Independence Day

Dripping weapons – all manner of knives, guns, grenades and things that looked like sci-fi cattle prods – the American gate guard stood firm. His ward, Hamid Karzai, would arrive momentarily. I was an unannounced nuisance, maybe worse. “You got no pass,” he said, “and that’s that.” Then, for further effect, he waxed poetic: “No pass, no way, no need to stay.”

“Come on,” I said. “We’re paid from the same U.S. taxes. I’ve been in this same stadium a hundred times. I first came here for Independence Day 31 years ago. Anyway, I’m too old to be a terrorist.” And then, not to be out-versified, “It’s no sin. Let me in.”

The guard – an ex-Special Forces type contracted in Fort Worth, Texas, for $144,000 per annum – had his Quiet Menace bit down pat. The sunglasses stayed on. The smile stayed off. The semi-automatic assault rifle lowered ever so slowly. He had an Afghan president to protect – no easy task. Hence, with good reason, his final couplet: “Yo, bro. The answer’s No.”

Round One to the Lone Star State. Poetry wasn’t getting me, in Texan parlance, “from Fort Worth to Dallas.” So I walked to the other gate, the one guarded by Afghans, and mused en route on how much had happened since Aug. 19, 1972, my first Independence Day in Kabul. Back then, King Mohammed Zahir had been on the throne for 39 years. He seemed immune to coup or revolution. I, a young diplomat, felt similarly secure.

I took for granted my official pass, front-row seat, and brand new embassy camera. Those were the days: Long lens zapped Zahir in Rolls-Royce.

Blame that photograph, currently on my cyber-desktop, for luring me – altogether unauthorized – back to Ghazi Stadium this past Tuesday. Nineteen seventy-two had marked the king’s last Independence Day in power. Less than a year later, he’d gone into exile and Afghanistan had begun to disintegrate. Ghazi means “holy combatant.” The next three decades had foregrounded combat – some of it arguably holy, most merely horrific.

Now I meant to see for myself how the current U.S.-backed government of President Karzai would handle Independence Day. Only problem: My passport was stuck in the red tape of visa extension. No passport meant no application for an Independence Day pass. And no pass, everyone assured me, meant no chance of getting in. “No exceptions,” I was told. “Don’t even try.”

Blame the photograph … but also credit the give-it-a-shot unruliness that Afghanistan evokes in me. Maybe here’s why I love this place: It makes me feel like a kid again. Hence my shrugging off the SpecFor heavy – who was, despite histrionics, just doing his job – and my heading instead toward his Afghan counterparts. They had responsibility for the far gate. We got to talking. One Afghan guard came from Kunduz, the northern province where I’d based my fieldwork in the mid-’70s. We talked some more and tried out names: “Do you know so-and-so?” It took several minutes but finally – bingo – the necessary connection: I had known his mother’s father’s brother, and that man, the guard remembered, had once spoken of me. And so (what could be more natural?) we kept on talking as

I was escorted to quite a good seat inside the stadium – not as good as what the diplomats got but sufficiently close to Karzai so that if I’d had a pistol in my unfrisked pocket…

My ridiculous, adolescent caper speaks to a serious, full-grown concern: security. Early and often, this column has emphasized the primacy of physical security in the grand enterprise of Afghan reconstruction. Democracy, women’s issues, narcotics control, even economic renewal – none of these can advance among Afghans without a sense that tomorrow will find them alive to continue what they begin today.

Primary among Afghans is President Karzai, on whom the United States has placed all its bets and whom we guard to the tune of several million dollars per annum. He’s a fine man, and it’s money well spent. But bucks alone, as my mischief demonstrates, can’t alter culture. And even without elderly pranksters, Karzai lives at great risk. He barely escaped assassination a year ago in downtown Kandahar, his supposed base of support. His brother’s compound in Kandahar was ripped apart this past Tuesday – Independence Day 2003 – by an explosion. Predictably and perhaps truly, the Karzais claim that it was not an attack but a household accident.

Was it bomb or blunder? Either way, Hamid Karzai faces two main security threats. One comes from his own Pashtun people, especially those in four southeastern provinces, who feel they’ve been shortchanged in the new regime. Accustomed to running Afghanistan, the Pashtuns aren’t having it all their way this time. Many regard Karzai as an ethnic turncoat. The greatest challenges come from the borderline with Pakistan. Here dissident Pashtuns have made common cause with Taliban and al-Qaida remnants. Security in this area is no better now, maybe worse, than a year ago.

Karzai’s second threat comes from the non-Pashtun, northern alliance forces of his own defense minister, the grandiloquently titled “Field Marshal” Mohammed Fahim. Karzai occupies the presidential palace, but Fahim’s folks run the street rackets in Kabul. They symbolize Karzai’s inability to control warlords, of whom Fahim is militarily the strongest. And they themselves emphasize symbolism, controlling – until now – most of the “national” ceremonies and celebrations.

But take heart, Hamid. If your latest Independence Day ceremony is any indication, you may be getting a grip on both these threats. Your stadium symbolism this past Tuesday was impressive in two respects.

First, the groups which passed in review were mostly Pashtun. They came from precisely the four southeastern provinces – Kunar, Ningarhar, Paktia and Paktika – where anti-Karzai sentiment is strongest. They came, unabashedly, in rural Pashtun costume, danced the famous Pashtun quick-step, and waved antique Pashtun swords. It was a show of Pashtun presence and support for Karzai, the most dramatic of this post-Taliban era. Better yet, these Pashtun marchers seemed more integrative than aggressive. Together with portraits of Karzai and King Amanullah (the progressive monarch who won full independence from the British on this day in 1919), they held aloft the likeness of Ahmad Shah Masood, patron martyr of the heretofore mistrusted northern alliance.

Second, this ceremony was hosted not by northern-run Defense Ministry but, as it should be, by the ethnically more neutral Ministry of Information and Culture. Field Marshal Fahim got his turn at the mike, hogged it for twice as long as Karzai, but received less than half the applause.

Let me not get carried away.

Symbols are only symbols, especially when enclosed within a (supposedly) secure stadium. It’s easy to make too much of this past Tuesday’s new symbolism. Certainly those Pashtun marchers were paid to come. Possibly there was some coercion as well.

Possibly Information and Culture is less loyal to Karzai – and more in thrall to Fahim – than I realize. And let’s remember that good King Amanullah, the man who gained independence, lost his throne to violent dissidents 10 years later.

Even so, I was heartened. At least symbolically, this Independence Day struck a better balance between contending forces. With that balance will come better security. With security, all things are possible.

Now if only someone will guard against geriatric expatriate gatecrashers…

Dr. Whitney Azoy, a cultural anthropologist and former U.S. diplomat in Kabul, has worked for 30 years with Afghanistan and the Muslim world. The second edition of Dr. Azoy’s study, “Buzkashi: Game and Power in Afghanistan,” is available from Waveland Press.