Sylvia's Journal

My Dari lessons are paying off. This morning, as the most senior person of the project present in the compound, I received our security chief Baba jan for the daily briefing. Usually, with the foreigners, he brings along an interpreter because his English is very poor. Today he came alone and gave me the briefing in Dari. I understood about 80% of it, enough to know what is going on (a demonstration but no cause for concern).

For homework today I had to write a brief summary of two stories I have read, as part of my reading and writing program. The first story was a little weird and I cringed about the message it was giving to young girls: stay home, the world is full of grumpy old bears who will not eat you if you agree to clean their house and cook for them (really!). The other day a (male) colleague told me, ‘you are brave, you go out in the world. But our women are not brave and prefer to stay in the safety of their home.’ The message of the story has clearly stuck and the vicious circle of fear fueled by lack of contact and exposure is reinforced. What is different is dangerous.

I remember feeling that way when I first arrived here, sticking to the safe (but very limiting) routine of going back and forth between the office and the guesthouse, across the street. Every day of doing this made the fear a little stronger. The idea of venturing out into Kabul, let alone into Afghanistan, was frightful. The image I had in my mind was the Afghanistan that is presented to the outside world through the main media: a dangerous and violent place with fully armed bad guys and naïve youngsters with suicide vests lurking behind every corner.

The media imagery is powerful. It also works the other way around: I have encountered many in Afghanistan and heard from Iraqis when I worked with them in Jordan, that for them New York is much more dangerous than their homes, with gangsters at every street corner. What is different and far away is dangerous.

Once we started to venture out the other lesser known side of Afghanistan emerged and we could collect enough experiences of friendliness, hospitality, beauty and charm that it could counteract the nastiness, ugliness and violence and push the balance in favor of staying for awhile. As the events of this last week show, the balance is not steady and events can change the scales. It appears that things are in balance again, for now.

Marzila and I went to a meeting with the deputy minister about eliminating gender-based violence. We think it is a great idea and long overdue. We left our office early to have time for a nice Turkish lunch in the Istanbul restaurant near the ministry. We were still early when we arrived at the ministry and so we walked over to her husband’s office for a quick hello and congratulations on his confirmation as Director General.

We were perfectly gender-balanced in the meeting, with the highest person a woman. “Ah,” I thought, “this should be a picture from the future.” How rare such a setup is nowadays. We sat with all the women on one side of the table and all the men on the other.

The ministry of health, according to the law signed on gender-based violence, needs to report on cases of abuse, both physical and psycho-social, every month. It is good to get that data but I don’t think anyone has thought through carefully how this will happen.

We were shown forms to collect the data, draft templates and I cringed; one had a column for ‘name of victim.’ Someone raised the issue of confidentiality, another how one would spot psycho-social abuse and a third wondered about enforcement. A committee will be created and we will have someone on it from our team.

My one instruction to our project’s representative on this committee would be, don’t let a bunch of people (worse, a bunch of guys) sit around a table in Kabul and decide on how to tackle this incredibly sensitive and complex issue in this country where wife beatings and slicing off nose and ears of young girls is considered the honorable thing to do. It will require a multi-disciplinary approach with women’s groups, local authorities and enlightened elders to come together. It will require much education and the attachment of consequences to (what is now) illegal behavior. It’s going to be a long road ahead.