My name is Maihan Far Alam, I am an Afghan American and I graduated from the University
of Virginia in 2019. I received my bachelor's degree in foreign affairs with a minor in
Middle Eastern studies. I am originally from Khasni Afghanistan but I grew up in Phoenix,
Arizona. On September 11, I was only five years old I was in kindergarten at the time
so my initial reaction I don't quite remember and I do remember watching the television with
my family around me just watching images of twin towers falling over and over on the news
and my mother was crying that day but I couldn't quite understand why and it
wasn't until years later that I would understand the impact of that day. Prior to the events
of September 11, I hadn't quite placed much thought into the fact that I am an immigrant
it wasn't until after the events of 9/11 that I became acutely aware of my cultural and religious
background. My brother and I would get called terrorists or people would often refer to Osama
Bin Laden as my uncle and my mom would always warn us about telling people where we were from or our
family background. When the United States invaded Afghanistan the Taliban regime fell and I put that
in quotes because the Taliban still continues to maintain control of large parts of the country,
but in major cities in Afghanistan like Kabul, women were now able to go to school they were
able to work outside the home but that freedom that they were given that they didn't have before
came at a cost. The war on terror led to mass displacement, it led to the destructions of homes,
hospitals, schools, entire neighborhoods, and the mass murder of thousands hundreds of thousands of
innocent afghan civilians. It kind of leads to the question what kind of freedom is that if
you leave for work in the morning to go to work or school you wonder if you're going to return
home because you don't know if you're going to be killed that day you're left wondering
when you go to bed at night if your house is going to be the next target of a rocket attack
and that's something my family has experienced we lost some of my cousins last year in a rocket
attack when rockets hit their home in Kabul. And this past year alone another one of my cousins
was shot by a Taliban member and he continues to remain in critical condition because he is
not able to obtain the health care that he needs due to the lack of infrastructure in the country
as a result of the war. For Americans September 11th is a day of mourning it's a day of reflection
it's a day of grieving and commemorating the innocent American lives that were lost,
but for Afghans especially for lack of a better word they don't have that luxury to grieve,
they don't have that luxury to mourn, war is their everyday reality it's something that
they have learned to live with and cope with and the impact that September 11th has had
on people in Afghanistan and and many other countries in the middle east is profound
and that's something that a lot of Americans either fail to realize or completely ignore.