Mitra Ebadolahi Ebadolahi is a
fourth-year international development studies and history student
who believes the forces of good will kiss evil on the lips. Please
send comments to mightymousemitra@yahoo.com.
Click Here for more articles by Mitra Ebadolahi
In recent weeks Afghanistan, which once dominated the media and
daily conversations, is gradually being replaced with new
“targets” in America’s War on Terror. But for the
hundreds of thousands of Afghans who have been displaced by years
of warfare and months of U.S. bombing, the aftermath of Sept. 11 is
still a vivid reality. These victims, just like the victims of
Sept. 11, must not be forgotten.
Recently, I interviewed Arlen Benjamin-Gomez, a fourth-year
international development studies and Latin American studies
student who traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan last fall. For two
weeks in November and December 2001, Benjamin-Gomez participated in
a fact-finding mission with the nonprofit organization Global
Exchange in order to understand the true impacts of America’s
War on Terror. Her experiences and insights indicate that Americans
must not turn their backs on Afghanistan now.
Benjamin-Gomez arrived in Afghanistan one week after the Taliban
had fallen and a month after the first U.S. bomb attacks. The
country was in chaos. Wealthier Afghans had fled, offering bribes
in order to make the difficult journey over Afghanistan’s
treacherous mountains to border towns like Peshawar, Pakistan,
where over half the population was Afghan. In response to the
influx, Pakistani officials began denying Afghans refugee
status.
“(The refugees) couldn’t get a tent and they
couldn’t get food. So people were on the streets. We saw many
women in burkas with children begging,” says
Benjamin-Gomez.
The magnitude of Afghan displacement and the number of victims
from the U.S. attacks were especially troubling. According to
international estimates, between 1,000 and 5,000 Afghans died as a
result of the U.S. bombing campaign. As Benjamin-Gomez explains,
“The victims of the bombing are mostly women, children and
elders, who make up the majority of the village
populations.”
After speaking to the Afghans in the refugee camps in Peshawar,
Benjamin-Gomez discovered a wide array of public opinion regarding
U.S. actions. “A lot of the people we spoke with didn’t
even know who the Taliban were. Anybody who had heard of the
Taliban told us, “They’re foreigners. They’re not
Afghans,” she explained.
Those who did know about the Taliban were often wealthier,
more-educated Afghans whose privileges had been removed by the
repressive regime. As a result, some Afghans “were happy the
Taliban fell, although they wished that the U.S. had taken other
measures.” Others said, “The Taliban terrorized us and
now Americans are terrorizing us.”
After spending $3 billion on the bombing campaign, the United
States has given very little money to the new Afghan regime for
reconstruction. Since the bombing, only $297 million has been
awarded to Afghanistan. International observers and NGOs estimate
that between $5 billion and $10 billion will be needed to repair
the country and repatriate the Afghan population.
In Benjamin-Gomez’s view, American inaction will only
cause future problems. “If the United States is really
interested in getting at the root of terrorism and understanding
the reasons these terrorist networks are starting, we need to deal
with the way the U.S. is perceived internationally. Spending $3
billion on bombing and destroying a country, and then spending a
fraction of that amount of money to rebuild, does not create a
positive image. A commitment to eliminating international terrorism
is a commitment to rebuilding countries and helping
people.”
As a UCLA student visiting an underdeveloped nation under
attack, Benjamin-Gomez was strongly affected by her experiences.
“Any time you travel to a Third World country, you are
shocked at just how privileged you are and how much you have and
how much you take for granted. We’d see kids starving,
malnourished. Women crying desperately to get food for their
children, people displaced from their homes,” she said. Yet
she encourages students to take action and become involved in the
struggle for Afghanistan’s future.
Here at UCLA, the UCLA Amnesty International chapter is doing a
fund-raising campaign to get money to Afghan children. They will
also be fund-raising for the Global Exchange Victims’ Fund,
which will help people with reconstruction in Afghanistan. Funds
are also going to be providing prosthetic limbs and medical care
for people who have injuries from shrapnel.
“You don’t have to go to Afghanistan to do work
here, to pressure the U.S. government to do more to help
Afghanistan, to do more with the issue of reconstruction and with
the issue of victims of the bombing. There are campaigns going on
now. Call your Congress people,” Benjamin-Gomez said.
Concerned citizens have done just that. A campaign has begun
throughout the United States to pressure the Bush administration to
commit more funding for Afghan refugees and victims of the
bombings. As Benjamin-Gomez argues, “The care and financial
support that was given out to the victims of Sept. 11 also needs to
be given out to the victims of the Afghan bombing. I think the same
support needs to be given to Afghans whose houses have been bombed.
Their entire livelihoods are gone.”
The price tag? “Humanitarian aid workers say there will be
about 2,000 claims from victims who are looking for compensation.
Each claim is for $10,000, so $20 million total is what is needed,
and this money would go directly to the victims of the bombing. And
for Afghans, for people who have absolutely nothing, it’s an
enormous amount of money. It would really help them
rebuild.”
Americans rightly rallied for the families of Sept. 11 victims
in order to demonstrate that the innocent should never pay the
price of terror. Now, Americans must also show the same humanity
toward Afghan refugees so that they too may be spared from the
terrible burden of war and political violence.
The time for action is now. As Benjamin-Gomez explains,
“Kids pick up a gun because they can’t go to school or
because the military promises to feed them; their parents send
their children off because they can’t afford to feed them or
give them an education.
“The United States is the richest country in the world. We
can afford to help ““ it’s not an issue of not having
enough money.”