Medical Volunteers Come to Aid of Afghans : Emergency Care, Facilities Desperately Needed by Soviet Occupation Victims

Michael Utter was hopeful when he read Saturday that formal talks on the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan may begin soon.

“Since the Soviets invaded at Christmas in 1979, wouldn’t it be great to have peace there this Christmas?” he asked. “My fondest hope is to see an end to the suffering there.”

For five months now, he has spent about 16 hours a day thinking about that suffering.

Nonprofit Medical-Care Group

He is executive director of International Medical Corps, a Los Angeles-based organization that provides medical care for sick and injured people in Afghanistan.

The nonprofit group was established about a year ago by Dr. Robert R. Simon, an assistant professor of emergency medicine, assistant director of residency in emergency medicine and director of the procedures laboratory at UCLA. Since June, the International Medical Corps has operated out of a house in Brentwood that was donated to the group to use for offices for a year.

“IMC was formed because of a vacuum,” Simon said.

The vacuum was created, he explained, when an Afghan doctor who had left Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion in 1979 returned in 1983 to find medical facilities destroyed--except for those in the major cities where Soviet troops are stationed--and nearly all of the 1,500 Afghan doctors executed or imprisoned. “When that was publicized, a number of American doctors and nurses wanted to help, and I wanted to set up a medical/surgical clinic,” Simon said.

To do that, he explained, he had to slip through rugged mountain passes on foot and under cover of darkness, accompanied by Afghan resistance fighters carrying medical and other supplies. The 36-year-old bachelor and the 13th of 16 children born in the United States to a Lebanese immigrant is believed to be the first American physician to enter Afghanistan after the invasion.

He also financed the trip.

“I contacted a number of organizations like the Red Cross,” he said, “but they refused to help me set up a clinic. The charters of these organizations state that they can’t go into a country where the government won’t allow them.”

Some organizations suggested that Simon contact the government set up by the Soviets. But he figured that would be fruitless, even though his clinic would treat anyone from resistance fighters to “Soviet soldiers, if they were brought to us.” The Afghan doctor had reported systematic bombings by the Soviets of rural medical clinics and hospitals, and the Soviets had ordered all of the international relief agencies, including the International Red Cross, out of Afghanistan.

This didn’t faze Simon.

Sold House

“He got so involved that he sold his house in Malibu to have enough money to open the first clinic, stock it with supplies for the better part of a year, and even start a second and third clinic,” Utter said.

Utter’s main job since he and his secretary, Patti Nottoli, became the only two full-time IMC employees last June, is fund raising, and that hasn’t always been easy. About 2,000 individuals made donations, but so far, corporations and foundations have not.

“The problem is that what we are doing looks controversial to some people, so it’s difficult for them to grasp and relate to. I think there is a lack of perception of the reality of what is going on there and the significance of it,” he said.

KABC Radio talk-show host Dennis Prager, who is on the IMC board of directors, sees what’s going on in Afghanistan as genocide. A 1984 Helsinki Watch report on Afghanistan estimated that 1 million Afghans have been killed since the Soviet invasion.

‘A Holocaust’

In the spring issue of Prager’s newsletter, Ultimate Issues, he wrote an article titled, “Afghanistan: How Good People Can Ignore a Holocaust.”

“It’s a key point from the perspective of a Jew,” said Prager, who was director of a Jewish institute for seven years and wrote a textbook on Judaism.

“I always thought that ignoring the Jewish Holocaust was a function of anti-Semitism,” he said, “and while I still think there is an element of that, Cambodia in the ‘70s and now Afghanistan prove to me that by and large, no matter where a genocide takes place, most people go on with their lives as if nothing is happening.

“It’s very important to me that the Jewish community act on this, take it on as a cause, because it maintains our moral credibility about our motto: Never again. Presumably, that means ‘never again’ for everybody.”

Registered Nurse

Prager worked out a program to be sponsored by the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies on Dec. 15 at 7 p.m. in the center in West Los Angeles. Called “Eyewitness to Genocide: An American Doctor in Afghanistan,” it will feature Prager, Simon and some slides taken by Prager’s wife, Janice, who just returned from Pakistan, where she helped set up an Afghan women’s medical clinic. She is a registered nurse.

She was also in Pakistan to return one of a handful of Afghan children brought to the United States for reconstructive surgery by the Committee for a Free Afghanistan, based in Washington.

Mariah Lucas of the California Committee for a Free Afghanistan returned from Pakistan last week with two children who are scheduled for surgery in Sacramento. The IMC hopes to bring other children to Los Angeles.

“Hospital and doctor care has been taken care of. They will be donated,” Simon said, “but the hang-ups right now are the cost of transportation and a place for a child to stay for a couple of months between surgeries.”

Slides of Victims

Simon has slide after slide of maimed and sick youngsters in Afghanistan. The three or four clandestine medical clinics his group has established treat thousands of patients a month. Of those, he figures that 90% are villagers, about 10% are so-called “freedom fighters” or moujahedeen (holy warriors), and a few are Afghan army soldiers. “Whole brigades have defected since the invasion,” he added. “So now there are only about 30,000 compared with 100,000 before the war.”

Most of the villagers treated are women and children.

During the five weeks that Simon was there, he traveled through one village where 70 children had died from the measles and another where 140 died from diphtheria. “Children are suffering from vitamin and protein deficiencies, so they lose their immunities to diseases,” he explained. “They are also suffering from malnutrition.”

As for injuries, Utter said, “with the men in the hills resisting the Soviets, the people left in the villages are the women, children and elderly. They take the brunt of the Soviets’ thrust.”

Children Burned

Simon tells about children who had kerosene poured on their arms by soldiers trying to extract information and youngsters who had devices designed to look like toys explode in their faces. Simon suggested that the Soviets drop these toy devices from helicopters to lure unsuspecting tots so families will move out of the country to Pakistan, where the nearest permanent medical facilities (aside from the Soviet-controlled ones) are situated.

IMC’s clinics are either hidden, as in a cave, or are mobile. There aren’t enough of them to reach all of the injured fast enough. “They could have minor injuries but die because of delayed treatment,” Utter said, showing some of Simon’s slides.

Another problem is limited supplies. When they run out, treatment is primitive. Goat hair is used for sutures, mud and straw for casts. The ambulance is a donkey and a wooden bed frame.

Hasan Noure, IMC associate chairman, said that his group is “the only one actively setting up clinics in the country,” though the German Afghan Committee wants to join with IMC, the French already have about 30 doctors in Afghanistan, the Swedish are donating medical supplies, and about 76 British doctors have offered their services to IMC.

The British bring the number of IMC’s medical volunteers to nearly 400. Of these, fewer than 10 Americans have actually gone inside Afghanistan. Even fewer Americans will be sent in the future.

The federal Agency for International Development is giving IMC a $675,000 grant to set up a training center near Peshawar, Pakistan, for Afghan medics, with the stipulation that no money goes toward sending Americans over the border into Afghanistan. To show good faith, IMC now only recruits internationally for that, said Hoeida Saad, a registered nurse in charge of recruiting, and American doctors and nurses will be used for training and at an acute-care clinic at the training center.

“We’ve located a facility, but we have to build onto it, and we hope to open the doors in January,” Simon said. “There will be 30 students in a class and maybe as many as three classes at a time--if the funds last.” Costs of supplies alone jumped 40% since June, he estimated.

“But even if we only teach one nurse in eight hours, she could immunize 150 to 200 people a day,” Saad said. “Since the war, there has been no immunization program. So the Afghan people are dying in masses.”

Basically, IMC wants to help the Afghans help themselves. It’s a goal that seems to be growing in popularity. IMC now has active or budding chapters in San Diego, Detroit, Sacramento, Seattle, Albuquerque, Portland, Ore., and Washington.

If the Soviets pull out, IMC will continue to help for a while, Utter said, “because the infrastructure for health care in that nation is completely devastated. We’d play a role in the reconstruction.”

Then IMC would concentrate on another place where medical help is needed. “Maybe Chad,” he suggested.