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Reading Zaeef: 20. Getting Out
Reading Abdul Salam Zaeef: My Life with the Taliban:
I was astonished to read the terms listed on this piece of paper. The group of soldiers and some senior officials were recording everything with their video camera as I listened to the translator. They handed me the paper to sign it, but I threw it back at them in anger.
“I am innocent, and not a criminal,” I said. “I never have, nor will I, accept any kind of accusations. And never will I excuse or thank the Americans for releasing me. If I have committed any crime, which tribunal or court has proved me a criminal!?
“Secondly, I was a Talib, I am a Talib and I will always be a Talib, but I have never been a part of Al Qaeda!
“Third, I was accused of terrorist activities, which I have never done. So how could I admit to doing something that I never did to start with? Tell me!
“Fourth, Afghanistan is my home. No one has the right to tell me what to do in my homeland. If I am the owner of my house, how can someone else come and tell me what to do in it?
“Fifth, I am still detained here, innocently detained. I can be arrested again, accused of any crime, so I am not going to sign any kind of paper.”
They insisted that I sign the paper. They told me that I would not be released if I refused, but still I did not sign it. Even if it would have meant that I spend the rest of my life in prison, I could never accept to confess to being a criminal. Many times they left and came back, but I still did not sign.
Finally, they told me to write something myself instead of what was written on the paper. I was obliged to write something, so I took the pen and wrote the following:
I am not a criminal. I am an innocent person. Pakistan and the United States of America have betrayed me. I was detained for four years without specific accusations. I am writing this out of obligation and stating that I am not going to participate in any kind of anti-American activities or military actions. Wasalam.
After that, I signed what I had written and they left me alone. I wondered if they would accept what I had written. After a short while a Red Crescent delegation came and congratulated me on being released.
…
They became angry. “Why do you hate us?” they asked.
“I do not like you,” I told them. “Just look at what you are doing, and what you did to me and other Muslims. What do you expect?”
They looked at me with bulging eyes and mottled faces.
“Do you want to go back to Guantánamo?” they asked.
“Whatever you do is your business,” I answered. “You kept me in Guantánamo for four years when I had done nothing. If you want to do it again, there is nobody to stop you. But if it’s a question of freedom, then I have the right to tell you to leave me alone. But if it’s a question of power, then do as you wish, for you have all the power. But I don’t want to see you. So throw me in jail or leave me alone, it’s up to you.”
They left.
It is easy to criticise people operating in another cultural perspective as being weird chiefly because there is insufficient time space to provide context for every incident. What is one of the worst epithets on the western internet? Being a “tinfoil hatter” how weird does that sound taken out of context?
As for Zaeef’s ability to represent Afghanistan, the first thing I noticed about that section of his book was how careful he had been to omit anything that might have relevance to Afghanistan’s day to day relations with the rest of the world, just as he left out a huge amount of his instructions/conversations with his boss the minister of Foreign Affairs Mutawakil, who he refers to as Mr Mutawakil in some places (i.e. when Mutawakil appears to be coming and going freely in front of the amerikans while Zaeef is in custody) and Mullah Mutawakil after he(Mutawakil) has secured Zaeef’s release.
One of the major causes of the mess western style societies have got themselves in is an overreliance on technocrats, that is experts alleged to be working for the good of the community as a whole whose specialisation has become so particular, few have any idea what the technocrats are really up to. The consequence of that is a society heading in directions vastly divergent from that the citizens believe it to be going, much less where they want it to head.
I have spent enough time working with people whose level of what we foolishly call civilisation is much lower than that of Afghans, to know that considering all such people foolish or naive, is a common error, one that those who make it may soon come to regret. Apart from the machines and technical dross that absorb so much of our time, Westerners still relate to each other pretty much the same as people everywhere do. It is true that in a large society with its characteristic of anonymity, some people manage to deceive for much longer than they would in a smaller community but there are large anonymous cities in Afghanistan where sharpies and conmen pull their stunts and then hide in the crowd so I would be surprised if Zaeef found westerners’ deceptions surprising. Offensive probably but not surprising.
I’m sure the reasons Zaeef was selected for the only real ambassador’s job the Taliban administration still had was precisely because he was so obviously pious, yet strong-willed. By selecting him, the administration knew he would be reliable and truthful with them, at the same time as he presented a personage to the Muslim world of somebody admirable, an incorruptible man, thereby insinuating that the entire leadership was pious and incorruptible.
But by no means simpleminded, Zaeef appears to see through many of the traps laid by Pakistan at the behest of amerika with little difficulty. He reports home and then leaves it up to Mullah Omar to decide whether to respond in kind or to choose not to lower themselves to that level.
Unfortunately it is highly unlikely that all of Afghanistan’s Taliban leadership clique were of that character.
The best leaders are almost always those who don’t want to be leaders and from what we can infer from this book, it seems that Zaeef was an exception in that regard as is the case most places. In fact nowadays the complexities of becoming a leader in systems that have been running for hundreds of years, pretty much precludes the ‘reluctant hero’.
In some senses Zaeef was a perfect ambassador for the situation Afghanistan was in before September 2001. After that it hardly mattered who was in the job or what was done BushCo had been scared shitless as bullies are when they receive a dose of their own medicine, so there was no way anything anyone could have done to prevent amerika lashing out. Afghanistan was an obvious choice. It was weak, still in the throes of a reorganisation, and by stretching a very long bow could be accused of being implicated in the action.
There were no other viable alternatives – as we discussed at the time. Saudi &/or Egypt would have been much too difficult and the long term cost was far too high for amerika or the zionists.
I think it is a bit harsh to compare Zaeef with what’s herface Palin. I reckon it is highly unlikely Palin believes any of that weird shit she spouts, which it seems to me is pretty much made up as she goes along.
I don’t favour theocracies but at least the Taliban style is based on social mores established after centuries of scholarship into the superstition. The values they promote are the same as the society has clung on to for generations. The xtian fundies often come up with weird shit no one has ever heard of before, stuff that has been developed to advance themselves politically.
A quick example. There is a mob in this part of the world called ‘the brethren’. They set up here at the start of the 20th century & there are branches in amerika, australia and england. You pretty much have to be born into this mob of xtian loonies, altho they do take in some ‘outsiders’ occasionally. The boss fella usually comes from amerika although the politicking around that shit is intense and very unxtian. Anyway the current boss (naturally there are no boss-ettes) who took over in the late 90’s is an australian who decided that they had become big enough, established enough and most importantly rich enough, to carve themselves a slice of the right wing fundie xtian action available from buying up politicians.
This is pretty strange because the original bossfella, their prophet or whatever they called him had reinforced the cult brainwashing by enforcing strict rules against getting involved in ‘worldly affairs’ as they call it. The poor little buggers I went to school with who were captives of the cult, weren’t allowed TV’s radios, or newspapers and had to eat their lunch in a separate area from the ‘outsiders’ (us normal humans). University is also verboten so they stick to technical careers, jewellery watchmaking used to be a favourite, tho optometry and other expensive quasi health skills are more popular with the brethren of my generation. There was a special rule against voting in elections, which I suppose the original boss thought would be enough, that making a rule against bribing pols was superfluous if a) ya couldn’t vote & b) ya had no idea about what it was pols got up to since you didn’t follow current affairs at all.
However the acquisition of wealth has become a major for the brethren and like many other sub-cultures operating within the larger disparate culture, a single minded dedication to money making can pay big dividends. The ability to dismiss those you rip off as being ‘unchosen’ lesser beings can also make it easy to shed any qualms about sharp practices. Combine that with the sort of vertical integration of a market in a small town that can occur when several families from the same cult own each segment of a particular market, and pretty soon everyone is making money and keeping ahead of the Joneses, by spending it on the few things their vicious & jealous god permits them to own. Expensive single malt scotch (no rule against men drinking) and huge gas guzzling motor vehicles are popular status symbols for the brethren.
Where was I? Yeah these guys decided that owning a piece of the political leadership in every country they operated in would be a good way to go. They tipped a few mill into Dubya’s campaign right at the start when options were cheap, and as a result were handsomely rewarded with contracts to run the birth control /sex education type classes, that were just bullshit xtian superstition disguised as education, that Dubya was pushing instead of useful info, and condoms etc. After the amerika success they did the same in Oz and tipped a couple of mil into deputy John Howard’s back pocket, and grabbed big subsidies from the education department for the ‘church schools’ they had begun to build to keep their kids away from normal humans.
When they came here they blew it badly and ended up implicating the then tory leader Don Brash in a scandal that meant not only did he refuse any more contact with or money from them, he got hammered by the Labour mob in the election.
It was only in the ensuing scandal when the big bossfella flew to NZ to try and sort it out, that the truth about interference in oz & amerika surfaced.
I reckon Palin, and just about all the rest of the right wing xtian god botherers are of that mould. Their religion isn’t their guiding principle it is just a means to an end, a tool for getting power and material wealth.
Of course that will be the case for the Taliban if they get back in and hold power long enough to become corrupted, but the two years or whatever they did spend in the box seat wasn’t sufficient time for too much of that sort of carry-on, so Zaeef was proabably one of many straight arrows in a bent man’s game.
Sure Zaeef probably has any number of beliefs that we would find objectionable, but for my money that is true of a huge chunk of humanity; what separates Zaeef and a zillion other superstitious people of different ilks, from the evil religious assholes is the fact they don’t spend all their days trying to make everyone else believe the same as them.
I dunno about other peeps, but I have spent a measurable amount of my life chasing bible bashers away from my front door.
Living in the west we tend to forget, or maybe not even know in the first place, is that most religions don’t go around ‘spreading the word’ trying to force their beliefs on the rest of us. A bit more of that restraint from the xtians & I may take em off the list of being the first people up against yonder wall come the revolution.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 2 2011 2:08 utc | 5
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