For the rest of the world the victims of the Afghan war
remain nameless and faceless. Not for us in Afghanistan. I myself have
mourned a number of such victims, including my own uncle, my father’s
brother. Three weeks back there was yet another suicide blast which killed
only the bomber and his accomplice. The suicide bomber was reportedly on
his way to ambush German troops in the north of Afghanistan. He was being
driven to the potential scene of action on motorbike by his accomplice. On
their way they were asked to stop at a police check post. Instead of
stopping, they attempted to escape and were fired at. The biker lost his
balance and both fell, setting off the explosives packed into a suicide
jacket. Both died on the spot. Either the suicide bomber or his accomplice
was my cousin, Abdul Latif. He was 22.
When the incident was reported on television, hardly
anybody in my family noticed the name Abdul Latif even if we knew that he
sympathised with the Taliban and used to support suicide bombings. Since
many bear the name Latif, we did not think it could be the Latif we knew.
We only learnt of his death after his parents became suspicious when he
did not return home for a week. Since he often went missing for a couple
of days, his absence was not initially marked. But a weeklong absence was
unusual.
When his father contacted the authorities, he was arrested
and had to spend a night in the lock-up. "The police were angry that I did
not tell them about my son’s plan to blow himself up," my uncle later told
family members after his release had been secured through tribal
connections. Though Latif’s parents knew where his sympathies lay, they
were not ready to hand their son over to the authorities. After all, one
hears about the torture techniques employed at the notorious detention
centres run by Americans in Afghanistan. However, Latif’s family,
particularly his mother, had begged him to end his association with the
Taliban. He would never argue. His only answer was: "I am seeking
paradise."
His strong conviction about entering paradise had been
inculcated into his mind over a period of 12 years which he spent at a
madrassa in Pakistan where our respective families had migrated to during
the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. In practice, the Afghan refugee
camps in Pakistan were run by the mujahideen even if the UNHCR (United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) officially managed their affairs.
In these camps, the education of girls, music, television or any liberal
pursuits were banned. Women had to wear a burkha. My father wanted me to
go to school. RAWA, an Afghan women’s organisation, ran underground
schools for girls as well as boys. This is how my family came into contact
with RAWA. It was not just me, all my brothers enrolled at these schools
too, as boys had no choice but to go to a madrassa. Over a period of time
supporters of RAWA were able to set up an entire refugee camp of their own
where fundamentalists had no influence. Life in this camp was in sharp
contrast to the camps run by fundamentalists.
Latif was not born in a RAWA camp. He grew up in a camp
under the jihadis’ control and attended a madrassa where the primers were
filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers
and mines. Ironically, these textbooks were developed under a USAID
(United States Agency for International Development) grant to the
University of Nebraska and its Centre for Afghanistan Studies in the early
1980s. This fact was brought to my notice during a visit to the USA soon
after 9/11, by a friend who showed me a report in The Washington Post
which said that USAID had spent $51 million on such "education programmes"
in Afghanistan from 1984 to 1994. Latif was one of those who became
lettered through such textbooks.
His death therefore stirred strange feelings in me, who,
as a RAWA spokesperson, has been on the Taliban’s hit list during Taliban
rule (and perhaps still am). It felt as if Latif himself had been a
victim, a victim of US-sponsored intellectual terrorism perpetrated
through textbooks issued from Nebraska University. Or perhaps I was
saddened by a youthful death.
I thought constantly about Latif’s mother, who received
only three bones to bury in our village’s sprawling graveyard. Since his
death, I have been thinking that if Latif (and youth like him) had had the
chance to go to a good school, he would never have had such suicidal
ambitions. Readers may wonder why he did not go to a RAWA school. Because
of the fear of fundamentalists and the threats his father received from
them. His father was told by fundamentalists that if he tried to educate
his children at coed RAWA schools, he would either face dangerous
consequences or else have to leave the camp.
The words of Latif’s elder brother, who helps his father
run a small shop, have also been constantly ringing in my ears. On hearing
of Latif’s death, his elder brother said: "Good that he only killed
himself. Think if he had been sent to explode himself where he would have
killed dozens of civilians. Imagine the tragedy he would have wrought." I
have been wondering, ever since I heard these words, how Afghan society
has been so brutalised that we don’t even know whether to mourn or to
celebrate the deaths of our dear ones.
