BOOK REVIEW

IMAGES BY AI

It's so easy to be wicked without knowing it, isn't it?

Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942)

EVOLVING SITUATION IN AFGHANISTAN (A REVIEW)

BY: NASSER YOUSAF 

Some may say I have no right to comment on the subject mentioned anthology edited by you. I say this because I didn't purchase this work but received it as a gift. I couldn't even have purchased it because it doesn't carry a price tag, and hence must not be available for sale in the market. I was a little taken aback when I read your copyright notice with strong-worded warnings because I thought to myself how could anyone copy from it when it is not supposed to be bought and sold in the market.

I am sorry for presuming that this collection of essays on Afghanistan is intended and meant for the officers in the Foreign Office, and the cautionary note is for these officers not to copy from it for their thesis while undergoing training in the Pakistan's elite academies. I also wonder how many Afghans, the protagonists in these essays, even know about such a collection.

My comments on the contents of this collection of essays may thus be called as unsolicited. Though, not unjustified because it has ostensibly been published with the taxpayers money. I may also add that I try to read almost everything about Afghanistan which may be due to our closeness to this country and its people.

I have to say the following about what has been discussed in the aforesaid anthology: 

1: I couldn't find the ordinary Afghans in these essays, the Afghans who live in mud-houses and tents in Pakistan and Iran. It refers to those Afghans just in passing or simply as 'numbers,' 39 millions or 40 millions at different places. Ironically, even after 20 years of the Western evaluators on the Afghan soil, we couldn't arrive at an agreed-upon number. It's as if one million people do not matter in the discussion. 

2: The Institute of Strategic Studies (ISSI) appears to be a body of the Foreign Office of Pakistan. Precisely, Afghan Refugees have now lived in Pakistan for 45 years, if we consider the arrival of Soviets on the scene in December 1979. Since Afghans marry early, three generations of them were born on the Pakistani soil during the last 45 years. A child, who could be seen rummaging in the garbage for his piece of bread, his/her father and the grandparents.These people can speak the Pakistani languages like Urdu, Punjabi and Hindko better than many locals in the areas of their respective residences. A vast majority of them have never set foot on the Afghan soil. Recent years have seen forcible repatriation of more than six hundred thousand refugees from Pakistan to Afghanistan where they are said to be living in miserable conditions.

3: The essays say absolutely nothing about these people. These people have their elders and children buried in the Pakistani cemeteries and their daughters married off to the Pakistani lads. Forcibly evicting these people from their tenements and then denying them entry in Pakistan even after passing through a cumbersome and malfunctioning legal channel is like extracting a tooth without the administration of anaesthesia. It's painful beyond the power of words to explain. How could officialdom allow this?

4: Both sturdy and frail-limbed Afghan labourers have built our upscale colonies and houses by the sweat of their brows. They have baked our breads and brought the vegetables to our doorstep. Afghan kids have disposed of our awful garbage for decades. Pakistan's farcical online visa system has made even these Afghans totally dependent on the agents and go-getters. Like in all other departments, we Pakistanis know better than all other people in the world how best to make mockery of the online systems.

5: The aforesaid essays tell us nothing of these Afghans, but tell us only of the Taliban as if the land and its resources are only theirs since time immemorial. This despite the fact that Taliban came to be known only from 1996 onwards. Some of the essayists have laid too much emphasis on which militant group is operating where and with what particular bent of belief. Giving so much importance to such trivial considerations has made the militants look bigger than what they can actually attain which is perhaps what the West wants to brandish as a grave threat to the world.

6: The essays talk of how much in billions of dollars and euros were expended on the rebuilding of Afghanistan and the training of its armed forces by the allied forces led by Mr. Sam. But it doesn't talk of why those security forces trained along modern lines couldn't withstand the Taliban onslaught even for one day. Both the Taliban and those trained by the West were Afghans. When we talk of being invincible, we don't talk of the Taliban, but the Afghans. This saga invariably starts relating itself from the the three Anglo-Afghan wars and as of now ends at the discomfiture of the NATO.

7: Western authors love rhetoric and cliches. The Taliban's retort that the West had the watch but the former had the time could in fact have been rephrased as the West had the 5000-pounders but the Taliban had the jacket. It's as simple as that. The jacket forced NATO out of Afghanistan. It's strange that anything other than this could be attributed to the end result. 

8: One of the essays tell us that Taliban delegates were accommodated in the most expensive hotels during their stay in Qatar. Those talking of rehabilitation should realize that even this grand hospitality didn't help change the hardened mindset. Taliban deliberated but at their own terms because they knew well that the interlocutors across the table suffered from the pangs of resistance-fatigue. Apparently, the negotiators and mediators didn't even try to make the Taliban agree to some kind of flexibility on their part. Such a stance could have been the holding of a referendum where only men would vote. The West probably thought such a solution would have made it look to be compromising on its self-styled stand on the women's rights. Based on ground realities both in Afghanistan and Pakistan, even a men only referendum wouldn't have given Taliban the mandate to return to power. Had this not been true a great majority of the refugees would have returned home to the Taliban controlled Afghanistan. As things turned out, both the refashioned country and women rights were lost to the fighters on the table. 

9: The essayist Thembisa Fakude ought to have known better that it was in Qatar where the Afghans lost their independence to a group of militants. In its eagerness to show its importance to the world and win undeserved plaudits, Qatar bartered away the most-adored possession of the Afghan people. Before long, Taliban too would realize that the victory that they gained was indeed pyrrhic.

10: The stolid bureaucratic corridors which engaged in prolonged talks with the Taliban would most likely pooh-pooh the foregoing ground realities. The conceited bureaucracy is perhaps more rigid than even the Taliban.

10: The essay titled 'China and Afghanistan' by Amin Mohseni gives a detailed list of Afghanistan's mineral deposits. The essays details that Afghanistan has untapped deposits of copper, lithium, uranium, gold, diamond etcetera including in how much quantity. It's a most intriguing account of Afghanistan's mineral wealth which undoubtedly this godforsaken country must be having but of what use is it to the thousands of Afghan kids as young as three who could be seen working as garbage-collectors on the streets of Pakistan. If the essayist is originally from Afghanistan, as his name suggests him to be, why he and others like him have runaway from their motherland. It's all too easy to settle down in the US or Europe and start writing sermons and an altogether different thing to face the reality head on. Every Afghan, both illiterate and semi or highly educated is trying to runaway and work as a slave in the West in whatever capacity possible.

11: Together, Hamid Karzai (2002-2014) and Ashraf Ghani (2014-2021) ruled Afghanistan as presidents respectively for close to 20 years. Both of them were of the Pashtun stock. They spoke fluent English language, and were very popular in the West. The Afghan people appeared to like these two gentleman, but the liking looked to be one-sided. While Karzai still remains stationed at home after the fall of Kabul in 2021, Ashraf fled to one of his several favourite hideouts from where he had sprang leaving behind a trail of allegations of malpractices. One always wonders what kind of foresight or understanding of the job the twosome had if they couldn't foresee the gathering storm around them. They couldn't even defend themselves against widespread allegations of doling out illicit favours to the people around them. They both had opportunities to leave indelible marks of good governance but they appeared to be consuming their energies in self-glorification in the eyes of the West. Karzai and Ashraf Ghani betrayed the trust of the wretched Afghans like no one else. How could the two forgive themselves especially Ghani who is said to be very highly educated?

12: The essay about Germany's contribution to the efforts in Afghanistan by Christian Wagner appears to be an exercise not worth the while. Germany through its consistent behaviour as an irresponsible state has proved that it should not have been allowed to come out of its status of pariah in the post World War 11 scheme of things. Germany should never have been permitted to rearm itself. Germany's rearming would now appear to have been allowed to aid and abet genocides by Israel on unarmed people like those in Gaza. Germany believes it is the only way it can atone for the crimes it committed against the Jewish people. By supplying arms to Israel to kill kids in Gaza, Germany has demolished the trust it was trying to reconstruct in Afghanistan. God is surely angry with countries like Germany, the US and UK. Why else would we see 17 billion euros spent on the training of 80, 000 Afghan police force by Germany go in vain. It appears that those euros were thrown in an oven in a baker's shop at the Shahr-e Naw in Kabul as the policemen supposedly trained by the rogue state of Germany didn't perform their duty even for an hour when the crunch time came.

13: After reading all the essays, one may safely assume that China, Russia and Iran have emerged as the most responsible states from the quagmire called Afghanistan. These three countries have behaved most reasonably both with respect to their own economic and geostrategic intersts as well as respecting the sovereignty of Afghanistan. The NATO countries led by the US have suffered a most ignoble defeat yet. They had to suffer this because wherever America and its partners go in the world they invariably interfere with the way of life of the people they come in contact with.

In conclusion, it can be argued that if Pakistan army can withhold the Taliban legions, although not without a heavy cost, why couldn't the Afghan military trained by the so called superior forces do the same even for one day? The Afghans are said to be formidable warriors. Training by the Western forces and being in possession of the most deadly weapons should have enabled them to offer at least some resistance. This part of the macabre drama needs to be told. It cannot be told in the niceties of the diplomatic jargon; if it is so attempted to be narrated than it will hardly help.

I hope the above will be shared with all the essayists in the best interest of the people of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, the three countries that suffered the most from the tragedy.

BOOKS

Image by AI

WHY DO WE READ LOLITA?

By: Nasser Yousaf

Our reading decisions are mostly influenced by the West. Western media, publishers and the award-giving organizations tell us what to read, and we comply with their biddings, whims and dictates.

Take for instance the case of 'Lolita' by the Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov. Lolita is an out and out paedopphilic story. But it has been showcased as a masterpiece in the West.

Had he not been a Soviet or Russian dissident, Nabokov wouldn't have been a household name in the Western literary circles. West loves dissidents if they happen to be from the countries that the West loves to hate.

Incidentally, paedophilia is a sickness that is very common in the West. Elderly people from Europe and America visit some Asian countries only to indulge their craving for children forced into prostitution due to extreme poverty.

But look at the dishonesty. In order to promote a novel by one of their favourite dissidents, and at the same time to cover up its own explicit proclivity for paedophilia, Western media tells us that Lolita is a story woven around exploitation in the former Soviet Union.

One doesn't really know when would the self-righteous organization called Transparency International wake up to rating intellectual dishonesty as a base crime. Intellectual propriety appears to have never existed on the shelf.

Undoubtedly, West has a license to do everything it wishes to do with impunity. It has perfected the art of annihilating cultures, societies and countries through its total control on media and through enslaving the rest of the world economically.

Organizations like the World Bank, IMF, UNDP, UNESCO, UNICEF, WHO etcetera are being used like guided intercontinental ballistic missiles. AI and its tools like Chatgpt have now added to the western arsenal.

Lest we forget him, the last Soviet leader Michael Gorbachev died in 2022. We remember him because his rule didn't just spell the end of his own country but it also dealt a fatal blow to a bi-polar world.

Russia defeated Napoleon in the early 19th century. War and Peace by Tolstoy tells the story of the ignominious French adventurism. Again, Russia defeated Germany in WW2. Russia didn't lose in Afghanistan but Gorbachev did when he got carried away with his glorification in the Western media.

Western media pampered and extolled Gorbachev through the excessive repetition of his so called reforms oriented slogans of 'glasnost' (openness) and 'perestroika' (reconstruction) to an extent that he was compelled into doing the bidding of the western media. Adept in flaunting its seductive charms, the western media acting like Circe, led Gorbachev to his inevitable doom.

Such is the power of the western media. But in Donald Trump, western media finally appears to have found its nemesis, and one would hope to the rescue of the rest of the world from the venomous bite of the ubiquitous chatter boxes.

Another novel that we have read despite it being outrageous and, therefore, unreadable is The Holy Sinner by a German Jewish writer Thomas Mann. Thomas was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1929. Ironically though, the world saw its worst economic meltdown or depression in the same year.

Thomas was an immensely intelligent man in addition to being a humanist. He wrote on subjects as varied as Mohandas Gandhi. It is, therefore, quite strange that he chose some most repulsive human habits to tell his stories.

The Holy Sinner novel is about incest from the beginning to the end. Throughout the torturous reading, one feels like skipping pages to find out if the subject wasn't intended to be what it has come down to. But there was no escaping the fact that the writer indeed was enraptured by the story that he had woven around incestuous relationship between a brother and sister.

The Blood of the Walsungs is another novel by the same writer on the same subject, which luckily one has not read. His infatuation with incest is beyond comprehension although the present-day Western reviewers would do their best to hide it under the veneer of most tempting explanations.

Before one is branded a moralistic prig, it would help to make mention of some of the great but nonetheless controversial works that one has read and reread. Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure, D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and Gabriel Garcia's One Hundred Years of Solitude merit mention among scores of others.

The beauty of its smooth flowery prose of one of the recent works of fiction titled 'The Crimson Petal and the White' by Michel Faber is so tempting that one had to reread it. Set in the Victorian era, the lead protagonist in the novel is a prostitute known for her killing charms, her average looks notwithstanding.

A novel, laced profusely with different figures of speech, is a beautiful narrative. The Crimson Petal and the White like Anna Karenina by Tolstoy is an ever lengthening narrative of love, betrayal and adultery. The prose in all such works makes them unceasingly readable. These superb novels are unlike Lolita, The Holy Sinner and many other similar works where the reader finds oneself in a claustrophobic cul de sac.

Apart from being a smart novelist, VS Naipaul was also known for his uncanny and belligerent arrogance, and no less for touching raw nerves in the literary circles. He had no love lost for women novelists of whom he told The Guardian that they were excessively sentimental. Having read the likes of George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), Bronte sisters, Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf and Hilary Mantel, one totally disagrees with Naipaul. 

But in the midst of all his scurrilous chitchat, Naipaul would some time blurt out the truth. Of his publishers, he once said that they would sell anything, even tosh, only if the cover had his name printed on it. This is exactly how western media plays with our reading choices simply because of our blindly following them.

'Have you read Bob Wood's latest book about Trump, or have you read Charlie Wilson, Clinton, Obama, Bush, Henry Kissinger?' are some of the inquiries we keep making all the time. We all know all such villainous characters by their criminal deeds they committed when they held the highest offices. Books written by them after quitting offices are little more than piffle.

We should be discerning enough to make better reading choices. Mandela, Gandhi, Castro, Teresa are not known to have hurt a bird. Reading autobiographies and biographies of such leaders raise our spirits.

A great work of literature is like an enticing cocktail. We must choose our own cocktails and sip them leisurely instead of looking to the West to recommend their undrinkable beverages to us.