Afghans ruled over the subcontinent for hundreds of years. Dr Mahmood Ghazi, a historian and a federal minister in the Musharraf era, used to tell us that often, when in trouble, the Muslims of undivided India sought help from Kabul.
In both our major wars against the arch-rival, 1965 and 1971, King Zahir Shah asked us to move all our military forces to the eastern borders and ensured calm on the western. Even a bigger favour Afghans did us was chasing away from Pakistan neighbourhood the two powerful militaries of the time, the Soviet and the American.
We had our own reasons to provide whatever support we could. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1989, millions of them sought refuge in neighbouring countries. We got the lion’s share for reasons of geography and tribes straddling the borders. The state of Pakistan was now confronted with a whole range of challenges.
While the Zia-led government was struggling to cope with this cataclysmic development—aptly described as Pakistan with an unfriendly India in the east and now an India-friendly superpower in the west, having fallen into the jaws of a nutcracker—we had a humanitarian crisis on our hands.
Some of us must have seen the arrival of a large number of displaced people as a God-sent opportunity to fulfill a religious injunction, but for the state of Pakistan, it had some serious logistical, financial and political dimensions. Moreover, there were no immediate prospects of any foreign assistance to help us take care of this calamity. Initially, the refugees were accommodated through some ad hoc measures—and, of course, by the traditional hospitality of our masses.
Eventually, as a consequence of the position we took, helping the Afghan resistance, which was supported by the world at large, we received considerable aid, also for the migrants. The problem was that the enterprising and proud Afghans were not content with the meagre dole that was dished out in the refugee camps. That also suited us. A few of the locals hired them to work on their lands and took off to more lucrative destinations in the Gulf. Many of our wastelands were turned into greener pastures.
I recall a few barren patches west of Hangu growing orchards. Even a Baloch landowner, when asked if he was worried about the ethnic balance tilting in favour of the Pashtuns, simply said that the Afghan expertise in arid-area agriculture was very helpful. As brigade commander in Kohat, which had probably the largest refugee camp in the vicinity, we often used Afghan labour (though discouraged by higher headquarters) because it was more productive.
I also learned about an expert on sports medicine who had a good practice in Kabul and was now advising his Pakistani hosts what exercise bicycle would work for them. My old Grundig radio had to be sent to Wana because only an Afghan there knew how to put it back in operation. Then there was an article in a local paper highlighting the Afghan culinary habits. Some of them could afford just one meal a day but ensured that it had a balance of bread, meat, salad and fruit.
The late Arif Bangash was then our GOC and, being from the area, had a soft corner for the Kohatis. He still could not help admiring the spirit of the immigrants whenever they had a dispute with the locals.
A young refugee was overrun by a motorist who admitted it was his fault, but the victim’s relatives refused to pursue the matter since they were “guests” in this country. The local policeman, however, was not impressed by their special status and added import duty to his usual rate when providing them protection.
Obviously, some of their hosts were not too happy as they were losing business to the Afghans, who were providing better and more reliable services. First preference when moving our household on posting to another station was an Afghan truck.
Most of them, including women and children, worked—at times merely scraping the bottom of the barrel. In our case, one earning hand had to feed a dozen mouths.
I was once in Chakwal in the heartland of the Salt Range and asked the locals if they had any problems with the new Afghan habitation in their area. They were full of praise for the moral codes practised by these aliens. Yes, anywhere else this large a number of immigrants would have given rise to crime and prostitution dens.
Jealousy of immigrants is a global phenomenon. Many countries in the Middle East grudged the brighter Palestinians who, imbued with migratory zeal, outshone the sedentary locals, who were becoming couch potatoes as the black gold started oozing out of the earth and the petrodollars rained from the sky.
Paradoxically, when one generation of migrants, having worked hard and created a niche in the host society, gets settled, it feels threatened by the next wave of foreign arrivals.
Most of us, descendants of refugees, had yet another reason to get rid of these invaders. As long as there was some aid trickling in for them, many state organs could take their cut. Even when it ceased, they could still be fleeced and had to work harder to keep some extra money in their pocket to feed our greedy watchdogs.
Reminds me of an advice given to anyone who had to walk the streets of Chicago at night: “must keep enough cash on you otherwise the mugger could become violent; his time and effort must be amply rewarded.”
By now, we all know about their resilience when defending their homeland, but that they are also talented students and sportsmen may not be that commonly known. They learnt cricket as refugees in Pakistan and are now a potential threat to all the big names in the game.
Amongst many dividends that these traits brought to the Afghans, some collateral costs were inevitable. Driven by greed, a good number of aboriginals started eyeing their businesses. Quite a few of them were chased away with the help of our (so-called) law-enforcing agencies to confiscate their properties or force them to sell these at throwaway prices. A man I often called over for help at home was one of them.
As the DA in Germany, I was also accredited to the Netherlands. My British counterpart there, in the best of diplomatic norms, often told me that the Pakistanis in the UK had done so well that the other communities were envious of them.
I had no reasons to argue with him, but during the last quarter of a century, I see many of my compatriots, especially from our traditional recruiting areas—northern Punjab and the flatlands of the former NWFP—acutely suffering from an inferiority complex vis-à-vis the Afghans who successfully resisted our colonial and post-colonial masters.
After NATO’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, the Afghan refugees were scapegoated for all our ills. A year after the foreign forces left the region, we found an opportunity to fulfill our long-held desires. It was not very clear to me as to why our establishment, while the country was reeling under political and economic pressures, opened another front, one against Afghanistan.
Regardless of the causes, it delivered a serious blow to years-long investment in our western neighbour and upended a regional policy for which some good people had worked long and hard.
It started with the expulsion of refugees—hundreds of thousands, allegedly “unregistered.” In a country where some locals got themselves registered as refugees to partake in the largesse received from home and abroad, and many foreigners had procured Pakistani ID cards, it was obviously a ruse.
Watching a mass of humanity moving through the wired corridors towards a country most of them had never known, and which had barely survived four decades of internal and external conflict, was heart-wrenching.
One could read anger writ large on some faces. A few seemed determined to return not as asylum seekers but with an army led by a modern-day Abdali. The most unforgettable was the sight of a child secured with ropes on top of a truck waving farewell to Pakistan. No gain appealing on humanitarian or religious grounds to people who, by now, had usurped the properties built upon the sweat and blood of the hardworking migrants, and indeed to those who had fulfilled their lust for schadenfreude.
More insanity was to follow. A decade back, a massive military operation had driven thousands of militants, members of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), into Afghanistan. They became a part of the Afghan resistance against the foreign occupation. Once it ended, they resumed their old mission: taking revenge on the state of Pakistan for what they perceived as an unjust war imposed on the tribal areas.
We now had many options: reconcile with some of them, take military action against others who had started attacking our assets, or hit them in their sanctuaries in Afghanistan. We probably tried a combination, but also asked the regime in Kabul to round them up and hand them over to us.
I was reminded of what we used to tell the occupation forces in Afghanistan who demanded the same from us: “it was physically impossible; your enemies were not ours; we had enough of our own troubles and have no intent to add one more; our people are sympathetic to your nemesis; and since you have a potent military machine, deal with any group that goes across.”
The Taliban had one more reason not to oblige. TTP had backed them in their war of liberation, and the Afghans were bound by their traditions not to forcibly evict them. This is but one set of narratives. One of many others seems to have led to the war now waging on our western front.
Some of its consequences were inevitable. Gen V P Malik, a former Indian Army chief, though long retired, remains an honest man: “Pakistan provided us the opportunity to gang up with our neighbour’s neighbour, and we were not going to let it go.”
Our media warriors indeed, as per the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), went all guns blazing in the service of the state. Many other matters, like how one conducts COIN, the Afghan non-recognition of Pakistan for all the two weeks at its birth, and that of the Durand Line as an International Border, have been debated for over seven decades.
Right now, we have guns to our east and guns to our west—and bombs from within. Charging like the Light Brigade is one option—staggering the fight is another.
(*Asad Ahmed Durrani is a retired general in the Pakistan Army and presently a commentator, speaker and author. Durrani previously served as the Director General of the ISI and the director general of the Pakistan Army's Military Intelligence.)
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