Anwar Ahmad

The sound isn't strong or sustained enough to filter through the every day noises around us. But sitting in a quiet corner, marvelling at God's greens outside and mulling over a world gone mad, it comes to you. Like rolling thunder far in the distance, wafting along the air, clear one moment and gone the next. The rumble of warplanes, the sound of death for many. So haunting can the dreaded drone become that it will even awaken you at night, to wonder if the planes had done their deadly deeds. And, how many more innocent Afghans might have suffered for others' fanatical ambitions. To worry that, having heard the distant sounds, you too had been tainted by sin.

Worrying also are the fiery sounds and sights in the streets which are splitting the country asunder. There is passion in the militant rhetoric, and a call to honour. Many a heart beat to their rhythm. But the minds wander. Yet, all the earth's logic cannot soothe the nagging guilt of abetting mass murder. Moderation is under stress. And, it is no longer possible to condemn the terrorists without also condemning the US.

And, the mundane worries! Are we not being used again? And, for a perfidious enterprise which would, if nothing else, leave us morally crippled. And it could, very easily, do far worse. We are deep down, beneath the verbal anaesthesia, too ashamed even to demand a worthwhile reward for services rendered. We are, we say, doing it for principles. What principles? Whose principles?

We are not asking for a debt write-off, only rescheduling, our finance minister assures the Japanese. Why aren't we insisting on a debt write-off? Isn't this the Achilles' heel which got us in this mess in the first place? Isn't that why no one is keen to write-off the debt, and let us off the hook of dependence and indignity? The Japanese say, and we meekly agree, that their laws don't allow write-offs. Did their constitution, or that of Germany, allow sending troops abroad? Haven't these been amended in double quick time because the international emergency, and Uncle Sam, needed them on board? Considering the horrendous risk we have been put to, why can't the laws against write-offs be similarly amended?

But we are too suave to argue. It doesn't hurt our tattered self-respect to beg for more loans and rescheduling of the old. But living on sand, as we do, we haven't the courage to draw the line and say: "This far, and no further." We cannot demand a write-off because that could close the spigot of new loans. That would inconvenience the ruling elite. So, in the name of the poor, we shall borrow more and, twenty years down the road, our children could be deeper indebt and indignity than we have been.

We are, of course, doing it for principles and, in any case, our friends know our needs. The trouble is, the born again "friends" also know our spinelessness and will try to wring the last drop of their interests out of us without reciprocating any more than is impossible to avoid. Thus, forget a debt write-off, we haven't even received the trade concessions from the US which the EU has so readily announced. And, not a kind word on Kashmir even as more of the resistance groups are being blacklisted. Fair enough, declare them blackguards as well if that will promote peace. But will it?

President Bashar-al-Asad stood the loquacious Tony Blair by his side and told the world that Syria does not recognise the Western definition of terrorism. If the Britain-based Charles De Gaulle fighting Nazi occupation of France wasn't a terrorist, he said, neither are the Palestinians fighting to evict Israeli terrorists from the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

Kashmir too is a similar case, and we have made the same distinction. But our "friend and ally" continues to sit on the fence. In her "the US is here for the long-haul" interview with The News-Jang, Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin talked passed the pointed question whether the US has promised to help India in crushing Kashmiri resistance. Pressed again, she repeated the homily that Kashmir is a "very complex problem" (diplomatese for `forget about the principles, be pragmatic'), violence isn't good and, so, talk to India. Her bosses haven't been any more forthcoming. Nor the embarrassing stream of European visitors (who seem to have been instructed to keep Pakistan occupied).

But the fault is our own. We have made such a mess of ourselves, and become so pliable at the cost of our own best interest, that few take us seriously. Have we, even now, kicked our notoriously slothful embassies abroad to launch a media blitz to inform the Western public opinion - at a rare and fleeting moment when it is focused on Pakistan, and interested in learning about it - what the Kashmir brouhaha is all about?

That, contrary to the general perception, it is not a secessionist movement but a struggle to implement half a century old Indian-initiated UN resolutions promising a plebiscite to the Kashmiris. That India had happily accepted the UN verdict, and secured a ceasefire in Kashmir. That Pundit Nehru, the first Indian prime minister, had repeatedly promised the Kashmiris their right of self-determination. That the pro-Soviet India then used Pakistan's first alliance with the US in the 1950s to wriggle out of its plebiscite commitment. That, ever since, Pakistan has been talking to a wall. That India is now set to follow the US "self-defence" precedent in attacking the resistance bases in Pakistani-held Kashmir. That this could trigger a nuclear holocaust.

The world doesn't know the basics about Kashmir. Before it loses interest, it needs to be told that Pakistan is not the villain here. India is. If we don't seize the moment, we can't blame others.

Thus far, on the two objectives for which we again got hitched to the US bandwagon, there is only prevarication. Practically no debt write-off, which is critical, and no worthwhile word on Kashmir. The third, securing the nuclear "assets" is far from fruition. The fourth, national integrity, cannot be guaranteed by anyone but ourselves. Presently, it is being increasingly stressed by the mayhem let loose by the US.

It is too painful to look the injured, orphaned or abandoned Afghan children in the eye, even though their tear-stained faces only look out of pictures and don't confront us in person. It would be inhuman if we succumbed to the temptation of looking away. And, all this is being done in the name of civilisation and justice.

Perhaps humankind's worst creation is the military, an institutionalisation of barbarity. The warplanes that we hear are flown by otherwise decent persons, who love their families and would ordinarily not hurt a fly. Yet, one can see them exulting after a successful mission, oblivious to the havoc they have caused to so many helpless lives on earth. Like the Vietnam veterans, some of them may, in their older years, return to Afghanistan to meet the survivors of their deadly payload. But what good will that do?

The US repents its cruelty in Vietnam because it lost, and that too to an enemy it had trivialised, demeaned, bombed, poisoned and killed with impunity. Winners have no regrets. The lessons it learnt were that body-bags must not come home, and the media must never have a free run of the battlefield. Hence, the painless and sanitised Gulf War victory and the absence of remorse for the hapless Iraqi soldiers buried alive by dozer-blade fitted US tanks and the slow, painful, starvation deaths of a million Iraqi children. A triumph of civilisation, indeed.

And, now there are the Afghans - poor and primitive unlike the Iraqis, proud and unbeaten unlike the Pakistanis. Parallels are already being drawn with the dreaded Vietnam "stalemate." Frustration on the ground had triggered frenzied US bombing there. In Afghanistan, too, the smart-bombs are giving way to cluster-bombs and carpet-bombing. But the "hated" Taliban regime has not crumbled, making the wise men crafting a "broad-based, home-grown" alternative look more and more like the proverbial Sheikh Chilli.Thus, the US having ruled out failure as an option, things can only get worse. But there is no certainty that these will get better thereafter.

The writer is a freelance columnist

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