Quotes from Shadow of Afghanistan

Wakil Akbarzai (Commander, National Islamic Front, refugee spokesman)

The Soviets have invaded our country and brutally slaughtered the people, and people felt unsafe and left home. It was not that we were starving and dying because of food or economic aid or those sorts of things, but actually we are dying because we don’t have our own freedom.

On one occasion, the Soviets entered the village, robbed the people, looted the whole village and even took some of the people out in front of the rest of the villagers and blew them up by the tanks and where the bodies, pieces of their bodies were hanging in the trees and nearby walls, just to demoralize the rest of the villagers that never to encourage any Mujahadin to visit their village. And in some cases they have taken the children – five, six month old babies - and brutally slaughtered them in front of their parents and telling them this is the first punishment we give you, and second time if you continue to support the freedom fighters and resistance people, we kill you also.

Afghan Poet

Nowhere in this world will people listen to the cry of the people of Afghanistan. I speak for the broken hearted, I speak for the tears of orphans, I speak for the widows dressed in mourning, I speak for the bleeding hearts of mothers who have lost their children, and also for those who have seen their children die before their eyes. Till when will we conceal this burning story? I am burning, burning to tell this story.

Wakil Akbarzai

Here in Jalalabad there used to be community place, school and education for people, very peaceful life all around. But unfortunately today you see only destruction and no life prevailing. There’s no school anymore and look what the bombs have done to the books. And whenever I stepped slightly off-road or here and there, some of the people whom I knew long back say please be careful. Don’t step there, don’t step there. And they talked all about mines, all about danger.

The thing which hurts me most, I remember my teenage life. This was our playground. What I see here now, scraps, guns, tanks. I can’t believe it. It was such a beautiful part of Afghanistan with lots of flowers, fruits, and greenery, enough water, and pretty life. It was a place for a shelter, for safety, for joy.

Fatima Gailani (head of Afghan Red Crescent)

It’s not just the United States. If it is a powerful person, if it is a powerful government, they like to feel things are easy. They like to see things are instant - instant coffee, instant juice, and lots of instant. I believe that most of the misery today we see in Afghanistan is because of that instant politics.

We fought the Soviet Union, we fought an ideology but our heads were up and it was a just cause. We were not ashamed of it. We didn’t become insane, we never acted with terrorism. But when the civil war started, the whole country went totally crazy.

Abdullah Ahmed (Wakil’s nephew)

Nowhere in the Koran or in Islam does it say to go blow up people for the name of Allah. Allah says respect every religion. Everybody who believes in their own religion, you should give them your utmost respect.

Ahmed Shah Masoud, Commander, Northern Alliance

If I could say one thing to President Bush it would be that if he doesn’t take care of what is happening in Afghanistan, that problem will not only hurt the Afghan people but the American people as well.

The picture that I have in mind for the future of Afghanistan is that Afghanistan will be a country independent, united, and together and stay that way. And the regime of the country would be the kind that’s the people’s regime, democratically elected by the people. This has been my wish to provide the people the power to vote and elect their own government.

Interviewer: If you would like to say something to the women of the Unites States?

Fatima Gailani

It’s a very emotional message, even when I talk about it I have goose bumps, never have I hesitated about that one message that I have. Please educate us. Please educate us because whatever I see today, the misery in this country, and I mean it with all my heart that it is because we are illiterate. We don’t know; we don’t know our rights because we are not aware. Islam was the first religion which taught and prescribed women’s rights, but there are times that because of the same politics, because of the same bad people a situation came that things were imposed upon women in the name of Islam, and again I am saying it because we are illiterate, because we don’t know, we believed them. It is so easy in the name of Islam to impose politics because they know that people will be shy or hesitant to challenge it. If you tell an illiterate woman that “you are not allowed to go to Bazaar because it is against Islam,” she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know to say that “well if this is against Islam how come the wife of the Prophet was one of the best business persons in the whole of Arabia?” Because they don’t know. That’s why ignorance, illiteracy is a plague that I beg every person on earth to help us to get rid of. We compare everything to a nightmare which was Taliban’s era, that’s why no matter what it looks a little bit better from what we used to have during the Taliban.

Abdullah Ahmed

Being an Afghan after 911 is very difficult because somebody would come and break the window and even try to attack any Muslims and at that time there were a lot of attacks on Afghans and any Arab, Muslim people in California.There were no Afghans involved in 911, but they used Afghanistan as a training base so that the Afghan people got a bad name. You know it was very difficult then, now it’s a lot easier. But still till this day when you tell them you’re from that part of the world, not only myself, but they kind of back away too.

Fatima Gailani

Everyone came to Afghanistan to ask for something. If the Americans came they just, we saw at the end it was not democracy. They wanted just to win the cold war. If it was the neighbors, it was not a neighborly act. They just wanted to have a stronger hand inside Afghanistan. But I couldn’t understand that when people came and collected money in the name of Afghan children and they also came and used this country so cowardly. They were digging the most sophisticated tunnels to live there, to be sheltered, and next door to them in the village, people were starving and dying of hunger. So as a Muslim, as an Afghan this is my question for Bin Laden and his lot: That this is what you do to a Muslim country? That’s what you do in the name of Islam? Are we so nothing, the Afghan nation is so nothing that we should be used by everyone? I mean this breaks my heart.

Wakil Akbarzai

I don’t believe it, how long it dragged on. And I’m a hopeful person. I thought that next year would be fine, and next year would be fine and hope a day has come, even if it’s a very chaotic situation, I still believe and hope a day will come that people in Afghanistan will live in peace and harmony, with love and affection with the rest of the world.