British Presence Mars Independence Celebration

Compared with previous years, the celebration was muted. Trees were draped in the red, green, and black of the Afghan flag, and lights strung across the roads lit up the evening.



Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province, was preparing to commemorate the end of the Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919, which finally drove the British out of this proud, mountainous land. Known as Afghan Independence Day, it is a major event on the national calendar.



But there was little in the way of festivities. After a two-hour event at the local stadium marked by a few pro forma speeches and some sports exhibitions, Lashkar Gah's residents went back to their daily routine.



A suicide bomb outside the capital took four lives, but that too has become a routine event for this battle-scarred province.



"In previous years, everyone would prepare for many days in advance," said one Helmand resident. "They were happy and excited. But now the presence of the British forces in the town has turned people against the celebration. It leaves a bitter taste in the mouth."



The British-led International Security Assistance Force, ISAF, took over command from United States-led Coalition forces in Helmand last summer. The local Provincial Reconstruction Team, PRT, is now under British control, its mission to help to rebuild the scarred and battered region.



But Helmand has become the centre of the Taleban insurgency, and many local residents see the British more as a danger than a help. Battles and bombs have taught them to fear and resent the foreign presence, while a stalled reconstruction effort has left them angry and cynical.



The provincial government did its best to put a good face on the day, but the speeches given at the Karzai Stadium in the heart of Lashkar Gah would not be reassuring to a foreigner looking for signs that the British were winning the public relations war.



Helmand's governor, Asadullah Wafa, gave a speech to a crowd of some 700 people, including government officials, tribal leaders, popular sportsmen and journalists, in which he recalled the proud fighting traditions of the Afghan people.



"Afghans will never tolerate invaders," he said. "Defend your nation, and keep your country the way your grandfathers did."



After the governor spoke, a number of government officials also addressed the crowd, urging people to cooperate in improving security and reconstructing the province.



Hajji Hayatullah, a local expert in political affairs, told IWPR that today's British presence differed fundamentally from that of the last century.



"Invasion is when a country comes in and does not respect your culture and your flag," he said. "Thieves come over the wall - guests come through the door."



The British, he insisted, were guests, invited by the international community as part of the Bonn Agreement of late 2001.



The nature of their mission was also wholly different from the Great Game played out in the 19th century between Britain and Russia.



"They are here to reconstruct Afghanistan," he said.



But Hayatullah’s was a lone voice.



In a country where calling someone "son of an Angrez" – an Englishman - can start a fistfight, the presence of a British garrison in town, no matter what its name or stated purpose, reopens old wounds.



"If we flip through the pages of our history, the Afghans only did things that could be written in gold," said Alishah Mazlumyar, a tribal leader from Nadali district." The Afghans expelled the invaders, but they did not reap the harvest. That blood, those victims, those graveyards were all in vain."



Mazlumyar delivered a brief summary of the popular version of history. King Amanullah Khan, known as the father of Afghan independence, summoned the nation to fight, and the army attacked the British, still reeling from the First World War. The attacks ended with the Treaty of Rawalpindi, which established Afghan independence and effectively ended the colonial era.



Amanullah then set about instituting reforms in his fiercely conservative nation. Among the most famous, and most scandalous, was his public unveiling of his wife, Queen Soraya. Women, decreed the king, were no longer to be hidden from view.



This shocked and alienated his countrymen, and Amanullah was soon toppled by an upstart from the north. Habibullah Kalakani, known as Bache-ye Saqao, the “son of a water-carrier”, ruled for only nine months. Many believe that he was supported by the British as revenge for their defeat. This is just more ammunition for those who see the British as Afghanistan's quintessential enemy.



Mazlumyar argues that the seeds of Afghanistan's present sorrows were sown in that turbulent period. "The present disaster has its roots in 1919, the day we expelled the British," he said. "We obtained our freedom, but the price in blood was very high."



The British should not have come back, he insisted. Given the long and violent history between the two countries, which spanned nearly a century and left many bitter memories on both sides, they would have been well advised to keep clear of Afghanistan.



"I wish other countries were here instead of the British," he said. "The people of Helmand, Uruzgan and Kandahar have not yet forgotten those bloody battles. And the British, who lost 17,000 of their people in 1842 on the road from Kabul to Jalalabad, may still have prejudice against the Afghans. There must still be some British who recall how the ground was stained red with their blood, and remember the bodies of the fallen, slashed by swords, and the burned corpses of their dead."



Mazlumyar then turned to the Battle of Maiwand in 1880, in which the Afghans virtually annihilated the British, in a clash that was disastrous for both sides. He mentioned General Ayub Khan, who commanded the British, and the indomitable Malalai, a woman who rallied the Afghan troops when they were all but defeated, using her veil as a standard and crying, at least in popular legend, “Young love, if you do not fall in the battle of Maiwind, by God someone is saving you as a token of shame.”



Yaqub Khan, a shopkeeper who had an Afghan flag prominently displayed outside his store in honour of Independence Day, was glum.



"I am not happy about this day," he said. "We should celebrate when there are no more Brits on our soil. We see them now going around Helmand as if they inherited this land from their fathers. They still hate us. You can see it in those soldiers out on the roads who yell at us, using swearwords. They will never help Afghanistan; they just want revenge."



Sayed Qayum, a newly-minted member of the Afghan National Army with just one day's service under his belt, displayed proper fighting spirit. But his staunchly anti-British sentiments were somewhat misplaced considering that the British and his government are on the same side.



"I will stand with the government as long as there is one single enemy in Afghanistan," he blustered. "If he is my father, if he is a Taleb, if anyone tries to hurt even one plant of this soil, I will not let him. There is no difference to me between the Angrez and the Taleban; both of them are enemies of Afghanistan. I will fight them until my last breath, I will not let any enemy of Afghanistan remain alive."



Mohammad Akbar, a white-bearded elder, was more moderate.



"When the Angrez came to Afghanistan, they wanted to conquer us," he said. "But Afghans cannot be conquered. They showed their strength and expelled the invaders. Now the British are back to reconstruct Afghanistan. But if we see they have the same ideas as before, we will answer them in the same way we did 88 years ago."



Aziz Ahmad Tassal is an IWPR staff reporter in Helmand.