Refugees know decades of turmoil

'It's been 25 or 30 years now, and we're fed up with fighting'

10/16/2001

By GREGG JONES / The Dallas Morning News

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Mahbooba Hamidi clings to faint childhood memories of Afghanistan at peace, memories long overshadowed by nearly three decades of war.

She has suffered through the summary execution of her father and brother, dragged from their home in Kabul, the Afghan capital, by CIA-supported "holy warriors" during the 1980s. She has endured the current Taliban regime's puritanical reign of terror.

Now, as American bombs and cruise missiles rain down on Afghanistan, the war-torn world that Ms. Hamidi fled four years ago has again caught up with her. She is safe here in Pakistan with most of her family, but filled with anguish as she wonders whether a sister in Kabul is dead or alive.

"They are waiting for their deaths," Ms. Hamidi said of her family members. She last spoke to her terror-stricken sister by telephone on Oct. 8, the morning after the U.S. bombing began. "They are sitting in their basement, and they don't know when a bomb is going to hit them."

U.S. warplanes hit Afghanistan again on Monday, in what the Bush administration says is punishment for the Taliban regime's refusal to surrender Osama bin Laden. The United States considers him the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks in Washington, New York and Pennsylvania.

The Pentagon has acknowledged that a U.S. bomb missed its target and hit a residential area of Kabul last week. U.S. officials expressed regret, saying that civilians are not being targeted. Four people were killed and eight injured in that incident, according to reports. Taliban officials have said many more civilians have been killed in other attacks.

For Afghan refugees such as Ms. Hamidi, desperate for news from loved ones trapped inside Afghanistan, each day of American air strikes is another day of agony. And even moderate Afghans such as Ms. Hamidi condemn the U.S. attacks.

"What happened in the United States was bad," Ms. Hamidi said. "But Osama is one man, and because of him ... [Americans] are bombing an entire country, and he is not even from Afghanistan. Innocent people are dying. They should have an alternative to bombing."

There is a weariness about Ms. Hamidi as she speaks, etched in a face that looks much older than her 36 years and a voice that is lifeless. These are the defining traits of many of the 2 million Afghan refugees scattered around Pakistan today.

"It's been 25 or 30 years now, and we're fed up with fighting," Ms. Hamidi said.

The trouble began in 1973, when Afghanistan's King Mohammad Zahir Shah was deposed in a military coup. The coup set in motion political and military infighting that culminated with the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and a U.S.-supported war of resistance.

The first years of the Soviet occupation were kind to the Hamidi family, because of its connections with the pro-Soviet regime. Ms. Hamidi's father was an army general. Her oldest brother was an assistant to the chief minister of Kabul.

There were occasional rocket attacks on the capital by the resistance fighters and "people died, but we got used it," said Ms. Hamidi.

But one night, the resistance fighters – known as mujahedeen , or holy warriors – took away Ms. Hamidi's father and brother.

"I had the Quran in my hands, and I was praying for the safety of my brother and father," said Ms. Hamidi. "But my prayers went unanswered."

The rebels shot their captives. The bodies were dumped in a nearby yard.

After the Soviets left Afghanistan in 1989, "life was better. A person could think of making a house or starting something," Ms. Hamidi said.

But the victorious rebel factions began fighting among themselves.

"We got so used to the rockets coming in that on the days they didn't come in, we wondered what was happening," she said.

Taliban's rise

The factional fighting opened the door for the rise of an Islamic vigilante force in southern Afghanistan known as the Taliban. In September 1996, the Taliban captured Kabul without firing a shot.

"We didn't know who they were," said Ms. Hamidi. "We thought they would bring about a good change, because they used the name of [deposed king] Zahir Shah."

But the Taliban set the tone for its rule by seizing the Soviet-era president, Najibullah, from a United Nations compound. He and his brother were castrated and dragged around town tied to the back of pickup trucks, then hung from lampposts.

"The execution was one reason people became scared [of the Taliban] and started to leave the country," Ms. Hamidi said.

The Taliban began staging executions and amputations at the national soccer stadium before large crowds.

Women and girls were expelled from schools and forced to stay at home. Men were required to grow their beards to a certain length.

Violators were subjected to on-the-spot beatings by Taliban morality police who cruised the streets in pickups.

Ms. Hamidi was forced to quit her job as a nurse at a Kabul hospital. Her two younger sisters were sent home from their university studies.

If a woman went out without covering her face and head with an all-encompassing burqa, "you would be beaten," she said. "If your feet were showing, they would beat you. You had to wear closed shoes and black socks."

After five months of increasingly harsh Taliban rule, Ms. Hamidi fled to Pakistan with her mother and several other family members. They settled in Islamabad, where Ms. Hamidi works again as a nurse.

Last month, two brothers who had remained in Afghanistan fled the country with their families, fearing U.S. airstrikes.

The brothers declined to be interviewed because "they might have to go back to Afghanistan, and they don't know what might happen to them," Ms. Hamidi said.

The sister who remains in Kabul with her family is now unable to escape because Pakistan has sealed its border with Afghanistan.

"We are trying every day to reach her by telephone, but we can't get through," Ms. Hamidi said.

The discussions under way inside and outside Afghanistan about the composition of any post-Taliban government don't interest the Hamidi family, she said.

"It doesn't matter who comes into power," Ms. Hamidi said. "We just want a good government so we can live in peace."