U.S. Marine from Afghanistan contemplates fate of ancestral home

By KATHY GANNON
Associated Press Writer

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – Tucked inside a sleeping bag on the cold cement floor of Kandahar's airport building, U.S. Marine Ajmal Achekzai contemplated the fate of his ancestral home.

He was 5 when his family left Afghanistan in 1980. The Soviet Union had invaded, and his father, a political science professor at Kabul University, was marked for arrest by the new communist regime.

"We left a country where we had something, and arrived in a country where we had nothing," said Achekzai, leaning against a camouflage knapsack.

His family moved first to New York and then settled in Fremont, Calif., home to America's largest Afghan-American community. Without U.S. credentials, Achekzai's father couldn't work as a professor, so he opened a hot dog stand.

The family thrived, Achekzai said proudly.

Achekzai arrived on the USS Dubuque with some of the first Marines in Afghanistan, opening the Camp Rhino base about 60 miles southwest of Kandahar. The base since has closed.

Achekzai, who speaks Pashtu and Dari, is a translator and liaison between Marines and the airport compound's Afghan staff.

He is proud to be a Marine, but he laments the state of affairs that he has found in his first trip back to his former homeland. He knows the U.S.-led bombing campaign in Afghanistan has touched ordinary Afghans – his aunt left Kabul for Pakistan.

"Even though the United States is my home, this is my home, too," Achekzai said. "It is a country with a lot of culture and beauty and good people."

But its history is a sad one, he said.

"Afghans have been paying for 23 years, first with the Russians who just took their soul," he said, "and then with the warring groups who ruled for four chaotic years, and finally with the repressive Taliban regime, who allowed Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida terrorist network to flourish."

That angers Achekzai.

"I call them – Osama and al-Qaida – Satan's puppets," he said.

"In Islam, they don't teach this. It is the most peaceful religion."

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