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Living
On The Edge
Constant
suspicion, poverty, ill-health and lack of work dog Afghan asylum seekers
in India. INDIA TODAY's Principal Correspondent Anna M.M. Vetticad meets
some of them.
It's
easy to spot him. On a dusty footpath at one of the less fashionable addresses
in south Delhi, Mohd Zaher Omar, 56, is busy repairing cycles. In his
neatly pressed grey trousers and faded but spotless tee, he doesn't look
the part. But he plays it anyway. Watching this man seated amidst the
debris of his life, it's still not hard to believe that he is an engineer,
that he was once an army officer in Afghanistan. "We don't know what
you call his rank in India, but he was a three-star officer, one notch
below general," his friend translates from Persian to broken English.
In a whisper he adds, "Sometimes when I visit him, he is crying to
himself." These are the images we do not see. Far removed from the
armed terrorists and bearded fanatics, these are some of the tragic visuals
of war-ravaged Afghanistan that are not beamed into our homes these days.
If Omar weeps in private, perhaps it is for his past, before he fled his
country 10 years back "afraid of the missiles landing all around".
But freedom spent in poverty is not a pleasant thing. Denied a work permit
in India, the family tried moving to Australia. His wife died in 1993,
the children left in 1994. Omar has not yet got a visa to join them. "I'm
old and alone. I earn Rs 50-70 a day. I can't live like this," he
murmurs, a sad widower in a one-room tenement with his thoughts and some
photographs for company.
Omar's demons are loneliness and the longing for his family. Others have
households to support, constant police harassment to contend with, and
psychosomatic disorders too expensive to treat. They may have got away
from the hell that was once home, but India is a wearying purgatory. There
are 11,684 Afghans registered with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR) in India. About 30,000 names could be going unrecorded. Most are
based in Delhi. Earlier, the hanged in recent years. The Home Ministry
has now promised that visa extensions will be done on a yearly, not half-yearly
basis. But refugees are still not given work permits here. Worse, reeling
under global budget cuts (down from $5 million to $2 million for India
in 1993), the UNHCR discontinued their subsistence allowance in 1994.
Now the dole goes only to identified "extremely vulnerable individuals".
As frightening as the penury is the feeling of being a marked people.
"The word Afghan has become synonymous with terrorist now. After
the New York crashes, I fear it might be even worse for them in the US
than in India," Augustine P. Mahiga, UNHCR's India chief laments.
Adds Ghulam Maroof Azamy, once an accountant in the Electricity and Power
Department in President M. Najibullah's government: "After the World
Trade Center tragedy, we are afraid "for relatives in Afghanistan
and the US who might suffer if either country strikes the other, for ourselves,
because the average Indian thinks that Osama bin Laden is an Afghan."
In a sparsely furnished room in Delhi's Savitri Nagar, he is attending
a meeting of the Association of Afghan Refugees in Malviya Nagar and Savitri
Nagar. The group nods as one member recalls that during the Kargil war
and Kandahar hijacking, "some people spat on our faces on the streets.
"Don't they know that every Afghan is not a Talib? Why else would
we have run away from them?"
But run away to what? Stepping gingerly through the galis of a crowded
mohalla in the city where goats stand tied to trees, one wonders. In a
tiny barsati flat in the area, Mohammad Awaz clutches his tazba in silent
prayer right through an hour-long interview. Once he was the lord of a
transport company that commandeered over 200 trucks in Afghanistan. Son
Javed, 15, drifts back to memories of flying kites as a carefree seven-year-old
on the terrace of their spacious Kabul home. Another son was captured
by the Taliban when he went to Kabul to sell some property in 1996. Nothing
was heard of him for a year till he
istan. They have not had a telephone conversation since.
"I long to hear my son's voice," says Ozara Awaz. "But
ISD calls are expensive. So we write to each other and hope that one day
he will come back." If her agony is this separation, for Azamy's
wife Anisa there is the trauma of inactivity. The 44-year-old former schoolteacher
was one of many educated women forced to quit their jobs by the Taliban.
In India, handicapped by her poor knowledge of English, she broods at
home while daughters Asina, 19, and Frishta, 18, work to support the family.
Her husband has been diagnosed with clinical depression. Anisa, like many
Afghan women here, has high blood pressure. "I am suffering,"
she says, "because my girls are forced to work when they should be
studying." There is hope in this house though. In today's Afghanistan,
women invite death by appearing in public sans a burqa, or being seen
with a man who's not a relative. Here in India, a male photographer shoots
their pictures without inviting a comment. Only Anisa covers her head.
The daughters even ditch their dupattas. Azamy often approaches Indians
in public places "to tell them that the Taliban are primarily ISI
agents, that they are mostly Pakistanis not Afghans". Hope does not
carry a price tag: Frishta wants to be a doctor; her sister Behishta,
17, an air hostess. Anisa points to a dilapidated metal frame saying,
"That's my husband's bed. See, we don't even have Rs 100 to repair
it." They can find it in them to chuckle.
A one-and-a-half hour's drive away, there is no laughter in Manohar Singh's
home. The 35-year-old former cloth merchant hasn't worked since he broke
his leg in an accident five years ago. In a congested residential area
in west Delhi, he shares his single-room hovel with seven family members.
The rent for six months is unpaid. They would have starved without the
langar at the nearby gurudwara. At 28, wife Har Kaur's gaunt frame seems
to belong to a gawky teenager. Why doesn't she attend the needlework classes
held by a local charitable group?
so weak, I can't see a needle and thread. There's no money for spectacles."
In 1992, Singh left a promising business in a battle-scarred Kabul. With
security came squalor. He too is an Afghan refugee.
Who would have guessed? Most Indians are not aware that 74 per cent of
Afghan refugees here are Hindus and Sikhs of Indian descent. The ethnic
Afghan Muslims with their distinctive features find it hard to integrate
with the local populace. So, many dream of a better life in the West.
An indeterminate number have made the move, but after September 11 they
are in danger of becoming the diplomatic pariahs of the world. In that
sense, the Hindus and Sikhs can count their blessings. Blending in is
easy since they speak Hindi or Punjabi. Most retain family ties here.
There is also help from the Diwan Khalsa Welfare Society, an organisation
of and for Hindu and Sikh Afghan refugees in India. The support system
is important, but it can't do everything. Says Hardit Singh, 54, who was
born in Kabul: "Life was terrible when I came to India in 1992. For
the first five years I couldn't sleep properly. Memories of Afghanistan
would haunt me at night."
Haunting. It's a word these people know well. In an unpublicised stretch
of Lutyens' Delhi, former Afghan president Najibullah's wife Fatana and
daughters Helay and Hosay are leading a quiet life. They repeatedly decline
an interview request. Can the comfort of the posh quarters ever wipe away
memories of the late ruler's hanging by the Taliban? Outside the UNHCR
office, Najib's personal bodyguard Ayatollah camps in a cramped roadside
tent. Shunned by governments the world over despite repeated representations
from the UNHCR, he has finally managed a visa for Norway.
Now he refuses to budge till an airline ticket is delivered to him. What
nightmares drive this man to such stubbornness? A Myanmarese refugee on
dharna next to him says Ayatollah's family sometimes visits him here.
He must have been handsome once, this well-built man with a scraggy white
beard and bald head. His li
Pleads: "Please you no take photograph. One journalist come. I say
no, so he take photograph from far. If I die, his responsibility."
Back in Savitri Nagar, the Afghan Association meeting is still on. "Are
the women in your families also members of this group?" I ask. A
rush of murmurs runs through the gathering of a dozen or so men and boys.
They smile, some titter at the question. A voice is raised in gentle admonition:
"Of course the women are members. We are not the Taliban."
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