`My heart is bleeding for my country and for my people.’ Modestans mourn native Afghanistan
Those seeking proof of Afghanistan’s bleak future need look no further than Modesto. Some of that country’s finest people are here and no longer there.
If Taliban rulers keep their word and let go all who wish to leave, the best and brightest won’t be around to help Afghanistan get on its feet. If the Taliban break their promise, prevent people from fleeing and start killing those who oppose them — as some reports suggest is already occurring — well, that’s even worse.
“We predicted this was going to happen,” Modesto’s Farhad Anwari said of the chaos and conflict in his homeland, a week after American military forces left. That’s why he and his wife, Zurwa Farhad, left in early 2019 for a new start in Modesto.
They loved their country, but had received threats and knew they could not stay. “Most people know we worked for the United States government,” Zurwa told me in an interview. “They think when a person works for the United States, they should die.
“You just keep walking,” she continued, “as someone is shouting, `Look at him!’ or `Look at her! They are supporting United States. What should happen to them?’”
They are worried sick about his brother, who worked with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to the end and didn’t get out in time. They fear for their aging parents and other relatives. They asked to be photographed from behind, to minimize retribution against loved ones.
Farhad, 30, was nearly 6 when the Taliban came to power in 1996. He remembers making his way with his mother through streets littered with corpses, dogs gnawing at them, as they searched for his father, who had been snatched by Taliban fighters. People talked about mass executions. “It was a bad time,” he said.
“So when the Taliban came back, and now they say they’re for women and won’t do anything to anyone and we can live peacefully, they’re absolutely wrong. They are so much brutal people,” Zurwa said. She noted reports that women were whipped and beaten at a recent protest. A week ago, a pregnant policewoman was murdered in front of her family; the Taliban have denied responsibility.
Nonconforming woman in male-dominated culture
Zurwa, 28, is not a typical Afghan woman. In her younger years, she did children’s radio broadcasts. A math whiz, she tutored girls in mathematics. When she entered Kabul Polytechnic University, Zurwa was one of two young women aside 150 male students in an engineering construction program. Eventually she became an architect and was hired to run a USAID program helping young women train and get good-paying technical jobs.
That path didn’t sit well in a male-dominated culture, with Taliban waiting in the wings for Americans to give up and leave.
“I am 100% sure they do not accept women as human beings,” Zurwa said. “If you say, `My brain is as intelligent as yours,’ they never accept this. They believe women are only for houses and treat us like a sheep or a cow. In their language, they don’t say, `How is your wife?’ They say, `How are your animals at home?’”
Halima, another Modesto woman I met recently who came from Afghanistan five years ago, had helped U.S. military officers as an interpreter, security specialist and trainer. She is frantic with concern for her three younger sisters, two of whom recently graduated from a nursing program and the other, a business student.
“I can say for sure that women can live in two categories: maids and housewives,” Halima said in an email.
“One day when my sisters were coming from school, two men on motorbikes stopped by and threw hot water with a bottle on their faces, saying, `Tell your sister this time it was just hot water, but next time it will be acid. Because we know Halima was working with USA, and now we do jihad against her family.’ After that day, my whole family stopped going outside, school and even shopping.”
At her university years ago, friends were killed in a Taliban suicide attack. Recently, Taliban militants detained three brothers who worked with American agents. None has returned, she said.
“So now how can I trust that they just suddenly changed?” Halima said. “They killed innocent people — kids, women.
“I was the eyes and ears of USA military. I was doing my best to tell them every single threat that could harm them to keep them safe, but instead this is what I got back — bring me here, but put my family to experience gradual death.
“My heart is bleeding for my country and for my people.”
Standing by Afghans who stood by us
Farhad and Zurwa came to Modesto when she was pregnant with the first of their two young sons. Soon after delivery, he searched in earnest for work and landed a job with an engineering firm. That was just four months after they arrived, and they have not accepted one dollar of public assistance since.
And Zurwa recently landed a position with another engineering firm that allows her to work from home.
“We are not going to lay ourselves on the government,” Farhad said. “We are trying to help serve the U.S. as we did our own country.”
Zurwa said, “We should be allowed to sponsor our families coming here. If we are independent and we support ourselves, why should we wait many years? At least for those who are independent, that option should exist.”
Farhad and Zurwa have little faith in a newly announced Taliban cabinet that looks very much like the one from 20 years ago; all ministers are from the same tribe, few are educated beyond religious studies and one is on the FBI’s most wanted list. Not one is female, and the women’s ministry already has been disbanded.
“They know how to plan suicide attacks. They know how to kill people, how to punish people. They just know this,” Zurwa said. “A person who knows about suicide attacks, how is he to serve as minister of health? They will keep everything backward. Afghanistan is in a dark area.”
Farhad said sadly, “In six months or a year, you will hear of a bad crisis in Afghanistan. You will see a poverty crisis. They will not let women work or be educated. This is my prediction.”
