La Vie Humanitaire – Part 6: Her Name was Malalai

“If my wife did that I would cut out her eyes.” I nearly put an exclamation mark after that sentence but now I recall last night’s conversation there was no heightened verbal effect. It was a statement of fact and not shocking to anyone in the room, not even me. I was disappointed perhaps (these guys seem so often to be kind, decent and even loving men) but barely surprised. I know this is what happens to women who are unfaithful, behave ‘inappropriately’ or are perceived to have been immodest or brought shame upon their families in Afghanistan. This does not happen to men who do the same thing or are complicit in the offending act with the woman concerned. Why? They are men.

My colleague Wali (not his real name) says he is happy with his wife (I mostly believe him) but he lives and works a long way from his family. He would like a friend who is a girl to chat with and spend time. This is not permissible in Afghan culture but of course it happens all the time. It’s only when it is discovered there are obvious consequences, and mostly just nasty ones for the girl. Wali’s parents arranged a match with his now wife who is a “good girl from a good family” within their close ethnic grouping. She stays at home, cooks, looks after the kids and doesn’t mingle or even look at men. It is clear that he would like greater intimacy and female company which may or may not involve sex. He doesn’t want a second wife like many of his even quite young contemporaries. As an unmarried guy who grew up in New Zealand I can’t really imagine what it must be like to be in a marriage which was not a love match of my own choosing. It must be hard.

Extramarital relationships, sexual or otherwise, abound in everywhere in the world I have ever been. What tends to be true in the non-West is that if they are discovered by the spouse or their family, the girl gets it and the guy gets off scot free. It is this double standard which bothers me more than the infidelity (although this causes damage too). If people agree to a shared standard of relational behaviour then surely they should be at liberty to live as they please. This is precisely the freedom of choice that we celebrate in the West even if it causes us harm. The problem in a place like Afghanistan is that when an inappropriate interaction between the sexes is deemed to have occurred, the consequences for the female are much more serious and usually involve physical harm ranging from a beating to a chopped off nose, acid in the face and sometimes death. The male of the other hand will rarely be held to account except perhaps to pay financial recompense or to perform some other face-saving duty for the ‘wronged’ family. Wali feels entirely justified in pursuing women other than his wife but when asked what he would do if she had a friend who was a boy he replied “I would kill her. No one would know if I poisoned her. It happens all the time and there are plenty more women I could marry to replace her.” And he is one of the more happily married Afghan guys I know. I have many Afghan friends and cannot imagine most of them being even remotely cruel to their wives but appearances are deceiving and it is difficult to really know how truthful they are being, especially in light of these accepted gender roles and attitudes.

There is a story with a female heroine which all Afghans know – Malalai and the Battle of Maiwand. In 1880 the British were in Afghanistan on another of their earlier misguided military escapades, the Second Anglo-Afghan War, and were winning when Malalai who was attending to the wounded pulled off her head covering and rode into the fray where her father and fiancé were fighting. She cried out something like: ‘My love, if you do not fall in battle, you are surely being saved as a symbol of shame!’ Shame, the greatest insult for an Afghan man, especially a Pashtun, is a massive motivational factor in male behaviour. The shame caused by Malalai’s declaration inspired the greatest British military defeat and perhaps the most evocative victory ever for Afghans who were outnumbered by a better armed force. Many girls’ schools are named after her and her story is used to inspire. However, true Malalais are not welcome as the educational activist Malalai Yousafzai found out when she was shot by the Taliban in Pakistan. It is not uncommon for women on our staff in rural locations to come in with a black eye suffered at home. And Malalai wept. Maybe the time has come for them to follow the example of the first of her name and cause their men to fight a battle they are losing morally (at least in my view) and inspire a victory for women’s rights in Afghanistan.

Not likely. Women’s liberation in this context is a suicidal mission. Their role and position in society will not change anytime soon or without violent struggle by the women of Afghanistan (and their men who will need to bravely fight with them). When will the oppression of women here been seen as shameful and appeal to men’s sense of honour to grant them equality? When will the mothers and daughters of Afghanistan ride into this battle, a battalion of Malalais, and make a stand regardless of the consequences? What would men do if every woman in Afghanistan decided that death was better than the status quo? It seems they would prefer women die than be equal.

“‘The real question,” wrote Harriet Taylor Mill, in words often called on by the suffragettes, ”is whether it is right or expedient that one half of the human race should pass through life in a state of forced subordination to the other half… when the only reason that can be given is, that men like it.” (Guardian, 19 September 2015)

And like it they do. Afghan men have fought often and for many things but a central motivation has always been been a desire to rule themselves and not be told how to live. When it comes to women their view is simple: They are their women - that’s the point. Women are their possessions to be loved, honoured, used and abused as men see fit. Whether I think women are equal human beings with the same rights doesn’t mean shit here. The generally accepted western-educated position, at least intellectually, is that Afghan society has got it wrong. While I may agree with this it is merely an opinion however well supported by logic, philosophy, religion and whatever else you care to call on. Believe me when I say that I have tried to reason and argue on this subject to no avail. The reality is that the vast majority of Afghan men disagree with me and are very happy with the established roles of men and women. That is their prerogative but they also have the power to ensure that nothing changes whatever others may say, think or do. Afghan men are ready to fight for this right and the likely result is another Maiwand provoking their violent tendencies for the sake of honour.

Yesterday I met two beautiful, innocent young girls (pictured) and it made me sad.

C’est la vie humanitaire.

Note: Information about Malalai and the Battle of Maiwand taken from Farewell Kabul: From Afghanistan To A More Dangerous World by Christina Lamb

La Vie Humanitaire – Part 5: Dishwater Ditches

High up the hillside beneath the imposing ramparts of ko-e-murgh (literally mountain of nails) lies a school which serves the children of the surrounding valleys. The high altitude and long winters mean the students only attend classes for about seven months of the year.  The terrain is difficult and limited educational service provision leaves some of them walking three hours each way if they are to get any schooling at all. Latrines for boys and girls have been installed and a protected water source high on the mountain delivers pure, cold water in great abundance to the campus. I filled my bottle direct from the tap stand and drank with confidence – something I have rarely done in four years of aid work and is surely the crucial test of faith in our work. Before Medair started this project three years ago, children were regularly getting sick and missing school because of waterborne diseases. Since the implementation of the water, sanitation and hygiene programming (WASH in NGO jargon) diarrhoeal rates have decreased and student health has improved. This is the kind of success story that makes this work seem worthwhile – the vulnerable assisted in their time of need and given hope for the future.

Further down the valley women and children hunch over an open drain and scrub teapots, pans, plates, cutlery and glasses. The ditch runs down from the mountain, along the road, through the village and then into the fields back towards the stream from where the water it carries came from. It is open and exposed to run-off from this route used by livestock, vehicles and people on foot. The water is dirty and yet it is a popular place among local women and girls for doing the dishes. Simply put, if clean, potable water is not used for drinking and washing people get sick. The children at the school know this and yet something has gone wrong here in a project which was supposed to serve the school and this village from which some of the students come.

There is a tap stand less than twenty metres away but the source was never protected at the head wall and the four hundred metres of sturdy plastic pipe to ensure delivery of potable water to the holding tank was never fitted. Consequently, dirty water from the ditch is used for washing up rather than the much needed clean water. Clearly there was a failure to get the work done and the community will have suffered as a result. That said, within the population there is knowledge about good water practice and this ditch is not their only option. A large percentage of the community would have also received the same messaging as the school during this project on health and appropriate water usage. Water can be boiled (one simple option but not the only one) and there are local means and knowledge to create a good water source independently of NGOs. While this situation reveals the inadequacies of humanitarian projects there is also a question to be addressed about who takes responsibility for WASH provision and good practice. Even when all the necessary information and resources are available it does not follow that people will adopt new behaviour. A disconnect exists in such contexts and communities clearly have different priorities and motivations despite attempts at local collaboration.

Unfortunately this sorry tale and variations on this theme are not that uncommon across the poorer nations of the world. You do not need to travel far to see wells that do not function for lack of an easily available part, even with a water management committee in place to maintain it. When you enquire about why a water source has fallen into disrepair or observe poor hygiene practice the response will invariably end up with requests for more projects even though the evidence suggests little would change if another project was implemented. During a project you may see changes in practice but once the resources stop flowing into the community the trend appears to be that people will return to their earlier habits. You could argue that there are deep cultural and personal reasons for it but it could also be said that durable results are rare and that behavioural change is very slow and may take generations. Worse, if by engaging with such communities it actually disempowers them and makes people dependent on outsiders then it could also be argued that in the longer-term the relief sector is not helping. It is a deeply unpopular but not original idea to suggest that doing nothing may be better. Doing no harm is a central tenet in humanitarian work but the sector systematically creates dynamics within societies which often seem to disenfranchise them from ownership and responsibility for significant aspects of their lives. This is where aid and development is akin to colonialism and the civilising mission whereby it claims to be a redemptive intervention while trapping people in a subservient condition.

The aid and development sector always bandies on about accountability, integrity and compassion and uses images of the child with distended belly or women doing dishes in ditches to engage them emotionally and move them to give money. If the humanitarian sector really made the difference it claims to then perhaps this PR machinery would be justified. The reality, however, is much more convoluted and deeply informed by ideas of race, economic exploitation by the West and its militarism for geo-political ends. This is not to undermine the good intentions of many aid workers who dedicate their lives to serving the poor but to say that we are all caught up in an industry which is; not accountable in any meaningful way; committed to the status quo; and driven by powers which do not seek first the dignity and interests of the people they claim to serve.

You would think clean water, latrines and hygiene training in rural Afghanistan could never be a bad thing and, in and of themselves they are not. But, writ large, what can be observed is a troubling development during at least the past fifty years in its current form which bares an ugly resemblance to aspects of Europe’s imperial past. Moreover, it is simply not bringing about the change it seeks however noble or good the stated goals.

C’est la vie humanitaire.

La Vie Humanitaire – Part 4: On the Wing

The white kite flip-flops above the houses, its movements muddled by the dirty, broken clouds behind it and the early winter snow of the mountains that surround Kabul. My neighbour’s small boy, who never lived through the ban on kite flying during the Taliban era, is learning how to manoeuvre his one with skill, perhaps also becoming aware of the history of various battles over the skies of the capital. Traditionally pairs of boys, a pilot and runner, work as a team to chop down other kites by using the kite string. This is covered with finely crushed glass to strengthen it and enable the pilot to wrap his line around other lines and sever them. Once loosed, his runner predicts where the falling kite will land and sprints to claim it ahead of other boys who have seen the prize tumble. You don’t see men flying kites. Needless to say, unfortunately, neither do you see any women or girls. Afghan men seem to progress to other pastimes – keeping pigeons is one. From the rooftop opposite a middle-aged man calls to his birds with sucking lips as he waves a long dark flag, calling them home. Similar to kite-flying the goal is to attract other birds and acquire them into your flock while avoiding this happening to yours. The pleasure of kites and pigeons share a joy in the act, but even more, what you can gain.

Afghanistan is a country that has known much war. This is an understatement of course. The past forty years have seen multiple violent takeovers of the country including two foreign military occupations. To be ruled by the gun is what everyone knows here as well as the fear and uncertainty of violence. Amniyat (security) is what everyone longs for but has never really known in their lifetime. When there is not a foreign ‘infidel’ taking over Afghanistan and using it as a pawn in their geo-political games, there is a domestic ethnic dimension which is as fierce and bloody as any mujahedeen resistance. When the Russians left in 1989 after their ten-year proxy war with America, the warlords who had fought to evict them, rich and well-armed from CIA support funnelled through the Pakistani secret service ISI, used their power to vie for control over the country. The worst of the fighting happened in the capital with the various warlords taking up positions on the commanding hills that dominate Kabul’s skyline, bombing and blasting all hell out of each other. Thousands of civilians were killed, maimed or scarred in the process. In those days, so the history books tell us, the night sky was full of flares to illuminate targets and daytime littered with rockets winging their way through the air to devastate government ministries and innocent peoples’ homes with impunity and lethal intent. Such was the fatalism of some locals that they started to walk brazenly down the middle of the street rather than scurry along close to buildings and walls – a dangerous form of liberation from fear but all they could do in reaction to the horror engulfing their lives. Most staff members I talk to have personal stories which tell of how they experienced this – a limp, a fatherless man, a family in exile or lost to them.

Sunshine streams into my room while a green mesh gives privacy but also creates a barrier between me and the kite-flying boy. A pigeon belonging to my neighbour lands on the rusty, spiked perimeter fence designed to keep out would-be intruders and peers at me through the cracked, bird shit-stained window pane. I am warm, secure and trapped. I long to fly up and away from the control, threat and suspicion of this place. Flight has long been associated with freedom. For many Afghans to fly away from here is all they long for – to abandon this place which offers little hope and many dark memories. I became an aid worker for adventure, a challenge and mostly to bring relief to those who were suffering and help them build a better life. These are flights of fancy.

C’est la vie humanitaire.

Postscript

The sun is setting and the pigeons are returning to the roof top coop on the third floor of the building next door. Children are playing in the last light as the call to prayer echoes in the Taimani district where I am staying. There are many constants that have endured down the centuries in Afghan life but belief in God, however twisted or culturally contorted, enables Afghans to accept their fate and find joy where it can be found. Everyday hobbies are important and give a sense of normalcy and continuity, especially in places where life is hard and violence an everyday reality. Perhaps in keeping birds or flying kites there is distraction and escape. Pigeons circle in groups now all across this part of the city. Round and round they fly readying themselves for home and the feeding and preening which precedes roosting for the night. Afghans think of the common pigeon, particularly white ones, in the same way that westerners think of doves – bringers of peace and messengers of hope. As long as they fly over Kabul I will deep down keep on quietly believing that better days are possible for all who reside here.

La Vie Humanitaire – Part 3: Lonely Mountains

This vain portrait above shows me on a fairly typical day in Bamiyan travelling between bases. The photo was taken on a pass outside Panjâb where we stopped to check out the impressive rock formations. They are a striking red colour and the climbing potential is wonderful. However, there was no time to explore further or seriously bother with the unlikely organisational approvals that would be required to have an outing. Local community permissions would be straightforward enough and the chance of a fall would be the biggest risk not any turbaned men looking on with guns and a glint in their eyes.

It’s all very glamorous or so it seems (and you tell yourself) is the impression of those you meet between contracts or on R&R from some war-torn or other disaster zone. Back home, if you still have one after a few years of aid work, you often become some kind of irrelevant misfit hero or simply misunderstood depending on how well you have stayed in touch or how well you are known. Joyful moments amid the reality of field life are more like occasional diamonds hidden within seams of coal rather than reefs of gold. Mostly it is all about enduring simple hardships and trying to achieve the most basic service provision or project implementation and not go completely mental in the process. For example, there is no firewood so we’ll all be cold because the guy responsible has no sense of planning ahead but instead spent most of the day, and previous weeks as the pile decreased, sitting in the early winter sunshine keeping warm and then using up the fuel supply at night while we were in project locations. Meanwhile we were monitoring water points, three of which were never completed even though they had been reported as functioning prior to last winter, which means that for a whole year families have gone without when they should have benefitted from plentiful, clean water and thereby reduced the incidence of waterborne diseases and improved health because they weren’t losing nourishment to diarrhoea. Rather than tell the truth about both circumstances there were ‘complex cultural reasons’ why they lied and didn’t do their job properly. What this actually means is that the shame they would feel would be too much and so to retain their “honour” they blamed others or denied knowledge completely. And that pile of horseshit is what an aid worker deals with every other day.

Still, in these ‘richly textured cross-cultural experiences’ there is in fact a complexity as to the reasons why and the same guy who will lie to your face will keep you from an offence causing faux pas ensure you are welcomed to hang out with his mates and play cards, joke and share his social time and space instead of retreating to a single cell room to watch a trashy TV series you’ve seen before or stare blankly at the wall trying forlornly to comprehend what was actually going on when you realised once again that you were lied to and there was a massive cover up going on. And so when the scene is stop-the-car-stunning or warm comradery embraces you in the lonely mountains, you remember again what a massive privilege it is to be in a place like Afghanistan and are grateful for any companionship on this journey. Yet, the dominant themes of dislocation, frustration and isolation remain while aid workers tend to pitch these experiences as something to be envied even as they criticise their work, just as I do as in this attempt at disclosure. So much of this is vanity and our deepest motivations are equally opaque.

C’est la vie humanitaire.