There is a song by the late Muboraksho, a famous Tajik singer from Badakhshan, called “Chor Javon.”

It’s about four young men who, against the advice of their parents decide to go on a trip in wintertime. They are killed by an avalanche. The song has recently been covered by a rock group and I can’t stand the new version but it keeps running through my head as I think about what happened to my husband recently.

My husband works in a certain city in Afghanistan. Given the present climate there I’m not going to say which one, but in any case, he’s become well-known to the people there as a Tajik who will help other Tajiks (as in, people from Tajikistan, not Afghan Tajiks, since he is obligated to remain neutral in that respect).

Over the past several weeks, as you may know, Iran has been expelling thousands of Afghan refugees. It seems that anyone caught in the net without papers is summarily expelled, without the chance to so much as return to his apartment to get his papers.

Among the thousands were three Tajik teenagers who had lost their passports and had copies of their passports in their apartment. They had gone to Iran to engage in religious study at a madrassa and had only been there a couple of months. The police picked them out as non-Iranians on the street, and when they didn’t have their papers, they got put in the truck and driven to the border. They were dumped on the other side for UNHCR to deal with.

At least, I hope UNHCR was there. There have been a lot of deportations lately.

Somehow, they made it to near the border with Tajikistan. They hoped that there, their fellow Tajik border guards would let them across. However, the Amu Darya separates Tajikistan and Afghanistan, and the Afghans wouldn’t let them across to make their appeal.

They returned to the nearest Afghan city, and were directed by the police to my husband, who housed them and sent their papers by courier to the Tajik consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif. They hoped to get a letter to eventually return to Tajikistan.

When my husband made his weekly trip to Tajikistan, he told this story to his family. That was when he learned that one of the boys he gave shelter to was the grandson of the mullah who took care of his mother when she was orphaned as a child.

Update

The young people are back home. Their things have been sent (presumably by friends at the madrassa) Chinese faux Adidas gym bag after Chinese faux Adidas gym bag, across the border to Herat, over through Hazarajat to Kabul, through the Salang pass up to Kunduz, and finally, dragged by my husband on to the barge to cross the Amu Darya and get stuffed in a taxi up to Dushanbe, where they sit in our apartment waiting for some relative or other to pick them up.

My husband is back in Afghanistan and I recently picked up a book about Afghanistan. My mother bought it some time ago and recently finished it. I don’t know whether her buying it had anything to do with my being there.

The book is The Places in Between by Rory Stewart. The guy spends his vacations walking around Asian countries and this book is about his walk from Herat to Kabul in early 2002.

The first thing that struck me when reading the book is how poorly Afghans come off. Although many reviewers did not seem to notice this (though the New York Times reviewer sort of did), I think that most Afghans, if they were to read the book, would call Mr. Stewart a liar.

Of course, they would be wrong. It was difficult for me to read all the hypocrisy (”Muslims are the most hospitable people; We are the most hospitable Muslims; now give me money to buy the dry crust of bread I am serving you…”) again since most of the time I was there I worked hard to block it out. When there, I constantly echoed the Afghans’ own mantra: Afghanistan is an extremely hospitable country, Afghanistan is an extremely hospitable country…

I repeated this although I was invited to about 10 times fewer homes in my two years there than my time in Russia and Tajikistan. A number of times I found myself, like Mr. Stewart, invoking Muslim hospitality in order to get the most modest concession (e.g. letting us drive through a village where we had sponsored a project) out of people. And unlike Stewart, I usually had something to offer and never came with a weapon.

I never entered a house in the former Soviet Union without having food shoved into my hands. I never left a Tajik home without food in my hands or in my stomach. In Tajikistan, if you refuse food, they give you something to walk out the door with, and will trick you into taking it if you refuse.

One suspects that many of the readers of The Places in Between will not understand the extent to which Stewart’s narrative condemns the Afghans he met, because they do not know what is the real tradition of Asian hospitality. They may not know that in Russia, where millions still live without land, electricity, or even more than $1.50 per day, that if you enter the house of a poor person, you risk plunging him into starvation because he really will give you his last piece of bread. If you so much look at someone’s coat, he will give it to you. They may not know that when Stewart comments on being refused entry to a house, he is basically condemning the owner of the house to hell- since hospitality is a must in the Muslim tradition.

Of course, part of it is Stewart’s fault. Rather than relying on strangers and normal people, poor people, he is forced by the situation and his own approach to rely on commanders and their lackeys- not the most generous or hospitable Afghans. He uses the old-fashioned tradition of getting letters of authority to go from one area to the next, so that he is always under someone’s protection.

In Afghanistan, this means he was always under some warlord’s protection. When you deal with butchers and mafia men, you have to expect to be surrounded by nasty people.

Whether he could have made it one kilometer on his own is another question, but I suspect that it is possible if only just. And I’m certain that if he had, he would have encountered an entirely different country- perhaps one full of people like the guards who begged him to stay with them when their master was out, who I’m sure would have fried him their last eggs, and borrowed money to feed him fresh bread.

I am sure of this because though I was invited into few houses, those people showed amazing kindness and generosity. And I was treated to the remnants of Asian hospitality at least once… when I complimented a colleague on her scarf, and she gave it to me, against all insistence and persuasion to make her keep it. It almost reminded me of Russia…

A former colleague called me recently to say he was in town. He wanted to arrange to meet up sometime before he went back to Afghanistan, so we set a date. I asked him if he had enjoyed his time so far, and he said he hadn’t been here for long but that he was really enjoying the city. “It’s really nice to see trees and women,” he said. He’s not a sex addict: women make the exact same comment when they come up. It’s the first thing I used to notice as well.

When I came to Tajikistan on my first assignment as an “aid worker”, my main aim was to work on something meaningful in the former U.S.S.R. I enjoy travelling and I love the culture of many of the countries in the former U.S.S.R. I didn’t come to find excitement or save the world. My motives were fairly common among my foreign colleagues, many of whom also just enjoyed travelling and at the same time who did not want to spend their time working for a multinational corporation. Though there were some of the typical missionary/mercenary types, they usually left pretty quickly as it’s much harder to take advantage of the population or pretend that you are someone special here.

Unlike, say, in Afghanistan. People go to Afghanistan for a variety of reasons, but it’s rarely just to see the country and make a living at the same time. People who go there are often trying to save the world, or make a huge amount of money on a consultancy which is almost certainly going to leave the country exactly $60,000.00 poorer than before with little to show for it, or possibly to achieve something vaguely political in nature. I went there- I admit it- because I hoped it would advance my and my husbands’ careers to work there together (I was right). In that sense, it was totally different from all my other trips abroad.

The whole time I was there, I was fully aware that Afghanistan is, unfortunately, not a normal country. I am not talking about traditional Afghan society, many aspects of which have all but disappeared, along with the trees, and much wildlife, as well as a normal economy. I mean Afghanistan, as it stands now, with all the poverty, post-traumatic stress syndrome afflicted people, psycho drug economy, and violence. Perhaps this is not the “true Afghanistan”, and it’s definitely not the Afghanistan of Nancy Dupre, but it’s the only Afghanistan I know.

Now, when I was there, I couldn’t help comparing it to the countries I’d been in before, in particular, Tajikistan. The level of education, and depth of understanding of such things as human rights, supply-and-demand, personal responsibility, and Islam, are light years above those in Afghanistan. This is thanks not only to positive progress but also to the fact that the entire population has not suffered the equivalent of being hit over the head with a iron rod a hundred times, which is the impression that many poor Afghans give off. Who can blame them? But it’s still not so interesting.

But when foreign aid workers come to Tajikistan, the human factor is usually not the first thing they comment on. Although it is probably the most important, the first things people usually notice are:

Flowers and trees along the streets. This is luxurious Dushanbe, but there are few district capitals that don’t at least make the effort. “I feel like I haven’t seen green in years…” Well, it’s only been months, but I know how they feel.

And then there are the people. Women wearing modern clothes, Islamist dress, traditional Tajik dress- you’ll find it all. The guy in the picture above is Tajik chav… there’s no other word for it. More men prefer plain white or blue collar shirts, black pants, and black moccasins, but unfortunately the sugar-daddy as shown above is not as uncommon as many would hope. Well, anyway, he’s not wearing a turban. (Though if you had to choose between a turban-cum-pirhan-tumban, and this, I think you’d agree with me that Tajik men could take some advice from the Taliban…)

Best of all, there are people having fun. People swimming in canals is much rarer in Afghanistan, though occasionally you’ll catch someone having a bath. Here, you will see several multi-story buildings standing in rows; children playing in the river; and water flowing abundantly through the city. Ah, the joys of normal life.

Why do you fire on crowds that are armed with sticks and stones? Did they outlaw tear gas in Afghanistan? Surely you could have done something else? Why did you think this would not have serious consequences? Why don’t you have a strategy for dealing with riots?

Did you really think that the Russians engaged in ground battle because they are sick bastards that like to see their comrades die? Didn’t you think they might have gotten caught up in something uncontrollable? Did you know that even before this, as I have posted to the whole world on my blog, that the people of Kabul respected the Russians more than they respected you? Because you walk around in robo-soldier outfits and huge tanks and build walls, whereas with the Russians, at least people knew who was boss?

Do you realize that your entire strategy depends on Dostum and his allies supporting you, and that he has supported every winning army since 1972, including the USSR when they were winning, and the Taliban? Do you know how fucked you really are if the northern warlords take their men in parliament (whom you allowed them to post), and their armes caches, and their people across the north for whom no jobs have been created, and go against you?

Do you know where your soldiers will be hiding out? Do you know what it will be like for your men to hunt out one dushman after the other, cave by cave, not only in the south, but in the Panjsher, in Kohistan, in Badakhshan, in the Dashti Qala, among the minarets of Herat, across the Salang?

Did you think that although the British, the Russians, and Alexander himself were defeated in the mountains of Central Asia by these Iranian tribes, you will manage it because you have really cool airplanes?

Are your men on the ground saying exactly the same thing, but you are not listening to them?

Do you think this could be the beginning of the end?

On another note entirely: did anyone know that some people still use Yahoo! to search? I didn’t, until I got this referral:

from them. Yes, type that into Yahoo, and my site comes up first. This, dear Yahoo!s, is why Google is kicking your patooties.

This isn’t wasn’t* posted on the Internet, so I’ll take it from my listserv directly:

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Scuffle in Afghan parliament after woman MP criticises warlords

KABUL (AFP) - Former warlords in Afghanistan’s parliament hurled water bottles and rushed at a woman MP after she accused them of being involved in the deaths of thousands of people.

Malalai Joya said bearded and turbaned MPs who were once warlords in the country’s decades of conflict had to be restrained from physically attacking her after a heated session of the four-month-old parliament.

The uproar, in which several MPs rose from their chairs shouting, was shown on television. A cameraman from a private television station said one of the MPs had slapped him across the face while he was filming the scuffle.

Joya, who has had death threats against her after a similar outburst during a meeting to draw up a post-Taliban constitution in 2003, alleged that she had heard a prominent former warlord telling his men “to stab me with a knife”.

“Several of them threw water bottles at me and many others rushed towards me to beat me up,” she said in an interview with AFP afterwards.

Joya, in her late 20s, said the MPs had reacted angrily to her statement that some of the men who led the resistance to the 10-year Soviet occupation were responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians in a civil war that erupted after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989.

Her comments were made in a debate about the anniversary last month of the defeat of communism in Afghanistan in 1993 when the government that replaced the Soviet administration was toppled.

“I told them that we have two types of mujahedin — one who were really mujahed (holy warriors) the second, those who killed tens of thousands of innocent people and who are criminals. My words sparked their anger,” she said.

The civil war ended with the 1996 takeover of the extremist Taliban regime that was ousted in late 2001 by a US-led coalition.

Joya caused a similar outburst at a 2003 constitutional Loya Jirga, or traditional gathering, when she said the once-powerful warlords involved in atrocities in the war deserved punishment.

Delegates rushed at her, yelling “Allahu akbar” (God is the greatest) and demanding her expulsion, and had to be kept back by soldiers.

The incident catapulted Joya into the international spotlight that was on the country as it emerged from the oppression of the Taliban, which kept women behind doors and barred them from political and economic activities.

The parliament, inaugurated in December after the first general parliamentary election in around 30 years, is dominated by former mujahedin but includes MPs eager to push the country along the road to democracy.

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Way to tell them, woman! It’s honest people like this that give me a little bit of hope for Afghanistan’s future. She wouldn’t be there in Parliament if what she said wasn’t true. But the fact is, she’s there because the people support her, whereas most of those guys are there because people hate and fear them, or at best, hate their enemies and therefore want their protection. Joya is one of the few true Parliamentarians in Afghanistan. Of course they want to expel her: she’s proof to the whole nation that there is an alternative to the lies and violence that they have propogated for the past three decades.

*Thanks, Asiyah!