Counting Your Blessings Department

I was just watching the last half of the appalling documentary, I Was Worth 50 Sheep, which some of you may have seen. Basically it's about the traditional Afghan practice of selling young girls when a family is broke. This particular film follows the story of 16-year-old Sabere, who was sold to a man in his 50s when she was all of 10 years old. She was both wife and slave to him for six years -- during which time she was frequently beaten, talked to constantly as though she were lower than a dog, and had four miscarriages, as well as a forced abortion when she was seven months pregnant -- before she finally escaped, and made her way to a safe house in Mazur.

The film is also concerned with the plight of Sabere's half-sister. Her mother had had to remarry after the death of her husband, Sabere's father, in order to avoid the shame (and destitution) of widowhood. She and her second husband -- who was, as tradition dictated, a cousin of her deceased husband -- also had a daughter. The husband, who had lived in and been deported from Iran, had heavy debts which he could not pay. He "had no choice," but to sell his daughter. When he said this, during one of the interviews with him, I let out an unamused laugh. "You had no choice," I said sarcastically to the screen. "What if selling your own daughter were not socially acceptable -- that wouldn't be a choice -- you'd have to figure something else out!" The father had made a deal with the buyer -- who was also a much older man -- that he and his wife would be able to keep their daughter with them until she was 15 -- when, according to the father, she would be "old enough" for marriage -- and instead of receiving the sheep all at once they would receive 10 a year.

The "drama" of the film had to do with the fact that Sabere, with the help of the people at the Safe House, was trying to obtain a divorce from her husband, while at the same time the stepfather was trying to fend off representatives from the man he had sold his daughter to, who were saying the buyer no longer wanted to wait; he wanted little Farzane now.

Watching something like this reminds us of something we all know, but prefer not to dwell on: while women in western industrialized nations have made great strides toward fair treatment and equality with men over the past century, in many parts of the world they have value only as slaves, as someone a man can kick around when he's feeling angry at the world, frustrated perhaps by his bad luck, or a bad day, someone he can always feel superior to. The stepfather, who kept insisting he did not want to have to give his daughter to the man who had bought her, nonetheless lay around on his cushions-on-the-floor barking "Bring me some tea," "Bring me a glass of water," to the three women who lived under his roof. Nary a please, nary a thank-you. He did go out most days and try to sell some pens that he had, inevitably without luck. But he didn't really hustle at all, didn't do whatever he could to feed and protect his family; he just metaphorically scratched his head and said, "I don't know what to do." If ever there was an example of a loafer, waiting for a miracle to save him, this was it.

At the same time, there is no denying the crushing poverty of places like Afghanistan, the lack of jobs. The United States and various international agencies have been trying for years to improve this situation, to help "develop" the economy of the country. But an "Asian Voices" segment I was watching recently on PBS stated that too much of the intended help has been poorly thought-out, poorly organized, and ineffective. This is one reason I have been so supportive of the Central Asia Institute, begun by Greg Mortenson.  Despite the controversy that arose around Mortenson at the beginning of this year, it has seemed to me that the organization has done a better than average job of working with locals to bring schools -- that oh-so-important commodity, education -- to the impoverished familes in the hinterlands of both Pakistan and Afghanistan.  Effective aid.

We all know that too much of the aid money, from our government, and that of other countries, that was supposed to go towards Afghanistan's economic development, has instead gone into the pockets of various government officials and their families; and this is of course maddening. But do we stop trying to help? Do we throw the country back into the hands of the Taliban (the man Sabere was married to was a member of the Taliban). What to do, what to do...

Giving, in a time of crisis (or anytime)

I was just trying to find out what, if anything, one of my favorite charities, the Central Asia Institute (CAI), was doing to help those affected by the recent flooding in Pakistan. The CAI, for those of you who don't know, was started by former mountain-climber Greg Mortenson, after he was rescued by villagers in the high passes of northwestern Pakistan. While he was recuperating in their village of Korphe, he learned that the children had no school and, impulsively, he promised he'd build them one. He spent the next three years trying to fulfill that promise, and found himself, in the process, falling into his life's work: getting schools built, supplies purchased, teachers trained, throughout northwestern Pakistan, and eventually northeastern Afghanistan.

Mortenson has written about his experiences and his mission in, first, Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace...One School at a Time, published in 2006, and later in Stones into Schools, which covered the expansion of his efforts into Afghanistan. Mortenson's story is truly inspiring, proof of what a single person can accomplish if he or she is sufficiently motivated. (It also illustrates how much energy, perseverance and sacrifice are involved in bringing about a miracle.) And it provides a shining example of what the United States should be doing, in our efforts to "win the hearts and minds" of the people in that part of the world. Mortenson's organ-ization is determinedly apolitical; it is not trying to foist American ideology onto the locals; it is completely respectful of the Islam religion. It is just trying to help these very poor people obtain what they want, which is education for their children. The one stipulation the CAI insists upon is that girls must be educated, as well as boys. And in almost every place they have sought to build a school, this requirement has presented no problem.

But to return to my original impetus for this posting: what, if anything, was the CAI doing to help in the current crisis? I was especially wondering because back in 2005, when there was a major earthquake in north-eastern Pakistan, the CAI was flooded with questions from regular donors as to what the organization was doing, or was going to do, to help. After much soul searching, the CAI decided it would not try to do any-thing in the way of immediate-emergency-response. They felt there were other organizations better equipped and trained for that sort of thing, and that what they should concentrate on was exploring the area for damaged or destroyed schools, to see how they could help rebuild those. And this actually proved of enormous psychological help, during that very stressful period, because going to school every day gave the children a sense of security, and normalcy. Also, the CAI was able to provide wages for teachers in that area, some of whom hadn't been paid for months.

My guess is the CAI will maintain the same policy in the current crisis, even though one of the areas most severely hit was where much of the school-building of the past 15 years has taken place. Quite possibly some of those schools have been destroyed, along with the villages they were in. Which means the CAI will have its work cut out for it once more. I would like to have seen some mention of this, of the crisis in general, on the organization's web site, or that of its founder, Greg Mortenson. Nonetheless, I do consider this a charity worth supporting -- can anyone doubt the positive effects of making possible a balanced, as opposed to extremist, education amongst people who would otherwise continue living in abject poverty and ignorance? Leaving their young people ripe for the picking by Muslim extremists? I've added a link to the CAI's web site, for anyone who might like to learn more about it. And I urge you to read Mortenson's books. They are fascinating, and make you feel good about the good people can do.

As a substitute for the next war

What I can’t figure out is why we keep having wars. Usually after a war we end up helping the defeated country, e.g., Japan, Germany, after the Second World War, Iraq even as I type. It’s only a matter of time before American tourists are visiting the place, e.g., Vietnam. So why don’t we just skip the war, and go directly to help mode? Afghanistan would be a good place to start. Instead of pulling all those soldiers out of Iraq and sending them to Afghanistan – which is what Senator Obama is proposing to do at once, Senator McCain proposes to do as soon as the war in Iraq is “won” (definition still to be determined) – instead of this out of the frying pan into the fire strategy, why not pour economic advisors into the country? Preferably economic advisors who can speak the language (and why isn’t there a push in this country for students to learn Arabic, Farsi, Korean, the languages of those areas that are proving most problematic for the U.S.?), economic advisors who could help develop the local economy. In Afghanistan, for example, there’s the problem of so many farmers growing poppies for the drug trade which the bad guys use to finance their nefarious deeds. What could they grow instead? In Columbia, Ecuador and Peru it’s the coca growers, feeding the cocaine trade. What could we help them grow instead?

As the current world-wide financial crisis is serving to illustrate, everything comes down to economics (well, actually, everything really comes down to biochemistry, but let’s talk a notch or two above that). As much as I hate to admit it, being so uninterested in business as I am, healthy trade really does make the world go round. We need to be helping the poverty-stricken areas of the world develop the means to join the rest of us in (healthy, not damaging) trade. With an improved standard of living they would have more to lose, and when you have something to lose you are less inclined to kiss it all good-by by blowing yourself and various innocent bystanders up.

While I don’t question for a moment that there are, indeed, evil people out there, some of the fanatical Muslim persuasion, most people, whatever their religion, whatever their country, want to live in peace and safety with their families. They want to be able to support those families, take care of them, make sure that everyone has enough to eat, decent housing, access to good health care when they get sick. If we directed our attention to helping them achieve those goals, without trying to convert them (after all, how do you feel when a Jehovah’s Witness comes knocking at your door?), without our usual swaggering assumption that we’re the greatest nation in the world and of course everyone must want to be like us, or should want to be like us...if, in short, our foreign policy more closely resembled the work of private aid organizations that don’t have a hidden agenda, that just want to help those in this world who are struggling with extreme poverty, I suspect it would go a long way in that winning-the-hearts-and-minds campaign they’ve been waging lately in Iraq.