Author: Anna M. M. Vetticad
Publication: India Today
Date: October 22, 2001
Introduction: Suspicion, poverty,
ill-health and lack of work dog Afghan asylum seekers in India. With war
breaking out in Afghanistan, it could only get worse.
It's easy to spot him. On a dusty
footpath at one of the less fashionable addresses in south Delhi, Mohammed
Zaher Omar, 56, is busy repairing bicycles. In his neatly pressed grey
trousers and faded but spotless tee, he doesn't look the part. But he plays
it anyway. Watching this man seated amidst the debris of his life, it's
still not hard to believe that he is an engineer, that he was once an army
officer in Afghanistan. "We don't know what you call his rank in India,
but he was a three-star officer, one notch below general," his friend translates
from Persian to broken English. In a whisper he adds, "Sometimes when I
visit him, he is crying to himself."
These are the images we do not see.
Far removed from the armed terrorists and bearded fanatics, these are tragic
visuals of war-torn Afghanistan that are not beamed into our homes. If
Omar weeps in private, it is for his past and the country he fled in 1991,
"afraid of the missiles landing all around". But freedom spent in poverty
is not a pleasant thing. Denied a work permit in India, the family tried
moving to Australia. His wife died in 1993, the children left in 1994.
Omar has not yet got a visa to join them. "I'm old and alone. I earn Rs
50-70 a day. I can't live like this," he murmurs, a sad widower in a single
room with his thoughts and some photographs for company
Like Omar, most Afghan refugees
in India inhabit an unhappy middle ground. They may have got away from
the hell that was once home, but India is a wearying purgatory. There are
11,684 Afghans registered with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
here. About 30,000 names could be going unrecorded. Most are based in Delhi.
Earlier, their visas were routinely renewed. That changed in recent years.
The Home Ministry has now promised visa extensions on a yearly basis. But
refugees still don't get work permits. Worse, after global budget cuts,
the UNHCR stopped their subsistence allowance in 1994. Now the dole goes
only to "extremely vulnerable individuals".
As frightening as the penury is
the feeling of being a marked people. "The word Afghan has become synonymous
with terrorist now. After the New York crashes, I fear it might be even
worse for Afghans in the US than in India," laments Augustine P. Mahiga,
UNHCR's India chief. Adds Ghulam M. Azamy, an accountant in a government
department during president M. Najibullah's regime: "With the ongoing attacks
on Afghanistan, we are afraid-for relatives there and in the US who might
suffer in this conflict, for ourselves because the average Indian thinks
that Osama bin Laden is an Afghan." In a sparsely furnished room in Delhi's
Savitri Nagar, he is at a meeting of the Association of Afghan Refugees
in Malviya Nagar and Savitri Nagar. The group nods as a member recalls
that during the Kargil war and Kandahar hijacking, "some people spat at
us on the streets. Don't they know that every Afghan is not a Talib? Why
else would we run away from them?"
But run away to what? Stepping gingerly
through the galis of a crowded mohalla in the city, one wonders. In a tiny
barsati flat in the area, Mohammad Awaz clutches his tazbe in silent prayer
right through an hour-long interview. Once he was the lord of a transport
company that commanded over 200 trucks in Afghanistan. Son Javed, 15, drifts
back to memories of flying kites as a carefree seven-year-old on the terrace
of their spacious Kabul home. Another son was captured by the Taliban when
he returned to Kabul to sell some property in 1996. Nothing was heard of
him for a year till he called one day to say he had escaped to Pakistan.
They have not had a telephone conversation since. " I long to hear my son's
voice," says Awaz's wife Ozara. "But STD calls are costly. So we write
to each other and hope that one day he will comeback."
If her agony is this separation,
for Azamy's wife Anisa, 44, there is the trauma of inactivity. This former
teacher was one of many women forced to quit their jobs by the Taliban.
In India, handicapped by a poor knowledge of English, she broods at home
while daughters Asina, 19, and Frishta, 18, work. Anisa, like many Afghan
women here, has high blood pressure. "I am suffering," she says, "because
my girls are forced to work when they should be studying."
There is hope in this house though.
In today's Afghanistan, women invite death by appearing in public sans
a burqa or being seen with a man who's not a relative. Here in India, a
male photographer shoots their pictures without inviting a comment. Only
Anisa covers her head. The daughters even ditch their dupattas, optimism
does not carry a price tag: Frishta wants to be a doctor: her sister Behishta,
17, an air hostess. Pointing to a dilapidated metal frame, Anisa says,
"That's my husband's bed. See, we don't even have Rs 100 to repair it."
They can find it in them to chuckle.
A one-and-a-half hour's drive away,
there is no laughter in Manohar Singh's home. The former cloth merchant
has not worked since he broke his leg in an accident five years ago. The
rent for his one-room hovel has been unpaid for six months. The family
would have starved without the langar at the nearby gurdwara. At 28, wife
Har Kaur's gaunt frame seems to belong to a gawky teenager. Why doesn't
she attend the needlework classes held by a local charitable group? A tired
smile, then the reply: "My eyes are so weak, I can't see a needle and thread.
There's no money for spectacles." In 1992, Singh left a promising business
in battle-scarred Kabul. With security came poverty. He too is an Afghan
refugee.
Who would have guessed? Most Indians
are not aware that 74 per cent of Afghan refugees here are Hindus and Sikhs
of Indian descent. The ethnic Afghan Muslims with their distinctive features
find it hard to integrate with the local populace. So, many dream of a
better life in the West. Now of course they are in danger of becoming the
diplomatic pariahs of the world. In that sense, the Hindus and Sikhs are
fortunate. Blending with the locals is easy since they speak Hindi or Punjabi.
Most retain family ties here. But Hardit Singh, 54, who was born in Kabul,
says, "Life was terrible when I came to India in 1992. For years, memories
of Afghanistan would haunt me at night."
Haunting. It's a word these people
know well. In an unpublicised stretch of Lutyens' Delhi, Najibullah's wife
Fatana and daughters Helay and Hosay lead a quiet life. They decline an
interview request. Can the comfort of the posh quarters ever wipe away
memories of the late ruler's hanging by the Taliban? Outside the UNHCR
office, Najibullah's bodyguard Ayatollah camps in a cramped roadside tent.
Shunned by governments the world over despite repeated representations
from the UNHCR, he has finally managed a visa for Norway. Now he refuses
to budge till an airline ticket is delivered to him. What nightmares drive
him to such stubbornness? He must have been handsome once, this well-built
man with a scraggy white beard and bald head. "Please no photograph," he
pleads. "I say no to one journalist, so he take from far. If I die, his
responsibility. "
Back in Savitri Nagar, the Afghan
Association meeting is still on. "Do the women in your families belong
to this group?" I ask. A rush of murmurs runs through the gathering of
a dozen or so men and boys. They smile, some titter at the question. A
voice is raised in gentle admonition: "Of course the women are members.
We are not the Taliban."
