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World’s
Worst |
There is an article published in the Economist, under International – The
World in 2001--that a friend sent me in the mail the other day. The title of the
article is:
"Where’s the
world’s worst?
"What will be the worst country of which to be a
citizen in2001? Alas, from Iraq to Myanmar to Sierra Leone and the Democratic
Republic of Congo, there is a shortlist of dismal candidates. Angola has a
powerful claim to the title. But the award for this dubious honour, given by the
EIU after a search is all that is dire in its database, goes to
Afghanistan.
"Not only is Afghanistan miserable now, it is
going to get worse. A drought in 2000—the worst for at least 30 years—will lead
to food shortages in 2001. A disastrous harvest will be followed by a scarcity
of seed for the next planting season. Closed borders, bombed roads and
international isolation will complicate the delivery of food aid…Cholera has
started to kill people in severe outbreaks. UN sanctions…have lowered the
availability of medical supplies.
"Like Angola, Afghanistan has an ongoing civil
war, and millions of land- mines…. In 2001, large numbers of people will die
through disease, starvation or war…None of this, of course, is necessary.
Afghanistan is a powerfully attractive land that could be loved by the world on
which it has chosen to turn its back. The fact that the misery it will
endure is so largely of its own making is an added qualification for top—that
is, bottom—prize."
The above short article is summing up, so very appropriately, the state of
the country and what is left of its population. Afghanistan lost about two
million people in the Russia’s attempt to Sovietize the country. It lost
hundreds of million dollars’ worth of national property when the Soviet Army
bombed highways, villages and small towns. Then came the worst when the Russian
forces of occupation spread millions of mines to make life miserable for other
millions who chose to stay on what was their ancestral land and which they hoped
to farm for a meager livelihood. There came a time when up to six million
Afghans left their country and sought shelter from war, destruction and certain
death in enemy’s hand into neighboring Pakistan and Iran and further into far
away lands such as the US and Australia and lands in between.
And when it became possible that the Afghans forced the defeat of the Red
Army with military equipment given them by and with the help of the United
States, Mujahedeen—or at least, some of them--destroyed thousands of government
properties, machinery, electricity services and other infrastructure and turned
their own country into a hopeless shambles. Since 1994, the Taleban, after
achieving early public admiration for bringing a semblance of peace to what was
left of the Afghans, began introducing their own version of Islam and closed the
educational system for boys and girls as it was known and enjoyed into the
seventies. They virtually imprisoned the women-folk in the cities and converted
them into a useless part of population only good for handouts by men-folk who
themselves could hardly find work to earn enough for their families. A stupid
civil war has been waged in the country since 1996 of which no end is in sight
in spite of several attempts by the United Nations and other bodies to end the
futile slaughter of kith and kin by kith and kin and brother by brother among
the Afghan nation.
Furthermore, there are the outsiders who came to Afghanistan during our war
with the Russians to help us throw the enemy out, have chosen to stay behind and
enjoy the hospitality of the nation. It is these latter bodies of "no
longer-needed guests" who have become the main cause of the world at large to
forget what the Afghans accomplished in beginning the downfall of international
communism. It is now widely claimed that Afghanistan has become the training
center for terrorism and Afghans are the recipients of criticism by friends and
foes every where. Osama bin Laden, the now-homeless Saudi Arabian, is sought by
the U. S. as it is claimed he has had a hand in attacks on US property and US
citizens in several parts of the world. His open anger at the US has brought
about promises of millions of dollars for his arrest and hand-over to the
Government of the United States for prosecution. Taleban believe it is against
the Afghan principle of hospitality to let him go and the US would not stop
short of locating and destroying his hideaway wherever it thinks it will find
him and his followers.
Meanwhile, natural calamities such as the current most severe drought,
disease, and hunger and, above all, the on-going civil war are doing their part
in damaging property and ending life in a country that once was hoping to really
be a country—however small—which could be the center of world attention for its
natural beauty and natural resources such as solid and liquid
gold.
Ponder this, O, you Taleban and Taleban Opposition, and O you happy people
of the peaceful world and find some way to save the Afghan land and the Afghan
nation from the present gradual annihilation! We are past the stage of blaming
this and that factor for bringing it all about. Healing the gangrenous wounds is
what we want for Afghanistan.