Fariba Nawa – AUTHOR AND JOURNALIST

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  • Clinic struggling to cope with Afghanistan’s refugees

    By Fariba Nawa
    November 5, 2001
    Agence France Presse

    Peshawar, Pakistan — Fatana Gailani’s small clinic is under siege, under-staffed and running out of resources almost as fast as its clientele of Afghan women refugees is growing.

    Set up in 1986 to provide basic medical care, the free clinic in northwest Pakistan has in the past two months been forced to function as a full-fledged refugee centre.

    Since the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, the number of women attending the clinic has doubled to 200 daily, and its services expanded from health checkups to providing food, housing and free schooling.

    Despite the fact that the border is officially closed, UN refugee agency officials estimate that up to 130,000 Afghans have crossed into Pakistan in the past two months.

    “We have bought 250 families flour, beans and oil. We enrolled a 12-year-old orphaned girl in school and rented out a room for her,” said Gailani, director of the Afghanistan Women Council (AWC) which runs the clinic.

    The AWC runs the premier Aryana Afghan school in the city with 2,600 students who pay fees. Gailani said 50 of the newly-arrived refugee children were enrolled for free.

    But like other aid workers here, Gailani said her organisation was being overwhelmed by the demand.

    “We only have our emergency supply of medicine for the next month, then we’re out,” she said. In the dusty yard outside the clinic 30 women sat on the ground waiting, their all-enveloping burqas — the head-to-toe traditional garment worn by Afghan women in public — pulled up over their heads.

    Among them was Mina, who two weeks ago saw the ceiling of her mud-brick hut near Kabul airport cave in as the result of a missile strike.

    Mina, her husband and four of her children survived the blast but her eldest daughter, 22, was killed when a large chunk of brick fell on her as she slept.

    “Please tell America to stop killing innocent people. If their goal is to get the Taliban and (Osama) bin Laden, they haven’t got any of them,” Mina said, rocking back and forth as she spoke.

    Gailani caressed Mina’s face as she tried to calm her down.

    “You should be grateful that you’re alive,” Gailani told the newly-arrived refugees in a soothing tone. “You should have hope … I’m with you and so is the world.”

    After her daughter’s death, Mina and her children bribed smugglers to help them cross the Pakistan border.

    Since arriving in Peshawar, they have been living with her cousin Ali Baba in his two-room apartment, crammed together with 12 members of his own family.

    Outside Gailani’s clinic in the Afghan-dominated Peshawar suburb of Hayatabad, women pushed and shoved to get inside the examination room, ignoring the attempts of an exasperated staff member to keep them in line.

    In the room, one of the clinic’s three women doctors examined 4-year-old Rozina, who had first-degree burns on her arms and body.

    The child winced as the doctor touched her scars. Rozina’s mother wasn’t clear as to how her daughter had been burned, mumbling only that the war had “scarred” her entire family.

    Another physician, Doctor Zarghoun said the new patients have a variety of illnesses including a virulent strain of malaria contracted in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad.

  • Hamid Karzai risks his neck for royalist cause in Afghanistan

    By Fariba Nawa
    November 2, 2001
    Agence France Presse

    Quetta, Pakistan — Hamid Karzai, now on the run from the Taliban, is the latest envoy to covertly penetrate Afghanistan in search of support for the country’s ousted monarch.

    Like Abdul Haq, who was caught and executed by the Taliban last week, Karzai, 46, made his mark fighting the Soviet Union’s decade-long occupation of Afghanistan which ended in 1989, from a base in the Pakistani city of Quetta.

    An ethnic Pashtun from the influential Durrani tribe, he returned to Kabul and rose to prominence in the early 1990s in the government that replaced the last communist regime.

    The Durrani are the second largest tribe of the Pashtun who widely support the ousted king, Zahir Shah, who now lives in Rome.

    The Ghilzai are the largest Pashtun tribe and form the backbone of the Taliban ranks, which opposes the king’s return.

    The Islamic militia reportedly captured 25 of Karzai’s followers and fought off four US helicopters which came to rescue Karzai in Deharwad, Uruzgan province. Karzai apparently fled. As deputy foreign minister in the government of Burhanuddin Rabbani, which replaced the Moscow-backed regime of Syed Najibullah in 1992, Karzai represented his tribes until the Taliban seized power in 1996.

    He returned to Quetta where he continued to play an active role in Afghan politics. Haji Hayatullah, head of the Council for Understanding, a Pakistan-based group which tries to bring the warring Afghan factions together, said Karzai’s family and tribal connections date back to the late 1960s.

    Karzai’s grandfather was Abdul Ahad Karzai, a former president of the national council under Zahir Shah before the monarch was ousted in 1973.

    Abdul Ahad retired and the family moved to Quetta in 1983 during the Soviet occupation. His son, Karzai’s father, fought the Soviets following the December 1978 invasion.

    “Their family is respected among their Durrani Pashtun tribe,” Hayatullah said.

    “Karzai has been inside Afghanistan for 20 days and his mission was the same as Abdul Haq’s — to convince the Taliban in his tribal area in southern Afghanistan to support the king.” Former mujihadeen leader Abdul Haq was executed by the Taliban on October 26 after being caught while attempting to win the support of Pashtun tribes for an anti-Taliban uprising. The United States has admitted that it also tried to help Abdul Haq escape by providing air cover.

    The killings were seen as a blow to attempts to split the Taliban and boost the campaign to capture alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden.

    “Karzai has a lot of support among the Taliban there because he’s from their tribe,” said Hayatullah. “But we know that it’s not an Afghan government anymore.

    “It’s an Arab government and Osama bin Laden rules Mullah Omar. The Arabs killed Abdul Haq and they will do the same to Karzai if he’s caught. But if his tribe stands up for him, he might be able to escape.”

    Tribal elders from southern Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan have claimed that bin Laden — blamed for the September 11 destruction in New York and Washington — has usurped power from Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.

    Karzai, the middle son of seven brothers and one sister, is married but has no children. His father was murdered in Quetta in 1999, aged 75 while returning home from a mosque.

    “For 22 years we wanted king Zahir Shah to come back,” Karzai’s younger brother Ahmad Wali Karzai, told AFP. “He was working for peace, he wants peace.”

  • Students of the war

    By Fariba Nawa
    November 2, 2001
    Mother Jones

    The turmoil in their native Afghanistan has followed refugee students and teachers to their new home in Pakistan.

    Islamabad — For the students and teachers at the Malalay Afghan refugee school here, the US offensive in Afghanistan is simply one more link in a familiar chain of violence.

    Some 700 boys and girls are enrolled in the school, all of them members of Afghan families that have sought safety in this sprawling Pakistani capital some 125 miles from the Afghan border. Some have been in Pakistan for a decade or more. Others arrived only recently.

    But the students, aged 5 to 19, share a common experience: they all became intimately acquainted with the brutality of war long before the United States began its bombing campaign. Some have seen rockets flatten their homes. Some have seen loved ones killed.

    Now, as refugees, they are no longer dodging bullets. But the violence in their homeland continues to color their daily lives.

    At one of Malalay’s two locations, in the city’s predominantly Afghan Karachi Company neighborhood, a rust-colored cloth separates the street from an apartment whose five rooms have been converted into classrooms, each equipped with timeworn blackboards and about a dozen wooden chairs.

    Neelab Hanifi, a 19 year old senior, comes to school despite the fact that she’s fighting malaria. Her family came to Pakistan from Kabul five years ago, fleeing the internal fighting that followed the collapse of Afghanistan’s communist government.

    “When I think about the rockets falling now, I have flashbacks to when I was in Kabul hiding from them,” she says. “People are so worried. But we have no choice but to be here right now.”

    Male students report being harassed by militant Pakistanis and Afghans, who pressure them to join the war against the United States. In the Peshawar More and Karachi Company neighborhoods, from which the school draws most of its students, children say they fear the return of Taliban recruiters, who three years ago scoured shops and streets in search of fighters. On a recent Friday many students and teachers stayed home, fearing violence associated with expected demonstrations by Taliban supporters.

    The school itself has become a target for Taliban supporters because of the simple fact that it enrolls boys and girls together.

    “They want us to shut it down or separate boys and girls,” says Malalay’s principal, Nooria Maroofi. “We have persevered to keep it the way it is so far.”

    Maroofi says Taliban officials in Kabul sent her a letter in which they demanded that she “stop her activities” and threatened her life and her family. The letter, she says, was slipped under her office door. Taliban representatives in Islamabad declined to comment on the letter or the school.

    Malalay was established in 1992 by Afghans whose refugee status meant their children were unable to enroll in Pakistani schools. Pakistan currently hosts some two million Afghan refugees. Malalay is one of some 50 schools that have sprung up to serve this swelling population.

    The school employs 35 teachers, who make from $11 to $33 a month. About 30 percent of the students attend for free. The parents of the remaining students pay a nominal tuition fee, from $1 to $2.45 per month. Maroofi says the school has received individual donations of as much as $500, but has never received any support from relief organizations or the Pakistani government.

    The result is a school that is unusually independent, answering only to the parents of the enrolled students. While giving them permission to operate, Pakistan does not recognize any of the Afghan refugee schools. A degree from one of the schools means little in Pakistan, so most of the students graduate with no opportunities for higher education.

    “The only hope we have is that our children are being educated and the level of education is good, the same as it was in Kabul,” says Mohammed Arif Zarifi, a former engineer with three children enrolled at Malalay.

    “The problem is that they are (our) future, but in Pakistan, they have no future.” Zarifi says his eldest daughter hopes to go abroad to pursue her education, but the family cannot afford either the travel costs or the visa.

    Maroofi says she is committed to keeping the school open despite the obstacles. But she echoed her students’ sentiment that the war has made life more difficult than it already was in Pakistan. Maroofi says the school’s neighbors are pressuring her to move because they fear an attack by pro-Taliban groups.

    The Pakistani police offer little protection, students claim. Instead, they say police routinely press their parents for bribes over passport and visa issues — pressure they say has increased as the US campaign intensifies. “In Pakistan, police harass us. We can’t leave our homes,” says Ajmal Wahadi, 15. “We’re afraid that they will take us to jail or send us to Afghanistan to fight.”

    Ahmad Siar Mahboob, 11, recounts a typical tale. The boy says a Pakistani police officer stopped his father, an ice-cream vendor, demanding his passport. When Ahmad’s father showed the officer a 30-year-old passport, the boy says, the officer demanded a bribe. Ahmad says his father refused to give the officer money, and the officer responded by beating the middle-aged man with the butt of a rifle.

    Having fled the regime, Maroofi says her students and their parents abhor the Taliban and what it has done to their country. But she draws no solace from the US campaign against the Taliban. For Malalay’s war-weary students and their families, she says, the only relief will come from a lasting peace.

    “There are other alternatives that have not been explored. Let’s find those options and stop war,” Maroofi says. “Twenty-two years of war, for God’s sake, is enough.”

  • Minority Hazaras rejoice at Mazar-e-Sharif’s recapture

    Rout of Taliban may not trigger ethnic reprisals
    By Fariba Nawa
    November 10 , 2001
    The San Francisco Chronicle

    Islamabad — The Northern Alliance’s capture of Mazar-e-Sharif last night was a sweet victory for the opposition and United States, but for the Taliban’s most persecuted victims — Afghanistan’s ethnic Hazara minority — it was overdue revenge.

    Among the opposition soldiers who seized Mazar-e-Sharif were some 2,500 Hazaras, a Shiite group whose members were massacred by the Taliban when they took the city three years ago. “Hazaras have been massacred more than anybody in Mazar, and this (victory) means more to them than any other Afghans,” said Abdul Karim Khalili, the Hazaras’ factional leader. Khalili, who heads Hezb-e-Wahdat (the Party of Unity), spoke via satellite telephone from his native Hazarajat in central Afghanistan.

    Populated mostly by ethnic Uzbeks, Tajiks and Hazaras hostile to the ruling ethnic Pashtun Taliban, Mazar-e-Sharif has witnessed horrific bloodshed between the warring clans that filled the void after the Soviets retreated in 1989.

    The Taliban briefly seized the city in 1997, only to be ousted by the brutal Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum and other tribal generals, whose forces slaughtered some 2,000 Taliban fighters. Many died in ghastly ways — sealed into truck containers and left to bake in the desert sun, or thrown down deep wells with grenades tossed in after them.

    A year later, Taliban troops retook Mazar-e-Sharif and exacted revenge by shooting scores of boys and old men and slitting the throats of hundreds of other mostly Hazara residents. As many as 7,000 residents reportedly died.

    THE CYCLE OF REVENGE

    The apparent defeat of the Taliban yesterday could usher in another round in the vicious cycle. But the Hazaras have been surprisingly tolerant of their Sunni archrivals of late, giving rise to hopes that the cycle is breakable.

    Ahmed Rashid, an expert on Afghanistan and a Pakistani journalist who has written a book on the Taliban, said of the situation in Mazar-e-Sharif: “It’s going to be a huge test for the Northern Alliance and the U.S. because there’s a fear for what’s going to happen to the minorities and what will happen to the Pashtuns.

    “But I believe that this time, they have learned their lesson from the past, ” Rashid said. Hazara commanders have said repeatedly that they will limit the killing to the battlefield. Khalili took that one step further yesterday by saying that he supports the formation of a broad-based postwar government that would include moderate members of the Taliban.

    The Hazaras could turn out to be a linchpin of that process.

    Other Pashtun factions working with American efforts to reinstall former Afghan king Mohammed Zahir Shah have included Hazaras in their meetings. Pir Sayed Ahmed Gailani, a Pashtun royalist based in Peshawar, Pakistan, invited a Hezb-e-Wahdat representative to speak at his peace and unity conference three weeks ago.

    TALIBAN SHOULD JUST LEAVE

    War-weary Hazara refugees in Pakistan say they want the Taliban and Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda fighters ousted without bloodshed. They oppose the U.S.-led bombings.

    “We don’t know how this (can) happen, but we want the Taliban to leave peacefully so we can go back to our country,” said Abdul Wali Khidri, a 50- year-old shoemaker in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, where many Hazara refugees have found a second home.

    Dr. Ghulam Hussain, a Hazara physician in Rawalpindi, has formed a movement called Wahdat Islami Shia-Sunni (Islamic Unity of Shiites and Sunnis). Its goal is to bring together members of Islam’s two major sects and reduce tensions among Afghanistan’s ethnic groups. Hussain says his faction wants Hazaras to receive proportional representation in a future government, but no more than that.

    “We’re for the Tajiks or Pashtuns to rule, but with justice,” he said. “We will work by their side. We want to be left to work in our businesses and carry out our everyday life.” While Hazaras have expressed their views quietly and behind the scenes, their role in the peace process and a future Afghan government is not assured.

    Analyst Rashid said, “The Hazaras will always be vulnerable, and any kind of settlement will have to have clauses to protect Shiites and Hazaras.”

    Compared to the ethnic Uzbek and Tajik troops in the Northern Alliance, Hazara troops have received the least attention and military aid from the United States, according to their commanders.

    But they are patiently awaiting their turn — in the form of a U.S.-backed blitzkrieg to take back from the Taliban their mountainous home region, known as Hazarajat. For several days, the Americans have been bombing the freezing, inhospitable area, located about 125 miles from Mazar-e-Sharif, opening routes for alliance ground troops, Khalili said.

    OLD TENSIONS, NEW HEIGHTS

    Hazaras, who account for 19 percent of Afghanistan’s 21 million people, are descendants of Genghis Khan, and their Mongol features distinguish them from other Afghans. As the country’s largest Shiite minority, they have been historically oppressed — working as servants, vendors and sheep herders.

    Tensions between the majority Sunnis and Shiites are old in Afghanistan, but the Taliban heightened them to a new level. The militia, made up of hard- core Sunnis, consider Shiites religious hypocrites and have carried out an ethnic cleansing of the Hazara population. International human rights groups documented a single four-day massacre in January, when 150 to 300 civilian Hazara men were killed by Taliban troops in Yakalang.

    “We invite the world to come and see for themselves at least 120 kilometers (75 miles) of ashes and dust that used to be bustling with life,” Khalili said of areas the Taliban have allegedly ransacked.

    The Hazara leaders’ willingness to cooperate with moderate Taliban does not mean they forgive the militia, experts say. But it reflects the recognition by the Northern Alliance that it cannot rule Afghanistan without the support of the Pashtun majority.

    Hazara refugees said they support Taliban inclusion in a future government only because Pashtuns are the dominant ethnicity in Afghanistan, while Hazaras are a small minority. “The Taliban have been cruel, but what can we do?” said Patra Sakhidar, a 63-year-old fruit seller in Rawalpindi.

    ————————————————

    Afghanistan’s ethnic diversity

    • Pashtuns — An overwhelming majority of the Taliban are Pashtuns; the group makes up 38 percent of the nation’s 21 million people.
    • Tajiks — 25 percent; they account for a majority of the forces fighting the Taliban.
    • Hazaras — 19 percent; the largest Shiite minority, they oppose the Taliban.
    • Turkmens — Less than 10 percent; they side mainly with the Northern Alliance.
    • Uzbeks — 8 percent; many rally around alliance warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum.

  • Support for Taliban written in blood

    By Fariba Nawa
    October 31, 2001
    Agence France Presse

    Peshawar, Pakistan — Gholam Dastagir lay still as his blood dripped into a plastic bag. For the 55-year-old Afghan refugee, any mild discomfort was offset by the knowledge that a pint of his blood could keep one of the Taliban’s battle-hardened troops alive and ready to fight another day against their US and Northern Alliance enemies.

    “If the Taliban get this blood, it’s good,” he said. “I want them to defeat America,” he said. Dastagir’s own personal contribution to the war effort was made at one of the many blood banks that have been set up in this refugee — dominated city since the US began bombing Afghanistan on October 7.

    Around a dozen have popped up in mosques and near hospitals asking people to give their blood and their money to help the casualties of war.

    The blood bank where Dastagir was giving his blood was opened last week by the Afghan Commission for Human Rights in front of Khyber Hospital on the city’s University Road. Five to 10 rupee bills were strewn on a donation table in front of the site. By the end of a typical day around 2,000 rupees (33 dollars) has been gathered, according to one of the aid workers at the site.

    More importantly, the organization has collected about 90 half-litres (pints) of blood from both men and women. An average of 20 to 30 people, mostly Pakistanis, give blood every day, according to Lal Gul, the chairman of the organization.

    Gul said the blood is to be delivered to hospitals inside Afghanistan but so far none of them have run out of their own stocks. It also goes to help the large number of injured Afghans who travel to Pakistan for treatment.

    Gul said about 33 Afghan civilians and two Taliban soldiers had received treatment at the Khyber hospital. Six or seven were given the donated blood.

    While many Afghans and Pakistanis are happy to give their blood to help injured civilians, not all are happy about the prospect of aiding Taliban fighters.

    “I would never donate my blood in these places. They just want to help the Taliban,” said one Afghan refugee who did not want to give his name.

    Gul denied the accusation and said the blood and money are for all those injured in the war. “No one is helping these injured people. I’m upset with the United Nations and Red Cross for not serving those who are injured. So I’m glad that we can do it,” he said.

    The aid worker running the blood bank has taken out ads in the newspaper calling for donors and is happy with the turnout. He expects demand for blood to increase as the war continues. Khyber provides the medical supplies for the blood and its staff make sure the blood is clean before it is used in treatment, Gul said.

  • Women’s rights group struggles to gain respect among Afghans

    By Fariba Nawa
    October 30, 2001
    Agence France Presse

    Peshawar, Pakistan — They have been called Maoists, spies for the Soviet Union, for Pakistan and now the United States.

    They work undercover, breaking the hardline rules of Afghanistan’s Taliban militia and angering religious conservatives with their liberal politics in Pakistan.

    But the aptly-named Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) says they are just trying to improve the plight of women in what is seen as the most repressive patriarchal society in the world.

    One of the few political Afghan women’s groups, the organization claims 2,000 members, mostly among the huge Afghan refugee community in Pakistan.

    Its aggressive media campaign has reached worldwide audiences through the Internet and evoked the sympathies of Western feminists, particularly in Washington and Hollywood. One spokeswoman appeared on CNN’s Larry King Live show three weeks ago.

    But RAWA has little support among Afghan refugees here in the northwestern Pakistani border city of Peshawar.

    “It’s their leftist activities and ideology — our people have suffered too much under leftists,” said Khorshid Noori, head of the Afghan Women’s Network.

    “We respect their opinions and they are intelligent, open-minded individuals, but people are bitter and allergic to any leftist thought.”

    With only a handful of women’s voices contributing to the debate over Afghanistan’s post-Taliban future, RAWA’s is one of the loudest, and they are not afraid to make their point in a strident, uncompromising language which some see as alien to Afghan culture.

    Few are spared RAWA’s wrath, from the Taliban to the armed anti-Taliban opposition and even other women’s groups.

    Salima, 33, a RAWA member who teaches girls at the Khaiwa refugee camp near here, was unapologetic.

    “We do not compromise our beliefs like other groups do,” said Salima, who, like other RAWA members, gave only her first name. “We encourage the spirit of debate and we encourage independence. This is what gives us our strength.”

    Shakiba, who works in the organization’s publication committee, was equally unrepentent. “We believe it’s our responsibility to expose corrupt leaders, including women’s groups,” the 24-year-old said.

    The Taliban have sworn to kill any RAWA members they find in Afghanistan. The hardline Islamic regime, under US-led military attack over its support for alleged terrorists, is infamous for its gender laws which govern everything from the shoes women wear to the men they can see in public.

    The militia bars women from most work and education, forces them to wear full-body veils and holds public executions of those accused of adultery.

    Yet RAWA still claims to run 100 girls schools, income-generating projects such as sewing and carpet weaving, literacy schemes and political courses on women’s rights in the deeply impoverished country.

    In relatively liberal Pakistan, RAWA operates a school and clinic in Khaiwa refugee camp and a few other schools in Peshawar and Islamabad. Yet even here, due to fear of Islamic “fundamentalists” and pro-Taliban extremists, RAWA members use pseudonyms and travel with bodyguards.

    “The fundamentalists are against women. They do not count women as human beings. We have won the respect of men and women by making a lot of sacrifices,” said Salima.

    The organization adheres to the ideology of their late founder, Meena. Afghan guerrilla soldiers assassinated the 30-year-old for being a “communist” in Pakistan in 1987 at the height of the war against the Soviet Union.

    Members say Meena’s husband was a Maoist but their founder was only concerned for women’s rights.

    “Just because her husband was part of the communist organization, we are stamped with the same label,” Shakiba said. “My blood should be shed like hers for her country.”

    Last winter, police used tear-gas to break up a physical clash between the women and Taliban supporters in Islamabad after RAWA tried to hold a peaceful rally in the Pakistani capital.

    Whether RAWA is really Maoist does not seem to matter to many Afghans — any group or individual connected with or even reputed to be a communist is regarded with deep suspicion following the brutal Soviet-backed regimes from 1979-92.

    “They have been too political and that’s not proper behavior for Afghan women. They’re strident,” said Nancy Dupree, an American expert on Afghanistan who has written on Afghan women’s issues.

    “They speak the feminist language, which is not the Afghan language, and they have a past of being leftist.”

    RAWA’s website at www.rawa.org carries gruesome images, often smuggled at considerable personal risk, of massacres and human degradation.

    “Caution, RAWA is committed to truthfully reflecting the reality of life under fundamentalist rule,” the site says.

    “This website carries photos and links to video footage which some viewers may find extremely disturbing. Our apology for publishing such material is: This is the reality of life for the people of Afghanistan.”

    The webpage, so inundated in recent weeks that it has been redirected to a larger mirror site, also offers RAWA mugs and T-shirts for sale.

    Members insist they do not want to see a leftist government installed in Afghanistan if the Taliban regime collapses. They are equally opposed to any Taliban or opposition Northern Alliance members taking any part in politics.

    The organization instead backs the return of exiled former king Muhammad Zahir Shah, but with an elected governing body representing all the disparate ethnic groups and, of course, women. Salima said RAWA finds a rich recruitment ground in the refugee camps along the Pakistani border, where some Afghan girls have spent their whole lives.

    Potential members are singled out during literacy and other courses, usually those who show the strongest streak of independence.

    Salima, for example, is a single woman from the western Afghan city of Herat, who now resides in the Khaiwa camp while her parents live in Kabul.

    The fact that she is not yet married and lives apart from her family is already a radical departure from what is expected of Afghan women.

    In the RAWA-run girls’ school, some students from first to 12th grade sit on chairs or a straw rug. The eighth-graders said they were RAWA members already. The girls were anxious to speak. “RAWA’s really good because they want us to be educated,” said 15-year-old Sahar.

  • Afghanistan to become a cold war for US

    By Fariba Nawa
    October 22, 2001
    Agence France Presse

    Islamabad — The United States will be hard pressed to complete its assault against the Taliban by a double deadline of the looming bitter winter in Afghanistan and the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, experts said.

    Temperatures will plunge about the same time as Ramadan starts in mid-November throwing up physical and religious hurdles to the US action against the Taliban and Osama bin Laden, the accused terrorist leader.

    Secretary of State Colin Powell surprised many Afghan experts and diplomats with his call Sunday for a speedy end to the military assault.

    “It would be in our interest and the interest of the coalition to see this matter resolved before winter strikes and it makes our operations that much more difficult,” Powell said on US television.

    A big freeze will hit Afghanistan from next month, making the mountainous mine-infested terrain even more treacherous.

    US-led forces can seize major Afghan cities soon but a lot of guerrilla warfare will continue, said Talat Masood, a retired general and senior Pakistan government defense analyst.

    “The major targets are feasible. They will be able to take over. But to be able to wipe off all resistance, that will be difficult,” Masood said.

    The Taliban has so far denied that much damage has been caused to their military capability. But US military officials say they have knocked out significant numbers of Taliban air defenses, tanks, artillery and support facilities.

    The Taliban have vowed that even if they are forced out of cities they will start a prolonged guerrilla war and the winter deadline looks ambitious to many Afghan opposition commanders contacted by AFP.

    Ismail Khan, a key opposition commander in western Afghanistan, said it should not take more than six months to take the prime targets. But he was doubtful that it would happen before winter.

    The best way is not fighting with weapons but by giving money to commanders and civilians who support the Taliban and bin Laden, said Khan. “The US needs to negotiate with civilians and commanders in Taliban-held areas for Afghans to oust the militia,” he said.

    “Unless the people are convinced that the Taliban and bin Laden are their enemies, it will be a daunting task to crush resistance,” Khan said. Abdul Karim Khalili, an opposition commander in Bamiyan province, said the Taliban are rapidly losing in the air and ground war but would not predict that the US army could meet a winter deadline.

    Khalili, an ethnic Hazara leader in the central region of Hazarajat, told AFP by telephone that the opposition has an advantage over the Taliban during the bitter winter.

    “We’re more used to the temperatures in the mountains and the snow doesn’t allow their big Datsun vehicles to cross our territory,” Khalili said.

    Temperatures in the mountainous valleys of Hazarajat are the coldest in Afghanistan. The water freezes and winter temperatures normally drop to minus 20 degrees Celsius.

    Emphasising the need to help the humanitarian operation in Afghanistan during the winter, Powell also admitted hostilities during Ramadan would be tricky.

    “We have to be respectful of that very very significant religious period but at the same time we also have to make sure we pursue our campaign,” Powell said. Traditionally fighting in Afghanistan’s civil war has eased during the prayer month.

    But Pakistani defense analyst Masood said halting the new war during Ramadan would be important to the public psychologically, showing that this not a war against Islam.

    Khalili said however that the opposition and Taliban do not consider holidays and holy months a reason to stop war. “We fight year round. They launch offensives and we defend ourselves.”

    Another pressing problem for Washington is the opposition insistence of a political framework for a post-Taliban government before launching an offensive to re-capture Kabul, which it lost to the Taliban in 1996.

    One international military analyst now based in Pakistan said “The Americans are low key about involving the Northern Alliance in any future government and the North Alliance has probably realised this.

    “Now there is no reason for them to come storming out of the mountains for a bloody fight.”

  • Air strikes force Pakistani women to choose sides

    By Fariba Nawa
    October 17, 2001
    Agence France Presse

    Islamabad — Ayesha Zia Khan is 22. She does not cover her hair and studies computing at university. Yet she says she would be glad to see allies of the fundamentalist Taliban regime running Pakistan.

    Khan is well aware that the Taliban, which has ruled Afghanistan since 1996, has ended public education for Afghan girls and forces women to cover themselves from head to toe.

    But she says her Islamic faith is more important than her personal freedom.

    “The Taliban are acting exactly as Islam would want them to,” she told AFP in an interview at Islamabad’s co-educational Quaid-e-Azam University, where she studies.

    “People call them conservative but they’re doing the right thing. I want to observe Islamic covering and wouldn’t mind being forced to do it. I need the encouragement.”

    Khan’s views are among the minority at Quaid-e-Azam.

    But since US air strikes on Afghanistan got underway, a growing number of university-educated women are feeling the pressure to choose sides — and many are picking the Taliban, despite its reputation for oppressing women.

    Several female students at Quaid-e-Azam and other universities said they did not agree with the Taliban’s interpretation of Islam but they would side with the militia simply because they were Muslims.

    “No matter what America says, this is the West’s war against Islam,” said Khan.

    While these women were as shocked as anyone by the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, they say bombing the Taliban and killing civilians is not the answer.

    “The Taliban are more into suppressing women than running a government. But I feel bad for the way they’re being treated by the rest of the world,” said Mahvash Sami, 20.

    The war and Pakistan’s role in it has been the number one topic for discussion among Islamabad’s secular university students.

    Some point out that expressions of support for the Taliban have to be seen in the context of ethnic ties. The Taliban and most of their Pakistani supporters come from the Pushtun tribe, whose traditions are generally seen as being more restrictive on women than other groups in Pakistan.

    Many students in Islamabad are Punjabi and proud that their women are “outspoken” and “liberated.”

    “It depends on the culture. Most people here would never accept such (pro-Taliban) extremist opinions,” said Maria Javed, a business student at Hamdard private university.

    Others linked hardline views to poverty and said Islamabad residents are generally too rich to be influenced by the religious groups.

    Farzana Bari, the director of women’s studies at Quaid-e-Azam and a leading women’s rights activist, said she was puzzled by upper-middle class women, like Khan, who support the Taliban’s interpretation of Islam.

    “They are a tiny minority and I don’t understand but it seems that for them, it’s about status and having a pious reputation,” Bari said.

    Overall, most of the women in Bari’s classes want a non-violent solution to the problem of terrorism, she said.

    Few women at the secular universities may have expressed any sympathy with the Taliban before US-led strikes in Afghanistan but today, they both dislike and sympathize with the group. Ayesha Khurshid, who graduated from Quaid-e-Azam last year and works as a research associate at an Islamabad think tank, says the air strikes have created an identity crisis for many women.

    “Women are struggling with their identities as are all Pakistanis. We feel that we’re Muslims before we’re Pakistanis,” she said. “There’s a polarization between the West and Islam right now and we feel tugged to take sides.”

    All of the students agree their biggest fear is the current conflict spreading to the streets of Islamabad, which has so far escaped the kind of violence seen on the streets of other Pakistani cities.

    “The thought of what might happen is torturing. I can’t sleep at night. Even the sound of a firecracker affects me,” said Maria Javed.

    Rumors abound that Quaid-e-Azam may close if the anti-war protests pose a threat to student safety. Families have cut down on their evening outings, staying home after sunset. Some women have already found their freedom restricted.

    “My parents are quite strict now. They don’t allow me to go places at night. I know they’re trying to be careful but it’s hard not knowing what will happen next,” said Rabia Sharif, 22, and a student at the Hamdard business school.

  • Smugglers turn saviours for Afghan refugees

    By Fariba Nawa
    October 11, 2001
    Agence France Presse

    Islamabad — Sealed borders don’t stop refugees. Pakistan’s frontier with Afghanistan has been closed for weeks, but hundreds, if not thousands of Afghans are managing to cross through mountain passes unpatrolled by border guards.

    Most pay an average of 500 rupees (eight dollars) to ride to the border zone in vans and station wagons filled with illegal goods.

    The smugglers drop them at the foot of the mountains where they rent donkeys, if they can afford them, or simply walk up and over to Pakistan.

    Ghulam Mohammed Feda, 61, has been living in Islamabad for the past 11 years, but went back home to renew his Afghan passport two weeks before the September 11 terrorist atrocities in New York and Washington.

    The renewal fee is 17 dollars in Kabul compared with the 104 dollars demanded by the Afghan embassy in the Pakistan capital, and Feda was looking to save some money and visit family before the onset of the harsh Afghan winter.

    The journey into Afghanistan was a smooth one. Public transport took him from Peshawar to Kabul where he renewed the passport and his Pakistan visa, and enjoyed visiting his cousins.

    Feda was drinking tea and quietly swapping unflattering talk about the Taliban government when the first news filtered through of the kamikaze plane attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

    When the Taliban announced that every block in the city had to produce 20 men between the ages of 18 to 35 to fight in the new jihad (holy war) against the United States, Feda, whose name means “sacrifice” in Arabic and Farsi, decided it was time to return to Islamabad. He was not alone.

    “People began to leave. Caravans of cars loaded with people’s belongings headed for the borders. From 10 apartments, only two apartments still had residents,” he said.

    “People went in all directions, north, south, west, without knowing what was really happening,” he recalled as he sat, cross-legged on a floral mat in his Islamabad flat — his white cotton, loose long shirt and pants matching the colour of his neatly trimmed beard and slicked hair.

    Feda took the 12-hour journey back to the Torkham border crossing, only to find that the frontier had been closed and 500 other Afghans trying vainly to get through.

    His passport and visa were summarily dismissed as border guards told him to return to Kabul. “I was worried. I have heart problems and diabetes. I wasn’t sure what to do,” Feda said. In the end, he threw in his lot with the smugglers, paid his 500 rupees and joined a group of seven men in the back of a station wagon.

    They headed southeast toward the mountains of Shakh-i-Shamshad, where they were duly offloaded in the early hours of the morning.

    A few kilometers (miles) east, Feda rented a donkey to take him up the rocky mountainside. “Every mountain passage was full of people on donkeys and some were walking, We kept going up for two hours,” he said.

    When the sun rose, Feda was in Pakistan. He took a bus to Islamabad and spent most of the next week in bed.

    “My legs are swollen. But I’m happy that I made it. Many others didn’t.”

  • Fearing war, Afghans cancel weddings

    By Fariba Nawa
    October 8, 2001
    Agence France Presse

    Islamabad — Bride-to-be Zinab Najam was supposed to send invitation cards, buy wedding clothes and book a banquet hall for her anticipated wedding next month.

    Instead, she is watching the news worried that her fiancee may be dodging rockets and missiles in Kabul.

    Najam, 28, an Afghan who has been living in Islamabad for several years, became engaged to Homayun Darwish, a distant relative in Kabul, a year ago.

    The couple were anxious to wed since they barely saw each other during their engagement period.

    But the US and British attacks on Afghanistan, and the belief that they were imminent, have delayed their union indefinitely, with the closure of the Afghan-Pakistan border.

    Najam and Darwish’s wedding is one of dozens of Afghan weddings cancelled in Pakistan.

    The crisis triggered by the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington have dampened the wedding season here. Few are in the mood for celebrating and those whose fiancees live in other countries are afraid to come to Pakistan, couples say.

    But Najam is taking the disappointment in her stride.

    “Every girl has a wish to have a great wedding. But that’s not a priority. I want there to be peace first,” she said. “What can I do? It’s my destiny.”

    In Peshawar, the bustling northwestern Pakistani city that is home to more than a million Afghan refugees, there are several Afghan weddings on every normal weekend.

    The weekends are anything but normal now.

    With the threat of US strikes on Afghanistan becoming a reality, Afghan refugees, who manage to sneak past the border guards, continue to arrive in the city.

    And while long-term refugees who have settled in Peshawar keep working and going to school, they have cut entertainment out of their lives.

    “It’s almost like we’re in mourning,” said an Afghan who has been living in Peshawar for 10 years. “But there’s no closure to this sadness.”

    While the couples who canceled their weddings are merely upset, the musicians they had hired to perform at their receptions are close to desperation.

    There are more than 100 Afghan musicians in Peshawar who count on income from the wedding season to see them through the rest of the year.

    Said Hamid Zia, a budding Afghan musician, had been booked for five performances this month to sing at weddings and parties. But after last month’s kamikaze attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, they were all cancelled.

    He normally books six to nine events a month but Zia’s performances are now limited to a few small birthday parties.

    The 27-year-old singer said he loses 8,000 to 10,000 rupees (125-150 dollars) each time a wedding is cancelled.

    A significant portion of Zia’s income used to go to supporting his family in Kabul — now he can barely support himself.

    “I’m living off my savings. I’ll have to go back to Afghanistan if things don’t get better,” Zia said.

    Even the wedding guests are complaining.

    Palwasha Mirbacha, 18, studies hard all year in school and looks forward to the wedding season.

    But the 10 weddings her family was invited to this season have all been postponed, robbing her of the opportunity to see all her relatives gathered together.

    But Mirbacha put her disappointment into perspective.

    “I don’t care about these weddings. I care about my country now. If peace comes, that will be the best celebration,” she said.