Los Angeles, California, USA – Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last month, the world has been captivated by images of buildings falling to ruin, millions of civilians having to flee their homes to seek refuge and action. defiant resistance.
For some Afghans who have also lived through the ferocious change of warThe images brought back painful memories.
“Everything with Ukraine was a flashback for us,” Zahra Nawroz, six years old and living with family in Kabul when the Soviets invaded in December 1979, told Al Jazeera in a phone interview. .
“You see pictures of people who leave everything behind, and it touches your heart. I know that even those who reach a new country have a very difficult road ahead of them. ”
Other Afghans look at the war and see similarities with themselves more recent history. But while they sympathize with Ukrainians whose lives have been turned upside down by the violent ideas of a foreign power, they are also frustrated by the powerful spread of solidarity and international support that is not was never extended to Afghans or other non-European war victims.
Farhat Azami, a woman from Afghanistan who works with refugees at a counseling center in Austria, told Al Jazeera: “I am happy that the Ukrainian people are getting the support they are getting. “But if it was really about people, they would treat everyone who tries to escape violence equally.”
Violent occupation
The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan began in December 1979 and ended a decade later, when Soviet troops withdrew after a protracted insurgency by Afghan resistance groups, some of which received funding and lavish weapons from United States as they sought to bring the Soviet Union into a bloody quagmire.
Afghan civilians paid the heaviest price, with about a million people killed and millions more displaced.
Timothy Nunan, a historian at the Free University of Berlin, told Al Jazeera: “The devastation was enormous. “About a fifth of Afghanistan’s adult male population has been killed, and much of the agricultural economy has been destroyed.”
For those who have lived through the conflict, the memories are still poignant even now, decades later. Nawroz remembers sleeping with a pillow over his head to drown out the bombs, and being shattered by the glass on the bus when a nearby explosion shattered the windows. Family friends were killed, while relatives who had joined the resistance were imprisoned and tortured.
“My career shaped my childhood,” she says. “One night, a large group of soldiers came to our house while my father was out of town to question my mother. My sister and I had heard about Russian soldiers sexually assaulting women, and we shivered, we were scared. I will never forget this.”
Nawroz and her family left the country in 1990 and eventually resettled in the US, where she earned a college degree and started a family of her own. “Watching the news gives me bad memories,” she said.
“You see people leaving with only what they can bring, and this is how we left too.”
European Double Standard
Since Russia’s the war start At the end of February, three million Ukrainians were forced to leave their country, according to the United Nations. Contrary to the experience of refugees from countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East – who have faced militarized borders, deportations and squalid camps – Europe has committed to providing safe haven for Ukrainian refugees.
With the conflict lasting about three weeks, Western nations’ commitment to sheltering the displaced remains untested and some countries have been punished for their strong support. for Ukrainians while trying to immigrate in red tape.
However, the international response is clearly different when compared with the experiences of refugees fleeing violence in non-European countries, such as Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya and Syria. Media was criticized to compare the conflict in Ukraine with conflicts in less “civilized” Middle Eastern countries, while African and Arab refugees fleeing Ukraine reported cases of racism and widespread abuse.
Meanwhile, despite public concern about the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, fueled by the collapse of the US-backed government and the ascension of the Taliban last August, Afghans seek to arrived in the US was abandoned, refugee advocates say. Thousands of people still have not received an answer about application for humanitarian paroleand those who were overwhelmingly rejected.
Such experiences have prompted some Afghans to issue a warning amid strong support for Ukraine: The international community’s sympathy could turn out to be substantial.
“As I watched the invasion, I was deeply affected by it. Your heart breaks for the Ukrainians,” Arash Azizzada, a co-founder of the Afghan community group Progressive for a Better Tomorrow, told Al Jazeera.
“But I also see parallels with the Afghanistan experience. It is an outpouring of solidarity, and the Western powers have also made many noble promises to us. But over the past few decades, this experience has been abandoned. They washed our hands when it was convenient. “
