"We are not heroes--we're simply doing what's right," said Edward Artis from Knightsbridge International after entering Afghanistan to help refugees. The Christian Knightsbridge International organization and the Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation have again worked together to provide help to war-ravaged Moslem refugees.

A CNN report showed a scene from a refugee camp in northern Afghanistan: a villager told a reporter that his child was just ten days old and his wife was seriously sick. He and his family had been on the run for a year and a half and had finally reached this place. "We need help," he said as he gazed into the TV camera. They had nothing to eat.

When Edward Artis of Knightsbridge International brought wheat flour to the refugees, some starving villagers immediately grabbed handfuls of flour and stuffed it into their mouths. Before Artis and his companions arrived, many people in the refugee camp had died. The team saw many graves not too far away from the camp.

The relief goods were transported through the desert on donkeys. While adults unloaded the goods, children were on the alert with guns and cartridges on hand. On this distribution day, a villager said happily, "This was the most substantial meal I've had in months."

A most difficult rescue mission

According to UN reports, due to years of civil war and drought, more than four million Afghans were starving before the September 11 terrorist attacks. After the attacks, 1.5 million Afghans fled to neighboring countries to avoid war.

On October 14, 2001, U.S.-based Knightsbridge International signed an agreement with the Tzu Chi office in Los Angeles to carry out humanitarian missions to the Afghan refugees.

At 6 p.m. on the same day, four Knightsbridge members, including Chairman Edward Artis, President James Laws, Walt Ratterman, and Adrian Belic, flew from New York to Afghanistan with the blessings of members of the Tzu Chi New York branch office.

After thirty-five days of hardship, Artis and Laws came to Taiwan on November 18 and reported to Master Cheng Yen about the completion of their mission.

According to Artis, everything--electricity, roads, postal services, public works, wastewater treatment plants, and water supply services--had all been ruined. Villagers fought to survive every day. The future was far from their minds; all they could think of was whether they would still be alive tomorrow.

Artis remarked that he had been in many life-threatening situations in the past thirty years. This mission was not the most dangerous, but it was the most difficult. Many international charity groups had been trying to enter Afghanistan, but they were blocked at the border because they couldn't get their goods cleared through customs or the border guards gave them a hard time with their visas. Danger, corruption and hatred in Afghanistan further prevented these groups from entering.

With help from the Afghanistan Relief Organization and protection from the Northern Alliance and the United Front, the four-member Knightsbridge team was finally able to deliver food, clothes and medicine to the refugees. Artis relayed a message from an Afghan friend to Master Cheng Yen: "If not for the Master's compassion, more refugees would have died from hunger." Artis also presented a Tzu Chi flag to the Master to indicate that he had accomplished the mission.

Entering Afghanistan

The four Knightsbridge members first stopped at Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, north of Afghanistan. They planned to go northeast to Tajikistan before entering Afghanistan.

They waited four days in Tashkent for their visas to enter Tajikistan. After they had entered that country, they spent another six days purchasing needed goods and arranging for transportation. It was ten days before they finally entered Afghanistan.

Artis observed that there were 1,300 reporters from around the world at the border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan, but they had been there for more than three weeks and still could not enter Afghanistan. He and his colleagues were fortunate indeed to be able to enter.

Before they left the United States, a forty-foot container had been sent to Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan. In it were medical supplies, clothes for 500 families, 2,500 pairs of shoes and other items. After the team arrived, they purchased wheat, sugar, cooking oil and other items.

Close to forty vehicles piled with relief goods jolted along rocky roads for six hours before crossing the border. From October 31 to November 11, the team spent twelve days distributing relief goods at three different locations: Hoji Malla, a hospital in Khoja Baldeen, and Cha Ab.

Since the refugees had nothing, the team members also ate in the open and slept in the wilderness. They experienced sandstorms, driving rain and scorching sun, and they took turns being sick.

Ratterman mentioned that they each brought only two sets of clothes and one sleeping bag; their other luggage was all communications equipment. The surroundings were so terrible that their four satellite phones and two notebook computers eventually broke, and they couldn't contact the outside world for eight days.

A worthwhile trip

In Khoja Baldeen, a small town in northern Afghanistan about fourteen kilometers [8.6 mi] from the war zone, there were 150,000 refugees. Hoji Malla, one of the refugee camps there, was the team's first stop to distribute relief goods.

Artis pointed out that this refugee camp had more than 1,200 people who lived in shabby tents made of earth, paper, tree branches or plastic sheets. For the past five months, they had survived on only a small amount of wheat and many people ended up eating garbage that soldiers left behind. Villagers said that many people had died from starvation. Artis observed, "When we heard that many people were dying there, nothing could stop us from going to them. It was worth it, even if one child was saved."

The team went to Hoji Malla four times to deliver wheat, sugar, cooking oil, and tents. The food could last each family two months.

An NBC reporter was also in Hoji Malla. After Artis handed a fifty-kilogram [110 lb] bag of wheat to an old man, the NBC cameraman followed the old man’s hobbling steps to his home.

An hour later, the cameraman returned with tears on his face. He told Artis that the man's home was made of tree branches and grass; it looked just like a huge bird's nest. It was the nest for the old man, his wife and two daughters.

"Is the wheat important to you?" asked the cameraman. The old man sighed and said that he had had three daughters the week before. He led the cameraman to a little grave beside the house. One of his daughters had starved to death.

When Artis heard this, he also wept. He just wished that he could have brought the food in earlier.

Someone asked Artis whether the relief supplies were useful to the refugees, since it was such a small amount. He said, "Now I can reply clearly that although it was only a bag of food, it could keep the old man's other two daughters from dying."

At a hospital in Khoja Baldeen, the superintendent was a cardiologist. Even though there was a great shortage of equipment and power, the doctors there could still perform delicate surgeries, perhaps due to their severe training through the wars.

This hospital has not charged patients any fees in the last five years. The Knightsbridge team donated medicine and a new electrocardiogram machine, which was used immediately to save lives.

Artis recalled that several reporters for the National Geographic Magazine were collecting information at the front line. One of them was injured in his thigh and hip by shrapnel from exploding bombs, and another was injured while trying to dodge a tank. They were treated in this hospital.

There were also many refugees in Cha Ab, about a four-hour drive from Khoja Baldeen. The team went there on November 10 and handed out thirty tons of wheat, cooking oil, sugar, blankets and other things. Artis said this small town had not received any assistance in four years because it was off the beaten track.

Second wave of assistance

Artis said that he and his members were not there to be heroes. They were there to bring the blessings of Master Cheng Yen and millions of Tzu Chi people. He felt his team was fortunate to return safely.

The medicine they gave out was mainly donated by James Laws, president of Knightsbridge International. Laws said that after the September 11 attacks, he, like most other Americans, wanted revenge. It was not until October 13 that he went to a Tzu Chi candlelight vigil in New Jersey and was inspired by what Master Cheng Yen said in a videotaped speech: "Force cannot end the turmoil on earth. Only love, gratitude, understanding, and accommodation can bring peace to the world." Thus, he didn't just donate medicine; this time he himself also went with the others to Afghanistan.

Another team member, Walt Ratterman, took leave from his job to come to Afghanistan. Unfortunately, his mother passed away while he was gone, but he transformed his love for his mother into love for the Afghan refugees.

Artis was very grateful that he could work with Tzu Chi again. He said that the Christian Knightsbridge organization and the Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation had worked together again to provide help to war-ravaged Moslem refugees. This was a symbol of true world peace.

Tzu Chi and Knightsbridge cooperated again in mid-December to provide relief goods to refugees in northern Afghanistan and the Bamiyan area, in order to help them survive the bitterly cold winter. The team set up a distribution center in Termez, Uzbekistan, to collect and distribute relief goods. They created a family-size pack in which they put rice, wheat, tea leaves, cooking oil and sugar, and handed one out to each family. They also provided tents and family first aid kits.

About half of the total Afghan population of twenty million are children under fifteen years of age and widows from Afghanistan's civil wars. Artis said that the widows, along with other Afghan refugees, are not terrorists--they need our help badly.