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News and information
from Google |
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| On this page |
| emails from around the world |
| from an American Afghan living
in New York |
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| from Tamim Ansary, an
Afghani-American writer |
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| Bomb them with
butter |
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| The US Mercy Corps has a
country focus section with web resources about Afghanistan and regional news
about what's happening on the Pakistan border with Afghanistan |
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The challenge of ...
UNDERSTANDING
what has happened
emails from Afghan Americans
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Dear Friends and Family,
As an American, a New Yorker and an Afghan, I have struggled with many
feelings. I have wondered what I can do to educate people about the state of
affairs in Afghanistan now and over the past 20 years.
The Soviets invaded Afghanistan in December of 1979, it is September 2001 and
my father's country has been destroyed day by day for over two decades. I am
disgusted by the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. For my family, these have been
household names for years prior to the tragedies we witnessed on Tuesday. My
father has spent years trying to get people in our government to listen - he
has sat around our dinner table talking to his children for hours on end about
what was happening to his homeland - so many of our friends have listened as my
Dad spoke passionately about the hateful crimes the Taliban was committing
against innocent Afghans all in the name of Islam, an Islam that my family does
not know, an Islam that cannot be found in the pages of the Koran.
I beg you, as friends, to take the anger we all feel and try to learn and
spread knowledge. We all want retaliation. We want someone to pay for the
innocent people whose lives were taken away. But, please, please, please
understand that Afghans like me and my family have never supported the Taliban.
In fact, we have watched helplessly as these cowards took the little bit of
dignity the Afghans had left after the Soviet war.
I went to work the other night and watched groups of friends, bright and
educated people, stop their conversations as I approached. I have never
experienced anything like this. My Dad recently grew a beard, but after seeing
images of bearded fundamentalists on TV, we have asked him to shave it off to
quell any possibility of attacks out of ignorance.
For the first time in my life, I am afraid to tell people my ethnic background.
My name is a liability. My coloring makes me feel scared when people look at me
on the subway. I find myself thankful that my sisters and Mom have lighter
coloring.
Please read the following letter. We all feel helpless right now. If nothing
else, please try to educate your friends. Please do not perpetuate hate. Hatred
brought down the World Trade Center. Hate is hate -- there is no gray area.
Please forward the following letter to everyone you know. Take a moment to
paste the letter into a new email, add your own thoughts so that people don't
just skip by a subject heading that begins with FWD:.
It is very possible that we will bomb Afghanistan in the coming days. maybe
emails like this will not stop that from happening, but let's not pretend that
we do not know that those actions will kill innocent and helpless people who
have lived under the terror of the Taliban for years.
We turned our backs for so long. We have not written about them, or if we have,
we have not read those articles, we skipped past them. People did not know
where Afghanistan was until three days ago. How is that possible? Bin Laden was
behind the first WTC bombing, the bombing of the Cole and the embassies in
Africa -- ask yourself, how did we not pay attention? Pay attention now. Know
what is going on in our world. All we have is hope, unity and the ability to
open our eyes. Open them.
With much love,
Yasmine
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Dear Friends,
The following was sent to me by my friend Tamim Ansary. Tamim is an
Afghani-American writer. He is also one of the most brilliant people I know in
this life. When he writes, I read. When he talks, I listen. Here is his take on
Afghanistan and the whole mess we are in. -Gary T.
Dear Gary and whoever else is on this email thread:
I've been hearing a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan back to the
tone Age." Ronn Owens, on KGO Talk Radio today, allowed that this would
mean killing innocent people, people who had nothing to do with this atrocity,
but "we're at war, we have to accept collateral damage. What else can we
do?" Minutes later I heard some TV pundit discussing whether we "have
the belly to do what must be done."
And I thought about the issues being raised especially hard because I am from
Afghanistan, and even though I've lived here for 35 years I've never lost track
of what's going on there. So I want to tell anyone who will listen how it all
looks from where I'm standing.
I speak as one who hates the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. There is no doubt in
my mind that these people were responsible for the atrocity in New ork. I agree
that something must be done about those monsters.
But the Taliban and Ben Laden are not Afghanistan. They're not
even the government of Afghanistan. The Taliban are a cult of ignorant
psychotics who took over Afghanistan in 1997. Bin Laden is a political criminal
with plan. When you think Taliban, think Nazis. When you think Bin Laden, hink
Hitler. And when you think "the people of Afghanistan" think
"the Jews in the concentration camps." It's not only that the Afghan
people had nothing to do with this atrocity. They were the first victims of the
perpetrators. They would exult if someone would come in there, take out the
Taliban and clear out the rats nest of international thugs holed up in their
country.
Some say, why don't the Afghans rise up and overthrow the Taliban? The answer
is, they're starved, exhausted, hurt, incapacitated, suffering. A few years
ago, the United Nations estimated that there are 500,000 disabled orphans in
Afghanistan--a country with no economy, no food. There are millions of widows.
And the Taliban has been burying these widows alive in mass graves. The soil is
littered with land mines, the farms were all destroyed by the Soviets. These
are a few of the reasons why the Afghan people have not overthrown the Taliban.
We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone
Age. Trouble is, that's been done. The Soviets took care of it already.
Make the Afghans suffer? They're already suffering. Level their houses? Done.
Turn their schools into piles of rubble? Done. Eradicate their hospitals? Done.
Destroy their infrastructure? Cut them off from medicine and health care? Too
late. Someone already did all that.
New bombs would only stir the rubble of earlier bombs. Would they at least get
the Taliban? Not likely. In today's Afghanistan, only the Taliban eat, only
they have the means to move around. They'd slip away and hide. Maybe the bombs
would get some of those disabled orphans, they don't move too fast, they don't
even have wheelchairs. But flying over Kabul and dropping bombs wouldn't really
be a strike against the criminals who did this horrific thing. Actually it
would only be making common cause with the Taliban--by raping once again the
people they've been raping all this time
So what else is there? What can be done, then? Let me now speak with true fear
and trembling. The only way to get Bin Laden is to go in there with ground
troops. When people speak of "having the belly to do what needs to be
done" they're thinking in terms of having the belly to kill as many as
needed. Having the belly to overcome any moral qualms about killing innocent
people. Let's pull our heads out of the sand. What's actually on the table is
Americans dying. And not just because some Americans would die fighting their
way through Afghanistan to Bin Laden's hideout. It's much bigger than that
folks. Because to get any troops to Afghanistan, we'd have to go through
Pakistan. Would they let us? Not likely. The conquest of Pakistan would have to
be first. Will other Muslim nations just stand by? You see where I'm going.
We're flirting with a world war between Islam and the West.
And guess what: that's Bin Laden's program. That's exactly what he wants.
That's why he did this. Read his speeches and statements. It's all right there.
He really believes Islam would beat the west. It might seem ridiculous, but he
figures if he can polarize the world into Islam and the West, he's got a
billion soldiers. If the west wreaks a holocaust in those lands, that's a
billion people with nothing left to lose, that's even better from Bin Laden's
point of view. He's probably wrong, in the end the west would win, whatever
that would mean, but the war would last for years and millions would die, not
just theirs but ours. Who has the belly for that? Bin Laden does. Anyone else?
Tamim Ansary
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Bomb them with butter, bribe them with hope
from an American citizen |
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A military response, particularly an attack on Afghanistan, is exactly what the
terrorists want. It will strengthen and swell their small but fanatical ranks.
Instead, bomb Afghanistan with butter, with rice, bread, clothing and medicine.
It will cost less than conventional arms, poses no threat of US casualties and
just might get the populace thinking that maybe the Taliban don't have the
answers. After three years of drought and with starvation looming, let's offer
the Afghani people the vision of a new future. One that includes full stomachs.
Bomb them with information. Video players and cassettes of world leaders,
particularly Islamic leaders, condemning terrorism. Carpet the country with
magazines and newspapers showing the horror of terrorism committed by their
"guest". Blitz them with laptop computers and DVD players filled with
a perspective that is denied them by their government.
Saturation bombing with hope will mean that some of it gets through. Send so
much that the Taliban can't collect and hide it all. The Taliban are telling
their people to prepare for Jihad. Instead, let's give the Afghani people their
first good meal in years. Seeing your family fully fed and the prospect of
stability in terms of food and a future is a powerful deterrent to martyrdom.
All we ask in return is that they, as a people, agree to enter the civilized
world. That includes handing over terrorists in their midst.
In responding to terrorism we need to do something different. Something
unexpected..something that addresses the root of the problem. We need to take
away the well of despair, ignorance and brutality from which the Osama bin
Laden's of the world water their gardens of terror.
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