Kabul Diaries-III

With a little assistance from Ambassador Jayanta Prasad, I get a mail from Karzai’s office that the president is not giving any interviews till the results. However, as proof of his friendship for India, the President promises he would speak first to Times Now. That’s flattering, but we won’t be there till results. Now my next target is Tajik leader Dr Abdullah Abdullah, the contestant second in-reckoning for the job. The India educated Abdullah is running strong, though suspected to be American backed. The plan seems to be to keep Karzai on tenterhooks, if not to outright defeat him. After all what would be the Great Game if everyone played straight. (It comes true with Abdullah withdrawing from the race in the second face-off).

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Ashraf takes us to Abdullah’s election office. We are asked to follow a car. It takes us to a dense old city residential neighbourhood, and then we are asked to follow another one. At any other place this security drill would have been so out of place, but not when it’s Kabul. Finally, we stop at the entrance of an alley that looks like a cul-de-sac. We are at an Iron Gate and Ali, Abdullah’s assistant, guides us in. In yet another proof of friendship, Indians are not frisked. Abdullah, who has studied in Delhi, greets us in the lawn surrounded by a courtyard that connects to the building. The drawing room is small but tastefully done, even posh, with Afghan paintings and décor. Of course Abdullah himself is sophistication personified. What he says can be heard here.

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The voting day arrives. I am at a polling booth inside Tajavur Sultan High School in one of the suburbs. Our car is checked three times – almost at every other turn – by Afghan police. Scene inside the booth just like any in India. A live is arranged and a Jordanian team is handling the logistics. In the midst of the five minute narration on air, I hear a loud boom at some distance followed by rat-tat-tat of gunfire and smoke. I call up J P Singh, the friendly first secretary at Indian embassy, to inquire if it was a case of bombing on election day. He is yet to receive intelligence, but says it’s likely.

***

The onion pakodas at Singh’s residence made by Hazara maids are as heavenly as the ones I have eaten at the ghats of Saryu in Ayodhya. But I get a much bigger catch here. The deputy chief of Afghan intelligence, Abdullah Laghmani is invited by Singh for a private meet. He obliges with a bite that Pakistan is interfering in Afghan internal affairs. My day - in fact - the whole trip is made with this news flash. Laghmani is killed in a suicide bombing just a month later in his home province of Laghman, the assassination attributed to the Pakistan backed Haqqani network.

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On the last day there is no work. I ask Ashraf to take me around town. The rich neighbourhood of drug lords is for all to see. Each house is a fortress with all imaginable luxuries inside. In one such we go in. There are five SUVs, a pool, and most luxurious fittings. On a hill on the outskirts is a sun-set point. I go there. An Afghan cop is playing flute. Guess what, its O’ Mere Dil Ke Chain! See some kids flying kites. Try one. I become the Kite Runner of Kabul. A bunch of kids plays on top of a Taliban relic, a tank left behind on the vantage when the allied forces drove in.

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