Time was when every year in the month of August Afghan government used to celebrate what was billed as Jashne Kabul in which thousands of Pakistanis also participated. The celebrations which lasted ten days in the Afghan capital comprised musical concerts and sports events. King Zahir Shah graced many events with his presence in them. The Afghan Consulate in Peshawar issued special red permits to the visitors and also ran buses from Peshawar to Kabul for them.
Kabul was quite liberal in those days and had not yet fallen on bad days and become a victim of linguistic jingoism, lunatic fringe had also not yet entered into the corridors of power in Kabul. Visit by road from Peshawar to Kabul was quite safe Kabul was then slowly and steadily on the road to modernism. One remembers that a big number of Pakistanis had thronged Kabul to see the classic Indian film Mughal e Azam screened in a Kabul’s Cinema House as in those days there was a ban on the exhibition of Bollywood movies in Pakistan.
All this now looks like a dream. After the downfall of Afghan kingship political turmoil gripped Afghanistan and things became bad to worse by the day. Internal wrangling for power in the Afghan monarchy, rift among the various communist parties and split of the Afghanistan politics into different factions made life hell for the common man of Afghanistan whose agonies hitherto show no sign of an end. It is a pity that the rulers of Afghanistan whether they were monarchs ,communists or Islamic zealots had one thing in common-all danced to the tune of New Delhi and followed India’s political agenda in so far their policy towards Pakistan was concerned.
