I have seen a hundred gardens turn red with the blood of the innocent.
Thus wrote Ustad Khalil Ullah Khalili in the early eighties when he was living in Pakistan as a refugee. A former minister and diplomat of Afghanistan, he was the country’s poet laureate before the arrival of Soviet troops in Kabul in December 1979. He was ousted in Baghdad as Kabul’s envoy and the then president Nur Mohammad Taraki had told him to stay on at his job but Khalili resigned and sought refuge in Pakistan.
Why had he exiled himself and taken refuge in Pakistan? I had asked him in 1985. His reply was: “I feel like an inured bird whose nest is afire. My children are in the nest on the tree. I cannot fly them to safety or help them in any other way. But I cannot forsake them either. I want to be near them, at least.” One of his sons was among the mujahideen inside Afghanistan. Khalili later migrated to the US where he died, apparently in anonymity. I got to know of his death through a four line news item buried in the inside pages of some newspaper.
He penned a number of poems with furious distress during the time of exile in Pakistan that reflected on the situation in Afghanistan and underlined his hopes and his anguish. A collection of verses was titled Tears and Blood and it was very much that but a great deal more too. Seething anger marked his poetry.
He wanted his people to fight on till victory is achieved. Homeland in his poetry was a “coffin” or a “house of mourning”. He looked at mujahideen as men who can shatter the shackles of bondage and save the heads of the free men of the Islamic nation from the scaffold. His writings were the cry of a tormented and committed soul. He wrote in Dari-Persian.
For a while he lived in Islamabad where he resided in a small house, his expenses, I believe, underwritten by some agency of the US. But he wasn’t a commercial commodity; people with vested personal interests do not send their children to the battlefield. Khalili was ideologically opposed to communism and his talent, skills and position among Afghan intellectuals became natural raw material for exploitation in the proxy war of the US against the former Soviet Union.
Old, a romantic at heart and naive to the ways of the ruthless play of power by international forces, he fell in to the trap but then there was nothing else that he could do except write elegies of his people, his culture and his homeland.
Another intellectual I remember from that period is Syed Bahauddin Majrooh, also a poet but his role in the struggle was more of a journalist. He ran the Peshawar based Afghanistan Information Center (AIC) and published a monthly Bulletin that discussed issues confronting the Afghans, identified possibilities and pitfalls and reported developments inside Afghanistan, specifically activities of mujahideen groups on the war fronts.
While he waged the war against communism with the pen, he was also active politically and worked for unity among Afghan groups. In his opinion, the only hope for Afghanistan was a “government headed by Zahir Shah, not as king but in a different role” so that mujahideen factions were united. The option was disregarded by Pakistan, mujahideen leaders and the US at that time.
One could disagree with his diagnosis and prescription but not his intentions. He was also an outspoken person and had no hesitation in criticizing commanders and faction leaders but they also had free access to the bulletin. Most of them were regularly provided space for defining and presenting their positions.
I was covering Pakistan for Asiaweek, Hong Kong, in that period and Afghanistan was a priority file for the publication. Majrooh started as a useful, fairly independent and balanced source but we later developed excellent rapport and freely discussed issues and possibilities. He did not see his country emerging from bloodshed and misery in the foreseeable future.
He continued working for unity among Afghan groups till the end and kept on urging them to resolve internal differences. He saw most of them as warlords and a bunch of greedy individuals.
Someone apparently saw him as a threat to his aspirations and Majrooh, the unarmed intellectual in search of peace in his country, was brutally gunned down soon after the Soviet troops withdrawal from Afghanistan. His death was an indicator of the direction of the winds of future.
One of his sons published the Monthly Bulletin for a while but soon migrated to the US. AIC was also regarded as US backed, but once Majrooh chose to take on communism — the decision was his own, support from capitalism became his only option, one can say, just like the position of Pakistan today. Both he and Khalili had the same predicament and became victims of their circumstances.
Interviews of Afghan commanders carried by the Bulletin were quite revealing, though more through questions asked than answers provided. I haven’t maintained a complete file of the publication but the few that are with me contain some interesting interviews and one of them is of Commander Abdul Haq who recently tried to find defectors in Taliban and paid for the effort with his life. Interviews were attributed to the publication’s staff but Majrooh himself conducted the important ones. In the interview dated April 1988, Commander Abdul Haq was asked about what would happen if the Russians leave Kabul? How will the mujahideen prevent bloodshed and administer Kabul?
Abdul Haq conceded that “of course problems will exist, because there is no united leadership among various resistance groups, not only around Kabul but also throughout the country. But it does not mean that there will be internal conflict among the mujahideen when the Russians withdraw from the country”.
He was also asked: “Will an extremist government replace the regime in Kabul?” The answer comprised a typical evasive political statement that “cruelty, oppression, abuse of power and extremism have always been rejected by the people of Afghanistan. The people have always resisted an extremist force, whether external or internal”.
Majrooh could see the dark clouds looming over the future of Afghanistan; the commanders had nothing to offer but empty rhetoric. They did not comprehend the vision of Majhrooh or subscribe to the passion of Khalili and led themselves and the Afghan nation into ever deepening quicksand of sufferings.
Majrooh could see that in the event of fighting between warlords for supremacy resulting in disorder and bloodshed, take over by extremist elements could not be ruled out. He could also see the implications of such a development and warned the mujahideen leaders. But they had visions of ruling Afghanistan and of personal immortality.
Khalili lamented the fate of his countrymen and helplessly gazed through his poetic crystal cup at the greater grief consuming the people of Afghanistan but the self appointed commanders refused to listen to his dirge. Every leader wanted the throne of Kabul for himself and ended up either marginalized or eliminated through the bullets that they believed would deliver Afghanistan to them.
I have seen a hundred gardens turn red with the blood of the innocent.
