{"id":113613,"date":"2018-07-02T12:01:43","date_gmt":"2018-07-02T11:01:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=113613"},"modified":"2018-07-02T07:58:18","modified_gmt":"2018-07-02T06:58:18","slug":"on-purpose-in-kabul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/07\/on-purpose-in-kabul\/","title":{"rendered":"On Purpose, in Kabul"},"content":{"rendered":"

26 Jun 2018 – <\/em>Writing this week for the Chicago Tribune, Steve Chapman called a U.S. Government report on the war in Afghanistan \u201ca chronicle of futility<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0“The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction” report<\/a> says the U.S. spent large sums \u201cin search of quick gains\u201d in regional stabilization \u2013 but these instead \u201cexacerbated conflicts, enabled corruption and bolstered support for insurgents.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn short,\u201d says Chapman, the U.S. government \u201cmade things worse rather than better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gains, meanwhile, have certainly been made by weapon manufacturers. On average, during Trump\u2019s first year in office, the Pentagon dropped 121 bombs per day on Afghanistan. The total number of weapons<\/a> \u2013 missiles, bombs – deployed in Afghanistan by manned and remotely piloted aircraft through May this year is estimated<\/a> at 2,339.<\/p>\n

War profiteers deliver hellish realities and futile prospects, but the Afghan Peace Volunteers have not given up on bettering their country. In recent visits to Kabul, we\u2019ve listened as they consider the longer-term question of how peace can come to an economically devastated country where employment by various warlords, including the U.S. and Afghan militaries, is many families’ only way to put bread on the table. Hakim, who mentors the APVs, assures us that a lasting peace must involve the creation of jobs and incomes with a hope of sustaining community. Inspired by Mohandas Gandhi\u2019s calls for self-sufficiency, and the example of his Pashtun ally, Badshah Khan, they resist war by fostering education and creating local cooperatives.<\/p>\n

Miriam is a student in the APVs’ “Street Kids’ School,” which prepares child laborers to pursue schooling while helping their families stay afloat with monthly rations of rice and oil. Sitting with me in the garden of the APVs’ Borderfree Center, her widowed mother, Gul Bek told me of the hardships she faces as a single mother of five.<\/p>\n

Each month, she struggles to pay for water, rent, food, and fuel. Some years ago, a company installed a water pipeline leading to her home, but every month a representative from the company comes to collect 700 \u2013 800 Afghanis (about $10.00) in payment for the family\u2019s water consumption. An impoverished household \u2013 even free of war’s ravages \u2013 can’t easily spare $10.\u00a0She tries hard to conserve. \u201cBut we must have water!\u201d says Gul Bek. \u201cWe need it to clean, to cook, to do laundry.\u201d She knows how important hygiene is, but she doesn\u2019t dare go over her budget for water. Gul Bek fears she might be evicted if she can\u2019t manage rent. Would she then go to a refugee camp in Kabul? She shakes her head. I asked if the government helps at all. \u201cThey know nothing about how we live,\u201d she said. \u201cAt the beginning of Ramadan, we couldn\u2019t even have bread. We had no flour.\u201d Her two eldest sons, age 19 and 14, are beginning to learn tailoring skills and they attend school part time. I asked if she ever considers allowing them to join the military or the police to earn something closer to a living wage. She was adamant. After working so hard to raise these sons, she doesn\u2019t want to lose them. She won\u2019t allow them to carry guns.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Girls and mothers, waiting for their duvets, in Kabul. Photo credit: Dr. Hakim<\/p><\/div>\n

Visiting a refugee camp several days later, I could understand her horror of moving into a camp. The camps are overcrowded, muddy, and dangerously unsanitary. An elder from the camp, Haji Jool, was entrusted with the keys to a control room for a well that two NGOs recently installed. On that day, the valves weren\u2019t functioning. 200 of the 700 families in the camp depend on that well for water. I looked at the worried faces of women who had been waiting, since early morning, to collect water. What would they do? Haji Jool told me that most of the families had come from rural areas. They fled their homes because of war or because they lacked water. Kabul\u2019s battered infrastructure, in desperate need of U.S. reparations for fifteen years of war, simply can\u2019t sustain people.<\/p>\n

Our APV friends, recognizing the need to create jobs and incomes, have begun forging ahead with impressive work to establish cooperatives. In early June, they initiated a shoemaking cooperative, led by two young men, Hussein and Hosham, who\u2019ve already been trained and have taught their skills to Noorullah. They named their store \u201cUnique.\u201d A carpentry co-op will soon be up and running.<\/p>\n

The APV are grateful to the many internationals who, over the past six winters, have assisted their annual “Duvet Project” to bring much-needed blankets to Kabul residents lacking protection from harsh winter weather. The “Duvet Project” has donated winter blankets to some 9,000 destitute families in Kabul and has offered a winter income to as many as 360 seamstresses. Yet, the APV have grappled with a persistent plea from seamstresses who, while appreciative of the seasonal project, express their acute need for an income throughout the year.<\/p>\n

This year, APV are forming a seamstresses’ cooperative which will manufacture clothing year-round for inexpensive local sale and will also distribute duvets.<\/p>\n

The U.S. exerts massive power from the skies of Afghanistan, raining down hellfire in ever greater quantities.\u00a0Its Security Zone and its military bases, within and near Kabul, help to drain the local water table faster than wells can be dug.\u00a0It persistently causes hatred and harm. Meanwhile, it might sound like a clich\u00e9, but in imagining a better world our young friends are helping to build one. With sustainable projects to support the neediest, they embrace Gul Bek\u2019s refusal to cooperate with war. Their simple, small actions do<\/em> strengthen Kabul.\u00a0 They give themselves over to compassion, to strengthening their neighbors. They plant the seeds that may or may not grow a forest there \u2013 they use, rather than wasting, what power they have.\u00a0They aren\u2019t rewarded with the titanic achievement of having shaped and ruined a country, but instead with purposeful intent to stop the vicious cycle of war and resist the cruel hierarchies attempting to prevail.\u00a0We at Voices are grateful for the chance, with them, to reject despair. In supporting their projects, we can make reparations, however small, for the persistent futility of war.<\/p>\n

_____________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Kathy Kelly is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>,<\/em> an American peace activist, pacifist and author, one of the founding members of <\/em>Voices in the Wilderness, and currently a co-coordinator <\/em>Voices for Creative Nonviolence<\/a>. <\/em>Three times since 2000, she has been nominated for the <\/em>Nobel Peace Prize. As part of peace teamwork in several countries, she has traveled to Iraq twenty-six times, notably remaining in combat zones during the early days of both US-Iraq wars. Her recent travel has focused on Afghanistan and Gaza, along with domestic protests against U.S. drone policy. She has been arrested more than sixty times at home and abroad, and written of her experiences among targets of U.S. military bombardment and inmates of U.S. prisons. She lives in Chicago.<\/em> Kathy@vcnv.org<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

26 Jun 2018 – War profiteers deliver hellish realities and futile prospects, but the Afghan Peace Volunteers have not given up on bettering their country. In recent visits to Kabul, we\u2019ve listened as they consider the longer-term question of how peace can come to an economically devastated country where employment by various warlords, including the U.S. and Afghan militaries, is many families’ only way to put bread on the table.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":74231,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}