March Planned to Aid Afghanis

Afghan-resistance supporters said nearly a thousand volunteers will march 10 miles through Cambridge and Arlington this Sunday to raise money for the victims of what the protest organizers consider "a form of a Holocaust"--the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

The march, sponsored by The Free Afghanistan Alliance, will begin after a brief noon-time ceremony featuring Alexy Semyonov, Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov's step-son, and Camelia Sadat, daughter of slain Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.

The alliance funds "humanitarian assistance and medical care that people can't get in Pakistan," said the president of the alliance, Dr. Scott G. Kramer.

More than money is the goal of the walk, organizers said. Kramer said the march will be "symbolic" of the Afghani "women and children who had to walk through the bitter cold mountain passes, even after being injured, to get where it's safe."

Minority Report

The organizers said the war in Afghanistan is severly harming the civilian population there. "How many Afghanis have to be killed for the American public to wake up?" asked Aga Khan Professor of Iranian Studies Richard N. Frye, a member of the alliance's board of advisors.

Semyonov said that the walk "expresses support for the Afghan freedom fighters, a worthy cause and a one in need." The Afghani people are "facing the most awesome military machine in the world," Semyonov added.

Money raised through the walk will help the Afghani resistance. "We can provide artificial limbs for the thousands of Afghans who can't walk," said alliance member Charles M. Brockunier '62. "The Afghans are suffering a lot, because the Soviets are driving the civilians out of Afghanistan."

Brockunier said he "delivered medical supplies to villages in Paktia province [Afghanistan]" in April of 1986. He said that five million people, out of the country's population of fifteen million, are refugees in Pakistan--the largest group of refugees in the world today.