Afghanistan
Something fell from the sky when the airplane took off. In normal circumstances, people would have worried that some part has fallen and alert the systems. But what happened on 15th August, 2021, I will not forget my entire life. It will remain as one of the ugliest blot on the world. It is the same as the 5-year old Syrian boy in the red t-shirt and blue shorts lying lifeless at the beach in Turkey during Syrian crisis.
In every human being on this planet, there is a little corner in their heart where they love their country so very much. To leave your home country is one of the biggest sacrifice one can make even when the person is going for his/her studies or for work related assignment. There’s a poem in Hindi which roughly translates to how one finds comfort only in their own home after travelling in each direction. But what the world saw on the most historically important date in India’s history, that a neighbour country to India was descending back into one of the most darkest holes possible and it’s people lined up desperately to leave their home land, their mother land. The desperateness was such that people tied themselves to the landing gear of an airplane hoping that at least in this way they would not die through guns and bombs. I don’t know if they hoped to live. I don’t know if they wanted themselves to be the symbol of Afghanistan falling. I don’t know if they wanted to tell America that it is them who screwed everything up.
As I am writing this note, there are currently around 15000 people (and the number is growing) outside Kabul airport, asking the countries evacuating their personnel to take them as well. If not, at least take their children for whom they hope that there is a better life outside the war-torn homeland. I cannot even imagine what they are going through when they are throwing their babies across the barbed wires. Every video, every picture coming out of Afghanistan is tearing me up. The lucky ones, who got evacuated are crying their eyes out. The not-so-lucky ones, who are at least at their airport trying to cling to the smallest of hope that the bullets getting fired doesn’t have their name on it and they have a chance to get evacuated. And then the unlucky ones, who didn’t even leave their homes fearing for the worst and has surrendered to the fate.
In my whole life, I always believed that people who have little or no sense at all are at least aware of the surroundings. But in the case of Afghanistan, even the most powerful man of the world (how the world knows him) has wrapped a blindfold on his eyes leaving Afghans in the hands of torture, agony and death. Taliban, the terrorist group who partnered with countless other terrorist organisations to spread their extremist ideology by limiting the women rights, killing the opposition and have a rule of fear, has made a deal with the world to let it grow, let it foster, and let it kill as many as possible for their ideology. World, quite surprisingly, has agreed to it. There were voices of opposition from the corners of the world but let’s just say, they were only voices.
Afghanistan, unlucky to be a country rich of resources and a place which acts as a bridge between Europe and Asia, also found that in the past 20 years, the people who it chose itself to govern, are the same ones who had no morality, no nobility and no integrity. President Ashraf Ghani, the US proxy, fled as soon as Taliban arrived at the outskirts of Kabul. He was afraid that Taliban would kill him. I have never said this for anyone but he should have died. He should have fighting from the front and that way, he would be martyred. But now, he is that coward who couldn’t even stand up for the country, the very same country which elected him to govern and bring peace.
I don’t know if prayers would help. I don’t know if life will ever be normal for Afghanis. I don’t know if women will ever feel like themselves again in Afghanistan.
What I do know is that we failed as a world. We are failing day by day as Afghanis look for smallest of hopes and desires of being alive. We are failing as Afghanis look to the world with the most stabbing questions in their most beautiful eyes.
Sorry, people of Afghanistan. I know it doesn’t matter anymore and it is garbage to you. But, I don’t know, for my conscience, I wanted to say the word. You don’t have to accept it and I know you will not.
Please stay strong, if you know how, and maybe the only ones who know how.
