Our last day was a frenzy of packing in as much as possible. I felt as though I needed to see everything in hyper-vision. Having seen so much that I had not expected, I could not shake the feeling that I was going to leave without seeing all that I needed to see. It would not be, however, for lack of trying. Scenes on the streets seared their way into my memory: two little boys no more than eight years old, rags hanging off their thin bodies, stealing a full garbage bag each off an open truck; a man squatting in an open sewer with his payraan hoisted just high enough to do the deed without the display, gratefully concealed by his tumbaan; two policemen standing bewildered in the center of an intersection clogged with all kinds of motorized vehicles, cyclists, pedestrians, donkey-drawn carts and goats aimed in every direction possible, all barely moving through the chaos. Soon, a green police truck with a loudspeaker blaring orders for traffic to move faster, came barging up behind us, adding an edginess I could have done without. Surreal.
To say that specific addresses often are difficult to figure out is to state the obvious in Kabul. A man squatting on the side of a road was unable to tell us the location of a street we had been trying to find. A little girl dressed for school came up next to him and told us where it was. The next street over.
We were looking for the Afghan Women's Network, an umbrella organization for 68 "angel" members, i.e., most of the women's NGO's in Afghanistan. The list of concerns with which AWN is engaged is the list of all the inequities facing women in Afghanistan: rescinding the Shia Personal Status Law, advocacy for mothers' rights, legal aid for abused women, hotlines for women victims of domestic violence, educating people about how the treatment of women in Afghanistan runs counter to the teachings of Islam, shelter for abused women and children...the list, sadly, is very long.
The women of AWN are deeply committed to building the capacity for women to be partners with men in the rebuilding of their country. Yet, life for women outside of Kabul has taken a turn for the worst and there is not much for the better that is happening for women inside of Kabul. With people the likes of Mullah Ratiki, a Member of Parliament and "former" Taliban, pushing hard for the return of the Vice and Virtue Police, AWN is fighting an uphill battle.
Notwithstanding all the miseries the women of Afghanistan are facing, we heard once again that security is their number one concern. AWN would prefer to see the resources intended for the possible surge of 40,000 US troops to be spent instead on the now all-too-familiar list of needs: a well-trained National Security Force (paid well enough so that the Taliban can't lure them away with higher pay, as so often happens now), education and redevelopment. If international troops must come, AWN wants them sent to secure the Pakistan boarder.
PARSA, our next stop, was founded in 1996 to provide an array of services for the disabled, widows and orphans, all victims of the on-going warfare in Afghanistan. In addition to rehabilitation and therapy, its clients learn skills that enable them to earn an income. PARSA is now run by the energetic Marnie Gustavson, an American who has spent much of her life in Third World countries, including years as an adolescent in a very different Afghanistan.
Marnie's take on the Taliban is one that I hope is being considered by the decision makers in Washington. It is consistent with much of what we have heard about them from many sources. She sees a very different cast of characters than those members of the Taliban just seven years ago. They are now mostly people who want an income and they can be rented for $10 a day. If they had jobs instead, that is what they would be doing.
She has watched as one agency after another has bungled its intended mission in Afghanistan. One of my favorite examples was a USAID program. The agency brought garbage bins to the country. Good idea for America, not so much, it turned out, for Afghanistan. People from all walks of life took the trash out and sorted it to sell or burn. Goats and beggars--usually in that order--got the leftovers.
Marnie maintains that most development work in Afghanistan was for political show. Hear! Hear! Very little of it actually affects the lives of real people. USAID is seen as totally irresponsible and the US Embassy workers, many who stay for only six or seven months, so rarely get out of their bunker, they don't have a clue what the real needs of the country are. And don't get her started on contractors! A huge amount of the excesses in uselessness are due to privatization. Understandably, the private contractors have a vested interest in the failure of Obama's efforts to find a satisfactory end to the conflict. In fact, many Afghans believe that the occupation is just about keeping the contractors employed. She named a few of what she believes are the worst offenders: Creative Associates, DAI, Chemonics. Gee--does no mention of KBR mean that it compares well to these other putative thieves?
She sees the 30,000 additional troops as just a bunch of 20 year-olds trained to kill with no other skills. Not a smart move. Someone in Washington should sit down and have a chat with Marnie.
We piled back into our trusty little bus for our trip's last stop, Women for Afghan Women. It was the only NGO we visited where the entrance was guarded by armed men, two of them, while two others checked our bags and passports. The security was high because we were entering a shelter where women lived in fear that they would be found. They all had fled the gamut of terrible abuses. Many of the women were there technically illegally. Some had been given in baad to abusive families when they were very young and were the property of the families they fled, to be used any way the family wanted. Baad happens when Family A does something to offend Family B and in order to make peace, Family B gets to have Family A's daughters. Of course, the number of daughters Family A forfeits depends on the gravity of the offense. One of the young women with whom we met had been given in baad when she was 8.
There were the women there who had been given to their deceased husband's or father's brother to do with as the men pleased. As they pleased usually meant used as a sex object. One 17 year-old with whom we met had been given to her uncle when she was 13. He raped her regularly.
Most people with whom we spoke put the number of abused Afghan women at 9 out of 10. That means that somewhere around 13 million women are abused in Afghanistan. This shelter housed 54 of them. It is the largest of the eight shelters in Afghanistan. That's right, eight in all of Afghanistan. Before this shelter opened, women, when they escaped abuse and didn't know any better, went to the police for protection. The police routinely jailed the women--and often still do--until the abusing family could come and retrieve them. It is not uncommon for women to be jailed for such offenses as being raped and being accused of having sex outside of marriage.
There's another stunning practice in Afghanistan that I just can't get my head around. It is called badal. If your husband beats you, then your brother has to beat his wife. Any excuse to beat a woman will do.
The brightest star in the shelter was a 14 year-old girl named Nilab. Her mother refused to marry her husband's brother when her husband died. In retaliation, the brother-in-law accused her of kidnapping a neighbor's boy. Even though the boy said it never happened, the brother-in-law was able to bribe the judge who then sent her mother to prison for 12 years. When a widowed woman goes to prison, her children go with her. There is nothing for these children in prison. Nothing.
Someone in the prison realized that Nilab was very special. She was sent to the shelter where she attends school and is number one in her class. When we asked what she saw in her future, she answered with a passion and clarity that would have been astonishing for a mature, well-educated, Western woman. She wants to become a lawyer and right all the wrongs that keep the women in Afghanistan oppressed.
I could not help myself. I told her that if she can get into an American university (and I will help her to the extent that I am able), I will pay for it and if she then gets into law school, I will pay for that, too. If I have to clean floors to keep my end of the bargain, I will. How a 14 year-old Afghan girl who has been through the kind of hell that she has, can be so strong, articulate and passionate is beyond anything I have ever witnessed. If I could have brought her home with me I would have.
Unfortunately, we had to leave and leave Nilab behind.
The ride to the airport was insane. We were short on time to begin with. Our driver knew it and drove accordingly. I so wished I had sat in the back. The traffic was bad even for Kabul. What we didn't anticipate was a complete traffic shutdown. No one could go anywhere until a hideous military convoy passed through the traffic circle in front of the airport. Military transport trucks, MRAPs, Hummers...I was trying to imagine that same line-up in front of LAX; then thought about all the seething Afghans who were just trying to get from point A to point B but couldn't because their occupiers were blocking their way. What a fitting metaphor for the end of our trip!
Eight days in Afghanistan did not make me an expert on the country. What it did do was scramble my brains and force me to think about US engagement there in a very different way. There is a genocide against the women of that country. I can't even begin to understand why the hatred is so profound. Our presence there is all the separates Afghan women from the resurgence of the Taliban, a venal, toxic tribe of men whose existence was fostered by our government as a counter to the Russian occupation. The Taliban continue to thrive for many reasons. The three obvious reasons are that the Afghan security forces, trained by the country's occupiers, desert in large numbers because the Taliban pay about $100 a month more--that is real money in Afghanistan; many join because their home or family has been bombed by their occupiers--retribution is big in Afghanistan; and a relatively small number join because they believe in the cause.
Due to the insatiable international market for heroin, the Taliban buy poppies and easily sell them on the black market to keep themselves well-funded. The poppy growers would be happy to sell the poppies to a higher bidder--say, pharmaceutical companies who could then eliminate the international shortage of morphine. Poof--Taliban's main source of funding gone!
By and large, the West is pretty clueless about what Afghanistan needs. Fighting for peace there--or anywhere--is about as effective as raping for virginity. We need to stop and take some time to get a clear understanding of what we can and can not do for the people of Afghanistan. A conference with the leaders of the country--50% women and 50% men--to come up with a plan for what they want us to do that we are willing and able to do would be a good place to start. And keep the conference going until there is consensus!
The billions of dollars that were supposed to go to fixing Afghanistan have gone mostly into the deep pockets of the profoundly corrupt men in positions of power--and not just those in Afghanistan. Imagine if all future expenditures in Afghanistan were to be funneled through the Afghan Ministry of Women (the only Ministry that now receives virtually no funding) and women's NGOs that are able to show a clean set of records. No money for the men. At least this way the money couldn't go directly into the pockets of corrupt contractors and government officials.
If we are sending more troops, let them be lead by the Army Corps of Engineers. Better that the country be occupied with professionals able both to provide security and redevelopment.
Afghanistan is arguably the most catastrophically complex country in the world and has the unfortunate fate of being at the crossroads of one of the most unstable parts of the world. It is surrounded by six less than desirable neighbors: Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, China and Pakistan. Throw in that mix China's demand for oil and things start to look really bleak.
Try to imagine US occupation from an Afghan's point of view. What is glaringly apparent is that the US supports a government that is hopelessly and brazenly corrupt. What would that do to your respect and faith in the US? A large percentage of Afghans believe that we don't want redevelopment in Afghanistan; that we want Afghanistan to fail. They know we have thrown billions of dollars at the country and have very little to show for it. They think we don't have to support Karzai, yet we do and we do nothing about the rampant corruption and ineptness that defines his rule.
We have big guns and military hardware. We are seen as the most powerful nation on earth. And haven't been able to do anything about Karzai; we haven't been able to build a viable security force; redevelopment is a standing joke; Richard Holbrooke is our excuse for a diplomat; Parliament is dominated by Northern Alliance warlords and Taliban and half of the population--the women--fears for its safety with every breath.
We can't solve Afghanistan's problems as occupiers. We must be their partners but only if Karzai and his corrupt entourage know that not one more dollar was coming their way until first they empower women and then can prove that their government is clean. Otherwise that partnership has zero chance of success.
Until then, occupiers are US and we lose.