Afghan Americans Full of Fear for Those Left Behind

Abdul Rafie and his wife sat, mournful, giving up on a half-eaten lunch of kebabs. Safe in the heart of American suburbia, their thoughts went to a tortured land 11 time zones distant.

Rafie has 50 relatives in Afghanistan, target of America’s new bombing campaign. His wife, Afghani, has a couple dozen cousins back in their native nation. They’ve heard nothing from any of them.

“Our country is the victim in this,” Rafie lamented as his wife, a traditional hijab scarf covering her hair, wiped away tears with a paper napkin. “For my people, life is important, too.”

In Fremont and other California centers of the Afghan expatriate community, there are divisions over the course of events as the U.S. undertakes military action in its war on terrorism.

But the one unifying factor is concern for their homeland, site of a two-decades battle against enemies domestic and foreign, and now a focal point for what President Bush has declared the first war of the 21st century.

Many Afghans applauded the U.S. strikes. Some suggested more commando raids. Others preferred diplomacy and economic pressure.

Each one lamented that Afghanistan was in the center of it.

At Pamir Food Mart, a hub of Little Kabul here in the state’s largest Afghan enclave, people mainly talked up the benefits of the bombing campaign that began Sunday.

“Everyone wants peace over there,” said Homayoun Khamosh, from behind the counter in his shop, its shelves stocked with everything from dry goods to CDs. “This is the only way.”

In a sweltering room out back, baker Nasrullah Zadraa kneaded loaves of noon, flat Afghan bread. Timor Ayubzai, 20 years in this country after fleeing the war against the Soviets in the 1980s, sat nearby talking of events back home. A small TV next to the bread pans blared the news.

Abraham Akbar happened in. An unemployed video store clerk, he gave what amounted to a 10-minute civics lesson. America must attack, he reasoned, but bombs won’t work.

Every expatriate Afghan, Ayubzai suggested, “wants to clean our land” of Osama bin Laden, the Taliban government and other forces they accuse of bringing ruin. “The only thing they worry of is the poor people left behind.”

“All Afghan people have relatives there,” Zadraa muttered before returning to his bread.

Vaus Aslaun, founder of a Web site dedicated to Afghan news and culture, said he is saddened by the bombing. He believes economic pressure, particularly on Pakistan, could accomplish what attacks may not.

“Afghanistan has been ground zero for decades,” he said. “This is never over.”

Efforts to reach relatives have been useless, he and others said. Phone lines have been severed, and even so most residents in major Afghan cities long ago fled to the mountains, seeking refuge in border camps alongside Pakistan and Iran.

A few people reported getting messages relayed from relatives, but those fleeting bursts of information--and validation of a loved one’s safety--were the exception.

Abdul Rafie, for instance, sent $100 via a friend in Pakistan to a cousin in Kabul. Tell them to escape, was the word he passed on.

That was two weeks ago. He has heard nothing since.

“My wife is crying all night over what happens,” Rafie said. “I worry for the civilians, the children. It happens in war--the innocents are killed.”

The feelings are much the same in Southern California. At the Afghan House Restaurant in Northridge, Saleha Ibrahimi, 46, took a rest after cooking lunch and worried about relatives in Kabul.

Razia Sadat, an Afghan American who owns the market next door, came to commiserate, complaining of a mostly sleepless Sunday night spent fretting over the attacks.

“We don’t support the Taliban. We’re sick of everything they’ve done. But the point is, nobody wants to see their country attacked,” said Sadat, 28.

The talk about the attacks kept drifting from what they’d seen on the news to their anger at the Taliban and Bin Laden. They spoke of Sadat’s uncle and aunt, both doctors, whose clinic was shut down by the Taliban; of women not allowed to work or leave their houses in safety.

“In Afghanistan, everybody’s hungry. There’s no medicine,” Sadat said. “And now, in the middle of all this, bombs are falling from the sky.”

Ibrahimi’s daughter, Sheila Nassiri, 27, stopped by. Her view was was clear: The attack on the Taliban and Bin Laden was justified, regardless of casualties.

“We’re excited about the American attack because we hate the Taliban,” she said. “You know, anyway, the civilians are going to die in that country. They’ve been dying. So either way, bombs or no bombs, chances are they’re going to die. If this gets the Taliban out, I think it’s worth it.”

Sayed K. Hashemeyan, who left Kabul University in 1981 and now runs Afghanistan Mirror magazine, worries that the United States doesn’t grasp Afghanistan’s political complexities.

“We are feeling a little bit of indifference and a little bit of carelessness,” he said.

Many people dream of returning. The bombs of October have, for some, made that possibility seem suddenly real. But some wonder about giving up lives in the U.S.

“This is the toughest question,” said Taher Hashemi, an exiled political scientist from Kabul University who lives in Thousand Oaks. “I would love to go back, to serve my country and my people. But someone who lives in the United States for 17 years, I am not just a person myself, I have a family and the roots of my family go deep in this society.”

Led by Hashemi, about 350 Afghans from Southern California met Saturday and drafted a resolution to President Bush, Congress and the exiled king of Afghanistan.

In the missive, which they plan to send this week, they are urging that the post-Taliban leadership of Afghanistan include representatives from all the country’s ethnic groups, and that it be allowed to operate without influence from surrounding countries or the Northern Alliance.

Their proposal does not differ greatly from that announced in Rome last week by the exiled king, except that many Afghans in Southern California are concerned that the Northern Alliance will have too much power in new Afghanistan, which they say will only lead to more conflict.

Despite the murky future, 23-year-old Sofia Fani said she will go back as soon as she can to help rebuild the society. She fled with her family 10 years ago and studies computer science at UC San Diego.

“I would love to go there as soon as it is safe to go back,” she said. “I want to help my people.”

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Bailey reported from Fremont. Lelyveld reported from Northridge. Jessica Garrison contributed from Orange County.