Italians Train Afghans for Non-Traditional Jobs
By Aunohita Mojumdar - WeNews correspondent
KABUL, Afghanistan (WOMENSENEWS)--Merafzon has a determined set to her chin and a resolute look in her eye as she surveys the pushing and jostling crowd grouped around the food counter. These are her customers, but she will take no nonsense from them.
While her customers clamor for attention she firmly tells them to wait their turn as she ladles out their food. Their attempts to bargain down the price of the dishes are also met with firm rebuttals. "The price is fixed and the menu set," she says, pointing her customers to the payment counter managed by a female cashier-in-training.
Merafzon--like many Afghans she has only one name--is the president of Mushtari Cooking and Catering Company, an all-woman association that has just opened a lunchtime canteen for employees of the government's Ministry of Women's Affairs.
Merafzon, 42, is part of a small group of women entering Afghanistan's male-dominated domains with the help of a program sponsored by Italian Cooperation, the Italian government's aid and development agency that has allocated $260,000 for the project. Another $30,000 has been provided by the Lombardy region.
Bypassing the traditional skills usually held by women--such as sewing and cleaning for poorer women and teaching or receptionist jobs for the middle class--the Italian program introduced a group of 60 women to four skilled trades: catering, gem-cutting, repairing mobile phones and making solar lanterns. Once they are fully trained, they will work in cooperative business associations officially registered with the Afghan government and will share the profits equally.
Atmosphere of Camaraderie
The women's center is a three-story building in a lower middle-class neighborhood of Kabul. In the basement is the gem-cutting room with its massive machines. On the first floor two rooms house the mobile phone unit and the solar lantern unit. There is a kindergarten on the second floor where the women leave their children while they learn new skills and receive literacy training. The atmosphere in each room is friendly and one of camaraderie; the women chat together as they pore over their work.
At the center, an Italian volunteer came to train women for catering, a field that is predominantly male in Afghanistan. To teach lantern-making and gem-cutting, experts came from India to pass on their skills. Some of the women also traveled to Jaipur, India's famed gem center, to train there.
When the project was launched a year and a half ago, Italian Cooperation opened it to women from Kabul's eighth district, one of the city's poorest areas. "The most vulnerable women were identified through a survey," says Monica Matarazzo, the social project officer with Italian Cooperation.
The choice of unusual professions was deliberate. "It was more challenging and original," says Matarazzo. It was felt, she says, that there were already plenty of projects in Kabul teaching sewing and more traditional skills to women.
Although Afghanistan's constitution now guarantees equal rights for women, customs restricting their movement still remain. Some women, especially those from more affluent or liberal families, have the freedom to leave their homes, but for others it is still forbidden, especially if their work will put them into contact with male colleagues. Women traveling alone still face harassment in the streets.
Layer of Protective Approval
Recognizing the difficulty the women had in leaving their neighborhoods, Italian Cooperation located the training center near their homes and worked with the local shura--the group of elders that make decisions in the community--to gain their support and give the women a layer of protective approval. The women are able to walk in to the center and their families and neighbors can visit and see what happens there. Once the first step was taken, it has now become possible for the women to travel further.
The Sultan Razia Gem-Cutting and Polishing Company is about to open a window on Chicken Street, Kabul's top tourist destination. Merchants along the narrow street lined with shops sell carpet and jewelry. Afghanistan is rich in lapis and quartz; during the war, the mines were plundered to finance the fighting forces.
Asifa, a 40-year-old war widow, has brought up five daughters and two sons since her husband's death a decade ago. She is a graduate of the project's gem-cutting program. Asifa remembers a very different earlier life, when she lived comfortably and securely with her husband, a senior employee of the government-owned radio and television network.
"But the Taliban came to him asking him not to make anti-Taliban programs," Asifa says. "When he didn't listen to them one day they came to the house. They knocked on the door and shot him dead. I survived by sewing clothes. No one helped. Then the center opened. In the beginning no one wanted to come to the center. They were not sure its work was in accordance with Islam. But slowly we saw what it was and now my neighbors have no problems with it."
Doing the Work Themselves
Another student in the gem-cutting program, Saleha, says she did not find it easy to start working outside the home. The big polishing and cutting machines scared her initially. Now, she says, the women can easily repair any of the minor problems in the machines themselves.
An owner of a local mobile phone repair shop offered his expertise to the project, and the nation's largest mobile service provider, Roshan, a Kabul-based company that says 21 percent of its employees are female, plans to donate equipment and says it will send a stream of customers to the women once they are officially in business.
One of those will be 19-year-old Fahima. Her father was shot in the eye six years ago by the "gilam jam," the "carpet-baggers" of the North who looted and pillaged Afghanistan in the civil war before the Taliban seized control in 1996. Refugees for 12 years, the family returned to their home city to find their shops burned down and their home in need of extensive repairs. Now Fahima has become an expert mobile phone repairer.
Shakila is only 35, but looks older. A hard life, a heart ailment and unending struggles have taken their toll, as they have for many Afghan women, who have an average life expectancy of 42 years and endure maternal mortality rates that are among the highest in the world. But Shakila says she is doing much better these days.
"I have six children and a husband at home," she says. "Before, the money my husband used to earn was not enough for the living expenses and my medicine as well. Now, after I started training here, I can afford my medicines."
Shakila is a part of a group of women who make solar lanterns. They disassemble kerosene lanterns and retrofit them with small solar panels and microchips. Although relatively costly at $75 apiece, the lanterns are useful in Afghanistan, which has plenty of sunshine but often runs short on electricity.
July 30, 2006
July 23, 2006
Desert Phoenix :The Mughal sire's grave has been roused from the cinders of war
Outlook Magazine| Jul 31, 2006
Heritage: Babar's tomb
Desert Phoenix
The Mughal sire's grave has been roused from the cinders of war
AUNOHITA MOJUMDAR
A few weeks ago, Kabul's Bagh-e-Babar, the resting place of the first Mughal emperor, hosted a sumptuous lunch. The invitees were the workmen on the site as well as the neighbours, residents of the adjoining hill. Sheep were slaughtered in the ritual manner, and kabab and pulau were feasted on. It was a traditional thanksgiving in the best Afghan tradition, offered by an Uzbek businessman who traces his lineage to Emperor Zahiruddin Mohammad Babar.
In a city bombed to smithereens, not a single historical monument remains intact, and restoration has to be only one of the many contending priorities in a country where people's very lives have been shattered. But the project for the restoration of the garden that Babar, a prince in exile, created for a sense of peace and belonging in a strange land is also one of the ways in which a war-ravaged city is now being restored to its people.
Even before the completion of the project, the gates of the garden are open to the people of Kabul. Families and groups of friends are flocking in to rest and picnic in this tranquil green oasis. Only residents of a city picking out their lives amidst the rubble and dust of 30 years of war can understand the importance of this space.
The garden, which is being restored by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC), together with Afghanistan's ministry of culture, the Kabul municipality and UNESCO, has tried to resuscitate traditional crafts by using techniques employed in the original building as well as those used widely in rural Afghanistan even now, so that Afghan craftsmen do not forget their traditions, says Jolyon Leslie, program manager, AKTC. To train the workmen, the trust went back to some of the ancient building techniques still preserved in Iran and India, and several Afghan master-craftsmen received training in India where these skills are still alive. The same techniques have been used in the restoration of Humayun's Tomb in Delhi. When AKTC took charge of the Bagh-e-Babar, it was a wilderness of tangled weeds, mine holes and bomb craters. The site had formed part of the frontline in fierce battles for control of Kabul, and taken a heavy share of the hits. Work has had to proceed with care, with plenty of live ammunition extracted from the site.
A 1994 picture of Haremsarai after its destruction by the mujahideen
The Bagh-e-Babar began as a natural wilderness spread over 11 hectares. Always longing for Fergana, the small kingdom in present-day Uzbekistan that he lost when he was 13, Babar tried to recreate its beauty wherever he went, building gardens in different parts of his growing empire, and introducing new plants and fruits to the regions he conquered. Unlike the highly stylised gardens of the later Mughal rulers, Babar's gardens were more natural pieces of land reclaimed from the wilderness and transformed with some ordered plots, flowers, fruit trees, and watered by streams. His attention to detail in the creation of his gardens is recorded in his memoirs, the Babarnama. "It is necessary to make geometrical grass plots and plant some flowers with nice colours and scents around the edges of the grass," Babar notes. But his favourites always remained his gardens in and around Kabul, the kingdom he conquered in 1504. His memoirs describe how in his garden in Kabul he had "a spring surrounded by stonework into a ten by ten pool, such that the four sides would form benches overlooking the grove of Judas trees. When the trees blossom, no place in the world equals it".On his death in 1530, Babar was first buried in Agra until, at the urging of his Afghan wife Bibi Mubarika, Humayun brought the remains to his garden in Kabul, fulfilling Babar's wishes.
In succeeding years, during visits to Kabul by later Mughal kings, including Shah Jahan, the Bagh-e-Babar became more structured and formal, with walls and water cascades added. More structures were built in subsequent years. The pavilion and the queen's palace were built by Amir Abdur Rahman Khan at the end of the 19th century but cut into the original design of the garden, including the central axis. The central water channel was disrupted. During the Soviet era, a swimming pool was built inside the garden as well as a greenhouse in an attempt to make it more of a public space. The garden suffered its worst blow in 1992-93 when bombing destroyed the water systems. Though these were restored in the mid-'90s, the original trees had died by then.
Babar’s tomb built in Indian marble by Indian craftsmen
While past archaeological surveys provided some information about the original garden, old foundations like that of the Shahjahani gate were discovered during the ongoing restoration, as was the central water channel. For the enclosure of Babar's grave, an 1852 drawing by Charles Mason which was found in the British Library was used to recreate the original. For this work, the marble was brought from India, and Indian craftsmen were used to create a replica, which was assembled in spring this year.
Sixteen species of plants mentioned in the original Babarnama have been replanted in the Bagh-e-Babar—planes, apricot, apples, peaches, quince, pomegranate, hawthorn, cherry and argowan (judas) trees. Traditional Afghan building techniques, including the use of hand-laid earth (pakhsa) and sun-dried bricks on stone foundations, have been used, as have their methods of mixing lime and making load-bearing arches.
But while tradition has been resurrected, the garden's restoration also reflects contemporary needs. The Shahjahani gate, for instance, will now become a public reception centre. The Soviet-era swimming pool, an eyesore in the original design, has been shifted just outside the perimeter and will provide valuable revenue for the garden. The queen's palace has been redeveloped—it has already hosted the performance of a Shakespeare play. As the Bagh-e-Babar regains its former glory, providing balm for the soul of this bruised and battered city, Babar can rest easy in his grave again.
___________________
http://www.outlookindia.com/fullprint.asp?choice=1&fodname=20060731&fname=Babar+Garden+%28F%29&sid=1
Heritage: Babar's tomb
Desert Phoenix
The Mughal sire's grave has been roused from the cinders of war
AUNOHITA MOJUMDAR
A few weeks ago, Kabul's Bagh-e-Babar, the resting place of the first Mughal emperor, hosted a sumptuous lunch. The invitees were the workmen on the site as well as the neighbours, residents of the adjoining hill. Sheep were slaughtered in the ritual manner, and kabab and pulau were feasted on. It was a traditional thanksgiving in the best Afghan tradition, offered by an Uzbek businessman who traces his lineage to Emperor Zahiruddin Mohammad Babar.
In a city bombed to smithereens, not a single historical monument remains intact, and restoration has to be only one of the many contending priorities in a country where people's very lives have been shattered. But the project for the restoration of the garden that Babar, a prince in exile, created for a sense of peace and belonging in a strange land is also one of the ways in which a war-ravaged city is now being restored to its people.
Even before the completion of the project, the gates of the garden are open to the people of Kabul. Families and groups of friends are flocking in to rest and picnic in this tranquil green oasis. Only residents of a city picking out their lives amidst the rubble and dust of 30 years of war can understand the importance of this space.
The garden, which is being restored by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC), together with Afghanistan's ministry of culture, the Kabul municipality and UNESCO, has tried to resuscitate traditional crafts by using techniques employed in the original building as well as those used widely in rural Afghanistan even now, so that Afghan craftsmen do not forget their traditions, says Jolyon Leslie, program manager, AKTC. To train the workmen, the trust went back to some of the ancient building techniques still preserved in Iran and India, and several Afghan master-craftsmen received training in India where these skills are still alive. The same techniques have been used in the restoration of Humayun's Tomb in Delhi. When AKTC took charge of the Bagh-e-Babar, it was a wilderness of tangled weeds, mine holes and bomb craters. The site had formed part of the frontline in fierce battles for control of Kabul, and taken a heavy share of the hits. Work has had to proceed with care, with plenty of live ammunition extracted from the site.
A 1994 picture of Haremsarai after its destruction by the mujahideen
The Bagh-e-Babar began as a natural wilderness spread over 11 hectares. Always longing for Fergana, the small kingdom in present-day Uzbekistan that he lost when he was 13, Babar tried to recreate its beauty wherever he went, building gardens in different parts of his growing empire, and introducing new plants and fruits to the regions he conquered. Unlike the highly stylised gardens of the later Mughal rulers, Babar's gardens were more natural pieces of land reclaimed from the wilderness and transformed with some ordered plots, flowers, fruit trees, and watered by streams. His attention to detail in the creation of his gardens is recorded in his memoirs, the Babarnama. "It is necessary to make geometrical grass plots and plant some flowers with nice colours and scents around the edges of the grass," Babar notes. But his favourites always remained his gardens in and around Kabul, the kingdom he conquered in 1504. His memoirs describe how in his garden in Kabul he had "a spring surrounded by stonework into a ten by ten pool, such that the four sides would form benches overlooking the grove of Judas trees. When the trees blossom, no place in the world equals it".On his death in 1530, Babar was first buried in Agra until, at the urging of his Afghan wife Bibi Mubarika, Humayun brought the remains to his garden in Kabul, fulfilling Babar's wishes.
In succeeding years, during visits to Kabul by later Mughal kings, including Shah Jahan, the Bagh-e-Babar became more structured and formal, with walls and water cascades added. More structures were built in subsequent years. The pavilion and the queen's palace were built by Amir Abdur Rahman Khan at the end of the 19th century but cut into the original design of the garden, including the central axis. The central water channel was disrupted. During the Soviet era, a swimming pool was built inside the garden as well as a greenhouse in an attempt to make it more of a public space. The garden suffered its worst blow in 1992-93 when bombing destroyed the water systems. Though these were restored in the mid-'90s, the original trees had died by then.
Babar’s tomb built in Indian marble by Indian craftsmen
While past archaeological surveys provided some information about the original garden, old foundations like that of the Shahjahani gate were discovered during the ongoing restoration, as was the central water channel. For the enclosure of Babar's grave, an 1852 drawing by Charles Mason which was found in the British Library was used to recreate the original. For this work, the marble was brought from India, and Indian craftsmen were used to create a replica, which was assembled in spring this year.
Sixteen species of plants mentioned in the original Babarnama have been replanted in the Bagh-e-Babar—planes, apricot, apples, peaches, quince, pomegranate, hawthorn, cherry and argowan (judas) trees. Traditional Afghan building techniques, including the use of hand-laid earth (pakhsa) and sun-dried bricks on stone foundations, have been used, as have their methods of mixing lime and making load-bearing arches.
But while tradition has been resurrected, the garden's restoration also reflects contemporary needs. The Shahjahani gate, for instance, will now become a public reception centre. The Soviet-era swimming pool, an eyesore in the original design, has been shifted just outside the perimeter and will provide valuable revenue for the garden. The queen's palace has been redeveloped—it has already hosted the performance of a Shakespeare play. As the Bagh-e-Babar regains its former glory, providing balm for the soul of this bruised and battered city, Babar can rest easy in his grave again.
___________________
http://www.outlookindia.com/fullprint.asp?choice=1&fodname=20060731&fname=Babar+Garden+%28F%29&sid=1
July 12, 2006
Optimism Gives Way to Despair in Afghanistan
Optimism Gives Way to Despair in Afghanistan
July 2006
Arab News
Four and a half years of governance with international support, a new Constitution, presidential elections and a new Parliament, over 4 million children back in school and 4.5 million refugees back in Afghanistan — these are the achievements that were being trotted out with some satisfaction by the Afghan government and the international community until a few months ago.
Yet, in recent weeks and months the word “failure” is creeping up with greater frequency as Afghanistan enters what is being described as its most challenging year since the ouster of the Taleban in late 2001.
Insecurity has increased, the drug eradication program appears headed for failure and the security sector reforms are not yielding the desired results. The government’s authority is severely circumscribed by both insecurity and lack of capacity; the NGOs and foreign governments are finding wider areas of the country out of bounds severely hampering their aid programs and there are increasing signs of friction between President Hamid Karzai and Afghanistan’s friends.
“The possibility of failure cannot be ruled out,” a UN diplomat told this writer in a private conversation this week adding that for the first time since 2001 “the failure of the entire process was a possibility”.
The views, which are being repeated by diplomats and experts seem to mark a long distance since the parliamentary elections a few months ago that were being projected as the cap to the successful completion of the first phase, the end of the Bonn process.
While some of Karzai’s foreign supporters are criticizing the Afghan government in public, the Afghan government too has been lashing out at the donor community with the president repeatedly calling for greater apportioning of donor funds to the government and change in the military strategy.
The changeover from the upbeat optimism of 2005 to the pessimism of mid-2006 seems remarkable. Have the reconstruction efforts in the country disintegrated in the last several months?
Have the anti-government forces including the Taleban received a shot in the arm that has turned them from remnants into a formidable foe? Or is it simply that the consequences of the intrinsic problems in the reconstruction efforts are beginning to make themselves felt?
The reconstruction of Afghanistan was not preceded by a peace agreement but by an invasion, points out an observer of Afghan politics. The American— led invasion paved the way for the ouster of the Taleban but the immediate needs of the US in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks overshadowed any discussions on subsequent nation— building. Faced with a power vacuum the government of Hamid Karzai was hurriedly installed but this led to the most perfunctory decision making process.
Having created its own quick blueprint for reconstruction, the world community and the Afghan government it installed have focused largely on fulfilling it, adopting short cuts and making compromises to meet the pre-selected benchmarks of success. If some people and governments are focusing their criticism on President Karzai for not having delivered, they must also take a great share of the blame for having opted for individualism over institution building.
Many of the compromises in the past few years have been made with a view to keeping Hamid Karzai in power and in a position of strength on the assumption that there is no one else capable of delivering. The result has been marginalization of some important political factions in decision— making and the weakening of the polity and state institutions.
In the run-up to the parliamentary elections, for example, rules were changed to keep political parties out of the fray. A process of vetting the antecedents of candidates undertaken with the professed intention of weeding out criminals satisfied no one and the process of national reconciliation has lacked both logic and transparency.
With the exception of some NGOs with long-term commitments to the country, the international donor programs have largely concentrated on clocking up numbers and deadlines as a measure of their success in rebuilding the country. This ensures impatience with the far slower process of capacity building and involving local community that would have led to a greater degree of stability.
The result has been a huge gap between the high expectations built up after the ouster of the Taleban and the actual delivery, a fertile ground for breeding dissatisfaction and the lack of support to state institutions, bringing Afghanistan to a critical situation.
________________________
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=85119&d=10&m=7&y=2006
July 2006
Arab News
Four and a half years of governance with international support, a new Constitution, presidential elections and a new Parliament, over 4 million children back in school and 4.5 million refugees back in Afghanistan — these are the achievements that were being trotted out with some satisfaction by the Afghan government and the international community until a few months ago.
Yet, in recent weeks and months the word “failure” is creeping up with greater frequency as Afghanistan enters what is being described as its most challenging year since the ouster of the Taleban in late 2001.
Insecurity has increased, the drug eradication program appears headed for failure and the security sector reforms are not yielding the desired results. The government’s authority is severely circumscribed by both insecurity and lack of capacity; the NGOs and foreign governments are finding wider areas of the country out of bounds severely hampering their aid programs and there are increasing signs of friction between President Hamid Karzai and Afghanistan’s friends.
“The possibility of failure cannot be ruled out,” a UN diplomat told this writer in a private conversation this week adding that for the first time since 2001 “the failure of the entire process was a possibility”.
The views, which are being repeated by diplomats and experts seem to mark a long distance since the parliamentary elections a few months ago that were being projected as the cap to the successful completion of the first phase, the end of the Bonn process.
While some of Karzai’s foreign supporters are criticizing the Afghan government in public, the Afghan government too has been lashing out at the donor community with the president repeatedly calling for greater apportioning of donor funds to the government and change in the military strategy.
The changeover from the upbeat optimism of 2005 to the pessimism of mid-2006 seems remarkable. Have the reconstruction efforts in the country disintegrated in the last several months?
Have the anti-government forces including the Taleban received a shot in the arm that has turned them from remnants into a formidable foe? Or is it simply that the consequences of the intrinsic problems in the reconstruction efforts are beginning to make themselves felt?
The reconstruction of Afghanistan was not preceded by a peace agreement but by an invasion, points out an observer of Afghan politics. The American— led invasion paved the way for the ouster of the Taleban but the immediate needs of the US in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks overshadowed any discussions on subsequent nation— building. Faced with a power vacuum the government of Hamid Karzai was hurriedly installed but this led to the most perfunctory decision making process.
Having created its own quick blueprint for reconstruction, the world community and the Afghan government it installed have focused largely on fulfilling it, adopting short cuts and making compromises to meet the pre-selected benchmarks of success. If some people and governments are focusing their criticism on President Karzai for not having delivered, they must also take a great share of the blame for having opted for individualism over institution building.
Many of the compromises in the past few years have been made with a view to keeping Hamid Karzai in power and in a position of strength on the assumption that there is no one else capable of delivering. The result has been marginalization of some important political factions in decision— making and the weakening of the polity and state institutions.
In the run-up to the parliamentary elections, for example, rules were changed to keep political parties out of the fray. A process of vetting the antecedents of candidates undertaken with the professed intention of weeding out criminals satisfied no one and the process of national reconciliation has lacked both logic and transparency.
With the exception of some NGOs with long-term commitments to the country, the international donor programs have largely concentrated on clocking up numbers and deadlines as a measure of their success in rebuilding the country. This ensures impatience with the far slower process of capacity building and involving local community that would have led to a greater degree of stability.
The result has been a huge gap between the high expectations built up after the ouster of the Taleban and the actual delivery, a fertile ground for breeding dissatisfaction and the lack of support to state institutions, bringing Afghanistan to a critical situation.
________________________
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=85119&d=10&m=7&y=2006
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