Killing the goose

While Afghanistan cooks their own goose, an angry, disgusted population waits for the departure of foreign occupation.

A metallic pink Toyota Corolla, packed with a motley crew of kerchiefed young men, cruises a wide side street off of Shara-e-Naw in central Kabul. An expertly etched black skull and crossbones are emblazoned across its bonnet — a blatant warning of the rapidly approaching anarchy. Shuffling figures encased in dusty blue burqas emerge from sunless shadows to beg, their numbers increased of late, as are those of grimy street urchins brandishing single packs of chewing gum, demanding baksheesh in practised whining tones. Cobblers and knick-knack sellers wait for non-existent customers. Weary labourers lounge despondently across the ambitiously named “Kabul Business Centre” — its blue-glassed facade silent and blank-eyed. Just around the corner, a row of cows march along the pavement outside a butcher’s shop, where gutter water floods out of the deep, garbage-clogged drain separating the cracked pavement from the road. It is noon and the cows’ feet, like the labourers, are going nowhere today.

The city, to a first-time observer, appears to be rising from the ashes of over three decades of war. Construction machinery roars amongst the stark ribcages of emergent buildings. But the previously frenzied pace of work has dropped from top gear to bottom and may just as well go into reverse — as has the economy and the very mindset of Kabulians themselves.

Afghans, in the guise of giving their all for the love of the country, have engineered this national disintegration all by themselves. Previously, they used to point accusatory fingers in the direction of Pakistan and elsewhere. However, now they no longer hide the fact that a certain segment of the population is solely responsible for cutting the nation’s throat; self-serving corruption and mercenary instincts being the final nail in a home-built coffin. Those who could have — and should have — saved this courageous country from destruction have ensured its demise as they siphon off and ship out billions of dollars any which way they can. Far from weeping when they have devoured the last golden egg laid by the convenient goose called foreign aid, they will simply pack up and run, leaving the long suffering population at the mercy of whoever or, more ominously, whatever, hits them next.

This rampant corruption, visible to anyone who cares to look, is so out of hand that President Hamid Karzai — that weak-willed puppet who is suddenly trying to take a stand much too late — publicly appealed for all financial looters to at least spend their ill-gotten gains within the country, in order to inject some life into the collapsing economy, instead of spending it overseas or stashing it away in foreign banks. But his appeal carried neither weight nor conviction as far as the increasingly beleaguered population is concerned, as those responsible for killing the country did nothing but laugh in his face. They are not about to change their spots now. And, while they cook their own goose, an angry and disgusted population watches, waits, and prepares for the long-awaited departure of the foreign occupation forces that brought this about and for the now seemingly inevitable civil war.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 24^th, 2013.