A Different Perspective -- World Conspiracies

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Sunday, October 05, 09:43:57am EDT [ Login ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, [2] ]

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Date Posted: 09:44:36 10/03/01 Wed
Author: Don Barone
Subject: A Different Perspective

Hi All:

Here is an e-mail I received courtesy of another board I am on. I felt that I should share it here lest we forget that we all are indeed "humans" !

"
Dear All

I have copied into this mail the text of an article written by a dear and wise friend, Vivek Ananda, from Pretoria, South Africa.

He would like me to share it with others. Please also share as you wish.
If you would like to correspond with Vivek, please do so. His email address
is viveka@worldonline.co.za.

Love

Alta

---------------------------------------------------------------

Since the World Trade Centre tragedy, I have been receiving e-mails from many parts of the world. They have helped me to focus my mind on what is happening on this planet. CNN notwithstanding, I realise that there is another story behind the headlines.

As much as I am appalled by the ruthless terrorist attack on the WTC, I am fearful of the consequences of the American reaction, as react they must. I have been aware since they seized power in the aftermath of the war against
the Russians, that the Taliban are unpopular rulers. When Bin Laden left Sudan and sought asylum in Afghanistan, I was fearful that the combination of Islamic fundamentalism and Bin Laden's ferocious anti-western sentiments could lead to disaster.

Thanks to Providence, I had the good fortune to have spent several of my formative years in London. That wonderful city is probably the best listening post for events around the world, largely because of the extensive coverage of international affairs by the British media and the constant
coming and going of visitors of diverse nationalities, a legacy of Britain's former empire. In the years that I lived there, I was acutely aware of the Russian rape of Afghanistan and of the stark horror of a poverty-stricken
people living in a harsh, uncompromising land. The shocking things that were happening to Afghan children, women and old people while their young men hid in the hills to strike at Russian troops, appalled me. After each mujahedin strike or ambush, the Russians reacted with unbridled fury - usually directed at women children and old people, since they were the only available targets for bored young Russian soldiers far from home in an hostile environment.

The e-mails I have been receiving evoked memories of the political turmoil in Afghanistan more than twenty years ago, the later invasion of that country by the Russians, and of the great sadness I felt at the time for ordinary Afghan people. Many of those e-mails made certain things clearer in my mind, especially as I had the feeling, since that fateful morning when the airliners slammed into the WTC towers, that mankind has now reached the apogee of the End Times (the Kali Yuga of the Hindus) and was being put to
its final test before the Great Day of Purification or Cleansing that the Hopi Indians have been talking about for decades. It also has, I suspect, a bearing on the final date of September 17, 2001 on the calendar stone within
the Great Pyramid. As so many people have said since September 11, the world as we knew it ended on that day. Perhaps they are right in more ways than one. I suspect that that date marks the beginning of this planet's shift, to be completed within the next twenty-five years or so, to a higher vibratory frequency or time-space continuum in preparation for the 1000-year Golden Age that will follow these End Times.

If you'll allow me, I'd like to tell you a story. I think it's important that I do, for it will help you to understand why I, a Hindu, should feel so heartbroken at the prospect of an imminent American military adventure in
Afghanistan.

More than two decades ago, when I was stationed at the South African Embassy in London as a young diplomat, among my duties was to take care of the Day Desk function. This meant that I had to receive and interview casual callers
at the embassy, mostly South Africans with the not unusual problems of lost passports, travellers' cheques or air tickets, expired visas and evaporated funds. Often there were women trying to get maintenance payments for children from their ex-husbands in South Africa, or Britons (mostly
geriatric) trying to trace friends and family after 20 or 30 years. Most common were British and other foreigners with trade queries. These I simply referred to our Trade Counsellor. Occasionally though, there were unusual
requests. Most of these were from Africans, and almost without exception they wanted our help to stage a coup against an unpopular ruler, or help to rid themselves of alien domination. If I were to write about the present-day
heads of state who sent their emissaries to the South African apartheid government, there would be more than a red face or two (only in a manner of speaking, naturally) in countries to the north of our borders. One day, I
received a most unusual visitor but he was not African.

I remember the day clearly, for I had noted the events in my diary in fine detail. It was early spring and as beautiful a day as it could be in London at that time of the year. To enjoy the pale sunshine and the crocuses and
tulips pushing up through the patches of thawing snow under the trees, I had walked to work from my house in Knightsbridge for the first time since the summer had ended, through Belgravia and Marble Arch across Green Park past Buckingham Palace and down Pall Mall to Trafalgar Square. By the time I got to my office in South Africa House, the dreary months of winter had become a distant memory and I was not as homesick for South Africa as I had been for months. Because I had walked to work, I had arrived in my office somewhat later than usual.

The reception desk in the foyer had called my secretary before I had arrived at the embassy (since 1994, the South African High Commission). As I entered my office, she told me a visitor was waiting for me in the interview room
off the foyer downstairs. He had arrived unannounced, but she had given him an appointment, as my diary was clear for the morning. Since it was almost ten o'clock, she had ordered tea. I was concerned that my visitor had been
waiting almost an hour. I hurried downstairs.

Although he was sitting when I entered the interview room, I could see that my visitor was a huge man. He towered above me when he rose to greet me, though I am by no means a small man. He was in his shirtsleeves although there was a slight nip in the air and he hadn't shaved for a few days. He was a strikingly handsome man, with light brown hair and pale blue eyes. I thought he was European although his skin was slightly tanned. My overall impression was that he appeared a bit dishevelled and rather tired. As
though reading my thoughts, he apologised for his appearance. He had been travelling for several days, he said, much of it without proper rest or sleep. He had taken a circuitous route from his country to London. He
thanked me for agreeing to see him without a prior appointment and asked how long I could spend with him, as he had several important things to say to me. I told him I had no other appointments that morning and that time was
not an important consideration. Pleasantly surprised to find a South African diplomat of Indian descent attending to him, he told me his tragic story.

He was an Afghan. His name, after all these years, completely escapes me, although I know I would find it if I went through my notes for that period. Although I had made a detailed entry of the meeting in my diary, I had omitted his name for security reasons. Starting his early education in Kandahar and Kabul, he had completed his studies in Russia, with a doctorate in economics from Moscow University. He had worked for several years in Moscow and in various other parts of the then USSR and Western Europe. An accomplished linguist, he was fluent in French, English, Russian and in the Pushtu and Farsi dialects of Afghanistan. Some two or three years before our meeting, he had returned to his country, for word had come of political
unrest there and his foreign-acquired skills were needed. He returned to a country in turmoil, shortly before the first Soviet tanks trundled into his mountainous homeland and before the first Russian bombs started to fall.

Divided as they were at the time by internecine strife, most Afghans were initially taken aback by the arrival of the Soviet military machine. Throughout their long history, they have always rallied against invaders and the Russians were no exception. Resistance groups quickly formed and
scattered into the hills. Formidable fighters throughout their history, the Afghan guerrillas - mujahedin- harassed and ambushed Russian troops incessantly. The Russians were not slow in learning the lessons that were taught to other invaders in the past, from Alexander the Great nearly two
and a half thousand years ago to the British who lost an entire army bar one solitary man in those unforgiving hills in the 19th century. Infuriated, the Russian military machine retaliated ruthlessly, testing Moscow's latest
weapons with reckless abandon. The mujahedin were then poorly armed, mostly with old bolt action rifles of first and second world war vintage. Later they were to use captured Soviet weapons, including tanks, hand held rocket
launchers and automatic assault rifles, to deadly effect. This much we saw on British television, day after day in those early days of the Russian invasion.

My visitor spoke excellent English. He gave me a chilling account of what the Russians were doing to his country and to his people. Except for comparatively large populations in Kabul and Kandahar and a few other sizeable towns, the Afghans were largely rural people living in small villages consisting mostly of tightly knit single family units in each village scattered through the hills and valleys. The Russians were systematically destroying the villages, bombing and strafing them with fighter aircraft and pounding them with their tank-mounted guns. Land mines,
which they seemed to have scattered like confetti, crippled and maimed thousands of men women and children. Old men and children were being slaughtered and women raped by groups of ethnic Soviet soldiers. My visitor described atrocities that were mind-boggling, from old people shot in front
of their families, children skewered on bayonets and pregnant women ripped open to destroy the foetus.

Already living in abject poverty in their remote villages, elderly peasants, women and children cowered while the Russians went on their mindless rampage, raping, killing people and livestock and flattening meagre crops in
an attempt to extract information on the whereabouts of their younger menfolk hiding in the hills, the mujahedin who descended suddenly from their mountain hideouts to ambush and destroy Russian men and machines then melt
away to strike another day.

The Afghans suffered chronic food shortages, a scarcity of basic medicines and medical equipment and an almost total absence of medical care for the victims of the Russian military behemoth. I am not surprised that there are
now some 500 000 young Afghans seriously crippled and handicapped by the Russian onslaught. On British television more than two decades ago, we saw terrible images of little children with their arms and legs and other parts of their anatomy shot away or blown away by bombs, grenades and personnel mines. I'll never forget the haunted eyes of those sadly maimed children.

As he told me these incredibly sad things, my Afghan visitor trembled and choked on his words. He told me that he had two children, a boy and a girl. He had not seen them or his wife for almost three months and did not know, even as he spoke to me, whether they were dead or alive. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he spoke softly. I dared not look into his eyes for fear that I should betray my own feelings. It affected me profoundly; I had never seen
a giant cry before.

He had been chosen in Kabul, because of his qualifications and his knowledge of European languages, to approach western governments on behalf of his country. He had been travelling from country to country on a shoestring,
depending on the goodwill of people he met along the way.
"Why did you come to us?", I asked. "Because your country is anti-communist", he said. "We desperately need your
help. We need medicines, medical equipment, money, arms. Anything you can give us to help drive out the Russians. They have launched a campaign of genocide against Afghanistan. They are murdering my people."

I asked him how he had managed to leave Afghanistan under the noses of the Russian invaders. He declined to comment for fear of implicating those who had helped him along underground routes out of the country. Satisfied from
documentation he carried that he was genuine, I offered him tea and the morning papers while I went upstairs to discuss his request with a senior colleague. My responsibility as officer in charge of Day Desk was to listen to all requests, then decide who was the most appropriate official in one of the several departments of the mission to handle it. I passed the Afghan on to our most senior intelligence official (all friendly governments allow the posting of intelligence officers to diplomatic missions). I never saw him again.

I met the intelligence man a few days later at a cocktail party. He told me, briefly, that he had been able to help our Afghan visitor. I acknowledged the information but never mentioned the subject again, as was expected of me. Once a sensitive matter was out of my hands, the rules of diplomacy dictated that I should not discuss the matter further. On a "need to know" basis, this rule reduces the risk of leaks.

In later years, whenever the news spotlight fell on Afghanistan, my mind went back to that spring day in London, to the tearful Afghan giant in the interview room in South Africa House. That was my first experience at first
hand, as a young diplomat, of the undercurrents of strife among nations. The images of the human tragedy in Afghanistan shown on British television moved me as few things did at the time, further entrenching within my psyche the pacifist and humanitarian attitudes that have shaped my life. I often wondered what had happened to the Afghan and his family, in the turmoil that subsequently raged through his country, and prayed that they had survived.

Once again, Afghanistan has been brought to the brink. Since September 11 and despite CNN, I have tried to remain strictly objective and impartial. Stunned as I still am by the monstrous barbarity of the WTC attack, I am aware that those who perpetrated that crime against the human race are as much part of my humanity as are those souls whose earthly lives ended so suddenly in that unbelievable inferno.

There are all kinds of undercurrents to the WTC attack. There is no absolute proof that Bin Laden was involved. All kinds of rumours and suspicions are floating around. I hold no brief for Bin Laden. To me all terrorists violate
God's purpose. Neither do I care much for religious extremism of any kind, be it Hindu or Buddhist, Christian, Islamic or Zionist, nor do I believe that any one religion is greater than the other, for they all teach the same
rules of human conduct and all lead to the same God.

I do not begrudge the Afghans their Islamic devotion; God knows the average Afghan has precious little else to hold on to other than his religious beliefs. While stationed in Canberra, I often travelled to Sydney on diplomatic business. I stayed at the Sheraton Hotel in Bligh Street whenever I went to that city and by coincidence, when I asked the concierge to order a taxi for me during two different visits, I got the same young Afghan driver. He was as surprised as I was, and on the long drive to the south side of the city over Sydney Harbour bridge on our second meeting, we talked about ourselves, for he did not know there were South Africans of Indian origin and I did not know that there was a large Afghan refugee community in
Sydney.

He had escaped the turmoil in his country, via Pakistan and India, to Australia. He worked part-time as a taxi driver while he studied for an engineering degree at Macquarie University. He lived in a suburb close to an Islamic mosque.
"It is important for me to maintain my religious practices", he said. "Otherwise, here in Australia, so far from home, I could easily forget that I am an Afghan with a duty to my country." Jalal's dream was to return to Afghanistan when he qualified to help rebuild his shattered country. I admired him for that.

Two days later, when he was free, I took him to lunch in a seafood restaurant in an old dockside warehouse at the Rocks in Sydney harbour. Later that afternoon and in the evening he showed me aspects of Sydney I never knew existed. He was easy-going and very courteous, almost as "laid back" as the average Australian and a delightful companion. When a scuffle broke out near us while we were sitting at a pavement pub in Paramatta that evening, he moved protectively close to me until the pub's "heavies"
pacified the warring parties.

I am not comfortable with the Islamic extremism of the Taliban, but I am painfully aware that their extremism does not sit easily with most Afghans either. Jalal was a devout Muslim, but he saw no reason to wear his beliefs on his sleeve. Since they seized power in that tormented country, the Taliban have been far from popular rulers, and they have multiplied the suffering of an already agonised people many times over.

Now, as America prepares to extract vengeance for the World Trade Centre abomination, all I can do is pray that a miracle happens and that the Afghan people do not suffer any more than they have already suffered. What a great
turning point in the history of the human race it would be if, as that compassionate man Mitch Rabin (The Path to Peace) suggests, George Bush offers humanitarian aid to the Afghan people rather than unleash his dogs of war. Would not the world be awed by such an act of compassionate munificence on the part of the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth? All the world loves a gentle giant. I agree with Mr Rabin: the world, including Afghanistan minus, perhaps, the Taliban, will love America. Such a gesture could easily become America's greatest triumph on the stage of the global village it is trying so hard to tell us the world has become.

Perhaps such a miracle, after the great marvel that took place in South Africa in April 1994, is just what is needed for this planet to complete its transition to a higher vibratory state.

Vivek Ananda
Pretoria
South Africa
29 September 2001
viveka@worldonline.co.za

Amen !

Regards
Don Barone

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