The Significance of Taking Kabul

Nov. 13, 2001 -- Embraced by the magnificent Hindu Kush mountain range, blessed by a river and gurgling streams, the capital of Afghanistan has been known to turn conquerors into poets and beasts — and shades in between.

Administering his vast kingdom from the hot, dusty plains of what is now India, the founder of the Mughal dynasty, Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur, wrote songs of praise to Kabul, even as ambition drove him further south.

Brave British soldiers met their gruesome ends on the ramparts of the Bala Hissar fortress in northern Kabul and corpses of communist apparatchiks have hung from public posts in grisly warnings of what the city has in store for traitors.

With a glorious, ancient legacy that lives to this day, it's little wonder that Kabul, for most Afghans and for the rest of the world, is the heart of Afghanistan and taking Kabul is symbolically, if not geo-politically, tantamount to taking Afghanistan.

"Kabul is the most important place in Afghanistan," said Thomas Goutierre, dean of International Studies and Programs at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and a former resident of Kabul. "Without Kabul, Afghans are like orphans."

Now that the Northern Alliance has captured the heart of Afghanistan in a surprisingly uncontested operation, experts are in some disagreement over what the taking of Kabul really means for the future of the country, but they all agree that the psychological implications of its capture are enormous.

"Controlling Kabul does not necessarily mean controlling the rest of Afghanistan, but it is a symbol of the legitimacy of the claim to rule Afghanistan," said Barnett Rubin, director of the Center on International Cooperation at New York University.

Melting Pot of Afghanistan

Dating back to approximately 2000 B.C. as an oasis settlement on the Kabul River for caravan routes, Kabul crops up in the writings of ancient scholars and globetrotters such as Marco Polo and is widely believed to have hosted the armies of Alexander the Great of Macedonia, the Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan and Muslim warrior kings such as Mohammed Ghazni and Emperor Babur.

But for Afghans living in the country and in exile, Kabul is a living symbol of the multi-ethnic aspirations of a very diverse nation.

"Kabul is the melting pot of Afghanistan," said Ishaq Nadiri, an economics professor at New York University who was born in Kabul and lived there for 19 years before coming to the United States in 1956. "Kabul integrates the ethnic divisions like no other Afghan city does."

According to Goutierre, the well-known "Kabuli culture" emerged from a cosmopolitan ethos that forced residents of the city to simply "forget their background."

But while much has been said about the ethnic divisions that have carved fault lines across Afghanistan, some experts marvel at the underlining agreement about the legitimacy of Afghanistan as a state among the many ethnic groups that call the largely untamed Central Asian region their home.

"Despite the bitter differences between political and ethnic factions, there are no significant separatist or irredentist movements in Afghanistan," said Sumantra Bose, a professor of politics at the London School of Economics. "The legitimacy of Afghanistan as a nation state is not contested and this essentially is the importance of Kabul: It is the symbolic center of authority in Afghanistan."

A Hip Destination

Strategically located west of the famous Khyber Pass that has, for centuries, given conquerors access to the fertile Indian plains, Kabul was visited by a diversity of traders, adventurers and spies. Many of them set up camp in the city, in the process imbuing it with a hodgepodge of cultural influences and contributing toward the creation of a major metropolis of the ancient world famed for its gardens, bazaars, mosques and magnificent palaces.

Today, older residents of Kabul fondly remember the days before the 1979 Soviet invasion, the civil war that followed and then the Taliban administration that have combined to reduce much of the city to rubble.

"Kabul was, first and foremost, a beautiful city with beautiful buildings, beautiful gardens and beautiful palaces," said Nadiri of the Kabul of his childhood. "The population comprised of all ethnic groups. There were Persians, Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks and a large number of Hazaras, and no one cared who you were."

Growing up in the 1940s, under the reign of King Zahir Shah, Nadiri remembers Kabul as a thriving Third World city benefiting from social reform programs passed by the Afghan parliament and financed with Soviet assistance. Home to some of the region's most highly regarded educational institutions, Kabulis boasted high literacy rates while cinemas and the once famous Kabul National Museum nurtured a thriving artistic community.

During the 1960s, Kabul with its curious blend of U.S. and Soviet influences, became a popular hippy destination spot for Westerners making the "alternate pilgrimage" from Katmandu in Nepal to the Afghan capital, where a bottle of Coke or a pinch of hashish were as easily available as tea from a steaming samovar.

City of Sin

But cosmopolitanism came to a screeching halt in 1979, when the Soviet occupation disrupted the natural flow of a modernizing nation. The real devastation however, came after the Soviets withdrew in 1989, when rival mujahideen factions devastated Kabul, literally flattening most of the city in a desperate bid to control the capital.

And though the Taliban capture of Kabul in 1996 put an end to the lawlessness of the previous years, the hard-line Islamic regime battered the cosmopolitan base of Kabuli culture. "The Taliban were basically against freedom, whichever way you cut it," said Nadir. "They were even against Islamic freedom. They obviously had some grudge against Kabul."

Spawned by religious schools or madrassas along the Pakistani border and comprised of largely rural, uneducated Pashtun tribesmen, Kabul was the worst hit by the Taliban's powerful Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.

"For the Taliban, Kabul was the city of sin," said Bose. "They showed their paranoia by imposing the harshest strictures on Kabul. It was not just a matter of taking Kabul, but a way to ensure that Kabul behaved as they wanted it to behave."

Time for a New Look

Although the southern Afghan city of Khandahar remained their stronghold, the Taliban retained Kabul as their capital mainly, experts believe, for its symbolic legacy.

But under the Taliban, Kabul was a capital largely in name. A Khandahari, the Taliban's reclusive leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, is believed to have visited Kabul not more than twice since its seizure in 1996.

According to Goutierre, the Taliban was never comfortable with the urbanism of Kabul. "Omar is rural fellow. And while he's certainly clever, his lifestyle is very unsophisticated. While Omar understood the importance of conquering the city, he certainly did not understand the concept of a capital city as a focus for nation-building."

Aid workers and visitors to Kabul testify to the decay and complete collapse of infrastructure during the Taliban years.

But all, they say, is not lost. "Of course the city can be rebuilt," said Nadiri. "After all, we Afghans have seen problems like this before. We are a survivor country.

While it's probably too late to save the ancient fortresses, public baths, palaces and gardens of the old city, former Kabulis say a revamp is all they're looking for. -->