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The Exiles Return

Afghans want to come home. But will they be welcomed by those who never left?

July 22 issue
By Babak Dehghanpisheh
NEWSWEEK INTERNATIONAL

Many former mujahedin resent the fact that these Afghans have laid claim to the fruits of a victory they did not win. Although some exiles struggled in menial jobs in the West, they at least enjoyed the benefits of a peaceful society.

Fawad Muslim knows how tough a life in exile can be. In 1984, at the height of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, he fled his homeland on horseback with his mother and older brother. The group traveled at night and hid by day, surviving mostly on green tea and bread.

From Pakistan they eventually made their way to America, where Muslim faced the equally daunting challenge of being a teenager in America. He took a job at Roy Rogers and played videogames on his home computer. He also went to mosque on Fridays, didn’t date and dreamed of returning to Afghanistan. “It was tough fasting [during Ramadan] at Roy Rogers,” says the 28-year-old. “It was really hot in the kitchen, and I would get dehydrated.”

Going home may prove even tougher. Like many of the 5 million other Afghans who abandoned their violence-racked homeland over the past two decades, Muslim returned after the U.S.-led coalition toppled the Taliban last fall. Also like a growing number of Western returnees, he landed himself a good job: with the help of Afghan connections in the Washington, D.C., area, Muslim -- who earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science from George Mason University -- was appointed director of technology at the Foreign Ministry in Kabul. Other exiles from the West have been hired as doctors and engineers, bureaucrats and teachers. The country desperately needs such skilled professionals; most of its educated classes either were killed or fled from the Soviets, the mujahedin or the Taliban. Yet their return is breeding resentment among those Afghans who stayed behind during the country’s dark years. “Local Afghans don’t understand why Afghans coming from abroad, who didn’t suffer all these years, should be rewarded with jobs,” says Daiva Vilkelyte, a program coordinator for the International Organization for Migration.
(More: MSNBC.com News Source)
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