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December 8, 2002
REVIEWS: Afghan drama
“Soldiers of God is a tale of strong-willed individuals as well as of ethnic groups formed by history and geography... It may succeed in giving the reader a sense of the mood, the beauty and the heady politics of Afghanistan and the North West Frontier during the last phase of the cold war.” In these words, Robert Kaplan, an American journalist who has the Bush Administration’s ear, describes in succinct prose, his fascination for war-torn Afghanistan.
In an attempt to understand the struggle by the Afghans to liberate their country from Soviet occupation, he travelled there as a young journalist, in the mid- and late-1980s. This book, which first appeared in 1990, is a description of that journey. The present edition has an additional chapter, “The lawless frontier”, written after he re-visited the area in the spring of 2000.
Kaplan’s admiration and respect for the mujahideen shows through his narration. Possibly it is this which has enabled him to get such in-depth insight into their thoughts and their lives. He regards them as “arguably the physically toughest people on earth, able to go long periods without food or water, and climb up and down mountains like goats”.
This physical toughness, determination to win back their freedom, and ability to live in the most primitive of conditions has contributed to the fact of the Afghans never having been conquered — not by the Soviets or the British, nor by the Mongols or others before them.
At the time of Kaplan’s writing, Afghanistan was a war-torn country, strewn with minefields, a primitive David fighting against a modern and mighty Goliath, with refugees struggling to reach safety. The visual pictures of the war, of Afghan mujahideen continuing to fight despite their severe wounds, their bravery in the midst of mines, bombs, hunger and thirst are fascinating close-ups of a people determined to continue their struggle despite the fact that, according to the Afghan resistance, five million had already died (the US government’s estimate was somewhere from 10 to 30 million).
During his journey, Kaplan met Abdul Haq and his brother, Abdul Qadir, Hamid Karzai (who later became the president in post-Taliban Afghanistan, his brother, commander Ismael Gailani, Haji Latif (popularly known as Haji Baba), countless mujahideen, journalists and photographers. His conversations and travel with them helped provide him a wide and rich perspective. He also learnt how this international battleground of superpowers had suffered from the long drawn Soviet invasion, counter-attacks by the US through Pakistan via the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence), and the shift towards fundamentalism of the mujahideen during the Zia years.
Yet, despite the intense daily drama and the incredible scale of human suffering, Afghanistan became a forgotten entity in the world media. The reason? Kaplan suggests that “... the Western media were really a bunch of pampered, navel-gazing yuppies, too busy reporting illegal detentions and individual killings in South Korea and the West Bank, before rushing back to their luxury hotels in Seoul and Jerusalem [Afghanistan lacked the luxuries and the drama that other places could provide, nor were the scenes as dramatic for photographers as those of hungry children in Africa, or war scenes of visual intensity in Palestine and Israel] to bother about the nuclear-like wasting of an entire urban centre by the Soviet military ...war reporting was fast becoming a misnomer”.
When Kaplan returned to Afghanistan after several years, religious extremism and two decades of war had begun to merge with Afghanistan’s troubles. He studies the newly emerging and fast-growing madressahs, the emergence of Osama bin Laden, and the reaction against globalization.
In neighbouring Pakistan, smuggling is rife — of computer parts, electronic goods, fuel, automatic weapons, heroin and other contraband. Bomb blasts of government and other buildings occur with increasing frequency. Smuggling spells the basis of the tribal economy, and border cities like Quetta and Peshawar continue to suffer. Political disturbances are common.
Swinging across from Quetta, Peshawar and Islamabad to the plains of Karachi, he describes another seething, troubled, overcrowded city, where water sells at a premium, the civic infrastructure is crippled, and the ostentatious upper rich live cheek-by-jowl with their neighbours in unbelievably miserable slums. Civic strife, bombings and destruction by people filled with pent-up rage are common; the city is overflowing with weapons. Tensions between religious sects run high, and religious extremism appears to be gaining ground, with increasing numbers of Taliban, both within Afghanistan as well as Pakistan, who believe in a more ideological and austere form of Islam — a belief pattern that has resulted in amputations and stonings, and severe discrimination against women.
Though Ahmed Rashid’s Taliban is set in the same background, the two accounts are written from entirely different perspectives. They agree, however, on the fact that “... the Taliban are orphans of war, who have never known the company of women, and have retreated into a male brotherhood reminiscent of the Crusaders”.
The invasions and the destruction by different countries, the primitive tribal creed and fierce religious ideology, and the growth of the Taliban have resulted in a lethal mix: whether this crisis point of Afghanistan and Pakistan will survive through this dangerous mix or not, or, indeed, how they will survive, are troubling questions for the future.
Soldiers of God
By Robert Kaplan
Vintage Books. Available in Pakistan at Paramount Books, 152/O, Block 2, PECH Society, Karachi-75400. Tel: 021-4310030
Email: paramount@cyber.net.pk
ISBN 1-4000-3025-0. 278pp. Rs795
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