As a kid growing up India, we had a far gentler picture of Afganistan in our minds. As a child, I read Tagore's short story 'Kabuliwala'. Its an heartrending story of an Afghan streetvendor who saw reflection of his daughter growing up in far off Kabul in a Bengali child who befriended him in Calcutta. When slightly older, I read Syed Mujtaba Ali's 'Dese Bideshe' - an account of his stay as a teacher in Afganistan. It painted a picture of the hospitality and large heartedness of the Afghan people. Ali had to get out in a hurry when a palace coup started in Kabul. But that didn't detract from his love of Afganistan. As I grew older, I heard about the ravages that the Soviets were wrecking there, I saw the photogaphs that captured the desolate beauty of the barren deserts of Afganistan. But the the image that stayed in my mind was painted in words by Bruce Chatwin in his introduction to Byron's 'Road to Oxiana' (the last passage. It was later reproduced in 'What Am I doing here'). It was very evocative. I wanted to travel in Afganistan.
The stories that are emerging from Afganistan are very different from the Afganistan that I imagined as a child. There is pederasty and its social acceptance , there was systematic state sponsored torture , there is images coming out of the misery of children. The other day, someone posted a link about the the massacre on the retreat from Kabul, Afghanistan (1842,the Anglo-Afghan war) in Mefi. The poem in the beginning of it captured the horror:
"When you're wounded and left,
On Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out,
To cut up your remains,
Just roll on your rifle,
And blow out your brains,
And go to your Gawd,
Like a soldier."
-Rudyard Kipling
The picture that I get now is of a people that have always been cruel, a people that are now so accepting of the excesses of feudalism, that no one would even try to change things anymore. In that sense it is similar to what is happening in Bihar (India). Only Bihar seems civilized by comparison. So much for remontic notions.
But I still want to travel in the Hindu kush mountains......
Posted by Kaushik at January 13, 2002 05:06 PMWas Afganistan ever part of India?
What religion prevailed in Afganistan before Bhuddism?
Do the Afghans have any similarity to ancient Indian Sages?
Thanks
Oscar
oscar@bookgift.us
While looking for links on history of Afganistan I've dropped into your page here. All of a sudden, after having read a heap of scientific material, it feels relieving to read something on Afganistan from a personal perspective.
I've read up on the USSR policy in Afganistan. The picture I got was Afganistan as a buffer region between Russian and British imperialist powers in the 18 century, and remaining a buffer region in soviet times, during cold war between USSR and US. Somehow, I've still got the period between USSR withdrawal in 1989 and the current situation in 2003 missing.
Actually, living in Lithuania one does not think much about Afganistan on daily basis. But as I keep hearing about it on BBC and reading in the press, I thought I need to learn more about the country and its history. Unexpectedly, it has taken me 4 hours to read the several articles that I have found. Why should history be as complicated as it is? ;)
Jolanta, Lithuania