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BOOK
REVIEW
Rebuilding pangs
Come Back to Afghanistan. A California Teenager's
Story by Said Hyder Akbar
Buy this book
Reviewed by Sreeram Chaulia
Editor's note: Donors pledged US$10 billion in aid for
Afghanistan at a meeting in London this week. This follows
more than $5 billion for the reconstruction of the country
pledged in January 2002.
What can one expect from an undergraduate student of Afghan
origin living in California? Identity crisis, teenybopper
mores, college pranks and carefree existence fit the
prototype. An introspective odyssey back to Afghanistan may
also be foreseen, but little beyond that.
Said Hyder Akbar - son of Fazel Akbar, Afghan President
Hamid Karzai's former spokesman and a former governor of
Kunar province - is a young man made of different mettle.
Meticulous record-taking of annual visits to his father's
homeland has yielded a book that must be treasured for its
political acuity. Come Back
 to
Afghanistan is a lesson in engaged and unbiased
reportage; all other accounts written on post-Taliban
rebuilding pangs pale in comparison.
Hyder's first encounter with "the country that is constantly
on the verge of falling apart" was in May 2002. Paved roads
and electricity were rarities and the obliteration of
physical infrastructure was ghoulish. Qualified Afghans
hedged their bets and did not return from foreign perches.
Although people were desperate for peace and national unity,
warlords such as the self-proclaimed "Amir of Southwest
Afghanistan", Ismail Khan, cooked their own morbid stews.
Landmines threatened and Pakistan worked against its western
neighbor's best interests as usual. In the backdrop was the
17-year-old author's insecurity about "not being Afghan
enough" (p 27) and journeys offering multiple rediscoveries
of a fragmented self.
Shortly after his arrival, a Tajik guard subjected Hyder to
frisking just because he was Pashtun. Having hero-worshipped
his family friend and legendary mujahideen commander Abdul
Haq, Hyder painfully discovered his posters torn down in
Kabul by supporters of the new national hero, Ahmad Shah
Masood. The hotel that housed him in the capital had a huge
multi-story crater from a missile hit. Locals had seen
enough rockets to become desensitized to the unceasing
attacks and counterattacks in the limbo left by the fall of
the Taliban. At the presidential palace, Hyder met the
barbaric General Rashid Dostum, noting that "his presence
underscores the ethical muddiness of this time. Even the
most outrageous characters are trying to curry favor with
the new government." (p 42)
In Kunar, his father's native province, there were men
aiming to kill Fazel Akbar but posing as followers. Several
factions had a furious interest in keeping this border
region lawless. The interim government was dominated by
Masood's Panjsheri Tajiks and lacked a popular mandate. Many
believed the loya jirga (grand council or
consultative assembly) of June 2002 to be controlled by US
envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, who compelled King Zahir Shah to
accept a ceremonial post. Delegates at the jirga who
spoke out against warlords and misuse of Islam were removed
and jailed. Heated debates took place on the floor on "Death
to Russia!" or "Death to Pakistan!" Hyder found that the
world was not transformed by the jirga. Women were
allotted only two ministries in the new cabinet and many
still shielded themselves in the burqa (a veil worn
in addition to a headscarf to cover their faces). In Kunar,
for women even to be in a public place was severely
intimidating.
Vice president Haji Qadir's assassination in July 2002 put
paid to Karzai's plan of luring warlords away from their
fiefdoms with desirable offices in the central government.
Qadir was supposed to be a test case. The nation's true
power and strength emphatically lay in the countryside, not
in the presidential palace. Important governmental
information from the center had to pass through the barrier
of provincial suzerains who ran communication networks
devoting bandwidth to their own propaganda. The September
2002 assassination attempt on Karzai in Kandahar prompted a
comment from the president that lax security-forces
recruitment in the provinces had to be changed. Hyder
wondered how he could follow through on such impossible
tasks. Bereft of a team of like-minded advisers, "how can
one man rein in the warlords or force the regional militias
to disarm?" (p 105)
Hyder's second stint in Afghanistan was in the summer of
2003. With war in Iraq taking center stage, Afghanistan was
once again "abandoned half-finished". (p 123) The Karzai
government swam against the tide of centuries of Afghan
history by trying to strengthen domestic tax collection from
the parsimonious provinces. American bodyguards for the
president, initially meant to be a temporary measure, became
a permanent arrangement. Karzai's Gul Khana palace sported
wartime windows pitted by bullet holes, yet to be replaced.
Reconstruction lagged throughout and speculation was rife
that the US$1.3 billion that poured in from donors was used
to purchase Toyota Land Cruisers and posh houses in Kabul
for foreign aid workers.
In Kunar, ex-communists who fought on the Soviet side and
massacred thousands in the resistance era, resurfaced in new
avatars to pose challenges to Fazel Akbar's governorship.
"Ninety percent of Kunar's troubles are caused by its
proximity to Pakistan." (p 217) An influx of insurgents from
across the border, operations of US troops and attempts by
the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to undermine the
Afghan government were thorny issues. "America needs to
choose: either keep Pakistan happy, or build a stable
Afghanistan. It will be impossible to do both." (p 160)
When American soldiers talked with the masses, they sounded
arrogant, "often failing to appreciate the intensity of the
nation's past". (p 169) Kunaris considered them tense,
alarmist and over-cautious newcomers unworthy of trust.
Targets alleged to have Taliban or al-Qaeda connections,
albeit innocent, "hole up in their houses, hoping that
suspicion will just disappear, their silence all the while
increasing the risk of a raid by the US forces". (p 187) The
torture and death of a civilian, Abdul Wali, in US detention
dealt a further blow to US credibility in Kunar. A second
assassination bid on Fazel Akbar revealed how development
and security were intertwined. Paved roads would have
prevented laying of mines to blow up government vehicles.
Hyder's last stay in Afghanistan was in the summer of 2004.
Chaos was rising and a sense of futility and exhaustion set
in. "Good news seemed secondary when lined up against the
bad." (p 262) Mukhalafeen (oppositionists) simulated
disorder in Kunar to chase away Fazel Akbar. The central
government could hardly handle itself, unable to establish
command over the capital city, not to mention the vast
Afghan outback. Government personnel were trading opium on
the black market, re-enacting the familiar "narco-terror
state". Commanders would slip into Pakistan, purchase
hundreds of Kalashnikov assault rifles and then present the
guns to the disarmament authorities to bag incentives for
turning in weapons. Tricksters skillfully manipulated US
troops to settle private scores. Hyder asks in exasperation:
"Is what is going on now war? You can't really call it
peace." (p 280)
Registration tallies for the October 2004 presidential
election served as unofficial censuses and provoked tensions
for being likely bases of determining ethnic representation
for the 2005 parliamentary polls. Pashtuns were on edge,
believing that the Panjsheris were purposefully
undercounting them to hand them the short end of the stick.
Ill-treatment of prisoners at the US base in Asadabad,
Kunar's capital, remained amid angst over secrecy and
framing of the guiltless. The Americans were rumored to be
trading aid for intelligence. "The line between militarism
and humanitarianism has been blurred." (p 288)
Before departing for California, Hyder went to Osama bin
Laden's former home near Jalalabad. At Tora Bora, residents
had made a shrine for the Arabs who died fighting the US
flush-out operations. People brought deaf and blind kids to
the mythologized cave complex to get healed by its
"spiritual force field". Al-Qaeda Arabs were far more
popular in the area also because they built wells and funded
welfare projects, an enterprise the Americans have failed at
comparatively.
Hyder concludes by avowing that the George W Bush
administration's storyline that Afghanistan is a "success"
does not square with the facts. The big question this
memorable account evokes is less whether Afghanistan will
rebuild institutions and stability and more whether it will
be allowed to do so by carnivorous neighboring states and
home-bred war profiteers. The daunting challenge for the
international community is to ensure that the blatant
foreign interference that destroyed this once-vibrant
society is permanently consigned to irrelevance.
Come Back to Afghanistan: A California Teenager's Story
by Said Hyder Akbar. Bloomsbury Publishing, New York,
November 2005. ISBN: 1-58234-520-1. Price: US$24.95; 339
pages.
(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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