Suicide Bombing in Kabul
December 30, 2012 Maya Evans
Susan walking the streets of Kabul, with help from APV
By Maya Evans
We're back in a taxi and heading to visit a woman who has lost two of her sons during a suicide attack in Kabul. The taxi travels along a narrow bumpy street. The snow has now turned to compacted ice. I recognise the area as being close to the Kuchi refugee camp we visited the day before. The district seems to be a fairly poor residential area with the common style of modest Afghan housing akin to the two-up two-down housing found in the north of England.
We exit the taxi and pick our way through a maze of side streets. The path is a typical Kabul dishevelled path, our partially sighted delegate Susan is led by one of the youth peace makers- around puddles, over potholes and into a side door set into a weathered mud wall.
We learn that terrorist attacks are almost daily in Kabul and more often than not, as per usual, it's the ordinary people who suffer the most.
The two-up, two-down has a small yard with a few chickens stalking around, a line of washing with kids clothing. We step into a very basic home, the front room is barely furnished, but for the traditional form of heating, a stove under a frame covered in blankets. We sit on cushions around the heater and bury our feet under the warm blankets.
We're then introduced to Rohila, a woman in her early forties. She sits down opposite us and also tucks her feet under the communal blanket. She ushers her small children to sit with her. A girl aged 11 and a small boy aged 7, they huddle in close to her, she wraps her arms tightly round them.
Her face carries creases of fear, worry and depression, her body seems enveloped with tiredness. She starts her story.
The incident happened 2 years ago, her teenage sons aged 14 and 15 were walking home from school. Usually they would make their way back from school separately and at different times, but for some reason that day they were walking home together.
For some unexplained reason there was a military tank on the roadside where they were walking. At the same time the boys passed the tank a suicide bomber drove a car into the tank causing it to flip over and kill 12 people. The official story reported 2 deaths.
Rohila describes the day: "The explosion was so strong that we felt the vibrations in the house"
Since the incident she has become too afraid to let her other 2 children go to school. Her daughter Shazia says she wants to become a teacher and her son Roshot aspires to be a doctor. Neither have gone to school in the last year.
Rohila's mourning face describes her feelings: "I've spent so much of my life bringing up my sons, now I don't know if I'm alive or not, I don't know if it is day or night. Every time I pass a grave my heart breaks, I don't know why this has happened, war hasn't ended. Maybe god has bought this on us. Inshallah the foreign forces will stop the war"
By a strange coincidence one of the peace volunteers had lost his cousin in the same incident. He sat opposite Rohila and talked with intense seriousness about his cousin's death. However unlike Rohila he doesn't feel the responsibility for the war ending rests with foreign forces, instead he concludes:
"If the foreign military leaves Afghanistan that may stop some terrorist bombing, but we have the problem that other neighbouring foreign countries are also fuelling violence in the country."
"People who commit suicide bombing have lost some of their family members and they want revenge for their anger, for example drones kills a family, some say: we don't have anything for life because I lost all of my family, I don't have a meaning for life anymore. The political leaders have lost empathy with the people, they don't feel their sadness."
He ends his thoughts by summarizing: "War creates more war, it doesn't stop the violence."
KabulKuchi refugee campMaya Evans
Kuchi Refugee Camp in the Shah's Back Yard
The first day of snow is turning to slush as we pull up outside a Kuchi refugee camp on the edge of Kabul. A small heard of goats dressed in old jumpers graze on a skip of rubbish, our taxi driver pulls up over some large puddles; I tiptoe out of the vehicle onto solid land. The refugee camp is home to around 65 Kuchi nomadic families who have spent their lives wandering the land with livestock.
The camp is set in the former Shah's palace grounds, perhaps once the grandest building in Kabul, the decrepit palace now stands alone on a hill fort, dilapidated and riddled with bullet holes, a sad relic of a former time.
The refugee camp is in a large walled off area which seems to be an extension to the palace grounds. Ramshackle tents constructed from what appears to be bits of rags, old sacking, old mats, juxtapose with the breathtaking snow-capped mountain ranges of the Hindu Kush, more synonomous with the pages of a National Geographic than a scene of desperate poverty and deprivation.
The Kuchi are traditionally nomadic people who wander land from Pakistan to Iran grazing cattle and gaining casual work. We hear that the Kuchi are considered amongst the least respected group of people within Afghanistan with tales of thievery and low living standards connected with their image. It remindeds me of the widely held perceptions which many Britons hold of the traveller community in the UK. Although the Kuchi are technically Pashtun in ethnicity they are considered a group apart and receive little to no alleigance from other Pashtuns.
As we walk into the camp we are greeted by a gaggle of young children dressed in a patchwork of clothing styles: one small boy wearing a pair of high-heeled women's shoes wading through the mud, another boy in an adult's fleece top dangling around his knees, a girl in a leopard print jacket over a traditional Afghan trouser suit. It's surprising that people at the bottom rung of society would meet and treat visitors with warmth and enthusiasm, however they did.
We walk through a bit of the camp, past a group of women huddled under a makeshift shelter, some wearing burkas, others wearing modern clothing likely donated from a western source. The children follow us every step of the way wanting to have their photos taken. The tents and shelters are tightly packed together, there's a cow tethered to a stick, some chickens pecking the ground, the bright sun melts the snow from the day before. The ground underfoot is a mixture of slush and mud.
It seems like the camp elders are trying to work out the best tent to host us in. Eventually we were shown into a medium sized tent constructed from hardy canvas material. The muddy floor is lined with off-cuts of carpet and small rugs, I remove my shoes and step into the tent which is large enough to stand up in. I walk to the back of the tent and sit on the floor, the bits of carpet feel cold and damp. The other delegates and some members from the Afghan Peace Volunteers also enter the tent and we are introduced to Frida, a female elder of the camp who explains she's received training from the Ministry of Public Health to teach other women about hygiene, she holds up a badge in a plastic sleeve. Frida is immediately striking, perhaps in her 50's, her weathered face set with deep expressive wrinkles seems to exude strength and wisdom. Her eyes are intense and you somehow know she has seen and done much in her hard life.
We learn that the camp has been there for four years, that the land belongs to the Government and the refugees live with the fear of being told to leave at any point… some sort of military helicopter flies overhead and drowns out Frida's voice for a few seconds. Frida explains that they were in Pakistan until the UNHCR told them to return to Afghanistan and they would receive help. She tells us that so far they have received none of that promised help.
Her voice is emotional as she explains (via an interpreter): "Guests are like the light of our lives, we are unable to have our needs heard by leaders such as Karzai – why as president can't he find a way to look after his people." She explains that a man standing just outside the tent had to bury his two two dead children in the street as the Government refused to give them a plot for their dead. Frida goes on: "If we can't bury our dead we may as well not live".
A man who is sat in the doorway wrapped in a classic Afghan blanket wearing a traditional Pashtoon hat explains his feelings: "We are all trampled upon, no one will speak up for us or talk about our concerns, aren't we born here, don't we belong to this land?" We learn that all the men are unemployed, unable to find work, the children don't go to school. Apparently there is a German NGO who provide some basic medicines but beyond that they can not get treatment for proper medical help.
An older man also sat inside the tent, perhaps Frida's husband is asked for his opinion: "There are so many problems I don't know where to start, I'm an old man but I want to work, but I can only tie up donkeys, maybe if I had a few sheep it might be a way I could get by. The tents sometimes get so cold that we prefer to sleep outside."
I ask if there is a message to send the people in Britain, he replies: "If the people of Britain could do what they can to help us get through the cold of winter, we are without work or necessities to get by, even if you can't help us, we are grateful for you hearing this message."
I personally would like to add to his message. The people of Britain should be speaking out against our own Government who have been central in installing the current corrupt Afghan Government who care very little for the welfare of its people. Our Government has been and continues to be central to the ongoing war which is stopping innocent people from living a life with basic human rights standards. The situation for the 350,000 internally displaced Afghans currently in the country is a symptom of a much bigger issue: it's not working, and it will never work while Governments such as ours continue to prop up and maintain corruption and inequality.
Hindu KushKabulKuchiKuchi refugee campMaya EvansPashtunUNHCR
First days in Kabul
December 20, 2012 Beth Tichborne
UK delegate Beth Tichbourne shares her first impressions of Afghanistan with us…
"I didn't know what to expect in Afghanistan. I knew there'd be men with guns about, and that there would be a lot of visible poverty, addiction and the other marks of a long war on people and the landscape. But I couldn't imagine what it would be like landing in Kabul, getting a taxi from the airport to the compound and meeting our hosts, the Afghan Peace Volunteers.
Our new friends from APV
What I definitely wasn't expecting was to feel so at home. We landed to a scene like nothing I've ever been part of before, a strange mixture of a heavy military presence and the more traditional aspects of Afghanistan. We walked out of the airport past men in various uniforms and crowds of ordinary Afghan people wrapped up in scarves against the thick snow. We had barely stepped into the carpark when were met by Ebi, a friend of Maya's from her previous trip and by Gulan, who has joined the APV more recently. They were so welcoming and friendly that despite its strangeness Kabul felt immediately like the right place to be, even before we had got in the taxi I felt unexpectedly at ease. They took us in two taxis back to the compound where the APV are based.
APV making tea
We spent the first sleep-deprived day acclimatising and making friends. There are all the funny little things that make a place seem foreign. They have carrot jam and gigantic fluorescent light bulbs. The room that we're staying in, which is also the meeting room, is beautiful, there's a stove to one side that heats the room and provides water for the constant cups of tea, a red carpet and gold cushions and curtains. For lessons and meetings everyone sits around the edge of the room on the cushions, and at night the four of us from England turn the cushions into mattresses and stay snug despite the snow outside. I think the other rooms are less luxurious and we're getting some guest treatment in having this as our sleeping space.
The compound feels like a safe space for a diverse range of people to come and to explore difficult and dangerous issues. There are the volunteers themselves, who are boys and young men from different ethnicities and backgrounds doing deep reflective work alongside the practical projects and campaigning that they run from here. There are women who come to sew quilts and are considering how to set up a business in a way that won't put them in danger from strangers or their own families. Some of the daughters of the women come to English lessons first thing in the morning along with the volunteers and other students, most of whom are in their young teens. And there are international visitors like us, who come to learn from the APV and to visit Afghan people to hear their stories of everyday life in Afghanistan.
We've only been here a couple of days but we've already visited a refugee camp, a women's business meeting and a woman who lost two children in a suicide attack. The boys and men of the APV that we've been making friends with have their own experiences of bereavement and hardship. It's startling and horrible to be in a meeting and to suddenly hear about the toll the war has taken on someone who you've just been sharing bad jokes and a plate of food with. And it's never just one tragedy. Ebi, the boy who greeted us at the airport with the friendliest grin I've ever seen, who is studying journalism and wants to one day travel to Africa, Mexico and Egypt to witness and support other people's struggles around the world, told us today in the meeting with the mother who had lost her children that he had lost a cousin in the same attack. Later he told us that when he was six he'd seen his older brother killed in front of his house.
The people we've been out to visit are exhausted. They have immediate needs and a profound tiredness and lack of hope. Every group has said the same thing in slightly different words. They don't know where to start telling you their troubles, there are too many to recount. Against this background the goodness and the energy of Ebi and the other volunteers is hard to comprehend. They do such hard work with such commitment and love. In the evenings they talk for hours, addressing the root causes of the prejudices that have left some of them bereaved in the potentially volatile setting of a mixed ethnic group. They also address problems that thay have a more indirect experience of, like how to live their values of recognising the fellow humanity of women in a society where genders are segregated in many ways and women very disadvantaged. In the daytime they do outreach and projects that empower the poorest and least visible members of their community. They don't shy away from living with contradiction or addressing controversy. I am learning a lot about Afghanistan, about the realities of war and poverty, but I hope I'll also be able to absorb something of the sincerity, passion and friendliness of the community here and find ways to apply it back in England. Two weeks already feels far too short a time to be here."
AfghanistanBeth Tichbournenon violencepeacepeaceful protestUK delegationVNCVUKVoices for Creative Non-Violence UK