Stress In The City

I've found myself in a very unusual situation this evening, of trying to write a blog while being overtaken by the very events I'm writing about, and it's proving hard to keep up. If we, in what I'll loosely term the western democracies, think we have  stress  in our lives, we should be thankful we don't live in one of the world's crisis hot spots - Myanmar, Somalia, Syria, Yemen... or Afghanistan, scene of the latest unfolding humanitarian disaster. 

One of Donald Trump's many crass and insular decisions (as he looked to boost his chances of getting elected for a second term as the worst president of the USA), was his commitment to pull all American forces out of Afghanistan by mid-2021, a policy that his successor has been unwilling to reverse. We are seeing the consequences of that policy for the Afghan people right now, as the Taliban roll over town after town and province after province and the citizens from those areas flee in their thousands to the capital Kabul. Imagine the stress in that city right now and the absolute stomach-churning dread of what is going to befall millions of decent, ordinary Afghans, particularly women and girls, as the oppression of a hard-line fundamentalist Islamic rule takes hold once again. The US (and Britain in its wake) knew what the consequences would be. They just didn't expect them to come so swiftly. Only a month ago Biden was ridiculing the notion that the Taliban could ever come to power again.  Even this morning the White House was predicting Kabul might not fall for weeks yet. Right now it looks like it will succumb before the week-end is done.

Of course, Afghanistan is already an Islamic republic, but for two decades it has been a relatively enlightened one in which democratic principles have been respected and the hard-won rights of women to education and employment have been upheld, ever since the allies agreed (in the aftermath of 9/11) to wage war on the Taliban and the militant fundamental groups like Al Qaeda that the Taliban gave protection to. 

The US-led intervention was called 'Operation Enduring Freedom'. Ironically, when the allies moved into Afghanistan in 2001, the Taliban offered an unconditional surrender which the Americans rejected. Since then, the war on the one hand and the reconstruction/humanitarian effort on the other has cost many allied soldiers' lives and trillions of dollars and pounds. But the political will in the West was not there to sustain the gains, the Taliban continued to recruit and grow - current strength approximately 60,000 full-time fighters- funded by the heroin trade which they control (Afghanistan is the world's leading producer of opium), and now they've taken their chance as soon as they saw the allied commitment falter, effectively rendering the last twenty years in vain. Everything is about to change for the worse, the liberalisation and democratic advances are bound to to be rolled back and freedom will once more prove illusory. 

Consequently, millions of Afghans feel betrayed by the West, and who can blame them? They have become refugees in their own county, homeless, hungry, helpless and hopeless about the future.

Some, who have served the allied cause, will be evacuated for their own safety, along with most foreign nationals who are scrambling to quit the country before the Taliban regime is fully installed. Many will probably try to flee even beyond Kabul if it falls, across the border into Pakistan. There is a concern that female MPs, women's rights activists and professional women (doctors, teachers, lawyers, artists) will be targeted, possibly murdered, that schooling and university education for girls will be curtailed, that the progressive reforms of two decades will be swiftly reversed, for the Taliban despise educated girls and emancipated women.

I can anticipate hand-wringing from our leaders in the West, expressions of surprise that it has all ended like this, calls on the soon-to-be new Taliban government to respect the rights of women - and it will all be to no avail. I think there will be widespread horror and moral indignation from humanitarian organisations and from ordinary people, and a deep sadness and shock that Afghanistan has been abandoned in this way. But I bet the abiding concern of the governments in London and Washington will not be for the people of Afghanistan so much as a worry that the fundamentalist regime, when re-established  in Kabul, will once again be a safe haven and training ground for groups such as Al Qaeda in their holy war against the West.

I find it difficult to craft good poetry to short order, so this latest is a work-in-progress from a heavy heart (with a few nuanced changes thanks to input from my fellow poets in Blackpool & Fylde Stanza group). I nearly called it A Second Slavery Beckons and may not be complete....but then nor is the momentous event it seeks to recognise, as the Taliban poise to turn the clock back on twenty years of fragile but joyous emancipation.

Afghanistan (15th August 2021)

Afghanistan, the sun sets on you.

Dread spreads along your streets

and fear fills many female hearts,

for a second slavery beckons.

Husbands and fathers take care.

The well-trodden path to water*

is hard on wives and daughters,

for a second slavery beckons.

Homes stand deserted, hope fades,

thousands seek to flee their fate.

Lamp-posts wait on human fruit,

for a second slavery beckons.

Hide your baubles and your books,

your certificates and song-sheets,

dissemble maidens, if you can,

for a second slavery beckons.

The flowering of your womanhood

will wither soon, narcotic poppies

prove the only acceptable bloom,

for a second slavery beckons.

Can there be too high a price to pay

for trying to make a better world? 

Tonight in Kabul, the reckoning,

for a second slavery beckons.

*The literal meaning of Sharia is: the clear, well-trodden path to water.

As a musical bonus (before women are prohibited from singing in public in Afghanistan), here's Aryana Sayeed performing: Za Spina Jeli Yama (Just click on the title of the song to activate the link.)

Thanks for reading. Never undervalue our freedoms, S ;-)

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Journeys To War

It feels almost perverse to be blogging about journeys during our second stretch of lockdown, but given the time of the season I thought I'd write something about the enormous change of horizons that war brought to the lives of those who signed up to serve, especially in the two world wars.

For thousands of young men from hill farms, mining villages, small towns, many of whom had never been - and never looked to go in their lives - further than occasional visits to the nearest big city or seaside resort, finding themselves not only away from home for an extended period but on trains and boats to France, Italy, north Africa, Afghanistan, the Far East was a transformative experience (even leaving aside the gruesome business of the fighting they were engaged in). Such journeys to war at a minimum broadened their horizons beyond all expectations; in many cases they also proved to be intense and rapid voyages from youth to manhood.

It is hard to imagine what those journeys must have been like. We are truly global now (thanks in no small measure, ironically, to the great wars of the 20th century). Apart from the natural apprehension about having to fight and kill other human beings, those soldiers of World War I found themselves heading off mostly in ignorance about the places they were going to or what they were likely to find there, truly a voyage into the unknown.

Many from the north of England who signed up to fight in the Great War found themselves passing through Preston railway station. Sadly, the "war to end all wars" proved not to be the case and the pattern of mass troop migrations was repeated a quarter of a century later.

Preston Railway Station 1940

As part of the programme of events to commemorate the centenary of the Great War, the waiting room at Preston station that had served as the Free Buffet between 1915 and 1919 was redecorated with art works on the walls telling the story of how in 1915 the Mayoress of Preston and a volunteer force of women that eventually numbered four hundred set up a free canteen service at the station for the troops who were passing through. The very least they could do was offer the soldiers a cup of tea and some jam sandwiches, a small but comforting gesture to those who were going off to risk their lives. On the first day, they served 386 men. By 1917 they were providing tea and sandwiches for an average of 3,250 men every day. The women worked in 12 hour shifts and the Free Buffet was open non-stop around the clock for the best part of four years.

I found the messages on the waiting-room wall very poignant, especially the one that reads: "...I am away to god knows where, only got warned this morning." 

Platform waiting room commemorating its WWI Free Buffet

Those who were lucky enough to return from foreign parts were usually reluctant, understandably, to talk about the harsh realities of the fighting they had been engaged in, but for many it became over time almost a pleasure to recount to those who'd never left the village or the county their tales of foreign customs, foods and some of the non-combat related sights they had been exposed to through their journeys to war. 

Today's poem was mostly written in situ at Preston railway station a few years ago while I was waiting for a train to London, in company with some soldiers on their way to Camp Bastion, one dark and drizzly morning. The unsettling event happened just as described in the poem. Although British troops were stood down from combat duty in Afghanistan at the end of 2014, some five hundred  remain there still in an advisory and training capacity.

Preston Railway Station 2014
Early morning Preston station

deep diesel purr vibrates

through every fixture,

would shake the fittings loose

if not for the mixture of rust

and oily soot of grimier times.

A constant mesmerising roar

rumbles forebodings of war

and soldiers sitting in the canteen

decked out 'in memory of 1915'

contemplate what awaits them,

six months duty in Afghanistan.

The tart, distorted tannoy spits

garbled soundbites of information

over bemused and bleary voyagers

chewing dispirited

their curls of sandwiches

washed down with watery coffee

when suddenly a piercing klaxon

blasts everyone out of the fug

of reverie or resignation

and all displays read:

Leave the station immediately

by your nearest exit.

Heaving kitbags to shoulders

they swear but trudge compliant

to outface dawn's drizzling cold

for the duration of a security sweep,

their part in history's fourth repeat*

placed temporarily on hold.

* British troops in Afghanistan go back a long way; two Anglo-Afghan wars in the 19th century and a third at the end of WWI, plus involvement in WWII and then the most recent years-long campaign against the Taliban insurgency.

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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