Nuanced Article on Affy

Interestingly, the part about entering Afghan homes is really telling. The Taliban would never, ever enter Afghan homes without express invitation. They believed that the home is one's own private domain, and this is a huge cultural precept that has held for hundreds of years in Afghanistan. You might get roughed up in the street, but no one would ever enter and search your home. I found this very interesting when I first read about it, and could scarcely credit it, but have heard it from two or three different sources now. This article corroborates the discontent with this method.

The hope that life in Afghanistan
will improve, however, often hangs by
a thread.
At a meeting at the center that had
been arranged for me to meet children
and parents, one mother suddenly cut
througji the niceties of polite talk and bitterly
declared, "We hate this country and
want to leave. There are no jobs here."
Tlie oatkHTst was striking not only
because such displays of raw emotion
are, in my experience in Afghanistan,
rare around foreign visitors. It also
pointed to something I sensed from
almost the beginning of my recent visit:
growing economic inequality was
becoming strikingly evident, at least in
Kabul.
The streets of Afghanistan's capital
city are displaying a wider variety of
consimier goods — some of them decidedly
high-end — and storefronts are
showing surer, and welcome, signs of
the pride of ownership.
It is hard to convey the sheer ugliness
and paucity of hope that seemed to
envelop Kabul six years ago, so the
presence of shopping centers and even
cash machines (that dispense both
American and Afghan currency) is a
striking and not unwelcome change.
But the downside of economic
improvement for some is, of course, a
growing income gap between the
wealthy and the poor.
It may not make much difference to
those living in Kabul's poorest neighborhoods
that the mansions that
reportedly belong to a growing class of
drug lords and warlords are still accessible
only by appallingly bad. potholed
roads. But such omate homes are at
least receiving electricity—something
I was told in October was still not the
case for about half of Kabul.
It was telling that six years after the
fall of the Taliban and after billions
have been spent on reconstruction
within Afghanistan, such a basic necessity
as electricity still eluded a large
segment of a city of 3 million.
Faces of progress
There are perhaps two ways of viewing
such a problem. One is to note the
—Photos by Church World Service/Chris Herltnger
Above: A man guards a one-time retreat
for the wealthy outside of Kabul.
Right: A new shopping center in Kabul,
an example of new prosperity for a small
number of Afghans.
Below: Faqirullah Hamldi. 45, with two
of his eight children.
progress that has been made in the last
six years. Signs of progress do exist.
Among the faces of progress is that of
Faqirullah Hamidi, 45, who relies on
crutches because of leg wounds suffered
during what he laconically calls
"the Soviet time."
Because of his disability, this father
of eight children, ranging in age from a
month old to 12 years, is a stay-at-home
parent, while his wife, Nafisa, is
employed by a govemment agency.
The family has now settled into "a
small home on the outskirts of Kabul as
part of a housing project funded in part
with the support of U.S. churches.
"It's a fundamental change that I
have my own house," Hamidi said,
describing the family situation now as
"happy." He credits intemational relief
and development groups for helping
him and others build a better life.
As for larger issues, Hamidi said:
"We want a secure country; we want
peace in this country; we want development
in this countiy."
Left unsaid was bow to define "security"
in a country with a weak central
govemment; the presence of foreign
troops and a growing insurgent movement.
A more jauiidiced and critical view
of the current situation rests in asking,
as many Afi?hans apparently are,
where exactly billions of dollars in
assistance have gone and why more
Afghans are not seeing the concrete
results of such aid.
A girl on
Afghans are not the only ones asking
the question. In a recent report, Oxfam
Great Britain said that much of the
more than $15 billion in intemational
aid that has gone to Afghanistan since
2001 has been ineffective or inefBcient.
The Oxfam report was particularly
damning of large portions of assistance
being "absorbed by profits of companies
and subcontractors, by non-
Afghan resources and by high expatriate
salaries and living costs."
Given such problems, it is hardly a
surprise, some say, that the Taliban are
experiencing a resurgence.
Little to lose
One senior program officer with a
U.S.-based humanitarian agency whose
work often takes him to many of
Afg^ianistan's rural areas, told me,
"Poverty is the source of the instabihty."
"People feel like, 'Why not join the
Taliban? We have nothing to lose,' "
said the relief worker, who like many
humanitarian workers in Afghanistan
does not want to be quoted by name
because of security concerns.
That raises an inevitable question:
How is the United States viewed among
Af^ans at a time when the situation in
Afghanistan seems to be spiraling downward?
Is the United States feiultedfor its
mere presence in Afghanistan or for not
having a sufficient-enough presence?
The responses I heard ran the spectrum.
One humanitarian worker minced
no words when he said that
Afghanistan has become "just one
example where the intemational community,
without understanding the
context and history, has once again
gone viTong." He said that the U.S.-led
presence in Afghanistan — specifically,
aerial bombings that have needlessly
killed civilians — has "only
increased the sufferings of the people."
"It's just introduced new pain and
sufferings to one of the poorest countries
on the face of this planet," he said.
Others viewed the situation differently,
arguing that the majority of
Afghans support the current U.S. and
NATO military presence in part
because it's the only tangible security
people, at least in Kabul, actually have.
Yet, memories of the long and hated
Soviet occupation in the 1980s have
made Afghans understandably weary
of a sustained foreign presence — and
make no mistake, the U.S. presence,
when seen by Afghan eyes, is foreign.
Even those who support American
efforts in a general way shake their
heads at oft-repeated stories of American
troops breaking Afghan cultural
rules and decorum. Most frequently
mentioned are incidents of U.S. troops
entering homes without a clear invitation
to do so.
At the same time, there are decidedly
welcome words for U.S. relief and
development assistance if done sensibly
and in concert with local communities.
There are anecdotal accounts
that confirm the conclusion of the
Oxfam report, with tales of heavily
funded projects that have gone awry
because local community involvement
A mansion-like
structure is an example
of a new dynamic in
Kabul: large homes
appearing in areas once
affected by war.
in planning relief and development
work wasn't sought.
Fond memories
linger
What is perhaps most striking in
speaking to Afghans in their 40s and
50s is their recollection and fond memories
of American teachers and engineers
who worked in the country in the
1960s and 1970s.
For^these Afghans, that was something
of a golden era for U.S.-Afghan
relations.
A telling moment for me came when
Naseer Ah Popal, the director of the
social protection division of the Afghan
Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and
Development, pointedtome—an American
journalist who works for a humanitarian
organization, wearing rimless
glasses and not attired in a military uniform
— and said, "Before there were
Americans like you here. Now there are
Americans with guns and that doesn't
always create a good image."
That comment points to the continued
and baleful legacy of war and violence
in a country that has borne so
much — indeed too much — of the
world's political problems during the
last three decades. Afghanistan in the
1980s was a crucible of the Cold War,
fell into disregard as an ignored and
blighted state in the 1990s and now
finds itself as something of the second
theater of the "war on terror."
It doesn't take much to imagine what
this has done to the national psyche of
a country where the power of the past
and the weight of history exert enormous
influence.
"Some say everyone in Afghanistan
is traumatized; some say no one is traumatized,"
said one intemational aid
worker. However one resolves that
question, be said, Afghanistan seems
"stuck in the past, and so can't go forward
either in the future or even in the
present."