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COVER STORY: AFGHANISTAN'S
FUTURE
SURVIVOR'S TALE: Ghulam H. Mardumy, Mayor
Mardumy was mayor of Mirbachakot district in Kabul
province for five years from 1985
"Afghans Are Victims, Not Terrorists"
 I
don't want to paint a picture of Afghanistan as some sort of exotic paradise,
but looking back at the country of my birth, it is hard not to think of
it as a slice of near-heaven from my past. Today, all you see of Afghanistan
are portraits of violence, burqa-clad women and bombed buildings. Once
it was different. The singer Beltoon was a national craze. Dancing girls
would perform in public. There were five government-run TV channels. Afghan
cinema was born in the 1970s, but it was Hindi films that drew big crowds.
Hema Malini remains the most enduring heroine in Afghanistan. Old hajis
would do their namaz at one side of the movie hall, then turn to watch
her on screen. Dharmendra, Amitabh Bachchan and Rajesh Khanna were all
popular. When we watched their films, we never thought we would one day
come to their homeland as penniless refugees.
I fled to India in April 1992. Najibullah's
government had just fallen, and anyone associated with him was in grave
danger. Najib was my classmate in Kabul Medical College. I had joined
his Watan Party in the 1980s. I was mayor of Mirbachakot district in Kabul
province for five years from 1985.
If you asked me then, I would have said Zahir
Shah (the king till 1973) was a corrupt man. But at least there was partial
democracy and complete peace in his time. Under his constitution, people
could practise any religion. The press was free. Culture minister Mahmud
Habibi was once attacked in Parliament because the newspaper Anees criticised
the Prophet. If Shah returns to Afghanistan, there is some hope for the
15 million wretched people living there. That is if you can call it living.
Shah's successor Daoud Khan ruled well for two
years. The USSR was the first country to recognise his government. Also,
80 per cent of our ammunition, trucks and clothes were coming from there.
The US, Saudi Arabia, Iran and other Islamic countries advised him to
stay away from the "kafir Russians". Russia got angry. According
to secret information that I had access to, Babrak Karmal, head of the
then Democratic Party of Afghanistan (Parcham), was a member of the KGB.
He got them to kill another member of his party and blamed Khan for it.
After an army revolution in 1977, Noor Mohammed Taraki became president.
Taraki's foreign minister Hafizullah Amin killed him by suffocating him
with a pillow in 1979. A hundred days later, the Red Army along with Babrak
Karmal invaded Afghanistan.
Today, every Afghan refugee sympathises with
America after the WTC tragedy. But let's face facts. Who are the mujahideen
if not rootless trees planted in the garden of Pakistan's ISI, watered
by the US and other western countries to work against Russian rule in
Afghanistan? Karmal wanted Russia to stay, but Najibullah welcomed their
exit. We didn't have a free press under Najib, but no one was hungry and
women were happy. Education was free.
It's all gone now. The mujahideen and Taliban
looted even the doors from colleges. They stole carpets from mosques and
they call us kafirs. The artistes have all left. Beltoon lives out his
old age in Germany. I know this not just from TV but also from stories
that successive batches of refugees have brought with them. I don't dare
return to Afghanistan. Six years ago, when my wife went to see my 92-year-old
father in Kabul, a missile killed her. Today, I find the collective tarring
of Afghan Muslims worldwide as painful as my personal loss. We are victims.
We are not terrorists.
—(As told to Anna M.M. Vetticad)
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