorist menace in the region? In 1971, when East Pakistan had launched the struggle for freedom with support from India, the Chinese had said, "India is riding a tiger". The words had then been dismissed as another expression of China’s anti-Indian and pro-Pakistan stand, and even today not many in this country would agree with it. But the fact remains that in the last three decades, Bangladesh has gradually turned out to be a larger problem on the eastern front than the erstwhile East Pakistan had been.

Frequent border incidents and skirmishes between the BSF and the BDR are entirely in keeping with the intransigence of that country. People living along the border in India are under constant threats of marauding raids from the other side and the theft of cattle. Dhaka pays no attention to official complaints regarding this or about the larger issue of harbouring insurgents from the north-eastern states. It is no longer a secret that Bangladesh has been allowing its territory to be used by the ISI for creating disturbances in eastern India. But Dhaka behaves as if it has never even heard of that organisation.

There are people in India who believe that this is because the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) backed by hardcore mullahs is in power and it has to be up in arms against the secular neighbour because of its strong Islamic credentials. One wonders if this is wholly true. If the BNP is hand-in-glove with the fundamentalist forces in its country, it must also be remembered that the Awami League had sought to come to terms with the same forces. Complaints against ISI activities during the regime of Sheikh Hasina Wajed had met with the same fate. So it does appear to be a bit fanciful to hope that things will be hunky-dory if she returns to power again.

Both the current prime minister, and her principal opponent, Sheikh Hasina Wajed, have to keep in mind the dominant popular mood and that mood has, since 1971, become anti-Indian. One remembers a visit to Dhaka in the early Eighties to cover a presidential election. In the run-up to the polls, the streets rocked with the slogan, "Hasina re Hasina, tor kathay nacina/Tor baper kathay naica, desh dichhi baica" (Hasina, we don’t dance to your tune, we danced to the tune of your father and sold our country). The Awami League lost the election and though it later returned to power, it no longer had the same popular support it had before and immediately after the creation of the new country. Sheikh Hasina knows this and has naturally had to make compromises. So no real hope lies with her.

New Delhi has itself to blame for this. Right from the beginning, India has treated the Awami League as being synonymous with Bangladesh. It ignored the other political forces, particularly the Left, despite the fact that its boys had fought the war. Even the men of the Pakistan army, who had risen in revolt and fought on different fronts, were treated as nothing more than soldiers who would return to the barracks when Bangladesh came into existence. Worse, after his release, even Sheikh Mujibur Rahman thought it best to view things through India’s eyes.

With time, the Awami League began to lose support and ultimately Sheikh Mujib had to pay the price with his life. All that is history. But it has to be kept in mind that the anti-Awami League sentiment engulfed India also and the latter came to be viewed as a colonial power, seeking to subjugate Bangladesh in cohorts with the League.

New Delhi did not learn any lesson and the Indian high commission in Dhaka acted as a second home to the Awami League. This worsened the situation, particularly in the context of Bangladesh having become an Islamic state. Today, it is not just India that is seen as the big bad wolf. The minorities in Bangladesh as also the saner elements are periodically subjected to harassment and even physical liquidation. To a large extent this is because India put all its eggs in the Awami League basket.

Now, perhaps, the time has come to take a new look at Indo-Bangla relations. India would certainly do well to forget 1971, to forget the help that had been extended to millions of refugees. Gratitude was expected but no individual and certainly no nation wishes to remain grateful for all times. Also, as Bangladeshis point out, the support from India was certainly not selfless.

So forget the past and treat Bangladesh as a nation that has become somewhat of a menace. Having a small neighbour is always a problem. But Dhaka must be made aware of its real station. With India’s relations with China and even Pakistan on a much more even keel today, real politik would demand a firmer stand than before. Bangladesh must be made to realise that it will be in its interest not to be trigger-happy at the borders or to open its doors to all kinds of undesirable elements. As the first measure, it would certainly help if work on the fence is stepped up. Even though the "friendly" Awami League may not take too kindly any show of firmness on India’s part, but in international relations national interest should be India’s main concern, irrespective of past relations.

A problem that this state faces vis-…-vis Bangladesh is the sentimentality of a section of the Bengali intelligentsia. Rabindra-sangeet is alright, but can the fact that it is sung better across the border be a guide to our relations with a belligerent Dhaka? Strangely, this section also wants India to cross swords with Dhaka on non-issues like providing shelter to an individual writer. It is a pity that it does not realise that it would be of no help to New Delhi to be nail-fisted where the situation does not warrant it.

At other times the Bengali intellectuals tend to view Bangladesh as some kind of a chosen land, even as books written in Kolkata are pirated in Dhaka. It is also time they realised that the "amar sonar bangla" sentiment can have no relevance in a situation which demands tough talking and tough acting. INAV