Fidel Castro - revolutionary or scourge of the West?

Perhaps, Pakistan is one of the few countries that completely ignored the death of the great Cuban leader of the 60's and later decades - Fidel Castro. Barring the sole socialist leader of the present crop, Chairman Raza Rabbani, who made the effort to visit the Cuban Embassy to record his condolences, no one else bothered to even make a mention of this occurrence.
I would have been in the first standard at school, when the name of Fidel Castro first hit my ear-drums. This is the era of the 'Bay of Pigs' episode that was a part of my father's discussions with his circle of friends in our sitting room, when they would verbosely exchange views on international politics. Puffing his favorite Havana cigar, my father would talk about the revolutionary Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. Hence began my personal fascination of the personality that Fidel Castro was, and it ended not with the collapse of the 'Berlin Wall' neither with his death. He dominated the stage of international politics for well over four-and-a-half decades.
Cuba, in the 50's was not one of the developed or developing countries. It was under the dictatorial rule of Fulgencio Batista. The political, economic and social fabric of the country was in shambles and hence the country referred to as 'the sugar bowl of the world' was ripe for a socialist revolution that had emerged as an alternative to the exploitative capitalist system post the Second World War.
Born in 1926, Castro was not privileged with the proverbial silver spoon, as such, but his father was relatively a wealthy farmer. Castro had, therefore, experienced economic well-being in his youthful years and had come to be dis-enchanted by the divide between the rich and poor. At the age of 28, in 1955, Castro made his first attempt to ignite a revolution against Batista. It failed badly. Castro was caught and sent into exile; he lived in Mexico for a year, where he developed friendships with the high and mighty of not just political circles but also with un-surfaced communist revolutionaries. He then led the famous crossing by sea, in the most perilous manner, along with comrade Che Guevara and arrived in Cuba in 1956 to start a guerilla war in the mountains. In 1959, after a grueling experience of living in the mountains, Castro led a 9,000-strong force of die-hard revolutionaries and forced Batista to flee. Within two years, he became Prime Minister and dared the United States of America by declaring Cuba a communist state in 1961, despite failed attempts by the USA to dislodge him. Following the Bay of Pigs incident, when fearing a US invasion, he allowed the Soviets to deploy nuclear missiles on the island state when the Cuban missile cruises erupted.
The then newly elected young President J.F. Kennedy announced a complete naval blockade of Cuba in October, 1962. For the next 13 days, the world lived in fear of a possible nuclear engagement between the USA and USSR. JFK was resolute and the PM and General Secretary of USSR, Nikita Khrushchev, succumbed and withdrew missiles from Cuba. The world heaved a sigh of relief. But Fidel Castro, the bushy black-bearded hero, who stood against the USA, had arrived at the center of the global leadership platform.

Before the King Idris of Libya was deposed, the Bandung Conference was held in Indonesia in 1955, and laid the charter of Paanch Sheel (Five principles of peaceful co-existence); this movement later came to be known as the 'Non-Aligned Movement (NAM)'. Although Pakistan was very active at Bandung, it was excluded from NAM because of Nehru's machinations, citing its presence in Baghdad Pact (later referred to as CENTO) and later with its entry into South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). During this time, Fidel Castro developed great personal rapport with Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Marshall Joseph Tito of Yugoslavia, Jawaharlal Nehru of India and Houari Boumediene of Algeria. The NAM was kind of a paradoxical response to the US-led capitalist countries; any country, inclusive of Pakistan, that was friendly towards the US was casted as an 'aligned nation' and those who literally sat on the lap of the Kremlin Leadership in Moscow became champions of 'non-alignment'!
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto strived hard to break the shackles and tried to make an entry into NAM, for which he sought the support of Fidel Castro, amongst many. At one time, Bhutto used to adorn a cap similar to the one which Fidel Castro had come to be recognized with - a slightly different version of the Mao Cap. Two decades later, it was President General Musharraf who, on the sidelines of some international moot, struck a personal relationship with Fidel Castro - it could be their passion for cigars that brought them closer!
Fidel Castro died at the age of 90, and even in his last public appearance during the Communist Party's Congress in April 2016, he remained a die-hard communist. He roared, '...but the ideas of Cuban Communism will endure'. In death too, Fidel Castro evoked diametrically opposite sentiments. The President-elect of the USA tweeted, 'Fidel Castro is dead...', but since this lacked the signature Trump lingo, he commented further, 'The world marks the passing of a brutal dictator who oppressed his own people for six decades.'
Fidel had said once, 'Condemn me. It is of no importance. History will absolve me.' In that spirit, the gentleman, US President Obama said, 'History will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him.' His communist and semi-communist friends from Beijing and Moscow were more indulgent and complimentary. President Xi Jinping said, 'The Chinese have lost a good and true comrade. Comrade Castro will live forever.' In tribute, President Vladmir Putin (my personal reference to him is the reluctant communist and socialist) remarked, 'This strong and wise man always looked to the future with confidence. His memory will live forever in the hearts of Russian citizens.'
As youngsters, we romanticized ourselves as 'revolutionaries', chanting 'Asia surkh hai' against 'Asia sabz hai' without even properly knowing the difference between 'surkh' and 'sabz'. But most of us have grown older and become wiser - some just refuse to do so, and it is best that they remain unnamed!
Fidel Castro, the liberator, the revolutionary, the people's man or the murderous tyrant, brutal dictator and scourge of the western world - let history be the judge. My personal fascination will not end with his death, because his penchant for Havana cigars stirs up memories closer to home and evokes reminiscences of my father, who only had that commonality with him!