Dialogue: Tragedy on a vast scale in land the world forgot

In having to deal with boatloads of Afghan refugees, the West is reaping what it has sown, writes SHAUKAT ZAMANI.

The Afghan boat people saga has a deep touch of both tragedy and farce.

Not long ago, Afghans were hailed in the Western press as the romantic heroes of the 20th century. Now they are considered invading refugees, perceived in some circles to be at best a burden on any Western society that would take them in, or at worst terrorists who will blow up the people who host them.

As an Afghan who partly grew up in the midst of the tragedies of the past 23 years of the seemingly interminable Afghan war, I am heartbroken to see my people treated as the Australian Government treated those on the Tampa.

As a former American-trained journalist, I blame the Western world for being an important cause of today's Afghan tragedy. The Afghan refugees trying to reach the relative safety of the West are only a small part of this tragedy.

Afghanistan came under the spotlight in 1979 when it was invaded by the former Soviet Union. The invasion was a flagrant violation of international laws and norms. As a first major sign of their support for the Afghans, the West, spearheaded by the United States, boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics.

The West was also quick to provide aid to the Afghan people. Support came in the form of humanitarian aid for the millions of Afghan refugees living in Pakistan and Iran. The US also poured arms worth billions of dollars into Afghanistan. A bloody struggle ensued against the Red Army.

The Afghans, keeping true to their reputation as a nation never subjugated by foreign invading forces, won the war. The Soviets were ignominiously defeated.

Yet while the war was won at the cost of 1.5 million Afghan lives, with a further one million people maimed, the CIA declared itself as the major winner. There is no doubt the war was one of the main causes that precipitated the fall of the Soviet empire.

It was not long, however, before the West's fascination with Afghanistan came to a grinding halt. The country fell completely off Western radar screens. The descent of post-Soviet Afghanistan into a state of complete lawlessness was a direct result.

The Mujahideen factions, who were manufactured during the Soviet era by the CIA, Pakistani intelligence agencies and to some extent within Iran, embarked on a bloody struggle for power that has all but destroyed the social, economic and political fabric of Afghan society.

The Taleban movement, which came into being in 1994, has defeated many of the Mujahideen factions responsible for the civil war. But it has created new problems for Afghanistan and its people that go far beyond the norms of modern politics.

This, however, represents only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the arrival of the Afghan refugees on Western borders. These Afghans are not what is commonly referred to as economic refugees seeking a better lifestyle in the West. They are desperate people trying to flee a desperate situation. The main idea behind the creation of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, as well as the Geneva Convention relating to refugees - to which most nations, including New Zealand and Australia, are signatories - was precisely to deal with genuine cases of refugees like these Afghan boat people.

More than three million Afghan refugees live in Pakistan and Iran, the biggest human displacement in modern history.

Some of these people will invariably end up in the West. Some have come as far as Australia and New Zealand, and there is no doubt that more are still to come.

I cannot help but agree with Prime Minister Helen Clark that any permanent solution to the Afghan refugee crisis will involve looking beyond the New Zealand, Australia or even the Indonesian border.

The main cause of the refugee crisis lies in the Afghan political crisis itself. As long as the world community turns a blind eye to that problem, the refugee flow to the West will continue.

The world community has a moral obligation to help the Afghans find a solution to their political crisis.

An important cause of the Afghan civil war is the direct interference of neighbouring countries such as Pakistan, Iran and Russia, which provide their favourite factions with arms and finance in pursuit of their own designs. Afghanistan, because of its important geo-political location, has historically been at the crossroad of foreign invasions.

An important part of the dynamics of a solution to the crisis must, however, be generated internally by the Afghans themselves.

There is also the question of Jenny Shipley's stance on the Afghan boat people. As the Leader of the Opposition, her role and that of her party involves mainly the criticism of Government policies. That, indeed, is the lot of opposition parties in Western democracy as they seek to moderate the policies of the ruling party.

But Mrs Shipley has gone too far in criticising the Government's stand on the Afghan refugees. Displaying almost no knowledge of the background of the Afghan refugee crisis, her stance seems more designed to increase her own, and her party's, popularity.

Rather than looking at the reality of the Afghan refugee problem, she homed in on a public opinion that initially opposed the Government's position.

Mrs Shipley has also been quite ignorant in characterising some of the Afghan refugees as possible terrorists. History has shown that Afghans have never been terrorists.

* Shaukat Zamani is a post-graduate sociology student at the University of Auckland.