A Coward in Afghanistan

Current reflections on global frontline aid, human rights, media and security issues by writer and journalist Edward Girardet.

Reflections on Access to Health Care

American film director Michael Moore’s documentary “Sicko” on health care in the United States – 50 million people without insurance or access to proper treatment – was not a particularly good investigation into the issue. But the film did make the point. You don’t want to be sick in America if you have no money. The fact that two billion other people, mainly in developing world, also have no adequate health care, brings it into a perspective which should shame Americans. The following draws on a recent personal tragedy which shows how lucky many Europeans are to have such access…even if we do complain about the inadequacies of National Health in the United Kingdom, the high premiums of Switzerland’s health insurance cartels, and overstretched facilities in French hospitals. This is also published in The Essential Edge www.essentialgeneva.com

Just over a month ago, my older brother Cliff, a sturdy man in his late fifties, collapsed with what appeared to be a heart attack. Cliff, who suffered from severe but manageable schizophrenia, lived with my 89-year-old mother overlooking the Swiss Lake Geneva town of Morges. He took care of most things such as shopping and ensuring that our fit but frail mother took her medicine. I just happened to be visiting for dinner with my two children, when the incident happened. I was able to act immediately. While trying to help him breathe, I called the ambulance which came within six minutes.

The paramedics immediately took my brother to nearby Morges hospital. There, the emergency team established that he had suffered from a dissected or ruptured aorta. Normally, most such victims are dead on arrival. The emergency doctor pulled me aside. “He is in extremely serious condition. It doesn’t look good. We’re amazed that he is alive.”

Aware of Cliff’s schizophrenia, the doctor quietly asked me about his quality of life. I explained that as with many schizophrenics, Cliff, who had once aspired to become a surgeon and had gone to first year medical school, had his ups and downs. He was a loner. He was also paranoid about being tracked by the CIA and believed that mysterious people were spiking his food with heroin. At the same time, apart from helping my mother, he worked several times a week at a local market selling vegetables. Basically, he still had a good life ahead of him.

This seemed sufficient to the doctor. He immediately dispatched Cliff, who was in a coma, by helicopter to Lausanne’s CHUV, one of Europe’s leading university hospitals, and less than 15 kilometres further up the lake. That night, a lead surgical team undertook two major interventions in an effort to save his life. The next morning, a tired doctor called me on my cell phone to say that they had taken care of the aorta but that Cliff had suffered major internal bleeding. Some of his organs, notably his kidneys and liver, were in bad shape. There was also a strong possibility that he might be paraplegic – if he survived.

For the next three weeks, Cliff remained in CHUV’s intensive care unit 5. He was hooked up to dialysis for his failed kidneys, a breathing apparatus, and various other support mechanisms. We visited him at least once a day, sometimes twice. The doctors and nurses, a team representing different nationalities – Swiss, French, Irish, Iranian…- were always helpful and ready to answer questions. They also phoned with updates. At all times, they remained candidly clear that Cliff’s chances remained slim. All we could do was wait and see.

Nevertheless, their insistence to involve the family in what they were doing did much to assuage our own concerns. Not once was there any talk about medical cost or insurance. In Switzerland, everyone is obliged to have health coverage and if one cannot afford it, the state is there to help. No one is left out in the cold. My wife’s father, a heart and lung specialist in the United States, who remained in close touch about Cliff’s condition, repeatedly asked about how we were going to pay for this clearly high quality intensive care. He was stunned when we told him this was not one of worries.

It is precisely this aspect of working toward universal health care that brought some 1,200 inter national experts to Geneva in late May 2008 for the second Geneva Health Forum (www.genevahealthforum.org) . Speaking to a special journalism workshop organized by Media21 Global Journalism Network (www.media21geneva.org ) at the Forum, Uganda vice-president Gilbert Balibaseka Bukenya, himself a doctor, explained that this was the goal for his own country. What is needed, he stressed, is to ensure that all Ugandans earn incomes thus providing a tax base that could eventually sustain a national healthcare system available to all.

Turning to me, he said: “If someone in your family was sick in Switzerland, you’d have the best health care for them, wouldn’t you? This is what we want to have in Uganda, too.” I could only nod in agreement.

My brother continued to suffer from various complications. At one point, he suffered from sceptic shock, but pulled through. He eventually woke up and was able to talk a little, albeit sometimes no more than mouthing a few words. We even began to have some hope. But he was weak and could only move his face. His arms and legs lay motionless. We wondered about the future. How would live as a paraplegic, even a quadriplegic, on full-time dialysis? For my mother, too, there were problems. Possibly as a result of the stress, she was hospitalised for four days with a lung infection.

Shortly before the end of May,more than three weeks after his collapse, I stopped by CHUV to visit Cliff. He did not look good. As I talked with him, I was shudderingly reminded of all those faces of dying war or famine victims I had seen as a journalist covering conflicts or humanitarian crises in Somalia, Afghanistan, Ethiopia or Angola. Cliff had that same expression. Desperately pale with sunken face.

As I sat there reflecting on his life but also our lives together as boys brought up in different countries around the world, I glanced over to the partly-curtained off area next to him. A young African girl, perhaps no more than 12-years-old, also lay in intensive care. The father was sitting by her side, his face buried in his arms, silently weeping. A woman, possibly the girl’s mother, sat motionless next to him. On coming in, I had noticed a whole group of friends and family sitting or standing in vigil in the waiting room down the hall. I wondered whether the girl would survive.

I also thought how lucky she was to be in a Swiss hospital. It was doubtful that she would have such care in Africa, except in South Africa or the more sophisticated hospitals of Nairobi or Lagos perhaps. Yet another reason for societies to try to provide at least basic of health care for all no matter whether Africa, Asia or the United States.

As I prepared to leave, one of the doctors, a Swiss-German, took me aside. “We have done all we can,” he said. “His body can’t take much more.” He paused. “We have to see how far we should go to keep him alive.” It was the conversation that I had been dreading. The doctor noted that even if Cliff managed to pull through, we would have to be prepared for the fact that he might not have a life anymore.

At the same time, he also made it clear that they were prepared to go as far as possible. This was not a conversation about cost or available resources, or that the intensive care unit had already spent almost a month providing him round-the-clock support. Nor was this a matter of forcing us into a thumbs up or down situation determining whether one’s loved one lived or died. Rather it was rather matter of being realistic – and compassionate, to decide what was best for the patient.

The next day, the same doctor called me at two in the morning. There was another complication, he explained. They suspected air leaking into his intestines. It was a relatively simple exploratory procedure. However, there was also a slight chance that they would discover other complications. If they encountered an impossible situation, he warned me, they would close him up again.

Later that morning, my wife called the hospital. They had not done the operation yet as they were waiting for one of their top specialists to come in. The intervention was scheduled for two in the afternoon. At five o’clock, a nurse called me. They had operated, she explained, only to find that his intestinal cells, which had been denied critical oxygen during the immediate stages of Cliff’s aeortic rupture, were dead or dying. There was nothing more they could do. Without a functioning intestine, he could not live. We should come in as soon as possible.

That evening, my wife and I drove to the hospital from Geneva. Cliff was sedated but looked surprisingly serene and even healthy, as if just taking a nap. We sat down with the medical team. Cliff only had a few more hours to live, a day at best, they explained. It was time to stop the procedures as these would only be prolonging his misery. They had not switched back on the dialysis following the exploratory intervention. We should say our goodbyes.

We returned to the hospital that night with my mother and our two children. Our 14-year-old daughter wept and my son – just eight years old – alternated between brief sobbing and being fascinated by the whole surgical setup with its flashing lights, computers, and motorized humming. As for my mother, she sat there quietly, looking at her son, not quite understanding how all this could go so quickly, from a physically healthy human being to a dying one. Finally, my wife and I brought them home before returning to stay by Cliff’s side until the end as they switched off his final support. Bizarrely, I found myself thinking that this is what happens to prisoners on death row with lethal injections. One is waiting for them to expire.

Cliff finally passed away at 0155 the next morning, peacefully, and without pain. A death with dignity.

The purpose of this story is to show that while Europe - but also select other countries around the world, such as Australia and New Zealand, - have made it their responsibility to provide quality health care, it is a crucial component of any society that should be made available to every human being, no matter who. This is what caring human beings do.

For those who rant and rave about the need for health care to pay for itself, and to hell with those who can’t afford it, they should understand that we're also looking at a matter of economic common sense. A healthy society is a productive society. Preventive medicine, too, including dental care, which most insurance companies still do not embrace, is far cheaper than reactive medicine. The provision of basic healthcare for all would probably save most governments - and businesses - tens of billions of dollars a year.

As Michael Moore points out in his film, the United States provides a state-supported postal service and schooling, so why not health care? So I find it very hard to understand why short-sighted politicians and lobbying groups cannot grasp the simple importance of basic health care. My mother, for example, has a nurse stop by the house every day to check on her and to ensure that she takes her medicine. This is all covered by basic health insurance. They also offer meals on wheels, which she refuses adamantly maintaining that she can cook perfectly well for herself. But, as one of the nurses pointed out, it is a lot cheaper to help people at home rather than have them go to hospital. Most people are also happier at home.

Most of all, however, is that those societies that provide basic health care for all show that they care about their citizens, regardless whether young or old, and regardless whether they live in Somalia, India or the United States. They're all human beings. And they deserve dignity. One is not simply discarding them because they are no longer considered useful. This is what civilized society does.

Edward Girardet, a former foreign correspondent, is a writer and journalist based in the Lake Geneva region. He is also journalist advisor to the Media21 Global Journalism Network.

June 10, 2008 in Weblogs | Permalink | Comments (1)

Charlie Wilson and Ignoring Afghanistan's Unwinnable Wars

By Edward Girardet

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Shortly after the start of America’s retaliatory bombing in Afghanistan in October, 2001, I found myself on “The O’Reilly Factor,” a Fox television talk show. Bill O’Reilly, the program’s interviewer, immediately confused the Taliban with Al Qaeda. This, I warned, represented a total misunderstanding of the country’s devastating conflicts over the past two and a half decades. The US strategy also threatened to inflict a whole swathe of new Bin Ladens not just on Afghanistan, but the rest of the world.

I had recently returned from Afghanistan, where I had traveled to meet with Ahmed Shah Massoud, the renowned guerrilla commander whom I knew well from my reporting of the Soviet occupation in the 1980s. Massoud wanted to explore why his homeland was still involved in an ever vicious cycle of destruction, much of it fueled by outside interests. The only option, he maintained via satellite phone, was to establish a broad-based government that included moderate Taliban.

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Sandstorms delayed our rendezvous and I had to return to Europe. While in northern Afghanistan, I had unwittingly shared a guest house with the two Al Qaeda assassins who blew up Massoud two days later on September 9. By ridding the country of its last major resistance figure, Al Qaeda could pursue its own more global objectives in the knowledge that the Pushtun-dominated Taliban could now extend their control nation-wide.

All this was of no concern to O’Reilly. He repeatedly interrupted my attempts to explain the rise of the Taliban and the significance of Massoud’s assassination for 9/11. “The American people aren’t interested in history,” he asserted.

The fact that Fox TV - today the main source of news to US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq - represented the patriotic mainstream at the time was disconcerting enough. It was an arrogance also widely embraced by other mainstream media, including the New York Times. At a Washington dinner, the foreign editor of the New York Times and other present rebuked two other journalists and myself – all three of us with Afghan experience - for daring to question US policy in the wake of 9/11. The fact that the Fourth Estate had a responsibility to report critically did not seem to bother them. This, I thought to myself, is what it must have been like during the McCarthy era.

Even today, newspapers like the New York Times and other mainstream media – but also many educated Americans who should know better - are still not that interested in confronting realities on the ground. It is this unwillingness to learn from the past that currently represents the greatest threat to Afghanistan’s international recovery effort.

As history has shown, no one wins wars in Afghanistan. Not even Afghans. America’s unilateral “war against terrorism” is unable to thwart the country’s steadily expanding civil conflict. Washington is further implementing a military-backed counter-narcotics campaign that is only turning irate opium poppy farmers into fresh fodder for Taliban recruitment.

Many NATO military, but also aid consultants and diplomats, remain staggeringly uninformed. So obsessed are they by “quick fixes” or top-down strategies with little understanding of on-the-ground realities that much of what is being done is doomed to failure. It is as if Afghanistan did not exist prior to the Taliban.

Today’s Afghanistan is remarkably déjà vu of the Red Army occupation. Then the communists “controlled” the towns and parts of the countryside. The mujahideen – as the guerrillas were known - were everywhere and nowhere. The Soviets regularly declared victory whenever the guerrillas - “terrorists” for Moscow - were killed or put to flight. More often than not, the mujahideen simply regrouped to fight again. Their strength – but also their weakness – lay in their lack of coordination.

NATO’s war consists of combating a disparate swathe of rebel fronts that include neo-Taliban, former mujahideen, and drug traffickers. Similar to the “freedom fighters” of the 1980s, the insurgents rely heavily on the tribal frontier areas for support, but also from outsiders, such as Pakistani military, sympathetic to their cause. About the only new tactic is the use of suicide bombings, some of them Afghan, others foreign-instigated.

Ordinary Afghans increasingly perceive the international presence as an occupation. They are angered by NATO bombings, the blatant corruption among privileged Afghan elites, and the failure of aid to reach where it is needed most, notably rural areas.

The United States must bear much of the responsibility for this. Following the 1989 Soviet withdrawal, the U.S. ignored the consequences of funneling weapons to Afghan extremist groups, such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e-Islami faction. This led to rampant lawlessness enabling the Taliban to emerge in the mid-1990s as a relatively popular movement among Afghans exhausted by war.

Seven years into the intervention, the ignorance is perpetuated by the Tom Hanks movie, Charlie Wilson’s War. Hollywood would have one believe that the pro-Western Massoud was the principal beneficiary for US covert aid, thanks to Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson. In reality, Massoud received very little. The film completely fails to mention Wilson’s involvement with Hekmatyar, a virulently anti-American resistance politician.

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Working closely with the Pakistanis, Wilson ensured that Hekmatyar received the bulk of U.S. backing as Afghanistan’s “most effective” guerrilla leader. Many journalists and western aid workers, however, had a completely different assessment. Hekmatyar relentlessly murdered Afghan intellectuals and attacked mujahed rivals. Some State Department officials raised concerns about his blatant efforts to undermine the resistance, but no one listened. Wilson had a war to fight.

By 2002, Washington had designated Hekmatyar an “international terrorist.” The Central Intelligence Agency even tried to kill its former protégé, but failed. Hekmatyar is now operating from along the Afghan-Pakistan border and is believed to be behind some of the worst bombings that have killed and maimed hundreds.

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Author George Crile, who died after the book Charlie Wilson’s War came out, did not conceal America’s support for Afghan extremists. Hollywood, of course, remains Hollywood, yet neither Washington nor many US media are interested in highlighting this murky past. By pretending that Wilson was not in the business of creating monsters, this latest spin is hardly doing anyone any favors. Surely, the international community’s costly involvement in Afghanistan merits a better understanding of the way things are.

Edward Girardet is a writer on humanitarian, conflict and media issues, who has covered Afghanistan since just prior to the Soviet invasion in December, 1979. Girardet, who is editor of the Essential Field Guide to Afghanistan, is currently writing a book on his experiences.

January 28, 2008 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (1)

Corruption and Critical Reporting of International Aid

A version of this was first published by the Christian Science Monitor in the June 08, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0608/p09s01-coop.html
The following is a slightly expaned version.

Aid projects need more critical media coverage

A specialized reporting entity could expose the weaknesses in the international aid business and encourage reform.

By Edward Girardet

Geneva -- The forced resignation of former World Bank director Paul Wolfowitz for nepotism was largely the result of intense pressure by an irate staff who saw his actions as lacking in dignity and concern for the well-being of the organization. The willingness of the press to pursue the issue was another contributing factor.

Wrongdoing, of course, is nothing new to the international aid industry.

But in most cases there is no dogged media reporting or public will to bring the culprits to task. The fact that Mr. Wolfowitz was appointed in the first place by the Bush administration only underlines the practice of many member states (who consider it their right) to dump political appointees – regardless of competence – on the United Nations and other international agencies. This does little for the credibility of these organizations.

The UN's 53-member Commission on Sustainable Development recently named Zimbabwe (led by its corrupt and increasingly arrogant president, Robert Mugabe) to head the key UN body. This is another example of the disdain that countries - this time African - often harbor for the mandates of institutions that are supposed to serve humanity and not dictatorial regimes. Another is the systematic failure of governments to hold their peacekeeping soldiers accountable for rape or trafficking.

International aid is in desperate need of more critical reporting. This is crucial if committed aid professionals - and there are many - are to do their jobs properly. Many feel frustrated by their inability to thwart the inherent nepotism, corruption, and power abuses that pervade much of the system.

Aid organizations regularly cover up managerial dysfunction, including sexual harassment, by ignoring the actions of those responsible. This includes a UN agency director in Geneva lying about his age to stay in power longer, the misappropriation of US funds by private contractors in the Middle East, and the placement of inappropriate personnel in well-paid UN positions by in-house "mafiosi" to the detriment of more qualified individuals.

In certain instances, this has led to an environment of impunity with few employees daring to speak out. One World Health Organization department head who consistently intimidated fellow colleagues was not only reassigned to another agency, but at a higher salary and position. Another UN aid coordinator - this time working for UNHCR in Somalia - was removed for blatant conflict of interest only to reemerge later with the same organization in Europe.

The UN system, however, will only prove as good as its member states allow it to be. All too many organizations are burdened by incompetent individuals who stifle the initiatives of others, sometimes with resounding consequences for the victims of war, HIV-AIDS, or drought. Nor is there any real pressure to "out" officials who abuse their trust.

The UN's country representative in Harare, Zimbabwe, a Mozambican known to be close to Mr. Mugabe, has been accused by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) of refusing to treat Zimbabwe's economic collapse as a humanitarian crisis for fear of embarrassing the regime. Why the UN would appoint someone from the same region - and from a country whose senior officials are know for their corrupt business dealings with their Zimbabwean counterparts - is a mystery. And why the interests of the country's people, who barely survive while Mugabe and his henchmen recline in the lap of relative plenty, should not prove more important to the UN than those of its dictator is another curious factor.

Every year, the UN and NGOs, but also the military, spend hundreds of millions or, as some suggest, billions of dollars on humanitarian, reconstruction, or peacekeeping programs of dubious impact.

Among these are costly but ineffective initiatives, such as opium-eradication pro¬grams in Afghanistan or desperate face-saving development operations in Iraq.

Many disasters, whether Somalia's civil wars or Zim¬babwe's economic collapse, are instigated by corrupt regimes, power-hungry factions, or criminal elements. Simply pouring in more aid or imposing inappropriate peacekeeping operations are not going to resolve such crises. They may even make them worse.

Numerous projects, too, are poorly coordinated as a result of interagency UN rivalries or inappropriate expertise among contracted consultancy firms, and sometimes such initiatives are implemented for the wrong reasons. Major donors, too, ranging from Britain's DFID to Japan's Development Agency also engage in practises which sometimes verge on corruption or inappropriate behaviour. Virtually every aid worker has a story which would make these organizations cringe if the truth got out.

While NGOs, which rely heavily on donor funding, can indeed cite innumerable examples of aid that makes little sense, they are cautious about criticizing their benefactors. One aid administrator in London pointed out that even when known to be part of a questionable political agenda, "it's still your bottom line." Another aid worker added: "You're certainly not going to spit in your soup if push comes to shove."

Many NGOs, including highly respectable organizations, have become obsessed by image as a means of promoting fundraising to maintain costly administrative overheads. They now often seek to focus on initiatives that make them look good but do not necessarily respond to on-the-ground needs. "For me, this is a form of moral corruption," confided one US agency representative. "Particularly when you know that the organization is not doing what it claims to be doing." Some aid agency websites seem to focus more on fund-raising than actually informing the public about their activities. You have to dig hard to find out what they are doing once you have waded through the fund-raising and promotional hype.

Much of the emergency response to the Indian Ocean tsunami in late 2004 was not required, but hundreds of organizations still insisted on being seen, often at the cost of rechanneling humanitarian resources from vital operations elsewhere in the world, bringing some to virtual collapse, notably in Africa.

What this amounts to is a blatant abuse of public confidence. As one International Committee of the Red Cross representative admitted, if the donating public knew how often personal egos or vested interests call the shots, they might prove less forthcoming in their support.

Efforts are being made to introduce desperately needed change. Last November, the High Panel for UN Reform co-chaired by Norway, Pakistan, and Mozambique presented a list of recommendations to make the system, including the Bretton Woods institutions, more accountable. Organizations such as the Geneva-based Humanitarian Accountability Partnership (HAP) are also promoting greater transparency among NGOs.
Many member states, however, have too much to lose from a truly open UN.

During its six-month deliberations, the High Panel discussed the need for improved monitoring but also an annual "state of the world" humanitarian report as a means of keeping tabs on situations, such as those in Darfur or Sri Lanka.

Humanitarianism, however, should not "belong" to any one group. What the international aid industry urgently needs is more hard-nosed and independent reporting.

Current initiatives such as IRIN, the UN's humanitarian news service, and the World Disaster Report of the International Red Cross are excellent in many ways but widely perceived as beholden to their organizations.
One problem, particularly for the Red Cross for example, organizations often fully confuse information with fund-raising or public relations. Another question is whether one can expect real criticism of the international aid industry if such ventures are themselves cofunded by governments.

The best solution would be the creation of a viable media watchdog capable of reporting the real causes behind humanitarian predicaments, including how the international community responds, or fails to respond.

Most mainstream news organizations, many of which appear to have abandoned real journalism, are unlikely to cover the global aid business on a consistent basis. On the other hand, a pooling of media, corporate, and foundation support for a specialized reporting entity could prove to be the answer. Any other approach that does not guarantee complete independence would be a waste of time and money.

• Edward Girardet is a writer and journalist specializing in media, humanitarian aid, and conflict.

June 11, 2007 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (1)

On the death of Christophe de Ponfilly

Remembering Christophe

By Edward Girardet

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CESSY, France -- Christophe de Ponfilly, the 55-year-old French film-maker, writer, and Afghan aficionado died on Tuesday, 16 May, 2006 by his own hand in a forest – one of his favourite walking haunts - outside Paris. For Christophe, it was a final act of romantic and melancholic desperation not only with his own life, but also the way Mankind deals, or fails to deal, with its fellow human beings...

But for me, a close friend of 25 years, Christophe’s decision – which I have to respect - at the end of a gun barrel represented the tragic conclusion to the remarkable life of a highly talented and passionate fellow journeyman. He was a man who constantly questioned the world but always saw a new challenge just over the next mountain pass. And yet, sadly for all who loved and admired him, he remained in torment, eventually concluding that he no longer had a place in the very world he was seeking to explore – and confront.

* * *

As a Paris-based foreign correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor newspaper, I first met Christophe in the early summer of 1981 in the Pakistani Northwest Frontier city of Peshawar. I had been planning a clandestine – and exclusive - reporting trip into northern Afghanistan with one of the resistance groups, Jamiat-e-Islami, who would be accompanying a relief team from the French voluntary aid organization Aide Medicale Internationale which was operating a health clinic in the Panjshair Valley. The objective was to meet a certain Ahmed Shah Massoud, an up and coming guerrilla commander, who was supposedly giving the Soviets a very hard time.

I was somewhat disappointed therefore when a Jamiat representative stopped by Dean’s Hotel where I was staying to ask whether I minded sharing the trip with two French journalists. They were preparing a documentary film for a French television network, he explained, and it would be better to combine our efforts. I reluctantly agreed. Of course, the two cineastes, Christophe de Ponfilly and Jerôme Bony, were equally suspicious of me, but after meeting for tea we agreed to travel together. They seemed a good, humorous bunch and we immediately got on well. To be fair, I was also glad of the company and the two men evidently appreciated that I had already made several crossborder trips by foot into Afghanistan since the December, 1979 Soviet invasion.

Leaving Peshawar with the three AMI doctors and nurses, plus Jean-José Puig, a French computer specialist who used to fish for trout in Afghanistan before the war and was now intent on helping the resistance cause, we proceeded by road up to Chitral and then Garm-e-Shishma, a small village blessed by ancient hot springs at the base of the snow-capped Hindu Kush mountains. Once serving as a transit point for Alexander the Great’s soldiers, it was now a staging base for the Afghan mujahideen. From there, Agha Gul, a mild-mannered former police officer with a drooping moustache and the look of a Sardinian bandit, took us under his protective wing to accompany us to the Panjshair. A Massoud confident, he was also in charge of a 150-horse caravan loaded with guns, food and medical supplies. Since then, Agha Gul was to remain a close friend with Christophe.

The journey was ideal for Christophe and Jerôme, who had pooled their resources to undertake this audacious film project. At the time, Christophe, a tall, thin man with short, military-style blond hair, was working as a frustrated editor with Laffont – supervising an encyclopaedia of sex no less – while Jerôme, an equally lanky individual with a thin nose and constantly bemused eyes, was a journalist with Antenne 2. Neither had much experience in film-making but had adopted the novel approach of using lightweight Super-8 cameras. Planning to transfer the film to tape for broadcast, they wanted to prove that it was possible to shoot professionally as part of a low-budget production while remaining mobile and without masses of equipment.

Over the next two weeks, swearing, arguing and laughing amongst themselves, Christophe and Jerôme filmed the arduously-moving convoy as it climbed 5,000 metre passes or manoeuvred gingerly along narrow trails across stony scree escarpments and verdant alpine pastures before descending through pine-forested ridges into the valleys below. At one point, a hapless mujahed stepped on an anti-personnel mine less than 20 metres from where we had stopped for tea. The doctors performed an on-the-spot amputation before dispatching him back to Pakistan for further treatment on a make-shift litter tied to a horse. One mountain pass beyond, Christophe and Jerôme stopped to film the doctors treating a small boy whose hand had been blown off by a mine he had picked up as a toy. The child, we later discovered, died from infection.

All this provided the team with precisely the sort of dramatic footage they needed to illustrate the devastating impact of this new Soviet war. Tens of thousands of anti-personnel ‘butterfly’ mines had been strewn by helicopter along the high mountain passes inflicting indiscriminate casualties amongst both guerrillas and fleeing civilians alike.
It also enabled them to begin telling the story – one which Christophe continued for years to come – of how a largely uneducated, but resilient peasant people were resisting one of the world’s Super Powers.

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Crossing through Nuristan and Badakshan, we slept in lone huts or huddled together in our sleeping bags against the bitter cold behind stone-lined enclosures normally used by shepherds to shelter from the wind. It took me some time to get to know the two Frenchmen, but they were very much the Mutt and Jeff duo. Jerôme was the clown with his incessant supply of quips and jokes, while Christophe was the more serious, philosophical type, albeit not without a characteristic high-pitched giggling sense of humour. He also had a fascination for the martial arts, notably karate of which he was a black belt. Whenever we stopped for a break, Christophe would present us with a series of demonstrative karate thrusts and jousts before settling down, thoroughly content with himself, to eat or rest.

We quickly developed a congenial rapport of mutual mocking. Christophe was particularly intrigued by the fact that I hailed from a bizarre Swiss, American and British background, could speak French and was able to identify most of the birds and other forms of wildlife in the region. He also shook his head in dismay over my relentless note-taking and obsession for listening to the BBC, whether the news or agricultural programmes, on my short-wave radio whenever we stopped.

“What’s the point in listening to the radio when you can’t do anything about it, particularly in a place like this?” he once asked as he and Jerome lay exhausted, their backs against a rock. Both nursed their knee joints or complained about back problems from our daily regimen of twelve to fourteen hours of constant trekking.

“Well, you can always learn something,” I explained holding up the radio with a laugh. “They’re saying that the best cure for stiff knees and back problems is lots of walking.”

Nevertheless, over the years, Christophe would sometimes listen to my shortwave (which I carried on all my trips) in one of many valiant attempts to improve his English. Reluctantly, he had come to accept the need to learn the language for professional reasons, but he had the most excruciating accent and always gave it up as a hopeless cause, including several jabs at hiring a teacher. “There is no way I can ever learn this maudite language properly,” he lamented.

Wonderfully French, Christophe regularly criticized, sometimes in geste, but often deadly serious, what he called Anglo-Saxon “cultural imperialism.” British and American television networks never seemed willing to accept his “impressionistic” style of film-making, obliging him to produce “international” versions better suited to “Anglo-Saxon” tastes. Whenever we worked together, I always insisted on shooting separate interviews in English to be assured that there would be something of interest to the BBC and other networks. Too many French-language “talking heads,” I constantly had to remind him, were simply not acceptable.

Every time, however, Christophe protested vehemently, bemoaning the fact that the Americans would never take his work anyway, or wanted shortened versions with they could themselves edit, a stipulation he always refused unless he was himself involved. Sometimes, Christophe descended into a deep depression from which I had to gently lift him back up, often spending hours to persuade him that cultural versatility was absolutely necessary if he hoped to break into the English-speaking market, and that there was no pride lost if he could demonstrate such resourcefulness.

As a professional, Christophe was utterly engrossed by his passion for film and the risk he and Jerôme were taking with their Afghan production. Both then and in the years ahead, Christophe and I regularly discussed the intricacies of documentary making, but also, as he had already made thoroughly clear during my first trip with him to the Panjshair, his dream for producing feature films. And so today, in late May, 2006, I find it sadly ironic that he chose to leave us having just completed this dream of making his first full-length fiction film, about Afghanistan no less. The film – “L’Etoile du Soldat” – about a Red Army soldier both during and after the Soviet-Afghan war could have offered him so many more mountain passes to cross. Was this Christophe’s full circle, I wonder?

* * *

Christophe_massoud_and_ed_1995_2
Naturally, too, when you spend so much time walking, you spend a lot of time talking, or being a “walkie-talkie” as my six-year-old son likes to describe conservations on country walks. Trudging along those Afghan mountain paths in the summer of 1981, Christophe and I chatted for hours on end about the art of living in Paris, our passions for women, the challenges of writing, and the food we relished. Or the reasons why Christophe, at the start of his adult life, had briefly joined a Jesuit seminary but then left when he realised – or so he maintained - that he could not survive without women.

For Christophe was the quintessential romantic. Often, we imagined entire menus from oysters washed down by cold, dry white wine followed by canard à l’orange or boeuf Stroganoff and a wonderful red burgundy to a chunky mousse au chocolat, all to be finished off with an expresse, bien serré of course, a Davidoff Cuban cigar and a cognac. As we trudged along those dusty mountain trails, our feet aching and hot, we could literally taste those oysters and that wine slipping down our parched throats. And the fact that neither of us really smoked or for that matter drank alcohol in excess did not seem to matter. When we later returned to Paris, we made a point of meeting up for dinner at the Cloiserie de Lilas so that we could indulge in our fantasies. Somehow, however, those meals never tasted quite as good as those imaginary clandestine repasts conjured up in our minds.

For both of us, our treks throughout the 1980s in Afghanistan represented a spiritual balm, a vital drug, for contemplating one’s life without the pollution or bland disturbances of the outside world. You were cut off for weeks at a time. The fact that Afghanistan was at war did not seem to matter because everything had been reduced to base survival. Life on the outside quickly lost its importance. You were dealing with an extraordinary country of overwhelming rugged beauty and a people whose profound sense of hospitality in the form of a handshake or a cup of heavily sugared green tea made you realise that nothing else really mattered.

Where else could you find the time to think so intensely and without interruption for hours, days, on end, where the physical art of living was so rudimentary, so simple, without the intrusions of the office telephone, the broken down washing machine at home or the bills one could barely pay? We both considered it indispensable that at least once a year, one should head off into the mountains or deserts for two or three weeks with only minimum food; bread, tea and some fruit would suffice, so that one’s stomach shrunk and one could focus, once again, on what really mattered.

Later, when the war wound down and you could travel into Afghanistan’s beckoning highlands or semi-arid expanses by car from Pakistan or Kabul, it was never again the same. The world, our worlds, had changed. Perhaps, too, it was a matter of growing up. Both Christophe and I agreed that without these spectacular treks ‘inside’ - as we referred to crossing clandestinely into Afghanistan - there was something strangely missing from our lives. Somehow, hiking in Corsica – as Christophe later did with his two sons – or my own trips into the Swiss Alps were never quite the same.

So now I wonder whether the lack of these “spiritual” journeys in the 1990s and early 2000s in their own way contributed toward Christophe’s thinking that there was no longer any point. That life was only a faint imprint of the romantic and spiritual notion of what he had set out to achieve.

* * *

Once in the Panjshair Valley, we finally met Massoud, an encounter - in the carpeted guest room of a bomb-damaged house lit by kerosene lanterns - that marked all of us for life. For Christophe, it was to prove the start of an extraordinary journey – and, above all, a friendship. This endured in life until Massoud’s assassination on 9 September, 2001, and in death until Christophe’s own demise only a few days ago.

During our several weeks in the Panjshair we travelled or regularly met with Massoud to discuss his resistance to the Soviets. At that time, the Afghan guerrilla leader had already thwarted several attempts by the Red Army to oust him from his stronghold and he was beginning to prove more than just a mere thorn in the side of Moscow. Massoud was galvanizing Kabul and other parts of the country with his exploits to step up their struggle to throw out these unwelcome invaders. We also reported on the work of the “French doctors” and the attempts by the local population to survive amid their bombed out villages, ruptured irrigation canals and burned fruit orchards.

On one occasion, we met with Massoud in a small village nestled away in a narrow sidevalley to discuss an attack early next morning against the strategic Salang highway. This was used by the Soviets to transport supplies down from the Tajikistan-Afghan border in the north. A pressure lamp hissed viciously as we pored over a map with Massoud. Red Army troops had entrenched themselves on the ridges less than one kilometre away, but this did not seem to bother the Afghan commander. Twenty minutes later, he stood up quickly, bade us good night and promised to pick up us up at first light to go on the attack which the French team hoped to film. We laid out our sleeping bags and I suggested to Christophe and Jerôme that they sleep with their boots on and with our packs ready to move at a moment’s notice. I was concerned by the proximity of the Soviets, who, I felt, must have had their informers on the ground. “It’s a gut feeling,” I explained, but both Christophe and Jerôme laughed and removed their gear.

Less than two hours later, we were rudely awoken by stomach-shuddering explosions and flashes of light. The Soviets were mortaring the village. They had clearly taken a sight on the house where they suspected Massoud might still be staying. With Christophe and Jerome cursing and struggling to pull on their boots in the dark, we took flight – shrapnel slicing through the mulberry and walnut tree foliage like hailstones – and surged across the fields in pitch blackness with only the mortar flashes to guide us. At least two people, it later turned out, were killed seconds later in the house where we had been staying. At one point, we came to a river, which we had carefully traversed only the morning before, and plunged in. Cold and wet, we made our way to an abandoned hut, where we collapsed to sleep. Just after dawn, Massoud appeared, cleanly dressed and relaxed, asking us with a grin whether we were coming. Still shaking, all three of us decided that we had witnessed enough “action” for the time being and sheepishly opted to return to the AMI clinic in Astana where we were staying.

Both Christophe and Jerome returned to France with the material for their award-winning documentary, Valley Against an Empire, broadcast in its entirety by the BBC. But Christophe’s relationship with the quietly confident and self-effacing “Lion of Panjshair” with the look of Bob Dylan developed into a fascination if not obsession (which Christophe did not accept). With all his strengths and flaws, Massoud represented in the late 20th century what many of us are not. It was Massoud’s ability to resist the Soviets and then his mujahed rivals and eventually the Taliban that struck such a chord with Christophe. He was challenged by the need to constantly explore – and record - what it was that enabled a human being to persevere for so long and against such overwhelming odds.

Some critics maintained that Christophe had gone over the top with his “sentimentalism” for Massoud, the Afghan, and this clearly upset him. But for me, it was evident that Christophe was not only intrigued by the whole concept of resistance (not just in Afghanistan) but the ability of a single individual to stick to one’s beliefs with such doggedness in what he saw was right. It is this that Christophe so admired.

All too aware of what had transpired during the Nazi occupation of Europe, and the reluctance, still grossly apparent today, of so many French to properly examine their country’s past, including Indochina and Algeria, Christophe felt that too many people today, regardless whether European, American, African, or other, lack the stamina and conviction to embrace our basic human and moral responsibilities.

This not only includes responding to the world’s humanitarian or conflict situations in a manner that is “right,” but also reacting with a decisiveness that can help prevent catastrophes in places like Rwanda, Iraq, Sudan, or the Middle East. For all too long, Christophe felt, the West – with all its hypocritical rhetoric - simply failed to deal with Afghanistan despite all the clear and repeated warnings by people such as Massoud. We choose to ignore what is too inconvenient, he argued, even if it is staring us right in the face. It was a subject that Christophe was to return to again and again in his films and in his books.

I remember only too well attending a dinner with about a dozen people in the 16eme arrondissement of Paris several months after Valley Against an Empire was broadcast on French television. There were several well-heeled bourgeois supporters of the French communist party at the table and somehow the discussion came to Afghanistan. One of them, a man in his early forties defended the Soviet invasion and dismissed the documentary as pure fabrication. He loudly pooh-poohed the film’s references to the existence of an Afghan resistance as if during World War II. No one supports this man Massoud, he proclaimed. I quietly asked him whether he had ever met Massoud. No, he retorted, but I have been to Afghanistan (before the war) and I know the Afghans. When I casually noted that I had actually been on the same trip with the two film-makers and had written my own newspaper series about the “Lion of Panjshair,” he shut up. It was then that I realised what Christophe had begun to achieve by alerting the French public to the role of Massoud and the determination of so many ordinary Afghans to fight back.

On our return to France, Christophe and I remained friends. We both retained our interest in Afghanistan, largely through the people we had encountered or knew with links to the situation there, such Dr. Laurence Laumounier of AMI, Pierre Issot-Sergent (the first journalist to report on Massoud), Dr Juliette Fournot of MSF, political science specialist Olivier Roy and ethnologist Mike Barry. Christophe and I would often meet for lunch in Paris or at his country place near Chantilly north of the French capital to hotly debate documentary films or journalism, or simply to discuss life and women, a preferred topic for both of us. We also began to work together on films or shared coverage.

Christophe considered himself very much the creative film-maker who found the necessity to stick to the facts an obtrusive burden. He did not consider himself a journalist; he even resented the term. While later working together in Africa or Asia, he often made fun of me with my insistence to put the same non-leading questions to different people.

“You know the answer, so why do you bother?” he would ask.

“Because I need it to be confirmed,” I said. “This is my way of being as accurate as possible.”

Deep down, Christophe agreed that the craft of straight reporting was indeed essential, but often lamented how difficult it was to make “true” documentaries because of the constraints imposed by reality. “It would be far easier to simply let fiction take over,” he said. “Then you can really tell the story.”

As a film-maker, Christophe considered it crucial to tell stories in a manner that allowed the human essence of his characters to seep through in an unadulterated a form as possible. For an “Anglo-Saxon” journalist, I sometimes found his commentaries too sinister or mushy. It was very French. Yet I had to admit that his approach could prove exceptionally poignant. He gave his subjects the opportunity to speak honestly, and with humanity. They also spoke with emphasis and with compassion, and often with powerful, meaningful pauses. Christophe was not one to believe in sound bites and had little time for American-style “bottom liners.”

At the same time, Christophe saw how mainstream television, both in America and Europe, increasingly ignored the realities or truths on the ground by pushing for cliché simplicity and focusing only on what made “good” television. Story manipulation masquerading as serious journalism was happening all the time. He eventually wrote about this in Les Gobeurs de Lune, a novel depicting an American journalist who deliberately fabricates a news story to see whether anyone can really tell the difference, or cares.

Of course, this happened with Afghanistan in the late 1980s when an American film-maker, Mike Hoover, deliberately staged shots– and even stole war footage from an Afghan cameraman who had risked his life - for a CBS documentary which won an award. For me, this was an affront to all the serious film-makers and cameramen such as Christophe, Peter Jouvenal, Ken Guest and others, who had spent months if not years painstakingly making serious documentaries or reports only to have some charlatan get away with falsification. Despite ample proof, CBS vigorously denied this and even sent Hoover back to Afghanistan to make further films. CBS’s response could have been straight from Christophe’s book.

* * *

In 1982, Christophe and I accompanied Rony Brauman, the head of Médecins sans Frontières, on an exploratory trip to Angola. The French relief agency had four seats available for journalists, two of them for Radio France Internationale, two for us. Although I reported mainly for my own newspaper, Christophe and I collaborated on a documentary, Les Rebelles de la Brousse, which won us a dubious award, the Prix Fou. For six weeks, we filmed with Jonas Savimbi, the South African-backed UNITA rebel leader, across half of Angola, including an attack against Munhango, a government stronghold along the strategic Benguela railroad. Whether jolting for hours through the bush in the back of a huge URAL truck or contentedly smoking huge reefers of Zairois grass in front of our base camp huts watching the setting sun, we spent hours talking and making elaborate plans for new projects. Christophe was determined to make more films and to write books. By 1983, he had set up his own production company – Interscoop - with his new partner, Frederic Laffont.

Once back in Paris, Christophe, who had been divorced from his first wife, Mathilde, and had been camping out in various temporary abodes, was in desperate need of a place to live. My then girl friend, Tala Skari, and I were just in the process of moving into a huge flat on the Rue Faubourg St Denis, and offered to share it with him. (It was Tala, whose daughter attends the same school as Christophe’s son Max, who called me on my cell phone from Paris last Sunday to alert me to his death.) For the next eighteen months, the house was constantly filled with film-makers, photographers, Afghan resistance representatives, international aid workers, and, of course, Christophe’s various women. While I spent much of my time travelling to Africa and Asia on assignment, Christophe was busy making new documentary films. In 1986, while I was crossing Africa on a nearly two-year-long trip for my newspaper, Christophe and his then partner, Anne, flew down to meet with us in Zimbabwe to shoot a film on white farmers, Une Autre Façon d’être Blanc.

Throughout this period, Christophe persisted with his fascination for Massoud and Afghanistan. Several more key films emerged, such as Les Combattants de l’Insolence and Massoud, Portrait d’un Chef Afghan.. Once, as I was returning by foot to Pakistan along one of the northern clandestine routes with French journalist Patrick St Exupery, we bumped into Christophe and his friend, Bertrand Gallet, just outside the Nuristani town of Kontiwah. They were making their way to the Panjshair to film just as we were heading back. It was like a chance meeting on the Boulevard St Germain. We embraced, slapping each other on the back, and chatted for several minutes. There had been a lot of bombing against fleeing refugee columns and casualties had been high. Soviet special forces, too, were trying to hunt down foreign journalists known to be operating in the region, so much of our conversation was about security. We promised to meet up for dinner back in Paris. We then continued on our separate ways.

At the end of the 1980s, Christophe and I again shared a huge flat, this time for almost two years, in the Rue Faubourg Montmatre in northern Paris. But I was travelling most of the time and spent less than two months in the apartment. With so much space, Pierre Issot-Sergent made a pied-à-terre in one of my rooms and Patti Norchi, an American musician, lived in another. Whenever I returned briefly, there was always some dinner taking place, even film showings. With new girl friends, Christophe would often place them in front of a video to watch his productions while he finished up some work before taking them out to dinner. On one occasion, just back from Namibia, I found Christophe holding a special screening of Autofolies, a documentary about obsessive drivers and traffic in Paris, with some 200 guests sipping wine, watching video screens and dancing to rock and roll.

On my return to Paris in 1990, Christophe and Frédéric Laffont asked me to work with them on an ambitious new project, A Coeurs, A Corps, A Cris, about Medecins sans Frontieres. Over the next 12 months, Christophe and I travelled on shoots to El Salvador, Sri Lanka, Mozambique and Liberia. While the main French version was three hours, I acted as writer for the BBC one, Frontline Doctors, with Daniel Day-Lewis doing the voice over. The 75-minute British cut helped raise so much money for MSF that the French aid group was obliged to create MSF UK. Many of my British television friends could not believe that BBC 2 had given such prominence – a Christmas holiday Sunday evening special – to a film made by the French. Clearly, this was a feather in Christophe’s cap, but he still niggardly begrudged the need to make a special “Anglo-Saxon” version.

The shooting of the MSF film was the also the time when Christophe met Florence, his second wife, and he was very much in love. From Miami on our way to Salvador, he asked me to call Florence, a striking and highly talented French-German woman whom he had just met. He asked me to pass on a message in German and to say that he missed her desperately. I was constantly amused by Christophe’s romantic affairs and the intenseness of his relationships. But even his loves proved a torment and he would often complain about how difficult it was to be with a woman, and to remain true to oneself.

During the MSF shoot, Christophe and I often went for long runs amid the overgrown, war-abandoned tea plantations in northern Mozambique or through the rice paddies in rebel-held Sri Lanka to keep fit. Such outings always turned into long existentialist discussions. Each of the MSF assignments lasted roughly three weeks and much of the time was spent sharing the lives of the teams. Often, we found ourselves unintentionally helping them with their own internal crises.

In Sri Lanka, for example, the lead doctor of one particular mission had had an affair with almost every woman on the team. No one was talking to each other. So Christophe and I decided to cook a huge dinner with fresh fish and fruit from the market, forcing everyone to sit down at the same table. Christophe was an excellent cook albeit with a limited but tasty repertoire of specialities. He also loved to regale everyone with his tales and exploits and there was always at least one female nurse or doctor to impress. Elsewhere, we provided distraction by arriving with special food packages of sausage, wine and other goodies. Christophe was always very good at stopping off at the airport shopping mall to ensure that we arrived with something for those we intended to film, particularly if they were stuck way out in the bush. It was good politics and our contribution to humanitarianism while on assignment.

Later, in 1993 following the collapse of the communist regime in Kabul, Christophe asked me to work with him on another film about Afghanistan. There was much shelling at the time, mainly by Hekmatyar Gulbuddin’s forces, and we lived in a safe house provided by Massoud. We shared a room on the second floor and, as the first volleys of rockets began to hit at dawn, we would lie in bed waiting to determine whether we would need to leap out from the warmth of our blankets and take cover under the concrete stairwell. Our warning system was based on the extent of the rattling and breaking of the windows as the rockets exploded closer and closer. Usually, we met with Massoud late at night when he suddenly appeared, often in the early hours of the morning, to play chess or to discuss the fighting, but also his visions of the future and his love for poetry.

Things were clearly not going well in Afghanistan. Nor for Massoud. The endless fighting was taking a toll on everyone. Kabul was looking more and more like Dresden. Christophe often talked about how he would like to make a final film about Massoud and Afghanistan, and be able to return with his wife and children with everything at peace. He always talked with pride about his boys, and later, his first daughter, Lola, now almost two years old, with his third wife Rim. How wonderful it would be, he said, to undertake those extraordinary treks with someone you loved. What he wanted more than anything else, Christophe extolled, was a romantic and peaceful end to the conflict in Afghanistan. But of course there is still no end to Afghanistan’s turmoil, even with the presence of NATO forces and the pouring in of billions of dollars worth of aid.

In 1996, I worked with Christophe again in the Indonesian-controlled territory of Western New Guinea on an adventure film about French explorer Patrice Franceschi, who was seeking lost tribes living within the Freeport mining concession area. Again, we spent hours and days talking about filming and writing, going for runs or walks, waiting for permits, and then shooting the actual documentary in the rain forest, where we slept in hammocks and trudged from village to village along narrow, muddy paths. At one time, while biding out time in Jakarta waiting for government paper work to come through, we took off for three days during a holiday weekend to Bali where we hiked in the hills and travelled impromptu by bus rather than spend any more time enduring the overbearing stultifying pollution of the Indonesian capital. As usual, Christophe constantly questioned his existence, but I put this down to the normal frustrations of producing a difficult documentary.

On our return to Paris that summer, I stayed at Christophe’s flat and learned of the death of my father, who had passed away during my absence. Christophe and I talked well into the night about life and death, and the need to leave behind some form of legacy, some form of contribution to life. Christophe was very concerned about this legacy and saw his books and film-making as part of it. Clearly, however, he felt that this would never be enough. Many a time during an assignment, Christophe would fall into deep or melancholic depressions. And then he would query the whole purpose of his creativity. I would spend the next several hours or days talking him back, putting an optimistic twist on whatever we were doing. In fact, I considered that my principal job when things got rough and Christope descended into one of his depressions.

Never once, however, did he ever discuss the possibility of suicide. I now wonder whether he was afraid of telling me and that I might consider it a weakness. Or maybe, he felt that much of what we were doing was a delusion and that we could not bear to admit our own limitations.

From 1996 onwards, I stopped living in Paris and soon moved to Cessy, a small French village near the Geneva border. I was now married to Lori and had two children of my own. I was also running a media foundation, Media Action International, which took up enormous amounts of my time. I saw much less of Christophe, but we often spoke to each other by phone, shared our mutual frustrations about attaining our goals, and met occasionally in Paris over lunch or a coffee in the Place Monges near the Interscoop office.

* * *

The assassination of Massoud on 9 September, 2001, was traumatic for all of us. I had been waiting for Massoud in Khoja Bahaoudin in northern Afghanistan while on assignment for National Geographic Magazine. However, I was obliged to leave in order to be back in Europe for Lori’s birthday on 13 Septemebr and made arrangements by radio to meet him several weeks later. While waiting at the Jamiat guesthouse, however, I found myself in the room next to two Arabs posing as journalists and who later killed Massoud with a suicide bomb. Christophe quickly phoned me in Geneva when he heard the news. We talked at great length and Christophe was clearly stunned by the death of his Afghan friend. It was a devastating blow. Even if one tried to keep an objective “journalistic” distance between oneself and the guerrilla leader, as I did but which Christophe disdained as “absurd,” one developed a close personal relationship simply by spending so much time eating, trekking, and talking with the man over so many years.

Some time later, Christophe came to Cessy with Florence, just prior to their breakup, and spent the weekend at our house. He was up every morning at four to work on a novel. I could not help but admire his perseverance. He voiced the usual frustrations of making films – funding, broadcasts, creative constraints - and, despite his problems with Florence, he seemed relatively pleased with his work. He seemed confident, too, that his feature film would finally get moving. In 2004 and 2005, I was spending more time in Kabul and was regularly in touch with Christophe by phone or by email. Much of our discussion was about the new film. He was excited by this although constantly seeking the money needed to ensure the project. We hoped that we would be able to see each other in Kabul once shooting began and he asked me for help him find good Afghan actors.

Some months back, I happened to be in Paris and met up with Christophe, Rim and Lola at the Gare de Lyons Train Bleu brasserie for a coffee. This was the first time that I got to meet his new family. Christophe had recently had his hips operated and was still in considerable pain. But he considered the intervention worthwhile as he hoped he would be able to walk and exercise as before once he had fully recuperated. He seemed visibly happy and very much in love with Rim. I asked him about having yet another child at such a late stage in his life and he said that nothing pleased him more. “It gives life new meaning,” he insisted.

Three weeks ago, Christophe called me from Paris leaving a message on the answering machine. He wanted to know what I thought of Hollywood’s plans to make a feature film about George Crile’s book, Charlie Wilson’s War. I was in East Africa at the time, and only managed to call him back on my return. I left a message with his office but never got round to chatting with him. Too much to do. Missed conversations.

So now I wonder if my talking with him could have helped change things in his mind. But these are the thoughts of all of his close friends. Based on the letters he left behind, his mind was made up. But for me, as with so many of us, Christophe was part of our lives. And he now leaves a jagged gap in our own personal domains, but as far as I am concerned, he has indeed left a legacy which makes us proud, and which, I know, will survive well beyond us.

EG Cessy, France, May 22, 2005.

May 24, 2006 in Afghan Journal - A Coward in Afghanistan | Permalink | Comments (0)

Somalia clashes and drought

Please find a piece published in the April 19, 2006 edition of The Christian Science Monitor, my old paper for which I have begun writing again, on the situation in Somalia. I was last there in the early 1990s having covered events on a more or less consistent basis since April 1980. While I did not visit Somalia on this recent trip - I was working in Burundi and Rwanda - I did talk to various people in Nairobi to put together a general picture. I obviously need to return, but it is sad to see how little has changed and how money, greed, egoticism and local clan or power politics still dictate the present and future of ordinary Somalis.

I wonder, too, whether all these years of international aid have really made any difference in the sad plight of this country and its people. In fact, with so many conflict and humanitarian crisis situations but also basic development, I wonder to what extent we are in fact not contributing to the ability of these groups to continue with their horrors and abuse. Are our efforts at humanitarian action not substituting for political inaction, or simply to ease our consciences, or to enable the whole global aid industry to keep churning away with the pretense of doing something? I am a born optimistic, but are we really doing our jobs? Have the aid agencies not become too obsessed with fund-raising and the desire to satisfy donorse? Or government agendas?

from the April 19, 2006 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0419/p04s01-woaf.html Clashes worsen Somalian food crisis as drought sets in Recent fighting between warlords and extremists compounds the country's notorious security woes. By Edward Girardet | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor NAIROBI, KENYA - Despite ongoing and often tricky efforts to end the civil war that since 1991 has turned Somalia into a worn-out and destitute failed state, heavy clashes have recently erupted between warlords and Islamist extremists in the capital, Mogadishu. The fighting, which has involved indiscriminate barrages of mortar and anti- aircraft fire leveled point blank across the city, represents the worst violence in almost a decade and is bad news for a region already suffering from the ravages of acute drought. Clans traditionally at war with one another are uniting to fight the Islamists, whom they call terrorists, but the Islamists say they can bring order to a lawless state that has not had a central government for 16 years. And while the renewed conflict has been restricted largely to Mogadishu, it is proving detrimental to the overall peace process, the political survival of the country's fragile United Nations-backed transitional government, and critical humanitarian operations. "You feel that one is just beginning to make some good progress against all odds, when something like this happens," observed one Nairobi-based official with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA). Much like the Taliban in Afghanistan during the mid-'90s, the Islamists have declared that they are determined to end the current lawlessness but also place Somalia under strict sharia or Islamic law. They have accused the warlords of being supported by "non-Muslim foreigners," implying the US anti-terrorist task force stationed in neighboring Djibouti. The warlords, who have formed a coalition called the "Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism," claim that the Islamists are behind many recent targeted assassinations of prominent figures, particularly those who have argued in favor of an international peacekeeping force, which the fundamentalists are dead-set against. Last year, a country director of the Geneva-based War-Torn Societies Project (WSP), who was heavily involved in promoting peace-building initiatives between the different rival groups, was assassinated in what international aid workers and diplomatsmaintain was clearly because of his links with outside organizations. The warlords also accuse the Islamists of cultivating close links to Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. According to the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG), terror-related groups have taken advantage of Somalia's collapse to attack neighboring countries as well as transit agents and material. "The country is a refuge for the Al Qaeda team that bombed a Kenyan resort in 2002 and tried to down an Israeli aircraft in 2003," according to a December 2005 ICG report. The organization further asserts that the Islamists have been behind the murders of Somalis and foreigners alike since 2003. The fighting has raised considerable international concern about the protection of civilians and the ability of aid agencies to continue providing key humanitarian relief. Compounded by the drought, which is beginning to create dire famine conditions, including the loss of more than half the country's cattle and sheep, current insecurity is causing people to flee to safer areas, including northern Kenya, where the UN says more than 100,000 Somali refugees are living. According to international aid groups, most of which operate out of neighboring Kenya because they consider it too dangerous to work full time inside Somalia, at least 70 people, mainly civilians, have been killed with hundreds more injured over the past two months. "They don't call the Somali situation a complex emergency for nothing," notes Robert Malleta, a veteran American aid consultant based in the region."There are areas of southern Somalia which are very insecure. You have to know whom to trust. Effective aid depends very much on working with good local NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) and civil society groups." Particularly critical has been the situation in Baidoa, where Somalia's Transitional Federal Parliament (TFP) has been sitting since February in a bid to reconcile differences and reestablish some form of government. Unpaid local militia roam the town threatening and assaulting civilians and aid workers alike. Although local authorities have imposed a curfew, the UN has declared Baidoa off-limits to all its international staff. On April 4, the international aid community appealed for $326 million to help thwart the onset of famine that threatens the lives of some 2.1 million out of Somalia's estimated 9 million people. According to Christian Balslev-Olesen, the UN's acting humanitarian coordinator for Somalia, emergency relief is also needed to bolster current peace-building initiatives. "If we cannot deliver on the humanitarian situation, it's going to backfire on the political process," he says. Full HTML version of this story which may include photos, graphics, and related links www.csmonitor.com | Copyright © 2006 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved. For permission to reprint/republish this article, please email Copyright

April 19, 2006 in Humanitarian Relief | Permalink | Comments (0)

Informing disaster victims, Christian Science Monitor, November 19, 2005

In a disaster, local media need support

By Edward Girardet

GENEVA - Within hours of last month's South Asia earthquake, a handful of organizations focusing on humanitarian information began mobilizing to support Pakistani media. Their objective was to replace as quickly as possible damaged radio transmission equipment and to train local journalists in the reporting of humanitarian needs as a way of helping disaster victims.

Above all, they wished to ensure that the more than 3 million people affected by the Oct. 8 catastrophe were properly informed about relief efforts, particularly in the more inaccessible outlying areas.

What previous disasters such as Rwanda, Kosovo, and the Indian Ocean tsunami have shown only too clearly is the powerful impact credible information can have - not only on improving humanitarian coordination and response, but also, most critically, in saving lives.

Two weeks into the crisis, however, humanitarian information still did not figure in the United Nations' "flash appeal" for support. Even the International Federation of the Red Cross, which recently published a report dedicated to the role of information in times of crisis, failed to incorporate support for local media as part of its response. As a result, Pakistani journalists - 50 of whom are believed to have been killed, or injured, or are missing in the quake - had to struggle with limited resources in their efforts to reach victims with rescue operation details.

While UN representatives privately acknowledged the importance of hitting the ground running with independent "lifeline media" initiatives, officially, information was not perceived as part of the Pakistani relief effort. Once again, as during the immediate aftermath of the tsunami, the international community ignored the crucial importance of disseminating credible and, above all, independent "news that you can use" to the very people they were supposed to be assisting. As one UN official explained with a shrug, "There are other, more urgent priorities."

Such attitudes severely undermine the victim's right to know. They suggest that material relief, such as food and medicine, takes precedence over information, even if it helps survivors make informed decisions about their own well-being.

"There is absolutely no excuse for this," Warren Feek, director of the Communication Initiative, told the Global Forum for Media Development, a recent international gathering of producers, journalists, and media organizations in Amman, Jordan.

As both Mr. Feek and others point out, there is abundant evidence supporting the need for reliable information as an indispensable component of any aid or post- conflict recovery operation. Disaster victims, including those who survived hurricane Katrina, have repeatedly cited information as among their most immediate concerns, often over material relief.

One of the problems is that donor governments are increasingly eliminating their mass media departments as part of their humanitarian or development contributions. They simply do not see information as a priority. With no institutional memory, few officials remain with a proper understanding of the importance of "needs based" public awareness strategies. Nevertheless, for the millions of hapless men, women, and children caught up in disaster every year, their survival depends on knowing what is happening, and whether they can realistically expect help.

During the first week following the Pakistan quake, few were aware of how difficult it would prove for rescuers to reach isolated areas quickly. With transmitters down and radios lost in the rubble, survivors had little access to credible information. Rumors were rampant. Many whose mountain villages were cut off realized only too late that their sole hope for survival was to trek out, their wounded on their backs, when helicopters could not fly because of bad weather. Initial air drops or mules loaded with basic supplies, including cheap transistor radios, might have helped.

With virtually every disaster since the mid-1980s, much of the aid community has consistently failed to recognize information as crucial. For Mark Frohardt of Internews, a global NGO with media projects in various crisis zones, all this wastes valuable time. "People need to know what is going on, what they should do, and when and where they can expect to find aid," he said.

This includes providing information to help survivors cope better, such as how to deal with cold at night, prevent dehydration, and avoid contaminated drinking water. Effective outreach can further enable people, notably children and the ailing, to endure the brutal winter months ahead.

All this underlines the need for emergency media support within the first 48 hours following a disaster. Local journalists can be quickly trained with "humanitarian" awareness, enabling them to know how aid operations work and what sort of information survivors need. And if broadcast transmitters are down, provisional FM stations "in a suitcase" can be set up almost immediately.

While all this may seem patently obvious, it hardly explains why media still does not make it onto the radar screens of most donors in times of crisis. "And this despite the fact that a communication breakdown usually prefigures war," noted Alan Davis of the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting. "At the same time, the level and quality of ongoing information provided usually determines how effective the international response ... will be."

The international media never remain long enough to cover the rebuilding of societies or to promote greater accountability, such as why tsunami funding in Sri Lanka is still not reaching those in greatest need. Local journalists, however, are normally present. They are the ones capable of providing a long-haul monitoring of aid operations, and of putting the message across - if only the international community would provide them with the means to do it.

• Edward Girardet is a journalist who writes on conflict, and humanitarian and media affairs.

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November 21, 2005 in Recent Article | Permalink | Comments (1)

Humanitarian Information and the South Asia Earthquake: The aid agencies and donors still don't get it!

Media & Humanitarian information in disasters: the aid agencies and donors still don’t get it.

Geneva, 20 October 2005

Last week, Internews (www.internews.org/) an increasingly global media NGO focusing on radio support to keep crisis-affected populations informed in humanitarian, conflict and post-conflict situations, asked me to help them out with their Pakistan earthquake coordination. For past two weeks, the national media in Pakistan has been struggling to respond to the disaster, including the urgent need to reach victims with vital information about humanitarian response. They also need to inform citizens and policy-makers about the nature and scale of the 8 October 2005 earthquake and progress of the relief effort. Most local media and journalists simply do not have the resources or know-how to respond effectively.

As with other media-based organizations striving to respond to humanitarian disasters, Internews has been having problems bringing the international aid community on board by persuading them to support the dissemination of credible and independent information to the victims, particularly the millions who have been displaced by the catastrophe. But once again, the donors, the United Nations and many of the aid NGOs have failed to consider the need to support public information initiatives as an urgent and crucial component of the overall aid effort. Internews is now seeking to develop a Pakistan Emergency Information Project (PEIP) designed to help private and public broadcasters to provide accurate, timely, and vital information to those who need. This should have happened within the first few days. So until the donors are willing to provide the money required, Internews is trying to fund the initiative itself.

As crises in Rwanda, Liberia, Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor, Afghanistan, Aceh and Louisiana have shown only too well, credible and independent information needs to be considered a basic humanitarian priority along the same lines as medical relief, food, shelter, and logistics.  This includes support for local or regional media. Local journalists are not necessarily aware of how to deal with such crises or what information to provide affected populations. One could even argue, particularly during the early stages of a disaster of this scale, that information to let people know what is happening is almost more important than food or medical relief.

Reliable needs-based “news that you can use” to keep victims informed and to avoid rumour is absolutely critical. Survival depends on it. Furthermore, not only can it provide the aid agencies with a highly effective tool to communicate their actions with those they are seeking to assist, but it can also save tens of millions of contributor dollars in humanitarian response. Taxpayers and individual contributors in North America, Europe or elsewhere would be dismayed if they really knew how many millions of dollars or euros are un-necessarily lost or otherwise frittered away as part of every disaster response due to a failure to communicate properly – including listening to those affected. We are talking tens of millions of dollars.

And yet, the dissemination of information, including the distribution of cheap battery, wind-up or solar transistor radios capable of receiving short-wave, medium-wave (AM) and FM, is being ignored. As with every previous disaster over the past decade, information has fallen between the cracks. Any idiot should be able to see how vital information is. It can help victims make life-saving decisions. So does this mean that those coordinating the efforts of the UN, government donors and aid agencies are idiots? One wonders. 

As one who has advocated for years for the need for credible, reliable and independent information as a critical component of any relief or recovery effort, whether in West Africa or Afghanistan, it does become incredibly tiresome to have to hammer away at the same issue in order to persuade key donors and aid agencies to react every time there is a crisis. Even worse are those so-called aid professionals or donors who constantly demand evidence that information can make a difference. Warren Feek of the Communications’ Initiative (http://www.comminit.com/) maintains that the only deserving response to such uniformed assertions is similar to what his own 12-year-old daughter says when he comes up with a stupid comment: Duh!

As Feek and others point out, there are now more than enough well-documented reports backing the argument for immediate and better information as part of any overall humanitarian response, but also longer term responses whether in post-war recovery, development or preventing HIV/AIDS. So much precious time is lost, and so are lives, when you have aid agencies and donors still failing to acknowledge the importance of information as a critical humanitarian tool. Another problem is that major donors, including DFID, the Swiss Development Corporation or German Technical Assistance, no longer have proper government departments dealing specifically with information as a humanitarian or development resource. So this means that institutional memory is lost and the media NGOs are never quite sure with whom they should deal during an emergency. The government officials keep changing. Or they have non-specialists in charge.

At the donor meetings in Geneva last week, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) presented its Flash Appeal with partners such as the World Food Programme, Unicef, UNHCR and World Health Organization. They all provided extremely valid arguments for supporting their own efforts or overall humanitarian concerns. Everything was neatly organized into clusters to help channel funding. This makes sense. However, the cluster dealing with Information and Communications only mentioned the need to provide the UN agencies with communications’ support. There was absolutely no mention at all of providing victims, or ‘beneficiaries’ as they are called in aid-speak, with the humanitarian information they might need to survive the days and weeks ahead.

When you point out such gaping deficiencies, most lead agency and donor representatives wholeheartedly agree that information IS important. But I have heard this all before. Days later, despite persistent efforts by Internews and other media groups to accentuate the need for more effective and immediate humanitarian outreach, the aid community was still not reacting with appropriate financial or collaborative support. And the victims continued to remain largely uninformed.

The aid community clearly wishes to help those affected by the crisis, but only with the usual highly conventional responses, such as food, medical relief, and shelter.  Heaven forbid that one might actually wish to communicate with those affected. The earthquake victims, but also their friends and relatives, need to know what the aid agencies are doing. They also need to know the extent of the help they may receive, and when and where this may happen. Equally crucial, they need to know when, and why, help may NOT come through. And what measures the victims themselves may have to take, such as walking out of blocked off valleys if help is not forthcoming. So how does one transform the advocacy for humanitarian information into reality?

Many of the South Asia earthquake victims had – and still have - little or no idea about the local and international relief efforts being undertaken by the Pakistani government, the military and the aid agencies. Numerous survivors have lost their radio sets. Or, if they have TVs, they have no power to run them. And forget about reading newspapers. Most have no money to buy them or they cannot be delivered. Transmitters of the Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation and other radio stations, too, have been severely damaged or destroyed.  The result is that most victims still have no means to receive even the most basic information except what they hear from the aid workers in the field or from other survivors. And as usual, rumour is rampant causing bitter frustration and anger.

Over the past 25 years, I have followed scores of disasters around the world and every time it is the same thing. The dissemination of credible, needs-based information is constantly relegated to an afterthought of non-importance. For some reason, it is not considered critical to ensure that informing the ‘beneficiaries’ is not only a necessity, but a human right.

Even the International Federation of Red Cross Societies (IFRC), which only recently published the 2005 World Disaster Report (http://www.ifrc.org/publicat/wdr2005/index.asp/) clearly underlining the importance of information for disaster victims, failed to heed its own words. Or maybe they did not bother to read it. When I called the IFRC in Geneva to alert them to the Internews'  appeal for collaboration and support, I was told to get in touch with the head of external relations, who normally deals with the press. Once again, the IFRC has not understood what such information initiatives are not the 'press' but that they should actually be part of the relief effort.

The failure of OCHA and other lead agencies not to include humanitarian information as part of their ‘clusters’ shows a similar degree of ignorance if not arrogance. Only UNHCR seemed make pointed efforts to get in touch with Internews realizing that such a media initiatives would help them communicate with the victims in the field.  Too many aid organizations still seem to regard victims as incapable of making their own informed decisions.

Government donors and aid agencies have more than just a moral responsibility to provide the very people they are supposedly helping with information. They need to recognize that humanitarian information is not just “dealing with the press,” but to begin incorporating departments within their organizations to undertake immediate support for credible humanitarian information initiatives the moment a crisis occurs. The ‘beneficiaries’ deserve more than just food, shelter and medical relief. They deserve to be treated as human beings.

EG

October 21, 2005 in Humanitarian Relief | Permalink | Comments (0)

Afghanistan and Frontline Aid Update

Dear Friends:

Greetings from Geneva! I do apologise for not having continued with this blog, but I expect to be up and running again shortly with Afghanistan but also critical issues dealing with humanitarian aid, human rights, development, media, and security, including observations on the increased use by the United States and certain other countries of armed mercenaries and their lack of public accountability.

To keep you updated, I have recently completed an article on frontline aid workers for National Geographic Magazine, which is scheduled for the December, 2005 edition. This should be published in most if not all the foreign language National Geographic editions. The magazine will be available on the new stands from November 15, 2005 onwards. The photographer is John Stanmeyer, whose coverage on Aceh, Afghanistan, Bam (Iran), and Northern Uganda has been superb. It has been a joy working with him, including the cigars and smoked oysters on the lawn of the Chez Ana Guesthouse in Kabul.

Otherwise, I am still working on my proposed book: A Coward in Afghanistan - 25 Years of Tea-drinking, Warlords and Clandestine Journeys. We have yet to find a publisher but Tom Wallace (my agent) and I are confident. However, if any of you do have suggestions or tips on possible publishers do let me know. The book will not be heavy analysis but will be highly personal, anecdotal and adventurous but coupled with insight into the way the press have covered (or not covered) Afghanistan since the early days of the Soviet invasion in December, 1979 up to the present, and the way the United States, Europe, United Nations and other entities have dealt (or not dealt) with the Afghan problem. There will be lots of new material, stories, profiles and pointers which should provide readers with a critical but endearing perspective of this extraordinary country and its people. Of course, I shall not be forgetting all those who have sought to play the Great Game, 20th/21st century style, sometimes with admirable adroitness, but more often with blatant stupidity and ignorance.

I am also completing my proposal for a book on frontline aid workers based on my past reporting but also recent coverage with National Geographic. This will not seek to compete with some of the excellent books that have come out on humanitarian aid and conflict issues, but will seek rather to portray the motivation, activities and risks of those aid workers operating in the frontlines of humanitarian crises, wars and natural disasters.

And lastly, just to let you know that the new third (and revised) edition of the CROSSLINES Essential Field Guide to Afghanistan in the Humanitarian and Conflict Series by Edward Girardet and Jonathan Walter will be coming out later this month in Kabul and on the world market.  We are trying to ensure that the Bookseller of Kabul (bless his conniving heart) does not steal this one as well. Donor funding has afterall supported us on this project and we deeply resent being ripped off by this thieving scoundrel whose piracy is undermining all the hard work put in by so many people. We would appreciate your buying only authentic copies.

Sayara Communications in Kabul has been working with us on the printing and distribution of this book. The EFG will be available in Afghan bookshops, hotels, guest houses and other outlets by the end of October, plus available elsewhere through the Intependent Publishers' Group (IPG) in the United States, Central Books in London and of course through various distributors such as Amazon.com. We are also lining up distribution in Paksitan and India.

All for now, with best regards,

Edward Girardet

October 07, 2005 in Editorial Advisory | Permalink | Comments (0)

Security for Aid Workers - A missing link

Dear Friends: I have been away from Afghanistan on holiday in Switzerland and France. I have now returned to Kabul and will resume the Afghan Journal. In the meantime, here is an article that recently appeared in The Christian Science Monitor newspaper touching on an issue which responsible-minded aid agencies and donors urgently need to address. Also, for interesting and independent coverage of global affairs, I can only urge you to subscribe to The Christian Science Monitor which appears to be one of the few American newspapers still undertaking serious journalism. The paper needs your support. With best regards and courage for 2005. Ed Girardet

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1220/p09s01-coop.html

Headline: Security for aid workers - a missing link

Byline: Edward Girardet

Date: 12/20/2004

KABUL - The release last month of three kidnapped United Nations election monitors in Afghanistan does not mean that all is well for the international aid community operating in conflict and recovery situations worldwide. Nothing has really changed on the security front for aid workers.

Particularly in Kabul, many feared that the hostages would suffer the same gruesome fate as those executed by extremists in Iraq. This, in turn, might have prompted more aid agencies to leave Afghanistan just when the recovery is beginning to make headway.

Once again, the incident underlines how both the international aid community and governments are failing to grapple with the real issues at hand in "security" zones ranging from Afghanistan to Chechnya and Burma. Aid agencies need to begin providing appropriate security training for their representatives, but also better awareness of the situations in which they will operate. And governments must recognize the urgency of establishing broadly recognized - neutral - "humanitarian spheres" without the involvement of the military in areas where where aid agencies can operate without fear of their workers being kidnapped or killed.

Key to protecting aid workers is the clear demarcation of the roles of the military and the aid organizations. Guns and humanitarian assistance simply do not go together. There is a dangerous blurring of the lines placing aid workers, private consultants - as well as journalists - in the same caldron as the security forces. For resistance or insurgent groups, there is increasingly little difference between the military, including government-employed mercenary groups, and the highly vulnerable relief volunteers or reporters operating in the same crisis zones. All are seen as legitimate targets.

The failure, too, of the US to recognize the dangers of disregarding the Geneva Conventions or due process under international law - such as the illegal detention, treatment, torture, and deaths of alleged Taliban and Al Qaeda prisoners held at Guantanamo and Bagram - has set a disastrous precedent not only for soldiers captured by insurgents, but for civilians too. Militants have cited such abuse as reason for capturing or killing aid workers. [Editor's note: The original story included a typographical error in which UN appeared erroneously in place of US.]

While the military may obtain good public relations by building bridges or schools, such initiatives double as intelligence-gathering operations. This makes the waters even murkier for those seeking to provide straightforward humanitarian assistance. For the taxpayer, too, military involvement in humanitarian aid makes little financial sense. The cost of deploying so-called Provincial Reconstruction Teams is dramatically higher than having qualified aid agencies or contractors perform the same task.

At the same time, aid organizations, notably those run by the UN, urgently need to assume responsibility for improving workers' safety in the field. Frontline aid has become far more hazardous to operate in crisis zones today than during the '80s or '90s. Whether in Africa, the Middle East, or Asia, aid groups are indeed stepping up security measures to protect workers. Employees are urged not to frequent exposed locations such as restaurants and markets, and to stay in well-protected compounds. Some, too, have had their vehicles repainted to look less obviously foreign.

Such measures remain deceptively cosmetic. They threaten to dangerously isolate aid workers from the very populations they aim to assist. Keeping in touch with one's surroundings is crucial for security. The US aid missions in Afghanistan and Iraq, for example, have almost completely cut themselves off, blockading themselves within compounds. Many leave only with heavily armed escorts.

The disturbing reality is that few humanitarian agencies have bothered to initiate even the most basic security awareness programs for staff prior to missions. Some deliberately subcontract dangerous jobs to consultants to avoid liability. Instead, aid organizations increasingly rely on security companies for employee protection.

Some risk specialists have long maintained that physical protection isn't enough. Aid groups, they argue, should refuse to send anyone into the field until they have received proper security training, including background political and cultural briefings enabling them to better understand their environments.

Too often, aid workers are sent out shockingly ignorant. Most get little more than 30-minute security briefings on arrival. Even though regularly updated by security advisers, few are taught how to cope with the hijackings, armed assaults, and abductions that they face in crisis zones. Sometimes the organizations concerned have covered up the lives lost as a direct result of negligence. Donors, too, have yet to make security awareness a funding prerequisite.

One of the few major agencies to take such matters seriously is the International Committee of the Red Cross. The Swiss humanitarian organization is well known for its mandatory two-week awareness courses. Disguised Swiss soldiers put candidates through highly realistic simulated guerrilla attacks. ICRC officials maintain that such training has probably saved the lives of numerous workers, despite horrendous attacks against its personnel in recent years. Also, as part of their insurance coverage, international journalists are having to undergo similar training prior to leaving for war zones.

The face of international aid is changing rapidly for the worse. Not only are security risks greater, but some governments are deliberately coercing aid groups by requiring them to come under military command in return for funding. If agencies are to perform their humanitarian duties properly, they must remove themselves from the political or military fray. In turn, donors need to accept that agencies aren't there to replace failed policies, but to provide humanitarian or recovery assistance where it's needed most.

* Edward Girardet is a writer on humanitarian, conflict, and recovery issues. He is also editor of the Crosslines Essential Field Guide to Afghanistan.

(c) Copyright 2004 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.

January 10, 2005 in Recent Article | Permalink | Comments (1)

New President, Drought and AGE's

Kabul Journal

Monday, 13 December, 2004

By Ed Girardet

Kabul – Last week’s presidential inauguration of Hamid Karzai proceeded smoothly. Despite threats by so-called AGE’s, or anti-government elements, to disrupt the proceedings, only one rocket was launched at the Hotel Intercontinental overlooking the Afghan capital. It smashed harmlessly against a nearby hillside. As expected, security was tight and most downtown streets were closed off, meaning little or no traffic. This enabled Kabulis to go for strolls without fear of being run down by diwana (mad) drivers – usually in government or security vehicles - who assume that newly-laid asphalt means that Allah has finally provided them with the means to charge through town at over 100 kilometres an hour with horns blaring. Traffic accidents, particularly of pedestrians and cyclists, are frighteningly on the rise.

Of course, apart from all the national and foreign dignitaries, ordinary Afghans had little chance to participate in the inauguration. Nor was there a celebratory buzkashi match – as might have been expected - for all to enjoy in the presence of the new president. They had to content themselves to watching the late morning ceremonies at the presidential palace on television or listening to the radio. As I walked down Park Street in Shar-e-Now street vendors selling soft drinks, kebabs, and various other edibles had their radios resounding with speeches for all to hear. There were some of the same old faces sitting in the line-up at the foot of the inaugural podium, the corrupt warlords, the former resistance politicians, and the Jihadists, who still hold sway. For many Afghans, the sooner these people are gone, the better. There is little forgiveness for what many have done (armed struggles, extortion, embezzlement of funds, etc.), and continue to do, to their country over the past quarter of a century. Whether the country’s new leaders will do any better is another question.

Even if one may feel somewhat cynical about the lack of popular access to the ceremonies, the inauguration remains symbolic of a return to peace and normality. Afghanistan still faces innumerable problems: drug trafficking, corruption, insecurity, greed, the Kabul-rural divide, a shattered economy, and abuse by those in power. Ordinary Afghans, no dummies, are only too aware of all this. Ever resilient, however, the change over the past two years, at least in the cities, has been profound and people harbour strong hope that life will improve. For this to happen, however, both the new government and the international community will need to act decisively over the next few months, if they are to undertake more than a mere superficial and cosmetic jab at resolving such issues. They need to show that the country’s recovery is for everyone, and not just the privileged few with the right connections.

The fact that there was a relatively strong international presence at the inauguration, particularly amongst the donors, was indeed a positive sign. It appeared to strengthen outside resolve to help Afghanistan with its slow but determined trudge toward recovery and stability. German chancellor Shroeder was there and so was former UN special envoy, Brahimi. US Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld also attended, but they couldn’t be bothered to spend the night. Apparently the security situation was far too risky. I am sure, too, that they and their well-protected entourage had affairs of state far more important than Afghanistan. These two gentlemen might have benefited from actually spending some time on the ground, drinking tea with local villagers perhaps, maybe talking with young Afghans about democracy, transparency and the abuse of power, or even visiting the political prisoners (who have yet to be charged) at Bagram or Pul-e-Charki to explain due process. Of course, Cheney and Rumsfeld might have found it difficult to discuss such subtle concerns openly and frankly. Particularly given that the US military are now accused by Human Rights Watch for a rise in the number of deaths, including murder, and torture of prisoners held by the Americans.

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Last week, I drove up to Ghorband, an administrative town some three hours drive northwest of Kabul, to witness the opening of a new courthouse. The sense of justice is strongly inherent in Afghan society. The challenge now is to ensure that justice becomes accessible to all. The new buildings are a start – at least from the infrastructure point of view - but it will take years if not decades to alter the perception – and reality – that institutional justice in Afghanistan is not corrupt. Sadly, there is little trust in the system. Many Afghans still regard bribes or having the right contacts in the police or a particular government office as their only means for seeking satisfaction.

The tarred road to Ghorband is fine across the Shomali Plains and past Bagram. But then you turn west just before Jabal-e-Saraj and head up the Ghorband River toward Bamyian. The road here becomes a dirt track but at least I was back in the ‘real’ Afghanistan. The Ghorband valley is far broader than the Panjshair, which lies about 20 kilometres further north, but equally fertile. The semi-arid mountains here are lower, but similarly without forests (they were all cut down centuries ago for building and charcoal). Nevertheless, apricot, walnut, almond and apple trees grow in abundance along the irrigation ducts, around the flat-roofed, adobe farm houses and in the fields. In the spring, the Ghorband is aflower with white and pink blossoms. And later, the roofs are covered in bright orange with apricots drying in the sun. But for now, with the onset of winter, everything is drab, dry, and leafless.

The villages here are mainly Pushtun and Tajik. Some have mixed populations, while others remain respectively dominated by one group or another. During the Taliban war, many Ghorbandi, including Pashtuns, sympathized with the United Front (or Northern Alliance), but there was also strong support for the militant “Islamic scholars” who eventually controlled more than 80 percent of the country until their collapse in the fall of 2001. Further up the valley, one begins to reach the Hazara areas where the Taliban burned and otherwise destroyed numerous villages and farms during the late 1990s. At the town of Ghorband itself, I found the inhabitants mixing easily, although one Tajik policeman guarding the courthouse compound – along side a small contingent of heavily armed American ‘shooters’ to protect the attending USAID representatives - did emphasize to me that the Taliban had been strong in this region. And that he had fought them alongside Massoud’s men. I showed him several pictures of myself with the assassinated Panjshairi leader from the 1980s and 1990s, which impressed him no end. I carry these in the back of my wallet as additional insurance for checkpoints or difficult government officials. I, too, play the Afghan game of using contacts.

The air was clean and it was good to see farmers churning the rich, brown soil with their oxen and wooden ploughs, clicking their tongues in encouragement to the animals, much as they have been doing for centuries. There are very few tractors up here. Children playing along the roadside, shouted and hooted at our car as we passed. The village bazaars – at least in the morning - were full with men drinking tea in the chaikhane or talking outside small shops brimming with fresh vegetables, particularly onions and aubergine. At one point, we passed a string of horsemen – a romantic vision from a previous era - riding proudly down toward Jabal-e-Saraj.

As one often sees along Afghanistan’s roads, old men and boys shovelled earth and gravel into the potholes. They urgently beckoned to the passing vehicles with sharp downward waves for baksheesh. A Malaysian architect sitting next to me waved back not realising that their urgent gestures were not part of a social greeting but rather an effort to survive. At one point, our driver slowed to throw them a crumbled ball of Afghanis. Road construction but also maintenance is a crucial way of helping revive local economies, particularly in remote parts of the countryside. Rather than bring in bulldozers, or whole teams of expatriate engineers, truck drivers, even labourers - as the Chinese are doing - road projects need to involve rural communities as much as possible. What the Chinese are providing is little more than self-interest foreign aid. It does little for local Afghans themselves. As some aid groups are already doing, donors need to focus more on labour-intensive road construction, but also ongoing maintenance such as winter clearance and grading through “food for work” programmes combined with some cash. In the Hazarajat, for example, this has proven the only source of income for many villagers.

The bulk of the land in the Ghorband Valley is irrigated so the local farmers will obtain a good harvest, regardless of the fact that Afghanistan has now entered its seventh year of drought. More than 40 percent of the country is living on the brink and below subsistence levels. Food prices have risen sharply and in many places, crops have failed yet again. Villagers have no other source of income. The lack of rain, but also severe deforestation and soil degradation are responsible. Traditional rain-fed areas that I visited in 2002 and 2003 in the northern provinces are simply no longer productive.

Even though we recently had another good day of rain and snow in the Kabul region – the third time in ten days –the country will need far more if the drought is to be broken. Local farmers say that even with good snow this winter and much rain to replenish the aquifers it will not prove enough. Afghanistan will need, at a minimum, a second year of good rain and snow. As I headed up the valley, one can see why water is such an obsession in this country. Everything depends on the rivers and streams continuing to flow. I wondered to what extent global warming is responsible for this disaster or whether the current shortage simply yet another of the country’s cyclical droughts of which there were several during the 20th century.

                                                            *             *             *

The after-effects of the kidnapping of the three UN electoral workers continue to have an impact. My friend Peter Jouvenal, who was recently detained by the Ministry of Interior for being involved – he had put a Swiss-Kosovar millionaire wishing to assist in touch with one of the alleged kidnap groups – is still being threatened by the Ministry of Interior.  It is all becoming rather ugly. Except that now, thuggish elements within the Ministry are going after his Afghan wife’s family. First, they beat up one of Peter’s chowkidars (watchman), who happened to be a handicapped landmine victim. Then they tried to arrest Peter’s father-in-law. When they did not find him at home, they arrested a neighbour instead. Last week, a car with three men cut off Peter’s driver, who was walking through the street. They leapt out and warned him that if he was seen again driving either Peter’s wife or his sister-in-law, he would suffer dire consequences.

Last week, I was visited by a mutual friend of Peter’s and mine, a former commander. He came to my house to warn me that Peter’s family was in danger. This particular commander, who had already saved my life on at least one occasion during the 1980s (he intervened following a death threat by Muslim extremist Hekmatyar Gulbuddin, now a US-designated terrorist but at the time heavily supported by the Americans and Pakistanis), would not have come unless there was good reason. Peter and I trust him implicitly. There are people, the commander warned, who do not like the fact that Peter has married an Afghan woman. It is acceptable for an Afghan man to marry a western woman, but not the other way round. Peter has remained extremely discreet about his marriage, but this has obviously caused resentment. The former commander further noted that former KHAD (East German trained secret police from the Soviet period) are being re-engaged in the Ministry of Interior and other government offices. These are the ones behind the threats, he said. What was the point of fighting a war if these people are creeping back into power, he complained.

What is happening to Peter is only one example of the rising corruption, particularly amongst Afghans of middle or senior rank within the government. Over the past week, I have talked to a number of Afghans who believe this abuse of power is going too far. There is an acute sense of helplessness about their impunity and the failure of the international community and Karzai to do anything about it. This is not to say that Karzai is involved, or even condones it. But the corruption has never been so bad. For me, this form of abuse is so severe that it now threatens to seriously undermine the recovery process.

The problem is that there is a lot of money floating about, much of it illegal and related to drugs or siphoned-off international aid. There is also much greed in the form of forced or illegal property expropriations, extortion, thuggery, and corruption within the government as well as local and international aid agencies. Incessantly rising rents by landlords seeking to profit from the artificial environment created by the aid and peacekeeping community is also forcing many ordinary Afghans out of their own city. It does not help either when organizations such as the World Bank overpay their Afghan employees in a manner that leads to overt salary inflation.

Several days ago, the Minister of Planning announced that he wanted to shut down nearly 2,000 non-governmental aid organizations (NGOs) for flouting the rules and laws of this country. While immediately disowned by the Karzai government and strongly criticised by the international aid community, Planning Minister Ramazan Bashardoost (who has just resigned) did touch a nerve amongst ordinary Afghans. There is a general feeling that, despite the thousands of jobs provided by the aid agencies (the Swedish Committee for Afghanistanalone has almost 10,000 on the payroll), many groups are not here for the country but rather for themselves. Afghans believe – rightly in many cases – that the donor funding currently used for high salaries, 4x4 vehicles, and comfortable but costly housing should be better directed toward Afghans themselves.

The sad reality, however, is that Afghans have not proven particularly responsible when it comes to transparency, efficiency and lack of self-interest in their country’s recovery. Nor is there appropriate infrastructure or qualified personnel in the ministries. So simply transferring funds to the ministries is not going to resolve the issue. But a thorough and unbiased review of what the aid groups are doing, and whether they are indeed needed, should become a priority. Perhaps it might be best for most of the aid organizations to leave and let the country develop at a slower, but more manageable rate with greater emphasis on private investment, both local and foreign. Right now, too much of what is happening is artificial and has little to do with development. So maybe Bashardoost does have a point.

                                              *               *             *

Some 18,000 American troops are now being deployed, mainly in eastern Afghanistan, as part of a winter offensive to “once and for all” eliminate Taliban and other armed insurgents who could threaten Afghanistan’s national assembly elections in 2005. For the moment, the United Nations and the US embassy are still talking about holding these elections in April, but anyone with the slightest sense of awareness about this country (not to forget the mountain passes blocked by snow) are pushing for July, even later, possibly September or October. With yet another wonderful operational name, “Lighting Freedom,” the US military are hoping to “persuade” insurgents to accept an amnesty offer by President Karzai. This could help stabilize the country, they maintain, and allow Washington to withdraw its troops for re-deployment in Iraq.

The American push comes at the end of a lengthy and much touted operation by the military regime in Pakistanagainst supposed Taliban and Al Qaeda elements in neighbouring Waziristan, a normally hard-to-control tribal area just across the border. There is deep suspicion that the Pakistanis, who claim they have now cleared “every inch” of the territory of AGE’s, have been engaged primarily in a public relations exercise to prove that they are wholly behind the Bush administration’s “war against terrorism.” In return for military aid and financial credits, that is. Many Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters living in Waziristan were not known to be active and had married into the local community.

On the other hand, the Baluchistan provincial capital of Quetta, which is seething with pro-Taliban and Al Qaeda sympathizers, has been largely ignored by the Pakistanis. And yet, this is where much of the support for AGE’s in Afghanistan originates, where Pakistan’s own military Interservices Intelligence, or ISI, which promoted militant factions such as Hekmatyar Hezb-e-Islami and the Taliban during the 1980s and 1990s, hold sway. Another reality is that many of those in Afghanistan being conveniently branded as terrorists or Taliban are in fact bandits taking advantage of the growing lack of government control. In the southern parts of the country, dozens of vehicles are being hijacked, robbed or otherwise assaulted every week by armed gangs using the Taliban veil to hold local populations hostage to their will. We are now seeing a disconcerting return to the insecurity which existed prior to the rise of the Taliban.

One British friend, an old frontier hand who speaks fluent Pashto and dresses in tribal garb, recently travelled by bus down to Kandahar. He was warned by at least four or five people not to let anyone know that he was a foreigner. “This has never happened before,” he said. “The security situation is worse than ever.”

All of this reminds me so much of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, whereby Red Army troops, together with their Afghan government allies, would engage during the 1980s in major offensives to eliminate – once and for all - the mujahideen in these border areas. The guerrillas simply disappeared into the mountains. It’s déjà vu all over again. Another growing issue is the way the Americans and British will deal with the poppy eradication. If they go hammer and tongs using primarily military or destructive means, they can expect even greater resentment – and armed resistance - toward the Kabul government and its international backers in the months ahead.

EG, Kabul, 13 December 2004

December 14, 2004 in Afghan Journal | Permalink | Comments (0)

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