Afghan native brings unsettling ideas to Sisters

Zaher Wahab is an American college professor with a message. Like the prophets of old, however, his words aren't necessarily greeted with a great deal of enthusiasm.

Wahab, who has been with Lewis and Clark College for more than a quarter of a century, is a native of war-torn Afghanistan.

In fact, he plans to travel there this week and, among other things, meet with interim Afghan President Hamid Karzai. He has been invited by the United Nations and the Afghan Ministry of Higher Education to help reshape Afghanistan's education system.

On Thursday of last week, however, Wahab was relaxing at Coyote Creek Café in Sisters.

Wahab was in Central Oregon as the guest of the High Desert Forum.

The High Desert Forum, which seeks to bring high-caliber speakers to the area in order to promote public debate and discussion, created more than a little of that by hosting Wahab last week.

On the night before his visit to Sisters, Wahab received a surprisingly warm reception from an apparently liberal-minded packed house of more than 200 listeners.

The presentation took place at the First Presbyterian Church in Bend, as part of the High Desert Forum's continuing lecture series.

After giving a brief history of Afghan-American relations over the last 30 or so years, the naturalized American citizen proceeded to champion such controversial proposals as partial surrender of American sovereignty to international courts and reparations payments to the Muslim world for injustices inflicted over the last 500 years.

Citing a recent Gallup Poll that surveyed 10,000 individuals in seven different Muslim countries, he said that the Muslim world views the United States as "ruthless and arrogant."

He also attacked the American media for its docility and suggested that more reliable news could be obtained from BBC, Radio Canada, and even Radio Havana.

After the presentation, one of Wahab's questioners suggested that the proposals set forth were "utopian," but the speaker stood by his assertions.

"If we want to stay on friendly terms with the rest of the world," Wahab said, "we have to change our foreign policy."

He said that Americans comprise only 5 percent of the world's population, yet consume 40 percent of the world's resources.

Similarly, he said that the Western World, as a whole, consumes more than 80 percent of the resources for just 20 percent of the world's people.

"We can't expect to use those resources," he said, "without people getting angry and jealous."

In addition to reparations, Wahab advocates the general transfer of wealth to the poorer countries -- where many people, he says, subsist on the equivalent of a dollar a day.

He called for "fair trade, not free trade."

Using the price of gasoline as an example, he suggested that prices of $6-7 per gallon are more appropriate, with the difference going to the people of the countries that provide the resource.

"What we need," he said, "is the just redistribution of the world's resources to achieve peace and prosperity for everybody."

Wahab has an uphill battle. An American society accustomed to a lavish way of life isn't likely to embrace his proposals, but he knows that. Privately, he admitted to being a realist.

"Think of these arguments as the opening offer in a bargaining session," he told The Nugget.

Wahab has a lot at stake in Afghanistan and identifies strongly with both the country of his birth and the country he now calls home.

"Half of me is at war with the other half," he said.

He spoke of 23 years of ongoing war in Afghanistan and millions of people killed or just "disappeared." Included among the dead he listed classmates, playmates, neighbors, a brother and a brother-in-law.

He said that the house in which he was raised lies in ruins; and his mother, fearing for his safety, warned him not to come home this week.

Wahab is concerned for the legitimacy and stability of the interim Afghan government and plans to discuss that with Karzai.

He also doubts that the government of Pakistani President Pervez Musharef will survive, a situation that would destabilize the entire region.

As a Pashtun, he is distrustful of the tribes of the Northern Alliance, which -- he says -- dominate the interim government, even though Karzai, himself, is Pashtun.

All of this will be weighing on his mind as he journeys to the country of his birth.

Just as he hopes to make a difference by speaking out in America, now he will try to make a difference in Afghanistan.