A Country Abandoned

Consequences Of Geography

Afghanistan has an area of 700,000 square kilometers. People live in cavernous valleys surrounded by towering mountains. To the same degree that these mountains obstruct foreign intrusion, they block the influence of other cultures and commercial activities. A country that is 75 percent mountainous has problems creating consumer markets in its potential industrial areas and in exporting agriculture products to the cities. Despite the use of modern weapons, wars take longer to wage and seem never to end. If Afghanistan was not so rugged it would have had a different economic, military, political, and cultural fate.

In its present state the economy of Afghanistan can keep its people half fed without any economic development. The average life expectancy of an Afghan has been calculated at 41.5 years and the mortality rate for children under 2 years of age was between 182 to 200 deaths per 1,000. The average longevity was 34 years in 1960 and in 2000 was pegged at 41. The reality, however, is that in recent years it has gone down to even lower than what it was in 1960.

The basic question that comes to mind then is how are the Afghan people supported? It is either through construction work in Iran, participation in political wars, smuggling or becoming theology students in the Taliban madrasas. On the Iranian border the United Nations pays $20 to any Afghan volunteering to return to Afghanistan. They are taken by bus to the nearest cities inside Afghanistan or dropped along the frontiers. Interestingly, due to lack of jobs in Afghanistan, Afghans quickly come back and, if they are not recognized, get back in line to get another $20. The jobless Afghans turn every opportunity into an occupation.

But there is a grim harvest to be reaped. I'll never forget those nights of filming Kandahar. While our team searched the deserts with flashlights, we would see dying refugees like herds of sheep left in the sands. When we took those who we thought were dying of cholera to hospitals in Zabol, we realized that they were dying of hunger. The camp at Zabol looked more like a prison. The Afghans who had fled because of famine or Taliban assaults were refused asylum and were waiting to be returned to Afghanistan. The camp could not afford to feed so many people and they had not eaten for a week. They had only water to drink. We offered to provide meals. We brought food for 400 Afghans, ranging from one-month-old babies to 80-year-old men. Most of them were little kids who had fainted from hunger in their mothers' arms. For an hour, we were crying and distributing bread and fruit. The authorities expressed grief and regret and said that it took a long time for budget approvals.

For many, theology is the obvious alternative to starvation. There are over 2,500 Taliban schools with a capacity between 300 to 1,000 students, which attract hungry orphans. In these schools anybody can have a piece of bread and a bowl of soup, read the Quran, memorize prayers, and later join the Taliban forces. For some, drug production and narcotic smuggling are the remaining, none-too-lucrative, options. Thus, heroin enters Tajikistan at one price and exits at twice that much. The same goes for Uzbekistan.

Ironically, the Afghan drug producer is not himself a consumer. Drug use is prohibited but its production is legitimate. Its religious justification is sending deadly poisons to the enemies of Islam in Europe and America.

Drugs are an interesting business for many. Just a few months ago when I was in Afghanistan, it was said that every day an airplane full of drugs flew directly from Afghanistan to the Persian Gulf states. In 1986, when I was doing research for the making of The Cyclist, I journeyed from Mirjaveh in Pakistan to Quetta and Peshawar in Pakistan. It took me a few days. When I entered Miijaveh, I boarded a colorful bus filled with all kinds of strange people.

At first, I was unaware that the bus roof was filled with drugs. We drove across dirt expanses without roads. Everywhere was filled with dust and the wheels would sink into the soft soil. We arrived at a surreal gate like the ones in Dali's paintings. It was a gate that neither separated nor connected anything from or to anything. It was just a superfluous gate in the middle of the desert. The bus stopped at the gate. There appeared a group of bikers who asked our driver to step down. They talked a little and then brought out a sack of money and counted it with the driver. Two of the bikers came and took over our bus. Our driver and his assistant took the money and left on the bikes. The new driver announced that he was now the owner of the bus and everything in it. This transaction was repeated every few hours and we were sold several times along the way. We found out that a particular party of smugglers controlled each leg of the route and every time the bus was sold, the price increased. There were also caravans that carried Dushka heavy machine guns on camelback. Bullets were sold in bags as if they were beans. Kilos of bullets were weighed on scales and exchanged.

The caravans are believed to be made up of groups of 5 to 100 people between 12 to 30 years of age. Each carries a sack of drugs on his back and some carry hand-held rocket launchers and Kalashnikovs to protect the caravan.

Émigré Destinies

Because of widespread need to migrate, human smuggling has become a new occupation for Iranian smugglers. Afghan families that reach the borders have to go a long way to arrive in Tehran and since their arrest is likely in Zabol, Zahedan, Kerman, or any other city en route, they leave their fate in the hands of pickup-driving smugglers. The smugglers demand one million rials for every refugee hauled to Tehran.

Since, in 99 percent of the cases, the Afghan family lacks this kind of money, a couple of 13-14 year old girls are taken hostage and the rest of the family is secreted into Tehran through back roads. The girls are kept until their family finds jobs and pays the debt. In most cases the money is never provided. A 10-member family with a 10 million rial debt has to pay the interest as well after three months. Consequently, a great many Afghan girls are either kept as hostages around the borders or become the personal belongings of the smugglers. An official in the region related that the number of girl hostages in just one of those cities is in the region of 24,000.

Those who emigrate to Iran are Hazarehs, who are Farsi speaking Shiites. Language and religion incline them towards Iran. Their misfortune is their distinctive appearance: their Mongoloid features distinguish them from Iranians. The Pashtoon who goes to Pakistan, however, blends in with Pakistanis because of common language, religion, and ethnicity. Although the Shiite Hazarehs find Pakistan more liberal than Iran, job opportunities in Iran are more appealing to them than the freedom in Pakistan. Bread clearly has priority over freedom.

For the Sunni Pashtoon it is a different trek that ends in the trap of another nation's politics. As a result of not finding a suitable occupation, a hungry Pashtoon is attracted to the theological schools ready to offer food and shelter. Pakistan has promoted, organized, and put into action the Taliban government for a variety of reasons. The first is the Durand line. Before Pakistani independence, Afghanistan shared borders with undivided India and serious disputes ensued over the Pashtoonestan region. The British drew the Durand line and divided the region between the two countries, on the condition that after 100 years, Afghanistan would regain control over the Indian part of Pashtoonestan. When Pakistan declared independence, British-held Pashtoonestan became part of Pakistan. Some six years ago, Pakistan, according to international law, was supposed to cede Pashtoonestan back to Afghanistan. But how will Pakistan that still has claims over Kashmir agree to return this land?

The obvious solution was to raise hungry Afghan mujaheds to control Afghanistan. The Pakistan-trained Taliban would naturally no longer harbor ambitions of recovering Pashtoonestan from their patron. No wonder the Taliban appeared just as the 100-year deadline drew to a close. From a distance, the Taliban appear to be irrational and dangerous fundamentalists. When you look at them closely, you see hungry Pashtoon orphans who are theology students by vocation, whose impetus for attending school is hunger. When you review the rise of the Taliban you see the political interests of Pakistan. If fundamentalism was the reason for Pakistan's independence from India, the same applies for Pakistan's survival and expansion at the expense of Afghanistan.

The Taliban have always been criticized for their fundamentalism but little has been said about the reasons for their arrival on the scene. The Herati poet who had come to Iran on foot returned to Afghanistan on foot, but the orphan who had walked to Peshawar in Pakistan returned to conquer Afghanistan driving Toyotas offered by Arab countries. How could Pakistan afford to feed, train, and equip the Taliban? With the help of Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Who Are the Taliban?

After the Soviet retreat, the outbreak of civil war created nationwide insecurity and the country was in perilous straits. Each group sought to provide its own security through continuous fighting. None, however, was able to provide safety for the nation. The mocking irony of this period was that everyone tried to ensure security by making the country unsafe.

The people were exhausted by civil war. When Pakistan dispatched the Taliban army holding white flags with the motto of public disarmament and peace, they were welcomed. In a short time, the Taliban had control over most of Afghanistan. It was then that the Taliban's Pakistani roots became evident.

The strategy of disarmament and dispatch of the religious Taliban claiming to be harbingers of peace quickly succeeded in winning popular consent. Security was established for two reasons. One was the disarmament of the public and the other the severe punitive measures, such as cutting the hands of thieves. These punishments are so harsh, intolerable, and quick that if 20,000 hungry Afghans saw a piece of bread before them, nobody would dare take it. Today, when you enter Afghanistan, you see people lying around on street corners. Nobody has the energy to move and no weapons to fight with. Fear of punishment stops them from committing crimes. The only remedy is to stay and die in the face of humanity's indifference.

 The Taliban have brought an apparent security to Afghanistan. On Shariat Radio (the voice of Taliban), which only has a two-hour program daily, even if there is fighting somewhere they do not announce it, just to maintain a sense of national security. When they say, for example, that the people of Takhar welcomed the Taliban, it means that the Taliban attacked and conquered Takhar. The rest is news about Friday prayer or the amputation of the hand of some bandit in Bamian, the stoning to death of a young adulterer in Kandahar, or the punishment of some barbers who have cut a few teenagers' hair in the style of the Western infidels. Whatever it is, with all the punishments and propaganda, a sense of national security suffuses Afghanistan. But this has also created for the world an enduring image of Afghan aggression and barbarism. The death of one million Afghans as a result of the world's injustice is not regarded as aggression. The death of 10 percent of the Afghan population by civil war and war with Russia is not perceived as aggression. But decapitation by the sword will for long remain the headline of satellite television news.

Who Is Mullah Omar?

In my seemingly endless trip to Kandahar, everywhere there is talk of Mullah Omar. His title is Amir-al­M'omenin (Commander of the Faithful). Nobody really knows much about his background. Some say he is 40 years old and blind in one eye but there is no photograph of him to prove or disprove this. How does a nation choose a half-blind man overnight to lead them, when not even a picture has been seen of him? Everyone I ask about Mullah Omar says he is a representative of God on earth who introduced the Qur'an as the country's constitution. He is extremely devout, as are his followers. His wages are as paltry as the Herat's governor's—U.S. $15 a month—and he lives like the poor people who are dying in the streets. As a starving Afghan put it, though he was starving he was happy that Mullah Omar too was always fasting. They were like each other. He thanked God for such a leader.

Among the Pashtoo refugees, I ran across someone who had not seen Mullah Omar but knew of people who had. I even met Iranian politicians who believe Mullah Omar really exists and that he is handsome. Mullah Omar fascinates a few Afghans who sleep in Iran at night and cross the border by day to sell dates in Afghanistan. They tell me that he is an ordinary monk who dreamed of Prophet Mohammad one night and was commissioned to save Afghanistan. Since God was with him, he was able to conquer Afghanistan in one month.

Afghanistan's Failed Modernity

Between 1919-1928 Amanullah Khan ruled Afghanistan. He was inclined towards modernism, traveled to Europe, returned with a Rolls Royce and made known his reform program. This included a change in attire. He told his wife to unveil herself and asked men to forego their Afghan costumes for Western suits. He also prohibited polygamy. Traditionalists immediately begin opposing Amanullah's modernizing.

None of the agrarian tribes submitted to these changes. The superficial, formalistic modernism served only as an antibody to stimulate traditional Afghan culture, making Afghanistan so immune to it that even in the following decades, modernism could not penetrate the culture in a more rational form. The most advanced people in Afghanistan do not believe that Afghan society is ready yet for female suffrage. It is obvious then that the most conservative will prohibit schooling and social activities. It follows that 10 million women will be held captive under their burqas.

With the coming of the Taliban, girls' schools were closed and for a long time, women were not allowed on the streets. Even before the Taliban, only 1 out of every 20 women was able to read and write. For all practical purposes, Afghan culture had denied education to 95 percent of its women. The Taliban denied it to the remaining 5 percent. The realistic question to ask then is whether the Taliban affects the culture of Afghanistan or was it the cause for the Taliban's appearance?

An Afghan woman has to maintain herself so that she will not be overlooked in the competition with her rivals. Polygamy is quite common even among the younger generation, and many Afghan homes have been turned into harems. Getting married means buying a woman. I have seen old men giving away l0-year-old girls and, with the bride price that they receive, marrying other l0-year-old girls. Scarce capital is circulated in a closed society by transferring young girls from one house to the other. Time and again I asked myself, did the Taliban bring the burqas or did the burqas bring the Taliban?

Opposition to modernism is not necessarily expressed by traditional organizations. Sometimes it is   reaction by the poor against the rich, a war between poverty and wealth. Today, in Afghanistan the only modern objects are weapons. The ubiquitous civil war that has created jobs, in addition to being a political-military action, has also become a market for modern weapons. Even though it lags behind the contemporary age, Afghanistan can no longer fight with knives and daggers. The consumption of weapons is a serious matter. Stinger missiles next to long beards and burqas are still symbols of a profound modernism that are proportionate to consumption and modern culture.

For the Afghan mujahed, weapons have an economic basis. If all weapons are removed from Afghanistan, the war ends and then, given the sub-zero economic conditions, all of today's mujahedin will join the refugees in other countries. The issue of tradition and modernism, war and peace, tribalism and nationalism in Afghanistan must be analyzed with an eye to the economic situation and employment crisis.

Some 180 international organizations are said to be active in Afghanistan. I soon learned that they have taken on colossal tasks. One is to distribute bread among the starving. A second is to negotiate the exchange of north-south prisoners. A third is to make artificial limbs for land mine victims.

The young people who have come here through the Red Cross fascinate me. I met a 19-year-old British woman who says the reason she has come “is to be useful.” It is only here in Afghanistan that she can make so many artificial hands and legs for people each day. In England, which offers so much satisfaction, she cannot find a job. Since she came, a few hundred people have been able to walk with the artificial limbs she has made. But can all this do anything more than remedy the deep and extensive wounds of this nation in some very limited way?

When I was crossing the border, I saw Iranian artillery pointing towards Afghanistan. When I entered Afghanistan, I saw artillery pointing to Iran. On the Afghan side of the border I heard that the region's military commander had called the Iranian consul and told him that their homes were made of clay so what did the Iranian guns aim to target? He had said, “The worst that you can do is bombard our houses and when it rains we will take the wet mud and build our homes anew. Don't you find it a pity if our guns destroy your beautiful homes? You can't make glass and iron and ceramics with rain. Why don't you come and build the road to Herat for us?”

The road from Dogharoon to Herat is worse than the winding roads of Iran. On the undulating terrain ahead, shovel-wielding men and boys stand for eternity. As far as the eye can see, there are shovel-wielding men. As soon as our car gets close to them, they start filling up the ditches with dirt and, we see them in the dust. It is a scene of shovel-wielding men who disappear in the dust and have created an occupation for themselves out of nothing. This is the most surreal scene that I see in Afghanistan.

In my opinion, the only solution for Afghanistan is a rigorous scientific identification of its problems and the projection of the real image of a nation that has remained obscure and imageless both to itself and to others.

Since the day I saw a little Afghan girl 12 years of age—the same age as my own daughter Hanna— fluttering in my arms in hunger, I have tried to bring forth the tragedy of this hunger, but I always end up giving statistics. I have become powerless, like Afghanistan. I feel like going to that same poem, to that same vagrancy and, like that Herati poet, get lost somewhere or collapse out of shame like the Buddha of Bamian. “I came on foot, I'll leave on foot.”                                                      Z

Mohsen Makhmalbaf is an Iranian filmmaker who traveled extensively in Afghanistan between 1988 and 2001.