Kymberley
I perfected 'BITCHYNESS'
- Joined
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http://www.dallasnews.com/attack_on...tories/STORY.e9a7ff4543.b0.af.0.a4.17e66.html
Afghans' calls reveal life of fear, suffering
U.S. residents' relatives tell long-distance tales of hunger, flight
10/20/2001
By BROOKS EGERTON / The Dallas Morning News
COLLEYVILLE – Midnight approaches, and the phone rings with news from a world away: Another relative has slipped through the mountains, past the border guards, and out of Afghanistan, bearing little more than stories of his ravaged homeland's descent into ever greater despair.
These days, Aziz Budri lives for such calls from Pakistan, hoping that his many relatives might somehow escape the ruthless Taliban and the massive U.S. military strikes in Afghanistan. He winces as he hears his cousin Abdul describe the bombs that have been falling all around them in the capital of Kabul.
"You can feel the vibrations," Abdul tells him. You may not see the point of impact, but you see the fallout in your own home: "Children are crying and shaking and in convulsions because they are so scared."
How does Abdul explain to the children what is happening? "The only thing we can do under the circumstances is to keep the morale up and tell them nothing really important is going on. It's just a war. They're used to this. We've been at war for 23 years."
It started with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the late 1970s, which made Mr. Budri an exile in the Dallas area and sent thousands of his compatriots to other parts of America.
The U.S. government helped Afghan guerrillas drive out the Red Army in 1989 but did little to help rebuild the country, which has since suffered through civil war, anarchy, and the rise of the current extremist regime.
Tempered hope
Afghans feel abandoned by the United States, Abdul said, echoing a sentiment expressed by many Afghans. And yet many are hopeful that this fight will finally bring about a representative government and peace, he said.
"Some people think that the United States is trying to show compassion" in the way it tries to isolate military targets and drop food in rural areas, Abdul said. But others, he added, suspect that the primary motivation is still revenge for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks – events that many Afghans have learned about from shortwave radio.
Abdul spoke Friday, with Mr. Budri translating, on the condition that only one of his names be used and that few specifics be given about his job. The Taliban has many supporters in the border area of Pakistan where he is staying with relatives, and he said he was afraid to speak too freely on the phone in case it was tapped.
Officially, Abdul is employed by the Afghan information ministry, though there has been little work to do since the Taliban seized power and shut down most forms of publishing and electronic communication. Because his salary doesn't feed his family and women can't work, he has crossed into Pakistan periodically for years to receive money sent by Mr. Budri and Abdul's five siblings.
This weekend, he plans to go back to Kabul with a fresh infusion of cash and try to find food. When he left home a few days ago, "all we had in our house was flour and some cooking oil," he said. They'd had lamb once in the last two months, "and that was the only time I'd had meat and a full stomach," Abdul said.
'We had to leave'
Another of Mr. Budri's relatives, who escaped to Pakistan just before the U.S. bombing started, painted an even bleaker picture of Afghanistan's hunger.
"In the past three years, due to the drought and the Taliban, most people haven't had jobs," said Ahmad, who also wanted only one of his names used. "People with rationing coupons would stand in line for hours to get bread. Those with no other resources resorted to begging, stealing, going through garbage.
"And some women – widows, teenage girls who've been orphaned – have done something totally against Islam: They've resorted to prostitution."
Well before Sept. 11 put a bull's eye on Osama bin Laden and the government that has sheltered him, Ahmad had managed to do what Abdul has not: get his wife and children into Pakistan. But unable to support them there, he had continued to spend much of his time driving a cargo truck in Afghanistan.
Previously, he had worked at the Kabul airport until Taliban officials forced him to resign. "They fired all the professionals," he said. "They don't realize that the country needs doctors and engineers."
The indignity that finally prompted him to move his family, though, involved one of his two daughters.
"My 7-year-old was going to an underground school, which was pretending to be a madrassah," an institution of religious indoctrination, he said. "A Taliban official, from the Ministry for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, stopped her and searched her bag and found an English book. They paddled her on both hands. She came home crying.
"That's when we made the decision that we had to leave."
Inescapable horror
At times, Ahmad said, it seemed relatively easy to cope with the Taliban.
"As long as you dress the way they want you to dress and wear the beard and go to the mosque when it's time to pray, they really didn't have much interest in you," he said. "As long as you were obedient, they left you alone."
But there were other times of sheer, inescapable horror. For Ahmad, the memory is of going to watch a soccer game at the stadium in Kabul, hoping for a little diversion.
During a break in the action, two men accused of crimes had their hands chopped off; another, his head. Afterward, the remains were hung outside for days, "to make sure other people saw it."
"I can't tell you how depressed everybody is," Ahmad said. "You don't feel like a human being. You're like a nomad in somebody else's land."
sighs
Afghans' calls reveal life of fear, suffering
U.S. residents' relatives tell long-distance tales of hunger, flight
10/20/2001
By BROOKS EGERTON / The Dallas Morning News
COLLEYVILLE – Midnight approaches, and the phone rings with news from a world away: Another relative has slipped through the mountains, past the border guards, and out of Afghanistan, bearing little more than stories of his ravaged homeland's descent into ever greater despair.
These days, Aziz Budri lives for such calls from Pakistan, hoping that his many relatives might somehow escape the ruthless Taliban and the massive U.S. military strikes in Afghanistan. He winces as he hears his cousin Abdul describe the bombs that have been falling all around them in the capital of Kabul.
"You can feel the vibrations," Abdul tells him. You may not see the point of impact, but you see the fallout in your own home: "Children are crying and shaking and in convulsions because they are so scared."
How does Abdul explain to the children what is happening? "The only thing we can do under the circumstances is to keep the morale up and tell them nothing really important is going on. It's just a war. They're used to this. We've been at war for 23 years."
It started with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the late 1970s, which made Mr. Budri an exile in the Dallas area and sent thousands of his compatriots to other parts of America.
The U.S. government helped Afghan guerrillas drive out the Red Army in 1989 but did little to help rebuild the country, which has since suffered through civil war, anarchy, and the rise of the current extremist regime.
Tempered hope
Afghans feel abandoned by the United States, Abdul said, echoing a sentiment expressed by many Afghans. And yet many are hopeful that this fight will finally bring about a representative government and peace, he said.
"Some people think that the United States is trying to show compassion" in the way it tries to isolate military targets and drop food in rural areas, Abdul said. But others, he added, suspect that the primary motivation is still revenge for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks – events that many Afghans have learned about from shortwave radio.
Abdul spoke Friday, with Mr. Budri translating, on the condition that only one of his names be used and that few specifics be given about his job. The Taliban has many supporters in the border area of Pakistan where he is staying with relatives, and he said he was afraid to speak too freely on the phone in case it was tapped.
Officially, Abdul is employed by the Afghan information ministry, though there has been little work to do since the Taliban seized power and shut down most forms of publishing and electronic communication. Because his salary doesn't feed his family and women can't work, he has crossed into Pakistan periodically for years to receive money sent by Mr. Budri and Abdul's five siblings.
This weekend, he plans to go back to Kabul with a fresh infusion of cash and try to find food. When he left home a few days ago, "all we had in our house was flour and some cooking oil," he said. They'd had lamb once in the last two months, "and that was the only time I'd had meat and a full stomach," Abdul said.
'We had to leave'
Another of Mr. Budri's relatives, who escaped to Pakistan just before the U.S. bombing started, painted an even bleaker picture of Afghanistan's hunger.
"In the past three years, due to the drought and the Taliban, most people haven't had jobs," said Ahmad, who also wanted only one of his names used. "People with rationing coupons would stand in line for hours to get bread. Those with no other resources resorted to begging, stealing, going through garbage.
"And some women – widows, teenage girls who've been orphaned – have done something totally against Islam: They've resorted to prostitution."
Well before Sept. 11 put a bull's eye on Osama bin Laden and the government that has sheltered him, Ahmad had managed to do what Abdul has not: get his wife and children into Pakistan. But unable to support them there, he had continued to spend much of his time driving a cargo truck in Afghanistan.
Previously, he had worked at the Kabul airport until Taliban officials forced him to resign. "They fired all the professionals," he said. "They don't realize that the country needs doctors and engineers."
The indignity that finally prompted him to move his family, though, involved one of his two daughters.
"My 7-year-old was going to an underground school, which was pretending to be a madrassah," an institution of religious indoctrination, he said. "A Taliban official, from the Ministry for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, stopped her and searched her bag and found an English book. They paddled her on both hands. She came home crying.
"That's when we made the decision that we had to leave."
Inescapable horror
At times, Ahmad said, it seemed relatively easy to cope with the Taliban.
"As long as you dress the way they want you to dress and wear the beard and go to the mosque when it's time to pray, they really didn't have much interest in you," he said. "As long as you were obedient, they left you alone."
But there were other times of sheer, inescapable horror. For Ahmad, the memory is of going to watch a soccer game at the stadium in Kabul, hoping for a little diversion.
During a break in the action, two men accused of crimes had their hands chopped off; another, his head. Afterward, the remains were hung outside for days, "to make sure other people saw it."
"I can't tell you how depressed everybody is," Ahmad said. "You don't feel like a human being. You're like a nomad in somebody else's land."
sighs
