Clandestine Motives…
He has to.
He has to start over; as someone approaching fifty with no wife and no children, he has to do it.
He must.
He used to view immigrants with contempt, not grasping why they must leave.
He knows now.
Nothing was going the way Ahmed envisioned.
1986 and the Mujahideen, with help from the Americans, which the Soviets all knew, soon turned the tide of the war, coupled with a new Gorbachev administration seeking openness and transparency in the Soviet regime, known globally as glasnost and perestroika. Furthermore, times were tough in the Soviet Union, and the country suffered greatly from rationing, events from Chernobyl, unrest in plenty of Soviet republics, and this general mood that too many things were unraveling at the seams. Ahmed didn't know what awaited the Soviet Union beyond the horizon, but if anything, he didn't know if he would stick around. He felt old, exhausted from persuading Afghans who reluctantly chose to see things from his perspective, never truly willingly, so he had to decide what he does now.
1986 will become 1987, further entrenching the Soviets in this military quagmire, this economic disaster that saps and drains the economy with every year of occupying aggression. Afghanistan was feeling like a lost cause to Ahmed, a disaster, and not worth any further mental effort other than seeing how the war would conclude. People didn't want the Soviets, they didn't want communism, they didn't want ideological change, and they indeed fought for Islamic visibility. He had to reconsider options after the Soviet Union, picking somewhere that could be a place for himself, someone with a firm background in government, yet a government rotting apart. He knew of North Korea; he also knew of South Korea, and while he was researching at the main library in Kabul, he discovered all the information, however fleeting, about South Korea. There.
He didn't throw a dart at the dartboard so much as to prepare himself mentally to emigrate there, just in case of Soviet collapse, an ominous storm on the horizon. He could truly feel it. He would have to start at the bottom, collecting garbage to recycle or working at a restaurant. Still, after his paperwork comes through, after he masters the Korean language better, he can take more considerable risks with his employment, moving into government, administration, something that embodies his mindset, perhaps education, perhaps something along those lines.
He has to. He has to start over; as someone approaching fifty with no wife and no children, he has to do it. He must. He used to view immigrants with contempt, not grasping why they must leave. He knows now.
They just had to because things had grown so bad, dire, and unworkable in their home nation. Ahmed then wore two masks. On the outside, he still appeared to push the Soviet propaganda agenda, yet on the inside, he taught himself Korean, studied South Korea extensively, and prepared himself to flee when the moment came.
Preparation was essential and paramount.
