Story by: Farnaz Fassihi

DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ!!
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That so-called e-mail is plastered all over the internet for quite a while now and has been spammed to everybody and anybody who even remotely might have an interest.

This is the same type of propaganda used by the leftists during the Viet Nam war. It is meant to demoralize the American public, cause confusion and create doubt about the mission and the outcome.

Here is her picture and more:




Education: B.A. in English literature – Tehran University in Iran

Previous work experience: Assistant and translator for Western reporters visiting Iran

Farnaz Fassihi is an activist anti war journalist.
She was writing about how awful Afganistan was during the campaign to topple the Taliban.


"I was about to bear witness to unimaginable misery'
Story by: Farnaz Fassihi - "On Afghanistan"

The white Toyota Corona carrying me and two other journalists bounced down a rocky makeshift road, creating a cloud of dust so intense that we could not see 10 feet ahead of us.

Along the road, children as young as 4 and 5 waved at the car to stop. They were begging for food. In the dead of the Afghan winter, they had no socks or shoes and no warm clothes. Sometimes, the children were joined by men missing arms or legs, victims of land mines, yelling for help.

I swallowed my tears and told myself to be strong.

My colleague reminded me that, as a reporter for the Newark Star-Ledger, I was about to bear witness to unimaginable misery.

Can't we stop and give them a little money? I asked Ahmad, our driver.

No, no, he replied in panic. If we stop, hundreds of people will gather around us. They are starving and they are angry. You may get trampled. It is very dangerous here, miss. This is Afghanistan.

It was mid-November 2001, and a dozen of us had crossed the border from Iran to the northeastern city of Herat. Kabul and Herat had fallen from the grip of the Taliban but war still raged in a 20-mile radius around us. We were nervous, cold and hungry but eager to tell stories from a land the world had forgotten for decades.

That morning, Ahmad was taking us to a nearby refugee camp called Maslakh – or in local lingo, Slaughterhouse. With 200,000 displaced people there, Maslakh was the world's largest refugee camp.

The situation is really bad there, warned Ahmad. I will stay close to protect you. Don't give anyone money. No warning, however, could have prepared me for what I saw.

Within seconds of stepping out of the car, we were engulfed by a thousand men, women and children. They pushed and shoved and grabbed my arm, my hand, my scarf. I lost Ahmad and Jon Naso, the Star-Ledger photographer working with me. Survey, survey, they screamed. The refugees had mistaken us for aid workers and thought we were there to register them and distribute goods.

Journalist, journalist, I yelled back but my voice was lost in their cry for help.

International aid workers evacuated from Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks and had not yet returned when I visited Maslakh. The result was a tremendous backlog in registration and distribution of wheat, blankets and tents. Over 1,200 people arrived in trucks daily and, with no processing system, were forced to camp on the bare ground and go hungry for days and weeks.

They were dying by huge numbers every day.

The wailing sound of children distracted the crowd around me. They ran to see what had happened. I ran after them.I froze when I saw the dead body of a 23-year-old woman on the ground. Her three young children were sobbing and her husband was asking the men to help him bury his wife. She had just died from hunger and cold. Shocked and shaken, I pulled out my notebook and started interviewing the family. I felt that if I didn't thrust myself into reporting I might start crying with them.

Jon had caught up with me, and his eyes filled with tears. He snapped pictures. I frantically took notes.

As I left the camp, an old woman followed me to the car. Her back was hunched and she walked with a cane. She took my hands in her wrinkled ones and looked me in the eye. My daughter, can you get us help? she pleaded. Can you tell the world how we are suffering? In tears, I nodded and told her that was the only reason I was there.

I am often asked why I do what I do. My non-journalist friends and my family are puzzled about why I risk my safety and endure hardship in places like Afghanistan, Israel, the West Bank and Iraq.

Yes, I tell them, I do it because it is intoxicating to see the world as a journalist, to witness history in the making. It also led to my new job as the Wall Street Journal's Middle East correspondent. But, most important, I do what I do because I believe that somehow my stories will make a difference.