Bashir Sakhawarz
Can any superpower
export freedom to another nation? Will military ‘might’ prevail no
matter what? Despite sanctions, despite many wars over decades,
despite hunger and despite their regime, the people are even more
determined to unite against the foreign interference and occupation
than ever before. They are unwilling to surrender to the allied sales
pitch of ‘democracy and freedom’. Iraq today is evidence enough that
nations and people unite against the deadliest of odds, even more
determined to resist foreign interference and occupation, no matter
how well the cause of freedom and their humanitarian liberation is
dressed. History repeats itself and man never learns.
Liberation of
Afghanistan
In
1979 Soviet Union miscalculated the mood of the Afghan people
imagining that its occupation forces would be greeted warmly in
Afghanistan. The Russian politicians were after all not doing
anything harmful to the Afghan nation, they were merely exporting
their version of communism to a country mishandled by its rulers over
many years. The Afghan people had been crushed under the combination
of the wheels of poverty, corruption, political unrest, lack of
freedom for speech and press and, all together the consequences of a
deeply suppressed nation. And did the Afghan reality of the time not
present the opportunity for an enlightened neighbour to walk in. A
neighbour who had found freedom and prosperity in the communism
philosophy. A neighbour attempting to export their ‘freedom ideology’
to Kabul. Every thing went smoothly to begin with and the streets of
Kabul were filled with Russian tanks in a matter of one night. Along
with the shipments of heavy planes, tall soldiers appeared fearlessly
on top of invading tanks and the radio started broadcasting welcome
news to the Russians. The puppet government of Afghanistan was
installed instantly. But alas, one thing was missing, and this
oversight determined the misfortune of the Russian Empire. This
omission was the beginning of its crumbling, slowly but surely, and in
the course of time this was exhibited in the form of lack of
enthusiasm from the ordinary Afghan people to welcome their Russian
brothers. No attendance of the public display of atan (national
dance) in front of the liberators. For the Russians, however, this
was a shock and in reality another example of the misjudgement of the
Afghan psychology. For no matter how much the Afghans may dislike
their governments, they would not welcome any invasion forces teaching
them their foreign ideology and freedom. This recurring behaviour of
the Afghans was evident in their history. The Afghans never trusted
invaders and their was no reason for them to do so in 1979.
Afghans and the
British
The history of
Afghanistan tells many tales of scenes such as that of the barbaric
behaviour of Chengiz Khan, Timor the lame, the Arabs and more recently
that of the British attempts to colonise. The tales that tell why the
Afghan nation dislikes invaders, always. The supposedly more
civilised Christian British empire in their three clashes against the
Afghans, raped women, murdered children, sacked the cities, burnt,
towns - to make the Afghans submit - but never achieved this goal and
caused the Afghans to be even more determine to fight against them.
The British of the time hated Afghans for being war lovers and
succeeding to resist. They asked themselves many a times “why these
people do not accept us like the Indians and other colonies do?”
Indeed it would have
been easier for both the Afghans and the British to accept each
other. The British Raj and the Afghan Sepahi (soldier). After all
Kabul was much more convenient for the British to reside and rule
India from. Like the Babar the Moghul Emperor, they loved the cool
weather of Kabul, the magnificent scenery of rivers, mountains, the
rose gardens and of course the charcheteh bazzar. The bazaar being
the famous acreage of four storeys of covered market with goods from
places afar such as China to the East and from Italy to the West.
India was dusty and hot in contrast. So there they were, the
persistent British Raj having come to establish themselves in
Balahesar, the Kabul fort, with their wives and children playing
cricket on the green Afghan planes. They misjudged their
reception. From the forty thousand soldiers that the British
deployed in Afghanistan only one ever escaped to reach the safety of
India after the war broke out. This by popular uprising of the
ordinary Afghan as there was no army. But Afghanistan also paid a
heavy price. In avenge, the British forces invaded again killed many
adults, raped the women on route to Kabul and burnt the Balahesar,
Chrcheteh, gardens and many historic monuments.
Liberation of Iraq
The US and British
invasion of Iraq is under the pretext of Freedom of the Iraq people,
and in a way very similar to Afghanistan when Russian prophecy
advocated a vision that invasion of Afghanistan was for the benefit of
the Afghan masses. It is true that the then invasion force probably
also had ulterior motives but covered it well enough under the pretext
of the Soviet Union Socialist responsibility to bring freedom to
Afghans from their brutal government chain. The cover story did not
sell in Afghanistan and neither can it in Iraq. The biggest shock
for the coalition “liberators” is not so much the ability of the
Iraqis to fight without proper weapons and create headaches for the
military might of US and the British, but rather their puzzlement on
the lack of Iraqis welcoming them with garlands and dancing with joy
in front of the US marines. It shows that even Tony Blair who has
more international respect as a politician than Bush got it wrong.
He said “freedom of Iraq would be a blessing for the Iraqi people”.
Blessing from whose perspective, certainly not from that of the
Iraqi’s. It shows clearly how far removed the psychology of the
western leaders and people supporting their actions have misjudged the
Iraqis who are not at all like the other Arab countries welcoming the
US. The Iraqis will always remember the first Gulf war and the day
when their surrendering army consisting of their brothers and fathers
was ambushed and assassinated in cold blood in the desert by the
coalition even at the time of the official retreat from Kuwait.
Afghanistan may have been occupied overnight by the Russians but they
could not hold on to it any more than the previous invaders and
finally, they were trapped and expelled. Iraq might be overpowered
by the military might of the US, who isn’t, but military might alone
is not sustainable over time. It is easy for the military to invade
but much harder and even impossible to change the psychology of the
ordinary people to submissively accept foreign freedom or to endure a
foreign imposed regime. People have already made up their mind that
there is an ulterior motive in this freedom of Iraq coalition
operation. Invading a country and trying to win the minds and hearts
of its people who lost their loved ones and saw their houses and
country destroyed is nothing less than ignorance.
