University Daily Kansan / Friday, April 24, 1987
7
Afghan students worry about conflict
By CHRISTOPHER HINES
Staff writer
Gun-running in the mountains of Afghanistan has created a political problem of superpower proportions, but seen through the eyes of some Afghan students at KU, it seems a little closer.
"The they send you to war and obviously you don't want to go because you have to kill Afghans," said Mohammad Nasim, an Afghan who is now a senior at the University of Kansas. "But if you don't fight, they kill you."
Nasim left Afghanistan in 1979 when the Soviet Union swept south across the nation's border with more than 100,000 troops and captured its capital, Kabul. He escaped into the mountains and was helped to a refugee camp in Pakistan by Afghan freedom fighters.
Shorif Byaquobi, a secretary of political affairs at the Afghan embassy in Washington, D.C., said the Afghan government had asked the Soviet Union for help in surprising a political uprising.
"In 1979, the foreign intervention was very strong." Byaqubi said. "The Democratic Republic of Afghanistan asked the Soviet Union for help in restoring order. The Afghan people were suffering."
The Soviet Union has accused the United States and other nations of prolonging the conflict by supplying Afghan freedom fighters with arms and money.
A U.S. congressional task force on Afghanistan reported last week that the nation's prewar population of 15 million had been reduced by 40 percent as result of killing and people fleeing.
"After the invasion there was a lot of fighting and suffering," Nasim said. "For a young person there wasn't much choice. I think those of us who left are resented by those that stayed to fight the Russians. Maybe they're right."
Nahid Noury, an Afghan student who is now a sophomore at KU, was only 14 years old and attending school in Kabul when the Soviet Union invaded. She said that for the
first few days people didn't even know what had happened.
"I remember they let us out of school early," Nour said. "There was shooting and bombs exploding all over. I couldn't find my mother. People were running around the streets searching and screaming. My mother found me, and we went to a friend's house in the country where it was safer."
"It was hard losing your home, your country, everything," she said. "It's like someone walking into your home and taking everything you own. You understand what that would be like?"
Noury said that her sister-in-law, dressed as an Afghan mountain peasant, had made her way through the mountains and reached the Pakistanian border with the help of freedom fighters.
Nourry left Afghanistan in 1979 with her family when her father, who works for the United Nations, was transferred to Beirut.
"We were one of the lucky ones," she said.
Most Afghans who wish to leave the nation must cross the mountains to Pakistan and wait there in a refugee camp until they receive a visa to enter another nation.
Byaquobi said that if the United States would quit supplying the Afghanistan freedom fighters with arms and money, the conflict would end.
"It can mean months and sometimes years of waiting in a refugee camp," said Nasim, whose mother and father still live in Kabul. "I would like to return someday, but it looks like the situation is only getting worse."
"At the beginning of the year, the government announced a new reconciliation policy with the rebels," he said. "We asked the groups inside and outside the country to come to a political settlement."
"Some groups surrendered themselves and accepted the policy, but neither of them was."
Noury said it would be very difficult for the freedom fighters to surrender without achieving total victory.
Art of sound will be featured at KU museums
Noisemakers, from tissue-paper kazoos to windchimes, will be on display Sunday at the University of Kansas' seventh annual Museum Day.
By a Kansan reporter
ages.
The event, from 1:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. in the exhibit areas of the museums of natural history and anthropology, Spencer Art Museum and the Snow Entomological Museum, will feature exhibits, games and prizes for all
Elizabeth Patton, program developer for the Museum of Natural History, said KU students would find several events interesting.
She said she was always surprised when upperclass students told her they had just discovered the museums.
"Once they come in, they're hooked," she said. "They just want to look at more and more and more."
will be people at the Museum of Natural History to demonstrate various animal calls, including the call of a wounded rabbit, which attracts coyotes, Patton said.
For students who like to hunt, there
Natural noisemakers such as windchimes and blades of grass also will be shown at the museum. A prize will be given to visitors who are able to match 12 animal sounds with pictures of the animals.
The Museum of Anthropology will feature a tape of a North American
Indian courting flute and such instruments as a Hawaiian ukulele and an African thumb piano.
At the Entomological museum, visitors will be able to look through a microscope and see the body parts that insects use to make noises.
The museums also will have a grand prize drawing of a $15 gift certificate for any of the museum shops. The drawing is open to those who tour all the museums.
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