Local Effort to Aid Afghans Goes On Despite Threat of War

Rice, dried beans, cooking oil. Abul Fazel Khalili says those donated provisions can mean survival for Afghans who have endured decades of civil war, a devastating drought, the Taliban and now possible military strikes by the United States.

Afghanistan Relief, Khalili’s Canoga Park-based assistance group, has tapped the local Afghan community for three years, holding concerts and other fund-raisers to help refugees.

On Friday, Khalili arrived in Uzbekistan, the former Soviet republic that borders Afghanistan, on a trip to ensure that an August shipment of medical supplies reaches refugee camps in Afghanistan’s northernmost region.

Attacks by U.S. forces will not keep him away from Afghanistan, said Khalili, 45, who was born in Kabul. He said he has made eight trips to Afghanistan since 1998, the last in June, and they were all dangerous.

“The only reason that takes me to Afghanistan is the innocent people,” said Khalili, who lives with his wife and two daughters in Canoga Park. “That is my life.”

On this trip, Khalili plans to enter Afghanistan from the north, escorting a truck carrying a 40-foot container of donated medical supplies. Corrupt customs officials there are eager to hijack such cargo, he said. The fighting between the ruling Taliban and rebel forces may also flare up.

Local Contacts Seen as Crucial to the Missions

Khalili’s contacts in Afghanistan are crucial to making the delivery, said Edward Artis, whose humanitarian group, Knightsbridge International, has shipped food, medical supplies and artificial limbs to some of the world’s other war-torn areas, including Rwanda, Cambodia and Chechnya.

Over the years, Knightsbridge has donated $300,000 in medical supplies to Khalili’s all-volunteer group. The current $250,000 shipment includes 81 boxes of sutures, anesthetics, syringes and other supplies. Artis said he hopes to meet up with Khalili in Afghanistan by Saturday.

“He’s like our UPS guy,” Artis said. “We will risk our lives to stand side-by-side with him in Afghanistan.”

The Bush administration has indicated that Afghanistan could be the target of military strikes.

Khalili, an unemployed parking lot manager, said he opposes the Taliban and its harsh interpretation of Islam and blames the regime for worsening the country’s hunger.

A United Nations study found a three-year drought has put 4 million Afghans in danger of starvation. The U.N. World Food Programme had been feeding 3.8 million residents in Afghanistan until the attacks on the U.S., said spokeswoman Abby Spring. Since then, only 1 million people in the country have received food because U.N. workers are hampered by lack of trucks, fuel and ground communication.

“With an early and harsh winter expected in November, we need to be as prepared as possible to provide shelter, food, medicine and clean drinking water to an expected 7.5 million in need,” Spring said Friday.

Khalili said he supports the Northern Alliance, the opposition force fighting the Taliban, but he does not distribute supplies to soldiers.

Haron Amin, a spokesman for the Northern Alliance, which holds Afghanistan’s United Nations seat, said the alliance provides Khalili security when he enters territory it controls, but it does not receive assistance from Khalili.

Khalili said he will also try to reach his uncle, who was an aide to assassinated Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Masoud. Khalili fears his uncle, Masoud Khalili, was gravely wounded during the suicide bombing that killed Masoud shortly before the attacks on the U.S.

“At the hospital, his wife was crying and said to come visit,” Khalili said. “He is in Tajikistan, that was the last report. He was very close to me.”

Khalili, a slight, dark-haired man, is a U.S. citizen and has lived here for 15 years. Before his departure he sat quietly at a Northridge Afghan restaurant, nibbling on a custard sweet as he told of founding Afghanistan Relief in 1998 to help victims of a magnitude 6.9 earthquake in the province of Takhar, the village of Rostaq and other areas.

On his last trip to Afghanistan in June, he bought $11,000 of food in the border areas of the country for refugee camps. Afghan college students at three University of California campuses raised about $8,000 for that project, he said.

The camp at Dashtak, north of Kabul, was overflowing with 200,000 refugees in June, he said. That means the 40-foot container of medical supplies he is shepherding will have a limited impact.

“It is nothing,” he said. “But we have to do something.”