MONDAY

• Home
• Video
• Podcasts/RSS 
• Local Showtimes
• Past Shows
• Blogs
• About the Show
• Tell Tavis
• Features
• Mobile

RELATED LINKS

• Article on Mr. Akbar
• About Come Back to Afghanistan
• Mr. Akbar on PRI's This American Life

E-mail a friend

Tavis: Hyder Akbar was leading a fairly typical teenage life here in California when the 9/11 attacks took place. But less than a year later, he traveled to his parent's home country, Afghanistan, for the first of three summers that would change his outlook on the world. Details of his time in war-torn Afghanistan are the subject of the new book "Come Back to Afghanistan, A California Teenager's Story." Hyder, nice to have you on the program.

Hyder Akbar: Thank you for having me.

Tavis: You're a student at Yale.

Akbar: And now I'm a junior at Yale, yeah.

Tavis: You're a junior at Yale, back in New Haven.

Akbar: Back in New Haven.

Tavis: But when 9/11 hit, you were here in California.

Akbar: When 9/11 happened, yes, I was a senior in California, going to high school. And I remember 9/11 happening, and it changing my life, basically. Because after that, became heavily involved in Afghanistan my senior year. I didn't apply to any colleges. I skipped out on prom and graduation, and took my finals early and just headed back to Afghanistan.

And luckily, my father, he became the spokesman for the government at that time in 2002. And later on became the governor of a province called Kunar, which is on the border with Pakistan. It's a mountainous province where the insurgency is strong. And so it really gave me a chance to see Afghanistan in this transitional period, and observe it and see what was going on there.

Tavis: That was your first trip, when you went for the first time after 9/11, that was your first time going?

Akbar: That was the first time in Afghanistan. I was born as a refugee in Bishara, Pakistan, and I moved out at the age of three to America and then briefly spent some time in India. But spent most of my life in California. Growing up in California.

Tavis: Tell me about that first trip, what you remember about that first trip to Afghanistan.

Akbar: Well, that first trip was very intense for me, because I went into country at the age of 17 and I had to grow up very fast. The level of dissonance, the level of violence in Afghanistan was pretty hard to get used to. I remember at that time I would meet people that had killed. I had met people that had done mass murders.

And also at the same time, you saw this country completely torn apart by over two decades of war. I been told beforehand about what to expect, but to see that thing face to face, and to see everything from a bombing, in which I remembered about 30 civilians were killed, to the dead body of the Vice President, it was something I had to get used to very fast. It was an intense experience, that first summer in Afghanistan.

But also a very rewarding experience, because I had this deep passion for Afghanistan. When I was growing up, and my father had always been involved in it, but I myself was, of course, too young to ever do anything. So to finally be able to come back and observe what was going on, and be able to form my own opinions and to be able to learn from my own experiences was an incredible experience for me.

Tavis: I assume that your passion that you spoke of a moment ago for Afghanistan has something to do with the fact that your father was so heavily involved, and so intimately and so strategically placed. That said, I'm trying to figure out how a kid who spends most of his time growing up in California ends up being so connected to a country, never mind his father, that he had never spent any time in.

Akbar: I think it came down to, aside from the question of my father being involved in the country, the intense experiences in Afghanistan gave me a sense of responsibility to the country. Even growing up, I always felt that I had a pretty comfortable life. I was getting an education. I was living in a suburban home in California.

And so I felt a sense of responsibility, and a sense of guilt that drove me to going back to Afghanistan. And to add to that, my father's role in the country and my family's traditional role into the country, I felt like I needed to go back and sort of almost pay my dues to the country. Growing up on stories from my father or my older brother, who is involved in the country, always gave me a strong sense of Afghan identity.

And even though I grew up here, I did speak the local languages of Afghanistan, Pashto and Dari, at home, and so it gave me a strong Afghan identity. And always a sense of belonging. My parents fled because of the war. They came from Bishara in Pakistan and eventually to America because of security situations there.

So I always felt like we were moving from place to place, but our real home was Afghanistan. Even though I haven't spent time there. And so I had this strong Afghan identity in me, and sense of responsibility. And also the means to go back with my father being there and strategically placed inside the country.

Tavis: I can only imagine that a certain point and time, and I'll let you tell me when that was, if in fact there was this moment, I would imagine at a certain point in time you came to be politically aware of how you felt. It's one thing to be emotionally attached to a country. It's another thing to have an identity with this country.

It's another thing, in a country like Afghanistan, certainly, given when you went, to connect to your own feelings about the politics of what was happening in Afghanistan. So one, tell me when you became politically connected to what was happening there. And what those political feelings were, what that political persuasion was.

Akbar: The political persuasion that I felt in Afghanistan started developing when I spent time there. Before that, I was sort of an expert on the country at home and read about it. But it wasn't a place that was real for me. When I went back, I established relationships with people. I established connections there and met people and sort of had developed strong bond to the country.

And now, I want to go back after I graduate from Yale. So I think that that happened over the time I spent there, over spending time with my uncle, who is a war hero who had been shot over 20 times and had one eye. And to me, these incredibly resilient people, you start to get connected and bonding to the place.

And you see this society that's trying to survive after two decades of war. And I felt a sense of duty to the country. And although it's difficult for me to say that I wanted to be politically involved in Afghanistan, or I wanted to be politically connected to Afghanistan, because of the nature of politics in Afghanistan.

It's a very different environment than I'm used to. I'm not sure I would be able to survive in that environment. I do want to be able to do what I can for Afghanistan. And a sense of responsibility, again, for the redevelopment of the country, the reconstruction of the country. And all the sense of it being real now that I've spent time there has made me more politically motivated in Afghanistan, I would say.

Tavis: Tell me, I'm gonna probe a little further on this, I'm curious and it's hard to get away from, obviously, given the politics that exist between the United States and Afghanistan, what's your sense now of U.S. policy toward Afghanistan?

Akbar: I think the U.S. policy in Afghanistan has sort of been a two steps forward, one step back approach right now. We're making progress, but I think that a lot more needs to be done. My problem with the way Afghanistan has been shown so far in the media, it's been sort of presented as the antithesis to Iraq. A sort of success story of the United States going into a country and democratizing it.

And I would have to say that there's still a lot of work that needs to be done in Afghanistan. A lot of people are happy with the American presence there and the fact that it's brought some form of stability and it's brought some economic benefits to the country and chance of redevelopment.

People are still worried about the security situation in a lot of the south and the east, and the places bordering Pakistan. People are worried about the reconstruction, the lack in reconstruction, the infrastructure. I think these kind of issues need to be dealt with very seriously by the United States, because we do have a finite amount of time to get it right in Afghanistan. And although our presence there might be more legitimate than Iraq, there is a chance of it becoming an issue.

Tavis: To your part about Iraq now, what's more legitimate and what's less legitimate, is it your sense, I take it it is, I don't know, you tell me, that the U.S. pulled out, resources, that is, too fast from Afghanistan and put those resources in Iraq?

Akbar: I think so. Especially in terms of economic resources. The level of aid that had been promised to Iraq is not comparable even to the level of aid that has been promised to Afghanistan so far. Iraq is a country that is actually smaller than Afghanistan and has the same population as Afghanistan, and has not been destroyed nearly as much as Afghanistan has been.

But yet, you see that the amount of aid that has been promised to the Iraqis has been much greater than the amount of aid to Afghanistan. So you see this being a form of their policy, and you see it's not an abstract issue, but you see it being played out every day in terms of the level of attention that is paid by the State Department, that is paid by the Pentagon to Iraq in comparison to Afghanistan.

And I think that is an issue that Afghans are becoming very worried about. Because they already have this sense of insecurity, of being abandoned by the West before. And that was 1989, when the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan and the Mujahideen and the resistance that was backed by the U.S. and the west was sort of abandoned.

And Afghanistan in general was sort of abandoned once they felt it wasn't serving their national interests any more. And people are worried about that again, that Afghanistan will be looked past again. And that's very troubling, because that happened once, and we saw the results of that. I think we have to learn that we cannot ignore a place like Afghanistan anymore, and let it become chaotic and a no man's land. Because it can have consequences on our own security.

Tavis: I know you're probably watching saying this kid is not 21. I checked his driver's license. He is. He's 21; he's a student at Yale. His new book is "Come Back to Afghanistan, A California Teenager's Story about Hyder Akbar." Hyder, nice to meet you, and all the best at Yale and beyond.

Akbar: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Tavis: Glad to have you on the program. That's our show for tonight. You can catch us on the weekends on PRI, Public Radio International, check your local listings. See you back here next time here on PBS. Until then, good night from Los Angeles. Thanks for watching. As always, keep the faith.