Afghanistan: Reports from the wreckage
While writing, reporters are taught always to be conscious of four things: That “short term” is 12 hours and “long term”, 24 hours, for that is the lifecycle of a newspaper; never to use polysyllabic words; never write a report beyond 800 words; and never, ever reveal sources, at the pain of death or worse.
There is another suggestion by British essayist Samuel Johnson: “Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.”
Nayanima Basu’s book honours most of these injunctions. She is a digital reporter. So like India, she believes in timelessness. But her book is very much a chronicle of the moment. India’s announcement in 2021 of the “temporary closure” of its consulate in Kandahar— for long described by New Delhi as a post occupied by nothing more than a man and his dog but always viewed by Pakistan as a hub of spying and other such nefarious activities— spurred her to travel to Afghanistan to find out what was happening there.
For a woman, a wife and a mother, it cannot have been an easy decision to take. But Ms Basu pressed on as only a driven reporter can. The closure, however temporary, of the consulate meant leaving the field free for Pakistan and China to step in. It was speculated that the fall of Kabul to the Taliban was barely six months away. India was invested heavily in Afghanistan where in a war-torn country it had as many as four consulates, all opened in 2001 when the first Taliban regime had ended. What would happen to Afghanistan— and its neighbours, including India— when Ashraf Ghani’s regime was toppled by the Taliban and American forces left the country? Who/what would emerge from the ruins? What would the region look like?
Ms Basu describes with aplomb the sense of urgency and fear of life that every decision would entail. To opt for a room in the legendary Hotel Serena facing the street that would be a better target for sniper and rocket fire? Or the garden wing, which meant forking out a fortune? She reports on the mood on the streets: Everyone is angry and impatient, she says, whether they are the well-heeled at airports to kababsellers on the roads. The women activists she meets tell her impassively of the restrictions they anticipate the Taliban will place on women once they come to power. This is to prove depressingly prophetic.
She also reports on the courtesy accorded to her when she visits mosques and the support for the Taliban. She quotes a head imam of the Blue Shrine of Hazrat Ali who explains why the Taliban will be the best thing to happen to Afghanistan. “Who is the foreigner?” the Imam asks her. “Taliban is our own. What have the Russians given us? What have the Britishers given us, what has Karzai or Ghani given us? What have the Americans given us? Let them [the Taliban] also have their chance”.
Ms Basu is one of the few Indian journalists to have the chance to interview Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, founder of the Hezb-i-islami party, once one of Afghanistan’s most powerful jihadi groups. He is known as the “butcher of Kabul” and one of the most ruthless anti-soviet militia leaders. Mr Hekmatyar tells her the US invested in the “wrong” people, which led to the rise of the Taliban.
Before Mr Basu can ask him more questions, the Taliban has entered the city, her taxi driver is racing to save his own life, and she is “abandoned” in the middle of a war zone.
August 16, 2021 is the day Ms Basu asks herself: “Will I die today”? The Taliban has entered Kabul, her efforts to reach the airport are fruitless, all phone communication has broken down and “we are sitting with our luggage at the edge of the pavement on the airport road, hiding behind the rose bushes that lined the alley”. Air India flights have been cancelled. Ms Basu has no choice but to make her way to the Indian Embassy in Kabul. She encounters the Taliban, armed to the teeth with Kalashnikovs and grenade launchers. She is allowed to walk to the embassy. There the Indian officials do something the Taliban never did: They seize her phone.
What follows is pure trauma. She and others from the embassy are driven to the airport. Everywhere, all she can see is desperate Afghans trying to flee their country. The scenes are heartrending.
Ms Basu writes about the friends she has made during her stay and describes how she is in touch with them. Afghanistan is the world’s favourite battlefield, she writes. After the Taliban, it continues to be a geostrategic nightmare for the world. As other problems grip the world, today, Afghanistan is just a memory. She quotes a former Indian ambassador to the country: “What can one really say about the Taliban and Afghanistan? It is so jaded and no one has any answer to the problem there”.
What Ms Basu really needs to do is make a similar trip across Pakistan and analyse Afghanistan from the lens of India’s “friendly western neighbour”. Given the current climate, this seems well-nigh impossible. But given the wonderfully descriptive account she has given of Afghanistan, for Ms Basu, this might not be an impossible exercise.