SIkander

by M. Salahuddin Khan

  “Yes,” responded Rabia, “the baby’s due in—December? It must be too late for her to go back to her parents until afterward, right?”

  Saleem nodded. Rabia lowered her gaze briefly before lifting her beaming face. “Brother Saleem, I can now read English language newspapers. Would you like me to show you?”

  “It’s uh…late, and I have to do isha and get to sleep. Perhaps in the morning, Rabia?” Saleem rose to excuse himself.

  Rabia waited until he was out of earshot. “Sikander, did you notice Saleem’s behavior?”

  “Hm. He didn’t seem to be his usual self. He’s normally quiet but it seems he’s become more religiously stern. When Ejaz was here last time, he mentioned that Younus Khalis had visited Laghar Juy to offer his encouragement to the mujahideen. Khalis persuaded some of the young men to travel with him for a while, supposedly to give them more guidance in the way of Islam. Saleem and your cousins were among them, but Ejaz did remark how Saleem seems to be more deeply into this stuff than the others.”

  “Well,” replied Rabia, “he seems quiet, that’s all. If he’s following Islam more properly, there’s nothing wrong with that. Maybe we can learn something from him too.”

  “Mmm…maybe.”

  As they were alone in the room, Rabia moved up behind the seated Sikander and put her arms around his neck as she lowered her head next to his. “Have you thought about children, Sikander?” she asked, wearing a broad smile.

  “Mmm? Yes—” he replied, laying a hand on her forearm, “but we have a lot of time. I’ve just turned twenty and you’re still in your teens, so what’s the hurry?”

  “Oh, I’m not saying right now, Sikander. I was just…asking.” Unable to let go of the smile, she added with signature sarcasm, “Come on, let’s go back to the lounge and—join the adults?”

  Sikander smirked. They moved to the lounge.

  “Ah, Sikander, Abdul Latif and I agree that it would be helpful if I send over one or two diesel pumps and a turbo-generator. That way, they’ll be able to create a reservoir and generate electricity for the village,” pronounced Javed, clearly pleased with himself and his small contribution to the mujahideen effort.

  “Will you be able to take such things with you on this trip, brother?” asked Sikander. “It seems like a lot for something unplanned.”

  “True enough, but it could be done the next time we come, if the equipment can be broken down into components so the mules can carry them.”

  “That’s excellent, then,” answered Sikander, impressed with his father’s generosity. Before long the conversation petered out and everyone finally went to bed.

  The following morning, Rabia wanted to show Saleem how much progress she’d made in her English lessons by reading from Dawn. Saleem offered a polite compliment to her for improving herself but reminded her to guard her modesty.

  “Well,” she pouted, mortified. “It’s not like I’m parading the streets.” She was obviously disappointed at Saleem’s less than delighted reaction to her efforts. Sensing where the conversation might be headed, Sikander tried to change its course. “Rabia, why don’t you tell Saleem what you make of life in Peshawar?”

  Sikander’s condescending attempt at intervention annoyed Rabia. Brushing it off, she defiantly resumed her reading, this time reporting that Benazir Bhutto was ahead of the opposition in the running for the November election.

  Women in politics! That’ll get Saleem going! Sikander risked another deflection. He’d patch it up with Rabia later.

  “So how’s Usman doing, Saleem?”

  “Very well, virtually another son to Uncle Abdul Latif, and he still goes on missions. He and I make a good Stinger team. He seems to have fit right into your old shoes, Sikander, though rest assured, we do miss you. But thankfully, we’ve been a lot less busy with Stingers lately.”

  Rabia looked on with a cynical smirk.

  Abdul Latif and Saleem left that morning to ferry their cargo of weapons and supplies across to Afghanistan.

  After the first week of November, word came that Operation Ghashay had been an outstanding success. General Wardak destroyed two bridges over a four-kilometer stretch of the Jalalabad-to-Kabul road, with a large contingent of vehicles and DRA soldiers stuck between them. The mujahideen attacked the troops in force and overwhelmed them, leaving more than five hundred dead and more than two hundred captured, including almost a dozen officers. The DRA lost over forty tanks and APCs, while several other light and heavy weapons were captured along with the prisoners.

  In the middle of the month, Benazir Bhutto won the election and was duly sworn in as prime minister. Life continued largely unchanged until February the following year, when the last of the Soviet forces officially departed. Najibullah remained head of the central government and mujahideen forces continued to hammer away at the DRA, who could no longer rely on Soviet help. Mujahideen progress was much slower than anyone anticipated, however. The DRA seemed to be more effective as a fighting force, perhaps from the knowledge that there was no longer a Russian crutch. They were on their own now.

  Javed’s business met with continuing success, and Sikander’s involvement in Wahid Electric’s operations deepened. Since returning to Pakistan, along with catching up on missed schooling, learning more about the business had been important to him and Javed was happy to indulge his son’s wishes. Sikander had proven leadership potential, and what better than to lead the family’s company? Sikander’s personable nature allowed him to build relationships with the people who worked for his father. One such person was Munir Anwar.

  Munir was a forty-two-year-old Punjabi who had migrated up to Peshawar in the mid 1970s. Having won Javed’s confidence, he was placed in charge of buying, proving himself to be a dedicated and hard-working person. This left Javed to focus on sales to major accounts and another employee, Rehan, to manage the counter staff for walk-in business and small accounts.

  From its warehouses the company distributed motors, pumps, switches, and generators, along with other small electrical items. Wahid Electric obtained locally produced items directly from manufacturers, and imported foreign-made products from larger scale distributors in Singapore or Dubai. Goods were picked up from the port of clearance for overseas items and trucked to the growing number of outlets owned by the company. Contractors, government agencies, and the military were the usual buyers and their purchases generally consisted of no more than one or two items of any given type.

  Javed typically doubled his cost to arrive at a price, giving him fifty percent gross profit, which covered his overhead and returned a decent net profit if volumes could be maintained. With most of his suppliers he had payment terms, and the majority of his business was with cash paying contractors, giving him considerable working capital liquidity.

  Sikander was sharp-witted enough to understand the numbers and the overall business concept but felt weaker in his knowledge of the company’s products. Learning more about them meant spending time with Munir.

  Munir was a portly man who always wore a qamees and shalwar to work. He ate well and it was easier on his waist to be able to loosen or tighten his ezarband as needed. His desk and office were littered with catalogues and he was constantly on the phone negotiating with suppliers over price, hunting down stray shipments, arguing with customs officials, barking at trucking companies, or sorting out space for incoming deliveries. He could do all these things in English, Punjabi, Pashto, and Urdu. Sitting across the desk from Munir and having a conversation with him was like trying to cross a busy highway. Each comment or question had to be delivered or received in between all the other things competing for his attention.

  The answers to Sikander’s questions came back in manageable packets of meaning, interrupted by a phone ringing, the conversation on the phone itself, the resumption of the answer, back to the phone, and so on, until eventually it was all reassembled as best it could be, back in Sikander’s head. Munir tolerated such questions as Sikander was, after all, the own
er’s son and no doubt set to rule the company one day.

  Along with product knowledge, Sikander also formed a better grasp of the purchasing side of the business and felt ready to engage his father more deeply about it. Some of his questions were still naïve but others had merit. Javed had become a more mellow personality since Sikander first left home and was happy to spend the time answering his son, but more than that, Javed enjoyed asking Sikander for his opinion on just about anything.

  Following the Soviet Union’s withdrawal, most of the non-Afghan mujahideen also departed. Most notably, Osama Bin Laden returned to his native Saudi Arabia, though he was frequently in and out of Pakistan.

  In the back rooms of the small house in Peshawar where the Maktab-ul-Khidmat had routinely convened, things had not gone well for Abdullah Azzam. There was increasing acrimony between himself and al-Zawahiri over the matter of the future direction of the Maktab’s resources. Al-Zawahiri argued that with the coming end of the Cold War and America emerging victorious, the new threat to the realization of his vision for a global Islamic state was America itself, hitherto the staunchest ally of the mujahideen. He further argued that if a disorganized band of mujahideen could prevail over a vastly superior foe, it could only have been by the will of Allah, and the same zeal and conviction about ultimate victory was needed in opposing America as it had been with the Soviet Union. Al-Zawahiri’s fiery rhetoric appealed to Bin Laden, despite the latter’s long standing friendship with Azzam.

  On November 24, 1989, while on their way to an evening prayer at the local masjid, Abdullah Azzam and his three sons were killed by anti-personnel mines. Whoever was responsible, al-Zawahiri’s ascendancy with Bin Laden was assured. Having lost its co-founder, Maktab-ul-Khidmat was duly absorbed into a new organization whose aim as al-Zawahiri had articulated, was to establish a single Islamic state across the Muslim world through armed struggle. It was called the Base—in Arabic, “al-Qaeda.”

  Al-Zawahiri’s position seemed vindicated when the United States virtually abandoned Afghanistan as a place no longer worthy of attention or expenditure once the Russians left. The Soviet Union was collapsing; Cold War victory had been achieved, and certainly to several hard-nosed congressmen, a post-war involvement offered no re-election benefit.

  In August 1990, however, a seismic event shook the political globe, with aftershocks that would reverberate for well over a decade. From under the sleeping noses of the world’s most sophisticated intelligence communities, the former U.S. ally against the ayatollahs of Iran, Saddam Hussein of Iraq, chose to lay claim to Kuwait by military force. His troops barreled into the neighboring and largely defenseless country to the great alarm not only of the United States but also of Saudi Arabia, whose oilfields were now within Saddam’s reach.

  Bin Laden immediately launched an appeal to the Saudi royals to allow his recently successful mujahideen to defend Saudi Arabia. Whether through pressure or otherwise, Fahd, the Saudi king, opted for American assistance and dismissed Bin Laden’s appeals. Whatever negative feelings Bin Laden might have had until then toward America for its abandonment of Afghanistan, were now transformed to full-fledged enmity.

  To him, the very idea of the presence of unbeliever soldiers on what he considered Muslim holy land was anathema, and with that presence, a pan-Islamic world state seemed more remote than ever. Bin Laden’s own sensibilities as to the sacredness of Arabian lands might well have been fueled by the historic role played by the family business in maintaining, refurbishing, and expanding the holy places within the cities of Makkah and Medinah. Founded by his father, the company had contracts for these two cities that together were valued at scores of billions of dollars. It was the largest source of the family’s immense wealth, and with it came a deep sense of responsibility for his family’s role as caretakers of the epicenter of Islam. Indeed, in the case of the Ka’aba in Mecca, the deeply cherished time-honored right to safeguard it and its precincts—fought over since pre-Islamic times—had been in the hands of Saudi BinLadin. Whatever the cause, Bin Laden was enraged.

  The Gulf War was quickly prosecuted with Saddam pushed back into Iraq, his gilded cage. But success against Saddam was of minor consequence to Bin Laden. The presence of U.S. troops on Saudi soil made him implacable. He swore to end that presence.

  Following the war, in 1992, Bin Laden’s animosity toward the Americans and the house of Saud was so strong and openly vocal that he was forced to leave Saudi Arabia. At the invitation of Omar al-Bashir’s government in the Sudan, he moved al-Qaeda to that country and began in earnest to set up operations for attacks on U.S. interests until such time as the Americans “pulled out of Muslim holy lands.”

  That year, Afghanistan saw the start of its next period of turmoil. With warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum switching sides to the mujahideen, Najibullah’s government finally fell. Najibullah tried to leave Afghanistan, but upon being blocked he returned, along with his brother, to Kabul, and took refuge in the UN compound.

  Progressively, Afghanistan slid into civil war, as no single power base was strong enough, or well coordinated enough, to form a solid unifying government.

  Abdul Latif now lived the more normal life of a local village elder. He successfully organized the construction of a reservoir upstream of Laghar Juy and set up one of the generators that had been provided by Javed. Wires precariously run over makeshift pylons delivered the electricity generated, enabling many village homes to have electric lighting for the first time. It was finally possible to read comfortably after sunset.

  The civil war tightened its grip on Afghanistan, and with the exception of the far north and the Panjshir Valley—controlled and unified by Ahmed Shah Massoud—the rest of the country had come under the rule of lawless warlords. Resentment at the way in which drugs and the weapons they funded had become the new instruments of warlord power, simmered everywhere. Drugs found their best value in the developed countries of the West, so not surprisingly, many of these countries sought ways in which to stem the trade.

  Among other reactions within Afghanistan, a significant backlash of religiosity began to brew in response to the warlordism, and its first small ripples could be felt in Laghar Juy, even creeping into the family. Abdul Majeed and Saleem had become increasingly radical. Ejaz, Hinna, and Abdul Rahman, who was now married to Sabiha, the niece of Azam of Takhto, were much more mainstream in their outlook—though still by any measure, conservative. Rifts between the family members were apparent but had not yet led to any serious difficulties. An air of cordial tension prevailed.

  Based on the ability to buy products effectively and to supply them reliably, especially in trading with the Pakistan government, Javed managed to continue the steady path of growth of the Wahid Electric Supply Company. It entered the 1990s as a fast-growing, politically well-connected, and financially strong company with offices in Karachi, Lahore, Gujranwala, Rawalpindi, and Quetta, along with its headquarters in Peshawar.

  By 1992, Sikander was a thriving, reasonably educated young executive who, in preparation for taking the helm someday, was becoming more confident in his developing management skills. Rabia had meanwhile become proficient in English and Urdu and liked to chat with her husband in English, very occasionally catching him out with errors. She had become a young Peshawar society woman, though neither she nor Sikander diluted their practice of Islam.

  Jamil was enrolled in the Lahore University of Management Sciences and was working toward an MBA, hoping to apply it to the family business. Sameena had blossomed into a beautiful nineteen-year-old and, having successfully completed her A-Levels, was admitted to an undergraduate program at the London School of Economics to study International Relations and History. All those hours of catching up under Maryam Reza had paid off. She was now also engaged to Wasim, the son of a senior army officer living in Islamabad, with the wedding set for September 1993, following completion of her bachelor’s degree.

  Sikander was nominally the head of human resources and labor relation
s for Wahid Electric. From this position, he and his father felt he would draw useful insight into how the company functioned without risking too much immediate damage from any mistake he might make. In any event, he would not be hiring or firing anyone in management without recourse to his father, so the risks were reasonably well managed. His office was on the mezzanine level of the building and overlooked the warehouse.

  On a routine October morning, Sikander was returning to his office from the material handling area at the back of the warehouse after dealing with a minor labor issue. Having just climbed to the mezzanine level, he was about to pass by one of the guest offices for people visiting from other company locations around the country. No one was visiting that day—Sikander would have known about it—yet he could hear someone using the phone in the office, as its door was very slightly ajar. The voice was Munir’s, and although Sikander had heard it many times before, the tone was unusually subdued on this occasion. Munir seemed to be struggling to sway the person on the other end of the line, but with none of his familiar self-assured and commanding tones. Sikander’s curiosity was aroused.

  “Yes, yes, I’ll get it for you, sir. You don’t have to worry, but please… be patient. It won’t be much longer and you’ll have what you want.”

  The odd nature of the location from which Munir was making or taking the call and the plaintive tone in his voice compelled Sikander to continue listening. Instinctively he held his breath and stood in a relaxed posture overlooking the warehouse floor but close to the part of the guest office that was a solid wall. This would attract the least attention from any passing employee who would simply assume he was looking at floor activity below.

  Munir continued to speak: “…a little more patience and it’ll be done.” His nervous words traveled through the gap in the door. While Sikander listened, the door abruptly closed. Munir clearly wanted privacy and must only now have noticed that it had been slightly ajar. Fortunately, Munir didn’t think to check outside before pushing it closed.