SIkander

by M. Salahuddin Khan

  Chapter 12

  Students

  BY 1994, PAKISTAN RETURNED Benazir Bhutto to office, continuing the country’s flirtation with ping-pong democracy. In neighboring Afghanistan, however, the situation was different. The country—if this part of the world might ever warrant such a label—had all but fallen apart. Warlordism was now firmly entrenched everywhere except in the Panjshir Valley and the far north.

  From Singesar, a village near Qandahar, a former member of Younus Khalis’s HIK by the name of Omar was reportedly prevailed upon to come to the aid of two teenage girls who had been kidnapped and raped by one of the local warlords. Omar raised a small force of about thirty students from the local madrassahs and, armed with a total of sixteen rifles, set out to arrest the warlord. They captured the man, shot him, and hung him off a battle tank barrel for all to see.

  Word of this incident reached Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto saw in these students a force quite different from the warlords. Guided by religious principle instead of the pursuit of wealth, they seemed interested in bringing order to the country. On what some might describe as “advice” from the ISI, supported in turn by the CIA, she sanctioned financial assistance for the movement. It would help with securing some of the more important truck routes through the south of the country.

  Encouraged by the Pakistanis, Saudis, and Americans, and empowered by their funds and their swelling numbers, this group of students began calling themselves “the students”—in Pashto, “Taliban.” Their leader came to be known as Mullah Omar.

  The Taliban practiced an austere, self-styled form of Islam that could best be described as a blend of the Deobandi School of India and the ancient Pashtunwali tribal code, dating from before Islam’s arrival in the region. Unlike the graduates of Deoband, however, most Taliban mullahs lacked the all-important “ijaazah” authorizing them to transmit Islamic theology and practice.

  A puritanical regime took hold, curtailing many freedoms, especially of females above the age of eight. They demanded that women wear burkhas in public. They abolished schools for older girls and women. They argued that it was impossible to create an environment conducive to female education without significant modifications to municipal infrastructure to assure separation of the sexes during travel to and from school. Modernity was shunned and education in the modern sciences and technology was widely considered a gateway to the sinful ways of the West.

  With their influence reaching into most villages, the Taliban attracted numerous former mujahideen. Several of Younus Khalis’s people joined them, including Jalaluddin Haqqani.

  Abdul Majeed and Saleem were exposed to more of their teaching than the others in the family and became more committed to the Taliban cause. Many of their fellow villagers, including Abdul Latif and the rest of his clan, welcomed the Taliban’s ability to restore a semblance of peace and order, putting local warlords in check. The welcome was soon replaced, however, by fear of the Taliban’s authoritarian harshness.

  For the family, things came to a head in September 1995. Ejaz and Hinna had returned to Noor’s place with their boys, Adam and Azhar, after visiting Hinna’s parents. Hinna wore what most Muslims in the world would have considered a conservative style of dress, but because her face was partially visible, it did not comply with Taliban rules. Saleem had returned from Pakistan after a month in a madrassah near Peshawar and had become vocal about such matters. He was at home with Noor when the family walked in.

  Ejaz offered his salaams in the usual fashion. Noor responded warmly but Saleem remained quiet, staring at the floor.

  “Saleem?” probed his older brother. “I just greeted you. We’ve been away for eleven days, is a simple salaam too much to expect?” Ejaz pressed, more puzzled than hostile. After a moment’s hesitation, Saleem opened up.

  “Brother, I’ve been troubled lately…especially so now. I’ve had my eyes opened to the things we don’t observe correctly in following Islam and…and that makes us either…” Saleem shook his head slowly as if unable to deny an inescapable truth. “It makes us apostates worthy of being put to death.” He was visibly upset with his own conviction about what he had just uttered.

  “Death!?” exclaimed Ejaz with a puzzled frown. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “Hm! No, not my mind. But I’ve been…we…we’ve all been on a path of losing our souls and I ask you, I beg you, brother, before it’s too late. Adopt the true ways of our beautiful religion. Only that way can we…can our calamity as a people ever be rectified.”

  Ejaz tried reasoning with his brother. “Saleem, we’re not rejecting belief. Yes, we may be doing some things in ignorant ways and yes, we could learn more, but this…this Taliban practice…it’s not Islam. They may be well-intentioned…but they’re misguided ideas put forward by so-called mullahs who never completed their own educations. Are you simply finding fault with the way we dress or walk or talk? That’s what you believe protects or harms a soul before Allah?”

  “Our women have been commanded to guard their modesty,” insisted Saleem. “I look at Hinna and she seems ignorant of this. The day will surely come when she’ll be punished for it; for walking in the streets of the village shamelessly alone—”

  “Saleem!” interjected Ejaz, angrily raising his hand. “You’re talking about my wife!” He paused to let himself cool down before continuing more calmly. “We do follow Islam. It’s our faith, our belief. You know that. Hiding the face wasn’t required in Islam except for the wives of the Prophet, may Allah’s blessing and peace be upon him. The Qur’an is quite clear. Let me show you.” He stood up to reach for the family’s Pashto-Arabic version off a narrow alcove high in the wall where reverence demanded it be kept, free of risk of desecration by falling or careless handling. He opened it to Surah 24, Ayah 31, and read out in Pashto:

  “And say to the believing women that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty; that they should not display their beauty and ornaments except what (must ordinarily) appear thereof; that they should draw their veils over their bosoms and not display their beauty except to their husbands, their fathers, their husband's fathers, their sons, their husbands' sons, their brothers or their brothers' sons, or their sisters' sons, or their women, or the slaves whom their right hands possess, or male servants free of physical needs, or small children who have no sense of the immodesty of sex; and that they should not strike their feet in order to draw attention to their hidden ornaments. And O ye believers! Turn ye all together towards Allah, that ye may attain Bliss.”

  Out of respect, Saleem remained silent during the reading. “Yes. Of course, I’m familiar with this verse, but if you could hear Mullah Omar, as I did in Peshawar, he’d tell you what lies behind this and the information in the authentic hadith of the Prophet, peace be upon him. Then you’d understand how you misread these words.”

  “How? How did I misread them, Saleem?”

  “Well, the many hadiths of the blessed Messenger of God, may peace be upon him, tell us how to interpret the Qur’an. They make it plain that a woman must cover herself completely and not expose her hands and face.”

  “But as you know, Saleem, direct reference from the Qur’an is always acknowledged to supersede hadiths. It’s only where there’s ambiguity that we use hadiths. I quoted directly. Nothing in this verse refers to covering the face.”

  As with all such debates, it ended inconclusively, but Saleem was clearly the more tormented of the two about the evil effects of living outside the complete guidance, in his view, of the Qur’an and Sunnah. What helped him to such a conclusion was the turmoil in his country at the time, which no one could deny, and his own certainty that a national departure from the “straight and narrow path” was most assuredly the cause.

  Unfortunately for Ejaz and Abdul Rahman, who himself experienced similar sentiments from Abdul Majeed, the Taliban were winning this and other debates. They had both force and international, financial backing. By 1996, armed Taliban presence was the norm in places like La
ghar Juy and from that point forward, things would never be the same.

  Abdul Latif, was designated village chief, but in the face of Taliban rule, the role had little meaning. Concerned though he was over such disempowerment, he was far more troubled by the seemingly unbridgeable rifts in his once unified and cheerful family.

  Abdul Rahman and his wife, Sabiha, and their family kept to themselves, as did Ejaz, Hinna, and their children. Razya and Noor were confined to their homes unless a male member of their household was available to escort them. This was not especially onerous, as they had generally been inclined to observe such a principle for most of their lives, though not rigorously. Having to wear the head-to-toe burkha was quite a different matter, as was being forced into any behavior relating to their day-to-day conduct, however much they may have agreed or disagreed with it. How they dressed was less important to them than who determined it. As with most women, for Razya and Noor, it was a matter of freedom, and though they understood the demands of Islam on personal compulsory behavior, such compulsion needed to come from within instead of being in a legal code.

  As conditions became more stifling, Ejaz and Hinna decided it was time to leave Laghar Juy. They would move to be near Yaqub’s family, where they would be in the slightly more liberal Pakistan. Two days before their departure, displeased with their decision, Saleem vented his frustration on his poor mother. Noor had stepped out of the house alone for a moment, when he rebuked her harshly for being unaccompanied. She was outraged and complained bitterly that her departed shaheed, Abdus Sami, would never have tolerated such behavior from his son. When the time came, she packed a few belongings and left with Ejaz and Hinna. But the bonds that tied her to her home and village were simply too strong and she returned a week later, though still irritated with Saleem.

  Despite the greater modernity and sophistication in towns and cities, women’s lives in places such as Kabul and Jalalabad fared much worse than in villages. Professional women, including doctors and teachers, were dismissed in large numbers and driven underground or confined to their homes.

  During this turbulent ascendancy of the Taliban, Osama Bin Laden’s Saudi citizenship was revoked after he issued several openly critical comments about King Fahd, for having backed the Palestinian-Israeli Oslo Accords. Finally, in May of 1996, after a series of botched attacks on Egyptian leaders, his welcome in the Sudan was exhausted and he was ordered to leave.

  With a stalemate in the Panjshir between the mujahideen of Ahmed Shah Massoud’s Northern Alliance and the Taliban, Massoud, invited Bin Laden to return to Afghanistan to mediate between the parties. On his way into Afghanistan, Bin Laden met with Mullah Omar and was so taken by him that a lasting friendship began. Bin Laden was persuaded to throw his weight behind the Taliban, leaving the conflict in place and Massoud with a new enemy.

  Rabia and Sikander paid visits to Ejaz and Hinna in the Aka Khel mountains. They enjoyed watching Ayub, Adam, and Azhar play together while the parents debated the politics of their two countries and the world at large. Rabia’s second child, Qayyum, was born in June 1996.

  By September of that year, with the exception of the Panjshir Valley, still in Massoud’s hands along with the territory he held in the north, the country finally succumbed to the Taliban. One of their early actions after capturing Kabul was to seek retribution for Najibullah’s excesses. Taliban forces summarily dragged him and his brother from the UN compound, executed them, and hanged their bodies from a traffic kiosk. This form of execution and corpse-display became the gruesome trademark of Taliban retribution as a warning to others.

  It was in December of 1996, four years since Javed’s passing, that Sikander and Jamil renamed Wahid Electric to Javed Electrical Industries—contracted to “Javelin”—in honor of their late father. Javelin continued to grow its customer base in the military and private sectors. Increasingly, the latter became involved in programs of infrastructure development throughout Pakistan, under the direction of Nawaz Sharif, following his election as prime minister in early 1997. With the brothers at the helm, it was on its way to becoming one of the largest national wholesalers of electrical products in the country.

  Osama Bin Laden reactivated training camps all along the Pakistan border from near Qandahar up to Nangarhar, readying his recruits from around the world, but in particular from Saudi Arabia. Because it impeded the realization of a pan-Islamic caliphate, the anathema of non-Muslim, American troops in the holy “land of the Haramain” had to be opposed by militant jihad, as far as he and his followers were concerned.

  Over the previous several years, Bin Laden and others had embraced a specialized version of Islam, a narrow branch of Salafism labeled by others as Takfiri. It was based on the teachings of Sayyid Qutb, a one-time Egyptian intellectual. Qutb drew his conclusions from the eighteenth-century teachings of Abdul Wahhab, who had himself been a follower of the medieval polymath and scholar, Ibn Taymiyyah, a proponent of highly conservative views about the “pure” form of Islam. Qutb was also a member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which had at one time tried to assassinate Egyptian premier, Gamal Abdel Nasser. Nasser had him executed in 1966 after a lengthy jail sentence.

  Going beyond conventional Salafism, Qutb’s interpretation held that all so-called Muslims who had departed from what he believed were the strict forms of practice established from the period of the Prophet and his immediate successors—the “salaf” period—were in a state of “jahiliyyah,” or tacitly embraced ignorance and opposition to truth. As a result, they were to be considered apostates, and according to interpretations by contemporary scholars such as Maulana Maududi, punishment by death was permissible upon such people. A number of political movements generally labeled Salafist sought political change based on these principles. Though himself not a Salafist, Maududi and others’ opinions on apostasy gave license to followers of Salafist ideology to kill without compunction people they deemed to be ill-professed Muslims.

  By contrast, several other Muslim scholars had written on the impermissibility of killing even professed apostates, much less those determined as such by the judgments of an extremist few. A more subtle middle ground of opinion also existed that held that apostasy was not grounds for a death penalty, but the active promulgation of a non-Muslim way of life by an apostate was, as this could be likened to treason given the absence of a separation of church and state in the Islamic conception of a Muslim state. However, for Salafists holding the death-to-any-apostate view, such reasoning had no merit. They were therefore referred to as Salafi-Takfiris, owing to their pronouncement of “takfir” on other Muslims, effectively declaring them “kafirs,” or infidels. Ayman al-Zawahiri’s Salafi-Takfiri ideology had consolidated its grip over al-Qaeda in the near seven years since its emergence from the old Maktab-ul-Khidmat.

  Takfiri reasoning effectively granted permission to commit terrorist acts resulting in indiscriminate killing. Even if they involved killing of Muslims, the victims would either be apostates and worthy of death or, as “true” Muslims, Allah would accept them as martyrs. The 1993 World Trade Center attack was arguably the first act committed by this movement against the United States. However, the attacks that first drew world attention to the al-Qaeda banner took place five years later in early August of 1998—the bombings of the American embassies in Nairobi and Dar-as-Salaam, which put Osama Bin Laden on the FBI’s ten most wanted list. Two weeks after the bombings, President Bill Clinton ordered cruise missiles to be launched from the Arabian Sea at several locations along the Afghan border with Pakistan, where Bin Laden’s training camps were located. Neither Bin Laden nor or any of his close deputies were killed. Similar attacks on Sudan hit the El-Shifa pharmaceutical plant, producer of half that country’s pharmaceuticals. The United States, however, alleged that it was a chemical weapons factory.

  When the news reports in Pakistan made public the U.S. attacks on Afghanistan and Sudan, Sikander was bewildered. He couldn’t imagine why the United States would take such a step
against the very country it had been helping only a few years earlier. He rationalized that the precision of the weapons meant that America was at least being careful not to incur unnecessary deaths, and that the terrorists of al-Qaeda were the targets, not the Afghans in general.

  Sikander did wonder, though, how the Taliban government of Afghanistan would view such an attack on people that it considered its guests. In melmasthia, allowing an attack upon a guest brought intolerable disgrace upon a host, no matter how deserving of punishment the guest might be. Retaliation was imperative to avoid the dishonor being complete.

  By early 1999, Javelin had broadened its supply sources and added more locations around Pakistan. Jamil increasingly demonstrated his managerial skills, and spearheaded the computerization of their product catalogue and several business processes, greatly improving Javelin’s cost structure.

  At home in Hayatabad, life was good for the most part. Jamil was married to Kausar, and Sameena had married Wasim, and was already mother to a young daughter named Rukhsana.

  The U-shaped configuration originally conceived for their house by Javed and Sofie, reflected an ideal of having the growing families of both sons living under one roof with their parents. Sikander lived with Rabia and their children in the north wing, while Jamil and Kausar took the south. Sameena’s place was with her in-laws. Occupying the front, connecting north and south wings were to have been Javed and Sofie, expecting in their twilight years to see a growing brood of grandchildren. Left to pursue this ambition on her own now, few things pleased Sofie more than to be able to play with, dote upon, and buy toys and clothes for the grandchildren. Sofie often reflected wistfully that Javed’s hard work had led to no such reward for him; he had passed on without ever laying eyes on a single grandchild.