[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 5 (Tuesday, January 29, 2002)]
[House]
[Page H84]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          AID FOR AFGHANISTAN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
January 23, 2002, the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Speaker, Hamid Karzai, the chairman of the 
interim government of Afghanistan, is in Washington, DC; and his visit 
reminds us of the debt that we owe to the Afghan people. It was the 
Afghan freedom fighters who fought the Soviet Union and defeated the 
Soviet Union; and it was the Afghan freedom fighters that fought with 
us to defeat bin Laden and the Taliban.
  After the Afghan people fought and defeated the Red Army, which was 
in occupation of their country, something that left their beautiful 
country in ruins and in a shamble, we simply walked away from them in 
1990. Then during the Clinton years we covertly supported the Taliban. 
Many of us noted that and opposed it at the time, but what appeared to 
be covert, or at least acquiescence, covert support or acquiescence to 
the Taliban continued through the Clinton administration. Many United 
States officials in the executive branch during the 1990s, who had no 
complaint about Taliban rule of Afghanistan back then, since September 
11, of course, have postured themselves in a totally different way. 
Well, today, we have another chance.
  At this time we must do what is right by the Afghan people. Any 
vacuum created by our unwillingness as we did in the 1990s to meet the 
urgent humanitarian needs of the people of Afghanistan will be filled 
by powers that are hostile to the United States. For example, Iran 
currently is pledging 50 percent more reconstruction aid than the 
United States. And this year only $27 million has been scheduled to be 
spent on mine-clearing operations in Afghanistan. And let me add there 
are 8 million mines in Afghanistan. Many of them were given to the 
people of Afghanistan during the war against the Russians, and we did 
not even help them dig up the landmines that we gave them. And now we 
are having a paltry $27 million being spent on clearing those landmines 
as hundreds of Afghan people still blow their legs off, little 
children, every year. And we have yet to outline a major program that 
will give the poverty-stricken people of Afghanistan, the farmers 
there, an incentive not to grow opium, which ends up as heroin on the 
streets of the United States.
  But most important, we must assist the Afghan people in creating a 
stable democratic government. Let us not forget that Mr. Karzai is 
heading a temporary administration which ends in June. At that time, 
tribal leaders will determine what kind of government they will have in 
what they call loya jirga.
  There is only one Afghan today who I feel, and it looks like my 
understanding of this having followed it for 10 to 15 years now, there 
is only one Afghan who has the personal prestige and credibility and, 
yes, the affection of his people to bring all the ethnic groups of 
Afghanistan together. That man is King Zahir Shah, who has offered to 
return in March to Afghanistan; and he has recently made it clear to me 
that his object in coming back to Afghanistan is to develop and to 
build a democratic and free government for his people.
  We must not permit ourselves in haste, in our haste to extract 
ourselves from that region to commit the same mistakes that lead to the 
fanaticism and tyranny in Afghanistan in the 1990s and the loss of so 
many American lives in New York on September 11. We have a chance now 
to do what is right by the Afghan people who fought and bled in a way 
that certainly helped the United States in defeating the Soviet Union 
and bringing about a more peaceful world and prosperous United States, 
and in the past few months have fought side by side. They are the ones 
who fought with our Special Forces to defeat the Taliban and to end the 
reign of bin Laden and his terrorists in Afghanistan.
  We owe it to do what is right by them now. I call on my colleagues to 
join me in seeing that we are providing the assistance needed to 
rebuild the country of Afghanistan so the people there can live in 
peace and prosper.

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