Bashir Sakhawarz
Creating parliament
during Zahir Shah in Afghanistan brought some degree of freedom for the
people. After many years of silence Kabul spoke through the voice of
virgin writers who took the smallest of opportunities to express
themselves. Suddenly, the market was full of independent newspapers and
magazines. Surprisingly many writers appeared to have varied knowledge
of philosophy, modern and classic literature and, wrote non-exhaustively
in the independent publications for people thirsty to read. People were
buying thirst-quenching knowledge and, the writers were writing with
passion about matters of interest, old and new. This era was the first
and last, for the freedom of writings in Afghanistan.
It was Stalin who said
that writers are the soul of the nation. Unfortunately, in Afghanistan,
the soul of the nation was frequently bought by the men in power.
Writers served Kings instead of serving their nation. Even Ferduasi, the
great poet who revived the Persian language, wrote his epic under the
instruction of Sultan Mahmood Ghaznawi. We have but a handful of
writers who truly served the nation, such as, Sanai, Sadi, Maulana
Julaludin Balkhi, Baidal amongst others. However, we must not forget
that almost all the great poets and writers were forced by their rulers
to write for the courts, for the powerful and in praise of their might.
The people who ignored this simply did not exist during their lifetime.
In modern history,
however, our writers somehow managed to untangle from this web of power
towards the cause of freedom and the strive for independence. That
because these decent, honest, humble writers managed a basic salary
through their teachings at school or practice of professions such as an
ordinary medicine-man or engineer. They could not resist their call of
duty to awaken their people to embrace progress and modern
developments.
I disagree with Stalin,
for saying, that writers are the soul of the nation, but I agree that
only good writings can influence the soul of their nation. We must not
ignore that writers too can easily be influenced to serve regimes for
economic gain - for fame, for status, for popularity, with or without
fortune, or simply to stay alive. This is a recurring cycle in
Afghanistan too throughout the course of its history. I can name more
than a hundred famous and many not-so-famous writers who served the
powerful for their own vested interests. Certainly these writers cannot
be called the soul of their nation because of the scale of the brutality
and aggression of the people in power whom the writers chose to serve.
However, those writers who consciously decided not to serve the courts,
not to serve the kings and not to serve the powerful have paid a heavy
price for their resistance and for their lack of cooperation. Sanai of
Ghazna was asked by Bahram the King many a times, to write in admiration
of Amir and when he declined, his life became a living misery. Amir
Khosraw of Delhi did the same and almost paid with his life.
Fortunately he survived but many writers in our modern history have not
had this luck. Ghulam Mohamad Ghobar committed the biggest crime
against the tradition of court historians by simply writing the true
Afghan history, and argued well on the economical and social aspects of
the times. The Afghan courts could not digest this wilful disobedience
and it was not enough punishment that his book was not published during
the Zahir Shah regime, for the court did not stop at that alone as
Ghobar was imprisoned for a protracted period in order to force and
induce him to forget and forgo any ambition of writing truthfully about
the history of Afghanistan, ever again.
The uphill struggle to
attain freedom of thought and freedom of press and publications has been
coloured red with blood of so many innocent writers, even in this modern
era and age that we live in today. A brief window of freedom for
writers during Zahir Shah brought so many enthusiasts to publish their
works in the Afghan independent press but alas, this freedom was only
short lived. This freedom period ended very abruptly, in fact that
became the instrument to separate the committed writers from the
others. Naturally aiming to identify those who wrote passionately,
voicing the problems of their monarch against the masses and openly
writing of how the rulers prevented the progression of the nation.
Suddenly these writers who never compromised their values and stayed
away from the influence of the courts, were identified as writers with
values and, after the demise of the so-called freedom of press none
escaped imprisonment, serving long terms of torture and solitude. The
most famous of these writers in Zahir Shah’s period were Ghobar, Safa,
Ismail Bulkhi and Dr Mahmoodi.
Despite all these many
crimes against humanity and freedom, it was nothing in comparison to
those imposed by the communists and the Taliban. It is ironic that
both the communist regime and the fundamentalist regime of the Taliban
were two side of the same coin as far as their ultimate policy existed -
for blocking freedom of speech and press.
Without this ordinary
freedom it is difficult to visualise a nation maturing or progressing.
And in order to substantiate this argument I refer to Mamood Tarzai, the
father of our modern journalism, as my witness. This idealistic,
well-connected journalist knew the importance of free expression and the
value of true literature and it was for this reason alone that, despite
all the important roles he could have played being related by marriage
into the King’s family, yet he preferred to choose to simply become the
editor of the Serajul Akhbar. It is in association with this role with
the paper that he was reincarnated as much more than a writer, for he
became the symbolic teacher of the nation, explaining the ideology of
reporting, and interpreting that ‘akhbar’ in Persian and Arabic derives
from the plural of ‘khabar’ and khabar means news. Teaching basic
values when addressing the masses of the nation in order to better
educate them to see the value of writings. Indeed, he was the
father-in-law of Amanulalah Khan and also, his best advisor, yet he
counselled the young king to give more and more freedom to his people.
I would not be wrong to claim that Tarzi’s time was the only true period
of fearless expression and, it was in his tenure as the editor of the
Serajul Akhbar that Hazara, Uzbeck and Pashtoon all wrote to the
newspaper and their works were published without discrimination.
The decision to choose
this newspaper editor’s role, preferring this position above all others
more powerful options was well received by his followers. He understood
the inner soul’s need to share knowledge and information, to educate the
masses and serve the nation. This is the reason the British feared the
minority writers and the men of that time. Although Afghanistan had
few poets, writers and literate population, yet their role in
influencing the nation to fight for freedom, for country, is absolutely
incredible. This influential role of writers inherent in the local
culture and freedom lovers was fully understood by the reactionary
regimes suceeding Amanullah. Writers such as Dawi and Ludeen instead
of being praised as heroes were targeted by their governments. The new
State paper replaced the freedom fighting paper of Sarajulakhbar. It
was rightly called ‘Islah’ meaning correction. The new regime wanted
to correct its persistent writers and historians through torture - to
make them forget their fight and flight for democracy and development.
The new regime realised that the only way to survive was to stop the
freedom of press. A good writer was thus a dead writer as it had been
for Stalin. Despite his love for literature Stalin had feared all
writers apart from Gorky and rumour say that the day Gorky died was a
day of relief for Stalin. Dictators do not like other opinions to
float. They consider themselves to be the centre of power and the
voice of the nation. So for Stalin to have said that writers are the
soul of the nation he implied by that of course, those loyal writers who
quoted him. My own fellow countrymen will remember that the same
happened in Afghanistan at the time of Brezhenov after he invaded.
Haqiqate Inqelabe Sawr was nothing but broadcast of its eight pages of
Brezhenov propaganda delivered to the Politbureau.
After the Russians
installed their puppet government in Afghanistan our libraries were
filled with books, giving the deliberate impression that the new
government was very much in favour of educating the people. However, no
denying that whatever publications appeared in the libraries were
Russians or Russians supported communist writers. What happened
simultaneously is the appearance of an extraordinary number of Russian
approved books in the markets and libraries and, in parallel, the
banning of all other books that did not fit communism. The puppet
government created organisations such as the Writers Associations, which
on the surface looked like encouraging writers but in fact the aim was
to institutionalise writers and induce them to write in favour of the
Soviet Union and the new government. Anything not in line with the
policy of the regime was banned or censored. The passionate writers
who decide to reveal the truth of the Russians, as they saw it, paid a
heavy price. It was during this era that ‘shab nameh’ (night news)
became popular and writers distributed their writing in the darkness of
the night. However, ‘khad’ the secret agent of the government managed
to crack down on these activities and writers such as Haider Lahib and
Dawud Sarmad were put behind bars only to be subsequently murdered by
the regime. There were a large number of writers who were kept
imprisoned for long periods and systematically tortured until they
succumbed to promise not to write against the governments. At the same
time those writers who cooperated with the regime were praised and
rewarded by the government. The non-compromising writers under fear of
prosecution left their homeland to lead miserable lives abroad as
refugees.
Although in theory, the
Islamic Fundamentalism is different from the communist dictatorship, but
in reality the two ideologies similarly restricted freedom of thought
and press. The Islamic Fundamentalism continued to destroy all the
remaining information institutions which were not in line with the
fundamentalist doctrine starting with the public burning of books that
the puppet government left behind and continued, to burn the buildings
themselves, housing, archives, libraries, TV and radio documents and
even destroying the historical monuments. By destroying all the
information institutions and historical evidences in museums, to be
captured in the world famous publicity stunt with the destruction of the
giant archaeological Buddhas, the Islamic Fundamentalism was determine
to create a nation without history or background, to create a new
fundamentalist nation. A nation without identity that had the
potential to serve one master such as the Osama Bin-Laden the likes of
who should have been anticipated one way or another. And with blind
fundamentalist followership of soldiers the imbalanced happening of 9th
of September, terrorists fighting in the name of their leader for
creating a unified world under Osama. No different to the desires of
the Russian communists of Brezhenove and his predecessors. Two
ideologies - two sides of the same coin.
In its modern history
Afghanistan enjoyed the freedom of press until just before the downfall
of King Zahir Shah. However, it gave birth of opportunities to the
Soviet Union and other nations who were interested in the Afghanistan
base for their own selfish politics and ideologies. The two periodical
papers in Kabul such as Parcham and Khalq reflected only the Soviet
Union vision of the world. But we should not focus only on the
negative impact of the freedom of press. There is no doubt that with
freedom comes possibility of expressions of different views. But a
mature nation with educated population would be able to rise above naïve
influence and distinguish between the good and the evil. This matter
is very much evident in the way that the Europeans react today towards
the war against Iraq. No matter how hard the heads of states such as
the Spanish Prime Minister and the Italian Prime Minister with all their
influential media tried to promote that the war of America against Iraq
as war of good against evil, but the common people were not
convinced. In France and Germany the people are even more well
informed to the extent that it is alleged that the German Chancellor was
voted for another term based on his policy against war and Jacques
Chirac has become a hero of the French people for standing up for the
same reason. The maturity of a nation cannot be judged by the number
of hidden books in secret cellars or even the burning of their very
existence but rather in their distribution. At the same time, a nation
can only reach its peak expression if they produce writers and
philosophers who fight for the cause of the nation’s soul and its
peoples’ belief. The humanitarian values of these philosophers and
writers become the values of the ordinary people in the nation and it
would be these messengers by pen and these prophets who guide the rays
of their sun into the hearts of their people.
The twenty three years
of war revealed one more deep routed problem in Afghanistan and that is
the lack of literacy. Education shortcoming, the lack of libraries, the
missing archives and non evidence of living poets and writers. A
nation without writers and philosophers is indeed a dead nation.
Whether physical books
or electronic internet books or media of TV and radio, the Afghans need
to identify themselves. Afghanistan has historically produced a huge
number of thinkers. The example of resistance of might, as expressed
by the leadership of its poets and writers, is the historic Afghanistan
freedom movement from the rule of the mighty British Empire. And yet
although Afghanistan was the first country to gain independence in 1919,
on the very strength of its humble poets and writers, today - one
hundred years hence there is no evidence of this very proud freedom of
expression heritage.
The roadmap and
atmosphere for free unbiased expression and literacy is a challenge
without which no nation can conquer its ‘best destiny’.
Bashir Sakhawarz
March 2003
Reference:
Ghobar, Ghulam Muhammad,
Afghanistan Dar Maseere Tarikh
Habibi, Abdul Hai,
Mashrootiat in Afghanistan
Bashir, Sakhawarz, Role
Sharan wa Naweesindegan in Afghan Independence
