My sister responds (more on the Afghan girl story).

[rivka]

I spoke with my friend and found out that I had gotten some of the details wrong, in ways that (sorry) may have reduced plausibility of the story. Some details are vague because of the girl's limited English.

On the side of this being real, or at least, less damning than the way I originally told you the story:

My friend's correspondence with the girl began last spring, well before Sept 11th, and before the girl had come to the U.S. (She was at that point living in/attending school in U.A.E., was planning to come to the US to attend math summer programs and started posting to the newsgroup because she wanted to talk to people in the U.S. about what it would be like to come, what kind of things to wear, etc.) The family has money (hence the private planes, and the ability to send a daughter to the U.S for education, and the ability of some family members to leave Afghanistan when the Taliban was in power), but only the grandfather was in favor of her getting educated, and he died on Sept 11th. She had attended 2 summer programs (Smith, and ? second program in California) and was going to stay and get placed in a school this fall to continue, when all this upheaval happened in this country and in her family.

The guy who originally contacted my friend to make sure she was an appropriate email contact for the girl was an associate of the family; he's the one who returned to Afghanistan and was killed along with other members of the family in the fire started by the Taliban. My friend has his name; don't know at this point if there's any way to confirm whether he died as we've been told. His contact with my friend was by email.

The U.S. contacts were not actually a host family (I was wrong about that.) The couple who died in the WTC were actually a teacher in her summer program and the teacher's husband. The Afghan girl had become close to them over the summer, eaten in their home, etc. The other U.S. contact was a man who was working as a liason to place her in a U.S. school. She stayed with him and his family for a short time after Sept 11th, until family members came and over-rode his authority to keep her. My friend has emailed him (as have other people in the newsgroup) and got a response on the lines of "I share your concerns and am doing everything I can..."

On the side of this not being real:

1. odd that her current "caretakers" could be so unaware of her ability to use email to communicate with outsiders. She apparently has been able to use both her handheld device and (in the middle of the night) possibly her desktop without being detected.
2. she sent my friend a photo of the prospective husband. Can a palm-type device handle something large like that? I won't even bother speculating about scanning the photo in, etc. because I'm assuming if she had it and sent it, that she received it electronically in the first place (which again raises questions about #1--how it is that the relatives are allowing her access to email, if they understand what it is.)

Thanks for your suggestions; my friend is going to call Smith College tomorrow and try to verify that the girl attended their summer program and see if they have any contact information. She's also going to email the girl to suggest that she email police, FBI, and/or State Dept directly with her story.

Comments

[elynne.livejournal.com]

This morning I had a thought, which I wasn't able to post before going to work - but you might want to pass back along the chain that she should also email news agencies, like CNN, People and Time magazines, the NYT, and that. She should write a couple of paragraphs explaining her situation, giving names, dates, locations, and other verifiable facts. Some news agency will give the budding story to a hungry young reporter, who will do the research. Once a news-beast has something that looks like an Afghanistan Elian story, nobody'll be moving her around, private jet or otherwise, without a platoon of camerapeople chasing them every step of the way...