We take for granted in Canada that women & girls can go to school without being slaughtered or have permanently disfiguring acid getting thrown in their face simply for learning how to read & write. That is true bravery. One thing many people should remember that our troop’s mission is here twofold, first to provide security to most of the Afghan people who legitimately want progress in this country so they can make the necessary steps to achieve long term stability. I have seen only one coalition convoy in the streets of Kabul, yet we do provide support so Afghans have enough strength in their country so the children have the opportunity for an education. Secondly, our funds help rebuild Afghanistan & help the people here. Though the funds do not always get to where they are needed the most, which unfortunately is often the case in locations with excessive poverty, our successful endeavours do not seem to get the media coverage that they deserve.
The Afghan people realize that we are not in this for the long haul (2014 is Karzai’s withdrawal date request) & that we will eventually leave Afghanistan leaving those who supported us completely vulnerable in what could amount to a death sentence should religious extremists take over again. Our memories are so short in the West we often forget that it is the Americans who helped put the oppressive Taliban in power but they haven’t forgotten that here in Afghanistan. The brutality of the Taliban government is well remembered, they have done ridiculously cruel things like kill a man for having no beard. They would feel men’s beards to see if they had been shaven & beat him if he had shaved or trimmed his beard. The beautiful Buddha statues at Bamiyan were destroyed. There were no games allowed, no music; women were made to wear berka’s (although many still do there is more that do not.) One can understand the Afghan’s confusion. In fact action star from my era Sylvester Stallone made a movie in the 80’s in which his notorious character ‘Rambo’ was on the side of the Taliban in the movie Rambo III.
The founder of Aschiana, M. Yousef began Aschiana during the Mujahedeen rule. He was told to just go to the government & take whatever job he wanted; there was no applying, no resume, nothing that would constitute a legitimate job offer. He knew that this was no way to run a company never mind a country so he refused the suggestion. Soon after, he met a working street kid whose Father was killed in the war so he had to work to support his family & although a brilliant child at the top of his class he was unable to get an education. Yousef began Aschiana after meeting that child & Aschiana has grown into what it has become today. During the Taliban rule Aschiana was teaching both girls & boys. One day when Yousef, who is an engineer by trade, went to school and imagine his feeling when there were Taliban waiting for him. They took him away shaved his head & threw him in prison. He was in a blackened cell with only one tiny window at the top of the room and about 20 other prisoners. They would sporadically take out prisoners and it was obviously the worst to get called because those men never returned, most executed or dismembered. Then after a week or so in jail they pulled him out of the prison cell & took Yousef in front of a Taliban judge. He thought ‘this is it’. Luckily the parents of the children that he had helped all showed up to the court & came to his defence & with their support his life was saved. He continued Aschiana after that although he had to cease educating girls until the Taliban’s rule ended in 2001.
Education is the key, religious zealots prey on the fact that people cannot read the Koran if they knew the true meaning of the Koran & could read it for themselves they would know that it does not teach violence or their perverted version of Jihad that has been distorted & twisted by these men to achieve their end of being in power. One Tomahawk missile costs something like $500000 imagine how many portable solar power stations it could buy; clean water distillers that could install, how many schools & roads that could build and how many lives that could change? If you add into the equation if one errant missile strike kills the people of a village or family members you now have enemies for life. Making life better for these people & helping them learn to read & write is really the key to long term success in Afghanistan
Untold stories are the Afghan teachers who are risking their lives to teach and they are truly inspirational. Nazar, Aschiana’s program director, has received many death threats for both educating girls & working with the people from the West. The teachers here that do amazing work risk their lives for $200 a month. In a city where the prices are driven so ridiculously high because of the foreign dollars flowing into the capital as well as the narco dollars funnelling in, it is staggering. A four-bedroom house will often cost $10,000 or more a month to rent, and about $500,000 to buy so consequently the ‘that’s good money for them “argument does not wash.
You cannot bomb force or intimidate people into happiness & prosperity. Yet the Afghan army is currently incapable of holding this country together without our support. It was a good dose of reality going into the Manipar Pass yesterday where while traveling many people really really didn’t like me. As a white Anglo Saxon male it was eye opening to be in the victim of such intense racism where people hate you who don’t even know you. However upon arriving to Farhad’s (my interpreter) village when I got a proper introduction to his family, a group of wild looking Afghan mountain dwellers, their intense friendliness, affection and hospitality was incredibly overwhelming.
It is a difficult proposition in the countryside, where if anyone is seen as helping the existing Afghan government or us would mean brutal death or jail. The Steep beautiful mountains are awesome and dramatic and reinforce that outside of the major cities Afghanistan is still very tribal & exists much as it has for hundreds of years. Physically beautiful mountains & landscape is a fusion of groups that mesh wildly nomadic tribe;s Pashtun to the South, Hazara in the East, Tajik to the North, just to name the three main tribes. An Afghan in the country may go their entire life not see anyone outside of their tribe. The Pashtun countryside is where the support of extremist groups such as the Taliban mainly tends to lie. They have no need for democracy there & get no benefit from a centralized government
Looking into the eyes of the children at Aschiana who are helpless innocent & kind & it is truly breaks my heart that without proper long term support it does not look promising here. When I came over to Afghanistan I did not know what to expect & was more or less a blank slate. I now see that we are legitimately trying to assist those in need and we must deliver the message that a long term vision & education is the key in helping the Afghans. I felt that it’s the least we can do for the people here that have suffered so much yet are still laughing smiling, playing and being mischievous like children in Canada
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