A transformed Kabul? BY Saleem Safi

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Being a Pakistani of Afghan origin, I have never missed an opportunity to visit Kabul because of my love for the city and its people. However, every time I visited there, I felt a change in the city's political ambience. This time around the change was both novel and pleasant.

My latest visit to Kabul was aimed at recording Afghan leaders' interviews for a special edition of Geo's current affairs programme "Jirga" and interactive sessions with the vice chancellor of Kabul University, teachers and civil society leaders under the auspices of the German foundation Konrad Adenauer Stiftung. In the month of February last year, the chilling cold spell due to heavy snowfall had made life difficult in the city. However, now the light snowfall had given way to pleasant weather in Kabul. For the three days over there, clear blue skies and pleasant weather could hardly be resisted for enjoyment.

The really heartening change was the positive attitude towards Pakistan. From Hamid Karzai to his national security advisor, Rangeen Dadfar Spanta, to education minister Farooq Wardag to members of parliament from the North, everyone avoided talking about Pakistan in a negative tone. Unlike in the past, this time my requests for an interview for Geo News elicited positive responses from all the Afghan leaders from the North, including Doctor Ramzan Bashar Dost, a presidential candidate in the previous election. The latter not only happily appeared on "JIrga" on short notice, but also avoided voicing his traditional hard stance on Pakistan.

Unlike in the past when Afghan friends would avoid a visit to the Pakistani embassy in Kabul despite repeated requests, most Afghan leaders and journalists not only met the Pakistani ambassador in crowded meetings but also tried to establish a good relationship with him.

On the day we arrived in Kabul, Ambassador Muhammad Sadiq had just returned from a visit to northern Afghanistan. He told me that he had visited all northern provinces where the unbelievably warm receptions in his honour impressed him.

President Karzai afforded me an opportunity of a detailed meeting on short notice. During the meeting, I insisted on a formal interview. However, the president preferred an informal discussion lest an inadvertent reference to "any issue, God forbid, harm the improving relations between the two countries." However, in the final moments of our meeting, I took him to a formal interview. To all my questions, the president offered only one answer: Kabul was ready to go to any extent in fostering dependable good-neighbourly relations with the people and government of Pakistan. On the issue of Mullah Beradar, he said he hoped that Pakistan will send him to Afghanistan, without demanding that Islamabad extradite him. He was non-committal on the issue of Mullah Berdar's trial in Kabul or his possible use in the planned reconciliation process with the Taliban.

The residents of Kabul have always hated the US presence in Afghanistan. This attitude, which translates into awareness that rapprochement with Pakistan is require, has infected the leadership in Kabul as well. Some government leaders are using the same language against the US as Gulbadin Hikmatyar and Mulla Muhammad Umar.

In the discussion with Hamid Karzai, Rangeen Dadfar Spanta and some presidential staff were also in attendance. My criticism of US policies towards the region did not evoke a single word of contradiction from President Karzai. Similarly, the president did not reject my assertion that the presence of the US in the region was the root cause of problems and the US and India had played a negative role in creating misunderstanding between Pakistan and Afghanistan. I also reminded Karzai that he and Musharraf, instead of understanding the US mission of instigating a perpetual downslide in relations between our two countries, had introduced into the equation for achieving the opposite. But now Kabul and Islamabad must set together for a fruitful dialogue and shut their doors to third-party intervention. This suggestion was received well.

At the call to Maghreb prayer, Karzai took me to the mosque. After the prayers, Karzai was all praise for the architectural beauty and vastness of Faisal Mosque. Nostalgically, he remembered enjoying his prayers in this mosque during his stay in Islamabad.

I was thinking as to how long Karzai, a practicing Muslim, would remain in the good books of the US and its Western allies. Perhaps, the secular allies and friends failed the religious president's attempts at bringing peace and stability to the country through reconciliation with estranged Afghan groups with religious credentials and nomenclatures.

Perhaps, a transformed Karzai is now more willing for reconciliation with these groups. But the-million-dollar question is: will his friends and allies allow him to do this? And more importantly, are the religious forces, Taliban and Hizb-i-Islami, ready to respond to such overtures?

In response to Karzai's praise for Faisal Mosque, I told him that this symbol of heavenly love is open for a warm welcome to the president if the journey to Islamabad takes the shorter route via Torkham and not Washington. In a lighter mood, he retorted that one should also offer the same advice to Islamabad. Sarcastically, I told him that we used to call Karzai a mayor of Kabul, having no control on the rest of the country. But now the facts seem in reverse gear; Kabul's writ is spreading out of the city's bound towards far-flung provinces, while our president wears the mantle of Islamabad's mayor. Factually, being imprisoned in a five-star hotel called the Presidency and accessible to few men, the latter cannot even claim to be a mayor of Islamabad.

However, on few and far between opportunities, I have unsparingly requested the occupants of the GHQ and presidential palace to kindly take the route to Kabul via Torkham and not Washington.



The writer works for Geo TV. Email: saleem .safi@geo.tv