An Afghan Foray

My foray into the coverage of Afghanistan got off to a disastrously ridiculous start. It was a lesson in the validity of the adage about pride preceding the fall.

In mid-1990 when I began my stint as The Hindu’s first Pakistan correspondent, I knew that I would need to keep track of Afghan affairs. Each country was often so deeply affected by developments in the other that the situation in one could not be fully described or explained without reference to the other. References to Afghan matters inevitably found place in my despatches. Bombastic claims by Generals and prominent mullahs about the imminent fall of Kabul could not always be ignored. Nor could speeches made by the heads of the seven Mujahideen factions operating out of Peshawar. Statements issued by high functionaries of the Foreign or other relevant Ministries of Pakistan could not be treated in cavalier fashion either.

There was more to it. At that time, in the early 1990's, victory in the war against the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul was Pakistan's most important national project. A military that had invested so heavily in training and providing assistance to the Mujahideen seemed only too keen to claim the lion's share of the glory when and if its protégés succeeded. Even though most of the money had come from Saudi Arabia and the weapons from the United States, the khakis in Rawalpindi evidently saw themselves as the prime prosecutors of the campaign.

There was yet more to enrich the fragrance of the victory that was supposedly within smelling distance. Triumph over a superpower would raise the prestige of Pakistan and its military to stratospheric levels. A nation that had chalked up few successes and had not lived down the humiliation of being split in half would metamorphose into a power to be reckoned with. All of the military's sinful record would be incinerated into oblivion by the splendour of its victory over a far more powerful adversary (the USSR) that was also a patron of the old enemy (India).

If such glorious achievements did not bring to their knees the infidels to the East, the practical gains would confer the means by which they could be subdued. Acquisition of "strategic depth" beyond the Khyber Pass would provide Pakistan the only additional factor it needed to win a conventional war. The imagination ranged over broader vistas. Once Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif came under Pakistani domination, the conditions would be created for the revival of a Timurid empire head-quartered in Islamabad. The rhetoric was so heady that the best Afghan hashish would have made for a poor substitute. Generals and mullahs had found a way to get stoned without ingesting.

Astute Pakistani observers had been issuing cautions all along. A year and a half before the start of my stint, the Mujahideen had been bloodily repulsed when they tried to storm Jalalabad. By the time I took up my assignment, Mohammed Najibullah, President of Afghanistan, was showing that he could hang on even after the withdrawal of Soviet troops in 1989. Six out of the Peshawar Seven were sending out strong signals that they were aggrieved by the partiality being shown to Gulbuddin Hekmetyar. That coalition did not seem very cohesive and faced competition from another set of parties based in Iran.

Many people in Pakistan were also perplexed by their government's policy. They apparently wanted to believe the official line that Hekmetyar was the best bet. At the same time, reports from the field suggested that he was far less active than commanders such as Ahmed Shah Massoud , Ismail Khan and Jalaluddin Haqqani. In fact, he seemed to spend as much time in Pakistan as the elderly heads of the Mujahideen parties--Sigbatullah Mojadidi, Syed Gaillani and Burhanuddin Rabbani.

My personal experience suggested likewise. Hekmetyar rented a house on the same street as the one on which I lived, about a dozen gates away. The grounds within the shoulder-high walls would be full of people on more days than not suggesting that the warlord was at home. Technically, I was not supposed to approach him since as much was specifically stipulated in my visa. However, on one occasion he held a press conference to which I was invited.

Before responding to that invitations, I needed to hold a debate with myself. The visa conditions were that I should not visit Afghan refugee camps or meet Mujahideen leaders. Hekmetyar had issued the invitation on the Hizbe Islami letterhead and so I could argue that he was a political leader, not a fighter. His rented house was also most certainly not a refugee camp. Further, the Pakistani powers that mattered, who would certainly be aware of the invitation, had not issued any warning. Lastly, how could I not attend a press conference called by a well-known person living on my own street.

It was a total waste of time. Hekmetyar spoke in Pashto and the English translation was just as indecipherable. That might not have been on account of the translator's lack of skill. As I was to find out later in Iran and Afghanistan, politicians in that part of the world are so fond of allusions and the oblique reference that it is almost impossible to follow them unless the reporter is very familiar with the milieu.

A net result of this part-time, incidental coverage of Afghan affairs was that I acquired more knowledge of the situation in the already war-torn country than I had anticipated. At the same time, the knowledge was so patchy that I would have to double-check the juxtaposition of names, places, events etc. before I sent my reports. After a year in Islamabad, I realised that this half-assed coverage of matters Afghan would not do if I wanted to seriously report on even Pakistani affairs.

Developments were also pointing to a revival of the Great Game. Whether Pakistan become the main beneficiary or not, the Yeltsin rebellion and the collapse of the Soviet Union opened new possibilities in Central Asia. Readers of The Hindu deserved to be alerted to happenings beyond the Hindu Kush and the Amu Darya. My bosses agreed and by the middle of 1991, issues pertaining to Afghanistan and the other Stans beyond became unofficial additions to my portfolio.

The professional or cognitive reasons I alluded to in the presentation of my case to the bosses formed only part, the lesser part, of my motivation to take on Afghan coverage. Truth to tell, the probability that I would get a chance to cover a war drove me even more strongly.

Every Western correspondent who touched down in Pakistan must have tried to get onto a "Muj tour" –a trip through the mountains with one resistance groups or the other. As a senior Indian scribe visiting Islamabad at that time jokingly pointed out, the Goras spoke more often about "getting in" than did frequenters of brothels. That form of tourism was of course not open to the Indian. War reporting would have to be done via Kabul for coverage from the government side.

While I would not be able to do something as exciting as the "Muj tour", the thrill of the expansion in portfolio was strong in my mind when I landed back in Islamabad after my holiday. As it happened, the BBC's correspondent Lyse Doucet was also waiting near the luggage carousel, having come off another flight. In my excitement, I got my priorities mixed up and blurted out to Lyse that Afghanistan had become part of my beat. She came out with the gentle corrective that I had joined the Afghan beat and not the other way round. That was only the first lurch towards falling flat on my face.

My wife Nandini's family still had their farm at that point in time. In common with all good Malayalis, her parents could not dream of sending their daughter away without a dozen coconuts in her baggage. All the nuts had been carefully de-husked and lovingly packed into a suitcase. But Pakistan customs or airport security had seen the images of the little bomb-shaped objects on the x-ray screens. There I was standing near Lyse , a little embarrassed yet still proud when the carousel started and the coconuts rolled down the belt one by one with their two eyes (I swear) winking at me.

In late March or early April 1992, I was back in Delhi making arrangements for my trip to Kabul. The few days I spent there were really hectic. Between getting my visa and tickets and imbibing insights from a few experts especially my dear friend Appan Menon, I overlooked one most important detail. The renewal of my International Communications Union card. Long before debit or credit cards issued by banks or others become fashionable, the ICU card, was the plastic disc that enabled journalists to send telex messages from country to country without paying on the spot. This could have been a calamitous lapse but my conception of the ground situation in Kabul was so vague that I did not even fathom the scale of the blunder until a few days after my arrival in the besieged capital.

(Writer is former editor of Mathrubhumi)