Dateline ACT

Afghanistan 05/02

"We are still standing because of them" -- trail of wartime aid leads to 23,000 homes

Kabul, Afghanistan, February 13, 2002
Jonathan Frerichs

Last October and November while the bombing of Afghanistan was most intense, food aid shipments into the country dropped off sharply. Despite difficult working conditions, Afghan aid workers supported by Action by Churches Together (ACT) were still able to help thousands of families. Some made up for the lack of outside aid by purchasing food in city markets and arranging for it to reach hungry households quietly. Using ration cards honored by local merchants, families picked up their allotments themselves. There were no aid convoys or mass distributions to attract attention - either from warplanes in the air or from armed men on the ground.

The strategy had other advantages over outside aid as well. It helped the local economy, saved money, and saved time. Geir Valle, Afghanistan director for Norwegian Church Aid (NCA), credits Afghan partners: "This was what we were able to do, thanks to two local partner organizations. This is also something that nobody else was doing at that time."

So began efforts that provided 23,000 families with flour, rice, oil and sugar for two months, during and immediately after the war. The beneficiaries were mostly widows and their children, households where the breadwinner is disabled, and displaced people. The job was done by seven Afghan non-governmental organizations that NCA has worked with for years.

The families reached were hungry during a war. Will they do better during peace? How they fare in the months ahead will be a critical indicator of post-war prospects for Afghanistan’s most vulnerable citizens. Already in early February a sampling of beneficiaries showed that most of the food had been used up.

A WIDOW, THREE OPHANS, AND AN UNCLE GONE MAD

Khanem Gul and her family live just up the road from a former Al Qaeda training camp outside of Kabul. Their village is the yellow-brown color of the fields around it. They stayed home as American bombers destroyed the camp compound. "Where would we go?" Gul says, "We had nowhere to go."

When a stray bomb exploded nearby, their clay home shook and a neighbor’s house fell down. War is like an unwanted but all-too-familiar visitor for Khanem Gul.

Her husband died 20 years ago fighting Russian invaders.

Her first son lost a leg during that war when he stepped on a landmine.

Her second son went to prison under Afghanistan’s Communist government, and disappeared.

Her third and last son died six years ago in a battle between two warlords. It was just before the Taliban took over. She took charge of his three children.

Then the son with one leg went mad, broken by the loss of his father and brothers. Now he lives downstairs. When it’s cold he sits for hours under a quilt with the box of hot coals that many Afghan homes use for heat.

"In the summer I find work in the fields if I can," says this breadwinner who is jobless, landless and 64 years old.

"I also get help from friends and relatives," she adds, "and from groups like SIEAL." SIEAL is one of NCA’s local partners.

Her grandchildren go to a home-based education center supported by SIEAL. The group kept 14 such centers open despite the ban on girl’s education under the Taliban.

During the air raids, SIEAL used ACT funds to buy emergency rations locally. "I received 100 kilograms of flour, ten kilograms of cooking butter, seven kilograms of rice and four blankets," Gul recalls.

Then, with grace, she adds, "We are still standing because of them."

 EIGHT MONTHS WITHOUT A PAYCHECK?

Eight months without a paycheck? That is what’s happened to Khan Ali, a biology and chemistry teacher in a Kabul-area high school. Fortunately, a local partner of NCA was helping his school with supplies and food during the Taliban period and so, when his salary stopped and then war came, Khan and his family ended up on their list for an aid parcel.

"Our school is still standing because of them," Khan says of the ACT-related group.

His family knows better what that means, now, too.

 "A ROCKET KILLED MY HUSBAND"

Questioned about their own lives, widows in Afghanistan often answer by telling about their husbands. It’s as if their former status as a wife is the only status they will ever have.

Rahilla (her full name) was widowed six years ago when she was 35 years old. Her late husband, Mohamed Akbar, had something rare in a largely subsistence economy—a job with a salary. He worked for the government.

Governments come and go, in Afghanistan more than most nations. Akbar’s job was with the regime that never quite took hold after the Soviets withdrew. By 1996, as Taliban soldiers closed in on Kabul, his job began to look shaky. Then the fighting spilled over into the district where his family lived.

"One day, just over there," Rahilla says, gesturing beyond her courtyard, "a rocket killed my husband."

Six years later Akbar’s picture still hangs on the wall but signs of his salary are long gone from the household. In freezing temperatures in an unheated house, his widow dresses in three layers of tattered cotton clothing. She has no work, no land, not even for a garden. Neighbors and relatives give her food and money, she says.

But for Rahilla, Afghanistan’s latest war has brought two good things—some much-needed food and some long-awaited retribution. As a vulnerable household, her family received a two-month supply of flour, cooking butter, sugar and blankets from a local partner of ACT. "I didn’t get anything like this during the war that killed my husband," she says.

Also, the Taliban are finally gone. "I have been waiting for this for a long time. It was a Taliban rocket that made me a widow," Rahilla says. "Now I am hoping for better times."