Foreign aid

>> Local Afghans try to rebuild, and help people understand, their country

by CRAIG SEGAL

A woman doctor who will join Afghanistan's interim government cabinet criticized the West for supporting Taliban repression after receiving an award from locally based human rights group Rights and Democracy Monday night.

"With the sole aim of defeating communists in Afghanistan, no one took exception to the trampling of the rights of Afghan women," said Dr. Sima Samar after she received the 2001 John Humphrey Freedom Award. "Men victimized women even further with the claim of upholding Afghan culture and tradition and observing Islamic values. Even the UN and so-called democratic countries indirectly supported the horrific maltreatment of women."

Dr. Samar founded her first hospital for women in Afghanistan in 1987. Since then she has been running girls' schools, health clinics and hospitals, and training doctors in Afghanistan despite Taliban prohibition and threats on her life.

"One of the reasons for the chaos, destruction and oppression that followed the Soviet withdrawal was the United States and the international community abandoned Afghanistan after funding and training the most radical extremists," she says. "We hope that the United States and the international community will not forget Afghanistan again. We hope that the U.S. and other countries will keep their new promises and provide substantial relief and development assistance to rebuild the whole system and the economy in Afghanistan."

Dr. Samar also criticizes aid agencies for finding reasons to avoid long-term support. "The aid agencies use the respect for culture and religion as an excuse for not supporting girls' education programs," she said. "We must also provide education for the boys. Unless real education opportunities are provided for boys, the madrassas [Islamic schools] will continue to create generations of boys that know only the war mentality and the mentality of repression against women." In the meantime, she said, her students and doctors will continue, with or without foreign help.

Knowledge building

Like Dr. Samar, many local Afghans aren't waiting for the West to rebuild their country. Many send money home to their families every month by money order or through agencies. Some sponsor relatives and friends to move to Canada. Others, like Hasibullah Fazel, have projects they work on part-time, in the evening, after they are done with studies, jobs and housework.

Fazel, 33, is one of the founders of Info-Afghan, an online resource devoted to preserving Afghan culture. Each member takes on a different project, like history, literature, medicine, religion or managing the huge photo database. "It will be a virtual library," the engineering undergrad says about the growing four-language project.

"We are very far from our country and we want to do something in Quebec," says Fazel's sister Roshana, who is doing sociological research on the 29 provinces of Afghanistan for the project. "There are no Afghan schools here. I want to leave something for the next generation."

In 1983, Fazel's family disguised themselves in dirty clothes, and rode through mountains on mule-back. The way was long and hard, but all the members of Fazel's troupe arrived in Pakistan without injury--better than could be said for the rotting corpses that dotted the route along the way.

Another Montreal Afghan trying to make a difference is Makai Aref, 50, an outspoken Afghan who has been active in the anti-war scene with the Comité de solidarité avec les femmes Afghanes, a group funded by Rights and Democracy. Besides speaking out publicly, she also participated in four public awareness actions in metro stations. She also works on creating links between local charity groups with Afghan hospitals, women's unions and schools.

Before moving to Canada she was the head of a national women's aid organization, and a school principal. "Afghanistan is a destroyed country," she says. "It needs all things. But most immediately, it needs education, schools, housing and communication." Aref also thinks the Canadian government could do more to help Afghan refugees. "They need to teach Afghan refugees how things work here--like the culture, the public transportation and the rules--and they need to be taught in their own language." What she doesn't want, however, is for refugees to live as long as they do on the dole. "Once they have been educated, they should be funded for a year so they can find work. But supporting them for too long makes them lazy," she says.

The greater good

Fazel says Montreal Afghans like himself, who are educated and entering the work force, have a greater goal in mind. "Young Afghans know the best way to make themselves heard is to become a professional," he says. "If you're a poor, lonely man, no one will listen to you. So they become as rich as they can."

Fazel says it is up to Afghans to help each other, because no one else will do it. "America says, 'We are here for human rights.' Give me a break. That country was built on slavery. It has always been for American interests. They contradict themselves. If they want to help they have to sign the international anti-mine treaty," he says, referring to the estimated 10- to 15-million landmines that continue to maim Afghan civilians by the thousands every year. "They have to stop selling arms."

Fazel believes that besides humanitarian aid and schools, Afghanistan needs to rebuild its transportation and communication systems, shattered by 23 years of war. Without them, people in small communities remain isolated and defenceless against warlords.

Another Info-Afghan member--who is working on a religious database for the site--says she is desperate to record Afghan culture, which she feels is threatened by the war and the mass-migration it has caused. "I want my daughter to be able to learn what it is to be Afghan," says Nilofar Javad, who turns 26 this month.

But Javad says her family back home would not have survived if she and her husband Ahmed Khalid had not sent them money. Javad and Khalid have sent $200 (U.S.) home every month since arriving in Canada in 1989. Like many Afghans, they send the money through an agency that keeps five per cent. It isn't easy, they say. "It's very hard to live here with the apartment, the car and the baby," says Khalid, who works for a company that sells electric shavers. "Once a month, once every two months, I go out for dinner with my wife."

"I have friends calling us crying and telling us, 'My children haven't eaten in days,'" says Javad, who is on one-year maternity leave from her accounting job. "We can't help everyone."

Khalid says he will return to Afghanistan as soon as things stabilize. "Eighty per cent of Afghans who left, left because of war," he says. "If Afghanistan is calm in a few years, and people are unarmed, I'll return. Here it's like living like a machine: wake up, work, come back, sleep. There, people visit each other. The air is cleaner. It's natural."

The Info-Afghan website is www.info-afghan.org. There will be an Afghan evening to celebrate the end of Ramadan this Saturday at 415 St. Roch (Parc metro) at 7 p.m. Call 327-5801 for info