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Old Friends, New Friends . . .
The Arabs have a saying that adds nuance sometimes missed in the West
to the
concept of loyalty: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." Even
directness on
this scale fails, however, to capture the pragmatism of loyalty as practiced
in Afghanistan. During the civil war, one warlord in the North switched
sides six times. Obviously, this was not considered unseemly conduct;
he now
holds a seat in the provisional government.
A couple of snapshots from Bokhara, in modern Uzbekistan, lend perspective
on
the region. Lt. Col. F.M. Bailey (Mission to Tashkent) arrived shortly
after
the Bolshevik Revolution and found the Muslim majority co-existing serenely
with Hindus and Jews in what remained an oasis of free trade the Soviets
had
not yet overrun. Some of the Jews were quite wealthy, and the Muslims
were
not resentful. They did have one stipulation. They collected the colorful
robes the area was known for with a fabric sash, under which they usually
concealed a revolver or a dagger. Jews and Hindus were allowed to use
only a
cord or string in place of the sash. Trust, like love, should be nurtured.
Colin Thubron (The Lost Heart of Asia) visited Bokhara in the early 1990s,
shortly after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. He discovered an
old
woman whose wealthy father had kept both his wives and all his children
in
comfort at the time of the Revolution. He fought on the side of the
Bolsheviks, but his wealth defined him more than his partisanship and
Stalin
shipped him off to a camp in Siberia. The woman married a Chechen and
after
a year he, too, was sent to Siberia. Neither man was heard of again. The
woman, unwilling to face the pain of waiting for both, divorced her husband.
In her old age, her lament was for the loss of the privilege she had
known as
a girl and for the collapse of communism. Stalin couldn't have been to
blame
for her father and husband, he couldn't have known. Now, under Gorbachev,
inflation was running riot and she had nothing. Communism had meant order
and control. She remained loyal to it.
Ed Fowler
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(c) 2002 Millennium Relief & Development Services, vol. 2 no. 7
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