Yes, I am back from Kabul. Got back May 26 after a 37-hour
trip, including an 11-hour layover in Dubai. The experience was truly
"magnificent" and our team of 7 bonded and worked so well together
that we came to be called the "Magnificent 7" (see the May 27
SF Chronicle article covering our return to
SFO, on page B2, or at
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/05/27/BA233049.DTL
We were five Afghan Americans -- Mary Chopan Alamshahi,
Nasir Durani, Farhad Latifi, Moosa Masody, and Ozeir Nassery -- and two
non-Afghan Americans -- Nancy Glaser and myself. We took leave from our
work and families and traveled to Afghanistan for three weeks as volunteers,
representing the Foundation for Global Community in Palo Alto, the Afghan
Center in Fremont,
the Center for Citizen Initiatives in San Francisco, and the World Business.
Academy in Ojai. Several disciplines critical for
our mission were represented on the team: two doctors (Mary and Farhad),
an agriculturist (Moosa), a social services planner (Nasir), an industrial
engineer (Ozeir), a small business startup and management consultant (Nancy),
and a development planner and systems analyst (me). The
seven of us were just a small part of a much larger team behind us at
our home organizations, a team that came together in the wake of September
11 and, over the ensuing months, collectively decided that our response
to that tragedy would be a constructive one. More precisely, a reconstructive
one. Our mission was to assess the needs for a vocational training center
that would help former combatants, returning refugees, and others un-
andunderemployed find jobs quickly and thereby contribute to rebuilding
their civil economy. The program is called ARISE, the Afghan Retraining
Initiative for Self-employment.Expenses were covered
by a grant from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, and we contracted
with Global Exchange to help with travel arrangements,
including air transportation and local lodging and transportation in Kabul
(http://www.globalexchange.org/tours/).
Actually, we seven were part of a larger Global Exchange
tour designed to reintroduce Afghan Americans to their country. I was
especially inspired by the young Afghan Americans in the group -- students,
just beginning their careers, moved by the country they hadn't seen since
they were children, coming out of curiosity, leaving with dedication and
determination to make a positive difference. The group included (not all
Afghans): Khaleda, the GX group leader who escorted us all to Kabul; Nilufar,
the GX tour organizer and our den mother in Kabul; Farzana, a doctoral
student contemplating a dissertation related to the interplay of economics,
politics, and social dynamics in the
development of a country like Afghanistan, who was "awakened"
by 9-11 and found meaning and the love of her life in Afghanistan; Halima,
a broadcast journalist and masters student who is gathering footage for
her thesis and has also been contracted by the Afghan government to spend
3 months there helping set up coverage of the loya jirga, training Afghans
in how to deal with the foreign press, and training the foreign press
in how to deal with Afghanistan; Zolaykha who, with her husband, runs
the School of Hope, with campuses in Ghazny, Afghanistan, and at a refugee
camp in Pakistan, and who fearlessly traveled around the country to visit
the school sites; Diana and Kathleen, with their orphanage/school in Kabul
and dreams and plans to return to Afghanistan; Rosemary, a Mountain
View city councilwoman, who just wanted the experience to wash over her
and who enticed me by example to shed my shoes and socks and let the spring-fed
creek wash over my feet at the Istalif picnic; and Meriam and Don and
Sam and Rameen and Dawoud. We the ARISE team attended
dozens and dozens of meetings and talked/interviewed/dialogued with and
photographed/videotaped everyone from farmers to street kids to beggars
to shop merchants to traffic cops to ISAF
soldiers to government ministers and deputy ministers and department heads
to NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) to international donor agencies
to Chairman Karzai to His Majesty Zahir Shah. A sampling of the visits:
USAID, UNESCO, Relief International, Refugees International, FOCUS, International
Relief Committee, International Organization for Migration, Red Crescent/Red
Cross, PARSA, HIFA (a school for the hearing impaired), Aschiana (a school
for street kids), Habibya High School (Nasir's alma mater of 30 years
ago, now heavily damaged), Rabia Balkhi School (Mary's high school alma
mater, now reduced to rubble though with 1200 students in K-12), Malalai
and Rabia Balkhi Hospitals, and the Ministries of Education, Agriculture
and Livestock, Labor and Social Affairs, Public Health, Women's Affairs,
Information and Cultural Affairs, Foreign Affairs, Rural Development,
and Reconstruction. Our timing was right. The Afghan
Interim Authority, headed by Chairman
Hamid Karzai, has given vocational training high priority for the reconstruction
and stabilization period. In fact, when I told Mr. Karzai about ARISE
at the close of the Global Exchange group's Q&A meeting with him,
his eyes lit up and he started reading our flyer right there in the middle
of a photo op -- until he was pulled away to continue posing for all those
who wanted their picture with him. Our meeting with
the king (arranged by Nasir) was more intimate, in a sitting room of his
residence with just our ARISE group of seven, our driver Ghafoor, Mary's
friend Nilab Mobarez, plus a few aides in attendance. We talked about
his potential role in ithe upcoming loya jirg and in the transitional
government to follow, U.S.-Afghan relations, our mission there, and the
hope we saw for the future of his country. We presented him with a gift
we'd bought from the Aschiana school -- a sculpture of a meat grinder,
carved out of wood by a street kid. I read (and Mary interpreted into
Dari)
a poem I had written about it:
=========================
THE MAGICAL MEAT GRINDER
The Kabul street urchin
is a product of war --
war with invaders,
war with his neighbors,
war with his brothers.
In the rubble of his home,
the ruins of his school,
the rocket craters of his street,
he plays,
begs,
survives.
Out of the rubble
he fashions a meat grinder,
a magical meat grinder.
Into the hopper flow
tools of butcher war:
rifles, grenades, rockets, mines.
Out the other end flow
tools of lasting peace: spades, milk, bread;
pens, pencils, books.
But this magical meat grinder
can flow in either direction.
Whose hand is on the crank,
and which way will he turn it?
=========================
In presenting the king with a copy of the poem, I told him I hoped it would be his hand on the crank -- at which point he got out of his chair (for the first and only time during our meeting), leaned over the sculpture on the table in front of him, and put his hand on the crank.
We came home to California with an agreement from the
Education Ministry to let us use 2 to 3 acres of the 36-acre site of the
Afghan Institute of Technology (Secondary Technical School) for our ARISE
vocational training center. We also got a signed memorandum of understanding
with the Ministry
of Agriculture regarding our vocational ag curriculum and are still working
on similar MOUs with Ministry of Public Health and UNESCO. Good encouragement
from the USAID office there and ideas for writing the proposal. And we
established an Afghan Center office in Kabul with a very capable person
hired to represent us and take care of that end of things until we get
up and running there, which we hope to do in a small way (with foundation
grants and private donations) by August and in a larger way (with USAID
funding) by November. Our plan is to offer, over time, curricula in
building trades, electronics repair and maintenance, health care services,
vocational agriculture, small business management, and office administration.
A commercial operation associated with the center and its students' products
will help ARISE become self-sustaining in the three to five years we have
targeted. After establishing the first ARISE center in Kabul, we will
open similar training centers in provincial towns around the country,
beginning, hopefully, in our second year if not sooner.
Speaking of which, we came back with a 40-item to-do list
to be accomplished over the next few weeks for pulling together the proposal
to USAID and for fund-raising and getting started on the ground just as
soon as possible, even before full USAID funding. Miscellaneous observations
and impressions
in flashback: * The trip to Istalif, through the
Shomali Plain, just north of Kabul, once flat and lush with wheat, barley,
mulberries, vineyards, and villages; now flat, treeless, mined, and empty
but for mud-wall ruins of villages and a few twisted vines; workers seen
in the fields these days are minesweepers.
* Istalif itself, once a village of 10,000, a fun day's outing from Kabul, with breathtaking views of the valley, curative springs, rugcrafters, jewelrymakers, and a destination restaurant; the whole village burned out and leveled by the Taliban in 1997 as a last holdout; creek diverted and irrigation systems destroyed by Taliban, thus successfully destroying the viticulture economy; a few hundred people have trickled back, living in tents while trying to rebuild.
* Picked up a hitchhiker for the half-hour ride over and
up a rocky dirt road from the highway to Istalif in the foothills; he
was going to a spring near the town for its curative waters; we decided
to have our picnic there. With my bare feet luxuriating in the creek,
I planted by the side of the
water the California soil sent by Jim and Wileta Burch (from beneath their
Palo Alto olive tree), and refilled the bag to take back. Later, Zolaycha
bent over playfully to let her hair dangle in the
stream -- and fell in!
* The workmen on the Kabul University campus toting wheelbarrows
full of cleared debris, who Mary engaged in a heated debate about where
the responsibility lay for all the destruction: that Afghans shouldn't
be wasting their time blaming others for their misfortune, that most of
the damage was wrought by Afghans fighting one another, and that Afghans
should take charge and responsibility for their own reconstruction; this
lone woman, without even a headscarf much less a burqa, lecturing and
gesturing to all these men around her. I don't think they thought she
was really
Afghan.
* The young woman, Sohila, 18 years old, one of four women to pass the Kabul University medical school entrance exam (out of 270 taking it), expert in using and maintaining computers (learned while with her family as refugees in Pakistan), working part time as a computer operator at the Ministry of Agriculture to support her aging parents and herself while going to medical school.
* The four high school girls who traveled from the provinces to attend the Afghan Institute of Technology (vocational school) to learn auto mechanics and, as they said, help their country; the only girls among the 200 boys in the school.
* Rachel Wareham, a British woman working for Medica Mondiale,
a German NGO; arrived only a week or two before us; rented a room in the
same guest house as ours until she got her own place; every time we saw
her, which was every few days, she seemed to have added half a dozen projects
to her
list -- recruiting and training women for the loya jirga, visiting women's
prisons and advocating (with Karzai himself) for their human rights and
humane treatment, arranging for tae kwon do classes for women, arranging
for driving lessons for women, and more and more I can't remember. Serious
and
capable and quick to laugh and lend a helping hand. Delighted with Dawoud,
who she said made her laugh. Let me use her Medica Mondiale e-mail account
to send a message to and receive an answer from Graciela.
* Nilab Mobarez, Mary's friend from medical school days; practiced medicine all these years as a refugee in Paris; coming back to Afghanistan to start a women's hospital called Bactriane (I think); agreed to share her Kabul office space with the Afghan Center; arranging for and escorting two Afghan children to Paris for special medical treatment they need (one a kidney problem, the other a diabetes problem).
* The whole southwestern section of Kabul reduced to mud
rubble 10 years ago by rocket fire from opposing warlord forces on opposing
hilltops in the civil war days before the Taliban. Homes, schools, streets,
everything gone or extensively damaged. Mary's alma mater, Rabia Balkhi,
all gone:
salvageable bricks piled neatly for eventual reuse; two classroom wings
rebuilt by Taliban for religious school now used for 1200 girls (and some
boys in the early grades) who have returned; too few classrooms for too
many kids, who have to sit on the floor, in hallways, outside following
the
shade; yet students happy and excited to be in school, shouting gleefully
while playing volleyball amidst the rubble. More than one school we saw
were like this. Nasir's alma mater Habibya not as bad off but a shell
of its former self nonetheless.
* Kabul markets full of just about anything, including colorful pepper powders, melons, tomatoes, onions, and other food products from spring harvests. The tourist shopping district, "Chicken Street", bustling, all shops full. Nilab says six months ago, when she started her return to Kabul, Chicken Street was empty. Don't know, though, how prices compare with consumer buying power, but markets are full of people. Provincial towns probably not as well off.
* Despite frustration at the slow pace promised foreign aid is actually coming into the country, reconstruction is under way: new facades cover bared brick walls; new second stories emerge over one-storied remnants of multi-storied buildings; cranes pierce the sky.
* Much anticipation of the loya jirga (grand assembly)
set to start June 10 -- maybe too much. Aid donors and private investors
are "waiting" to see how it turns out. The UN imposed and Afghan
agreed-upon process will have 1501 people from all over the country make
three decisions: (1)
transitional head of state (hopefully the king but others, including some
warlords from the bad old civil war days, are jockeying and politicking
and buying votes); (2) head of transitional government (expected to be
Karzai - he has done a hell of a good job walking the minefield of Afghan
politics);
and (3) form or permanent government. After the loya jirga, a constitution
will be written for the chosen form of government, then ratified in 18
months by another loya jirga, after which elections will be held under
that new constitution for the permanent government.
* Women are going out in the streets again but still mostly with burqas. Many beggars in the streets, mostly women in burqas and children, but getting better, even noticeably during the three weeks we were there.
* Ate china ki in a hole-in-the-wall traditional Afghan
restaurant -- sitting on the floor, eating with hands. China ki is a stew-like
dish of meat and vegetables, slow-cooked in porcelain pots, and served
over rice. Loved it! Loved all the Afghan food I ate, even though I had
stomach problems a couple of times. Herat Restaurant was the best, in
my opinion, of the restaurants foreigners as well as locals might go to
-- better than the popular Marco Polo and far better than the famous,
formerly glorious, now depressing Intercontinental Hotel.I
could go on and on, and maybe some day I will. Or maybe not. Maybe further
details will dribble out as I talk to you all one on one, which I hope
to get to do.For the Afghan Americans on the team
it was a time of reacquaintance -- with their city; their country; their
family members, friends and colleagues; their schools; and all the sights,
sounds, tastes, and smells of Kabul and Afghanistan. For Nancy and me,
it was our first time in the country and we loved it and its people. It
is in the spirit and energy of the people where the hope lies for the
future, in the eagerness shining from the eyes of the kids, so happy to
be back in school even if the school is rubble and they have to sit on
the floor and/or outside for lack of desks, chairs, and
classrooms.
Let's not forget Afghanistan this time around!
Peace and love,
Mike