In Afghanistan, past is present

National state flags of Afghanistan and Taliban together (Source: ShutterStock)

On Sunday, as India celebrated its 75th Independence Day, the Taliban wrested control of Kabul, turning another page in Afghanistan’s history of chaos and conflict and triggering dire predictions of more bloodshed and strife.

To experienced observers of Afghanistan, the events that have transpired would only have brought a sense of déjà vu. After all, they have seen it all happen before. Only the rapidity with which the Islamist militia captured the Afghan capital after overrunning one major city after another – Mazar-i-Sharif, Herat, Kandahar and Jalalabad – in a matter of days would have been a surprise.

Also Read: What the Taliban victory in Afghanistan means for India and the world, explained

When troops of the then Soviet Union started pulling out of Afghanistan in May 1988, questions were asked too and ominous predictions made about the future of Afghanistan, under a Communist regime at the time and wracked by a 10-year civil war.

The fate of the regime led by Najibullah was sealed when the Soviet Union, itself embroiled in chaos, disintegrated in 1991. In a matter of months, the Communist regime collapsed and Mujahideen fighters overran Kabul. Najibullah found refuge in the United Nations compound, from where he dragged out, brutally tortured and killed by the Taliban which toppled the Mujahideen from power in 1996.

In a sense, the fate of the government of Ashraf Ghani was sealed, too, by US President Donald Trump’s determination to end US military engagement in Afghanistan. When his successor Joe Biden vowed in February to complete the pullout of US troops fr0m Afghanistan by September 11, 2021, two decades after the terrorist attacks carried out on US soil by the Taliban, it was cast in stone.

Ghani was more fortunate than Najibullah; he escaped to Tajikistan before the Taliban entered Kabul.

Reporting from a battlefield

I have visited Kabul several times in the past, first in April 1988 to chronicle the 10th anniversary of the so-called Saur Revolution that ended the monarchy and brought the Communists to power, and again the following month to cover the start of the Soviet withdrawal.

The last was in 1992 after Mujahideen fighters overran Kabul, carved the city into rival territories and launched a fratricidal war that ended up sapping their own strength, making them sitting ducks four years later for Taliban invaders, who presided over a brutal regime that endured until the US-led invasion in 2001 in reprisal for the September 11 attacks.

For Indian journalists, visas to visit Afghanistan became all too rare during the years the Mujahideen and Taliban were in power. Watching the scenes unfold on news, television and social media, I had my personal moments of déjà vu when in Kabul.

Once, in May 1988, I was in the company of a few journalists who had broken curfew when a soldier took aim and said, "Stop." He was part of a team of soldiers who were on guard on our way to the hotel. Tarun Basu, who used to work with a German news agency those days, stepped in and said: "Tum Amitabh Bachchan diktha hain" The soldier became very excited, called in the rest of his colleagues, and said:  "Do you know, what he said, I look like Amitabh Bachchan.” They all gathered around us and let us go home, on condition that we will bring them Mithun Chakraborty videos.

Also Read: Taliban Captures Afghanistan | What it means for India

In 1992, I again had a gun pointed at me by a Mujahideen fighter when I went to the Wazir Akbar Khan Hospital to count bodies. Only this time, this guy was extremely serious. I kept saying: "Hindustani, dost, khabar nigar" (journalist) when I descended the steps, made it all the way and told him: "Indian ambassador ke ghar chalo." (Let’s go to the Indian ambassador's house).

The ambassador offered me tea when I asked him very politely: “Sir, can you please give me a whiskey?"

On the 1992 trip, a group of us journalists braved gunfire and heavy rocketing by rival Mujahideen factions for a 50 kilometre taxi ride out of Kabul for an interview with Commander Ahmed Shah Massoud and joined a prayer led by the man known as the Lion of Panjshir. In 2001, Massoud was killed by Taliban assassins days before the attacks on US soil.

The more things change…

US officials including Secretary of State Anthony Blinken didn't explain how Washington failed to anticipate the pace of the Taliban’s takeover, news reports said. Until last week, the US military had estimated that a collapse of the Afghan regime could take three months, the Washington Post reported. The Taliban sweep through the country took a matter of days.

Also Read: How did the Taliban take over Afghanistan so quickly?

To be sure, the Taliban's initial statements as the Islamist militia entered Kabul were conciliatory.

“We have reached a victory that wasn’t expected … we should show humility in front of Allah,” Abdul Ghani Baradar, head of the Taliban’s political bureau and the man tipped to be the next president, was quoted as saying in news reports. “Now it’s about how we serve and secure our people and ensure their future to the best of our ability.”

The long-suffering people of Afghanistan, who don't exactly have fond memories of the Taliban's years in power, may well take those words with a grain of salt,

On one of this writer's visits to Kabul, a street-side vendor was despairingly pessimistic about the future of Afghanistan. "You can't put water into a broken pot," he said, using a local simile. Decades later, nothing seems to have changed.