Afghanistan: A Dialogue

M. Majid KhanLinell DavisLearning in Post-conflict SituationsMay 2001

The Universal and the Particular

Majid: I enrolled in this course because of my interest in that region, Kashmir, Afghanistan and

Pakistan. That whole region is really suffering because of constant war. We may not see an end

to this conflict in the near future. Whether it is post-conflict or real conflict remains to be seen.

The second thing is I think we should work on a project to improve the basic educational

infrastructure in a way that is in line with local needs. It should help them to understand why we

want them to get education.

Linell: It is my idea that in the class discussions and readings we get universal principles such as

gender issues, the needs and resilience of children, and the need for healing. But you have to

apply these universal principles in a particular situation. You, Majid, are the one who has more

knowledge of the particular situation since you come from that part of the world. You have

personal knowledge of those particulars. You and I by working together have the opportunity to

apply the universal to the particular.

Majid: Yes, that is very much needed. It is the only way to get to a solution.

When we started out we thought we would design a project, and this goal shows up in our

dialogue. We did not do that. What we did was have a conversation and then search for resources

to increase our understanding of both universal principles and the realities of the local situation

in Afghanistan. We were the learners in this project. We present our findings in the form of an

annotated bibliography organized according to the topics that we discussed in our dialogue. We

leave it this way so that it can be a resource to others who want to explore issues of post-conflict

learning in this particular setting.

In our dialogue we first discuss some of the characteristics of Afghan society and culture and

then we discuss the conflict. To conclude we explore possibilities for post-conflict learning in

relation to three themes from the course: healing, gender issues, and social capital.

Related Sources

Dirlik, Arif. Our Ways of Knowing: Globalization . . . The End of Universalism? Keynote address for the conference "New Directions in Area Studies." University of Massachusetts/Amherst. April 26, 2001.

Professor Dirlik spoke about the apparent paradox of fragmentation in an era of

globalization. He points out that Western ways of knowing, Western epistemologies, are

under attack both in the Euro-American centers of the globalized economy and in many

other places around the world. He cautions against falling into either economic or cultural

reductionism. We should not think that Western or non-Western traditions are

monolithic, that there is one set of Confucian values, Western values or Islamic values.

The author sees it as a mistake to identify whole peoples with certain symbols despite

differences among them. When processes and practices that we identify as modern are

adopted in non-western countries, they are adapted to the local culture or cultures.

Eisenstadt, S. N. 2000. Multiple Modernities. Daedalus, Winter 2000 129

The author argues that Western patterns of modernity are not the only "authentic"

modernities. Today we are seeing an ideological conflict between universal and

pluralistic visions of modernity. The particularistic view accepts the existence of different

values, different rationalities, different ways of knowing while the universalistic vision

conflates different values and especially notions of rational thought in a totalistic way.

The tension between the universal and the particular is evident in much that is written

about Afghanistan today. In Afghanistan fundamentalism is aligned against western

modernism. It is necessary to find alternatives to these polarities, modernism with local

characteristics.

Linell: I agree but the situation is very much in conflict now. We should discuss the conflict in

terms of the local situation. You know much more about that than I do. What are the things we

should keep in mind as we plan a project?

The religious context

Majid: The first thing is that we should look at who is now in power and who is now the ruling

elite. We know that the Taliban are supreme and they control 90% of the country. If we enter

Afghanistan we have to be acceptable to them. They belong to a certain school of thought called

the Deobandi. It is orthodox and very fundamentalist. This group goes back to the 1860s to

Deoband, which is in India. In 1860 they established a religious school there. Now we have

come to the point where the students of those religious schools are ruling Afghanistan.

Linell: What is unique about the teachings or approach of the Deobandi school of Islam?

Majid: The special thing is that they are very orthodox. They emphasize Islamic teachings, which

are very fundamentalist. They think that women should not be allowed to work or educate

themselves, that women have no rights. They think that the solution to conflict is jihad. They

want to fight. They believe that dialogue is not the best solution. They are extremists. The

prophet Mohammed said that to seek knowledge is the right of every man and woman. At the

time, he said that you have to seek knowledge, you should go to China. In those times China was

very far from the Middle East.

Linell: So he was saying, do whatever you have to do, go as far as you have to go, to get that

knowledge.

Majid: Yes. He said that it is the duty of each man and woman to seek knowledge. But the

Taliban is taking different things from Islamic teachings.

Linell: I understand that because it also happens in Christianity. There are different groups who

interpret the teachings of the religion in different ways. One of things we want to keep in mind as

we plan a project is that this is an Islamic country. As you were saying, the teachings of Islam

put gaining knowledge and education in a very high place.

Majid: Education has a very high place. The Prophet Mohammed, though he was himself

illiterate, he rated knowledge very high. He used to sit with people to educate them. That was his

way to create awareness He was himself an orphan. He stood against the social evils of his time.

I think that was how he got his support. In those times in Arab society people would kill their

daughters as soon as they were born. He stood against those social evils.

Linell: He was a progressive. He was trying to improve social conditions.

Related Sources

Shorish-Shamley, Zieba. 1985. Women's position, role, and rights in Islam. Unpublished Dissertation, University of Ilinois at Urbana-Champaign 1985: 48-50

Passages from the Qur'an and the Hadiths (tradition) show that Islam supports education,

property rights, employment, and human rights for women. It is not necessary to define

the situation in terms of a conflict between Islam and the secular state. There is sufficient

basis for gender justice in the teachings of Islam. Learning initiatives should take

advantage of this cultural resource.

Butt, J. 1997. The Taliban Phenomenon. In Essential Field Guide to Afghanistan. Media Action International. Available at: http://www.mediaaction.org/pubcn/efgafghn/jbutt.htm

The author describes the background and development of the Taliban movement. The

Taliban was born in the refugee camps of Pakistan after the Soviet invasion. Many are

Afghan orphans who were sheltered, fed and instructed in religious schools with the

specific purpose of training fighters for war in Afghanistan. Until the rise of the Taliban,

Islam in Afghanistan was not fundamentalist. The article has much useful information,

including the fact that the Taliban make a distinction between an action being permissible

(ruskhah) and honorable (azeemah). It is permissible to take a life for a life, but the

honorable thing to do is to forgive. We can see that even in the philosophy of the

fundamentalist Taliban it is possible to find resources for healing.

The ethnic context

Linell: In connection with the issue of the Taliban, I understand that there are different ethnic

groups in Afghanistan. It is not just a religious struggle between a conservative and a more

progressive form of Islam.

Majid: According to what I know all these areas that are now part of Afghanistan were brought

together in the 1730s when Ahmed Shah Abdali took over and made it one country. From that

period until now Afghanistan has been made up of different ethnic groups, Tajik, Uzbek,

Pushtuns and Hazara, they are Shiia Muslims. There are few ethnic groups. We heard that the

Tajiks, like Ahmed Shah Masoud

Linell: Yes, he is the leader of the National Alliance that is fighting the Taliban in the north.

Majid: These Tajiks were always among the ruling elite. They are taken as intellectuals, literary

people, more enlightened and more accepting of changes.

Linell: Maybe we could say that the Tajiks had a more secular orientation.

Majid: Exactly and they were always in the ruling elite but after the 1979 Soviet invasion all

these groups came together and fought against the Soviets. In the early 1990s things went in their

favor, although initially Rabbani was made president. He was a Tajik and Masoud was the

defense minister. He was a Tajik. Then maybe they were not accepting direction from Islamabad.

Pakistan had always played a major role in Afghanistan since 1979, so they wanted to have a

government of their own choice. The Pakistan government and the Pakistan military wanted to

have a government of their own choice. But when Rabbani and Masoud came to power they

started to have an independent stance. Those policies were not acceptable to Pakistani rulers,

maybe to Pakistani friends. They started on a new program. At that time there were many

hundreds of schools in NWFP (Northwest frontier province of Pakistan) run by Deobandi

ulemas, Deobandi religious scholars. At that time the majority of students in those schools were

Afghans. We know at that time there were more than 3 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan

Linell: As a result of the war with the Soviet Union?

Majid: Exactly. The children of Afghan refugees were getting a religious education from the

Deobandi religious schools. The Pakistan government or religious parties in Pakistan started

funding the Afghan Taliban. Taliban is from an Arabic word that means student. Taliban means

students. They got outside funding and they learned how to use weapons. In 1993-4, Pakistan

was not satisfied with Rabbani and Massoud, so they started funding the Taliban. The Taliban

made inroads in Afghanistan and within a year they controlled almost 70% of Afghanistan. They

had enough funds, which they used to buy the local commanders. These are the old values of the

Afghan people. They always obey their commanders, the leader of a clan.

Linell: You are talking about a tribal social system. There is a leader and people are loyal to that

leader.

Majid: Exactly. The Taliban started buying those leaders. Eventually they became the supreme

rulers of Afghanistan. Now we have to take into consideration that the Taliban were brought up

and they were taught in just one school of thought. They do not have much awareness of Islam

and they don't have much knowledge about the rest of the world. A person who is getting

education at a religious school, and those schools are focused on one theme, they became the

rulers of the country.

Linell: We should also keep in mind that the educated elite of the country left. During the Soviet

conflict and this later conflict with the Masoud government, the more western style educated

elite left the country. The people remaining are the working class.

Majid: Lower middle class. When Rabbani and Masoud came to power they accepted those

Soviet officials that were working in Kabul and they asked them to work with them. The people

who had left earlier came back to Afghanistan to work because Rabbani and Massoud were more

accommodating.

Linell: More modernist.

Majid: They had that personal charisma to attract people, but when the Taliban came to power,

you are right, all the enlightened intellectual and liberal people left Afghanistan.

Linell: I read recently that a high percentage of the population is no longer living in the country.

Some are in refugee camps in Pakistan and Iran and others have gone to other countries. The

people who remain have not had much education. And the Taliban come from that group.

Perhaps they are from village families.

Majid: Many of them are orphans from the Soviet war. They had no one to support them and

through the religious schools they got education plus food. It was free there.

Linell: What is the relationship between the Taliban and these ethnic groups?

Majid: Talibans are basically Pashtuns. They are the majority population of Afghanistan. They

were part of the previous ruling elite but the Pashtuns who were liberal, enlightened and

intellectual were always in Kabul, the capital. When the Taliban took over they gathered support

from the Pashtun clans, Pashtun tribes, and now the Taliban government, I am sure, is more than

90% Pashtun. After that they conquered the Tajik and Uzbek dominated areas like Mazar Sharif

and northern Afghanistan. They subdued the local Hazaras, Tajiks and Uzbeks and they have

made them part of their government structure, but in many instances we have seen that the other

ethnic groups do not accept the Taliban. The Taliban are more inclined to favor the Pashtu

speaking group.

Linell: This is not an uncommon situation, but we should remember that this has not been an

ethnic conflict up to now. If the conflict continues even longer it could become that. People are

loyal to their own group whether it is religious, regional, linguistic or tribal. When I was in

Tajikistan the conflict there had to do with regions. They have the same ethnic groups there as in

Afghanistan, but the conflict was not between ethnic groups but between regions. Now people

from the southern region of Tajikistan hold the presidency and people complain that all the good

jobs are going to people from that region. I think that loyalty to one's own group is the way

things are in that region. We don't have to accept it in the sense of endorsing it as the way things

should be, but we do need to recognize it as a fact.

Majid: It was always there and it is still there.

Related sources

Magnus, R.H.& E. Naby. 1995. Afghanistan and Central Asia: mirrors and models. Asian Survey, July 1995 35:7 605-621.

This is an excellent article about the historic relationships between the peoples of the

Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union and Afghanistan. There has always

been a mix of ethnic groups in Afghanistan that lived and worked together. The conflict

has given rise to tensions among ethnic groups but divisions are not primarily along

ethnic lines.

International context

Linell: I understand that Russia, China and the United States are all opposed to the Taliban

government.

Majid: And its immediate neighbor Iran is also opposed to that ruling regime. They are interested

in a broad-based government for Afghanistan. Massoud has been to Europe recently and he got

widespread support from the European parliament. He has always been a strong French ally. He

gets a lot of positive reporting by the French media. Things might change in the future. And now

Dostam who was the governor of Mazar-I- Sharif when the Taliban took over, is a staunch

socialist supporter when the Soviets took over, and then he left Afghanistan and went to Turkey,

which also has a strong interest in that region. Turkey also is in support of a broad-based

government. Turkey and Iran are two friends of Pakistan. They, and even China, are asking

Pakistan again and again to stop support for the Taliban. They are asking Pakistan to sit down

with opposition groups to go for a broad-based government there. Pakistan is even interested in

becoming a part of the Shanghai Five, but this was opposed by the Central Asian states because

of Pakistan's support of Afghanistan.

Linell: China supported Pakistan's membership in the Shanghai Five. The former Soviet

republics of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakstan and Khirgizstan opposed Pakistan's participation.

Majid: Pakistan is facing huge international pressure to accept the realities and stop support to

Afghanistan. It might happen in the future.

Linell: There seems to be a growing international consensus around this issue.

Majid: Yes. Pakistan is facing severe economic problems. In order to receive aid and loans from

international agencies it has to accept international demands.

Linell: Even though the situation is terrible now, it could be moving toward a settlement. It is a

good time for us to be thinking about the possible post-conflict situation.

Majid: In the near future, I can see that, maybe within three, four or five years. There will be

loans and aid to Afghanistan to build up its educational infrastructure, because everything has

been ruined. There is nothing left.

Related Sources

Malkin, L. 2000. Reflections in a Distorted Mirror. World Policy Journal, Fall 2000 17:3 51 The author describes how Afghanistan became embroiled in Cold war politics in the

1970's and relates this back to the Great Game of the nineteenth century between Russia

and Great Britain. In the process "anyone who touched that tragic country became a

prisoner of someone's rhetoric." The US government was committed to triumphing over

the Soviets even if it cost every last Afghan life, while the Soviets became trapped by

commitments to Afghanistan as a client state. The US CIA began funding opposition

groups at $30 million and Saudi Arabia matched that amount.

Online Center for Afghan Studies. Available at: http:// WWW.AFGHAN-

POLITICS.ORG

This web site publishes articles and links to other web sites about Afghanistan. Among

the topics covered are economy, foreign affairs, history, human rights, who is who, and

women's rights.

The economic context

Linell: We can talk about what has been ruined, about the effects of this conflict on the country

as a whole and the population. First, there are all the people who are in refugee centers in Iran

and Pakistan. A further problem is that in the last year Afghanistan has experienced a severe

drought. There has not been enough food. A year ago people were returning to Afghanistan from

refugee camps in Pakistan, but then drought forced them and even more people to return to

refugee camps. They couldn't feed themselves at home. Another thing that aggravates the

situation is the way the agricultural economy has been disrupted by the opium business. People

are growing opium to support the activities of both armies. The food crops have been replaced by

opium.

Majid: Opium has replaced food crops because they think they can earn much more by selling

opium. It is a lucrative business in Afghanistan because there is an open border with Pakistan.

Then they have a long border with Iran and with the Central Asian republics.

Linell: They have a long border with Tajikistan through a very mountainous area, which is very

hard to control even though the Russian army guards the frontier. So, traditional agriculture has

been disrupted by the war, not just because war interferes with farming and other economic

activities, but also because the whole economic base of the country has changed to support the

conflict.

Majid: It is taken as an easy solution to their problems, to grow poppies and to get an instant

reward in money. They are going for this easy solution instead of going for long term policies.

Linell: If we can anticipate an end of the conflict in the next few years, the challenge will be re-

establishing the economy from the roots. That is going to be a difficult job. I was also reading

that some of the traditional practices dealing with money and taxes, for instance the Islamic tax

of Zakat has also been turned to support the drug economy.

Majid: Zakat is for everybody to be paid before Ramadan Before the start of Ramadan

everybody who has money is supposed to pay 2.5% of that money for Zakat. That is a tax on

money. If you have gold or silver or anything of great value you are supposed to pay a tax on

that.

Linell: An additional tax on real property, any property of exceptional value.

Majid: Yes. If you have agricultural land or livestock, then there is an Islamic tax

Linell: This system that might work very well when the society is at peace has been disrupted

too. Those taxes are collected by the ruling regime and used to further the conflict rather than

being used for their original purpose, which was to meet the needs of the population. Weren't

these taxes traditionally used to support education and to give aid to poor people? That tax was

previously used to meet the social welfare needs of the community, but now that is not

happening. There is no money going for health or education.

Majid: Another situation that aggravates the troubles of Afghanistan is that it is a land locked

country. It has no other source of income. It has no ports; it has no other opportunities to earn

money. They must use indigenous resources to make a living, to generate enough income to run

the country. You are right that they have ruined every section of society and particularly

agriculture, because agriculture is the backbone of Afghanistan's economy. They have gone for

easy solutions and easy solutions have ruined their economy. It will take them years to rebuild

that system.

Linell: What we can do now is to develop some ideas and do some preliminary planning for

when the conflict ends. I don't know what we can do under present conditions. What do you

think?

Majid: Even now, even though we know that the Taliban are not accommodating, but still UN

agencies are working inside Afghanistan. They are working on humanitarian relief and

education. Even under these conditions we can do a project.

Linell: Yes. CARE has a program of schooling.

Majid: Which is going very well. It is getting a lot of attention from the local population. People

are sending their kids to school.

Linell: We can think about it in two ways. First, what can be done under present conditions and

second, what would need to be done when the conflict ends or at least decreases, when

something changes in the political situation. What can we do at the present time?

Majid: I think we should focus on non-formal education. Implementing formal schooling would

be very hard because we would need structures and schools and trained teachers and written

materials.

Linell: And we don't have those things.

Majid: Non-formal education means a project based on their old values and their traditional ways

of making money, so introducing those skills again and motivating people to restart those things.

Linell: One thing that I notice when I do the readings for this class including documents from the

UN and from the NGO community is that they make statements about women, about children

and human rights. I have the feeling that that approach needs to be balanced with an approach

that looks at the local situation and people's traditional ways of arranging their lives including

their values. What do you think?

Majid: Exactly. Very right.

Linell: For instance, when we are talking about education we have to understand the way

education has been handled in the society, for instance the use of that tax we spoke about and

other social practices regarding education.

Related sources

REACH (Radio Education for Afghan Children) More information is available at: http://www.mediaaction.org/mai/projects/projects.htm

It is estimated that 70-80% of the Afghan population listens to the BBC soap opera "New

Home, New Life." Up to 80 themes ranging from landmine awareness, cultural heritage

and drug production to personal hygiene, safe birthing practices and environmental issues

are addressed through the medium of an entertaining radio drama. Topics are discussed at

monthly meetings with aid agency representatives. Three episodes are broadcast a week

in both Pashtu and Persian, repeated three times, including a two-hour omnibus edition

specially aimed at women and timed to coincide with Friday prayers when their husbands

are at the mosque. The broadcasts are reinforced by a monthly cartoon magazine which

includes a section entitled "Where there is no school", aimed at teaching basic reading

and writing skills.

UN Report on Humanitarian Activities in Afghanistan. Feb 2001. Information available at: www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/vCD/Afghanistan?OpenDocument&StartKey=Afghanistan&ExpandView

The warring parties have agreed to a cease-fire for one week in April to permit children

to be immunized against polio. Two pasta production facilities have been established in

centers for internally displaced persons in Herat under a food-for-work program. The

Comprehensive Disabled Afghans Program is operating in Kandahar. Mine clearance

teams cleared agricultural land near Kandahar and over 1,000 people in the southern

region of Afghanistan received mine awareness training.

Community Organisation for Primary Education (COPE) CARE International. Information available at: http://www.careinternational.org.uk/countries/afghanistan.html

Activities of InterAction Members in Afghanistan. Reports of international NGOs

operating in Afghanistan. The agencies working in Afghanistan include CARE, Church

World Service, International Rescue Committee, Mercy Corps International, Medicins

Sans Frontieres, and Save the Children Information about specific agency's activities is

available at: http://www.interaction.org/situation/afghanistan.html

Swedish Committee for Afghanistan. Report February 2001. More information available at: http://www.db.idpproject.org/Sites/idpSurvey.nsf/357a5774361a2868c125679300832804/e0ca1997f392acbcc12569f20056d6a9?OpenDocument

SCA set up a program to counter malnutrition in Takhar and Badakhshan. They are

providing health assistance in several areas. Through their 13 clinics SCA is providing

supplementary feeding, measles vaccinations, repairing of wells and pumps, education

for IDPs and distribution of blankets and hygiene articles.

Goodhand, Jonathan. 1999. From holy war to opium war? A case study of the opium economy in north eastern Afghanistan. IDPM, University of Manchester. http://idpm.man.ac.uk/idpm/idpm_dp.htm#peace

This article is based on a study of a village economy. The shift from wheat to opium

cultivation and from the livestock trade to the opium trade has occurred very rapidly. A

large number of people now have an important stake in this economy; from the poor

farmer, to the opium trader and shop keeper, to the commander who controls and taxes

the trade. The collapse of the Afghan state has created a power vacuum that has been

filled at the local level by commanders. In the village that was studied people now pay

their zakat to the local militia.

Gender Issues

Majid: In the case of Afghanistan we know that we cannot start a revolution as far as the case of

women's rights is concerned.

Linell: My idea is that we build on the traditional values, beliefs and philosophy about women

rather than going in and saying, all women should have these rights.

Majid: Even before 1979 there were many hundreds of women working in Afghanistan. They

were intellectuals. In addition, in Afghanistan women have always played a major role as a wife,

as a mother, as a sister and they have played a major role in their internal wars, skirmishes

between different tribes. There were always good Afghan women poets and Afghan women

writers. And Afghan music is so good whether it is Persian or Pushtu. They have their own

instruments and women singers are so popular among Afghan people. Whether they are Persian

or Pushtu speaking people they love to see movies, Afghan movies, and all kinds of

entertainment.

Linell: So, the arts were highly developed in Afghanistan.

Majid: It is part of the oldest civilization. This whole part of the world is historically very rich in

culture and in art.

Linell: I think of Central Asian cultures as being crossroads cultures. They have had a lot of

different cultural influences. It is characteristic of that region of the world that many cultural

influences converge to enrich local cultures. You have the cultures from India, from all of South

Asia and you have China and then some western influences.

Majid: I would take it as different layers on every individual. First, they are Pashtun and then we

have ancient Buddhist kingdom in Afghanistan. It was 5-600 B.C. So there was Hinduism,

Buddhism and then Islam, so all these layers are on each individual. Then the English made

inroads there. In that way the culture has been rich until the 1970's. Even now the refugees living

in Pakistan organize huge social events. I attended many marriages of Afghan people. They are

very fun-loving people. Lots of participation by women, basically this is a woman's event. They

love to hold this kind of event and they don't stop women participating. They have respect for

women. If we use the right kind of tools, we can motivate them to send their offspring to schools.

Linell: There is nothing in the local culture that is against women. We should build on the local

culture, the local value system rather than coming in with what some international agency is

saying about the rights of women. We should build on the rich cultural heritage, both traditional

and modern. That is the particular.

Majid: We can use the examples of the great women poets, great women writers and even great

women warriors in many ways. They brought honor for their tribes, their clan, by winning. In

many ways women have always been a source of inspiration for the younger generation. They

have respect for women. We can use that.

Linell: There are also local traditions supporting the education of women. We also have to

consider the problem of the widows, women whose husbands have been killed. There are many

women who have no male family members. I think this is a particularly difficult situation for

women in the context of Afghan society.

Majid: As far as my knowledge goes this is a problem in two different ways. One is the situation

of Afghan people who are living in refugee camps in Pakistan. There are huge numbers, more

than 2.5 million. They have no means to generate incomes. One way is for them to use the

women. Many of them are using the women as prostitutes even in Islamabad where 80,000

Afghan refugees are living. Many of them are involved in the sex trade because they think they

have no other way to earn a living. Widows, and even if they are not widowed and have

husbands or other male family members, they do not want to do lower status jobs because they

were high ranking officials during the Soviet period or under the Rabbani-Massoud government.

They were officers in the civil or military administration.

Linell: When they became refugees, when the government changed, they lost their status.

Majid: Now they are living in big cities in Pakistan, so to maintain their living, they don't feel

easy doing manual work. They are using their women to generate income. Then there are women

living inside Afghanistan. They are not allowed to go outside their homes to get education. They

are not allowed to work in offices. These are two issues.

Linell: The situation in the refugee camps is very difficult. They are almost totally dependent on

international aid. I also read that the health conditions are very bad. There is a very high child

mortality rate. Young children are dying of dysentery.

Related sources

Reports from fundamentalism blighted Afghanistan. Available at: http://pz.rawa.org/rawa/recent2.htm

The website of the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan has several

sections, but this one contains dozens of articles on the plight of women in Afghanistan

under Taliban rule. It also contains many photographs of women and children in refugee

camps and in Afghanistan. The women in Afghanistan are shown wearing the burqa (a

voluminous head-to-toe covering with a mesh grid over the eyes) which the Taliban has

declared to be the only acceptable attire for women. Women in the camps are wearing

traditional Afghan dress, which is colorful with no veiling. Some of the photos are

disturbing showing the desperately overcrowded conditions in the camps as well as

portraits of emaciated children in their mothers' arms.

Sorensen, Birgitte 1998Women and Post-Conflict Reconstruction: Issues and Sources WSP Occasional Paper No. 3 Available at:http://www.unrisd.org/wsp/op3/toc.htm#TopOfPage

This long paper is a comprehensive review of literature dealing with political, economic

and social reconstruction from a gender perspective. It goes beyond images of women as

victims of war to show the ways that women contribute to rebuilding societies emerging

from conflict. The paper focuses on women's priority concerns, resources and capacities,

and discusses factors that may reduce women's participation in reconstruction. It also

looks at how women's participation in reconstruction influences the reshaping of gender

roles.

Healing

Linell: One thing we need to pay attention to is the need for healing.

Majid: We know that the majority of Talibans are Pashtuns. Within that Pashtun group there are

different clans, small tribes and large tribes. They are very much against each other. And then

there are other ethnic groups. Though they are not part of the ruling group, they have to live in

Afghanistan. They have to survive, so to bring them together and to reduce the gap, this healing

concept has its importance. They have fought against each other and they have destroyed each

other, so this healing concept will help a lot.

Linell: So there is healing among the ethnic groups and within the ethnic groups, the tribes and

clans that have been opposed to each other. Do you have any idea how we can respond to that

need?

Majid: From our readings we learned about the school in Sri Lanka, the butterfly garden. We can

take that example. Based on these models, we can design a project.

Linell: One thing I read talks about the growing opposition to the Taliban. One reporter is saying

that tribal leaders were calling for a meeting of the tribal leaders. Is that a traditional mechanism

of clan leaders getting together to make decisions?

Majid: That is what I was saying earlier. What the Taliban did was to spend money to buy the

loyalty of tribal leaders. If they are now feeling an urgency about going against the Taliban, they

can do that. They will sit together and they will decide.

Linell: So that might be a structure, this tradition of the meeting of the tribal leaders.

Majid: It is called Jirga

Linell: What can you tell me about how that works?

Majid: It has always been used in the NWFP of Pakistan. It is an old Pashtun institution. That is

the way they solve their problems. They don't like to go to courts; they don't like to involve the

local authorities. They want to sit together and solve their problems. It might be related to

criminal matters such as rape or murder or with animosity between tribes. Whatever has

happened that someone believes is wrong among tribes. The selected individuals who are the

leaders of tribes or elders within the tribe will call a meeting , called Jirga. They will sit together

and decide what action is to be taken against an individual and why it should be taken. They will

also decide what needs to be done to reduce tensions. It is centuries old tradition and still very

much in vogue in tribal areas.

Linell: Do you think there is a way to use that mechanism to further the healing?

Majid: That is the best way. If we are successful in involving those people, this is the best way to

introduce healing. Those are the people who are influential.

Linell: They can persuade people in their own group to cooperate. That could become a structure

that does something comparable to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. To

recognize the suffering and the crimes of various persons and groups, and to say that while that is

true, we have to go on to build a future as a society.

Related sources

Journalists in Conflict Fellowship Program sponsored by Media Action International. Information about the program is available at:http://www.mediaaction.org/mai/projects/fellowsh.htm

The purpose of the program is to provide journalists with new perspectives on reporting

conflict that promotes humanitarian values and supports peace building The idea is that

the media can have a positive impact on conflict and should be encouraged to do so.

Maynard, V. A. 1999. Healing communities in conflict: International assistance in complex emergencies. New York: Columbia University Press

Two factors hinder the effectiveness of interventions in promoting healing. One is that

building a sustainable peace may not be the first priority of foreign actors. This is a

problem in Afghanistan because the US, China, Russia, Iran and some Arab states have

political and strategic agendas in this area. The other problem is the proliferation of

NGOs and problems of coordination and institutional experience in that community. With

widespread famine in Afghanistan there is a danger that the distribution of aid could

aggravate animosity between groups. In this resource-scarce environment aid could

become "the new currency" that impedes the resumption of ordinary economic activity.

There is also the danger that NGOs will hire Afghans who left the country during earlier

phases of the conflict and who are likely to favor more urban, secular, modern segments

of the population.

Social Capital

Linell: What is the situation with social capital now?

Majid: Now it is at the lowest ebb because people don't rely and trust each other and they have

lost their motivation to work together and to rebuild their institutions, rebuild their economy. It is

the legacy of the long war that is still going on. People have lost their ability to work together.

Linell: Maybe what we are seeing now is the negative side of social capital. You talked about the

Taliban using money to buy the loyalty of tribal leaders. The social capital that exists from

traditional society has been used to criminalize the economy and society. Some writers are

saying this.

Majid: It is very much related to economic conditions. When economic conditions are higher,

social capital is also high. When we look at it from that perspective, they have ruined their

economy and it has badly effected the social capital.

Linell: One of the tasks is going to be rebuilding social capital. There is a great deal of

international interest in having a broad-based government. So that is likely to be the approach at

the national level. But there is also the local level and the intermediate level.

Majid: It will start something new for them. They have always had good social capital because of

their centuries old Jirga system and it has always helped them in taking care of each other and

providing help to destitute. They have always used it during internal conflicts (within the tribe)

and battles with other tribes. This process bears fruit and helped in bringing reconciliation and

eliminating old rivalries. They know they have to live together. Before the 1970s they were rich

in social capital but because of these events they have lost their old value system. They are not

ready to work together now the way they used to.

Linell: We can predict that there will be international initiatives at the governmental level,

perhaps under the name of nation building or state building. There will be attempts to build

political structures to replace the old structures that have been severely damaged, even destroyed.

Related sources

Strategic Framework for Afghanistan: Towards a Principled Approach to Peace and Reconstruction 12 September 1998 Available at: http://www.wfp.org/afghanistan/documents/strat_framework.html

This document outlines the operating principles for United Nations agencies in

Afghanistan, most prominently the World Food Program. It stresses humanitarian relief,

human rights and gender issues rather than the protection and development of social

capital in its local and traditional forms.

Afghanistan - Endless war in a fragmented society. European Platform for Conflict Prevention and Transformation. Available at: http://www.oneworld.org/euconflict/guides/surveys/af.htm

The European Union approach to the crisis in Afghanistan like the UN approach stresses

the collapse of formal state mechanisms and the need to recreate them following a

western model of civil society. They don't say it exactly in those words, but that is the

meaning.

Pugh, M. 1998. Post-conflict Rehabilitation: social and civil dimensions The Journal of Humanitarian Assistance. Available at: http://www.jha.ac/articles/a034.htm

The paper draws on the experience is Yugoslavia to look at problems in protecting and

developing social capital when conflict ends. The author argues that in tribal societies

local initiatives will probably be more successful than efforts to create social capital only

at a national level. Grass roots networks usually have as their main goals social and

economic reconstruction. Care should be taken to encourage the reconstruction of local

networks in such a way that they Interact with rather than oppose the state.

Goodhand, Jonathan. 2000. NGOs and peace building in complex political emergencies: A study of Afghanistan. http://idpm.man.ac.uk/idpm/idpm_dp.htm#peace

This study uses ideas about social capital to assess the situation in Afghanistan. Field

studies were conducted in three villages in three provinces to determine how

communities have responded to violent conflict, and how NGO activities have affected

community coping strategies. NGOs were found to have a limited impact on peace-

building processes. Many NGOs remain skeptical about peace building as a concept and

practice. Few have explicit peace-building objectives incorporated into their relief and

development programs. NGO activity has helped, however, to mitigate some of the

suffering that is created by conflict and can have an indirect peace-building role, at the

local level by reducing competition for economic resources and by supporting local

institutions. Agencies have learned from past experience, so that aid programs are better

managed than they were ten years ago. Some NGOs were too far removed from the grass

roots to have a major impact. They need to invest in building longer term, deeper

relationships with Afghan communities.

Fielden, Matthew and Joanathn Goodhand. 2000. Peace-making in the new world disorder: A study of the Afghan conflict and attempts to resolve it. Peace Building and Complex Political Emergencies Working Papers Series #7. Available at: http://idpm.man.ac.uk/idpm/idpm_dp.htm#peace

The authors find that social networks in Afghan society are resilient but they are not

optimistic about creating a civil society. Their historical analysis shows that the tradition

of resisting the state goes back more than 200 years when the state was first formed as a

buffer between British controlled India and the Russian empire. Afghan people have

always used tribal and religious networks to create a "mud curtain" between themselves

and the state.

Collier, P. 2000. Economic causes of civil conflict and their implications for policy. Washington, D. C. The World Bank.

The author argues that whatever the rhetoric, be it religious or ethnic, the root causes of

civil conflict are economic. Based on a study of civil conflicts in recent years the author

finds that a large diaspora community and outside funding of warring factions are leading

risk factors for conflict. Both of these conditions are present in Afghanistan.

Conclusions

Studying the conflict in Afghanistan and searching for ways to intervene has been most

instructive. Perhaps the most important learning has been that conflict is complex. When it

persists over time it develops multiple dimensions including the political, cultural, economic, and

personal. Each piece of literature or web site is likely only to discuss one or two of these

dimensions and make recommendations on that basis. The media has tended to define the

conflict as a war between the fundamentalist Taliban and the forces of modernization and reason,

but this is a gross oversimplification. The conflict had been going on for a generation before the

Taliban was born. It is more accurate to see the Taliban as a result of the conflict rather than a

cause. It is a case of victims becoming perpetrators.

An important aspect of learning in post-conflict situations is the learning of the

organizations that plan programs and deliver services. There are so many things to understand,

including the local social structure, customs and economy. Those planning interventions also

need to understand the larger political economy of the conflict, including its history and the

dynamics of how the conflict situation has altered the local society and economy. Agencies

responding to complex emergencies may raise money and get other kinds of support by

appealing to the heart. In the meantime they may not pay enough attention to the rational part of

the mind. They may not analyze the complexity of the situation they are operating in.

As an example, in Afghanistan we can anticipate continued efforts to get rid of the

Taliban and to create a secular state. The rhetoric of human rights and women's rights are now

used to demonize the Taliban and this is likely to continue. We should recognize, however, that

this rhetoric favors some segments of the population and disadvantages others, so that in

supporting it, NGOs become actors in the conflict and not the impartial agents they would like to

be. It would be better to identify characteristics of the local culture that support human rights

and gender justice. They exist and if built upon over time, there is the possibility of building a

local consensus around these rights. Otherwise human rights will be seen as yet another

imposition from the outside. Consensus will not come automatically just because Afghan people

and Afghan ideas are involved. Thinking so would be to ignore that conflict exists within

"normal" societies as well as those defined as worn torn or conflict ridden.

A greater emphasis needs to be placed on listening skills so that the staffs of programs

can learn how people in local communities cope and what initiatives they are already taking. For

instance, the social networks that women participate in are mostly informal so they are usually

not recognized. Western observers are likely to miss what is defined as private, as within the

domestic sphere. This is where women operate and where they exercise influence. Probably

social networks, conflict resolution mechanisms and the exercise of power and influence are

extensive in the women's sphere, but we do not know enough about them. This is an area where

more research is needed.

What is learned from listening to people in local communities needs to filter up so that

the whole agency structure, even the whole system of agencies, can incorporate these insights

into their work. It is important to avoid institutionalizing what has been learned into a new

orthodoxy. Reading the reports of official agencies suggests that a culture of orthodoxy does

operate in that community. Conflict and post-conflict situations are fluid. Agencies need to use

more process based learning approaches so that they are continually learning from experience. It

is not sufficient to do a needs assessment and then move on to implementation without

continuing the listening and assessment.

One problem that is particularly apparent in Afghanistan is that agencies find it difficult

to deal with long term problems. Most are so pre-occupied with the enormous task of responding

to life threatening issues of hunger, basic health and land mine safety that they use all the money

available to respond to these needs. In their urgency and with the limitations of funding

mechanisms, they often bypass community structures. Thus they miss opportunities for healing

and peace building. With limited funds and a humanitarian emergency to cope with, agency

personnel tend to be active rather than reflective. They don't think they have time to think

through the evolving complexities of the situation they are responding to. As one analyst put it,

action often gets ahead of understanding.

It also appears that most of what has been written about social capital is based on western

notions of civil society. It is necessary to look at indigenous forms of social capital and to

support them. Otherwise the universalist orientation of humanitarian agencies, based as they are

in western culture, may end up inflicting more pain on the people of Afghanistan by continuing

the conflict in another form. Remember the mud curtain.

Despite these problems we did identify three programs that exemplify positive

approaches to learning in conflict situations. They are:

1. Journalists in Conflict Fellowship Program sponsored by Media Action International.

This program assumes that reporters are actors in as well as observers of conflict. It

seeks to enlist them in peace building.

2. Community Organisation for Primary Education (COPE) program sponsored by

CARE International. The program demonstrates that it is possible to provide formal

schooling for girls even in Taliban controlled areas. It shows that dealing with groups

on their own terms can work.

3. REACH (Radio Education for Afghan Children) program sponsored by the British

Broadcasting Company. This program uses the knowledge and expertise of NGOs

and refugees in Pakistan to create entertaining and practical educational programs for

the people of Afghanistan.

It will be a further challenge to incorporate learning principles into feeding, health care, land

mine removal, and economic reconstruction programs once the conflict ends. We hope that our

dialogue and the study that came out of it is of some value in preparing for that effort.