A New Year Eve In Kabul’s Ruins

It was a bitterly cold night in Kabul. The year 1988 was ending and a new year, which would see the Soviet occupation forces evacuating the country, was beginning.


The Afghan Mujahedin, who so valiantly fought the Red Army, were still
outside Kabul but the communist regime was showing signs of weakness. In three months, the Mujahedin will push the Soviets out of their country. But, instead of restoring peace, they will bring more bloodshed and destruction.

Their infighting will kill more than 50,000 people in Kabul and pave the way for the Taliban to capture the city in 1996.


The Taliban will bring even more suffering and turn Afghanistan into an
international pariah by sheltering suspected terrorists like Osama bin Laden and his al Qaida network.


But all this had not yet happened. Kabul was waiting patiently for the
Russians to leave. Fear and uncertainty had paralyzed everything. Night
curfew was the norm. Tanks and armored personnel carriers patrolled the
streets.


Kabul Hotel, now closed after being hit by Mujahedin rockets, was still in operation. Inside, a little Iranian girl, Sosan, danced in a room crowded with refugees from Iraq and Iran.


One of the refugees, Raad, 21, an Iraqi Kurd, was to leave for France in two days, traveling on a visa issued by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. The others, who awaited their visas, had gathered to celebrate the new year.


They were also celebrating Raad's successful escape to the West, while
lamenting his departure. They promised to meet again but their promises
sounded hollow -- and they knew it.


Sosan, barely 5, had grown attached to Raad during his 2-month
U.N.-sponsored stay in the hotel. She danced to a taped cassette of Madame Gogoosh, an Iranian singer popular in the Shah's days but later banned from performing in her homeland.


Suddenly Sosan stopped dancing, embraced Raad and both began to weep. "O Khuda (Oh God)," said Shaheedeh, 12, Sosan's sister. Iranians and Iraqis, mortal enemies during the eight years of the Persian Gulf War, had become friends thrown together in that crumbling hotel hundreds of miles from home.


Kabul Hotel, destroyed after the Mujahedin took over the city in April 1992, had seen a lot of action. Fourteen years ago U.S. Ambassador Adolph Dubs was kidnapped by radical Muslims and brought to a room in the hotel. A few hours later the room was raided by Afghan policemen on the orders of the Soviets.

Dubs was killed in the shootout.


But the hotel would have presented an eerie sight even without that memory. Its corridors were so dimly lit that people involuntarily looked over their shoulders and quickened their pace when they left their rooms at night.


Even during the day, the place was not comfortable. Despite Kabul's subzero temperatures; the heating had been turned off to save fuel.


Kabul's food shortage, which worsened after the Mujahedin take-over, meant that virtually the same fare was offered on the menu every day. Chicken with rice, chicken with bread and chicken with nothing.


The hotel could accommodate 200 guests but there were only 50 staying there. Journalists, diplomats and members of medical teams from the West gathered at the hotel every night and frequently got drunk. There was little else to do in that dismal city.


Friday afternoon was the bright spot of the week. This was when couples in Kabul liked to get married and the hotel had one or two wedding parties on most Fridays. The bridal couples and their guests usually wore western suits and dress instead of the traditional chadors and loose shirts and trousers seen in the bazaars.


The parties would begin rather soberly, with all the guests sitting together and discussing the weather or politics over cups of green tea. Often there was a small bar behind the main wedding hall, but only the men went there to drink.


After a while, a band would start to play and the men would get up to dance with each other. Before long the women joined in.


But, for what should have been a joyous occasion, the songs were
surprisingly sad. The lyrics of one ran: "Oh, my beloved, come to me, come to me before it is too late. It will be no use coming when I am no more."


The sadness was palpable at Raad's farewell party, too. Everyone had fallen silent. The only sound in the room was that of the cassette player.


"Kiss me, kiss me, as the time to leave has come. Kiss me for the last time as the spring of my life comes to an end," sang Gogoosh.


"Oh Khuda," said Shaheedeh again.


"Don't cry my little angel, don't cry," Raad consoled little Sosan. "We will meet again, and in better conditions, in Europe."


But Europe seemed so far away, and the fears of the Iraqi and the little Iranian girl seemed so real.


Sosan, Shaheedeh and Gogoosh were victims of a revolution that had no place for them. Raad was disowned by Saddam Hussein's Arab nationalism, which was unwilling to accommodate non-Arabs.


And the people of Kabul are victims of the three dominant political forces in the region: Islamic radicalism, socialism and nationalism. All three forces have contributed to the human tragedy that Afghanistan is today but the Muslim radicals perhaps bear the greatest blame.


The nationalists tried to create a Western nation state in a country that has not one but many nations with distinct ethnic, linguistic and cultural features. The socialists tried to impose a secular ideology on a people known for their devotion to Islam. The Muslim radicals, who include both the Mujahedin and the Taliban forces, based their dreams of a pure and just Islamic society on people's attachment to religion. But instead of delivering any of the goods they had promised, they led the country to its worst destruction.


Obscured by the dust raised in these ideological conflicts are innumerable tales of human suffering and personal tragedy.