The Human Tragedy

                                                                

Afghanistan ? Yes. It is not only a geo-political crisis for the neighbours and the international community, but an irreversible, intolerable, and dastardly serious human tragedy for the innocent men, women, boys, girls and children who must continue to live there.

Human beings in Afghanistan, who, for the first time had tasted the grandeur of life in a true liberal democracy of the twenty first century, are suddenly thrown back to the dark ages of medieval times and that too under the barbaric Sharia Law. Under this inhuman dispensation, as declared by one of the Taliban leaders, women are to remain at home and produce children.  They cannot go to schools or colleges. They cannot work in offices. Even those who were working in the Ministry of Women Affairs were locked out and asked to go home. The moral police changed the name of the ministry to Ministry of Prayer and Guidance and Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. According to their dictates women cannot go out alone but only with a male relative and must wear hijab.

Can we imagine the mental torture of boys and girls who were born free during the period of twenty years and who have now become full grown adults ? They would have dreamt of unshackled liberal education in a free world. Worst is the fate of the girls. I shudder to visualise the agony of their collapsed aspirations of doing what they want anywhere in the world.

World is quietly watching the catastrophe since it does not affect the quality of life anywhere else. But do you hear the wailings of these young boys and girls whose fate is sealed in an abyss ? Or is it that we are completely dehumanised ? I am sadly reminded of the poetic sigh of Martin Niemoeller, when Nazis trampled Poland during the 2^nd World war, in his unforgettable words:

“THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists,

and I did not speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.

THEN THEY CAME for the Jews,

and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.

THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists,

and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

THEN THEY CAME FOR THE CATHOLICS,

and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.

THEN THEY CAME for me,

and by that time no one was left to speak up.”

Let us listen to the clarion call of our fellow human beings in Afghanistan and let their ordeal penetrate our hearts deep enough to compel nations across the world to unite and act.