Afghan Activist Calls for Halt to Bombing

An Afghan activist called Monday for the United States government to stop bombing her homeland and making the long-suffering Afghan people victims of the fight to end world terrorism.

“How many more lives should be taken? What else should be destroyed in Afghanistan?” said Tahmeena Faryal, a representative of the Revolutionary Assn. of the Women of Afghanistan. She addressed a UCLA gathering of about 70 people at the start of a Southern California speaking tour.

Several members of the mostly antiwar audience told Faryal, who uses an assumed name for protection, that they were trying to build a protest movement.

‘Ethical Human Beings Need to Stand Up’

“We really need to start finding our voice. It’s a time when decent, ethical human beings need to stand up,” said T.J. Ghose of the UCLA Student Coalition Against the War, a sponsor of the event, before introducing Faryal.

Faryal, who is based in Pakistan, said America should wield its diplomatic and economic power in the region. The U.S. and its allies should end all military and financial support for Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and other countries that encourage the Taliban and fundamentalist groups, she said.

Faryal said her organization has worked for more than 20 years to help people in Afghanistan and refugee camps. It has helped organize secret classes for illiterate women and for girls and set up mobile health clinics because Afghans are in desperate need of health care.

She said the group has tried for years to attract attention to those needs.

“No one listened to what RAWA was saying until the 11th of September,” Faryal said.

Now, she said, the U.S. government is paying lip service to human rights in Afghanistan but still isn’t really listening.

“So far, we see the deaths of hundreds of innocent civilians,” she said.

Faryal also called the Afghan Northern Alliance misogynistic and “not any different” from the Taliban in terms of human rights abuses. The U.S.-backed alliance is fighting the Taliban.

“The armed groups should be disarmed in Afghanistan,” she said.”

Messages for Afghan Women

At the back of the Grand Ballroom in the Ackerman Student Union, where Faryal spoke, audience members wrote messages to Faryal’s organization in felt-tip pen on a piece of cloth.

“Hang tough! In America there is growing resistance to this deplorable war!” wrote someone who identified himself as “Henry, L.A.”

“We are crying for your people as well as ours,” someone else wrote anonymously.

“I wrote that I cannot sleep at night when people are dying,” said 19-year-old Sabrina Krewin, a sophomore from Seattle.

Krewin, who joined the campus antiwar group soon after Sept. 11, said 400 students had signed on to an e-mail list. She said 50 students regularly attend the group’s meetings.

Krewin said she was moved by Faryal’s description of people living without food in a war-battered country without basic infrastructure, from banks to daily mail.

She said she knew that Americans were devastated by what happened Sept. 11.

“But I hope they don’t take their pain and just turn it into vengeance,” she said.