Kabul and Peace Synonymous, back in the days.

[Admin Khan]

http://dawn.com/2012/05/20/flashback-when-peace-kishmesh-and-kabul-were-synonymous/

Hailing from Nangarhar, Jalalabad, Muhammad Asif Dagarwal, a retired Afghan civil servant, graduated from Kabul Air Force School way back in 1949 and joined Kabul Airport service as In charge of Logistics and Supply of Ration. He is an eye-witness to many tragic and bloody events in Afghanistan during the last four decades.“For every Pashtun Kabul is like a soul, one cannot imagine life without a soul. The superpowers attacked our soul many a time, depriving us the right to live. I spent my youth in Kabul during King Zahir Shah’s reign; there were 14 cinema houses and many Sahnahs (drama theatres) in different parts of the city. Though Kabul did not have its own film Industry (still doesn’t have one), mostly Indian and English movies were screened; some cinema house owners even smuggled reels of Pashto films in the early 70s. Peace, kishmesh [raisins] and Kabul were synonymous at that time,” Dagarwal recalls.He regrets that Islamabad always boasts of enjoying social, historic and cultural ties with Afghanistan but never bothered to establish a cultural exchange programme so that at least Pashtuns on both sides of the Durand Line could get to know each other in a better way as they are the two sides of the same coin. A famous Pashto maxim says: Water cannot be ripped through a stick; it means Pashtuns across the border share a common history, as well as social, literary and cultural values, hence they cannot be separated by an imaginary line.The history of Kabul spreads over 3,000 years; the city is considered an ancient city of Pashtun culture after Kandahar, Jalalabad, Quetta and Peshawar. Though Pashtun are in the majority, people belonging to various ethnic and cultural backgrounds lived in Kabul which was once a favourite tourist destination in this part of the world. Tourists would easily cross over the Torkham border and drive up to the beautiful Swat Valley. “Those were the golden days, people were prosperous in King Zahir Shah’s rule, and everything was in abundance.They enjoyed dance, music and a variety of seasonal fruits. The tribal life in and around Kabul was peaceful and full of literary and cultural activities,” Dagarwal fondly reminisces.Young Afghans move to the beat on Jashne Istiqaal in the early 60s in Kabul. -Photo by Asad Danish (private collection).He goes on to add that even Rahman Baba has praised the fruits of Kabul in his verses:Those who have not relished raisins of Kabul / May take it like black berries which cannot be compared to it in tasteKhushhal Khan Khattak also bewails the wastage of fruit in Kabul when Mughals took over its control:The tasteful fruits of Kabul fell to parrots/ when the black Indian crows [Mughals] began flying around it.The third Anglo-Afghan war of 1919 forced the British to reaffirm the Durand line and abandon their imperialist ambition and Afghanistan declared its independence. To commemorate this, Afghanistan’s Independence Day (Jashne Istiqlaal) has always been celebrated with great enthusiasm on August 19 throughout the country; on this occasion Afghan culture and national pride is also celebrated.During his rule, on this day, King Zahir Shah used to mingle with the common people and walked through the streets of Kabul without any royal protocol; anybody could easily access all high officials in Afghanistan. Afghan sports like Buzkashi and many cultural events attracted victors from the neighbouring countries. Those were the days when tourists visiting Afghanistan in summer used to sleep in the open lush green gardens and parks to enjoy the cool breeze of Kabul nights without any fear of being robbed.The wedding ceremonies in the early 70s were celebrated for many days in villages; music and Attan (a traditional tribal dance) used to be part and parcel of these ceremonies. Guests were served with a variety of food and fruits. Young girls unfortunately, were not taken into confidence while their marriage was being arranged with their cousins (cousin marriage is still very common among Afghans). Inheritance in land property for women is unthinkable even today among most rural Pashtun folk.“Fortunately, my father-in-law was an enlightened person. At the time of my wedding he advised me to let my wife continue her education;I accepted his advice, and now my wife is a school teacher. I am very happy that she is contributing to the Pashtun society by educating Afghan women,” Dagarwal says.However, social life of Pashtuns has changed a lot; Pashtun woman’s participation in general activities was insignificant during the 60s but now they have come out of the shuttlecock (a type of burqa) and are playing an active role in national life. Now there are Pashtun woman parliamentarians, diplomats, pilots, doctors, engineers, human rights’ activists, journalist, poets, artistes and intellectuals.King Amanullah Khan in early 1919 had for the first time introduced many educational and social reforms in Afghanistan, which greatly impacted the general Afghan psyche towards women’s education; although some conservative Pashtun tribal elders and religious clerics put up a strong resistance at the time but he overcame the resistance with his broad vision and power. “Life has become better for Afghan women now but a lot has to be done for her complete emancipation,” Dagarwal suggests.Talking about the Jirga, Hujra and other Pashtun traditions in Afghanistan, Dagarwal says that Hurja, Jumaat and Jirga are still intact in Pashtun majority areas. He says with contempt that the Taliban era was the worst for the Afghan women as they were denied freedom in any form, which was not only against Islam but also the celebrated Pashtun social norms as in a traditional Pashtun set up women are allowed to work along with men in the fields.He also condemns the destruction of the world’s largest standing Buddha sculptures in Bamiyan in central Afghanistan by Taliban regime, and says that it was an unforgivable crime as it roused the wrath of the international community towards the Afghan nation. “Those Buddha sculptures existed even during the time of Mahmood Ghaznavi who did not break them because he never disowned our past Buddhist heritage. Burning of the Kabul Museum was another black scar on their face,” he says remorsefully.The British, Russians and Americans have played havoc on Afghan’s peaceful social and cultural life. “Pashtuns are being exploited on different pretexts; the main reason in my view is their lack of education. Some have exploited them because of their good attributes, others denounced them for their bad qualities,” Dagarwal says. He quotes Rahmat Shah Sail, the noted Pashto poet from Malakand:From time to time I [Pashtun] have been swallowed up [exploited] by world powers/ because I am sweet, crispy and Pashtun Dagarwal says, “Afghans are peaceful; war has always been thrust upon them. Pashtuns — a big factor in the region — can bring about a positive change if supported by power players; all they need is unification, freedom of expression, education and economic prosperity.”Dagarwal concludes while reciting a famous Pashto tapa:Don’t think ill of the Kabul [Afghanistan] /There are dwelling the hospitable and prideful Pashtuns

[Levanaye Zalmaye]

Admin Khan, the Babarnama gives a very detailed account of Kabul in the 16th century. It was the most cosmopolitan city of the region. It had gardens, vineyards, orchids, beautiful spaces, an active society and of course, beautiful people. When Babur lived in Hindustan, he would miss his life in Kabul.

Unfortunately, Kabul has been destroyed now. Who knows how many more generations it will take to restore the city to its former glory.

[BarakzaiAbdali]

Fisk, celebrated for his honesty, access, adventurism, and deep research as an enlightened reporter gives a better view of the Zahir Shah regime in his masterful obituary:

Zahir Shah: The last king of Afghanistan


He was King of a nation that, in the minds of many, does not really exist. He was a feudal master who believed in liberating women. He was a figurehead who lived a life of luxury in exile while his people suffered the agonies of war and occupation. The story of Zahir Shah is the story of Western arrogance and Eastern impotence, argues Robert Fisk

When I arrived in Afghanistan to cover the 1979 Soviet invasion, I mischeviously purchased a huge tin of talcum powder, produced by a German factory in Kabul and called – for local consumption – " Buzkashi". The front of the tin was illustrated with a portrait of a massive Afghan warrior in long red robes, riding towards the purchaser upon a fiery steed and with an expression of utmost ferocity on his bearded face.

What puzzled me was why a talcum manufacturer would name his product after one of the bloodiest of Asian sports: a mounted version of rugby football played with a decapitated goat – riders were supposed to tug the bloodied corpse of the wretched creature from each other, often ripping the beast apart in the process. Of course, someone German had concluded that this manly sport emphasised the romantic warrior of the desert, the spirit of Afghan individuality amid the rugged landscape – Afghan landscapes were always "rugged" or "forbidding" – although I noticed that the only buyers of Buzkashi were foreigners. Afghans had no interest in this exotic talcum powder.


Zahir Shah was much the same. We in the West loved him. He was a king. He was a unifying figure in a country that many people suspect does not really exist – it was the country's first king, Ahmed Khan, who created Afghanistan in the 18th century – or so we thought. In reality, Zahir was never a really a king. Like the Buzkashi talcum powder, Afghans did not greet his accession in 1933 with roses and song – any more than they did when the Americans freighted the old man back from his Roman exile after the overthrow of the Taliban government. His supporters – those who could remember his calls for democracy, the "free" period as Afghans called it – approved of his written constitution, his enthusiasm for a free press and for the spread of legal political parties. But Zahir was essentially disinterested in this much-trumpeted democracy and the moment that his courtiers warned him that a party system would prove a threat to the monarchy, he refused to sign the new party legislation into law – even though it had been passed by the new parliament. Parties were closed down. So were the newspapers. He created democracy – and then he destroyed it.


Afghanistan has proved a mirage to every foreigner, a land whose images and history – however ferocious – draw back the doomed armies of countries that have already been humiliated over two centuries. The British suffered their greatest pre-Boer War loss of arms in the Victorian age when an entire army was massacred in the Kabul Gorge in 1842. We lost again in the Second Afghan War when the British were defeated at the Battle of Maiwand; young, black-turbaned Afghan students would choose a grenadier and hurl themselves towards this one man, drag him from the ranks of his comrades and cut his throat. They were called "Talibs" or "Taliban". Many of the Afghan warriors were led by a girl called Malalei – she later fell victim to British bullets – who tore off her veil to use as a flag. The young Zahir Shah, when he ascended the throne at the age of 19, would have approved. He was, after all, a man who believed in modernisation and women's rights and the unveiling of women. The Russians, after a century of diplomatic humiliation in Afghanistan, spent 10 years in occupation, only to leave in further humiliation – a frustration that they finally vented on the equally innocent Muslims of Chechnya.


But there was another Zahir Shah, who liked to "unveil" women in a far less liberating way. In his early years as king – when he was a mere boy by Asian standards – his two uncles, who effectively ruled the country, supplied him with a driver and a black Chevrolet. The job of "the man in the black Chevrolet" – as he was known in the streets of Kabul – was to tour the colleges of Kabul and choose the most desirable girls for the king's bed. The Afghans has a word for their pleasure-loving king – " ayoshi" – which roughly translates as "having a good time" . "Ayoshi" is not a polite word. Even so, in a country whose kings were alost all cruel – Amanullah, the reformist Shah was an exception – Zahir was a peaceful man. He did not want to involve himself in politics; indeed, he had no interest in political life. He was an artist who loved paintings and books. He was actually taking a mud bath in Italy when his cousin Daoud – a highly ambitious prime minister who adored politics – staged his bloodless coup d'etat in 1973.


And what did our favourite Afghan king do as his country descended into foreign invasion, occupation, mass murder, civil war and Islamic puritanism of the least educated kind? He enjoyed Rome. Just as he ignored the possibility of war with Pakistan when he was King, so he largely ignored the catastrophe of his country when he was enjoying his long years of exile. His life in Rome, his visitors reported back to Kabul, was very much like the life he had lived in his royal palace at home. He was happy with his art and archaeology books and sport, and with his friends among the Italian upper classes. True, he occasionally – very occasionally – expressed his sorrow at the chaos of Afghanistan. But he was a man of the past, a victim of politics rather than a leader, a long-forgotten figurehead – until the Americans rediscovered him – for whom the dramas of his homeland were like the shadows in Plato's cave, mere ghosts of the titanic tragedy played out 2,000 miles from Rome.

His life, of course, encompassed a familiar narrative of the 20th and early 21st centuries; exile amid the ambitions of others and then the resmption of colonial rule, first under the Russians and then – after the overthrow of Mullah Omar (a man who at least understood the history of Afghanistan and acted a role in it, however perverse) – under the Americans and British. As the poppy crop was reborn under Nato's gaze, the British found themselves fighting for their lives in Helmand and on the very site – did they realise this? – of the Battle of Maiwand. The Taliban know their history even if the British do not.


And yet, it was to the ageing king that the Bushes and the Blairs turned when they needed a "unifying" figure to reunite the Afghans. In reality, it was folly to think that the old man culd be taken from his Saturnalian life of ease in Rome to play the one game in which he was never interested: politics. Yes, he was exotic. He was, after all, a king, even if he had no robes to match those of Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's impotent President. But he was attractive to us in the same way that all monarchs appear useful in the West. He was educated, pro-Western, pro-democracy (up to a point) and, though a Pashtun, a supposedly popular figure across all Afghanistan's tribes. He was not. But we like to promote these people because we feel they are "safe". We understand monarchies, and Zahir, though he was closer to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in his desire to " secularise" his country (why must we always expect Muslim countries to be "secularised"?), was a king and we are familiar with kings and queens. We liked King Idris of Libya and King Farouk of Egypt and King Abdullah of Jordan, just as – after we were forced to dispense with Idris and Farouk and replace them with supposedly pro-Western colonels and generals – we continue to love King Abdullah of Jordan and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and all the other princes and emirs of the Gulf.


That is why the Americans – and, to a lesser extent, the British – thought that they could return Zahir to create a land of peace. His welcome was supposed to be as glorious as that which was supposed to be accorded the Americans and the British in Iraq. It was a dream; it was our Orientalist view of how the Afghans should behave. We thought the natives would admire this symbol of old-world élitism because – and here's the rub – old Zahir Shah was more like "us" than "them", more European than Afghan, more secularist than Muslim. If he was trained as a soldier in Afghanistan, he was educated in France. "I wish just to do things for my country and serve it," he said pitifully when he returned to Kabul, to be proclaimed by Karzai and the Americans – but few others – as "Father of the Nation". When he ascended the throne in 1933, he was hailed as a new star in the Afghan firmament, a foreign-educated man who could modernise his country, govern during a period of rapid transition to " modern political institutions". I'm quoting from a US history book published the year before Zahir's overthrow by Daoud. The same words were pulled out of the drawer for reuse in 2002. Will we ever learn?


Read more: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/ne...#ixzz1wEOKlN4D

Oh that Robert Fisk... The ISI must be paying him well! (Sorry Soldat had to beat you to it with a note of sarcasm)

[Shah-i-Kot]

The point to make is all this criticism by these secular false nationalist (such as the man who is being interviewed in the OP) conveniently ignores the reference point for all this - and that is the Afghan Communist murder of Daud Khan and his entire family, the Communist Revolution which followed, and the Soviet war/occupation which gave rise to the Afghan resistance.

After the Soviets were defeated, the different Afghan resistance groups fought each other, creating a environment of chaos and disorder, crime was occurring, murder and rape. As a result, the Taliban rose to power as a reaction to the civil war, put an end to it in mostly all parts of the country except where Masood was holed up in the Panjsher.

These secular Communists of yesterday, Democratists of today broke the peace in Afghanistan, and are responsible for the current situation.

This is the last time they will be able to do this, I think. China is too smart to ever start a war with Afghanistan .