Letters to My Daughters (31 page)

Part of my job involved travelling to Islamabad in Pakistan for conferences. I would fly to the city of Jalalabad in the south of Afghanistan and then across the Torkham border pass, the same drive Hamid and I had taken with my brother in that brief, happy week we had spent in Lahore before he was arrested for the third and final time. I loved the trips to Pakistan, and they enabled me to buy Hamid more medicine. But arriving in Jalalabad, which was under Taliban control, was horrible. I hated seeing the Taliban when I got off the plane and hated the way they snarled at me when I showed my United Nations identification. I felt their stares as I walked past them to the waiting UN vehicle; they scared me, even though I was under UN protection and they couldn't do anything to me. I used to repeat a little mantra to myself to calm down: “You're UN now. You can work. You can deliver. They can't stop you.”

One day, I was about to board the plane to Jalalabad when I was stopped by Afghan security officials. They told me that Rabbani government officials had informed them that my husband was a suspected member of the Taliban and that I was a security threat. I was incredulous with rage. I said, “Thank you so much. My husband was in prison for three months just because he met Rabbani in Pakistan and now you are telling me he's a traitor?” I later discovered that someone, I don't know who, had deliberately given the intelligence services false information about us. It was a reminder that enemies can be hidden anywhere and that gossip in a country like Afghanistan can be deadly.

Badakhshan was the only place in Afghanistan where women could work, and I was the only Afghan woman in the whole country working for the UN. It was high profile, and of course that involved certain dangers. Pretty much all of Faizabad now knew who I was and what I did. Many people were pleased for me and liked having the UN presence. To others, I was a constant source of scandal and gossip. Even my direct boss couldn't get his head around having a female deputy and used to tell me to close the door so I couldn't be seen if he had male visitors to the office.

There was a mosque close to our house, and one Friday afternoon the mullah started preaching about women working for international organizations. He declared that it was
haram,
,
forbidden, and that no husband should allow his wife to do it. His view was that women should not work alongside non-believers and that any salary that resulted from such work was also
haram,
.

Poor Hamid was sitting in the yard playing with Shaharzad as he heard this. He told me he managed to laugh before going inside so that he wouldn't have to listen anymore. His wife was the only woman in the entire province working for an international organization, so it had to be me the mullah was referring to. There he was looking after his daughter while I worked, listening to us both being denounced. Of course, such reversal of roles is much more common today. Not only in the West but also in Afghanistan, many younger men of the modern generation share child-care duties, and in many households both husbands and wives work out of economic necessity. Back then, though, we were almost unique. I was desperately upset by what the mullah had said. Perhaps it was easier for him to try to turn an entire community against one family than to speak to my husband man to man about what he perceived as his wife's errant behaviour.

Ironically, when I became an MP a few years later, this very same mullah, who was also a teacher of religion, came to ask for my help. He had been kicked out of his job and wanted me to intervene with the Ministry of Education. When he had preached against me, he would never have come to me for help but years later even a man like that could accept that women now played a role in government and society. I did help him, and in 2010 when I stood for election again he helped campaign for me. It is so important to have women in public and governmental roles because this is what allows people's views to slowly change.

The UN was a wonderful organization to work for and was very helpful to me at that difficult time. Sometimes I was able to take the kids and Hamid with me to Pakistan. One time, I took him to the Shifa hospital, one of the most famous hospitals in Islamabad, where he received a new type of medicine. It was very expensive, however: five hundred dollars a month. I managed it for six months, but after that my salary just couldn't cover the expense.

I suppose I was still in denial that he was dying. He was so young. It was early 2001, and he was only thirty-five years old.

By now, the fighting between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban had almost stopped, and there were rumours that the UN Security Council was about to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. That was a prospect that many Afghans found terrible. It seemed the world couldn't see what we saw, nor could it see the danger the Taliban presented. In the spring of 2001, Ahmad Shah Massoud went on a political trip to Europe on behalf of the Rabbani government. He had been invited to address the European Parliament in Strasbourg (a place I would visit in later years) by the European president, Nicole Fontaine.

He used his speech to warn of the emerging threat of the Taliban and the imminent risk of a large-scale al-Qaeda strike on western targets. During his brief visit to Europe, he also travelled to Paris and Brussels, where he held talks with European Union security chief Javier Solana and Belgian foreign minister Louis Michel. He carried with him the hopes of many Afghans, and we were pleased to hear via BBC radio that he was well received. His message was simple and clear: the Taliban, and the al-Qaeda fighters they were sheltering, were a growing threat not only to Afghanistan but to the world. In a personalized message to American president George W. Bush, Massoud warned, “If you don't help us, these terrorists will damage the U.S. and Europe very soon.” But, alas, the West's political leaders did not heed his warnings in time.

There was very much an air of sad resignation among my friends at that time. It really seemed like the Taliban were here to stay. For fourteen years, we fought the Soviets and now we had to fight this new and strange form of Islam. And if the United Nations did recognize them as the government, that meant the Rabbani government that ruled in Badakhshan would become the illegal government. Which, on a personal level, meant I would almost certainly lose my job.

At the same time as General Massoud was in Europe, a lot of foreign delegations came to Badakhshan to meet Rabbani, who had returned from Pakistan and was now based in Faizabad. It was clear that the UN was actively trying to broker peace and some kind of agreement between the Taliban and the government.

It was September 9, 2001, a sunny autumn day. I had just gotten into the UN car and was on my way to an internally displaced persons' (IDP) camp where I was supposed to be monitoring the children's play activities. The lives of these IDPs were truly awful; they were living in tents with no sanitation, but they never lost their spirit and would always smile and joke. But when I arrived, they were all in floods of tears. A young man told me why. Ahmad Shah Massoud had reportedly been killed. My head spun and my knees buckled underneath me. It was just like the sensation I had had when my mother died and I had felt like the stars were falling from the sky. The hero of our nation could not be dead. It wasn't possible.

Later that night, we got more details of the story on the BBC. The situation was still very confused, and it was not clear whether he was dead or just badly injured. On the ground, there was wild rumour. But over the course of the coming weeks and months, the picture became clearer. Two Arab extremists posing as television journalists had detonated a bomb that was hidden inside their camera as they interviewed the famously cautious Massoud. One died in the explosion and the other was gunned down by Massoud's men as he tried to escape. Massoud was badly injured in the blast and died while being flown by helicopter to the hospital. Police in France and Belgium later made a string of arrests and convicted a number of al-Qaeda-linked North African men for having provided the killers with forged documents and cover stories. It seems Osama bin Laden had correctly judged that in the wake of his network's infamous terrorist attacks on the United States two days later, Washington would naturally turn to Massoud to ask for assistance in capturing or killing bin Laden. If anyone could have caught bin Laden, it was Massoud. In the end, the Northern Alliance did go into battle to help the fight against al-Qaeda. But it did so without its great commander.

I can liken the day Massoud died only to the day when President Kennedy died. Americans of that generation always say they remember exactly where they were when they heard the news. It was the same for us Afghans. Even Shaharzad, who was just a tiny girl of three, remembers the day Massoud died.

For many, Massoud was the hero of the Mujahideen, the man who had led the battle against the Soviets. He was a skilful tactician and a brutally efficient soldier. His victories earned him the title of the “lion of the Panjshir.” But for many of the younger generation who had been damaged by that war, including me, he began being a hero when he started to fight against the Taliban. He was so often the lone voice speaking out and warning against the extremism they carried with them. He warned the world about the terrorists and he paid for that with his life.

To this day, I struggle to understand how the West ignored his message that Islamic terrorism was a threat to the world. He told world leaders that if terrorism was not stopped right here in Afghanistan, tomorrow it would come to their borders. He tried to explain that he was a devout Muslim, but that the Islam the Taliban propagated was not one he agreed with nor one that represented the culture or history of the Afghan nation. He had five children, four daughters and a son. All his daughters were educated, and he often spoke about that. He tried to educate people that Islamic values do not prevent a woman from being educated or from working. He knew the Taliban were creating a negative image of Islam around the world, and he tried to counter that.

He was such an inspiration to me. He taught me that freedom is not a gift from God. It is something men must earn.

When he died, I felt Afghanistan had lost all hope.

Just forty-eight hours later, Massoud's warnings about Islamic terrorism came horrifically true. The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Virginia had been hit by three planes, each taken over by five hijackers, while a fourth airliner crashed into a field in Pennsylvania, killing forty passengers and crew along with the four hijackers on board, bringing the total number of al-Qaeda victims that day to nearly three thousand.

Two thousand nine hundred seventy-seven innocent people.

The world had heeded the warnings too late to save these poor people.

And many more innocent lives, mostly in Afghanistan and Iraq, would be lost in the so-called War on Terror that followed.

Dear Shuhra and Shaharzad,

It saddens me so much that many people in the world have a negative view of our country and our culture. Many people in the world believe all Afghan people are terrorists or fundamentalists.

They think this because our country has so often been at the heart of the world's strategic battles—wars over energy control, the Cold War, the War on Terror.

But beneath this is a country of great history, of enlightenment, of culture. This is a land where our own warriors built great minarets and monuments. It was even a land where travellers and those of other faiths were made welcome, some even building their own monuments, such as the Buddhas of Bamiyan.

It is a land of giant mountains and skies that never end, of emerald forests and azure lakes. It is a place where the people show hospitality and warmth like no other. It is also a nation where honour, faith, tradition and duty know no bounds. This, my dear girls, is a land to be proud of.

Never deny your heritage. And never apologize for it. You are from Afghanistan. Take pride in this. And make it your duty to restore our true Afghan pride to the world.

This is a big duty I ask of you. But it is one your grandchildren will thank you for.

With love,
Your mother

· · SEVENTEEN · ·
The Darkness Lifts

{ 2001 }

ON SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, I was sitting at my desk when a colleague ran in clutching a radio. We listened in shock to the news that the Twin Towers had been attacked.

I had tears running down my face as I thought about all those people trapped inside. We had no skyscrapers in Afghanistan and I had never seen a building so high it touched the sky, so I could only imagine the terror of being unable to get out of the burning building.

For the first time, I felt a strong connection between what was happening in Afghanistan and what was happening on the other side of the world. For me, the whole story was like one big jigsaw puzzle. A puzzle that had been coming together for years. Now, someone somewhere had placed the final piece on the board. And the world was shaking with shock.

Bitterly I thought that at least world leaders would now finally know Ahmad Shah Massoud's warnings had been justified when he said terrorism would come to their lands.

What I didn't expect was such a quick response from the world. Perhaps some Afghans disagree with me on this, but I personally believe very strongly that the United States was right to send troops into Afghanistan to topple the Taliban.