Seattle-area Afghans assail Taliban policies

TUKWILA -- Local residents with ties to Afghanistan last night condemned the Taliban government for its oppressive policies and harboring a known international fugitive whom they called "an unwelcome guest in a once free and peaceful country."

About 100 Afghans from around the region gathered in the Tukwila Community Center to pray and to deliberate the possibility of U.S. attack on their former nation.

While Afghan children waited outside the meeting hall playing video games, their parents talked about how they wish international intervention might finally bring a stable political and social structure to Afghanistan. They also hope Western leaders would do nothing to further hurt innocent civilians there.

"We have suffered a lot, and right now matters are worse," said Mohammed K. Roashan, who was deputy minister for information and culture of the republic before he escaped Soviet-controlled Afghanistan in 1979. "The only positive thing the Taliban did was take weapons away from the criminal groups, but they also took Afghanistan back 1,400 years."

The Taliban is the strict religious group that now controls much of Afghanistan.

Those gathered in Tukwila last night said they were pleased with President Bush's speech to Congress and the nation Thursday night in which he issued an ultimatum to the Taliban and other governments that may be harboring terrorists.

"I'm proud we have a leader like that," said Yunus Peshtaz, 45, who helped organize the Tukwila event. "It was exactly what I wanted to hear. No negotiation. You're either with us or you're not."

Peshtaz, now an American citizen, got his first taste of American life as an international exchange student at Puyallup High School, from which he graduated in 1974.

He returned to Afghanistan to find political unrest, and Soviet-backed government officials eventually labeled him an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency. With help from the U.S. Embassy, Peshtaz fled Afghanistan in 1979, a month after the U.S. ambassador there was kidnapped and killed.

Peshtaz found political asylum in the United States.

Most Afghans here fled the Communist government that once controlled their homeland. In recent years, others have come fleeing the Taliban.

Shahila Karimyar, 26, drove from her home in Portland to take part in the Tukwila discussion. She said that she cannot remember when her native land was ever OK.

"People there want the Taliban out. They want Afghanistan to be free again," she said, wearing the traditional hajab scarf around her head. "When there's leftovers in my house, I just think about those people, those mothers, their kids who have no food."

Roashan said, "You can imagine when people run from atrocities and cruelties in their own country, they try to run to a place that is free and where there's peace. When I was in that position and thinking about leaving, we thought about America. There was no question. This was the only country that was safe."

Roashan became a citizen in 1994, after his hopes that "Afghanistan would become Afghanistan again" had faded.

People who have fled Afghanistan make up the world's largest single group of refugees, according to London-based Amnesty International.

P-I reporter Candace Heckman can be reached at 206-448-8348 or candaceheckman@seattlepi.com

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