"For once, right has prevailed over wrong in Afghanistan. The people we like will rule again, but...," says Rehman, a carpet dealer in New Delhi and an Afghan by origin. The "but" in the sentence says it all. He's happy but hesitant. He's been living in India for the past five years and had fled from his homeland at a time when tension was high and survival tough.

He is relieved but does not quite feel the urge to go back home and settle there once again. "No never, not again! I have been uprooted once and have taken years to settle my family and me here in India. I cannot risk my children's future again," he emphasises.

Most Afghans in India feel so. They do not want to go back to Afghanistan, which is always in the throes of war. Another carpet dealer Ahmad Zia feels the same way. He has come from Kandahar and has been staying in Delhi for the past eight years. "I live here with my wife and ten-year-old son. I was tired of the total anarchy and lawlessness in Afghanistan. What is happening now is partly the fault of Afghanistan's rulers and partly the US'," he says.

He went on to lament the utter neglect that country had undergone at the hands of the ousted Taliban. Zia said even if Osama bin Laden was killed and "buried in the burning hot sand", he would still not return to that land.

Abdullah Alam, however, is an exception. He left Afghanistan three years ago. His aged parents' ire was directed towards the Northern Alliance (NA) who had allegedly raped his sister (she consequently went missing, later suspected of having committed suicide). They left Afghanistan, making India, rather than Pakistan, their destination because his parents did not want him to turn into a militant.

Alam's parents now live in Bulandshahr while he, along with his younger brother, live in old Delhi. "If I get a single chance I would return there and help my friends in retaining Afghanistan. The phirangs (foreigners) have an understandable reason to destroy us. They want autonomy and control of the whole world and whoever opposes them, they kill. That is what my community is facing there. We are fighting for our rights, we aren't asking for anything extraordinary," said a very excited Alam.

"If I did not have to support my parents, I would have gone to Afghanistan at the very first invitation of my leaders (the Taliban) to fight at the fore. Now all I can do here is fight racism in another country and watch my brothers getting massacred by the US bombs. But I'm helpless, I cannot do much," he spoke with remorse.

Given a chance, Alam would spring to go help the "jehadis" fight for his country, but other Afghans in India would prefer remaining where they are, secure in their future, assured of a livelihood and not worried about stepping on a landmine every two minutes. They have taken it in their stride that their country is in shambles and have no hope left for it to return to normalcy. They have run away from terror to a safe society. Their TV is the window to their homeland that now seems alien to most of them now. No, they would not go back there.