There are currently around three million Afghan refugees in Pakistan alone, a commonly cited fact, which we are all only too aware of by now.
But, it is hard to really digest this fact. The number alone is the first problem.
THREE MILLION.
Take the Tufts undergraduate population and multiply it by 600! So, so, so many people! More than live in Boston. Hard to imagine. Easy to forget that we are talking about individuals. A lot of individuals...
The other aspect that makes three million refugees hard to understand is this term refugee. We all know what it means - a displaced person, forced to live in another country. But how often do we picture what it really entails?
I know I never really did. And I am ashamed of it now. We saw so much on TV about the victims of the World Trade Center. The building collapsed over and over again, we saw bodies falling out the windows, heard stories of people who were in one of the two towers at the time, struggling to get out - brought into the hearts and memories of every single American. Really, really terrible things.
But how much did we hear about the plight of Afghan refugees? Section B of the New York Times sometimes showed one or two pictures. CNN and other TV stations were rather quiet.
Yet, I believe that particularly for Americans, it is extremely important to understand what American bombs did to so many people. I am not saying that three million Afghans were uprooted due to American bombings, but maybe one million were. Again, such a HUGE number! The UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that there are at least 200,000 new refugees in Pakistan alone, maybe as much as 500,000 - nobody knows. Not to mention the tens of thousands who are waiting close to the border and are not allowed into Pakistan as well as the tens of thousands who are displaced in other parts of Afghanistan.
And the horrors these people had to go through... Sometimes I wonder how we could possibly understand. Living in this wonderfully cozy environment here!
Little children waking up at night because 200 pound bombs are falling onto their village. (And please don't tell me these things about American bombs only hitting al Qaeda and Taliban networks. Far more American soldiers have died in their own accidents than in enemy fire. During the very first weeks, a CNN, a UN, and a Red Cross building were destroyed).
Imagine your house getting hit, members of your family dying - the noise of planes and bombs and sleepless nights with bombs dropping all around you. Praying you will survive. Crying children, weeping adults, traumatized for months and years to come.
Or bombs destroying livelihoods. People simply had nothing to eat any more. (Hard to imagine here at Tufts - I could start crying when I see how much food is left on the trays and wasted after every meal). Some people in Afghanistan were eating grass - others really had nothing.
Finally, the situation becomes too bad to bear, and people have to start leaving - little children, pregnant women and the elderly.
What must it be like to leave EVERYTHING you have, everything you worked for behind, not knowing whether you will ever see it again?
People had to walk for days - carrying their children, and, if lucky, a couple of blankets.
They had to cross minefields, sneak through the borders like criminals, try and find a place where they can survive.
When they arrive, they are exhausted. Long marches, in often terrible weather conditions take their toll. They arrive hungry, tired. Their feet are cut and they have nothing. And how do you deal with the psychological burden? This insecurity of the future?
Somehow they manage.
Or they don't. Huge, sad graveyards greet every visitor to refugee villages. Piles of dirty rocks covering dead bodies.
Those who survived this first part of the journey will often have to move again and again. They get relocated to different camps, or decide to return to their home - and have to flee again.
And people only barely get by. The lucky ones get jobs none of us would ever want. Many, many children are forced to work as well to support their families. School is an unaffordable luxury. The first months or years are the worst. In the places where people settle first, there is often not enough access to safe water. There are not enough latrines. People live in tents. The situation is particularly harmful for women. Their traditional space is in the house. Can you imagine how hot it gets inside the tents during summer? Women develop skin diseases due to sweating.
And yet, they survive. And I admire them for it.
Since September, there are at least 200,000 new refugees in Pakistan. Maybe the number is even closer to one million. Nobody knows. What happened in New York and Washington, DC is horrible. But what is happening in Afghanistan is horrible, too.
More than 3,000 people have directly been killed by American bombs. Many more have been killed indirectly due to a lack of food or because they died when they had to flee their homes. Hundreds of thousands have had to go through the experience just described.
I believe (and I know that opinions differ on this) that "the hunt for terrorists" certainly does NOT justify the suffering of so many innocent victims. "Their" government (which according to the US never was, a government representing the people of Afghanistan) might be (somewhat indirectly) responsible for the deaths of 3,000 Americans. But that does not justify our government's actions; to kill or injure over one million people on the grounds of fighting "terrorism."
But then, luckily, in this case, there is another approach one could take to "Taliban Under Attack." In many ways, the Taliban certainly was not a good regime, and they refused to change. So, in the most positive light one could examine the American attack, one could argue that they are taking out a bad regime and replacing it with a better one, hence helping the Afghan people in the long run. In this case, the inflicted suffering to at least one million people MIGHT (I am not sure myself) be justified.
Yet, if looked upon in this light, the most difficult task of the American operation in Afghanistan still lies ahead of us.
And it is a hard task. According to some newspaper articles, conditions in some parts of Afghanistan, notably around Jalalabad, have returned to pre-Taliban conditions. Local warlords are fighting each other, making life for everybody extremely insecure. The US and other countries must now ensure that the situation will improve, and that a stable, just government can rule the country in peace.
Many Afghans are extremely hopeful right now. For the first time in a long time, they see a real possibility of peace.
Maybe one day then, the refugees can return home and finally settle down again.
Jana Frey is a she should call back with this info] majoring in sociology.
