Written by: Rashid Yusofzai
Afghan politicians (!) in late September, a shameful meeting was held in Islamabad, Pakistan. These ridiculed figures of the political arena returned happily to the Western countries as if they had returned victorious from a hot battlefield. But this time, their spoils were not tanks, cannons, or other important ammunition, but thirteen thousand rupees and a pair of Pakistani clothes!
This was the true “price” for those who sold their faith in exchange for the honor of their homeland, territorial integrity, national sovereignty, conscience, and dignity, at the price of one-fourth of the monthly salary of an ordinary and weak Afghan laborer in Pakistan. They fabricated reasons for Pakistan’s aggression on Afghan soil with thirteen thousand rupees and a pair of clothes, calling the bombing necessary and a kind of reform.
When thirteen thousand rupees were put into the pockets of the participants after the Islamabad meeting, each one of them might have been as proud as if they had found their lost item after a four-year delay. They might have also said to each other, “We’ve lost our homeland, but thank Allah our clothes are new after a delay!”
The irony and mockery of this situation is that these people call themselves representatives of the nation and boasted about deals over the country with Pakistan’s security agencies at the meeting, while the Afghan nation recognizes them as political lobbyists and mercenaries in exchange for thirteen thousand rupees. For the opponents of the Afghan government, the country’s values are just a slogan, and national interests are subject to the size of their pockets. The more personal gain they have, the more they sacrifice national interests.
The irony isn’t that they are patriots, the irony is that they still consider themselves political figures and sympathizers of the country! The Afghan people recognize these faces; they are the ones who prostrate in gratitude at the bombing of foreigners. For the past few days, they have been analyzing as if there is good behind the bombing of Afghanistan, they interpret patriotism and nationalism, and the bombing is seen as an instrument of prosperity. Well, if someone else’s embassy gives them another ten thousand, these same politicians will show a different face and support them.
Pakistan is a debtor country, with each citizen owing 318,252 rupees, and the country’s economic recession is growing; the free advice is not to trust and invest in such shameful faces who are always ready for any kind of deal with anyone. Today, they are finding reasons to legitimize Pakistan’s bombing, and tomorrow, for a few rupees, they will be chanting death slogans against Pakistan again from another country. The support of thirteen thousand rupees is such an ineffective, then!
The Afghan nation will also keep it in their memory, that a few shameful activists and politicians (!) supported bombing of their land, disregarded Muslim and then Afghan blood, independence, territorial integrity, and national interests, and sold their patriotism for worthless rupees. The thirteen thousand have the same patriotism. The opponents consider themselves successful now, but history will record them as the failed mercenaries who sold the country for thirteen thousand rupees and a pair of clothes.
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