Afghans cautiously optimistic

While protests by Taliban sympathisers in neighbouring Pakistan continue unabated, reaction from Afghans in Iran - by its own account home to the largest Afghan refugee population in the world - remains more subdued. From ambassador to labourer, Afghans in the Iranian capital, Tehran, are cautiously optimistic that the US-led strikes will have positive effects on their homeland. Unanimous in their wish for a Taliban-free Afghanistan, they warn, however, that the current military campaign should be brief, and well-targeted to avoid civilian causalities. "The Taliban leadership must go," Sayed Mohammad Khairkhah, the ambassador of the Islamic State of Afghanistan to Iran, told IRIN. "In Afghanistan there is no work and no food - only poverty and oppression. Of course we support the Americans in their war against terrorism, but we are concerned over the reported deaths of innocent civilians," he said, speaking as a representative of the opposition Northern Alliance. "America must be very careful," Khairkhah warned. "Whatever measures are taken must be well-targeted and precise to avoid civilian deaths. The quicker this operation is over the better." "If America attacks the terrorists, there is practicality in what they are doing. If, outside this, they consider staying longer, or occupying the country, it will backfire," Khairkhah stressed. "Both the Soviet Union and Britain attempted to do this in the past, but failed. This would be a big mistake, and Afghans would resist this." Badreddin Sharegh, editor of the Tehran-based Afghan biweekly Jonbesh, shared this view. "Anyone who attacks the Taliban is a friend of ours," the 45 year-old ethnic Uzbek told IRIN. Unlike Pakistan, which has its own large Pashtun or pro-Taliban population, there were no Afghans protesting against America on the streets of Iran, he said. "There are no supporters of the Taliban in Iran due to the ethnic composition here." Very few of the Afghans living in Iran belong to Afghanistan's majority Pashtun population. Here, most of them are Tajiks, Uzbeks, Turkmens or Hazaras. Sharegh, too, warned against deploying foreign troops on Afghan soil for too long. "That would be problematic," he said. "What we need is to immediately get rid of the Taliban and establish a broad-based government embracing all the country’s ethnic groups, including the majority Pashtun." Asked what would become of Iran’s two million-plus Afghan refugee community, Sharegh said: "Afghanistan is our homeland. If the Taliban are destroyed, and there is peace there, I am sure all Afghans living here will return." Another journalist, Nabi Khalili of the Iranian daily Entekhab, an ethnic Hazara who originates from Ghazni, southwest of the Afghan capital, Kabul, told IRIN that for the first in his life, he had thought of returning. "The Taliban promised to bring security to Afghanistan, but it was security under the gun," he said. Khalili stressed that under the Taliban, there was no room for the Afghan people, and the country had become a place for assembling and training terrorists and non-Afghan extremists. "Simply speaking, there was no longer room for ordinary people who wanted to live normal lives there." Like many other educated Afghans living in Iran, he admitted thinking of moving to the West, but now things were changing. "There is an Afghan proverb that out of crisis there is hope for something good," he said. "Although there might be a lot of lives lost as a result of the US-led attacks, many of us Afghans hope that this will pave the way for us to return to our country." "I lost all my family in Afghanistan and, as an educated woman, I wanted to serve my country," Aqlima Hamidzaie Navie, a 35 year-old dentist from Kabul, who has been in Iran for a year, told IRIN. "When the Taliban came, they made us stop working and [told us to] stay at home, so I escaped." "Although these [US-led] attacks may kill civilians and leave many more homeless, if there is a hope that it could bring peace and an end to the situation, [and introduce conditions] where people might live peacefully in their home country, I approve of the attacks," Navie said. She asserted that most educated Afghans shared this attitude, adding that if there was sustainable peace in her country, she too would return. However, there are some who feel that already all is lost. "Afghanistan for me is dead. Of course it's my country, but there is nothing for me there now. I don't ever want to go back. I want to go to Turkey and then on to Europe. At least there I would have a chance," Seyed Saber Sadat, a 21 year-old day labourer from northern Afghanistan, working for less that US $3 a day in Tehran's construction sector, told IRIN. Indeed, a chance is precisely what most Afghans want now. While it is unclear what Iran’s burgeoning Afghan refugee community will do next, hope remains the poor man’s bread. Khalili - just one of the 600,000 Afghans living in Tehran put it most succinctly. "All Afghans, all over the world, wish wholeheartedly that this agonising war will be the last for the Afghans. They have been victims of bloodshed for over two decades, and hold the rest of the world responsible. We hope when this war is over, the entire globe will witness the happiness of the Afghan people, and not only their misery," he said.