California’s Afghans Fear a Civil War in Homeland

While some Afghan immigrants cheered each snippet of news on Taliban retreats in their home country this weekend, others worried they were witnessing another prelude to civil war and a mad scramble for control among the nation’s ethnic factions.

In the Pamir Food Mart in Fremont, home to the state’s largest Afghan community, patrons were exchanging congratulations over the fall of the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, a milestone most said was the beginning of the end of the Taliban regime.

“People say congratulations to each other. People want a different regime,” said Homayoun Khamosh, the store’s owner. “We want peace at last. Everybody’s hoping that this brings peace for us.”

But even Taliban detractors like Khamosh worried that too hasty a move into the capital, Kabul, would only spark infighting among the ethnic groups that make up the Northern Alliance.

“They don’t want to capture that,” he said. “Once we go in, there are a lot of different groups that will start fighting again.”

San Diego resident Shuaib Azizi, 35, likewise was pleased with the Northern Alliance’s progress, but worried about the pace of events.

“The way it’s moving right now, it’s very close to victory over the Taliban and most of Afghanistan, but the political issue is as important as military advancement,” Azizi said. “I feel at this point, we don’t have a coalition ready to go. If we don’t have a transition government, a lot of innocent people could die.”

Indeed, Afghan immigrants with a less negative view of the Taliban regime cautioned that the minority ethnic groups that claim to have wrested control of half the country have shown a propensity for violent discord during nearly a quarter century of internecine fighting.

“If we just destroy the Taliban, if the Taliban is gone, I think we’ll be plunging Afghanistan into another civil war, from which it will not recover in a long time,” said Zaman Stanizai, a political scientist and adjunct professor at UCLA.

Maryam Lodin, a Northridge woman who fled as a child 20 years ago, said she had spoken with her uncle, who owns large tracts of farm land near the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, on Friday, as Northern Alliance troops pressed into Mazar-i-Sharif.

“He sees it as, once these guys come into Kabul, they’re going to start fighting amongst each other and it will be the same civil war,” Lodin said.

“All they do is fight. There’s never been a peaceful solution in that country, even when the king ruled.”

Like Lodin, most immigrants’ knowledge of the situation was piecemeal, culled as much from telephone conversations as from mainstream and niche news outlets, such as Radio Voice of Afghanistan, based in San Francisco.

The station, whose owners have been celebrating the Northern Alliance victories all weekend, broadcast reports from Mazar-i-Sharif of men lining up to shave their Taliban-mandated beards.

“There was major jubilation and celebration going on in the streets--thousands of people, especially lots of women,” said Kamran Faizi, translating for his father, Said Faizi, the station’s president. “There were hundreds of men lined up at the barber shops waiting to get their beards shaved.”

News images like that energized conversations throughout the weekend in the state’s Afghan immigrant communities. About 100,000 Afghans live in the U.S., half of them in Northern California.

“I was jumping up and down this morning when I saw it on CNN,” said Nina Najmia Anzarinejad, 39, of Irvine, an activist in the local Afghan community. “A lot of people called me and said, ‘Did you see the news? Did you see the news?’ ”

Airan Nassir, 41, of San Diego, was picking up her dry cleaning when she got word of the Northern Alliance victories. She rushed to the car to listen to the radio, then spent the rest of the day talking about the victory’s implications with her Afghan American co-workers and family members.

“I am very excited, very happy that they captured Mazar-i-Sharif and other cities,” Nassir said. “I feel sorry for the children that live there, and I feel sorry for the evil invading my country. I want the United Nations or whoever to help out and kick [the Taliban] out and get rid of them.”

But Gulalai Rahimi, who owns Mission Paradise Restaurant in Hayward, longed for contact with her many family members. “We don’t have facts,” she said. “We don’t know what to think. We are completely in the dark.”

Rahimi, who left Afghanistan 21 years ago, said new regimes in Afghanistan have a long history of failing and killing civilians.

“Every time, our wishes were for the best and still it turned out for the worst,” said Rahimi, whose father was an Afghan army general. “I wonder what’s going to happen next. That might be worse. There’s no guarantee for us.”