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(AMAN) KHAN Interviewed By The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project AMANULLA (AMAN) KHAN Interviewed by: Daniel F. Whitman Initial interview date: September 29, 2007 Copyright 2020 ADST INTERVIEW th Q: Here we are in McLean Gardens, Washington, DC. It is the 29 ​ of September 2007 ​ and Dan Whitman is interviewing Aman Khan, who was once a Foreign Service National at the U.S. embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan. We are very honored to have this interview, because it is the first ever in our series with a local employee. We are way overdue in beginning this aspect of our research. Also present is Dr. Affiz (A). [Later in the interview we will be joined by Tom (T) (p. 103) and a voice (V)(p. 96).] Mr. Khan, I’d like to start by asking you to give just a brief overview from the very beginning. Let’s start with your birth, but in a paragraph, may I know the basics, a synopsis of your curriculum vitae? th KHAN: To start with my date of birth, I was born on December 30 ,​ 1939. If you asked ​ me as to what prompted me to join the American embassy, I would briefly state that I had just returned from the UK (the United Kingdom), where I had done my degree in international relations. I came back and I came to know that there was this position as the political advisor at the American embassy. Somebody had read it, and I was told that I really perfectly fit it as per the requirements, because my qualifications were absolutely suitable to the job. My political science background---I had my political science degree with honors, and then this diploma in international relations from the UK---was making me a very good candidate. There were about 250 candidates, and I was that of ____________; there were more than 200 candidates. A proper interview was conducted, and I---it turned out that I was the one who then the American embassy selected. Q: I am going to be like an American journalist and interrupt. I’d like to know--- KHAN: Go ahead. Q:---what took you to the UK? I’d like to know earlier, earlier; I’d like to know the type of ---I’d like to know when you were ten years old and what took you eventually. I don’t know which university in the UK. I want to go back further. How did you become a person interested in political science? 1 KHAN: When you say about ten years, can we go back a few years, to when I was seven. Do you want me to? Q: We can go back to the year zero, if you’re willing. KHAN: I’m not only willing, I would like you to know. Q: I would like to know your first memory. KHAN: I have a very interesting trajectory in my upbringing, in my life. It was in 1947 when I was only about---maybe less than six years old. We convoyed with the Muslims, hiking towards the Pakistani border. It had been planned by the local extremist Hindus that that convoy was to be attacked. It only consisted of women and children. When the convoy was attacked, I was with two of my sisters in that bus. I was sitting in the lap of my mother, and I can never forget that incident when our bus was attacked. Physically my mother and I were pushed out of the bus. I don’t know what happened to my two other sisters; two of them were martyred, one was saved (she was young). I was just clinging to my mother when these attackers came with the swords in their hands. They were just attacking me and my mother. In an effort to save me, she just came in front and you know they hit her here [indicates place] on the forefront and--- Q: ---she stepped in front of you--- KHAN: Yes, in front of me. There was a canal nearby, and it was the month of December, and it was cold, very, very cold. People were jumping into the canal and would cross [the canal], because these extremists, these would-be killers, these assassins were not on the other side of the canal. Maybe they had not planned that. My mother started bleeding profusely, and this is a scene that I can never forget in my life. It still makes me cry when it comes. It is almost sixty years to the day when this tragic incident took place. She was pushing me towards the canal, and I was clinging to her. I wouldn’t leave her just like that, and she kept telling me, “Go and jump into the canal!” When I would not leave her, she pushed me into the canal. There were some women in the canal, who could have taken me to the other side of the canal. I could see her lying down, maybe from too much bleeding and I could look back and see her falling. Again, I still hear that wise voice. She was shouting, “Go! Go! Go! Aman, go! Don’t worry about me! Don’t worry about me! I can go!” The woman out there who knew me and knew the family had also jumped into the canal, so she took hold of me and she took me to the other side of the canal. I wouldn’t like to use the word holocaust, the way the massacres took place, the way innocent women and children were killed. I could see the dead bodies and the people crying with their wounds, mostly women and children. I am told there was a Brigadier in the Indian Army, whose name was Mohammad Usman, who, when he had heard what had happened, had come to [the scene, and he tried to save the rest of the people who were able to manage. Q: Could you spell the name of the Brigadier? 2 KHAN: U-S-M-A-N. This name I came to know through my elder brother who had already--- Q: Again, for the benefit of people not familiar with your history, can you tell us: you were in a convoy leaving India--- KHAN: ---leaving Jammu, a part of Kashmir. Q: Can you spell it? KHAN: J-A-M-M-U. Q: Jammu in Kashmir KHAN: ---in Kashmir--- Q: ---which had been thought of as India, before--- KHAN: Yes. The maharajah had already declared Kashmir’s succession to the Indian union, against the wishes of the people of Jammu and Kashmir state, because ninety percent of the population of the state of Jammu and Kashmir were Muslims. In Jammu itself, in town, the Muslims were in the minority, and the local organization convinced the leaders of the city, the Muslim leaders, that we want to take you out of Jammu and take you to Pakistan. So they brought the entire population of Muslims to the parade ground. They had lined up lorries and buses and trucks. They decided to first take the women and children and leave the men behind, and that was the convoy that I was in with my mother. Q: Tell me---the Partition [between India and Pakistan] was when? KHAN: The partition took place on August 14, 1947. Q: So the convoy--- KHAN: ---it must have been four months after. Q: People living in Kashmir, which by accident of history was India, were the people seeking to go to Pakistan. KHAN: Yes. Q: Was the Indian Army attacking them as they left? 3 KHAN: Some of the Indian Army were spectators when the convoys were being attacked. Those people were hidden in the bushes; this side was the canal. On one side, the convoy was stopped. Q: Was the canal a border? KHAN: No. It was a local canal. The border between Pakistan and then Kashmir was, I believe, about less than 30 miles---very close. Q: Now, what happened to your mother on that day? KHAN: I can assume that she died. Q: You never saw her again? KHAN: I did not, I did not. The army came and put the people who were safe in a camp; that camp was without any tents or anything on their bodies or on their heads. They were in the cold under the open skies. It was seventeen days, and the people were kept outside in the very severe cold month of November in Kashmir. Q: Who was holding the camp? Who was organizing the camp? KHAN: It was just the local army, who had camped themselves in the houses of the village, and there was a [base] there— Q: We are still in Kashmir; you’re still not over the border there? KHAN: We are still very much in Kashmir. Q: So you are six years old; this is a terrible memory and perhaps your first memory. KHAN: First memory, and that is one thing that I think will never go away from me. One thing I can say: the raid was something that took me away from religion. When I was crying like hell as a child, I would ask my father and my God what sin had my mother committed? Why was she killed? This kind of question would come to my mind as a kid, as a child. Where are you, God? Why was she killed? Why am I alive? Why wasn’t I killed? So these things kept building up in my mind. I still think about this as the reason.
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