General Aminullah Amarkhail recently stepped down as commander of the Eastern Border Police. His has been a remarkable journey.
The year was 1979.
The year was 1979. In the household of Colonel Ghulam Hazrat Khan his 16-year-old son Aminullah was leaving for military school. His weeping mother called out blessings as he passed under the Holy Quran. Aminullah’s father who saw him off at the bus station, clasped him to his bosom one last time, and said: “Son, may you be a faithful and patriotic person or I will not be able to forgive you.”
Now 50 years old General Aminullah has given the best years of his life to his country. During the government of Nur Mohammad Taraki, the first communist prime minister, he clandestinely assisted General Abdul Rahim Wardak, ex-foreign minister. When the mujahedin took over power he chose not to join any political party. Like the mujahids he had walked from Paktia to Logar, Jalalabad and Kabul. The civil war broke his heart. “I told my friends we have not done jihad to make people leave their homes.”
His friends did not forget his contribution to jihad but Aminullah kept his distance from the government of the time
In 2002, when a transition government was installed in the country, Aminullah felt a new phase was beginning. He chose the Ministry of Interior Affairs as an ideal place to start working in. He applied for a job with Ali Ahmad Jalali, then minister for interior affairs. He was promptly appointed deputy minister of internal affairs.
“I was deputy minister for two and a half years. Thereafter I was employed as chief commander of Kabul airport. The airport was in a very bad condition. I arrested 130 narcotics smugglers,” the fearless general recalls. “I even arrested a diplomat who was smuggling heroin in his bag.”
Rocket attacks
Under General Aminullah the destroyed airport was put back together. He raised money from business. Careful to be scrupulously honest he kept a record of all the money collected and spent. “I was keeping all records of my performance, but I was dismissed from the job because I arrested a powerful commander on smuggling. I prepared the file on him. Then I found myself accused. In the end I got letters of acquittal from three courts with the help of God,” the devout man says.
Dismissed from the airport he found himself appointed a consultant in the Ministry of Education in 2005. But he was shifted as chief commander of Eastern Border Police.
As commander he was close to people, he says. “I have walked to every police post on the border. I have shared many of my soldiers’ problems. They would say please tell the government not to give us food but give us bullets to defend our country against Pakistan.”
General Aminullah was an eyewitness of the Pakistani rocket attacks. “Pakistan had fired 1,600 rockets when I was on the job,” he calculates. He describes the Punjabi-dominated Pakistani military as “cruel”. “They were firing on Goshta area last winter. They martyred many Afghan soldiers. I went there and defeated their post. They also fired on Gordish military checkpost located in Nuristan, where 23 soldiers were martyred. I cried a lot and swore to revenge the young soldiers.” Two months later he retook the post of Gordish.
The general says he submitted many plans for the defence of the border to higher authorities. In return he was shifted from the east zone. General Aminullah decided to lay down his arms. Grateful tribal leaders felicitated him with a turban and title of ‘hero’.
