A Window of Hope in Afghanistan

"The first essential characteristics of nonviolent action is that it is creative."
         -- Hildegarde Goss Mayr

For the western world, September 11th marks a day of such infamy that people no longer feel the need to describe it as the "terrorist attacks on the US" or "tragic events at the World Trade Centre." Instead we simply say September 11th. It has been called our wake up call to the terror and suffering of the rest of the world; however the people of Afghanistan have been wide awake and screaming for two decades now, each day as nightmarish for them as September 11th was for us.

Dr. Simar Samar knows this nightmare well as she has been a living witness to it most of her life. She knows of the fear and helplessness that the American people felt that day. "This is the terror we live with," she says. "It may be just a little mud house, but it's still a house for those people. Life is life -- does it make a difference if they are rich or poor?"

But even in all this darkness, Dr. Samar has become a ray of hope to her people. She is a healer in a country where so many are suffering and she is a woman educating and empowering other women in a time when they have never been more oppressed. Hers is a story of caring and humanity, in a place where those elements seem to be in dangerously short supply.

"Nothing is working," Dr. Samar says, "no roads, no water, no sanitation, no health, no education system, no books, no sense of our own history, because everything from the past has been burned."

The forty-five year old doctor was born to the Hazara tribe, one of the most the persecuted ethnic minorities in Afghanistan. She received a scholarship to go to medical school at Kabul University and became the first Hazara woman to obtain a medical degree in 1982.

This moment of triumph, however, was overshadowed by the darkness already falling over Afghanistan. The country was in the throes of civil war as the mujahdeen--the Islamic and tribal groups heavily backed by the US--were attempting to oust the Soviets and their puppet government. As a doctor, Samar aided the efforts of the resistence movement alongside her husband who was also active in the cause. In 1984, Samar's husband and three brothers were taken by the Soviets and never seen or heard from again. In all, she lost 63 members of her family.

Samar fled with her two year old son across the border to the refugee camps in Quetta, Pakistan and continued her medical efforts there. With money from the Church World Service, she founded her first hospital in Quetta in 1987. Two years later, Dr. Samar launched Shuhada (meaning "Martyrs" in the Dari language), a non-profit organization dedicated to reconstruction and development in Afghanistan.

Over the next ten years Shuhada expanded its reach across the borders and deep into Afghanistan. Dr. Samar founded four hospitals and ten clinics including one teaching hospital to provide staff and resources for the entire network. The Shuhada also opened schools all across rural Afghanistan including the country's only secondary school for girls.

But the Soviet occupation had by now given way to the brutal oppression of the Taliban which, as Dr. Samar notes, made the Soviets look good by comparison. The Taliban introduced strict religious codes and forced Afghan women, who had previously been free to wear and do what they wished, to closet themselves away behind black painted windows and wear the burqa. The burqa is a head-to-foot garment that covers all parts of the body save for a tiny window which allows the women to see.

Dr. Samar notes that the burqa plays havoc on women's health, already weakened by malnutrition. "Almost every woman I see has osteomalcia," she says. "Their bones are softening due to lack of Vitamin D. They survive on a diet of tea and naan because they can't afford eggs and milk, and to complicate matters their burqas and veils deprive them of sunlight." Osteomalacia is the medical term for this condition in adults. In children it is known by its more familiar name--rickets.

Under the Taliban, Dr. Samar's ongoing work became even more dangerous. Women were no longer allowed to go to male doctors unaccompanied by their husbands and although medicine was one of the few areas of employment still open to women, no women were allowed to receive higher education. Even with death threats upon her, Dr. Samar bargained with Taliban commanders--opening more beds for wounded soldiers to keep her hospitals open and compromising on the ban on girls' education.

After negotiations in Ghazni, the Hazara region where many of the Shuhada's rural schools are located, the Taliban agreed to keep the schools open--but only up to Grade 6. Samar subsequently renamed Grade 12 to Grade 6 and the schools kept teaching. In cities like Kabul, female teachers taught their classes behind the black painted windows as it was now illegal for them to work in public. The Shuhada currently teaches 20,000 students in Afghanistan.

On December 10th, 2001, International Human Rights Day, Dr. Samar received the John Humphrey Freedom Award from from the Montreal-based non-goverment organization, Rights & Democracy. In the speech announcing her award, the President of Rights & Democracy, Warren Allmand, said "We hope that this international award will help provide some form of protection to Dr. Samara who faces real personal danger providing health and education services to Afghan women and girls. Her courage inspires us all to continue to struggle for a peaceful resolution to the situation in Afghanistan."

Even as Dr. Samar conducted a speaking tour across Canada in conjunction with her award, events had already marched on in Afghanistan--although this time perhaps to a more hopeful place. Dr. Samar had been named the Minister of Women's Affairs, one of five deputy premiers in the new interim government in Afghanistan. At last she will have the power and position that she not only deserves, but that will allow her to continue implementing health and education improvements. Dr. Samar will finally be allowed to go home.

It would be nice to believe that this is the happy ending to a terrible tale but the book does not close this day in as much as it didn't open on September 11th. The country that Dr. Samar has returned to is one that has been all but obliterated by war--first by the Soviets, then by the Taliban, and subsequently by the US and its allies. Since the west's day of infamy, it is estimated that Canada has spent $1 billion on the war effort. The Americans have spent approximately $1 billion per month and as the bombing in the mountains of Afghanistan continues the cost in dollars and human life continues to rise.

Dr. Samar and the Afghanistan interim government are now seeking $22 billion in aid over the next ten years to rebuild their shattered country--$45 billion over the next twenty years. Our governments did not cringe at the price tag when they attacked Afghanistan; the images of September 11th had too recently been burned into our collective consciousness by the glow of several million televisions sets. Now, as Afghanistan comes to the world with the price tag for a peaceful, hopeful future, we must take a moment to imagine the horrors that they have witnessed and continue to witness half a world away.

It is a world where there are thousands of sick and injured but not enough hospitals or trained staff to care for them; a world where people are dying of starvation and exposure in refugee camps--the Afghans representing the largest refugee population in the world; a world where the bombs continue to rain down upon the homes of innocent people who will listen to your story of that terrible day in September and then tell you their tales of a lifetime as the victims of terrorism.

All that remain are the victims--theirs and ours--and there is still much work to be done.

article by Athena Cooper
staff writer