Copyright 2001 Newsday, Inc.
Newsday (New York)
October 21, 2001 Sunday
THE WAR ON TERROR:
In Kashmir, Sights of War Seem Natural;
Pakistan, India's fight for control has been ongoing for 54 years
By Tina Susman; STAFF WRITER
Kakutta, Pakistan - The view of India is clear from Magsood Ahmed's tiny shop and adjoining house, and so is the sound.
On a warm and dozy afternoon, the whistle of gunfire streaking in from the red-hued hills a couple of miles away interrupts conversation. It sends a jittery giggle through a cluster of village girls, who scurry toward the shelter of a house.
After a quiet minute and no return fire, the giggles fade, the girls return to lounging outside in the shade and the adults resume their conversation as if a bullet streaking through the sky on a sunny Saturday was the most natural thing in the world.
In a sense, here in the hills of Kashmir, it is. "Of course we're worried, but this has been going on since we were kids," says Ahmed's younger brother, Mustafa Ayub. "We're pretty used to it by now."
Since Pakistan became a nation 54 years ago, it has been virtually at war with India over control of Kashmir. In 1947, Britain allowed its Indian colony to divide into independent, Muslim-dominated Pakistan and Hindu-dominated India. Between them, Kashmir was a separate principality with a mixed Muslim-Hindu population and a ruling maharaja unable to decide whether to be part of India or Pakistan.
War broke out and, after an Indian-Pakistani truce in 1949, Kashmir wound up divided along the cease-fire line, the so-called Line of Control.
Both sides want it all and have resorted to all-out warfare twice, most recently in 1972, to settle the matter. Between those larger battles have been endless skirmishes that send mortars, bullets and bombs flying back and forth and often landing in villages like Kakutta, which sits just beside the Line of Control.
Normally, such flare-ups are ignored except by the people - usually civilians - most affected. On Friday afternoon, for instance, Kakutta residents say shelling pounded the area for nearly two hours and killed two civilians in a nearby town.
Occasionally, the duels make news, as they did last week when intense fighting coincided with Secretary of State Colin Powell's visit to the region. It was a reminder of the tangled web the United States is having to pick through here as it tries to maintain support in the region for its campaign against the militant Islamic leader, Osama bin Laden, and the Taliban regime of Afghanistan that protects him.
While Pakistan's logistical and intelligence support is crucial to the U.S. campaign, India can't be jilted either, lest it decide to show its resentment by stepping up the Kashmiri conflict, say political analysts. That is putting the United States in the awkward position of trying to please both foes over an issue that has proved intractable for five decades.
"The point is, who is more important in this campaign: Pakistan or India? The Americans are performing a very delicate balancing act trying to keep the squabbling allies on board," said Rifaat Hussain, the chairman of the department of defense and strategic studies at Islamabad's Quaid-I-Azam University.
If the Kashmir conflict does not intensify in coming months, it may not be enough to derail the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan, Hussain said. The danger arises if Pakistan's Taliban-backed Kashmiri forces are provoked into a full-scale retaliation against India, he said. "Then the whole situation escalates into a direct confrontation, and then the United States will have two of its allies who are part of the coalition fighting it out among themselves."
A first-time visitor to Kakutta, which lies about 50 miles northeast of the capital, Islamabad - a five-hour drive on narrow and rocky mountain passes - could be surprised to hear that anything is amiss. In the wide, rocky riverbed separating Kakutta from Rawalakot, the closest city of any size, overloaded buses, their passengers squeezed tightly against the windows, creak slowly through the shallow water and toward the steep, tree-lined hills on the Kakutta side.
In the village itself, it's business as usual in the central market and at the shop Ahmed runs, which sits down the hill from the bazaar. At times, Ahmed and his neighbors are caught in the middle when Pakistani gunners in the hills behind the market trade fire with the Indians.
Nearly everyone seems to know of someone injured by shelling or gunfire.
Ayub says his 18-year-old niece died 1 1/2 years ago from a stray bullet. The tin roof of Ahmed's house is dotted with holes, the result of shrapnel falling during a skirmish some months back.
"Naturally, we're fed up, because we run the risk of being shelled, but what can we do?" asked Ahmed. Like virtually everyone here, he blames the Indians for the problem. He and others argue that India is simply jealous of the United States' new closeness with Pakistan and is trying to punish its neighbor for that.
"It's India that's wrong. They start a lot of trouble," said Gulham Fatima, who fears her seven children, most of whom are not yet teenagers, could be caught up in the violence. "We're really worried. When they go to school, we're worried. When they go fetch water, we're worried. We can't go anywhere."
India says it has been forced to defend itself against incursions by Muslim guerrillas from Pakistan. It blames them for such incidents as the suicide bomb attack on a legislative building in Indian-ruled Kashmir two weeks ago that killed 38 people.
And, India says, Pakistan's government and military support the guerrilla movements in Kashmir by training them and providing them with the covering artillery fire they need to sneak across the mountains into India.
Despite their bitterness toward India, however, virtually everyone interviewed here said that, if given the choice, they would not be part of Pakistan, either.
They would prefer to return to the autonomy of pre-independence days, which they say is the only means of silencing the guns that have tormented them for decades. "Kashmir is not Pakistan's or India's," Fatima said. "It is our own. If we're free from both, that would be brilliant."
As for the U.S. role, Kashmiris here tended to agree that if Washington wants Pakistan's unwavering support in the fight against terrorism, it should help fight what they say is terrorism coming from Indian-ruled Kashmir.
Otherwise, said 80-year-old Mehmoud Hussain, it will prove itself a hypocrite. "The Americans say they want to fight terrorism, but they only do it to Muslim terrorists. Why not to the Indian terrorists?" he yelled, shaking his walking stick toward the hills.
Copyright 2001 Newsday, Inc.
Newsday (New York)
October 17, 2001 Wednesday
THE WAR ON TERROR;
Ousted King in Waiting;
Under skepticism, he looks to return as Afghan leader
By Tina Susman; STAFF CORRESPONDENT
Islamabad, Pakistan - The scent of onions and garlic is as thick as the densest fog as Gul Khan picks his way through the hawkers in Islamabad's main vegetable market, peddling strips of cloth from a bulging plastic sack. At 62, he's old enough to remember life in his native Afghanistan under former King Muhammad Zahir Shah, but there's no waxing nostalgic, no yearning for the days of the monarchy as Khan takes a break from the work that has sustained him for two decades.
There's only a sense of slightly bemused wonder that, after all these years, the man who was driven by a coup from his throne in 1973 is suddenly back on Afghanistan's checkered political map and being hailed as the best bet for bringing peace to the bombed-out, bullet-riddled, mine-ridden nation. It didn't take long for Zahir Shah's name to emerge after the U.S. bombardment of Afghanistan began two weeks ago, and he is already playing the role of leader-in-waiting as the United States and its allies anticipate the collapse of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban regime. He sent a delegation to Pakistan on Monday to meet with officials of Pakistan's government, once a Taliban ally but now a backer of the U.S. action, and has been visited at his Rome home by representatives of the United Nations, the U.S. Congress and the Northern Alliance guerrilla army fighting the Taliban.
For all the high-level diplomatic fuss, though, it's hard to find average Afghans, jaded by decades of abysmal governments, bubbling with enthusiasm at the idea of yet another government, even one led by a man who presided over four decades of peace.
"He was good in the sense that he didn't breed enmity in the country, but he did nothing for the development of Afghanistan in those years. So how can I expect him now to come and do anything good?" said Khan, his snow-white beard falling to his chest and a gray turban wound carefully around his head. "He was really doing nothing wrong - nor right."
That may be the biggest selling point for the exiled ex-king: his ability to seem relatively benign, even to his critics. In a country like Afghanistan, which has suffered a string of failed governments, warlords and civil wars since the 1970s, finding a potential leader who doesn't have a downright despicable legacy is a chore in itself, and at this stage, Zahir Shah, 86, seems the only candidate.
"At the end of the day, it's a question not so much of who's the best man for the job, but who's the least unacceptable man for the job," said Najam Sethi, a Pakistani journalist and editor of the Friday Times independent news magazine, citing two crucial credentials of Zahir Shah: his Pashtun ethnic background, the same as most Afghans, and the support - albeit grudging - from the Northern Alliance. Comprised of ethnic minorities, the Northern Alliance is looking to him to promote ethnic tolerance similar to that of his reign, which would give it a share of power in a post-Taliban government, political analysts said.
Equally important, Zahir Shah alone has clean hands among leaders of a country saturated by blood; hence he could ensure foreign financial support for a post-Taliban system, said Rasul Rais of Islamabad's Quaid-I-Azam University. "He is the only respectable Afghan left untouched by the events of the past decades, so why not try him?"
Zahir Shah's biggest support comes from those who thrived during the monarchy, the middle- and upper-class elite whose fortunes crashed in the decades of instability that followed his ouster. "He was good for the poor as well as the rich. There was employment for everyone," said Zain-ul-Abiddin, 50, who worked as a government engineer during the king's days. Now he drags a plastic jug through the vegetable market selling water to thirsty traders. "Nobody can unite the people the way he can. When the king left Afghanistan, people came to realize how beneficial he had been."
Those too young to have known the monarchy, who have seen only failed governments since Zahir Shah's, also tend to favor the king's return but for vague reasons or for no reason at all. "I like the king, but I don't know why," said one produce seller, who gave his age as 27 but did not give his name. "Zahir Shah is good because I've never heard anything bad about him," said another, Sarfaraz Khan, 30. Asked if the king's age could make it difficult for him to be a strong leader, he replied: "I don't know if his memory will work, but as long as he is alive, he can do the job."
Such is the mood among many Afghans, who seem willing to accept anyone, even a king they barely know, to replace what they've got now.
Already, though, problems may be brewing for Zahir Shah. The Northern Alliance, which had agreed with him on plans for an interim leadership to take over if the Taliban falls, began backing away yesterday as it claimed gains against Taliban forces. The Alliance had supported convening a traditional council quickly to plan a government. But it now says that council should not materialize for two or three years - "after the Taliban are completely defeated" - and that the ousted government of Burhanuddin Rabbani, driven out by the Taliban in 1996, should dominate any interim leadership.
That would clash with Zahir Shah's idea of an ethnically diverse selection of Afghans deciding how to run the country if the Taliban goes.
Zahir Shah must also contend with those who blame the ex-king himself for much of the country's current strife, who say he abandoned Afghanistan and its people by never returning after the 1973 palace coup.
"Who will assure us that he will come and not repeat his previous behavior?" said Saif Ullah, 53, who, like Khan, is skeptical of Shah's intentions after being cheated by so many bad leaders. "Everybody is acceptable with good intentions," he said, "but the problem is we don't know any longer who is good and who is not good, after 23 years of war."
Copyright 2001 Newsday, Inc.
Newsday (New York)
September 20, 2001 Thursday
AMERICA'S ORDEAL;
Legendary Passageway A Bottleneck
By Tina Susman; STAFF CORRESPONDENT
Michni Post, Pakistan - "The crime rate here is zero! Would you believe that?" Muzaffar Wazir said as the car rounded a hairpin turn of the Khyber Pass.
It isn't hard to see why. A few feet ahead, uniformed men with faces ruddy from the wind and sun patrolled with automatic rifles slung over their shoulders, their eyes scrutinizing the cars and battered trucks that rumbled along the narrow highway toward the Afghan border.
The 26-mile-long Khyber Pass, which curls like a Slinky from Pakistan's Indus River valley up into the Suleiman Mountains, has for centuries been the stuff of legend, a place heavy with gun-runners and smugglers. This road also is one of the main economic lifelines of landlocked Afghanistan, carrying overloaded trucks of food and other goods for cities such as Kabul, the capital.
But as the United States confronts Afghanistan over the fate of Osama bin Laden, Pakistan has closed the border to keep out potential pro-Taliban saboteurs as well as masses of Afghans trying to flee a feared U.S. assault. For those who live here, and survive on the commerce passing through, the U.S.-Afghan confrontation seems to raise few passions other than a desire to see it ended so that business can get back to normal.
Access to the pass, never easy, is more restricted now. At the pass's highest point, 3,600-foot Michni Post, cars heading to Afghanistan are stopped, and only a handful are permitted to go farther toward the border crossing, a couple of miles on. No Afghans are permitted to pass except for a few, mainly traders, who seem to know the guards well enough.
The road from Peshawar, the Pakistani city at the bottom of the pass, climbs past a smattering of market towns, brick military forts from the days of British colonial rule and peeling mosques. Cemeteries, their headstones fashioned of jagged rocks dragged from nearby river beds, resemble sets of badly broken teeth against the sky.
As the road leaves Peshawar, at the sprawling Kharkhano Bazaar, a large sign declares: "Entry of foreigners is prohibited beyond this point." That's because the Pakistani border region remains, by Western standards, a lawless zone. Foreigners wishing to pass must negotiate a bureaucratic labyrinth in Peshawar for the necessary permit.
Like the British before them, Pakistani rulers have never managed to enforce the laws of central government on the ethnic Pashtun tribes who inhabit the borderland. Here, the tribes and their laws rule in a wary coalition with Pakistan's border force, the Khyber Rifles paramilitary guard.
Wazir, who works as an official guide to the few foreigners permitted to visit the pass, says there is no crime in the tribal homelands because there are no police. "Police are corrupt everywhere . ... This is a universal truth," he said.
"We live by our traditions," said Wazir. Tribal law is interpreted and enforced, not by judges, but by "jirgas," or councils of elders.
As punishment for a theft, for example, a jirga might impose a fine - or order the convict's hand cut off. "The general desire is not punishment," he said. "They just want to extend the peace and tranquility of the area."
The tribal territories are not, by reputation, more tranquil than the rest of this region. Blood vendettas between clans are routine, and men openly carry AK-47 assault rifles.
As startling as the guns and the open smuggling seem to a Western visitor, little of it seems odd to people living along a route with a front-row seat to thousands of years of wars and invasions. Here, gleaming Shell gas stations share space with ancient mosques and low-slung mud hovels.
Perhaps the strangest thing to hit a foreigner here today is the apparent lack of animosity toward Westerners, given the anger of so many Pakistanis toward the United States over what they say is its unfair aggressiveness toward Afghanistan's Islamic government.
The only sign of anger is a fresh graffito reading "Go Back America" painted in white on a low, brick wall by the road. It cannot be missed by drivers but was being ignored by the turbaned men, the ragged traders pulling donkey carts, and others out walking after an afternoon downpour.
In the crowded markets and at the Michni Post, where the Khyber Rifles guards peer down the mountains at the border post in the distance, there is little sign of anger at anyone, just the slightly bored attitude of people who've seen plenty of wars before and consider this crisis a mild hiccup amid life's routines.
"It's not a new thing. Since 1979 we've seen bombs, firing, so we're used to it," said Gul Agha, a trader who walked over the rocky hills to Michni Post recently not to survey the border, but to survey the foreign journalists surveying the border.
"There's no other entertainment, so I come here, because there's some activity," Agha said. "Foreigners - they're crazy."
"I'm not worried. This is normal for us," said Agha's friend Gul Roze. He said the showdown between the United States and Afghanistan shouldn't necessarily affect Pakistanis such as himself. "Maybe it's the Afghans' problem. Maybe it's the U.S. problem. It's not our problem. We're just concerned for our own interests."
Right now, those interests include getting traffic back into the Khyber Pass. The international crisis that is focused on this region has made business very difficult for the traders here, who deal in anything from grapes to guns.
For that reason, perhaps, the pass' residents seem far removed from the passionate anti-U.S. rallies that have been held by fundamentalist Islamic groups down in Peshawar. While Pakistanis at the rallies have shouted their readiness to join a holy war against the United States, people like Roze and Agha say they want everyone to keep a cool head and, most important, to abide by the strict traditions that govern the Pashtun people living here and in Afghanistan.
That includes lavish hospitality, including sheltering one's enemy or even a wanted criminal if he seeks help.
"If there is some solid proof against Osama bin Laden which is acceptable to the world community, we would have no objection" to Afghanistan handing him to the United States, Roze said. Even he admitted, though, that this could clash with the Pashtun culture of hospitality and finally concluded there was no simple solution. "We would probably choose the Pashtun [code], but we like justice, also," he said. The Khyber Pass The Khyber Pass is a 26-mile-long passage. It connects the northern frontier of Pakistan with Afghanistan. The pass is only about one mile at its widest point and a mere 50 feet at its narrowest. Contingents of Pakistan's Khyber Rifles, the Pakistani paramilitary force, have been deployed across the hills of the desolate frontier crossing to monitor the border.
Copyright 2001 Newsday, Inc.
Newsday (New York)
September 17, 2001 Monday
TERRORIST ATTACKS;
Afghan Refugees in the Crossfire;
Many fear consequences of reprisal
By Tina Susman; STAFF WRITER
Peshawar, Pakistan - It was supposed to be a weeklong trip when Sara Rauf Lewal crossed the Khyber Pass into Pakistan from Afghanistan in 1994, just enough time to let things settle down in her tense, war-wracked homeland. But seven days stretched into seven years, and seven years may stretch into infinity for refugees like Lewal, who have escaped a succession of wars only to find themselves caught on the cusp of yet another.
In the narrow, winding alleys and mud huts of the Nasir Bagh refugee camp, the talk is not about when people might go home, but if, because the United States is poised to attack Afghanistan's Taliban rulers to avenge last week's terrorist attacks on American soil.
"The situation is so bad now, so much worse, that I can't even say if I'll be alive tomorrow, much less if I'll ever make it back to Afghanistan," said Lewal, 40, who left behind everything when she left the Afghan capital, Kabul, with her husband and seven children so long ago. "I thought I was leaving for one week only. That's why I hardly brought anything."
There was the comfortable house with the garden, furniture and indoor plumbing; her thriving beauty parlor with its hand creams and jars of colorful makeup and nail polish; jewelry, and closets of clothes. A week after arriving in Peshawar, Lewal learned that the house and business had been destroyed. Since then, she and her family have lived with more than 150,000 other Afghan refugees at Nasir Bagh, about 25 miles from the Afghan border on the outskirts of Peshawar.
The compound they share with several other families is relatively luxurious, by refugee standards. The floors are dirt but covered with rugs that, though tattered, keep the ochre dust in check. There is virtually no furniture - not so much as a single chair or footstool - but there is a ceiling fan to stir the air and electricity to fuel it and to light up the bare bulb that dangles from the straw roof. A pond of open sewage the size of a backyard swimming pool festers a few feet from the front door, but Lewal and her family have their own bathroom facility: a corner in their courtyard with makeshift brick walls for privacy and buckets of water hauled in from the camp's communal tap.
For refugee camp residents, many of whom enjoyed middle-class lives in Afghanistan, the indignity of living in squalor is made worse by the belief that their plight is a consequence of foreign meddling in their beleaguered nation, meddling that seems likely to spark an American military bombardment if the Afghan regime refuses to hand over Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born chief suspect in the attacks, which are presumed to have killed thousands of people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
"We are slaves of many masters, and what these masters say, their puppets do," said Lewal's husband, Abdul Rauf Lewal, whose sentiments echoed across the vast camp here.
"We are angry with America because Afghans have nothing to do with these terrorist activities. Osama, he was imposed on us. He is not an Afghan," said Taimoor Shah, 37, who fled Kabul nine years ago when he was a soldier in the army of the communist government of the day. "NATO and others, they armed these guerrilla groups, trained them and started all of these things."
Pakistan, which has good relations with both Washington and Afghanistan's ruling Taliban movement, planned to send a delegation to Kabul today to pressure officials to give up bin Laden and save everyone the agony of a massive military confrontation. The Taliban, meanwhile, has threatened war against any country that cooperates with the United States, an ominous message to Pakistan, which is being pressed by Washington to permit use of its ground and air space to launch an attack.
If such an attack takes place, Afghan refugees say innocent civilians who remain in their country will be caught in the crossfire, and refugees such as themselves will have less chance of ever going home.
Many refugees say they don't support the Taliban, whose extreme interpretation of Islamic rules bans women from working and limits education for girls, and whose policies have led the country into economic and political isolation. But the refugees also say the U.S. government should be sure it has the right suspect before it moves against bin Laden and his Taliban hosts.
"If America wants someone, it should act against the individual, not the entire Afghan nation," said Muhammad Kabir, 42, drawing nods of agreement as he blamed today's problems on the Soviet occupation of 1979 to 1989 and large-scale covert U.S. operations to end it. During the anti-Soviet war, which pitted an unpopular communist government against Muslim guerrillas, the United States welcomed the involvement of freelance Arab volunteers, such as bin Laden, and freely armed them with shoulder-borne Stinger missiles that rendered Soviet tanks useless in the arid mountains.
Soviet fighters withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, and the government they had backed was overthrown in 1994, leading to a power struggle among the Muslim guerrilla groups. With the capture of the capital, Kabul, two years later, the hard-line Taliban assumed control of most of Afghanistan.
"The Afghan people have nothing to do with the Taliban or [bin Laden]; they didn't come by our wish," Kabir said, his voice betraying anger as he described his past life - which included a two-story house, car and running water - as "gone with the wind."
The wars have produced a virtual nation of Afghan refugees in Pakistan, where the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates the population at nearly 3 million, including about 1.5 million living in camps such as Nasir Bagh. Tens of thousands more have in recent days been fleeing Afghanistan's major cities, in anticipation of U.S. bombardment. Most of them are expected to try to enter Pakistan, but they face reluctance by Pakistani officials who already are struggling to support the current refugee population and have agreed, at the urging of U.S. officials, to soon close its borders with Afghanistan.
The problem, said UNHCR spokesman Roy Herman, is grossly inadequate international aid to provide the support needed not only to care for current refugees, but new ones.
"The number [of new refugees] could certainly be in the hundreds of thousands," Herman said. "Where do you get these resources from? How do you get [the resources] where you need them?
"And all of this is happening in a situation where the international agencies that usually work in refugee camps are evacuating their staff."
International aid agencies have evacuated their foreign staffs from Afghanistan in the wake of Taliban warnings that it could not guarantee their security in the event of a U.S. attack, and nonessential staff and their dependents are being evacuated from Peshawar, a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism, as well.
The refugees already here say things couldn't get much worse for them. Two of Lewal's children, 14 and 15, are forced to work to help bring in money for the family. Her beautician's business is barely surviving because the bulk of it depends upon young women getting wedding-day makeovers and hairstyles.
"This is the wedding season, but now, with everything that's happening, nobody is getting married, so there's no business," she said.
If only outside forces would let us be, her husband said.
"Afghanistan should be allowed to decide its own future, to solve its own problems," Abdul Rauf Lewal said. "When there is an end to foreign interference, then there will be a solution."
