Healing Hands Reach Out to Afghan Fighters and a Little Boy

From their 10th-floor hospital room, Mohammad Asghar and Zikr-Ullah can gaze out on the Pacific Ocean and Newport Beach, but their thoughts are of a mountainous land half a world away, where they fight a war with Kalashnikov rifles taken from slain Soviet soldiers.

They are moujahedeen --Afghan rebels--who have come to Orange County to receive specialized medical care unavailable in Pakistan, where they live in refugee camps. Four refugees from Afghanistan arrived at John Wayne Airport Jan. 27 as part of a nationwide effort to treat wounded rebels. A fifth arrived two days later.

Speaking through an interpreter Tuesday, Zikr-Ullah, 26, who heads a contingent of 200 moujahedeen in his native province of Faryab, said all the rebel fighters are deeply appreciative of the medical treatment.

“Otherwise we might never be able to fight again,” he said. “Still, we prefer to get weapons.”

Asghar and Zikr-Ullah are the only two to undergo surgery so far. In a pair of operations that lasted 14 1/2 hours at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian last Thursday, doctors performed bone, nerve and tendon grafts, along with other procedures that will allow both men to return to battle in a matter of months.

Asghar, 36, lost the sight in his left eye and the use of his right hand when he was hit by shrapnel from a land mine. Zikr-Ullah lost the use of his right hand when a bullet destroyed a critical bone. Both men, attending physician John Cook said, were “unable to pull the trigger on a rifle or even to eat with their right hands.”

Two other rebels will be treated at Western Medical Center in Santa Ana.

Khudai Dad, 17, is due to undergo surgery for shrapnel injuries to his left leg this morning. Dr. Joseph Swickard said he will attempt to graft bone onto Dad’s fused ankle and lengthen a leg that was shortened about two inches by doctors in Pakistan.

Mohammad Ayub, 21, who also suffered shrapnel wounds to his left leg, may not need surgery, Dr. Robert Sheridan said. He said Ayub may be able to regain full use of the leg with a brace and therapy.

The fifth Afghan, 6-year-old Mulla, whose family members are moujahedeen , on Thursday will check into White Memorial Medical Center in Los Angeles, where he will undergo the first of a series of operations on Friday morning. Mulla lost parts of four fingers on his right hand when Soviet aircraft strafed his village in 1983, decimating the population.

Treatment of the injured Afghan rebels is the only U.S. involvement in the bloody seven-year conflict that Congress has specifically authorized, although elected officials have acknowledged that some arms have been shipped to the area on a covert level. The program, funded by a combination of private Afghan relief organizations and the U.S. government, has provided treatment in this country for about 145 soldiers and injured civilians since the program began last July.

All of the numerous doctors and hospitals involved across the country have donated their time and services, officials connected with the program have said. Cook said he can’t put an exact dollar value on the treatment being received by the two men at Hoag, but he offered a ballpark estimate of at least $15,000.

Cook said he became involved in the program through Dr. Jack Warburton, who coordinated the program for the four Afghans in Orange County. While he said he would like to eventually serve a short volunteer stint in a Third World country, Cook stressed that he is trying to steer clear of politics and therefore takes no public stance on the war.

But the program is like nothing he’s done before, Cook said. “I’m still excited about it. It’s been a real challenge for me,” he said, adding with a smile, “It’s not your typical Newport Beach reconstructive surgery.”

The other doctors involved expressed similar mixed feelings about their involvement. Dr. Roger Huf, who will operate on young Mulla, said he hopes that publicity about the program “will have a snowball effect” that will prompt other doctors and hospitals to volunteer their services.

Mulla will require surgery to release contractures in his hand and possibly will need skin grafts and a prosthesis, Huf said. “Let me put it this way,” he said. “If he is now 15% to 20% functional, then with the surgery and with the therapy, and possibly with prosthesis, it’s hoped that he’ll be 70% (functional).”

Huf said Mulla has remained fairly timid and added that the culture shock must be tremendous for so young a boy. “Just walking into a supermarket must be overwhelming,” he said.

There’s no way to estimate how long it will be before the youth can return to his family, Huf said. “But I understand that there’s no hurry. He needs to go to Disneyland first.”

But in their first two weeks in Orange County, the Afghans have seen little more than the inside of a shared Santa Ana apartment and hospital rooms, Zikr-Ullah said. The only Americans they have met have been reporters and doctors. In the brief stay so far, they have picked up two words of English--”thanks” and “OK.”

But the two men don’t have much interest in small talk. They prefer to speak of battle.

Neither man has seen any American-made weapons, and they fight strictly with Molotov cocktails, captured Kalashnikovs and other Soviet weapons and a few arms manufactured by the Chinese. Asghar, who was a soldier in the Afghan army when the Soviets invaded in 1979, produced a news story out of Pakistan detailing a battle in which the rebels captured numerous weapons and equipment, including rocket launchers, mortars, jeeps and six tanks.

He said the rebels have learned how to use all the Soviet weapons except for helicopters and jet fighters.

Despite being outnumbered and poorly armed, the rebels have kept the Soviets at bay, Asghar said. “We hope and we think that they may leave our country soon,” he said.

Both men expect to remain in Orange County at least another three months. Asghar also is being treated by ophthalmologists Richard Kratz and Stephen Johnson, who will attempt to restore full vision to his partially injured right eye.