On assignment from CWS, Chris Herlinger recently returned from Afghanistan -- his third visit there since the summer of 2001. In this series of three stories, Herlinger reports on the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan as 2007 came to an end, as well as the ongoing CWS response.
Progress in Afghanistan Proves Elusive
January 11, 2008 - KABUL, Afghanistan - How, in the six years since the fall of the Taliban, is it possible to measure progress in Afghanistan?
It is a frustratingly difficult question to answer, especially for someone who recently made his third visit to the country since 2001 and has seen Afghanistan in three distinct periods.
Let me retrace my steps.
It is hard to convey how hauntingly devastated the capital of Kabul appeared in the summer of 2001 (immediately before Sept. 11), when I and a Danish colleague visited Afghanistan on behalf of the global alliance, Action by Churches Together (ACT) International. We were in Afghanistan to report on a drought that, together with oppressive Taliban rule and the effects of years of internecine warfare, were forces crippling the country.
A return visit a year later, in the fall of 2002, saw some hopeful changes -- clearly Kabul was a livelier and more humane place, especially for women and young people. But it was already clear that the country's humanitarian (not to mention political) problems would take years to solve, and that a power vacuum was already being filled with entrenched forces like warlords. That did not augur well for the future.
My recent visit confirmed those earlier fears: In a recent report, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) cited some progress in the areas of economic prosperity, access to health care and education but also warned that "the needs of many remain unfulfilled."
Expressing the hopes of many, one Afghan man, Faqirullah Hamidi, a father of eight who lives on the outskirts of Kabul, said: "We want a secure country, we want peace in this country, we want development in this country."
The UN report said Afghanistan's "human development index," which measures such benchmarks as health and education, was the lowest among its neighbors, including Pakistan. That placed the country 174th out of 178 countries. Only four countries had lower indicators than Afghanistan, all in sub-Saharan Africa.
My recent trip introduced new worries. At the end of 2007 in Afghanistan, the level of day-to-day safety and security had dropped markedly, making travel outside the perimeters of Kabul risky. Security, or perhaps more to the point, insecurity, has become a mantra among a population that in recent months had had difficulty inuring itself to suicide bomb blasts, kidnappings and robberies.
But perhaps most striking was a clear and growing gap between a very small group of "haves," and the overwhelming population of "have-nots." The UN report was spot on: yes, there are signs of progress in Afghanistan; certainly striking evidence of change, including amenities that would have been impossible to conceive of in 2001 or even 2002 -- including shopping centers with luxury goods and cash machines that, tellingly, dispense both Afghan and American currencies.
At the same time, large sections -- I was told about half -- of Kabul were still astonishingly, six years after the fall of Taliban, without electricity.
Moreover, a city with a population of anywhere from 3 to more than 4 million is growing with returnees and those displaced or frustrated by continuing rural poverty -- and most of them struggle to find places to live. Their living standards are in marked contrast to those who live in opulent mansions being built in once war-ravaged neighborhoods. (Many are reportedly drug lords and warlords.)
The poor, understandably frustrated by tight job prospects -- one woman told me she and others hate Afghanistan and want to leave because there are no jobs here -- are asking why they have not seen the benefits of the billions in relief and reconstruction that have flowed into Afghanistan since the end of 2001.
Some say such frustration in part explains why the Taliban have experienced something of a resurgence, particularly in poor rural areas. And that, the argument goes, explains the possible link between poverty and insecurity.
"Poverty is the source of the instability," said Mohammad Zakir Stanikzai, a senior Church World Service (CWS) program officer whose work takes him to many of Afghanistan's rural areas. "People feel like, 'Why not join the Taliban? We have nothing to lose.' "
Unfortunately, by those standards, progress in Afghanistan since 2001 has proven frustratingly elusive.
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Working Small Has Its Benefits
Asking whether humanitarian assistance by international agencies like Church World Service (CWS) is making a difference cannot be separated from a larger question: what is the role of such groups in a country where there is a U.S. and NATO military presence?
The answers supplied by both Afghans themselves and by international aid workers cannot be boiled down simply.
On the one hand, Afghans -- with harsh memories of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan during the 1980s -- are understandably uncomfortable with the idea of foreign troops once again in their country.
At the same time, some Afghans -- at least those who loath the Taliban -- say a sizable portion of the country supports the presence of U.S. and NATO troops as a temporary necessity because such troops are offering, the argument goes, the only real security presence.
Yet the same Afghans also speak with alarm about U.S. troops breaking Afghan cultural decorum -- entering homes without a clear invitation to do so is a particular and oft-repeated taboo -- and there is also shaking of heads when the stories of civilian deaths by U.S. and NATO aerial bombings are repeated.
One humanitarian worker with wide experience in the region said he believes the U.S. and NATO military presence has introduced new pain and suffering to one of the world's poorest countries, worsening what he calls the most complex man-made disaster today.
Afghanistan, he said, has become just one example where "the international community, without understanding the context and history, has once again gone wrong."
And yet, there is clear support for continued international assistance in helping rebuild Afghanistan -- and it is here that the work of ACT member, Church World Service (CWS), and other agencies is clearly welcome. This is particularly the case when meeting Afghans in their 40s and 50s like Naseer Ah Popal, who remember an era in the 1960s and 1970s when most of the Americans in Afghanistan were not soldiers but engineers and teachers.
Ah Popal, the director of the social protection division of the Afghan Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation & Development, a government body that has worked with CWS, said that today, by contrast, "Now there are Americans with guns and that doesn't always create a good image."
One reason the work of CWS and other humanitarian agencies is respected among Afghans is the foundational issue of solidarity -- something not long forgotten in a country which was largely ignored by the international community during the 1990s. (CWS's work continued in Afghanistan during that time.)
"I am thankful for those people who live far from us," Ah Popal said, "and have a good life and haven't forgotten the Afghan people."
Another issue is the way CWS works -- with local partners at the grassroots, doing small-scale work that tries to address the problem of Afghan insecurity in collaboration with local communities.
"The Church World Service approach is good -- it's like ours," said Esmatullah Haidary, the deputy managing director of the Afghan Development Association (ADA), one of CWS's partners. "It's local and cost-effective."
"We live like (every-day) Afghans," he said.
That a local partner carries out the work of relief is no small matter: A recent report by Oxfam Great Britain criticized what it said was often ineffective or inefficient expenditures in the more than $15 billion of international aid that has been sent to Afghanistan since 2001.
The report was particularly critical of aid it said had been absorbed by profits of companies and subcontractors, by non-Afghan resources and by high expatriate salaries and living costs. By contrast, working in small and focused ways has its benefits.
A children's rehabilitation center -- a joint project of CWS and its partner, the Cooperation Center for Afghanistan (CCA) -- has become a place of both refuge and instruction for the 200 war- and violence-traumatized Kabul children like Zahra who annually enroll in the program. (A similar program also exists in the east-central province of Bamyan.)
Zahra, a quiet but determined 12-year-old, wants to contribute to a more peaceful and settled Afghanistan by becoming a teacher. She hopes that someday she will live and work in a country where, as Ah Popal said, "Afghans will be able to stand on our own legs, with our own resources, to help our own people."
Until that time comes, agencies like CWS will have a needed role -- helping not only the security of Afghans, but perhaps -- just perhaps -- the security of other countries, as well.
As Sayes Abdullah Ahmadi, a CCA manager put it: "If there's not support for Afghanistan, there will continue to be problems for international security."
"Afghanistan is part of the global village," he said, reflecting on the events of Sept. 11, 2001. "And we know now that the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan affects the rest of that village."
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A Fundamental Change
Among those benefiting from the work of ACT member, Church World Service (CWS), in Afghanistan are two families living on the hilly, wind-swept terrain of the outskirts of Kabul.
There, CWS has worked with its partner, the Afghan Development Association (ADA), on a shelter project that has provided housing for dozens of families.
On a recent visit, the experiences of two families highlighted the progress CWS and other aid agencies working in Afghanistan have made in providing homes to those most needing them.
One family, parents Malik and Bassri and their four children, ages 5 to 14, recalled a tortuous journey of displacement that is all too common in Afghanistan.
The family was first uprooted from their home community -- in this case, the city of Jalalabad -- and headed east to a refugee camp in Pakistan. The family then returned to Afghanistan, first to Jalalabad and then eventually to Kabul, where they have lived since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.
Some sense of normalcy proved elusive, however, as Malik, Bassri and their children lived in a lightless, cramped hillside cave -- an uncomfortable, if not downright dangerous and threatening place, as Bassri noted. She said the cave's possible collapse was a constant and draining concern for the family as they eked out a living.
"Now we don't have those worries," she said, noting the new home has four rooms in all, with an exterior water pump and latrine. "We are happy," Bassri said.
Another family experiencing a bit more comfort and safety is that of Faqirullah Hamidi, 45, and his wife, Nafisa.
Faqirullah must navigate with crutches -- the result of leg wounds he sustained during what he calls, in dry understatement, "the Soviet time." As a result of the injuries, he is also the principal stay-at-home parent -- Nafisa is employed by a government agency -- and tends to the couple's eight children, ranging in age from a month old to 12 years.
The family's life together has been immeasurably easier with a new two-room home. It is still a bit tight for a family that large but it is a place the family can call their own, and they are not, as is so often the case in Kabul, going from rented space to rented space.
"It's a fundamental change that I have my own house," Hamidi said, describing the family situation now as a happy one.
Small steps, perhaps. But as Johnny Wray, director of ACT member, the Christian Church (Disciples)/Week of Compassion, a long-time supporter of CWS work in Afghanistan and himself a one-time visitor to Afghanistan, put it: The small-scale efforts by CWS and other humanitarian agencies are "offering both North Americans and Afghans of goodwill alike a remarkable opportunity to bring help, hope and ultimately peace to that battered, yet beautiful land."
