Mangalore: Mohammad Shafiq Sultan, a terminal student from the School of International Relations at Jawaharlal Nehru University, has not been able to talk to his family for the last two weeks. His family is from the Wardak province of Afghanistan. He says people have advised him not to go to Afghanistan until normalcy returns. “There are no direct flights to Afghanistan from India and right now, nobody wants to go there fearing persecution,” he says. Despite being away from the terror unleashed in his homeland, Shafiq and other students from Afghanistan studying in India are facing various challenges. He says he is anxious and under pressure as he has to prepare for an entrance examination for South Asian University which will be held on the 25th of this month. Shafiq says he might have to vacate the hostel in 2-3 weeks and he cannot afford to find a place outside due to financial constraints. He adds that the visa of a few students living in India will also expire soon. He wants the Indian government and the university to give scholarships for Afghan students, especially the ones who are bright, those appearing for entrance examinations and those opting for Masters and PHD programmes, as it costs a lot of money.
“During 2020, scholarships were given for Afghan students pursuing their studies through online classes; this year, the Taliban will not let girls fly out of Afghanistan and return to their campus to continue their education,” he says. Reacting on the recent viral video which shows the mayhem at the airport in Kabul, he says people are not idiots to cling on to a moving airplane. “It just shows that most of the people in Afghanistan prefer to die than live under the oppressive regime of the Taliban.”
Regarding the current situation in Afghanistan, Shafiq says his family is of the opinion that it was a preplanned imposed coup against the government coordinated by Pakistani Generals and the USA. He says the US wants Afghanistan to be a broken state to exploit its rich mineral resources. Shafiq says students pursuing International Relations and Politics are looked upon with suspicion by the Taliban as they’re considered to be brainwashed.
Dewa Safi, who is pursuing her Masters in Politics and is specializing in International Relations at the same institute, wanted to apply for the position of Political Assistant as she considered it to be her dream job. The process was underway up until the recent Taliban offensive, after which it got postponed. She says she might get a job anywhere, but she always wanted to work in her homeland and serve her country. Dewa Safi says it is the dream of thousands of Afghans who are pursuing their studies elsewhere. Her family is from the Badakhshan and Balkh Mazar-I-Sharif province of Afghanistan.
She says she did not come to India with a scholarship and is a self-financed student. She says the situation is difficult for students like her who need to pay for their room and food on their own. “My family can’t send me money as banks are closed and because of the current situation, they cannot send me large sums of money like they were sending earlier.” She says since the fees are very high, the university must give discount for self-financed students like her. She mentions that she is very grateful to her friends in India who checked on her immediately after the chaos in Afghanistan broke loose. While trying to apply for the “e-emergency X-MiscVisa” of the Indian government for her friends and classmates stuck back in Afghanistan, she says she went through some technical issue while uploading the address in Delhi after uploading the pictures of the ID. “Since there is no network there, we are helping them to fill the application for the visa.” She says the website shows the address is not valid and each page disappears quickly and “we have to fill the forms again”.
She requests the government to come up with an easier system for applying for visa as there are many people trying to get out of Afghanistan. She says her friends back in Afghanistan have informed her that if a girlwants to go somewhere, she needs to be accompanied by her father, brother or husband. She exclaims saying the rules imposed by the Taliban are not in favour of women; for instance, if her husband decides on marrying multiple women, she cannot object nor seek divorce.
Nargis Ahmadi, who lives in Balkh Mazar-E-Sharif, was working for the women in Afghanistan before she came to India as a refugee fearing her life and lived in India for seven years. Because of the pandemic and the subsequent lockdown, she could not afford to pay rent and hence left for Afghanistan two weeks ago. Now, she cannot return to India as she says the road to Kabul and the Hamid Karzai International airport is blocked. When I asked her regarding the news of a woman being killed by the Taliban for not dressing “appropriately”, she says not one but 10 women might have been killed so far. She says the Afghan media is in their control and there are no foreign reporters. “I don’t know if my neighbours are alive or dead,” she says. She says she has some essential supplies at home for now, but she does not know what is she going to do once it gets over as there were fights and it is has become increasingly unsafe to venture out.
She further adds that she has received information that Mullah Yaqub, the son of Mullah Mohammad Omar says that the Taliban leader Mullah Hibatullah has instructed the influential people of the Islamic Emirate that the Taliban should treat all the people of Afghanistan well until the surrender of Ahmad Massoud and the complete conquest of Panjshir, so that there should be no public uprising against the Emirate. She says there is information going around that Mullah Hibatullah said those who attacked Taliban homes and martyred thousands of Taliban in the last 20 years should be executed as a lesson to others.
Sayed Maqsood Sadat, who is the Dean of Political Science Faculty from a university in Afghanistan, says that the Afghan government was one of the most corrupt governments of the world since 2001. Similarly, he says the withdrawal strategy of US, technically helped the Taliban to organize their fighters effectively. “My main concern is the future of my children, their education and their lifestyle. I think with Taliban coming to power, Afghanistan would be isolated globally,” he remarks. He says domestically, the “Pashtunwali” (Pashtunism) helped in keeping the ideology of the Taliban alive in Afghanistan. He says the mass malpractices during the presidential elections have weakened the legitimacy of the government and the rulers and that the Ghani administration can be considered to be one of the modern authoritative regimes of the 21st century.
On asking him about the impact of the prisoner exchange on the current situation in Afghanistan, he says, “Yes, no doubt that the freeing of Taliban prisoners was a big mistake which took place due to the strong pressure by the American diplomat Zalmay Khalilzad.” The only hope for the people of Afghanistan, according to him, would be Afghans coming together, having a dialogue and finding solutions for the peaceful settlement of issues and differences. He says what really gives hope for Afghan civilians is that the Taliban are really strict when it comes to crimes such as corruption, robbery, kidnapping etc.