Members of the Baltimore Antiwar Coalition, Johns Hopkins University for Peace, and other antiwar and human rights groups gathered on Saturday to march silently through cold rain in a funeral procession for innocent lives lost both in the United States on September 11th and in Afghanistan. Some dressed as mourning Afghan women and carried a coffin to depict the fate of those who have been--and will be--killed by American bombs and those who will starve or freeze to death this winter if humanitarian aid is not provided to Afghanistan. Others passed out literature and carried signs and banners reading "No More Victims," "The Northern Alliance is no Better," "Solidarity with RAWA (the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan)," and "Humanitarian Aid for Afghanistan." As the procession wound through Charles Village and Waverly, many drivers honked in support. A few opposed onlookers engaged the marchers in dialogue that proved constructive rather than confrontational.

The procession ended in a rally at St. John's Episcopal Church, where co-organizer Aimee Pohl spoke of the positive reaction that she had witnessed during the march. "I saw a lot of support and appreciatory comments out there, especially on Greenmount Avenue, where people know that
the government could better use their money," Pohl said.

Pohl asked the 50 or so people assembled to remain vigilant, as even if bombing stops in Afghanistan, it is likely to increase in Iraq, whose refusal to allow U.N. weapons inspectors back into the country was recently called by the Bush administration an act of terrorism. "If there is another country that has been as devastated by the U.S. as Afghanistan, it is Iraq," she told the crowd, "we have to remember how we got to this situation in the first place."

Doug Basford, a professor at Johns Hopkins and member of JHU4Peace, spoke of a recent document titled "Defending Civilization: How our Universities are Failing America." The report was put out by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a nonprofit organization whose leadership includes Lynne Cheney and Senator Joseph Lieberman. The document includes quotations made by university professors that its authors deem anti-American, many of which, Basford said, are actually calls for peace. Though the names of the speakers are not listed, the published sources from which the quotes were taken are included in the back of the report, and Basford said that "this is effectively a blacklist...it's being sent to 3000 universities." He urged vigilance against "the criminalization of dissent creeping up" in universities and throughout American society.

The featured speaker was Fahima Vorgetts, an Afghan woman and women's activist who is a member of Peace Action. Vorgetts told a history of a much different Afghanistan than the one typically portrayed in the United States. She described a country that was secular until the Soviet
occupation of the late seventies. At that time, the U.S., still bitter from it's defeat in Vietnam,sought revenge against the Soviet Union. Afghanistan was one of its many battlefields. Because the Soviet outlawed religion, the U.S. used faith as one way to incite Afghans to rise up.

According to Vorgetts, U.S. funds poured into Afghanistan, but all of them went into the hands of fundamentalists who Vorgetts calls thugs. These were the mujihadeen, some of whom became the Taliban, and the treatment of women, which had improved during Soviet rule, worsened under them. The Northern Alliance, according to Vorgetts, were similarly fanatical and came to power in much the same way. "The U.S. government says that if you harbor a terrorist, you are a terrorist, and if you help a terrorist, you are a terrorist. So what are you if you create a terrorist?," she
asked, speaking about the CIA.

Vorgetts said that before September 11, she was knocking on doors to tell the story of Afghanistan, and in particular the abuse of women there, but no one would listen. Today, she said, people are knocking on her door. Vorgetts said that "the destruction of the Buddhas in Afghanistan got more attention than the abuse of women," despite the fact that information about atrocities committed against women was widely available.

Asked what Afghanistan will need to rebuild, Vorgetts listed a host of basic human needs: food, health care, education, skills training, infrastructure, and the return of refugees, none possible without an end to U.S. bombing.