For
Immediate Release
February 6, 2002
By
Congressman Joe Pitts
Kabul’s Dorkhanai High
School for girls reopened at the start of January after being shut down by the
Taliban more than five years before. Congressmen
Frank Wolf, Tony Hall and I visited there a week later and met with classes of
tenth-, eleventh-, and twelfth-graders. We
asked one girl who spoke English if she knew where America was.
The best she could do was guess. “Is
it in Europe?” she asked. She
knew she was probably wrong, and was terribly embarrassed.
Many of Afghanistan’s
schools have been closed for 20 years. Only
47.2 percent of Afghan men over the age of 15 can read and write. A mere 15 percent of women can read and write.
The girls in that classroom
knew the value of an education. They
yearn for learning, the way all of us yearn for things that are always kept just
out of reach.
But as valuable as an
education is, it is not the most important thing.
In a country where simple survival is still a struggle for many people,
going to school ranks second to the need for food, clothing, shelter, and
safety. The United Nations
estimates that 8 million homeless Afghans will need to be fed over the next
three months or they will starve to death.
Millions more need to be fed in refugee camps across the borders with
Pakistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan.
Four years of drought, five
years of Taliban tyranny, and 20 years of war have left Afghanistan this way.
Many millions in this Texas-sized country have no homes or livelihoods,
and live every day trying to outrace death.
That’s not a race they all
win, either. At the Indira Ghandi
Pediatric Hospital in Kabul—the best children’s hospital in the
country—one in three children die from malnutrition every night.
The Alauddin Center Orphanage is home to 800 boys and 100 girls who have
lost their parents.
The orphanage, the girls’
school, and the children’s hospital are three of the several places my
colleagues and I visited in January. We
went there to find out what the situation was on the ground—to find out what
the average Afghan was facing.
What we found was a nation of
proud and friendly people, delighted with their new freedom, but utterly unable
as yet to provide for themselves. They
need help.
But they are only helpless for
lack of tools, not for lack of spirit. They
are a people who did as much as any other nation to defeat Soviet communism in
the ‘80s. They are a people who
have never been conquered, despite repeated invasions.
They are a capable, industrious, and friendly people.
Unbelievably, after all they have been through, they are even a happy
people.
But they are also a people who
are living in what amounts to a pre-industrial civilization.
Bicycles, carts, and one’s own feet are the primary means of
transportation. Few have radios;
almost none have televisions. The
country has one Internet service provider. More than a quarter of the capital city—once the cultural
hub of Central Asia—has been reduced to rubble, and most of the rest is
crumbling.
But things were not always
this way. In the 1960s, Afghanistan
was on the brink of being a modern, prosperous democracy. It was governed by a multiparty democracy.
Newspapers reported freely on the events of the day.
Men and women alike routinely attended universities.
A Soviet-sponsored coup, followed by invasion, ended all of that.
When the Soviets withdrew at
the end of the ‘80s, Afghanistan had an opportunity to return to stability and
to thrive. If we had helped them
then, they might have succeeded. But
with the Cold War over, we weren’t interested any longer.
We must not make that mistake
again.
Afghanistan’s immediate
material needs are food, clothing, and shelter for refugees and internally
homeless people. Its immediate
political need is security and stability. Only
through our strong support of Hamid Karzai’s interim government, and of the
upcoming Loya Jirga or Grand National Assembly, can a trustworthy and
functional government return.
But Afghanistan’s long-term
need is our simple friendship. Unlike
their former masters, the Afghan people love, admire, and appreciate America and
what we have already done for them. If
we return their friendship over the coming years and decades by opening our
universities to their children and establishing sister relationships between
schools, hospitals, towns, and cities—then we will have a permanent ally and
friend in a region where we need one. It
might even be a prosperous friend that only knows of war from history books.
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Additional Information:
See Congressman Pitts’ new Afghanistan page on his Web site at: www.house.gov/pitts/afghan.htm
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