‘Kite Runner’ Author Urges More Support For Afghan Refugees

Novelist Khaled Hosseini came to the United States as a 15-year-old Afghan asylum seeker who knew only a few words of English. Today he is a doctor, a United Nations goodwill ambassador, and author of two internationally acclaimed books, “The Kite Runner” and “A Thousand Splendid Suns.” Hosseini told RFE/RL that when he left Afghanistan in 1976, Kabul was a “growing, thriving, cosmopolitan city.” By the end of his father’s four-year post at the Afghan Embassy in Paris, his country had been invaded by the Soviet Union. Hosseini and his family sought asylum in the United States and ended up in California, where he became a doctor and eventually wrote “The Kite Runner,” which was an overnight literary sensation. RFE/RL correspondent Courtney Brooks caught up with Hosseini at the United Nations on World Refugee Day, where he spoke about the plight millions of Afghans face, both inside and outside the beleaguered country.

RFE/RL: Can you describe the impact that 30 years of war has had on your country’s culture, and on the daily life of Afghans?

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Khaled Hosseini: It’s been incalculable. We’re still suffering the legacy of all the different wars in Afghanistan. You know, this is a country that today finds itself as one of the poorest non-African nations in the world, that has a GDP that ranks 218 in the world, [and] where, on average, 30 percent of people live below the poverty level. The country faces rising insecurity in different regions of the country. Millions of people have returned to Afghanistan from Iran and Pakistan — about 5.7 million since 2002 — most of them with assistance from the UN refugee agency [UNHCR]. And those people who returned to Afghanistan, those refugees, have had a really hard time adjusting to life in Afghanistan, have had a [really hard] time reintegrating and restarting their lives.

And so Afghanistan is in need of long term economic development, of developmental projects that will trickle down to the village level [and] affect people at the local level — and we are by now, more or less agreed, everybody is at the same page, that there is no military solution in Afghanistan. And so my hope is that the international community will continue to support the country economically even if NATO and the U.S. forces are no longer in charge of military operations. But I think for most Afghans, this is a period of anxiety, this transition period. The jury is sort of out on how well the Afghan state is prepared, equipped, [and] trained to protect its people from the insurgent groups, and I think the next few years will be very telling years.

PHOTO GALLERY: Refugees around the world struggle to rebuild their lives:

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RFE/RL:  Ahead of NATO’s planned 2014 pullout, violence in Afghanistan does not seem to be abating. Taliban and Taliban-associated groups often attack NATO checkpoints and soldiers — such as the June 20 bombing, which killed at least 21 people.  Can you describe the prevailing national sentiment toward Americans?

Hosseini:I think the last few years — although generally there is support for the foreign troops because people fear that in the absence of the foreign troops the country may slide back into the chaos of the 1990’s and military warfare may break out — that support has dropped to some level. [This is due to] the perception that promises that were made by the West haven’t necessarily been kept because of the civilian casualties caused by air strikes, and night raids, and so on, and also because of fairly effective propaganda on the part of the Taliban. So although on balance that support is not as strong as it was, my sense is that in general people still have a fairly supportive stance toward the foreign presence — not because they enjoy having foreign troops on their lands, quite the opposite. But mainly because the alternative — the fear that Afghanistan will slide back toward all out militia warfare and the chaos of the 1990s — is just too grisly a scenario to be considered.

RFE/RL: What would be the best scenario for the 10 years of support the United States has promised afterward?

Hosseini: We have millions of Afghans who have returned to Afghanistan, and we have 2.7 million refugees who are still living in Iran and Pakistan and appear to be reluctant to return home. The main reason — certainly security cannot be discounted and is part of the reason — but also, people are aware that basic resources, basic services and resources, are lacking in Afghanistan. [Of] the 5.7 million [people] who returned to Afghanistan, anywhere from 40 to 60 percent of them have not successfully reintegrated, and they end up either returning to Iran [or] Pakistan or being secondarily displaced because they don’t have access to jobs, to water, to schools — basic services that we need for day-to-day survival. So I think the solution strategy that [was] arrived at in Geneva in May of this year with the governments of Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and UNHCR (High Commission on Refugees) , was that we need economic development at the local level, at the rural village level, [and] the community level in order to build viable communities in Afghanistan so that those millions of refugees who have returned can be anchored and can have a chance at a successful long term reintegration.

RFE/RL: What kind of hope do you have for Afghanistan? Is there a ‘best case’ scenario that you see in the next 18 months or two years?

Hosseini: In this next year and a half [or] two years, I still see that there will be insecurity marked by spikes in violence. I think there will be political tension and a sort of a shrinking humanitarian space where aid organizations will have increasing difficulty delivering assistance to the people who need it in Afghanistan. But it’s my hope, and that of every Afghan, that eventually the war will end, that a peace process will come about, and that the parties will sit at a table where the best case scenario would be that legitimate representatives from all corners of society are represented at the table and present, that the peace process represents the will and aspirations of the people of Afghanistan, and is one that is inclusive, particularly with regards to women and their rights. So that’s sort of the hope for all of us, that’s the best case scenario; that Afghanistan, after 32 years of war and upheaval, will finally be a nation that is once again at peace, within and without.

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