The Honey Thief (7 page)

Garrisons were left in many villages of the north. The soldiers of the garrisons punished at will. When outbreaks of resistance were too great for the garrisons to subdue, soldiers from Kabul and Kandahar came back, sometimes twice a year, and repeated the massacres of 1880 and 1881. A further punishment was heavy taxation. The Hazarajat is a place of beauty in some regions, well watered, with abundant spring grass. But it is not a land of great wealth. Hazara families lived there hand-to-mouth, able to survive for the day but never able to set aside provision very far into the future. The heavy taxation was a death sentence for thousands. Starvation and the outbreak of diseases that develop when nutrition is limited took lives more slowly than gunfire or the blow of a sword, but they took lives just as surely.

The Hazara of the south who had escaped the wrath of Abdur Rahman had deceived themselves of the Emir’s intentions. His plan was to extend his control and tribute over the whole of Hazarajat. Those Hazara who had stood aloof from their suffering brothers repented of their error when harsh taxation and reprisals were enacted everywhere in Hazarajat. In secret meetings, the Hazara of the north and south agreed on rebellion. What choice did they have? The best of their traditional lands were being confiscated and handed over as gifts to the Emir’s friends and supporters, whose allegiance he would count on in the years to come. The Hazara whose lands were left in their keeping today would likely lose them tomorrow. It is a bitter thing for any man to endure, to have the lands that he has inherited from his father taken from him and given to strangers. For these Hazara who had suffered the theft of their lands, death held no terrors. Without their lands and with their hearts torn apart, they were dead anyway.

The rebellion, which began in 1888, lasted for two years and ended in defeat. Whenever he could, the Emir took the opportunity to turn Hazara against Hazara. To one tribe he would say, ‘Put aside your weapons and I will return your lands.’ When the tribe accepted the offer, the Emir sent messengers to tell other tribes of the bargain, and in this way sowed the seeds of hatred. Also, Abdur Rahman was shrewd enough to use for his own purpose the great division within Islam of Sunni and Shi’a. The division is the most tragic of all differences that throw Muslim against Muslim. Like divisions within Christianity, it makes no sense when so much of the faith is shared and honoured by all. But the fact is that most Afghans are Sunni, while most Hazara are Shi’a. Abdur Rahman said to the minority of Hazara who are Sunni, ‘Why should we fight in this way? We uphold the true faith. Your enemies are the Shi’a who persist in their blindness and arrogance.’ In this way, with promises and flattery, he persuaded Hazara to spurn Hazara, and battles were lost, and the war was lost.

Yes, the war was lost but anger was as strong as ever. Many of the Sunni Hazara who had listened to the Emir’s flattery were murdered at the war’s end. The promises amounted to nothing. In 1890, no more than six months after the close of the first rebellion, the Hazara rebelled again. This second rebellion was not carefully planned; it was sparked by a sudden outpouring of rage brought on by a single act of infamy.

The Hazara had come to know in what contempt they were held by the soldiers of Abdur Rahman, but even in the midst of savagery, certain rules were observed. As a rule, Muslim soldiers avoid the abhorrent crime of rape. It is a deed that destroys the spirit of the women on whom it is enacted, and destroys also the souls of the men responsible. There is no justification for rape to be found in the scriptures of Islam, not under any circumstances; indeed it has been reviled from the age of the Prophet through the centuries. When soldiers of one of the Emir’s garrisons seized the wife of a Hazara chieftain in Hazarajat and violated her, the husband of the woman led his followers to the garrison’s armoury and took possession of all the weapons inside. Now armed, the chieftain slew the soldiers who had so dishonoured his wife and rallied Hazara of neighbouring villages to his cause. Within weeks, almost the whole of Hazarajat had risen against the Emir.

It was the belief of the Hazara that the Emir had instructed his garrisons in Hazarajat to provoke rebellion, so that he might have an excuse to take control of the whole region. Such a claim is impossible to prove, but is it any wonder that it was accepted as fact in Hazarajat after what the people had endured under the reign of Abdur Rahman? To me, it seems likely that the Emir had a plan of provocation in mind, for his soldiers were prepared for invasion in so short a time after the outbreak of rebellion. The Emir had called for the help of the British to instruct his army in techniques of invasion well before the second rebellion, and that help was freely given. The Emir had also foreseen the benefit of having the invasion officially declared a Jihad against all the Shi’a by his council of imams. Amongst his followers, there were those who were unhappy – perhaps I should say, ‘uncomfortable’ – about the massacres of women and children in the earlier rebellion. I am sorry to say, for myself and for Afghanistan, that once Jihad is declared, misgivings are swept away, for the war becomes a conflict in defence of the faith itself. It is meaningful, too, that the Jihad was declared so soon after the commencement of the rebellion. It usually took some time before a council of imams would declare a Jihad. In the modern world, such a declaration can be negotiated swiftly under certain circumstances, but protocols were far stricter in 1890. It seems likely that Abdur Rahman had gained agreement for a Jihad much earlier than the violation of the Hazara chieftain’s wife.

And think of this: the Emir raised an army of 150,000 foot soldiers, cavalry and well-armed militia inside a month and was ready to invade Hazarajat in the autumn of the year. It would have been no easy task to raise a large army in such a short time – three weeks – for a great many allegiances have to be negotiated with tribal leaders. Such a task can take a year, with many jealousies to be settled before the leader of one tribe will even enter a tent in which the leader of another tribe awaits.Whether the infamy was carried out under instruction from the Emir or not will never be known, as I have said. What is known is that the Emir’s soldiers faced an enemy in Hazarajat weakened by the two-year-long rebellion. The outcome of the rebellion and invasion is also known. The Hazara were crushed, and the whole of Hazarajat was dominated by Abdur Rahman’s soldiers.

The reprisals against the Hazara were horrifying, even by the standards of Abdur Rahman. It had been a custom amongst the more savage rulers of Afghanistan and its neighbours since the age of the Samarkand tyrant Tamburlaine the Great to show to all what fate awaits a defeated enemy. It was Tamburlaine’s custom to build hills of his enemies’ heads. Abdur Rahman had chosen Tamburlaine as his hero amongst rulers. His most precious possessions were certain relics of the Samarkand tyrant that he had obtained over the years, sometimes through purchase, sometimes by stealth. Amongst these relics – a sword, a tooth, a horse’s bridle – the most valued was a single long hair, said to have come from Tamburlaine’s beard. There seems no doubt that Abdur Rahman had taken to heart Tamburlaine’s motto: an enemy once is an enemy forever.

After the first Hazara rebellion, beheading of captives was a common form of execution, but not the rule, for it takes much longer and requires much greater effort to behead a hundred captives than to shoot them. After the second rebellion, Abdur Rahman ordered that all captives should be beheaded, and their heads gathered in mounds standing twice the height of the tallest of the defeated enemy. Even those who had died of wounds in battle were beheaded. Hazara who were not forced to their knees to be executed were forced to their knees by the poverty and starvation that followed the reprisals. By the onset of the winter of 1892, Hazarajat was a land of mourning and despair.

And yet, early the following year, when the snows had begun to thaw, the Hazara rose again. People reduced to such misery as the Hazara have nothing to lose; death itself is preferred to humiliation. In this third rebellion, the Hazara surprised Abdur Rahman’s soldiers. It was thought impossible for these defeated people to find the will to risk even further reprisals. However, in the battles that followed, the Hazara reclaimed the whole of their homeland, only to fall victim to starvation. For years, almost no provision could be made for the winter; men who would normally till the fields and guard the sheep and goats in the pastures were fighting for their survival. Weakened to the point of collapse after their victory, the Hazara were easily overrun in the counter-attacks of Abdur Rahman’s army. Ultimately victorious, though shocked at the fierce resistance of the Hazara, Abdur Rahman ordered more mass executions, more public torture. But he went further, and caused the greater part of the Hazarajat population to be forced from their homeland and resettled in stony places far away. At this time, many thousands of Hazara fled to Iran, to India, to Uzbekistan, or to the far north of Afghanistan where the soldiers of the Emir were fewer.

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Abdur Rahman, by God’s grace, did not live forever. In 1901, his son Habibullah succeeded him on the throne. I have said that Habibullah was not the worst of the Barakzai family, and that is true. He attempted to make peace with those Hazara who remained in Afghanistan. It was his desire to be remembered as the man who built the modern nation of Afghanistan, not as a formidable warrior like his father. He granted an amnesty to any Hazara who might wish to return from his land of exile. And a number did return, perhaps with dread still in their hearts. But the legacy of the years of murder was a solemn determination of the Hazara to one day live in freedom.

In Afghanistan, memories are not made of air and light and colour; memories are made of iron and stone. A wrong committed by one man against another will stand like a statue in the wronged man’s mind forever. Forgiveness is not a common virtue in my native land, no matter which tribe’s blood pulses through your heart. One man may consider an insult endured by his ancestors five hundred years ago to be as fresh as a callous word spoken yesterday. The Hazara who had remained in Afghanistan and those who returned could not forget how many of their friends, how many family members had been murdered by Abdur Rahman. It was not possible. If I am a child and I put my hand in the fire, the burning and the pain will stay in my mind forever. Hazara children grew up in fear of Abdur Rahman’s soldiers. Abdur Rahman was the fire that they could not forget. The son of Abdur Rahman said, ‘Return! All is forgiven!’ but for the Hazara, forgiveness was something that only the Hazara could grant, if they wished. To be forgiven by the son of the man who had made towers of the heads of our people? No.

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The great massacres became part of who we are – we, the Hazara. I say ‘part of who we are’ rather than ‘part of our history’ because history is a thing apart; something that you can study, if you wish, and write books about. The massacres are not ‘history’ in that sense; they have a place in our minds and our hearts from which they can’t be torn. But don’t imagine that it is something we wish to have living inside us. No, it is a burden. It is like the burden of the Jews. They cannot stop being Jews – they are Jews every second of their lives, and being a Jew means carrying a burden of grief, because the Jews too had an Abdur Rahman in their past.

The reign of Habibullah the son of Abdur Rahman was not a reign of murders – no more so than the reign of any king in my part of the world. He tried to do some good, Habibullah. He didn’t say, ‘The Hazara poison my land, let me be rid of them.’ He didn’t say to his captains, ‘Take a thousand soldiers and bring me back ten thousand Hazara heads,’ as his father did. He had studied politics. He had studied democracy. He believed that a king has to embrace everyone in his kingdom, some more warmly than others, of course. But by murdering Hazara in such numbers, and in doing so forcing them to defend themselves, his father had succeeded in making the Hazara a people held in greater disdain than ever by more powerful tribes. Habibullah himself may have wished to bring peace to his country, but the people who kept him in power found a hundred ways to make the Hazara suffer. With their traditional lands confiscated, Hazaras were forced to look for employment in towns and cities. They were offered only the most menial of jobs and paid very little. If you needed someone to dig a ditch for you, clean your house, tend your animals, dig a well, carry water to your fields – you hired a Hazara. Living on next-to-nothing gives people a certain appearance. They look badly fed, their clothes are ragged, their eyes are dull with tiredness. And because they look tired and ragged and underfed, they are thought of as beggars, and held in contempt. A Hazara with twenty sheep is thought to have ten sheep too many for a beggar, and the ten too many are taken from him. A Hazara with money is thought to have stolen it, and so it is no crime to take the money from him.

By a process that began with mass murder, the Hazara became an underclass, the poorest people in Afghanistan, and it was thought to be their own fault. When a man has his boot on your neck, he doesn’t wish to think that he is being cruel, that he is betraying God with his cruelty; no, he wishes to think that the man on whose neck his boot rests is not truly a human being, and does not have the feelings of human beings.

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Habibullah Khan, as I have said, ruled Afghanistan at the time of Abdul Khaliq’s birth, but he did not outlive Abdul Khaliq. No, he was murdered by close friends in the year 1919, or by people who were close friends up until the time they murdered him. He was on a hunting trip without knowing that he was the one being hunted. He had no time to be surprised because the bullets that killed him ended his life in an instant. His brother, Nasrullah, put himself on the throne of his dead brother very speedily, but lasted only a week. Habibullah’s son Amanullah, who commanded the army, threw his uncle into prison and had himself named Emir. What was said of the Barakzai in Afghanistan at that time was the undeniable truth: those to whom you are related by blood
want
blood.