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Month in Review September 2010: The Alchemy of Empire

Sabera Mohammad, age 9, lost 5 family members to U.S. bombing in Afghanistan. In late January, she met with U.S. visitors whose family members were killed on Sept.11.

From One Ground Zero to Another
"Collateral Damage" of War
BY JUNG HEE CHOI
______________

Rita Lasar's younger brother, Abe Zelmanowitz, called his family after the second plane crashed into the World Trade Center building where he worked on the 27th floor. He told them he was safe and that rather than leave his wheelchair-bound friend, he would wait until the firemen came to rescue them both.

But the building soon collapsed and Zelmanowitz and his friend died with 3,094 others on September 11.

THE HUMAN COST

Masuda Sultan's family lived near Taliban-controlled buildings in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Soon after hearing about U.S. plans to attack Afghanistan, they decided to seek safety on an isolated farm about 50 miles outside the city. One evening while they were sleeping in the barn, U.S. airstrikes killed 19 of Sultan's family, as they have about 4,000 others since the bombing began on October 7.

The government calls these civilian tragedies the "collateral damage" of war. However, Masuda Sultan, a young Afghan American, and 70-year-old Rita Lasar, a Jewish New Yorker, would not allow their grief to be dehumanized and dismissed by military jargon.

Amy Goodman, host of the Pacifica radio program Democracy Now!, brought the two women together to speak about the human cost of war and their hopes for peace.

Sultan traveled to her native Afghanistan in early January after hearing about the devastation to her family. Surviving family members of the air raid recounted the deadly event.
"They described the scene where they were running with their kids in their arms, dodging bullets left and right, while they had balls of fire falling down to the earth," Sultan said. "They had no idea what was going on. They were just running for their lives in every which direction.

These people were not Taliban supporters. They weren't Al Qaeda fighters. They were simple Afghans trying to stay safe in their own country. It breaks your heart to know this is the collateral damage of war," Sultan lamented.

For Rita Lasar, coming to grips with her brother's death was difficult enough. But when President Bush called her brother a hero in a speech given at the National Cathedral, she realized that the president was using him as a "justification for killing other people."

"I heard the term collateral damage all my life. It was always used to describe people far away from us," she recounts. "Now I realize what it meant because my brother was collateral damage in a war he didn't want and Masuda's people didn't want."

SHARING SORROW AND HOPE

Lasar believes that she, Sultan and other U.S. and Afghan families are bonded together by their grief over the death of their loved ones. Although the U.S. government is waging a war in Afghanistan, Lasar says, "Masuda and I are the same. There's no difference between us. My family member died; I'm grieving. And her family, god, I don't know how I would survive just hearing about this. We are the same people."

Sultan says that Lasar continues the heroism of her deceased brother by working for understanding and peace. "It's amazing to me that someone who has lost so much isn't as revenge hungry as some of the other people. A lot of this is about revenge, I feel, especially after having seen the faces of people [in Afghanistan], and realizing they are the farthest thing from the enemy we can find."

Since September 11, Lasar and many others who lost family members in the attacks have become outspoken advocates of peace. At rallies and in editorial letters they have asked the U.S. government not to use their lost loved ones as justification for war.

In mid-January, Lasar and three other victims' family members traveled to Afghanistan to carry their message and share their grief with Afghans whose family members died in the U.S. bombings.

On a trip sponsored by Global Exchange, a San Francisco-based human rights group, Lasar along with Derrill Bodley, who lost his 20-year-old daughter Deora in United Airlines Flight 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania; Eva Rupp, Deora's stepsister; and Kelly Campbell, whose brother-in-law died in the Pentagon attack; met with Afghans to share their experiences.

"For me this trip is about respect and love for all human beings," said Bodley, a music professor from Stockton, Calif., who described his daughter's life as "Twenty Years of Light." "I [went] on this journey to show my concern for those innocent Afghans who have died or are suffering now. By embracing our common humanity and sharing our sorrow perhaps we will be able to avoid other loss in the future."