Open letter to the Intellectuals of the World

Babar's tomb

we were invited to Babour's tomb. Babour was the founder of the Mogul empire which ruled India from the 16th century till the 18th though the dynasty was kept as a figure head up until the Mutiny in 1857).

The tomb is really an extended garden. It has been rehabilitated a fair amount since out last visit a couple of years ago. The palace was closed at the time we went there but it has been restored and is open to the public on occasion. From the outside the palace was a rather modest building, though his main palace was in India proper apparently. The tomb is quite small and tastefully done in what I judged to be white marble. He certainly did not give the impression of being extravagant. One imagines a serious man who would have preferred to rule his empire from horseback.  I was happy to have along the two Sabiras--on the left a future high school exchange student and on the right 'our' Sabira, the pre-med student. (Here we are in the restaurant at the park.)

I had an nice conversation with our hosts. One, Mahmood Hakimi, was a newspaper editor who had been imprisoned for about 6 months before the Taliban were overthrown. We found ourselves in great agreement till economics came up.

It seemed to come into the conversation by my talking. He asked me about democracy and I said that it might be too early to introduce it in the countryside where the literacy rate is so low. I suggested that in Western countries democratic rights spread gradually from urban elites to the rest of the country. He said that I sounded like a communist.

As it turns out this was not necessarily a criticism from his point of view. For one thing, the communists were pretty good and keeping order and protecting the urban elites (like my newspaper editor friend, well, like all my friends in Kabul). For another, my friend turned out to be a great proponent of the planned economy.

He said that capitalism might be alright for a country that is already rich like the US but that in a country that is as poor as Afghanistan it was not fair. He gave the example of 10 taxi drivers put out of business by a rich man that buys a bus. I countered that the people riding the bus are saving money that can be spent on other goods and services, the provision of which, the 10 unemployed taxi drivers might eventually be employed. I also started in with the example of the horse and buggy makers displaced by the automobile in the first place but my friend was adamant about making a larger point that went on for some time without definite conclusion. (I thing the most direct answer to his argument would have been to ask why not replace the taxis with mule carts which would require ten times as much labor again to provide the same amount of transportation service)

In any case, our host, an older student at Kateeb named Asif Razi, soon produced several copies of a short letter which I quickly gathered had been the real reason for the invitation.

I have asked him to send me the document with an English translation which I will later post. Here is a rough and ready translation of his statement:

"The world is growing more interconnected. Therefore, what happens in one part of the globe cannot be kept separate from the rest of the globe, whether for good or ill.

Intellectuals are citizens of this globalizing world. Intellectuals are against ignorance and ignorance is a danger to intellectuals. What is dangerous to them is dangerous to the world.

People living around the Durand line are living in ignorance. They are ignorant because in a globalizing world they are killing their fellow human beings without due process.

Then you, intellectuals of the world, what do you intend to do? Since Afghanistan's intellectuals are in the first line facing this danger, what will you intellectuals of the world do to support us in our struggle?"

I answered by asking if he knew George Orwell. He said that he did, of course.

I said that Orwell once remarked that there are some ideas which are so obviously absurd that they could only be believed by intellectuals. The great danger in our world today comes from the barbarians in his country and the intellectuals in ours, who believe in the absurd notion that they can negotiate with barbarians.