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CounterPunch
August
13 / 19, 2002
Return
to Afghanistan
At the al-Qa'ida Cemetery, People Kiss
the Earth Above the Honoured Dead
by Robert Fisk
The
Independent
They are honoured as saints. Beneath the grey
mounds of dust and dried mud lie the "martyrs" of al-Qa'ida.
Here, among these 150 graves, lie the
three men who held out to the end in the Mirweis hospital, shooting
at the Americans and their Afghan allies until they died amid
sewage and their own excrement. Other earth hides the bodies
of the followers of Osama bin Laden who fought at Kandahar airport
in the last battle before the fall of the Taliban.
They are Arabs and Pakistanis and Chechens
and Kazakhs and Kashmiris and all--if you believe the propaganda--are
hated and loathed by the native Pashtun population of Kandahar.
Not true. For while the US special forces
cruise the streets of this brooding, hot city in their 4x4s,
the people of Kandahar visit this bleak graveyard with the reverence
of worshippers. They tend the graves in their hundreds. On Fridays,
they come in their thousands, travelling hundreds of miles.
They bring their sick and dying. For
word has it that a visit to the graveyard of Mr bin Laden's dead
will cure disease and pestilence. As if kneeling at the graves
of saints, old women gently wash the baked-mud sepulchres, kissing
the dust upon them, looking up in prayer to the spindly flags
which snap in the dust storms. The Kandahar Kubrestan--the place
of graves--is a political as well as a religious lesson for all
who come here.
"Foreigners are advised to stay
away from the al-Qa'ida graveyard," a Western aid worker
announces with ceremony. "You may be in danger there."
But when I visited the last resting place of Mr bin Laden's men,
there was only the fine, gritty winds of sand to fear. It crept
into my eyes, my nose, my mouth, my ears. Many of the men around
the graves kept their scarves around their faces, dark eyes staring
at the foreigner in their midst. The local authorities have put
two Afghan soldiers on duty to control the crowds, but all they
do is watch the visitors as they put bowls of salt on the graves
and take pieces of mud from the graves to touch with their tongues.
An old man from Helmand was there. He
had put stones and salt and mud on the tombs--he shook hands
with me with salt on his fingers--and he had come because he
was sick. "I have pain in my knee and I have polio and I
heard that if I came here I would be cured," he said. "I
put salt and grain on the graves. Later I collect the grain and
eat the salt, and take the mud from the grave home." Khurda,
the Pashtuns call this, bringing salt to the tombs of saints.
A second, older man had travelled from
Uruzgan with his mother. "My mother had leg and back pains
and I brought her to Kandahar so she could see the doctors. But
when I heard the stories about these martyrs' graves--and that
they might cure her--I also brought my mother here. She is happier
here than going to the doctor's." I watched his elderly
mother on her knees, scraping dust from the mud tombs, praying
and crying.
The two soldiers at the graveyard appear
to have succumbed to the same visionary trance as the worshippers.
"I've seen for myself people who get healed here,"
a young, unbearded man with a Kalashnikov rifle on his shoulder
told me with a smile. "It's true. People get well after
visiting the graves. I've seen deaf men who could hear again
and I've seen the dumb speak. They were cured."
This is not the time--and definitely
not the place--to contradict such conviction. The sand blasts
over this graveyard with a ruthlessness worthy of Osama bin Laden.
The city cemetery is much larger--there are square miles of tribal
graveyards within the perimeter. But it is the al-Qa'ida dead
who attract most mourners. Attracted by what, the foreigner wonders?
By the rumours and legend of healing? By the idea that these
men resisted the foreigners to the end, preferred to die rather
than surrender, that the non-Afghan "martyrs" had fought
like Afghans?
Perhaps it's as well the American special
forces boys don't drop by for a visit. They might see something
that would--and should--worry them.
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