St. John's student says family in Afghanistan 'just want to live'

A St. John's medical student said her family is reliving traumatic memories from the past as the Taliban regains control of Afghanistan.

Khadija Ibrahim, a first-generation Afghan Canadian, said her parents are reminded of their own escape from Afghanistan as they watch relatives contend with the chaos inside the country.

"They're feeling a lot of different emotions, guilt and just immense sadness and devastation for what's happening to their country," said Ibrahim in an interview Tuesday.

In a swift takeover last week, the Afghanistan government collapsed, handing power back to Taliban insurgents and ending a two-decade military campaign to remake the country after the United States and its allies invaded the region in 2001.

"There's a lot of anger at the Taliban and just disbelief that, you know, after so much struggle and so much pain, that it's come to this," Ibrahim said.

Ibrahim said communication with her family in Afghanistan has been sporadic.

Her family in Canada feared the worst when they didn't hear from her father's brother for days, but on Monday evening they received news that he was safe.

She said her mother's brother's family in Kandahar was caught in the crossfire between Afghan forces and the Taliban. They were forced to hide in their home, which was damaged badly by bombing and bullets.

"They just assumed that they weren't going to make it," Ibrahim said. "They said, you know, 'We thought everyone in Afghanistan was dead, like this was the end of the world.'"

Members of her extended family have been killed in recent skirmishes, she said, describing her relatives' weariness at the "constant terror" of war.

"They just want to live.They don't want to be bombed, they want to be able to go to school and go to work and feed their families and just not be under constant threat."

Childhood during war

Ibrahim said her mother has post-traumatic stress disorder from "brutal" childhood encounters with mujahedeen guerrilla fighters and fleeing to Pakistan in the 1980s. Her mother and her family hid in the back of a potato truck because Soviet and mujahedeen forces wouldn't let anyone cross the border, she said.

"If you were found trying to escape, you were essentially gunned down. There was a baby, my cousin, who started crying. And so they held her mouth."

The baby survived.

"Somehow, through some miracle, they were able to cross the border. No food, nothing else, just family members holding on to each other, sitting in the back of a truck for hours in the heat, crossing a border, just to be alive to make it somewhere so they wouldn't live in terror."

Ibrahim said she doesn't think her parents have fully processed what they experienced when they were young, but as a first-generation Canadian, she's more aware of how those events impact their mental health.

"To grow up with bombs and military around you, for a child any child, of anywhere is hard to kind of digest," she said.

She said her own parents have worked hard to build a better life for their family, and other Afghans want the same thing.

"Many other families have tried so hard to give their kids a better chance and just didn't make it," she said.

No chance to rebuild

Ibrahim said there were "mixed emotions" when the United States withdrew its forces after two decades.

"Having a military presence in your country that is foreign is very, very difficult," she said.

She pointed to the devastation of infrastructure and the loss of human life as part of the impact of the war in Afghanistan, which ousted the Taliban and saw a new government ascend to power.

According to estimates from Brown University, 47,245 Afghan civilians died during the conflict. Ibrahim said she lost family members to friendly fire.

Now theTaliban is back in power once again.

"Afghanistan hasn't had a chance to rebuild itself, and the people on the ground have just suffered enormously," she said.

"We're sitting here in Canada happily with our family members, enjoying the sun and living a very free life and they are in such different circumstances, and there's nothing we can do."

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