The Good Afghan: Race, Ethnicity and Diversity in Foreign Service!

Bill stood up and said, “we are now going to have a session on Pashtun cultural norms!” And now Bill, our trainer, started to tell us, a number of USAID field program officers working in western Afghanistan, how the Pashtuns behave! Bill, was a former military personnel who, after coming back to the US, had hung up his boots, came back to Afghanistan, and was hired as an Afghan expert! The problem with him speaking about the Pashtun culture was that, in our group of trainees, we had five Pashtuns, who were more than capable of presenting a view of their own culture. They worked for USAID, they were all educated and the cream of the crop in their respective field. But still it was Bill, who perhaps lacking a bit of "situational awareness", stood up and gave us a superficial understanding of a very diverse and complex culture. During his presentation, he never alluded or asked the opinion of the real, live, Pashtuns who sat with us. Can you imagine if Jumah Khan, from Farah, Afghanistan, flew to Mississippi and told Bill and his family about the American culture?!!! This example underlines one of the fundamental problems with foreign aid, development and diplomacy, where local expertise are often ignored. Race and ethnicity determines who is an expert and who is not, who should lead and who should not, who should be trusted and who should not.  

If there is a “local” expert hired, he/she can’t “act” too local! If your name is Mohammad, you better change in it to “Mo” because the Country Director who is from Iowa can’t pronounce the world’s most common name! The local expert is only considered an expert if he or she can push the goals and the agenda of the donor. If you show or care too much in finding solutions to the problem of the local communities then expect to be sidelined!! I know people, in this case Americans, who changed their “ethnic” names because they were afraid that there would bias against them. They worked for agencies, who go around the world and tell people about the importance of diversity, yet it has created a system that does not allow room for the “other”!  This is not 1492, when Christopher Columbus met the “Red Indians” this is happening in 2015, when Barak Hussein Obama is in the White House!

In 2009, before flying out to Afghanistan, we were given a series of training to prepare us for our work there. Our main trainer was a retired US Diplomat, another “expert” on Afghanistan. The last slide that he showed us before sending us to improve the lives of Afghans, was something that still shocks me!!! The slide had on it, the image of an old American family, riding a horse-pulled wagon, surrounded by the US army, and in the horizon were the Native Indian horsemen with their spears drawn out coming to attack the family!! Our diplomat and “Afghan expert”, ended by saying, “this is how you will feel when in Afghanistan!” We, the USAID, State Department folks were the good guys, whose lives were being protected by the US military against the savages, the Afghans. If he was trying to show his cultural “sensitivity” he did not do a good job. His last slide is an example of how the local population and the “other” is looked upon! To be feared, subdued and civilized, and shaped like us, whatever that is!

 

Hopefully those who are hired to work in the Foreign Service and foreign aid will be hired based on their skill sets, their mutual respect and understanding of their own culture and the local culture, and most importantly to truly work for a world that people's diversity is valued not feared! Until that day more resources will be wasted and the voices of the real “experts” silenced!    

 
 

Shindand District: Working with Women in Rural Afghanistan!

Rahimah stood up and started to speak about the needs of the women in her community. Her head looked straight up, her voice was loud and clear. This was my first time meeting with women in Afghanistan. Rahimah belonged to a women’s group located in Shindand Town, whose aim was to organize women and provide them with literacy classes and vocational training.

The gender issue is one of the most sensitive topic to address in Afghanistan, but it gets even more difficult when you are working in the rural area. Steeped in traditional, cultural and local interpretation of Islam, women are not to be seen or heard from, their roles are to be played out in their own space, behind the walls of their homes. They are to be seen by their husband, brothers, and only certain members of their male family members. A friend of mine from Shindand told me that a woman’s place is either in her house or in her grave! It was against this background that I attempted to engage women in my work.  

One thing I learned was that though all of the communities within the district were traditional in the view of gender equity, their level of conservatism differed. The other issue was that, because  of the violence in the district, many families had lost their male relatives. These families now depended on their extended family (usually their husband's family) to take care of them. Unfortunately the extended family in most cases were poor and could not support the extra burden.  Because of their economic burden, communities were looking for alternative ways to support the now women-headed families. They were open in participating in women-focused activities. The other factor in Shindand was that many during the past three decades had left Shindand and had lived in big cities of Iran and Pakistan and had been exposed to urban life where women played an active role outside the home and girls went to school. Finally, many Shindandis were part of the Afghan military (Shindand Airbase is the second biggest airfield in Afghanistan) and got their training during the Afghanistan Communist government’s aggressive effort to educate women in rural areas. These former military personnel had been exposed to the topic of women empowerment and some had interacted with women military personnel. Taking all these factors into consideration, and despite the conservative cultural and religious belief, there was a critical mass of people who would support women-centric programming. They needed some entity or someone to facilitate programming according to Afghan rural cultural realities. The most important condition the people of Shindand asked for was, no military nor any foreign men (especially soldiers) should be allowed around the women participating in the programs. They said the mere presence of this group would jeopardize the project.

Unfortunately, there were those in the Coalition Forces and civilian sector who believed that if, you were paying for a project or giving resources to it, you had the right to go and see it. They also thought it would make great photos for folks back home in the US, UK or Italy to see. And ultimately believed that through these photos, they would understand how much their military or their government was doing to advance the cause of the downtrodden women of Afghanistan!!! Basically, they were saying we will help you but I need you to shake my hand and take photos!

The Wrong Way and the Right Way

My phone rang and it was Farzana, who ran a small organization, focused on young women. She sounded a bit frantic, and I asked her what was going on? She said basically, one of the American military units had shown up, unannounced, and brought them sewing machines!! Though she was thankful for the sewing machines, Farzana said, she could no longer work in her office, because the presence of American military units being seen around her office with male soldiers coming into her organization’s compound (usually to escort the female American soldiers) made it impossible to continue her work and she had to close down at least for a few months. This military unit thought it was doing the women there a favor by providing them sewing machines, but in reality all they did was to undermine the efforts of Farzana and her group. What the unit needed to do was ask around and find out if their action was appropriate! This happened in 2011, almost ten years after operations in Afghanistan had begun, I am sure someone had trained these soldiers on the technique of working with women in Afghanistan.

 

A few months after that, one of my USAID colleagues, contacted me and told me that the US Special Forces wanted to conduct community health worker training for women in Zerkoh Valley. Zerkoh Valley was the most violent area in Shindand District and the most underdeveloped. The condition of women in Zerkoh Valley was abhorrent specially related to their health. This project could help them get access to health workers who could assist them and their families to resolve their health issues, specially related to postnatal and prenatal health. I told my colleague that it would be a very useful project, but if they wanted to ensure some level of success, they had to keep all military personnel away from the training site. The soldiers don’t need to come there and take any photos, and if they really want to know how the training is going, I will go myself, check on the training and talk to the beneficiaries. Once that condition was agreed upon, the training began. I monitored the project remotely through my trusted group of local contacts. After a while when the training was in full swing, I decided to visit the site and speak to the women directly. Dressed in my local Afghan clothes, I made my way to Zerkoh Valley, which was about 45 minutes from the Shindand Airbase. The training took place at the Parmakan Village Clinic. After talking to the men (there was 30 women and 30 men being trained). I went to visit the women. I remembered how amazed I was to hear from the women, and how good they were in answering the question about what they had learned.

 

Dealing with gender issue in rural Afghanistan is challenging. All it takes is knowing the cultural and the societal landscape related to women, listening a bit to both men and women and see how they want us to work with them. Then implement programming that makes sense and puts a dent on issues that ails them and their communities.

Maybe one day we'll learn!