Time was when one could drive up to Kabul via Khyber pass without any fuss and hassle this part of the year to participate in the annual Jashne Kabul celebrated for ten days every year in August during the course of which sports events and musical concerts were held. King Zahir Shah also attended most of them. One remembers Iqbal Bano rendering ghazals in Persian language and Mehdi Hasan also enthralling the audience with his melodious voice. One remembers cine goers in thousands from Pakistan thronging Kabul to see the classic Indian film Mughal e Azam screened in a Kabul cinema as there was a ban in those days to screen any Indian film in Pakistan.
With the overthrow of Zahir Shah everything changed. The Communists and the Islamists ruled turn by turn in Afghanistan but they failed to solve bread and butter problem of the masses and also could not introduce an educational system commensurate with the modern day needs. Sardar Daud who had toppled Zahir Shah from power was booted out by the Soviets forcibly killing him and his near relatives and throwing their dead bodies together in a big ditch in which they lied buried for three decades. When it was decided to recover his body it was difficult to identify it but when the grave diggers were told that Daud used to wear special foreign made branded shoes made of the skin of crocodile that disclosure helped them to find it out so it was dug out given a wash and after wrapping it in white cloth according to Islamic ritual was again buried. The fate of other Afghan leaders who followed him was also not different from his fate. It is rightly said those who live by the sword die by the sword.
POSTSCRIPT: One doesn’t know what is at the back of the mind of those who move in the corridors of power in the Pentagon and Knesset. They have taken their countries in a blind alley from where they are finding it difficult to come out without losing face. In a few months time elections are due in both these countries and those at the helm of affairs there fear backlash from the hawks in their country in the polls which might result in their defeat in the elections if they fail to achieve the objective for which they have involved their country in war.
