Shackles Of Slavery

PM Imran Khan declared on 16 August 2021 that “Afghanistan has broken the shackles of slavery” referring to the Afghan Taliban having taken over Kabul a day earlier. He had made these comments while addressing a ceremony to launch the Single National Curriculum. The premier spoke how the parallel education system led to the existence of English Medium schools, resulting in the adoption of “someone else’s culture” in Pakistan, creating a system of mental slaves. The Taliban victory in Afghanistan was in a way the same as the people of Pakistan breaking the shackles of slavery.

Imran Khan’s comments drew an avalanche of criticism, not surprisingly in the U.S. but also in Pakistan. Dawn columnist Fahd Husain called these remarks “ill-advised, ill-considered and ill-timed’. The West’s discomfort over anybody applauding what can only be described as surrender by the might of American armed forces to the raggedly lot of a few thousand scantily armed Taliban is understandable. But now that the dust has settled, there is a need to understand just how this happened, and to place it in a proper context.

There is no dearth of explanations. Ranging from the ‘graveyard of civilizations’, to the unexpected fleeing of President Ashraf Ghani and to the unbridled corruption amongst Afghan senior administration which led to the Afghan army melting away, there are as many alibis as there are mouths to speak. These are no doubt the immediate causes of the debacle suffered by the US and the joint NATO forces. But the fact is that whatever has happened  in the neighboring country was inevitable, and was bound to happen sooner or later, even if none of the causes mentioned above was present. And, intriguingly, this has to do with ‘shackles of slavery’.

It is a fact of history, proven again and again, that occupation of a country by forces which are foreign to it never succeeds. It does not matter whether the foreign rule is harsh or benign, with ill-intent or with genuinely good wishes, painted as occupation or nation building, it always finishes with a bitter end, and after taking a toll of countless human lives and leaving behind tales of misery and gloom. History is replete with cases where the beginning of a foreign rule was marked with “good intentions”. Brought about to civilize the natives, to show them the benefits of a fair and efficient administration, to bestow upon them the fruits of technical innovations. As Rudyard Kipling put it, “the white man’s burden”. But it never worked. It never worked a single time. The natives, while fully enjoying the good things in life gifted by the foreign rulers were, to the amazement of their benefactors, always rather ungrateful, wishing them to go back and stay back, as soon as possible.

Take the case of our very own beneficent rulers. As foreign rulers go, they were probably one of the most gentlemanly lot. Indian freedom struggle started rather sedately and Indian National Congress, the party which led the freedom movement, was founded by an Englishman!. However, once the freedom struggle did commence, there was no stopping it. All through the 1920’s, 30’s and 40’s the British continued to hand out more and more local participation in government to Indians in bits and pieces, each concession being considered by the natives as too little, too late. Eventually they had to beat a retreat and leave India in 1947. All the railways, roads, canals or the schools and colleges built by the British in India could not help them to hold power indefinitely..

Same happened in Ireland, where a political/military campaign by Irish nationalists between the years 1916 to 1921 forced the British government to free Ireland but only after they forced a partition of the country and created a new state called Northern Ireland. Here, even the congruity of race and geography could not stop the natives from agitating against a foreign rule.

Welcome to Afghanistan where no commonality of any sort between the occupier and the occupied existed whatsoever, the two societies might as well be living on two different planets. In the beginning there was a semblance of comradeship between the members of American army and the newly created Afghan army. But all this changed over time especially after there were some stray incidents of Afghan soldiers opening fire on members of Coalition forces.

The foreign occupier throughout the centuries maintains its power by following one simple principle: divide and rule. They create a small clique of ruling class showering it with power and privileges while the vast majority of population seethes with discontent but is powerless to do anything about it. British did it by creating princes, rajas and other landowning elites in India. Americans followed suit by empowering heavily armed warlords and awarding lucrative contracts to a small urban section of society. Ordinary Dari/English translators working for the American or NATO forces became millionaires overnight by switching jobs. An urban elite of Afghan men and women was created. Educated, sophisticated and a model of the modern Afghan society. The world clapped.

The vast majority of the Afghan population however remained unaffected by this change. They suffered economically, because the national wealth remained confined to a tiny pampered minority, and socially, after the now powerful warlords began to terrorize the common people, just as they had done during the years 1989 to 1996, the period between the Russian and Taliban rules. The cliché of “history repeating itself” struck with a vengeance and Taliban started to gain power the second time in history, generally for the same underlying causes as before.

The Occupier remained oblivious to all this, as it always is. But not for want of warnings. Others may have done so too, but it is a matter of record that the Pakistani leaders, both civil and military, continued to warn the Americans repeatedly about the futility of their policies in Afghanistan which were bound to result in disaster. But intoxicated in their arrogance and hubris, the Americans refused to listen. Until the disaster struck. And now, as usual, there is a frantic search going on to find scapegoats.

When Prime Minister Imran Khan declared on 16 August 2021 that Afghanistan had broken the shackles of slavery, he was perhaps being tactless and undiplomatic, but viewed in the perspective of history, he was dead on target. The slaves always win in the end.

SH:  October 1, 2021