Replies

October 2003

Sarah Chayes records a radio spot in Kandahar.

Sarah Chayes, a former NPR reporter turned aid worker featured in “A House for Haji Baba,” describes herself as “tenacious-a kind word for pig-headed.” FRONTLINE/World series editor Stephen Talbot interviewed her by email about her struggle to rebuild, the dangers of her work and the rigors of daily life in a country that “looks like the moon with goats on it.”

I don’t think it’s immediately dangerous for me in Kandahar: I’m well known around town, and I’m known to enjoy powerful backing. I am connected with the Karzais [the president’s family], and I’m seen, if not as “an American,” at least as connected with the Americans in some way. What’s important to understand about this culture is that security is not based so much on protection — on how many guards I might have — as on the certainty of retaliation should anyone try something. For the moment, I enjoy that kind of deterrence.

This is not an indigenous, spontaneous uprising. All of these attacks originate in Pakistan; top Taliban leaders live and organize their activities openly in the Pakistani city of Quetta; the border is for all intents and purposes open. The problem of terrorism in Afghanistan is intimately linked to the regional strategy of Pakistan. The U.S. military fights Taliban members when they can be found in concentrated groups inside Afghanistan. But once they cross the border, they are beyond reach. The U.S. government, by not holding Pakistan accountable for its open support of the Taliban, is in fact contributing to the problem.

Abdullah, the engineer (hydraulics, not construction) is an extraordinary person, and one of my closest friends on Earth. Apart from being the truest friend you can imagine — protective, tirelessly thoughtful and helpful — and a wicked tease, a great mime and dangerously short-fused, he is one of the few people around here who has a moral compass. He was in university when the communists started pulling students out of class and shooting them. He was jailed twice, then drafted for some elite military unit — of which no member survived — and escaped training camp in the middle of the night with two friends. He fled to Pakistan while his younger brother fought the Russians; worked for Ahmad Shah Masoud in Peshawar

Yes, he thinks I’m in over my head. He’s been telling me to go home from the day I got here. But I think he respects me for not leaving. And for not stealing or lying, even if I’m as blind and clumsy around here as a child, in his view. And I believe he respects me for speaking out in public — that is, for opening a space for the truth.

Women are invisible here, Taliban defeat or no Taliban defeat. I’d say 80 percent to 90 percent of the women in Kandahar are still not allowed to leave their homes. So, while I visited women in Akokolacha almost every day I was out there, Brian Knappenberger, the filmmaker, never even saw one of them. It would have been even more unthinkable for him to film them.

We also have a “women’s law group,” in which six women — two school principals, a teacher, an educated housewife and two illiterate housewives — get together each week and discuss first the draft Afghan constitution, and now the 1976 civil code, article by article. It’s an absolutely extraordinary group. Our conversations have been wide-ranging and intimate — sometimes outrageous. We brought the group to Kabul to present their report on the constitution to President Karzai, the United Nations and the constitutional commission. That was a pretty revolutionary trip for all of them.

Afghans don’t expect to see much of any money any more. But they do say that as long as the United States or other foreigners are controlling disbursements, maybe 20 cents on the dollar might get to the people. If Afghan officials control disbursements, most Kandaharis tell me, no one will see a penny.

The problem with international assistance is not only one of quantity, it is also one of how aid is delivered: through what channels (warlord or other), according to what kind of master plan (if any) and to what kind of projects.

The problems I have seen have been an overemphasis on very small projects that won’t be much of a loss if they fail, but that by the same token don’t make much of a difference to the people. Big projects, like the hydroelectric dam, are deemed too large to tackle right away — but then the whole economy of two provinces is crippled, with serious political repercussions. Just the other day, a man stopped in the street opposite our car and began to harangue us about electricity. “If you don’t help us,” he shouted, “we don’t want you here.”

Much of the big money that is finally being allocated gets slurped up by the huge “Beltway bandits” — U.S. contracting companies that get millions of U.S. aid money, then hire international NGOs and Afghan companies to do the real work on the ground. And those who do that work usually regard it as a profit-making venture. It’s as though many see the suffering of the Afghan people as an economic opportunity.

Please also note that the $1.2 billion is largely going for the costs of U.S. military presence and only secondarily to the training of the Afghan national police and army. There’s not much for big economic reconstruction jobs.

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/afghanistan/chayes.html