Born in War
Written By Levsa Bayankhail
I fled from the Taliban on 26 September 2001, right after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and Pennsylvania.
I was born in war. When the Soviet Union left Afghanistan, I could hardly remember what happened in the 80s; but I remember my parents and elder family members telling me how it was to live under a communist regime, and how bravely my dad fought against the Soviet Union. I remember how much the “inqilab” [revolution] cost our people’s lives and cost our country. We lost everything to that war, having no idea that we fought another’s war. Then we were left alone by the US and its allies, or thrown on the mercy of Pakistan with our collapsed state.
We faced a civil war in the 1990s and then the Taliban came and everything changed for the worst. My father was one of those mujahideen commandos who didn’t participate in civil war that followed.
Under the Taliban, we were not allowed to listen to music or move freely in our own country. I remember one day back around 1997 when I was a little girl, I was on the way to visit my maternal grandmother all alone, which was quite normal in Kunar Provence for a little girl at that time. I was stopped by long-bearded men with guns, some of them didn’t speak Pashto. The one man who did speak Pashto asked me who I was, and ordered me to never go out alone, and warned me next time that I had to cover my head. I was frightened and ran home to my grandmother.
By 1997 my father faced a lot of threats and saw the situation getting worse day-by-day, so he decided to leave the country.
Afghanistan has always been invaded by foreign powers, and we Afghans have had a lot of bad experiences with the invaders. So, when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan to fight a war on terror, some people were scared and didn’t like the idea of foreigners fighting on Afghan soil, because we didn’t have any idea who Osama bin Laden was and what terrorism was. The only thing many understood was that “angreezan”(white people) were coming to our lands and we would never be free again.
After the years passed, and many Afghans soldiers fought shoulder-to-shoulder with the American and NATO forces—we slowly saw the progress and development in our country, and our people came to know the people in the foreign forces and understand their reasons for intervening in Afghanistan. We no longer saw Americans as a threat to our sovereignty.
When I was in Kunar Afghanistan back in 2014 I saw how the majority of the local people supported Afghan security forces, and noted their perspectives on Americans were now friendly. Many people discussed with me how our Province had seen progress since the Taliban were removed. Afghan people, the majority, considered the U.S. and NATO as an ally of Afghanistan. One of the biggest reasons was that the U.S. and NATO nations didn’t interfere in our way of practicing our culture and religion.
I saw the national pride in my people’s eyes, and that they had adopted a lot of democratic values in combination with our cultural and Islamic beliefs. I saw especially the younger generation that they were more enlightened and educated, and wanted to live in peace and with dignity in their own country. Some of my family members shared their concerns with me over Pakistan’s support for the terrorist groups, and the fact that there were some corrupt leaders and warlords in the now-previous government. They were aware that Afghanistan would face another threat from Pakistan once the foreign soldiers left Afghanistan.
After 20 years of development in the country, and having only a young security force, we Afghans inside Afghanistan, and abroad, feel betrayed and abandoned by the U.S. and its allies.
I personally think the way U.S. and its allies left Afghanistan indicates to the world how untrustworthy the U.S. and its allies are as strategic partners.
I believe that it would be very hard for we Afghans to believe that any other foreign power can be true friend to us. We have paid a huge price in big-power geopolitical wars on our soil since the Soviet Union invaded us and in their Cold War with the U.S. killed over two million Afghans for their political interests. Pakistan got all the benefits and acknowledgment for the USSR’s defeat in Afghanistan. In reality Afghans were on the frontline fighting against communism, and the same goes for the war on terror later. We were on the frontline of the fight against global terrorism, meanwhile the U.S. killed Osama Bin Laden as he lived next to Pakistani army generals and the ISI. It is unthinkable that the U.S. abandoned us and keeps maintaining a strong strategic relationship with the terror-sponsor state of Pakistan, and that