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Medford woman had up close view of Taliban's 'evil' When Colette Sherbourne opens her photo album, the happy little faces of Tabasu and Farsheet peer out at the world. Age 6 and 4 respectively, the two children from Afghanistan were among those befriended by the Medford resident this past summer when she volunteered at a refugee camp in Austria. The children, both as cute as a bug's ear, are beaming. "The smiling faces of those children will remain in my heart the rest of my life," she says. But the smile of their aunt appears strained. "Her husband was murdered by the Taliban," Sherbourne says. "After they killed him, they cut up his body, put it in a box and left it on her doorstep. "From what I understand from the refugees, the Taliban is very opposed to education or anybody with influence," Sherbourne adds. "She was a nurse; he was an engineer. They were a prominent family." Sherbourne arrived in the refugee camp in Badkreuzen late in May, staying through June. It is run by the Austrian government, one of the few governments in the world that allows refugees to enter its country without a visa. She was part of International Teams, an organization supported by her church, Westminster Presbyterian of Medford. "But I did not go there to proselytize or force my Christian faith on people," she stresses. "I went to love them unconditionally." About 95 percent of the 200 refugees in the camp are from Afghanistan, she says. Refugees wait in camp for their paperwork to be processed before heading to the country where they have applied for asylum. While there, they cannot work. Few have any money. "Most of them fled horrendous conditions in their homelands," she says. "They are hurting. They are lonely." She helped the refugees by doing things such as driving them to relief agencies or helping them with their paperwork. But she also showed that she cared by simply taking the time to listen. A 1986 Medford graduate and a 1990 graduate of the University of Oregon, majoring in finance, Sherbourne took the corporate route after college. She traveled widely throughout America as well as abroad. Weary of climbing the corporate ladder, she returned to the Rogue Valley to become a self-employed commercial real estate appraiser. "I wanted to do something to help other people," she says of going to the refugee camp. "But I got so much more out of it than I gave." Before the terrorist attack, the United States had been providing the most humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, she says. Sherbourne, who can speak enough German to get by, was the only American on the three-member team. "I heard some horrendous stories about what the Afghan people have suffered from the drought and at the hands of the Taliban," she says. "It is a humanitarian crisis of astronomical proportions. "The events of the last few weeks have just exacerbated it," she adds. While Sherbourne hopes the terrorists who helped orchestrate the horrible acts of Sept. 11 get their deserved punishment in the deserts of Afghanistan, she is worried about the innocents. "I see the eradication of this evil as something that has to be done," she says. "This is a regime where women cannot work or go to school. If a woman has nail polish on, her fingers are chopped off. "But I don't want to see the Afghan people being bombed. Those people have suffered tremendously." The refugees she saw in Austria were those who had the means to escape, she says. The hundreds of thousands who are trying to flee to neighboring Pakistan are in much worse shape, she says. "The people I met were wonderful people," she says. "The terrorist actions do not represent Islam. The Taliban do not represent Islam." Most of the refugees were Islamic, she notes. "One thing I came away with is a feeling of how similar we all are," she says. "Everybody basically desires the same thing: to have a job, have a safe place to live and raise a family. We're all the same, whether we are Afghan or American." She has the smiling faces of Tabasu and Farsheet to prove it. Reach reporter Paul Fattig at 776-4496 or e-mail him at [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.