BY SARAH STEPHEN
"Four teenage boys are crouched in front of the TV, watching, listening, hanging on the words of the BBC reporter who is describing the carnage when US jets bombed a wedding party celebration in central Afghanistan... A slight boy, barely 14, breaks the silence. 'And Mr Ruddock says it is safe for us to go back to Afghanistan. Well, I will give Mr Ruddock my $2000 if he will go and live in my village for a week. He would not last one day.'" This account was given to the July 6 Melbourne Age by a social worker.
The Australian government continues to pressure asylum seekers to return to Afghanistan, threatening them with forcible deportation if they refuse to go willingly. This is based on a cold and inhuman calculation by the government that Afghanistan can be portrayed as "safe" simply because the Taliban has gone.
But facts are stubborn things. War and instability are features of daily life. Hunger is widespread and famine is still a possibility. Drought threatens the few crops that have been planted. The country's infrastructure is inadequate for the present population, let alone the million or so refugees who have returned in recent months.
On July 1, US warplanes bombed and strafed four villages in south-east Afghanistan. A wedding party was decimated, killing as many as 120 people according to survivors. On July 6, a key member of the pro-US government in Kabul, vice-president Abdul Qadir, was assassinated in Kabul.
Qadir was one of three vice-presidents appointed during the June grand assembly, or loya jirga. As a Pashtun leader allied to the dominant faction of the Northern Alliance (NA) that now dominates the Afghan government, Qadir's role was to give the false appearance of "ethnic balance" in the government.
The majority Pashtun population in southern and eastern Afghanistan has been politically marginalised and disenfranchised since the fall of the Taliban. The central government of Hamid Karzai is unpopular in the south and east.
Until the Taliban's rise to power, Qadir was the warlord who controlled the eastern city of Jalalabad. In 1994, Qadir made a deal with the Pakistan-backed Taliban and handed the city to them without a fight. He only fell out with them later.
One of the wealthiest and most powerful figures in eastern Afghanistan, he made his fortune from the trade in opium across the Pakistan border. Nangarhar, the province in which Qadir was governor before and after the Taliban, is the second biggest opium-producing province in the country.
Peace?
Riz Wakil, a refugee from Afghanistan living in Australia on a temporary visa, told Green Left Weekly that the assassination of Qadir "challenges what the US is saying — that there is now peace in Afghanistan, that all the warlords have been thrown out. It has shown that there are people not happy with the government, or with the US presence. My personal opinion is that the assassination is a good thing, because now another warlord is gone."
Reflecting the tangled web of warlord rule in Afghanistan, Qadir had many enemies. Commentators have speculated that his assassins could have been NA warlords concerned that Qadir was becoming too powerful. They may have been remnants of the Taliban or rival Pashtun warlords angered at Qadir's support for the US war. They could also have been rival drug barons.
Wakil suspects that the dominant NA faction was behind the killing. "Qadir had a lot of fighters, which was a threat for the current government", he said.
As for the US bombing of the wedding ceremony, Wakil can't believe that the US made a mistake. "It is one of the reasons there is no uprising against the current government, even though there is widespread discontent. All other minorities are scared because if they protest against the Karzai government, the international media and US forces will label it a Taliban uprising."
'Premature and unsustainable'
Afghanistan has suffered three years of drought which has significantly affected agriculture and livestock production, from which 80% of Afghans make their living.
According to a study, Food Security in Afghanistan 1999-2002, prepared by famine expert Sue Lautze for USAID and released in May, there are "many instances where people would have died without humanitarian assistance, especially emergency water interventions and emergency food aid".
Relief efforts have only partially eased the situation. Internal displacement as a result of the US war has placed huge pressure on communities which have to support an increase in population, further disrupting agriculture. The report concludes that large-scale repatriation of refugees from neighbouring countries is "premature and unsustainable".
Drought-driven debt has led to some peasant families selling daughters, as young as seven, into marriage, the report stated. "We went into this thinking maybe this country was going into a reconstruction phase, when in fact it's still in acute disaster phase", Lautze reported.
Speaking at a Washington conference at the end of May, USAID official Andrew Natsios explained that prolonged and severe malnutrition has contributed to a "dire health situation" in Afghanistan, along with low life expectancy, high rates of mortality among mothers and children, and a high rate of infectious disease. Only 11% of people in the countryside have access to clean water.
In the third week of June, the number of refugees returning home to Afghanistan from neighbouring countries topped 1 million. That number is expected to rise to 2 million by the end of the year and may trigger a humanitarian disaster.
The July 9 British Guardian reported that UN High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers had warned that thousands of refugees could be put in peril if the lack of shelter and drinking water in war-damaged villages and towns forced them to leave Afghanistan again.
The UNHCR has not received the funds necessary to assist the huge number of returning Afghans. If more funds are not received from donor countries, programs for returned refugees will end in August. The World Food Program has also had to cut its rations by two-thirds.
Wakil told GLW that continuing war and famine contradicted the Australian government's view that Afghanistan is "safe": "I can't see any change for the better in Afghanistan. The latest killings, Qadir's assassination — why would anyone expect people go back to Afghanistan? There is no economy, there are no factories, people have no incomes, no jobs and no future.
"A friend of mine who recently returned to central Afghanistan from Iran explained it very simply. The religious leader before the Taliban took power was Sheik Irfani, a warlord from a Shia Islamic group. When the Taliban captured central Afghanistan, they appointed him leader. When US forces arrived, he remained in his position!"
There is "nothing in Afghanistan for anyone to go back to. Don't send us back to war", Wakil pleaded.
From Green Left Weekly, July 17, 2002.
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