Why Not Afghanistan?

Becky Burgwin
OpEdNews.com

(Reaction to recent article stating, “At U.S. Meeting, Iraq Appears Open for Business” in which 400 people from 30 countries line up to develop Iraq, while Afghans go hungry. Information from a young Afghan woman that exposes the real truth regarding conditions in her country.)

I find it extremely tragic that the country we invaded for no real reason, the country that does not appear to want us there, is “open for business”, and that “despite suicide bombers, snipers and attacks from Saddam…loyalists,” 400 people from 30 countries are attending to its reconstruction. They’ve got condo developers, companies that make walls that can withstand attacks from shoulder fired rockets, and a guy who wants to put a super sized apartment building and Cinema complex in downtown Baghdad called Sinbad’s. My God, haven’t these people suffered enough.

Meanwhile, we seem to be forgetting that the Afghans begged us to come into their country and help them. They had been living for 6 years under the brutal regime of the Taliban, who, lest we forget, WAS responsible for 9/11. For weeks afterwards, their spokesperson, Haron Amin, talked to the media trying to convince the American government to allow them to guide the U.S. troops into their harsh and difficult country. And, as I’m sure everyone recalls, we did just that…took out the Taliban in about a week with minimal U.S. casualties.

Afghanistan was invaded by the Russian’s in the 70’s. After 20 years of war their legendary commander Ahmed Shah Massoud drove the Soviet Union off, thereby making that union, well, not a union any more. That’s right, the Afghans should be given credit for the fall of Communism.

Next they’re treated to 6 years of anarchy and finally 6 years of the Taliban, whom we helped into to power, thinking it would stabilize their precariously placed country. For a year before Sept. 11^th we ignored pleas from Commander Massoud and his Washington lobbyist that Al Qaeda was alive and well in Afghanistan and that they were planning something huge. Two days before the buildings fell down Commander Massoud was murdered in a suicide attack. That was their warning shot.

We promise to help them rebuild. We entertain their new president. We help them refurbish their embassy. Millions of refugees that left the country when the Russians invaded and millions more who left when the Taliban arrived start coming home. Why? Because the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA promised to help the Afghans rebuild.

Let me tell you something about these Afghans. They should all be given Nobel Peace Prizes. Every one of them has left a nice life to return to their battered country to do whatever they can. My Afghan friend, who has lived in the U.S. for 25 years, has an organization called Aid Afghanistan. They are trying to get the thousands of young girls who were not allowed to attend school during the reign of the Taliban back to school. Keep in mind that Afghan women have traditionally been highly educated. They are doctors and lawyers and by decree, at least half of their democratic government, often more, has to be women. But there are no buildings and few teachers and 16 year old girls who want to be reporters and doctors have 3^rd grade educations. If you would like to help Aid Afghanistan go to www.aidafghanistan.net .

While attending a fund-raiser for Aid Afghanistan recently, I met a 24-year-old Afghan woman who is in the U.S. working for The Afghan Women’s Network. She and the members of her family were refugees in Pakistan for 20 years. The Afghan Women’s Network is an organization comprised of around 60 women’s groups from all over their country. They are here in the U.S. trying to educate us to their plight, as well as learn from us by visiting battered women’s shelters, homeless shelters and childcare centers, as well as looking at programs that distribute food and clothing to low-income, in their case no-income, families. I spoke to her in a cab we shared and because of what I learned from her in that very short time, I did a 45-minute follow-up interview with her, which will be published in its entirety.

Here are some of the things she told me. Women in Afghanistan are poisoning their children and killing themselves because they have no food or shelter. Homeless orphans are begging and dying on the streets every day. She, herself, has taken in 4 of them while also supporting her family of 12. Since there is no family planning, and there never will be while George Bush is in the White House, families are huge and some are forced to sell one of their children just so they can feed the rest of the family for a year. You don’t even want to know what happens to them. Her stories are tragic beyond words.

Listen everyone, these ARE the people who greeted us dancing in the streets and throwing flowers. Afghanistan would have been a perfect location for the stabilizing democracy in the Middle East our government claims to want. At least that’s their latest excuse for invading Iraq. All of the others are being systematically exposed as lies. And in response to this, I have to ask, WHY NOT AFGHANISTAN? There’s only one thing I can think of that Iraq has that Afghanistan doesn’t, and we all know what that is…OIL. I don’t know about you but it really makes me wonder if their plans have anything at all to do with democracy in the Middle East and I cry when I wonder what’s going to happen to the long-suffering Afghans.

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