La Vie Humanitaire – Part 2: Securitised

Leaving Kabul after a week of confinement at the NGO compound felt like a release from an internment camp. Not that I was a prisoner but the base was like a place where you are obliged to stay because those in authority think that this will be best for you. Often beneath this reasoning is a more honest layer of reality which means that it is safer for them if you don’t venture out because it allays their fears of perceived threats, gives a sense of taking responsibility and avoids possible lawsuits. It has always confounded me that that humanitarian organisations are so bureaucratically risk adverse when the nature of the work they do naturally puts their field staff in objectively unsafe environments. This is not to say that I or any other aid worker necessarily seeks out the adrenaline-fuelled highs we sometimes find ourselves caught up in, but, we implicitly accept that the work we do exposes us to situations that may cause us harm. It comes with the territory. Organisationally however, there is an attempt to create a security bubble around us that isolates us from the local context and in some cases makes it more dangerous to operate effectively because we are so removed from reality on the ground. UN and foreign diplomatic staff are an extreme example of this. Some work in Kabul for years but rarely, if ever, venture or even see beyond their compounds walls. The sense in which they are meaningfully experiencing living in Afghanistan is very limited (they could be anywhere) – much less so for me but on the same continuum. I call this phenomenon ‘securitisation’ – a noun but also verb done to such workers.

One might think that Medair, whom I work for, would fly me to project locations themselves because surely air travel is a core part of their work. Don’t let the name (or retro logo above) confuse you – we have no planes and offer no air service. Our work is not medical either. Although, health and nutrition programming does form an important part of our core activities. I flew out of the Afghan capital on a plane operated by United Nations Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS). As we rose above the city, the dirty brown cloud hovering in a polluted faecal haze was clear to all on board. This undoubtedly explains the origins of the mildly rasping cough I developed within a day of arriving. The plane headed west over dry, rocky mountains into thin, clear air and bright light towards Bamyan. This is where I will be based for my stay in Afghanistan and the prospect of clean air and relative calm will be a welcome change from life in the capital. All things being equal I will be relatively free to move around town and the province. I look forward to the prospect of strolling through the bazar, eating in local restaurants and even short walks in the Hindu Kush – Afghanistan’s central massif – which all fall outside the ‘No Go’ list of proscribed places. Of course, I will be accompanied by a driver and translator at all times regardless of my experience and local language ability. Like it or not, I will be fully securitised. Whether I will be safer as a result is a different matter.

C’est la vie humanitaire.

La Vie Humanitaire – Part 1: Bread of Life

Nân is the staple food in Afghanistan. Afghans eat this with most meals and so it is perhaps unsurprising that the word also applies to food generally. There are a number of varieties such as nân-e-roghanî (pictured above) which is made using oil which makes it sweeter and richer with a taste somewhat like a croissant. This is a generous comparison but when freshly baked it is soft and delicious. However, by the end of the day it is stiff and lost most of its tastiness. Bread is usually eaten the day it is made. However, not for the first time in Afghanistan’s history, many people in this country don’t have a choice and are fortunate to have nân once a day. Nân is indeed their daily bread and the country’s rhythms revolve around the daily preparation or purchase and breaking of bread together. Meals are invariably shared and at a minimum accompanied by tea which is often sweetened with sugar. This round flat bread is baked locally from Mazar-e-Sharif in the north to Herat in the West, and from Khandahar in the south to Jalalabad in the east. Naturally there are regional variations but it is nân that has sustained Afghans rich and poor for centuries. It is prepared and sold daily from small bakeries with wood-fired clay ovens or by the children of widows from woven baskets on street corners trying to supplement their meagre income. In the three years since I was last in Afghanistan there has been much hardship, conflict and inflation largely due to the staggering amount of foreign aid funds which have flooded in, much of it to sustain the US-led military project which began here following 9/11. Still, the price on the street of a nân remains ten Afghanis (the local currency and not a word used to refer to Afghan people). The enduringly low price of bread means that even the poorest people, of whom there are many, can afford this essential food item that gives life to all. I would love to say that today I could walk to my local bakery in Kabul and buy my own nân but I cannot. Working for an international NGO with very restrictive security protocols means I am cut off from everyday life on the streets by explosion-proof, sand-bagged walls and not permitted to venture out for such a simple task as buying bread and talking with my neighbours. This task is done for me whereas previously I knew the baker and happily took the same risks as the chowkidâr (guard) now takes for me. I’m not sure the risks are much higher than previously, although security across Afghanistan has steadily deteriorated over the past few years and more so since American combat troops left in 2014, but I simply don’t have the choice or pleasure of buying my own nân as long as my stay here is mandated by my current employer.

C’est la vie humanitaire.

Untitled

The young foolish dreamer
Who wishes upon a star
Knows, like twinkling twice
Hope can carry you far

Even skipping and jumping
Along moon beams beyond
Into the heart’s imaginings
No faith in magical wands

Or witch doctor juju
Beneath dark African thatch
That conceals in shadow
A smoky deceptive catch

The celestial Congo sky
And way out milky haze
Too wonderful to behold
At heavenly bodies gaze

Looking for something known
The Southern Cross perhaps
Or a promise of new life
Like the magis’ maps

Nothing cries perfection
Beauty and strength, gone
Eyes once starry dimmed
Oh how her qualities shone

Alone, lonesome once more
The dirt road stretches out
To Saramabila and Kindu
Empty and without doubt

Human flaws exposed, ugly
Like an open cast mine
Diamonds and gold hidden
This scarred earth a crime

That weeping cannot cry out
The soaked up innocent tears
Or the blood of Mai-Mai
For too many years

Base instincts dominate
Sexual appetites ravish
Where savage violence reigns
Love surely must vanish

Vacant eyes mask the smile
Oh how we are weary Lord
Yet little ones still beam
Before fathers bored

Where in this land are you?
Your fabled fulness of life?
For these Congolese and me
Companions in this strife

The final flickering light
Of a planet that is dying
Once lovely, enchanting
Neither known nor crying

When wishing wish again
Let it be as children do
Hopeful and expectant
Light shining through

My Saturday Poem

Orchids and birdsong

Lake Kivu tranquil

Verdant bush-clad hills

Painted hazy in green

For a balcony exclusive

This Bukavian idyll

Almost colonial

In the NGO style

Too removed perhaps

From everyday life

A helicopter arrives

Obliterating the calm

Like coffee in China

Instant made fancy

A veneer so common

Like peace in Baraka

NGO Graveyard

A crowded jumble of signs dominates the northern entrance to Baraka, like an overgrown graveyard for humanitarian actors whose work here has finished. The late afternoon sun paints these white memorials to UNHCR, ECHO, Oxfam and various others in an orange glow masking the rust streaks and badly faded letters. They stand testament to projects undertaken to save lives and relieve suffering in this war-torn village on the western shores of Lake Tanganyika. As I read the text and photograph the scene I can’t help wondering if this image captures the idealistic nature of aid work in profound ways. These monuments to justice and an end to suffering speak of a brighter future, but ten years on from the first interventions how real are those prospects? Whose dreams were they in the first place? Did locals cherish them about as much as these dilapidated signs suggest or has hope begun to set like today’s sun because it only ever existed like a false dawn which once promised so much? There are undoubtedly statistics and justifications for every well-meaning action taken and budget line spent, but really we must also ask how different are the baseline figures today compared with the days following the fighting, raping and looting which devastated Baraka’s its inhabitants before the outside world tried to help? So much of the project work undertaken does not take root in places like the Congo and others. Sure, any assistance will be embraced but it is more about a financial transaction than partnership which is locally owned and embraced as something of integral value. When the funding disappears and NGOs leave, the decline begins – training forgotten, best practice ignored, maintenance disregarded until people are living as they did before disaster struck. I’ve seen communities targeted for water and sanitation programmes receive tens of thousands of dollars in aid for wells, hygiene education and maintenance committees which were all realised. A few years later the wells are in disrepair, the latrines full, unused and people are drinking water direct from the lake. Much like a Congo that had functioning transport, industry and infrastructure (albeit on the back of Leopold’s heinous slavery) where barely an overgrown railway sleeper can be seen today, these humanitarian projects seem doomed to decline in the same way. Perhaps it’s simply better to do nothing (as some critics of development have argued) and allow people the freedom and responsibility to live their lives as they see fit. Some days it’s hard not to view people here as beneficiaries receiving unemployment cheques, dependent on aid rather than honestly tackling the challenges they face as a local community. Worst of all is the way they have been defined (by themselves as much as others) as victims in need of a handout. The loss of dignity and dehumanisation is shameful for all. I suspect international NGOs, just like the colonists who abandoned this country fifty years ago, are taking away a lot more than they are giving.

Young Guns

For PT