Equivocality

This book is the story of a Scotsman who walked across central Afghanistan, 800 kilometers from Heart to Kabul, in January of 2002. He writes of his various adventures, including the peasants, soldiers, village headman, imam and Taliban that he meets, and he discusses the complex history of each place he passes. He visits ancient cities and witnesses a polo-like game played with a dead goat instead of a ball. As a piece of travel writing, it is entertaining and informative, but I believe it is not in this way that his work most shines. Rather, it is his detailed explication of the diversity of the place and the complexity involved in trying to govern or even aid the people who live there that is most valuable. Mr. Stewart, it turns out, has spent a career in international policy, aid, and human rights work. He’s a very smart cookie, and this simultaneous understanding of Afghanistan from both a modern academic perspective and months of actual contact with the people on the ground is very, very illuminating.

I defer to the author:

Most of the policy-makers knew next to nothing about the villages where 90 percent of the Afghan population lived. They came from postmodern, secular, globalized states with liberal traditions in law and government. It was natural for them to initiate projects on urban design, women’s rights, and fiber-optic cable networks; to talk about transparent, clean, and accountable processes, tolerance, and civil society; and to speak of “people who desire peace at any cost and understand the need for a centralized multi-ethnic government.”

But what did they understand of the thought processes of Seyyed Kerbalahi’s wife, who had not moved five kilometers from her home in forty years? Or Dr. Habibullah, the vet, who carried an automatic weapon in the way they carried briefcases? The villagers I had met were mostly illiterate, lived far from electricity or television, and knew very little about the outside world. Versions of Islam; views of ethnicity, government, politics, and the proper methods of dispute resolution (including armed conflict); and the experience of twenty-five years of war differed from region to region. The people of Kamenj understood political power in terms of their feudal lord Haji Moshin Khan. Ismail Khan in Herat [the recently appointed provincial governor] wanted a social order based on Iranian political Islam. Hazara such as Ali hated the idea of centralized government because they associated it with subjugation by other ethnic groups and suffering under the Taliban. Even within a week’s walk I had encountered areas where the local Begs had been toppled by Iranian-funded social revolution and others where feudal structures were still in place; areas where the violence had been inflicted by the Taliban and areas where the villagers had inflicted it on one-another. These differences between groups were deep, elusive, and difficult to overcome. Village democracy, gender issues, and centralization would be hard-to-sell concepts in some areas.

Policy makers did not have the time, structures, or resources for a serious study of an alien culture. They justified their lack of knowledge and experience by focusing on poverty and implying that dramatic cultural differences did not exist. They acted as though villagers were interested in all the priorities of international organizations, even when those priorities were mutually contradictory.

In a seminar in Kabul, I heard Mary Robinson, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, say, “Afghans have been fighting for their human rights for twenty-five years. WE don’t need to tell them what their rights are.” Then the head of a major food agency added privately, “Villagers are not interested in human rights. They are like poor people all over the world. All they think about is where their next meal is coming from.” To which the head of an Afghan NGO providing counseling responded, “The only thing to know about these people is that are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.”

The differences between the policy makers and a Hazara such as Ali went much deeper than his lack of food. Ali rarely worried about his next meal. He was a peasant farmer and had a better idea than most where his next meal was coming from. If he defined himself it was chiefly as a Muslim and a Hazara, not as a hungry Afghan. Without the time, imagination, and persistence needed to understand Afghans’ diverse experiences, policy makers would find it impossible to change Afghan society in the way they wished to change it.

In Ghorak, I asked Ali who should be the president of Afghanistan.

“Governor Khalili,” the room replied in unison.

“But the Pashtun and the Tajik don’t want your Hazara leader as president of Afghanistan,” I said. Other Afghans blame Khalili for atrocities in Kabul.

“Ahmed Shah Masood,” coughed the headman, “is the only national figure.”

They all nodded.

“But he is dead,” I muttered.

They nodded again.

“Well, then, who? Hamid Karzai, your current leader?”

“Definitely not… no… a Pashtun American puppet…,” the headman said.

“Well, then, who?”

Silence. It seemed they had never considered the issue. Perhaps they thought it wasn’t up to them to chooses the president or that Kabul didn’t matter.

“Please eat your meat,” said the headman, half seeing the tray of rice and stale bread. There was no meat because the Taliban had taken most of the village flocks. But it was dark and the headman was too ill to notice.

“Come on,” I said, “who should be your leader?”

“The king…” someone suggested eventually. The others looked a bit uncertain.

“But he’s eighty-five.”

They all nodded.

“If God was willing there would be no war,” added Ali, “but we will in the future fight for many things against other people.”

The first step to improving things is finding reality, even when that reality is frightening and hard to understand. That is what Mr. Stewart’s accomplishment is.

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