12/09/2009 4:00 am
POV
From Afghan Women's Mouths to Obama's Ears, by Sara Davidson
Editor’s Note: Sara Davidson, author of the bestselling books Loose Change and Leap!: What Will We Do with the Rest of Our Lives?, has contributed articles to The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, Harper’s, O the Oprah Magazine and Rolling Stone. She’s written and produced TV dramas and in 1994 was nominated for a Golden Globe for her work on "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman." Sara now lives in Colorado. Visit Sara’s website by clicking here.
I thought I knew what we should do in Afghanistan, until I flew to the country with a group of eight women and one man, organized by Code Pink. This is the final piece of the six-part series.
On our last day, the final voice we hear is that of a member of Parliament from the south, Roshanak Wardak, who expresses the opposite position from what we’ve been hearing in Kabul. She just moved to a house in Kabul because it’s no longer safe to commute to her village. The concrete slab house looks as if it were erected yesterday, surrounded by rocks, rubble and a security wall with barbed wire.
(Image: Jodie Evans, Roshanak, and Sara Davidson) Roshanak is small and graceful, dressed in turquoise with a black head scarf. "I’m sorry for Americans. They waste their lives here," she says. In the four years she’s been in Parliament, "everything in the south has deteriorated. America didn’t help us. Our country can’t help us. If you stand in the market and kill ten people, nobody will catch you. There’s no justice, no security."
She says special forces killed a father and son working in their fields. When she asked the commander why, he said the son had relations with the Taliban. "I have relations with the Taliban," she says. "We are living with them. When any person is killed, I have to go for the condolence. They ask why Americans did this killing and nobody knows. Now people are against Americans and against our government."
Roshanak is a gynecologist who set up practice in Wardak in 1996. When the new Afghan constitution was written in 2004, it required that 25 percent of the seats in Parliament be filled by women. Roshanak’s neighbors urged her to run but she resisted. "I hate politics, it’s a dangerous game, full of fraud," she says. But her constituents prevailed, "and I won, even though I did not spend one dollar."
With the video camera rolling, Code Pink founder Jodie Evans asks Roshanak what she wants to tell President Obama. "Withdraw all troops," Roshanak says, then proposes a three-part solution to the war. "First, the U.S. should negotiate with the Taliban and ask them to participate in government. If you think it’s impossible to talk with Taliban – that’s not true." Second, she says, "Everyone knows the center of insurgency and training camps is Pakistan. If you don’t give money to Pakistan for one year, the fighting will finish in Afghanistan." Third, she says, "Instead of sending troops, send engineers, doctors, teachers."
Her proposals are sensible but are they workable? What good will it do to send doctors and teachers if the roads are too dangerous for them to travel where they’re needed? Roshanak confirms what Jodie believes, though, and Jodie will post this clip online. Roshanak signs Jodie’s petition urging Obama not to send troops and we race to the airport, passing the Indian embassy where, three days later, a suicide bomb will explode, killing 17.
I ask Jodie how she can be sure the president will see the petition. She doesn’t know yet, she says, but ten days later she will find her opportunity. A friend buys two tickets to a Democratic fund-raiser in San Francisco for $32,400, which entitles her to a photo op with the president. She invites Jodie to come, and as Obama puts his arm around Jodie for the picture, she hands him the petition and tells him women in Afghanistan don’t want more troops and they’re upset that women are not at the negotiating table. The president says, "What do you mean, I have Secretary of State Hillary Clinton." Jodie says, "No, Afghan women want to be at the negotiating table." Later, Jodie reports that the president responded, "Oh." He told her he would not be able to fix Afghanistan quickly. She said, "You won’t be able to fix it at all. Only they can."
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The main point of Roshanak’s that I agree with is that we do need to co-opt the Taliban. They are not going away, and so long as they are disenfranchised and forced out on the fringes, they will continue to operate outside the law.
Her solution on Pakistan is a little too simplistic and does not take into account the realities of Pakistan’s politics or international politics. We also are in a Catch-22 of sorts with Pakistan, since we depend heavily on them for logistical support. Heavily.
I’m sorry that Jodie seized so strongly on what she wanted to hear. A fact-finding mission like this is expensive and risky; it should not be used merely as a credential to shore up a preconceived notion. A true researcher’s thoughts go where the facts lead; sorry, but this was essentially a case of intelligence cherry-picking to support the argument she already wanted to make. I think we have had just about enough of the results of intelligence cherry-picking, thank you.
Thanks for this series. I did not agree with everything in it, but it generated a lot of good discussion.
Lila: Here’s the link to Melissa Roddy’s piece that she posted for us the other day. It is from Huffington Post. It’s really very good and thorough.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/melissa-roddy/how-we-should-really-be-v_b_376673.html
I watched Dan Rather’s program last evening, I found it very interesting and informative. I found a clip from it.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/video/video.php?v=592267913444&ref=mf
That is not right, let me try again
http://www.hd.net/danrather.html
Thanks for the link, it was a good article. Her observations about the Afghan-Pak border are absolutely correct. The comparison to Bosnia gives pause in more ways than one: first, she noted the 1:50 ratio that we had in order to stabilize Bosnia. Consider: that was not combat, but a peacekeeping op with the blessing of the locals who were begging for outside security assistance. Not so in Afghanistan. Second, I am still convinced that once foreign troops leave Bosnia for good, the Bosnians will be back at each others’ throats. I mean dang, they had 70 years of relative peace under Tito, intermarried, built a society together - if, after all that, you fall apart once your dictator is gone, a few decades of peacekeepers won’t help either. So what does that say about Afghanistan, which is even more clannish and divided…?
I think about the only period that Afghanistan had a period of relative peace and stability was under King Zahir Shah. But even he was unable to achieve any real progress against constant factional disagreements. And things only got worse when he instituted democratic reforms.
I know this is extremely un-PC, but it’s my opinion that not all cultures are well suited to democracy, and Afghanistan is one of those. Democracy requires the willingness to accept outcomes of the majority vote, peacefully accept transitions of power, bow to the law before bowing to your clan or tribe, etc. Afghanistan isn’t known as "land of the unruly" for nothing.
Back to Ms. Roddy’s Bosnia comparison: maybe what Afghanistan really needs is a Tito. But that’s not what the US is about, so…