October 26th, 2024
Dear friends,
I am now back from Afghanistan. From the beginning to the end of my stay there, my eyes were itchy and watery, I often had to cough and my nose was running. It turned out that this was because we had cleaned up our neglected garden. Our guard dog there didn’t make it easy. In spring, fences were put up to separate the dog from the flowers. Then we planted. One plant grew particularly vigorously – the angel’s trumpet. Google tells us that this plant is very poisonous. The faint sweet smell it gives off is also poisonous. It permeated our entire living area. Shortly before I left, I realized that I had slept under a mosquito net, as I always do in September, but that there were no mosquitoes in the house. I was never hungry and probably didn’t eat much. On the return journey, I collapsed at Kabul airport and got a laceration on the back of my head. There is a competent emergency medical service there, so I was able to travel. At Frankfurt airport, I didn’t manage to place my two suitcases on a descending escalator. I landed upside down between my luggage. The airport staff helped me to get back on my feet.
We continued our activities during my stay in Afghanistan. Our lessons are very popular. The new walnut tree plantations in Dzadzi-Maidan have just been approved today. Every day our staff went to the Ministry of Agriculture and explained to civil servants why we were doing what and how. One official complained that we had not planned any channels for watering the nut trees. He had no idea how heavy the rainfall is in this province bordering the Indus Valley.
Officials like this dominate the ministries in the capital. They prevent many sensible initiatives. Our midwives work in the Schindowal district. They advise pregnant women and provide newborns and their parents with food and medication. Our midwives have one foot in prison. They are not actually allowed to work. We submitted an application in the spring. But the Ministry of Health is still not in a position to approve our work or not.
In contrast, the administration of the Ministry of Education is quite active. The Ministry is examining the work of all aid organizations. It turned out that many organizations had claimed far too high numbers of classes and pupils. Especially after the Taliban invasion, many foreigners had left the country and Afghan employees had plundered the bank accounts of their organizations. The Ministry of Education has now visited all school classes run by aid organizations to get an idea of what they are teaching. A decision will be made in the spring as to which organizations will be allowed to continue working. We are looking forward to this calmly. Everyone was satisfied with our lessons.
Overall, the officialdom that King Amanullah introduced in Afghanistan over a century ago has also prevailed under the Taliban rule. It has survived the monarchy, the “republic” under President Daud, the rule of the communists, the civil war and is now also enforcing the rule of the Islamists. This rule by bureaucrats is not committed to the common good. The Afghan official is convinced that he is called upon to regulate all life in his country. In contrast, there are hardly any rules that limit the arbitrariness of officials. Nevertheless, the Taliban are not afraid to punish and dismiss particularly corrupt civil servants, including those who belong to their movement. A high turnover of civil servants shows that the Taliban are trying to fill positions as efficiently as possible. The difference between officials in the ministries and provincial or district officials is striking. Local officials are closer to the action. They must expect to be called to account by the population. Ministerial officials in distant Kabul do not have this problem. Their highest duty is to flaunt their sovereignty.
The Taliban leadership is responsible for the basic outline of policy. They encouraged opponents of the war to help rebuild the country. Ethnic groups should not be discriminated against. Such reasonable approaches often find their limits in personal vindictiveness and old enmities. Overall, however, they helped to reassure people and gain acceptance of Taliban rule. Leading Taliban and the majority of their supporters were in favor of an efficient education policy and constructive cooperation with Western countries. However, in 2021, the Taliban leadership appointed Mullah Haibatullah Akhondzadah, a previously not very prominent official, as emir. An emir is not only the head of state, but also the leader of the faithful, i.e. also the religious leader.
Shortly after his appointment, the emir shocked the population and many Taliban with his decision to only allow girls to attend school up to the sixth grade and to ban women from studying and severely restrict their professional activities. The Minister of Defense and the Minister of Interior urged the Emir to reverse the decision. The Minister of the Interior launched an advertising campaign for school education in some provinces. But Emir Haibatullah stuck to his decree and his opponents avoided open confrontation. Open opposition to the Emir’s order would probably have torn the Taliban movement apart.
This summer, the Emir followed up. Music was banned. Women are not allowed to speak loudly in public, where they are only allowed to move around fully veiled and accompanied by men anyway. Believers are not allowed to cultivate friendships with non-believers. The Emir ruled that photos and films of living creatures are forbidden in Islam. This time, too, open contradiction was avoided. Even the vast majority of Taliban do not intend to abide by their leader’s commandments, which are based on his insights. These are in stark contrast to the reality of life. Every Afghan has a cell phone, for example, which he uses to take photos and videos.
The Emir’s orders will probably be ignored more and more. This means that there will soon be hardly any binding laws in Afghanistan. Such a prospect is not all good news.
How does OFARIN see itself in this constellation? We are dealing with the politics of the Taliban and the bureaucracy. Dealing with the bureaucracy is obviously a long-term task. OFARIN sees no other option than to come to terms with the demands of the bureaucracy. OFARIN’s Afghan colleagues show a great deal of patience, much more than would be possible for me personally. They patiently deal with ever new bureaucratic impositions. But this is the only way to gradually establish objective, constructive cooperation. The civil servants must see that we are making an effort to meet their requirements. Only when they experience that there is generally nothing wrong with our work will they assume that it is not worth the effort to check every little thing at OFARIN. Nor should there ever be any suspicion that OFARIN pays bribes to avoid lengthy inspection procedures. Once you have paid a bribe, you will be subject to any number of further audits. In the long term, an aid organization makes itself immune to difficulties with the bureaucracy by gaining a reputation for running successful projects.
The Ministry of Education uses a thorough investigation to gain an overview of the quality of the aid organizations‘ activities. If it is reasonably honest, that is a great advantage for us. The planting of 33,500 nut trees in Khost in the winter of 2023/24 has made a big impression on the agricultural departments in Khost province. These are the first steps.
The influence of the Taliban’s policies, particularly those of Emir Haibatullah, are not easy to predict. Here too, very good projects are certainly a prerequisite for good acceptance by the political forces. However, there is a very real danger that OFARIN’s work will violate the emir’s decrees. Our employees will, of course, photograph newly planted nut trees to document their work. But nut trees are living beings. If you are unlucky, a dedicated religious policeman will intervene and cause incalculable difficulties. In particular, the expected gradual disregard of the Emir’s rigorous regulations will require a good adjustment. We expect that the regulations on the participation of women and the teaching of girls will be increasingly disregarded. Of course, we want to make use of the resulting freedom for our female colleagues and students. But it will always be a delicate matter of judgment as to how far we can go.
In the garden of our Kabul office, all the angel trumpets, even their roots, were dug up and burned. We will be traveling to Afghanistan again in the first half of November.
Kind regards,
Peter Schwittek.