Home truths from Afghanistan

How much longer can Afghanistan allow itself to become a battleground between Pakistan and India?

Major Mitali Madhumita taught English to young Afghan officers in Kabul, but when the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) struck at a guesthouse in the Afghan capital in the early hours of February 28 last year, where some of her colleagues were lodged, Mitali ignored the sound of whistling bullets, dying men and the gathering pools of blood to quickly inform the Indian Embassy — thereby saving the lives of many Indians and Afghans.

It came to me that there are several conclusions and some lessons we can draw from this event. One being that, since there is no real relationship between courage and gender, why is it that the Indian Army — since I don’t know how things are in Pakistan — is pushed to notice women only when they are pushed into the limelight by the force of considerable circumstance?

The sum and substance of my other conclusions is this: How much longer can Afghanistan allow itself to become a battleground between Pakistan’s extravagant instincts and India’s deepest desire to return to a semblance of its former intimacy with Afghanistan?

The question of whether or why the Lashkar-e-Taiba was targeting Indian Army officers, even if they were only doing something as harmless as teaching language skills to Afghans, is fundamental to cleansing the subcontinent from the monster of terrorism. Perhaps the LeT mistakenly believed that the Indian Army officers were doing much more than equipping their Afghan counterparts with the nuances of conjunctive verbs. India has vehemently denied any security assistance in Afghanistan so far, although it is true that a handful of Afghan jawans, about 100 or so, have been sent for short courses to Delhi.

Karzai will never allow the Indian Army to train his young soldiers, even if it were considered to be among the best in the world, because he knows the Pakistanis don’t want that to happen. He knows that Pakistan’s worst fear is the spread of a creeping Indian influence in a region it has long considered its ‘strategic depth’. The world ignored Pakistan’s multidimensional role in Afghanistan over the years as long as it achieved its own ends — including the eviction of the Soviets as well as Islamabad’s acceptance of being a front line state in the war against terror.

But as Canada, the US and Britain slowly withdraw and the chips begin to fall, it may be time to ask ourselves several questions: Who is the Lashkar-e-Taiba and what is it that they want? Can the Americans persuade the Pakistanis to back off from Afghanistan and create more space for countries like Iran and India? Can India and Pakistan create greater trust between themselves so that the Afghans stop getting hurt?

Hidden in the act of recognising Major Mitali Madhumita’s valour are the answers to all the questions above. Now we have to ask ourselves if we are brave and honest enough to tolerate these home truths.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 28^th, 2011.