Odia Man Recalls The Road Less Taken, To Afghanistan

Bhubaneswar: Samir Sahoo had no doubts in his mind that the Taliban would once again capture power in Afghanistan. The man from Dhenkanal, Odisha, worked as a purchase officer for Sterling and Wilson Limited, sub-contractors for Shapoorji Pallonji, which had the contract for Kabul Serena Hotel and British Embassy projects, from July 2004 to June 2006.

Looking at scenes of the Taliban seizing Kabul and people trying to flee and falling off planes gives him goosebumps now. “Imagine, if it had happened while I was still there,” he asks. In fact, he was constantly tracking news about his classmate, a journalist who returned from Kabul on Tuesday (Aug 17).

There was fear on Samir’s mind as his flight took off from Delhi for Kabul in July 2004. However, it was too late by then. The choice had been made. Asked if he wanted to join projects in Mauritius or Kabul, he had himself chosen the latter. Why Kabul? He thought that would be adventurous. “Jaha hebo dekha jibo (Will deal with the scenario). Netaji (Subhas Chandra Bose) had been there. Socha mai bhi ho aaun (I thought let me too visit the place),” he told Odisha Bytes.

That the Americans were overseeing security gave him some solace, but only till he reached there. The list of dos and don’ts, rather only don’ts, his colleagues gave him were enough to give him the jitters.

• Don’t appear in shorts or T-shirts on the balcony, let alone roads
• Keep windows covered with thick screens if you don’t want to invite gunshots
• No playing music
• No having food openly during the fasting month of Ramazan

In the first week itself, while walking down the streets, he heard gunshots. But soon it became a daily affair and it was news if there were no gunshots. “Our drivers would say that gunshots were like a sport to them,” Samir said. They would even fire in the air to scare someone who was smoking during Ramazan. And not everyone who seemed trigger-happy was the Taliban.

Some of the labourers and even supervisors who worked on his project, however, were former Taliban members. Whatever money they had amassed had been rendered useless when the then Hamid Karzai government demonetized the afghani in 2002. Being unskilled in anything other than bloodshed, the former Taliban members now worked as labourers. However, despite following a radical ideology, it looked like they had had enough of violence and wanted peace to prevail in the country.

In the early days there, vehicles plied on the streets of Kabul only from 6-8 am and then from 4-6 pm. The streets would be deserted at all other times. Gradually, in 5-6 months’ time, however, things returned to normal. By the time he made a second shorter visit in 2007, things had normalized further. He had actually begun liking the place. But nobody knew how long the peace would last.

The only element of surprise now is the almost bloodless manner in which the Taliban reclaimed the country even as the US forces were pulling out of Afghanistan. Fear was the key, however.

Ousted President Ashraf Ghani fled the country before they captured him. Nobody wanted to take chances, given how the Taliban had executed former Afghan president Dr Najibullah in 1996.

The Taliban’s success in making a comeback, says Samir, has much to do with perceived malpractices in elections that brought Hamid Karzai to power. There was simmering discontent. “Many of those who had fled when the Taliban was in power earlier were now calling the shots in the country. The rulers were seen as extremely corrupt. Also, the country lacked the money to protect itself from the Taliban. It was just a matter of time before the Taliban took over. “I wonder why the US spent so much money and two decades in Afghanistan to return empty-handed,” says Samir, who is now AGM-Purchase at the Salarpuria Group, based in Kolkata.