The Afghan conundrum

New Indian Express

Friday July 25 2008

Aunohita Mojumdar



“Who is left in the Indian embassy?” Khalid wanted to know three days after the brutal suicide attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul that killed 46 persons on the spot, five of them inside the embassy. Khalid works with a fledgling independent Afghan news agency, Pajhwok. It is located a block away from the embassy and had also suffered from the blast with torn limbs landing in the garden flung by the impact of the ferocious explosion. When I told him I had just walked from the embassy that was fully staffed and almost returning to full functionality, Khalid was shocked. He had expected most of the embassy staff to have been relocated to safe hideouts.

Khalid’s astonishment was not surprising. The Indian embassy’s decision to dig in its feet and withstand the shock waves runs counter to the rules the expatriate community in Afghanistan lives by. Be they diplomatic missions, international institutions, NGOs or private companies, spiralling insecurity has led most of them to barricade themselves behind barbed wires, high walls and gun toting security personnel. Enormous resources are often spent on ensuring that the international community that is rebuilding the country has minimal contact with the Afghans it is here to help. Conflict scarred Kabul is a tale of two cities. Those who live and work behind the barbed wire fences (including a small section of the Afghan elite) and those who are kept out.

As an Indian freelancing in Kabul I fall somewhere between two stools. I have no guards or barricades but my international identity allows me access to the houses of those who use them. My taxi is stopped on the road at check points, more often perhaps because I am brown-skinned and have no armed escorts, while large SUVs, especially those carrying westerners are often driven through with no checks. I don’t earn the dollar salaries that other foreigners do, but I am better off than most Afghans. Yet, my earnings are clearly insufficient in a country which still has no manufacturing capacity and where the bulk of goods and services for middle class existence are imported, putting them beyond the reach of the middle class. For example house rents are between $1500 and $3000 a month and several international institutions do not baulk at paying $20,000 or more a month. The salaries they pay for translators ($50 to $100 per day) and drivers ($50 per day) ensures that I cannot afford either.

Costs apart the most difficult thing about living here is being a woman because of the scant acceptance of women in public space and an extreme form of patriarchy. For example, half the women in Afghanistan’s largest prison outside Kabul are there for moral crimes, many of them in jail for leaving home without permission even when they have clearly been victims of horrific abuse, for instance girls as young as seven and nine who run away from forced ‘marriages’. Even for foreigners such as myself, there is little understanding amongst many Afghans of women who are working away from their homes and families and an assumption of immorality and ‘availability’is the norm rather than the exception.

There are other local conditions which make it difficult here. We get electric power for a couple of hours a day at the best of times,while in peak winter this drops to two hours every fourth day. While in summer this limits the use of electronic gadgets like lights, fans, laptops, TV and fridge, in winter it can be very depressing with limited daylight hours and temperatures which can drop to between minus 15 to minus 20 with only primitive heating systems.

Personally the dogged persistence in staying here has to do with the fascination of watching a country being built from scratch — literally and figuratively and a certain insistence on getting an Indian or even regional voice to report on a country that is usually covered only by the western media and to report on the substantive changes rather than the day to day.

As a reporter I record a very mixed picture. Since 2001 the living conditions of many have improved. Six million children are back in school, the government claims to have provided access to healthcare to 86 per cent of its citizens, 12,200 km of roads have been renovated, five million Afghan refugees have returned to the country and the private sector has established telecom connectivity widely. A parliament has been established, presidential elections held and a new Constitution voted on.

Yet, food insecurity is increasing (the UN estimates nearly half the population to be food insecure or borderline), the returning refugees are being forced back from Pakistan and Iran without access to homes or employment. Children, especially girls, are dropping out of school in the secondary stage, the quality of education is being diluted in the race for numbers and Afghanistan’s maternal mortality ratio of 1,600 deaths per 1,00,000 live births, one of the highest in the world, has shown no significant change. The disarmament of illegal armed groups has not been successful and the rebuilding of the national army and police has been slow and tortured.

Quick implementation cycles of the international donors has meant high dependency on external expertise and an estimated 40 per cent of the aid money has returned to donor countries. Not so with Indian aid. While many of the western nations come with the solutions, India knows the similarity of complexities, of living within contradictions and multiplicities, something that Afghanistan contains in abundance, helping the aid go much further.

Though not a traditional donor, India is the sixth largest bilateral donor in Afghanistan. Its funding is not linked to the annual Indian budget, thus allowing time and space for the execution of projects.A small fraction of the aid is spent on salaries, making it extremely cost-effective.

The bulk of India’s aid, $750 million pledged till now, is being spent on building infrastructure: power projects including transmission and hydel power plants and roads in some of the most difficult areas of the country. The most important asset however is the rebuilding of human resources. Contrary to the normal trend which sees successive generations becoming more educated, in Afghanistan today many parents are better educated than their children with 30 years of conflict having decimated the educational opportunities. thirty Indian civil servants are now deputed to Afghan ministries for capacity building and two vocational training centres have been set up. Most of these projects require much greater hands on interaction of Indians with the Afghans, a risk that the Indian government has estimated is worth taking.

Certainly the violent incident certainly did emphasise the insecurities of Afghanistan, but it also reinforced visibly, just how much Indians are needed and loved here in this country, strengthening the will to stay on