Lawrence grad in Pakistan helps steer Afghan refugee to Appleton
By Rick Peterson
Lawrence Today magazine, Spring 2004
Compared
to fleeing the Taliban, Zubair Hakim considers taking Freshman Studies
to be the proverbial piece of cake. The 21-year-old refugee from Afghanistan’s
journey to Lawrence, enabled in part by some gentle guidance from a Lawrence
alumna, has meant overcoming obstacles far more difficult than posting a high
ACT score or writing a compelling application essay.
A member of Afghanistan’s Farsi-speaking Tajik tribe, Hakim once called
Kabul his hometown, but seven years ago the life of this second-oldest son
in a family of five, whose father served as dean of education at a medical
institute and whose mother taught biology and chemistry at Kabul University,
was suddenly
and violently
turned upside down when the fundamentalist Taliban came to power.
Within a day of the Taliban taking control of the government in September
1996, his mother, Fatima Hakim Kamyar, lost her job, the victim of a decree
that
banned women from working or even leaving their
homes without being accompanied by a male relative.
Soon after, the Taliban stripped Hakim’s father, Abdul Hakimzada, of
his position at the university, forbidding Farsi-speaking people from holding
any positions of power or authority in the country. As Tajiks, Hakim and his
family had every reason to be afraid of Afghanistan’s new Pashtu-speaking
leaders.
"There was always fear,” Hakim says of those early days of the Taliban
regime. “We were told my father was being watched.”
Just two months after the Taliban assumed control, Hakim and his family,
with little more than the clothes on their backs, left their home and boarded
a
bus headed to Pakistan. They eventually settled in the capital city of Islamabad,
where his aunt had already moved.
His mother landed a job teaching Farsi at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad,
and Hakim learned of an opening there for a translator. His fluency in four
languages — English,
Farsi, Urdu, the official language of Pakistan, and Pashtu, a language commonly
used in both Pakistan and Afghanistan — eventually earned him
a position in the visa/immigration department of the embassy.
During his eight months at the embassy, Hakim met Susan Raddant, a native
of Shawano, Wisconsin, and a 1999 Lawrence graduate, who turned her bachelor’s
degree in government and international relations into a position with the U.S.
State Department. Islamabad was one of her first foreign assignments.
Although she wasn’t on retainer for the Lawrence admissions office, Raddant
began selling Hakim on the idea of attending college at her alma mater.
"My brother had attended Amherst, and I really wanted to go to a college
on the East Coast,” Hakim says, “but the more I talked to Susan,
the more interested I became in Lawrence. I started checking out the website
and
saw that they provided a high standard of education and they also had a high
percentage of international students, both of which were appealing to me.”
Getting into Lawrence would prove easier than getting into the United States.
In Islamabad, he and his family began the complex process of applying for
official refugee status to come to America. After living nearly five years
in Pakistan,
their application was officially approved on September 9, 2001. But their
joy was short-lived. They soon learned what a difference 48 hours
can make.
"We were all set to come to the United States in October, but then the
September 11 terrorist attacks occurred, and everything got delayed,” Hakim
recalls.
“The whole process was stopped. Every man who had applied to come to
the United States, whether as a refugee or an immigrant or a non-immigrant
and who was
above the age of 16 and under the age of 45, had to go through an extensive
FBI background check.”
It would take another 13 months before Hakim and his family would know true
freedom.
"He is incredibly fortunate to come to the United States from that region
of the world at this time,” says Claudena Skran, associate professor
of government and a specialist on refugee issues.
"Refugees are already the most carefully screened class of immigrants, but
one of the first things the U.S. government did after 9/11 was to stop processing
refugee applications.”
Refugees are admitted to the United States on a quota system. For many years,
that quota stood at 70,000 per year, but in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks,
the number of refugees allowed to enter the United States fell to 26,000
last year — the lowest total since 1979 and barely a third of the actual quota.
"The revised policy is based on the mistaken belief that refugees are
likely to be terrorists, when in fact refugees are more likely to be the victims
of
terrorists, tyrants, and torture,” says
Skran, author of the book Refugees in Interwar Europe: The Emergence of
a Regime.
"In the wake of 9/11, the government instituted new security procedures,
but they haven’t allocated enough resources and personnel to implement
those procedures.”
While the wheels of government slowly turned, Hakim had little choice but
to ponder a future rife with doubt.
"Life in Pakistan was really a life of constant uncertainty,” he
says. “We
felt we were looked down upon. We never really knew when the Pakistani authorities
would drive all the Afghans out of the country.”
After more than a year of patience-testing, the Hakims finally were allowed
to leave Pakistan for the United States, arriving first in New York on November
14, 2002, before making their way to Southern California to live near relatives.
"When we landed in New York, it was a great feeling. At last, I knew I
wouldn’t
have to run any more. I wouldn’t have to go back to our burned-out house
in Kabul,” says Hakim, who calls La Mesa, a suburb of San Diego, home
today.
"Ever since I was old enough to think about college, I knew the best place
to pursue higher education would be in the United States,” adds Hakim,
who is leaning toward majoring in government at Lawrence.
"Now that the time is here, I am glad to be a student again.”