Wednesday, November 28, 2001

No holiday for Afghan troubles, fears
By Monique Bhimani
Skiff Staff

With the holiday season approaching many of us will begin to see the familiar sights and sounds of winter: the Christmas displays in malls, the TV specials and consumers looking for the best deals while shopping for gifts. Most students are looking forward to the awaited vacation days ahead, the gathering of family and lavish meals. This is how Americans will typically celebrate the winter holidays.

However, in some less fortunate countries, many will not have these luxuries. Starvation is a fear in the everyday lives of the majority of some populations, as it is often a struggle to find one’s next meal. These people live in the worst conditions, where disease runs rampant and medical assistance is rare. TCU students might complain about the quality of food at The Main, yet there are some in this world that have never had so much food available to them in their entire lives.

Some religions require periods of fasting to represent faith; to others “fasting” is not necessarily done voluntarily to show any religious faith. The life span of the unfortunate in Third World countries is therefore cut short, much more so than the life expectancy of even the underprivileged in America.

One such country is Afghanistan. Since the reign of the Taliban government, all women were forbidden to work. Many female doctors, teachers and lawyers, among others, were forced to become little more than beggars in the street if they had no family or husband to support them. As progress in most Third World countries is slow to begin with, the Taliban regime has chosen a strict traditional rule that has caused the country to regress even further.

While the majority of Afghan citizens are impoverished, many of whom have experienced starvation at one point, they have an additional concern looming over them: whether or not they will make it through the day without a bomb falling near them or their home. While there are specific targets selected by U.S. military forces, there can be no doubt that there have been numerous innocent casualties as a result of these air raids. The occasional “stray” bomb can, in fact, claim to the lives of hundreds of uninvolved civilians. So not only is food, shelter and adequate healthcare hard to come by, but now residents in Afghanistan must worry that death might fall from the sky — literally.

Even as the U.S. government will not recognize Ramadan as an important enough reason to cease attacks, it will be expected that troops and all military personnel will receive the “day off” for Christmas. Hence, at the same time children dream of sugarplum fairies, the toys and the laughter the holiday will bring, children half a world away will shiver in fear of these modern “Santas” that could instead deliver fireballs of death and destruction at any time.

Monique Bhimani is a freshman international communication major from San Antonio. She can be contacted at (m.s.bhimani@student.tcu.edu).