Captain Cat's Diaries

Ghosts before dawn

 
Aerial view of Paktika, January 2010

  

On Wednesday I flew to Urgun in East Paktika to meet with some people at the US military base in order to try to get the other side of the story about this marauding Afghan commander named Azizullah employed by Special Operations Forces (SOF), who is apparently striking terror into the hearts of the local population down in one of Paktika's southern districts.

  

 

For years I’d heard Urgun was Paktika’s thriving economic hub and the province’s capital city by rights. With all respect, Paktika is the back of beyond - but Urgun was different, I was told, bigger and more vibrant than Sharana.

  

 

I was excited as our little Soviet-era helicopter bobbed over endless windswept wastes, eyes peeled to the windows of our rickety aircraft (one of these MI8’s tails fell off unexpectedly the other day) (not in mid-air thankfully). I was expecting to see a thriving metropolis emerging from this desolate and lonely landscape, shimmering in the distance like an oasis in a desert.

  

 

I was somewhat misled. From the air, Urgun looks like a barren wasteland with a few small houses dotted here and there, one high street and a mosque. It seemed only marginally less barren and wasteland-ish than other parts of the province as it's encircled by small mountains, but let's face it, it's still pretty bleak.

  

Urgun from a distance over mountains likely to be 'crawling with insurgents' (though those dark things are actually trees)

  

 

Over lunch in the FOB’s canteen, I learnt not only that Azizullah has a bad reputation even on the FOB, but just how dysfunctional things are. I already knew that SOF operate under a different set of rules and command from ISAF, but hadn’t realized how little interaction there was and that relations between ISAF and SOF can sometimes be a little tense. Whatever strategy ISAF comes up with next to try to redress what is an already pitiful situation here is bound to fail. SOF must also change the way they do things. 

   

 

During one of my many rants in recent days, I was informed by my smart and level-headed colleague that ‘SOF do actually kill a lot of bad guys’.  Great job, only whose benchmark of success is this? I have an analogy in my mind of a group of avid gardeners dressed in army slacks vigorously chopping down weeds at the stem. Those weeds are going to grow back, and besides, I don’t believe numbers are the issue here.

  

 

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, these bearded G.I.Joes need to start considering the cost-benefit relationship between alienating the local population and potentially turning them towards the insurgency, versus the gains made in capturing or killing insurgents who are in many cases easily replaced by others. Any perceived benefit of these operations is being outweighed by mounting tension and resentment, which is slowly rippling across the region in SOF’s wake.

  

 

Before I boarded our trusty MI8 back to Gardez, I managed to snatch a few words with the busy but receptive battalion commander and impressed upon him the various stories I’d heard about Azizullah barging into people's homes in the dead of night. Meanwhile, I’m compiling a detailed list of specific accounts collected from different sources of Aziz's crimes to give to higher ranking commanders in Salerno.

  

 

On Thursday afternoon I met with a reconciled former Hezb-I Islami commander. I’ve met him several times before. He’s always been quieter than the others and appears to be more conservative. While some members from his group make eye contact with me and shake hands (sometimes I even get a smile), he never has. He’s rather sinister looking and wears a large black turban and dark sunglasses, even when indoors. I only noticed as I looked at him more closely the other day that this is to cover an empty eye socket. I also noticed he has a slight lisp.

  

  

Over the course of our meeting in the quiet of my office, I started to get that familiar heavy feeling inside me as if something was slowly crumbling, and had to hold back tears. I realize I’m getting far too emotional about all of this, and probably should balance out a bit more what are perhaps sometimes unfair and biased opinions. I am not anti-American and have met a number of well intentioned and compassionate people on these US bases, including among top-ranking officers.

  

 

However I am in a unique and privileged position at the moment, able to meet with and listen to the local people from this area. I realize that a lot of the people I talk to probably don’t have squeaky clean pasts and their intentions may not always be noble or good, but their stories should be told.

  

Three weeks ago this man’s house was raided by SOF, during which they dug up the floors of his home. “They came first at night and again the next day, and destroyed my home with this digging. They found nothing and then apologized. I said to them “you have insulted me, I cannot forgive you. If you continue to do this, you are pushing me to climb the mountains” (a Pashtu turn of phrase for joining the opposition).

 

He went on, “The ANSF can do these searches better, they know the customs and traditions. Wherever the Special Forces go, not only do the communities hate them, but they also come under pressure from AGEs once they leave the area. They show no respect to the elders or to our religious scholars. Last year they bombarded a house killing everyone inside, as well as 70 sheep”.

 

“They wanted to live in communities to work with the arbakai (tribal police) but the elders rejected this. Then they said ‘ok’. They began forcing elders to provide them with arbakai so they could train them. The elders refused. The Special Forces told them “if you don’t provide us with arbakai, you are supporting the insurgents”.

 

“The Americans will fail here. They won’t be here forever and when they leave, do you think our arbakai are strong enough to fight the AGEs? The AGEs will come to these communities where the Special Forces people were and ask them “why did you support the Americans?” The tribes who provide arbakai to the SF are in grave trouble. The Taliban know who cooperates with the SF. They then intimidate us during the night. It is also really against our customs and traditions to have such people present in our local community”.

 

He talked for a while longer, recounting several more depressing anecdotes. I asked how frequently the military came to his area, he said maybe every ten days to two weeks. He insisted that the sources the SOF relied upon for information needed to be cross-checked.

 

“They need to analyse their reports. Do they realize that there could be issues of personal enmity or a land dispute influencing such reports? People who want revenge for whatever reason sometimes just go to Special Forces and tell them lies about people. The ANSF are sometimes corrupt but at least they know who is who here. They should do these searches. The people here have already been disappointed. We want peace, we want reconstruction. But these Americans are just insulting us”.

 

It was getting dark outside and my guest stood up to leave. I told him I was sorry that he and his family and community members were under so much pressure and prayed things would get better soon, and that I would do my best to ensure these stories were heard. I hoped it didn’t all sound hollow because I meant every word. For the first time he made eye contact with me and put his hand to his chest and smiled.

 

A Letter from the "Eagers of Martydom"

Oh, that’s nice. I just received an e-mail from the Taliban. Slightly disconcerting is the fact that it was sent to my personal e-mail address, I have no idea how they got hold of that.

 

I wasn’t the only recipient, copied on the e-mail were a number of Kabul-based banks and various embassies.

 

For your reading pleasure (this was the English translation of the Pashtun sent alongside it):

 

“Islamic Emmirate of Afghanistan

Al Hamza Estishadi Kandak

 

To all those who scare from the death:

 

May Peace and blessing be on those who accept Guidance!

 

Our Attacks are not ended, Just wait, wait…..and wait

 

All foreign Embassies, Foreign NGOs, Karzai’s Organizations and firms and planners and  Conspirator of these Plots, Conspiracies and hatcheries are our Targets.

 

The breakage point of  Cross and Crusade Stared Here and Soon it will be defeated and vanished. Insha Allah.

 

The Slaves of Cross are in letdown and vanquishable, and watch their Shellacking defeat, Soon they will be Routed and Sink in Cavern and Sinkholes.

 

And Truth is Conqueror and predominant.

Just wait

 

Seven of Chivalrous Youths Reached to their aims and targets, and 13 others are in Lurk fervor awaiting to reach to their targets and destinations. (This I presume is a reference to yesterday's attack in Kabul - CC).

 

From the Eagers of Martyrdom”

 

I don't know about you, but I am somewhat upset by the lack of ‘x’s at the bottom of the missive. I’m also in half a mind as to whether I should write back offering English lessons. Maybe if I put forward a discounted rate the person might accept (though his prose is rather quaint).

 

If all goes quiet, maybe it'll be because one of those lurking chivalrous youths achieved his goal...

Fear and Loathing in Loya Paktia

While we’re on the subject of Special Forces operations, I must just recount a meeting I had a couple of days ago with some elders from one of the Mangal sub-tribes in Jani Khel district, Northern Paktia.

 

[Briefly, lest I accidentally find myself thrown into the back of a humvee and bundled off to Bagram myself, I should really caveat everything with ‘there are two sides to every story’. Sure there are, I realize that. I will share this particular side, as for now it’s all I have.]

 

Before I go on with the story, the tribal elders I’ve been meeting these past few months have been informing us that they are beginning to reinstate their local arbakai (tribal policing mechanism) as they can’t rely on the Afghan National Security forces for security. Based on these and other discussions with them, I am inferring that levels of frustration against the International Military Forces are reaching their peak and people are so desperate to be rid of the American forces from their areas, they are determined to try secure their own communities in order to avoid any need for the IM.

 

One of the principle reasons the arbakai have generally been effective is that they are from and are paid by their own community, which in turn ensures a level of accountability to their people. Problems generally emerge when outsiders start to interfere and offer to pay / train / equip these local arbakai (again, our friends in the Special Forces have been involved in this recently in a few areas throughout the country. To my knowledge it hasn’t worked).

 

Back to the Jani Khel elders. Their story is a shocking one. We’ve documented the case and are following up on it as best we can, but perhaps my writing about it here as well might be helpful, who knows.

 

Jani Khel is a thickly forested mountainous district in northern Paktia and shares a border with Pakistan. The District Administration Centre has been under construction for the past two years, and again, very few officials can stomach being in the district on a permanent basis. It has been largely law-less this past year and has reportedly been something of a haven for ‘Anti Government Elements’, which of course has brought a lot of attention from the international forces.

 

The elders told us about a Special Forces search operation, which took place a few weeks ago, in which several people were arrested, one of whom is now in Bagram though the elders claim he is illiterate and ‘doesn’t know the first word of the Koran’.

 

“A lot of information is provided to the International Military forces that isn’t correct”, an elder told me. “The community is under pressure from both sides (AGEs and the Americans), but mostly from the Americans”.

 

“During the search operation, the Special Forces took two brothers out from their home in the middle of the night. When they were outside, they separated them, so one small group of SF went with one brother, and another group with the other, so they were out of sight from each other. Then one group fired a shot into the air. The other group holding the other brother said ‘we’ve killed your brother. If you don’t cooperate we’ll kill you too’”.

 

I believe this constitutes a human rights abuse, surely. Is this sort of behaviour legal? Do these officers' commanders know this sort of thing is going on, is this behaviour encouraged? Between you me and the gatepost, I’m fairly certain this isn’t the worse thing that has happened during a search operation.

 

Yesterday morning I attended a tribal jirga at the municipal hall here in Gardez. To get there, we drove in our armoured vehicle replete with 2-inch thick blackened windows through a cold barren husk of a town, and as I looked around me, I realized how thoroughly depressing this place is. All you can see are high walls, decrepit crumbling buildings destroyed during the civil war and yard upon yard of barbed wire lining government building compounds. There wasn’t a living soul to be seen in those cold empy streets, except for the odd emaciated dog sniffing through piles of garbage.

 

Elders from Paktika, Khost and Paktia attended the gathering to discuss how they were going to secure this region (known as Loya Paktia). There was even a Pakistani Waziri there. His pale yellow turban was twice the size of anyone else’s in the room.

 

Once again the elders talked about how only they alone could secure their communities, because no one else was going to do it for them. They also strongly condemned ISAF and said that as long as they were here, there would be no peace. They actually went further than that, angrily shouting into the microphone that the presence of ISAF was making things worse.

 

After two and a half hours of speeches and the odd poetry recital by various heads of tribes as well as from the deputy minister of tribal and border affairs in Kabul, the deputy governor, chief of police and a number of others, one young woman who had been sitting at the front of the room the whole time looking very nervous stood up.

 

She was an ISAF representative (I assume sent from Kabul) and addressed the crowd with a half smile. She thanked them for welcoming her, though her words came out sounding flat and rehearsed. She must have been terrified, aware of the fact that she wasn’t the most popular person in the room.

 

She read her spiel from a piece of paper, then looked up at her audience. She said that her boss, General McChrystal, assured the people of Afghanistan that they would be in charge of the future of their country and that ISAF would be there for as long as people needed them in order to ‘rebuild and secure Afghanistan’.

 

A very nice speech by all accounts, which was met with hesitant applause – but I wonder how much longer people will clap politely, having heard these words so many times before, words falling on the ears of people who are becoming more and more angry and disillusioned as each year goes by.

Clown in the Moon*

 
Tira Pass, December 2009 

  

How difficult is it to grasp that all these botched ‘search and kill’ operations carried out by Special Forces (or the CIA) are going to piss people off.  How difficult is it to understand that you are not winning hearts and minds by storming into people’s homes like a bunch of tobacco chewing war-pumped cowboys and arresting or killing the inhabitants, based on what is maybe false information fed to them by their young Afghan ‘advisors’?

  

 

I often wonder how many lives have been turned upside down or ruined through the casual relaying of false intelligence. I’m not saying they get it wrong all the time -- but they get it so tragically wrong far too often. 

  

 

Yesterday morning four elders from the Waziri tribe set off from a remote, isolated border district in southern Paktika to come to my office. Paktika, which we sometimes affectionately refer to as ‘the black hole’, is one of the most socially conservative parts of the country and is so cut off from the rest of Afghanistan it’s insane.

  

 

Paktika is huge and desperately poor, there are very few people (roughly estimated somewhere between 300,000 to 500,000 – low for somewhere so vast) and literacy rates are some of the lowest in the country. 

  

There is minimal government presence in the districts, some of which have long been abandoned to the Taliban. Provincial government officials are mostly corrupt, diverting what little humanitarian assistance that makes it to the province destined for remote and impoverished communities, and selling it off to line their own pockets.

  

 

Most of the roads connecting the districts to the provincial capital are too dangerous to travel along due to IEDs planted here and there, as well as insurgent ambushes targeting the international military or the government. Where there are schools (mostly only primary), the teachers are unqualified. Very few girls attend school in Paktika.

  

For medical assistance, people generally rely on services across the border in Pakistan, where they have to travel through an equally perilous Waziristan to access Peshawar, NWFP’s capital city. Unlike other provinces, there is hardly any assistance coming in from NGOs or other agencies, as it’s too dangerous to work there.

  

 

But wait! It gets worse.

  

 

These four elders risked life and limb and came to our office via the scenic route, which took them 2 days, because the short cut would have led them to certain death somewhere in Mata Khan district probably.  The reason they came is because they have nowhere else to turn, pleas have apparently fallen on deaf ears in Sharana, the provincial capital.

  

 

They arrived tired and worn out in the early afternoon. They were a motley crew. The eldest had beautiful pale green eyes and spoke a little English and was keen to practice it with me. He had apparently worked as an engineer with Ariana airlines many years before but had had to retire early due to problems with his kidneys. Another was rather dashing and well groomed, and had worked before as a driver for a UN agency, so knew a little English as well. The third was a gruff, rough southeastern Pashtun with a wild beard and strong accent and had no time for pleasantries. The fourth man was dressed in a thin grubby shalwar kameez minus the waistcoat, and wore black rubber sandals with no socks. Instead of a turban, he had wrapped a dirty white piece of cloth around his head.

  

 

Interestingly, these men barely mentioned the Taliban during our meeting, or any other kind of insurgent, though they are of course under pressure from them.  What they needed to offload about were these search operations carried out by the US Special Forces, who are being ‘advised’ by one particular young Afghan man named Azizullah. According to the residents of this district as well as those from neighbouring ones, this man is the devil incarnate.

  

 

I have met many of these young Afghan men who drawl in highly irritating pseudo American accents, who call me ma’am in all the wrong places, apparently stoked because they hang out on military bases with burly tattooed US soldiers wearing bandanas and black Ray-bans. It’s as though they are desperately trying to be what they imagine it must be like to be American.

  

 

I used to feel sorry for them, they seemed like anachronisms, lost and out of place. I wondered how they related to their families anymore.

  

I also wondered whether I maybe resented these cocky gum-chewing young men because they didn’t conform to my view of Afghans as being, on the whole, gentle, kind, and mild mannered people. At least this to date has been my experience here, with surprisingly few exceptions.

  

 

Starry-eyed and somewhat patronising views aside, time has given way to a more jaded opinion and I have become impatient, irritated by the absurdly grotesque glamorising of this army base culture and discussions permeated by gross over-simplifications and a paltry understanding of what is an inordinately complex situation.

  

 

I suspect that these young men may not necessarily be in the right position to be putting forward critical information which may determine whether a person lives or dies or gets to spend the next 4 years in jail wearing an orange jump suit.

  

 

This may be wild speculation and I am sure their information is sometimes accurate, but from here it almost seems irrelevant. Having spent the best part of 18 months in this region talking to people who have been victims of or witness to these 'search operations', seeing time and again desperation and anger in people's eyes, I know with whom my sympathies lie. Didn't we come here to help people and gain their trust? Maybe some of us did. Some came to root out the 'bad guys', whatever the cost apparently.

  

 

“We are caught between the Taliban and Special Forces”, one of the elders tells me. “If we even climb a mountain we are automatically AGEs (Anti Government Elements), if we stay at home, that too looks suspicious”.

  

 

“The other day I had to make a phone call. There is one place in our district from where there is telephone reception and we can make calls, but it is at the top of a mountain. I needed to make my phone call, so I had to ask a sheperd if I could accompany him and his flock. I went with him, in disguise” (as a sheep? I wondered to myself momentarily. No, don’t be ridiculous! I chastised myself. As a fellow shepherd. Stop making light of this tragic conversation).

  

 

A lot of the time I feel helpless, and then angry. These four men travelled for 2 days to ask us to please do something. Military folk are belligerently obedient creatures, I suppose they have to be, answering only to a very specific command structure. I doubt my whining to a battalion commander will do much good (we are tolerated at best by the military because I assume they have been ordered to ‘cooperate’ with us); but I intend to travel to Paktika to meet with the manoeuvre battalion commander there, and try to take this Azizullah case further up the chain of command. It may not do any good, but sadly I will probably have a better chance of being listened to than these poor men have in their own country.

  

 

In other news, the Southeast region is going to the dogs. A few days before I went on leave for Christmas, there was a complex attack here in Gardez on an international agency compound a few hundred metres away from my office, which shook from the force of the explosion. Some minutes later as we were still trying to figure out where the impact had been, I received a call from one of the girls I knew working for this agency, asking me for help. Five people had been killed and the place looked like an abattoir, bits of mangled flesh hanging from walls.

  

 

A few days later, there was another complex attack in Gardez, the target this time was the police base (what is meant by ‘complex’ is that it is a well planned and coordinated attack).

  

On top of this, we received intel (see above) that an imminent attack was planned for our compound (incidentally my bedroom, which is at the very back of our guesthouse, faces the back wall and would likely be the first room any marauding Talib would enter, had he managed to escalate our laughably thin brick walls). That night I spent hours trying to fall asleep, at one moment literally paralysed with fear as I was convinced I could hear people walking about on the roof. It's not a nice feeling. You want to run but you can't and your heart is thumping so hard you're sure it can be heard from outside.

  

The next day our guesthouse was evacuated (it has since been heavily fortified by vitamins B and D and some Hescoes. And some more Nepali gurkas, who incidentally are phenomenal basketball players).

  

 

Finally, last week, a man blew himself up in Gardez’s main bazaar, killing eleven people including four children. My heart was in my throat as I drove from the helipad to the office, through this same market where there had been carnage just a couple of days before. The same day in Khost, someone planted a bomb outside the lovely deputy governor’s office. He and the people he was meeting with at the time were slightly injured but thankfully ok. We often attend these meetings. We’ve also been told there are four suicide bombers on the loose somewhere in Gardez.

 

 

[…]

 

So I’m hoisting the white flag and cashing in my chips at this point folks. I’m not sure my nerves can take much more. I’ve handed in my notice and will be leaving the Southeast region and this organisation at the end of this month.

 

 

I know life goes on and change is good, but my heart fair aches when I think about saying goodbye to my wonderful friends and colleagues who I love so much. I can’t think about that now without crying. I have a few more weeks with them still. 

 

 

*Title taken from a poem by Dylan Thomas

Winter’s blue-eyed souls

 

A tribal elder from Ahmadabad district in Paktia province reading a manual on the "Basics of Afghan Law and Criminal Justice" 

 

There is so much more to Afghanistan than what is reported in the news about the war and the Taliban and the shady machinations of a corrupt government. Five years on and I’m still under this country’s spell, filled to the brim with love for its people, for their gentleness and warmth, their perseverance and hope and overwhelming hospitality despite everything they’ve been through. I still feel so lucky to be here. Wand-tipped, as my writer-poet aunt would have said.

 

Today I sat again, as I have done so many times here in the Southeast, on toshaks in a room filled with spin giri (white beards) and once again felt as though I had stepped back in time some two thousand years. A small wood stove hissed and crackled away in the centre of a long narrow room as snow fell quietly outside, covering this tribal land in a blanket of white.

 

As discussions began, a young man wearing an all-black shalwar kameez poured sweet cardamom milk tea from an old pewter tea pot into glass cups and set down plates of Pakistani biscuits in front of us. 

 

The tribal elders talked about how decisions taken amongst their tribal councils might be legitimized in the eyes of the state. What we foreigners have come to term the ‘informal justice system’ is the tribes’ own way of dealing with problems and crimes which take place in their communities.

 

 

 

Most cases in this tribal region are brought before a jirga (a tribal decision-making body composed of elected tribal elders) and solutions to problems are found according to tried and tested tribal traditions, which do not always conform with our western concepts of justice (such as the practice of baad, which is the giving of girls in marriage by the family of the perpetrator to the family of the victim in compensation for murder).

 

Any issue which might potentially disrupt the peace within a community is generally resolved by a tribal council from that community (or district if the case is big enough) – whereas criminal cases are more often referred to the formal justice sector and relayed to an under qualified and probably illiterate district prosecutor, who may or may not (but let’s face it, he generally does) take a bribe to resolve a dispute one way or the other.

 

A lot of the work I do involves trying to get the Governor and Deputy Governor to lend weight to land dispute settlements by appointing a commission of elders acceptable to both sides in order to reach an agreement.

 

[A word about our provincial authorities: both of these men are pretty shady characters. Whilst I have no love for the Governor himself (who is a Pashtun warlord from the North and hates working in this Southeastern province; he also has inordinately hairy hands), I am very fond of Deputy Governor Mangal, who looks almost exactly like Pluto from the cartoon Popeye. I sometimes imagine him grabbing the scrawny provincial deputy head of the intelligence services by the neck and holding him in the air as he prepares to sock him over the barbed compound walls of the Governor’s office.]

 

But I digress. The relationship between state and non-state institutions has often been tense, and attempts at expanding the jurisdiction of what is widely seen as a corrupt state have not gone well. However there are degrees of cooperation between the two, and a draft law by the Ministry of Justice in Kabul has been circulated to get feedback from the tribes.

 

Here are some ad hoc snippits from the discussion among these spin giri this morning:

 

“The draft policy from the Ministry of Justice talks about the Law, but the old people don’t know about the Law.”

 

“We have solved many cases where we have had witnesses according to our own law (pashtunwali) and the people have agreed. Then we give this decision to the prosecutor. Why does he not accept our decision?”

 

[I notice a tribal elder dipping a biscuit into his milk tea as he listens. Another fiddles with his yellow turban as it becomes unraveled, and starts to wrap and unwrap it around his wrist. Another clasps his toes to warm them, as I do mine, as we are far away enough from the stove to feel the chill in the room. I see another trying to stuff his feet under a toshak.]

 

“Criminal cases should not go through the tribes, they should go through the government, because in this way they can be punished”.

 

“There should be workshops to build the capacity of our tribal councils, so we can better deal with these things”.

 

“This draft law is good. We didn’t have a framework before, now we have one.”

 

“Most of the letters written by the district commissioners to the prosecutor begin with “In the Name of God”. This is a very big and important sentence for us. This paper should be respected.”

 

“One person cannot claim he is a tribal elder. Tribal elders must be nominated.”

 

The oldest tribal elder in the group speaks up in a wheezy voice: “I am the oldest person here and forgive me, I can’t hear well as one of my ears is not working. We respect human rights (loosely understand it appears), we aren’t against them, but we don’t accept that some people say that women shouldn’t wear the hijab (head scarf).”

 

Another wrinkly faced elder pipes up: “We will make the law according to human rights of our choosing.”

 

The oldest tribal elder responds: “Slowly we will reach the point; but by taking the stairs, not by jumping.”

Raised voices behind burqas

 
 "You can cut down the flower but nothing can stop the coming of Spring" - Malalai Joya, exiled former female parliamentarian

 

December has so far brought with it chilled winds and melancholy clouds filled with cold rain, as yet undecided about becoming snow.  Sweet smoke already fills this damp wintry air as wood stoves quietly burn up what’s left of a region once covered in pine forests. During winter, brightly painted Pakistani trucks trundle between Kabul and these southeastern provinces packed to the brim with lumber. This is a source of huge tension among tribes here, who fight out their turf wars to determine who gets to cut down the remaining green areas to sell as firewood. 

 

Mabel has gone, though her three kittens are here. They are sweet and affectionate, but I miss Mabel. I wonder if this was a conscious decision on her part, to step down giving way to her offspring, or whether she was mauled by one of the many stray dogs who sit like sentinels outside our compound walls.

 

Yesterday, in the absence of our Human Rights officers, I had to give a speech on the occasion of the International Day for the Prevention of Violence against Women. There were about a hundred people present at the event, including the Deputy Governor, the Provincial Chief of Police and some other large turbaned Provincial Council bigwigs, as well as numerous local journalists and a small television crew. Afghans certainly love their speeches.

 

Ironically but somewhat predictably, the only women there were tucked away at the back of the room, hidden beneath their tatty blue burqas, token participants to the occasion.

 

I wondered to myself what the point was, but hoped this whole charade of an event was nonetheless a small step in the right direction. I spoke on behalf of my organization over the crowd of beards and sun darkened faces to the women seated at the back. I told them that Afghanistan needed to get to a place and time where this day wasn’t celebrated once a year with flowery speeches, but one that had to be celebrated every day. Beyond this, Afghanistan needed to get to a point where people forget that they even need to celebrate that women aren’t being abused in their homes or raped with impunity, and that their attendance at school isn’t in question.

 

Except my words came out sounding hollow and empty, I felt like an idiot, and I suspect much was lost in translation. Who am I to give false hope to these women.  I told them I had worked with some of the most extraordinary people here over the past few years, committed to improving women’s lives, and that things can change. But it’s a fact that over the past few years, of the many women who have bravely taken seats in parliament or who are working as doctors or journalists or for national and international organizations seeking to promote women’s rights, many have received death threats, have been beaten or even killed – not by the Taliban, but by their own families and community members.

 

This country will be doomed until women realize that they can and must demand equal rights. And they won’t until they can trust that there are institutions working to help them achieve this, that there are safety nets and that the government is on their side and will hold accountable anyone who feels it’s their right to mistreat them.

 

It’s almost insulting to recognise a single day a year celebrating such a thing. But if it plants a seed and gets people thinking and talking, particularly in this highly conservative part of the country, then maybe it's a start.

Notes from a tribal gathering

 

…So back to those querulous tribesmen up in the Kurram Agency. After a couple of weeks, the Deputy Governor managed to arrange a meeting between the Shi’a Turi tribe and the Sunni Bangash tribe, to try to find a peaceful settlement to their long-standing dispute.

 

A word on this particular sectarian conflict: tensions between the Shi’as and Sunnis flared up back in the 80s when the Zia government in Pakistan introduced fighters to the Kurram Agency in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), in order to quell Shi’a influence on the main weapons supply route between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

 

The two sides now accuse each other of not allowing the other to travel freely through the areas they inhabit and control. Thus the Turi tribe tend to take out any hapless Bangash tribesman from Boshara who tries to travel across into Afghanistan to northern Paktia and onwards to Kabul, and likewise the Bangash spare the Shi’as no mercy en route to Peshawar in Pakistan.

 

It should also probably be noted that the Taliban (who are Sunni) have increased their activities in this area, establishing bases along the border with Afghanistan. The Shi’a Turis use this information a lot when trying to garner support from the Afghan authorities and US military to support their cause.

 

A word about tribal disputes. According to Pashtunwali, the Pashtun tribal code of conduct, if a weaker tribe wants ‘help’ (read ‘hitmen’ in most cases) from other tribes in a particular area, the tradition is for the tribe in question to slaughter a sheep in offering to the stronger tribe. A number of poor sheep have met their end in recent weeks as the Bangash have sought the help from fellow Sunni tribes this side of the border here in Paktia, where I am based.

 

Back to the story: on Tuesday morning after a heart stopping journey on a Blackhawk (courtesy of the US military) skimming effortlessly in between Paktia’s frosted peaks, we landed at a small military base up in the northeastern part of the province and set off with the Deputy Governor and a posse of parliamentarians from Kabul to a large meeting room perched on the side of a hill.

 

After about an hour chatting outside waiting for the Turi and Bangash tribal representatives to show up, we took off our shoes and went to sit in a large circle on the floor, as is the tradition in jirgas (a tribal gathering to solve a dispute). The Deputy Governor motioned for me to sit beside him, and as I sat down, I became very aware that amidst the hundred or so tribal elders filing in, I was the only woman in the room.

 

And so, as happens in jirgas over endless cups of green tea, the more respected elders and tribal leaders take the floor and present their side of the argument. The discussion went back and forth between both sides for some time. A couple of hours into the jirga, things suddenly got a little heated (by which point I was in dire need of two hip replacements and longed to stretch my legs out in front of me, which would have constituted something of a cultural faux pas).

 

One prominent parliamentarian and former jihadi commander held up his hand piously, and ordered the gathering to quiet down. He then started to bellow angrily, spluttering into his long black beard, stating that as the key Bangash representatives hadn’t turned up, the outcome of this particular meeting was void. I watched this man caught between dust-filled sunbeams on the faded carpet as he appeared to chastise his onlookers, and imagined him leading troops of men through once wooded hills armed with Kalashnikovs.

 

Commander Daoud

 

This man, Commander Daoud, is not a particularly nice man. He was one of the people in this province responsible for widespread vote rigging in his area of influence in Zazi Aryoub district. A short while after the jirga as we waited outside still hopeful that the Bangash would turn up, this burly man who towered above everyone else beckoned to me to join the large circle of tribal elders he was communing with. I looked at him incredulously. “Me?” I mouthed as I raised my eyebrows questioningly, pointing at myself. He nodded and I walked over.

 

I was instantly encircled. Thankfully my young colleague had come with me in order to translate. “The UN is meddling with our election! This is nothing to do with you! You foreigners should keep your noses out!” I tried to explain the UN’s role in the election, and that of the Independent Election Commission, and the Election Complaints Commission, but somehow it all got lost somewhere between him brandishing his walking stick at me and then storming off. Well, limping off really.

 

The next morning as we waited at the military base waiting for our ride back to Gardez, he hobbled up to me in what I believe was an attempt to apologise for his behaviour the day before. Apparently he had been more receptive to my other colleague that morning, who had been able to have a more rational discussion with him. However his words were lost, swept up in a sudden whirlwind of noise and dust as our helicopter landed, and we parted ways. I turned and watched as Commander Daoud hobbled back down the hillside, followed by his faithful former jihadi fighters.

All along the watchtower

 
 The view from my bedroom at dusk

This evening I sat in my usual spot in the narrow doorway of my room with Mabel and her skittish kittens, and watched as the sky turned a dusky deep pink above the mountains. The only thing standing between those mountains and I are coils of barbed wire which line the crumbling brick walls around my prison of a home. They stand out so black and sharp in this half-light. The empty watchtowers perched at the corners of the compound are as already as black as the night that’s about to fall. I’m filled with such longing to fly beyond these razor walls that it almost hurts.

 

I could actually close my eyes and draw the view from this room I’ve seen it so often.  In front of me just off to the right, beyond clumps of grass that we tried to grow earlier this year, there’s a rickety wooden hut covered in weathered, lichen green paint where Nemat, the houseman, does all of our ironing.  Nemat’s eyes almost disappear beneath his bushy brows when he smiles, displaying a row of crooked browning teeth.  I am embarrassed by the way he sometimes bows his head as if in deference when I walk past, his hand to his heart in that beautiful way the Afghan people have when they meet each other.

 

To my immediate right, a narrow barren yard stretches past another similar hut (which is used for nothing at all) and a makeshift tennis court. It comes to an abrupt end at yet another wall and a latrine, above which one of these empty guard boxes sits precariously. Way over in the far corner of the yard, past an unassuming vegetable patch where tomatoes refuse to grow, a once formidable bus now squats in a rusting heap, grubby yellow paint betraying a glorious past. I call it the ‘love bus’, I’m not sure why. I imagine it in bygone days bumbling along a large open highway full of hippies, music blaring from its open windows.

 

The Love Bus 

 

This whole place is bound by high walls and barbed wire, over which you can’t see unless you climb up to one of these guard boxes, which I do sometimes. The other evening I sat up there and watched a full moon rise over shadows of mountains. I sat on sand bags and called my father and tried not to cry as I told him cheerily how beautiful the night sky was.

 

And just when I feel I can no longer carry the weight of this confinement, this bizarre life in someone else’s war zone a million miles from home, a magical moment comes along and lifts me sky high above these jagged walls. I walk into my office and my three Afghan friends and colleagues, my companions these past 18 months in this remote little outpost of the Southeast, who have taught me more about this country than anyone ever could, embalm me in their gentle teasing, love and friendship, and I am soaring again.

 Nemat, faithful houseman

Conflicted

It's never a good idea to write when you're angry, and I'm fuming. The head of the UN is making us all look like fools, I feel humiliated and angry that I have been put in this position, that I'm being forced into making a decision about staying on and working here (though I wonder whether I should be jeopordising an opportunity to put myself through law school next year if I leave - at least this is a tentative future plan).

Anyone following this saga has no doubt seen the very public argument between the head of the UN mission here and his deputy who was sacked a few days ago 'in the interests of the mission', because he didn't think we should be supporting these elections. Of course we shouldn't.

The other day I sent a letter to my head of office who was on her way to Kabul for a heads of office meeting. She asked us if there were any issues we wanted to raise. I wrote that I wanted to know what the UN's official response was going to be to the issues of widespread fraud throughout the country, and what our 'line' should be to the people with whom we have spent months and years building relationships, people who now trust us and come to us for help. 

Over the last few weeks since the elections, we have been working hard to get people's perceptions of the process, particularly from Provincial Council candidates. We have carefully collected and recorded incidents of fraud and passed these on to HQ.

A lot of people in the Southeast region are angry and want to see how our organisation will respond. We have been told in no uncertain terms that the local population will no longer respect or support us unless we speak out strongly against this fraudulent election.

It is incredibly demoralising. I had no interest in these elections in the first place, how can elections be held in the middle of an insurgency? How can they be monitored? How can those crooks working close to or for the 'Independent' Election Commission be held accountable? So much of the actual work we do here can be useful, but everything is being eclipsed by these wretched elections, and they are wretched in every sense.

So yes, I want my boss to ask the head of this organisation how, in light of our mandate - which was to support an election that was free, fair and transparent and given that it was none of these - how he intends to uphold our credibility, and how he views the damage to our reputation, particularly in light of the dismissal of his deputy?

Yesterday I met with 30 Sunni tribal elders from the Kurram Agency across the border in Pakistan. They want the Afghan government to help them. At the moment they are trapped, their villages are surrounded by a dominant Shi'a sect who are refusing to let them pass through to northeastern Paktya to get supplies and medical assistance. I met with the provincial Governor afterwards and we are setting up a meeting in a few days with Shi'a tribal elders to hear their side; we will hopefully then bring both sides together to negotiate some form of settlement.

The other week I was in Khost to speak to the deputy governor and elders from two warring tribes following a land dispute, which has already resulted in a number of deaths on both sides. I got UNHCR involved to deal with displaced families and am (still) working on getting local security forces to the area.

I have no idea whether any of these efforts will pay off in the long-term, or whether we do add any value here. I hope at the very least we don't make things worse. But being that bridge and having people come to ask us to mediate is incredibly rewarding and I am proud to work for this organisation in so many respects because I am convinced we can do a lot of good. Yet I am now forced to think about resigning over this stupid election, when it represents so little of the actual work we do here.

[...]

I just had to duck under my desk because I'm hearing a lot of gunfire right outside my office. More later.

[added afterwards - it was actually a wedding, but my insides have already turned to jelly. Urgh. We use confetti in the UK, maybe the Afghans could have a think about that. I was interested to note my reaction in that I didn't run for the bunker or put on my flak jacket or helmet which are here beside me, but hovered around the window looking for someone to tell me what was going on. Duh.]

Conversation with a young American soldier

 On a Chinook, somewhere between Gardez and Khost, summer last year (photo taken by a colleague)

Yesterday as I waited for a colleague to get checked out at the medical facilities at the PRT (we think she has malaria), I sat outside and had a chat with a 20-year old medical officer (who I'll call Mike for the sake of anonymity).

Mike was short and stocky, soft around the edges with cropped hair, of Filipino origin. He was wearing a khaki tee-shirt, army slacks and boots and smoked one red Marlboro after another as we sat in the sun.

My heart went out to this little chap and I asked how he’d ended up in the army here in Afghanistan. He was so young, but there he was acting so tough – pinching his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, flicking it away deftly once he’d finished with it.

He furrowed his brow and spat, taking a swig of water then pulled out another cigarette. He told me his parents couldn't afford to send both of their kids to university, so he signed up. He hopes to go to school (university) in a few years' time. I believe the military help pay for their recruits' studies once they've served for a few years, but it’s so sad that he was in that situation in the first place, that he didn’t feel he had a choice.

Mike pretty much talked at me for 45 minutes without stopping. He talked quickly and earnestly without ever making eye contact, as if he were on ecstasy. He hopped from one topic to the next, I couldn’t follow his train of thought, but I sat and listened.

“Man I’ve seen some f****d up shit. This guy came in the other day, he’d had his face blown off in an IED explosion – we had to perform a cricothyroidotomy, it’s a lot easier than a tracheotomy, there’s less damage done to the nerves, recovery time’s faster. Tracheotomies really mess with your voice box. I don’t think he made it though, I didn’t see him again after that.”

 

“The thing with the army is, you have to keep up. It dun' matter if you’re not as fit as the rest, if you can take the pain or can outdo your peers, you’re ok. The army’s all about being there for each other, we push each other. I’d do anything for my buddies. Back before we deployed, we’d get up at 4.30 and run for 8 miles. I hate the cold, but they stationed me in Alaska. WTF?”

 

“I love jumping, but jumping out of a plane in Alaska in winter? WTF? I love to surf. I’m from California and me and my buddies surf all the time. You gotta get on the board right. I can’t snowboard though. I get back from surfing all day and I watch TV.”

 

“In Alaska when you go running when it’s negative 30, you can’t touch your eyelashes ‘else they’ll just fall off.”

 

“I don’t touch the women here on the base. You see people in and out here with all sorts of weird shit. Man there are so many STDs on army bases, I don’t go near the women here. Not worth it. That means abstaining ‘til I’m home. That’s cool.”

 

“The thing with training, when they train you to become a soldier, they f***k with your mind. That’s what it’s all about. It’s all brain games.”

 

“These Afghans, man they love their pills. They’ll go for years without seeing a doctor, then they come in with these problems. I’m treating this police guy from Sayed Karram. He got his leg shot 15 years ago and has been wearing this splint since then – now all his muscles have atrophied. He never changed his bandages and he had all these sores. I told him ‘you do what I say now, you hear me?’ He came back a week later, all his sores had dried up. He can’t do anything with that leg though. There ain’t no physical therapy this guy could do to make it better.”

 

I hope the US military treat their boys well when they get home, that they get the counseling they need. I expect most don’t realize that they need it. I wonder what Mike will end up doing, whether he’ll leave the army and study, as he wants to.