DEHRADUN: On the night of August 15, a day after Mazar-i-Sharif -- Afghanistan’s economic centre and the city that employed Hariom Singh -- fell to the insurgents, the Taliban came calling at Singh’s doorstep.
“Five armed men barged into our compound. They were speaking in Pashto and were accompanied by a man who was translating their message in English. They told us that their fight was against the country’s government, not its people, and that we should continue working,” Singh, who works as a security coordinator for an American company, told TOI over phone on Wednesday.
“They said that the previous Taliban was corrupt, but they want peace and normalcy in the country and need our support for that,” said Singh, who is among an estimated 100 Indians stranded in the capital of Afghanistan’s Balkh Province.
The Taliban men told Singh and his colleagues — five of whom were Indians — that they wanted to “change the image of Afghanistan and bring stability in the country by throwing out Americans.”
“They were surveying all buildings in the area. They said it was necessary since they were going to form the government. They stayed for 15 minutes and spoke nicely to us, but those were the longest 15 minutes of our lives. We were terrified. Fortunately, nothing bad happened,” said Singh, son of an ex-Armyman in Dehradun.
The sense of fear and foreboding, however, lingers. Sunil Kumar, a former Army personnel who works as a security guard in Mazar city, said, “Many Indians, including ex-servicemen, are employed here as security guards and in administrative jobs. Many have resigned and are desperate to go home. But domestic flights are not operational from Mazar city to Kabul.” Mazar city is 400 km from the country’s capital by road.
Kumar said their worries have multiplied after the Northern Alliance, an anti-Taliban coalition under Afghanistan’s vice president Amrullah Saleh and Ahmad Massoud in Panjshir valley, announced that it would stand up to the Taliban.
“Saleh’s forces have recaptured Charikar district (Parwan province) which has the only road that connects Kabul with Mazar. A war-like situation could arise in the area,” said Kumar, adding that they had locked themselves indoors to stay safe.
“The new Afghanistan might be very different from the one I have known,” said Kumar, who moved to the country in 2009 from Dehradun.
Back home, in India, families of those stranded have appealed to the Indian government to bring its citizens back. Narayan Dutt, Singh’s brother, said, “We want the government to bring back our families. There is no safety or stability there.”
Estimates suggest that at least 300 people from Uttarakhand are stranded in Afghanistan. While chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami assured families that those stranded would be brought back, additional chief secretary of Uttarakhand, Anand Bardhan, said they were collating data on those stuck in Afghanistan and had flagged their concern to the Centre.
“We have asked families to provide details of their kin who want to return from Afghanistan to their respective district magistrates or police. They can also dial the state government’s helpline number 122,” Bardhan told TOI.
(Some names have been changed to protect identity.)
