Afghans look to America, UN for peace

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Cynical after more than two decades of war, many Afghans said Tuesday that their hopes for peace rest mostly with the United Nations and the United States rather than the Afghan factions holding talks in Germany. \n"We know these people. They would not be sitting together if the United States and the United Nations did not force them," said Sami Ullah, a father of eight who earns barely 50 cents a day selling odds and ends in Kabul's main market. \n"I am optimistic that maybe we will have peace now because the United States and the United Nations will make sure they don't start fighting," he said. \nIt's a long way from the sunbaked mud homes, grinding poverty and rutted roads of Kabul to the luxury hotel overlooking the Rhine River in Germany where Afghan delegates discussed the first steps toward a broad-based, multiethnic government to replace the Taliban. \nCalled by the United Nations to plot a better future for this war-shattered country, including eventual democratic rule, the conference brought together 23 men and two women representing a wide spectrum of Afghan society. \nBut many delegates have lived outside Afghanistan for much of the past 23 years while people back home struggled to survive Soviet occupation, civil war, harsh Taliban rule and now another conflict they hope will be their last. \nThis rubs some Afghans the wrong way. \n"Some of them have been swimming in pools in the West while in Afghanistan we have nothing, our children have no food," said Mohammed Hussain, as his 2-year-old son, nose running and bare feet in ripped plastic sandals, clung to his leg. \nHis head wrapped in a green scarf, his long beard speckled with gray, Hussain said that most days there is no lunch at his home. Breakfast is usually bread and sweet black tea. Dinner consists of potatoes and bread soaked in a greasy soup. \n"For more than 20 years we have been burning in a fire of war and death. No human being can stand this. Our houses are destroyed, we have no food, we have no life. It has to stop," said Hussain, who was a farmer outside Kabul until war drove him out. \nHidayat, who gave only one name, once was a major in the aviation ministry in Kabul. "I have no job. I had no hope until now," he said. \n"I expect the help of the United Nations to unite these people and to bring them together," Hidayet said. "Definitely they need pressure from the United States and the United Nations or they will not stay together. Of course they will start to fight." \nMany of the delegates gathered outside Bonn are from the same groups that once fought each other for power in Afghanistan. \n"We want peace, whoever can bring us peace. This is the one we want," said Mohammed Abdul, a young guard with his rifle slung casually over his arm, his beard neatly trimmed. "We are tired of fighting. Our country is ruined." \nWith so many Afghan leaders identified with failed governments and discredited ideologies, a growing number of people here are looking to the 87-year-old former monarch, Mohammad Zaher Shah, as their best hope. \nMuch of Zaher Shah's support stems from nostalgia for the peace that prevailed during his rule, which ended in a coup in 1973. Zaher Shah, who lives in exile in Rome, is not attending the conference in Germany but has sent a delegation. \nIn the eastern city of Jalalabad, dominated by Afghanistan's majority ethnic Pashtuns, there is also widespread support for the exiled monarch. \n"We need a team with Zaher Shah that can rebuild Afghanistan. We need people with knowledge of the modern world," said Dr. Abdul Baseer. "We cannot have the Taliban or the communists." \nThe Taliban movement, largely an ethnic Pashtun group, rose to power in 1996 mostly because of popular disillusionment with the factional fighting that wrecked Kabul during the presidency of Burhanuddin Rabbani, head of the northern alliance. \nRabbani has resumed the presidency since the alliance seized Kabul on Nov. 13, although he has promised to step aside if a new government is established. \n"We have to find a way to heal the wounds and start rebuilding our country," said Mullah Mohammed Khaqzar, a Pashtun leader who helped launch the Taliban but has abandoned the movement.