La Vie Humanitaire – Postscript: Beneath the Burka

The eyes peer back at me through the burka's mesh. This is a forbidden act, a secret rendezvous. My camera set up in a discreet bathroom in an attempt to unveil a hidden aspect of the world of Afghan women. This probably sounds like the beginning of some risqué fling or a dodgy porn film. However, all is not as it appears and perceptions are deceiving. Images so evocative. If I wrote about a woman who fled to our guesthouse after being abused by her husband, this veiled figure would represent all that offends western sensibilities about the rights of women in Afghanistan and the various ways in which they are oppressed and treated as dehumanised chattels. What if I said that the photo shoot was contrived so I could steal a glimpse from the other side of the burka and get a feel for the claustrophobic and sensory deprivation experienced when you cannot see properly, keep bumping into things and risk tripping on its edges or catching them on door handles. Who is this person beneath the burka and what is it that we see when we observe this distinctly Afghan item of clothing? The point is not to talk about the burka per se, not how it came into usage under the Taliban or remains a daily reality for a large percentage of women in Afghanistan, but to use the image (above) to comment on being known. Let me simply say that I have known very few Afghan women and the barriers that exist between the sexes are significant. However, human beings and their desires will always find a way to defy even the most severe societal strictures. We will not be regulated even if that means risking a dangerous liaison or harming ourselves in an attempt to escape bad relationship. Possums have been known to chew off a leg rather than remain trapped by a paw in a claw trap. Every year Afghan women immolate themselves to end the torment of loveless marriages. Some are happy. We were made to thrive, not merely survive, to know and be known. We long to belong.  

I am profoundly grateful for friendships made during my time as an aid worker. Above all these are perhaps the things to treasure most and yet our disparate lives will probably not cross that often. This saddens me and leaves me feeling empty. There are so many kind, good and capable people in all the countries I have worked. Many of the national staff I know could make things much better than I ever could, if only they had the chance. Whatever we have or have not done as a humanitarian community over the past four years, the question that is beginning to trouble me is what I have become. We never stay the same and all these experiences have shaped me in ways I cannot comprehend. I thought I could "make a difference" and a difference has been made for every action has its reaction but was it even remotely like what I hoped for or believed possible? I have not seen enough change for the better. Returning to Afghanistan gave me an opportunity to revisit the place where it all started. In the end I went back not for the projects or 'mission', I went back to make sense of my connection to this troubled, beautiful land that captivated me. It has felt a bit like Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness when Kurtz is found deep in the Congo interior, talking to his demons "oh, the horror, the horror". We see so much suffering in this world and nobly attempt to tackle injustice, poverty and death but sometimes I wonder who are the real monsters. Perhaps the brute to be exterminated is me. I seem to have become on some levels like the people I tried to serve, an emotional, intellectual and spiritual refugee, traumatised by exile.

The landscape sweeps away behind me vast and barren, formed over the ages it has seen everything and shed no tears. It only soaks up the hate, hurt and hopes to keep on giving life and passage to all who pass through, accepting that people, always with a capacity for tremendous love will tread their unmistakably human footprints upon it forever, doing their best and worst to it and one another. And then you meet someone amazing and it's simple, you want to be with her. Wrapped up in your response to the suffering of this broken world, lonesome journeys full of heartbreakingly beautiful views was all along a thinly veiled longing to share this adventure together, a fitful search for a companion to affirm what these eyes have seen, the devastation and the joy, and even whisper that everything will be alright. But she is headed in as you are getting out, or you are stuck in the DRC while Syria steals her affections. Love doesn't happen. Shitty timing, the off key melody plays. And you knew it would be that way.

She pushed her finger assertively up my anus and it was then I knew that I was back. These contracts abroad always end with such medical assessments and while the purely physiological can be dealt with swiftly, the psychological effect is more difficult to probe. A necessary reality check to assess what really happened inside while I was 'out there', a context so different that it feels like another world. Hard to imagine I was ever there, even a day or two later. Awaking from that dream to find myself 'back here' is disconcerting. Moving so often in and out of strange as well as familiar cultures I feel estranged, detached from any single context. I am most uncomfortable in the familiar. The idea of home is alien to me. I am dislocated like a bearded man beneath the burka.

C'est la vie humanitaire.

La Vie Humanitaire – Part 7: Show Me the Money

I met Habib, this cool little Afghan dude in the province of Maydan Wardak where Medair is working. He was shy but also interested enough in me to overcome any fear he had to draw close to this visitor, so very different from any of the other people where he lives. The nearest town with a decent bazar is about three hours away when the roads are passable and only if you have a four wheel drive vehicle. When these factors are combined with his access to quality healthcare and the general levels of infrastructure, economic opportunities and the dominant cultural norms of life in his village, meetings like this, for him or me, may not happen that often. I had my own fear. Specifically, I was praying that he would not say the following words: “Hey mister, give me money!” Anyone who has travelled even briefly in a materially poor country like Afghanistan has experienced this phenomenon and power dynamic which defines you as a wealth resource to be tapped. Habib simply said to me salam alekum (lit. peace be upon you), smiled and then stared sweetly. What I think was going through his young mind is pure conjecture but when I think of him I find myself hoping that he will experience a life free from the worst of the humanitarian sector and foreign interventions – disempowerment, exploitation by the West and dependency – which are so pervasive in such countries.

My observations over the past few months have served to confirm what I realised early on in my first job as an aid worker in Afghanistan four years ago. Namely, that the priority for the vast majority of local people when it comes to NGO and community relations seems to be money. Certainly I have helped to assist some vulnerable people in that time with clean water and other project deliverables, but mostly it has seemed to me that financial motivations have been at the heart of formal interactions. In fact, the biggest beneficiaries I have dealt with have been national staff employees. There is no denying that the injection of cash for projects stimulates the local economy with some positive effect but this should not be a primary motivational driver for NGOs and it is certainly not part of the humanitarian imperative. It is clear that the priorities for the current guards at work are making sure they are paid, fed and warm in winter. A few days ago there were two guards working their shift and three guards eating because it’s better than being at home. This is true to the point that our guards would prefer not to even take annual leave but instead come to work and stay warm, eat for free and hang out with their work mates. It may also say something about family life but if a country’s best, or only good, employers are NGOs then you know things are pretty messed up. The Afghan economy grew exponentially following 9/11 due to the cash injection required to facilitate military intervention and the accompanying humanitarian effort (in my view a close relation not only because the source of finance is the same). The rise of contractors supplying army bases, bags of cash (literally) from such countries as Iran to support Afghan government operations, and local companies geared towards delivery of development projects saw a flourishing of wealth like never before. Yet all of it is, and was, unsustainable. Unlike poppy production and trade in opium, which though illegal and detrimental (not least to drug users in the West) functions as a genuinely financially viable and sustainable commodity, most of the billions that bloat Afghan national finances are not authentic. The majority of aid money has benefitted the few (usually through very corrupt means) and the more entrepreneurial enterprises that sprung up are reliant on an artificial funding source that is drying up and was never durable. What is left of the real economy is much distorted and less robust than what existed before.

It speaks volumes that all NGOs operating in Afghanistan are overseen by the Ministry of Economy. Aid agencies are a great source of wealth and have a greater functional capacity than the government, which of course I hope would do the work of NGOs if it could (a very big presumption). NGOs here have been asked to collect the tax out of payments to contractors and rent because the government has little capacity to do it themselves. However, they could do this. It would take time, effort and perseverance to establish a functional system of revenue collection but getting NGOs to do it is not going to help build that capacity or an administrative apparatus that can govern and serve its people. By using NGOs to capture revenue integrates them into the fabric of governance of which they should have no part not least because they won’t be here in the future (or so I naively dream). Wouldn’t a refusal by NGOs to collect tax and the resultant lost revenue be a motivation to get their shit together? Nothing is going to change if they don’t and using NGOs as tax collectors is an indictment upon both parties. When the inefficacy of aid programmes is considered in light of the revenue it involves, the bottom line seems to be about economics more than anything else. Why don’t we cut through the crap and simply call it what it is, ‘wealth redistribution’. You may argue this would be correct and fair. And I would agree. Many poor nations deserve financial reparations after decades and sometimes centuries of actual or virtual occupation. It would be more efficient to give cash and forget about all the planning, resources and time that go into most of these projects and rarely bring the results promised. Unfortunately and rather predictably, they are reported on in such a way to justify not only their existence but to encourage greater ongoing funding. We could simply give governments money directly to do as they saw fit. We’ve never witnessed this level of trust in recipient governments by the aid sector or wealthy nations. Nor have we ever seen good stewardship of funds by the vast majority of poor countries’ leaders without a dirty political deal being part of the equation. A more productive way of bringing transformation to countries like Afghanistan might be for the West to be truly charitable for a change and actually trust them with the money they are granted. Let them decide how to go about the business of governing and take responsibility to do their job and improve the lives of their people. Let be in their hands and on their heads. Critics will say that we are funding dictators, genocidal maniacs, terrorist organisations and the money will never go where we intended. How that would be so very different to what we have been doing for years?

The West only spends a small percentage of GDP on aid and development (at most it is less than 1% and when considered together it is less than half a percent, a lot of which comes back to consultants and contractors in the West). We could simply make annual payments to poor countries with no conditions, simply a hope that they will do the right thing by their people. That way these countries could decide everything for themselves, even use foreign advisors and construction companies if they chose, do exactly as they saw fit. That level of national self-determination would be an improvement on the status quo. Or here’s a radical idea, forgive all their debt (partially done in the past but never comprehensively) and not tie poor countries into things like “defence” deals where they have to buy something stupid like 50 fighter planes from the donor country in order to receive the money. Shockingly I discovered during my last contract in Haiti that the government in that newly-created country back in 1804, having defeated the French militarily to free themselves from slavery, was later compelled to pay compensation for lost revenue to French land holders and slave owners for the next century and a half. That is a damningly poignant example. France, a country founded on great principles of liberty, equality and ‘brotherly love’, did the opposite and other European powers did worse. Tragically and in different guises, the West keeps doing the same thing time and time again. In Afghanistan we see an ugly yet familiar pattern repeated which blights our common humanity. For all its genuinely good intentions, sadly including my own, the humanitarian community is complicit with a bigger Leviathan than we can ever imagine. Despite our best efforts, even if we wanted to, we can never practice what we preach.

And that my friends, is la vie humanitaire.