Afghan refugees who have made a home in New Zealand say the country must again show generosity towards those suffering in Afghanistan's current crisis
Twenty years on from a government decision to house those fleeing persecution by the Taliban in Afghanistan, some of the refugees who now call New Zealand home say we have another chance to provide a safe haven for those at risk.
An online seminar hosted by the Helen Clark Foundation on Thursday offered an opportunity for Afghan Kiwis to share their thoughts on the unfolding catastrophe in Afghanistan and press the Government for more action.
Abbas Nazari, an Afghan refugee turned Fulbright scholar whose family was taken in by New Zealand following the 2001 Tampa affair, said the last few weeks had been incredibly challenging for Afghan families here who still had extended relatives in areas where the Taliban had advanced.
Nazari had been providing advice to several Afghan families seeking an evacuation flight about where to stand at the Kabul airport and who to contact, and while they had made it out of the country, the Islamic State bombing had made the stakes even higher.
“I almost felt complicit because I was forwarding on information about where to go and where to stand, and I wondered, had I sent people to that place that day, I could have been culpable.”
He cautioned the public against accepting the word of “incredibly sophisticated, social media savvy” Taliban spokesman who were offering assurances about their changed approach, saying talk of a ‘Taliban 2.0’ was premature.
“Right now the world's media attention is on Kabul and particularly around the airport, but what you have to realise is that beyond that, into the provinces, the Taliban look exactly the way they were in the 90s.
“We're already starting to see door-to-door executions of folks who've worked with the government, we're starting to see, on a softer level, cultural destruction, especially, of Hazara, Uzbek, and Tajik cultural monuments – exactly what we saw ISIS do when they when they overtook Syria and they destroyed the Gates of Palmyra.”
But Nazari also had criticism for the international community, saying the decision to freeze the Afghanistan central bank’s assets had put the economy in freefall and would harm the wider population, while he wanted New Zealand to make a clear commitment to resettling Afghan refugees beyond those it had already evacuated.
“I understand that the wheels of government in Wellington are turning very, very hard to try and organise something, but the fact that there's been some silence and the fact that we haven't heard something…
“It gives me as a member of the Afghan New Zealand community a bit of strife to think, OK, what are they thinking, what's happening here, why have they not made even a verbal commitment?”
Zahra Hussaini, a community advocate who came to New Zealand after her siblings were accepted from the Tampa, said she was concerned about how women would fare under Taliban rule.
“When there is a war, the most vulnerable members of the society are women...although they’ve [the Taliban] promised and mentioned that they're supportive of women and what it is they do, they can be in the society and work is normal, but are they going to live by their promises?”
Hussaini knew of families where widows were afraid their young daughters would be forced into marriage to Taliban members, while promises of continuing education for women were undercut by suggestions there would need to be gender segregation.
“Leadership is seen as very, very high status…[and] getting to be governor of a province, mayor of a city or elected to a regional council was also an opportunity to make a great deal of money.”
“If there's a class with a majority of guys and a few women, then...what are the chances of them being able to access the same gender lecturers or teachers? It’s obvious and clear that what they're trying to do is keep women inside.”
Former Labour MP Chris Carter, who spent four years in Afghanistan working for the United Nations Development Programme, said efforts to strengthen the governance of the country’s 34 provinces were stymied by tribal traditions and problems with corruption under both presidents Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani.
“Leadership is seen as very, very high status…[and] getting to be governor of a province, mayor of a city or elected to a regional council was also an opportunity to make a great deal of money.”
During his time in Afghanistan, Carter had also been struck by the deep poverty of those living outside the urban areas, exacerbated by the country’s dry climate which made irrigation critical for agriculture.
The UN’s World Food Programme had recently estimated 40 percent of crops due to be harvested had already been lost due to the second major drought in the last three years
“Control of water has been perhaps the greatest source of conflict in Afghan villages for probably millennia, and so it’s bred a sense of survival in the countryside.
“But also, people are very, very vulnerable to climatic change, to insecurity, and now with the conflict that's occurred, not sure whether even those basic services will be able to be provided by the Taliban.”
Clark herself said the world’s focus on Afghanistan needed to endure beyond the aftermath of the Taliban’s surge and US withdrawal, with the country facing “a crisis on every front”.
“In global affairs these days, we suffer from the CNN effect as it's called: at the immediate moment of crisis like an evacuation from Kabul airport, it's 24/7 television, and then it melts away and the suffering and the challenges that the Afghan people face don't get the coverage that they should.”
Clark shared Hussaini’s concerns about the future for Afghan women, saying many had become governors, doctors, lawyers and teachers despite the remaining difficulties after the Taliban had been ousted.
“I've seen the Taliban saying on our TV screens, ‘Oh, yes, there'll be women in government but not senior’ – well, what does this mean? A clerical assistant in the government department? I mean, nothing is clear about this moment.”
With two-thirds of Afghanistan’s population under the age of 25, many would have no memory of life under the Taliban: “In the far flung rural areas and hamlets of Afghanistan, perhaps not so much changed as for the youth in the cities, but the youth in the cities have got their cell phones, their pop music, blue jeans, they shave their beards, they've been used to a different life – how are they going to react to this?”
Nazari, Hussaini and Tampa refugee Zakaria Hazaranejad all expressed a desire for the Government to take more Afghan refugees beyond those it had helped airlift to safety, while Carter said New Zealand was in a position to take as many as 1200.
Clark agreed New Zealand needed to support those who were vulnerable and needed safe haven, but said the global community also needed to think of “the great bulk” of the country’s population who were not in a position to leave and would need ongoing support from aid agencies.
* See the Red Cross website for more information about how to help the people of Afghanistan.
