United Afghan Club event, ‘The Longest War,’ fosters talk on conflict in Afghanistan
By Kelly Zhou
Feb. 4, 2010 10:41 p.m.
The United Afghan Club at UCLA hosted a teach-in on Wednesday to educate students about the war in Afghanistan, emphasizing the United States’ role in the conflict and the impact the war has on students today.
“We as members of the United Afghan Club came to the conclusion that, although we are a nonpolitical organization, it’s important to educate ourselves on the issue and to promote and stimulate talk regarding the war on campus,” said Salmon Hossein, club founder and fourth-year political science and international development studies student.
With such a complicated and contentious topic, the club members said they saw an issue that had hardly been addressed at UCLA, and thus wanted to provide an opportunity for discussion.
“There are a lot of people who, despite knowing there’s a war in Afghanistan, don’t understand the history or the current situation,” said Weiss Hamid, club president and fourth-year political science student.
Thus, the club hosted “The Longest War: A Teach-in on Afghanistan,” covering the history of Afghanistan from more than 30 years ago all the way through the current conflict.
Question-and-answer sections were interspersed during the presentation, allowing for discussion from the 60 students who attended.
“As students, this (issue) very much affects us,” said Zafir Shaiq, a fourth-year economics student and president of the Muslim Student Association. “Friends and relatives are being shipped out to Afghanistan … to fight in the war, and money is being taken away from education.”
The teach-in organizers emphasized the connection the conflict has on UCLA students, specifically the amount taxpayers are paying for the war. Currently, the war costs $1 million per year per soldier.
“Those taxes could be used to help students with Cal Grants, loans, while we’re in a recession; that money could be allocated elsewhere,” Hossein said.
The club members said they hoped all participants would gain this sort of understanding and concern, in turn motivating people to get involved.
“We wanted people to leave the event with a better understanding of the situation in Afghanistan and with the interest to look more into the conflict,” Hossein said. “It doesn’t matter what your opinion is; it just matters that you have an opinion. Apathy is worse than having the quote-unquote wrong opinion.”
More than a few students noticed a lack of bias, applauding the club speakers.
“It was really well-balanced,” said Austin Ford, a second-year linguistics student. “They talked about reasons the U.S. should stay and reasons the U.S. should leave.”
The United Afghan Club saw the teach-in as an overall success, which Hamid partly attributed to the help and support from the Muslim Student Association, the Iranian Student Group and the Undergraduate Students Association Council internal vice president’s office.
“There were a lot of people there that I did not recognize personally, which means that the outreach was pretty successful, considering it’s fifth week,” Hamid said.
“I had people coming up to me after the event, telling me they learned a lot … and it was very informative.”
Yet even with the club’s seeming success, Hossein refused to be complacent and encouraged the possibility of another teach-in in the future to increase student awareness.
“Next time, we’d like to co-program with more organizations to have more students come out,” Hossein said.
The club is hosting its second annual banquet in three weeks in order to raise money to provide people with access to safe drinking water.
Open to the public, the banquet will be at 7 p.m. in Ackerman Grand Ballroom on Feb. 26.
