Glynstrong

TV interview on Women & Homelessness

2012-01-25T11:50:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VathXUTsdzw&list=UU5gtqdJOvhGdh-6WRO2CTpw&index=7&feature=plcp

From Rock to Clock

2011-12-31T05:36:00.000-08:00

The 30-year-old soldier sitting opposite me is not homeless. He has no alcohol or drug problems. He is not in debt and he enjoys physical and mental health. He didn’t come to the charity Veterans Aid to seek help, but to offer it.

Captain Edouard ‘Ed’ Plunkett (Queens Royal Lancers) – is an Army officer who has served in Cyprus, Canada, Iraq and Afghanistan. As a Troop leader and Squadron 2IC he has had responsibility for men’s lives and wellbeing. As a soon-to-be civilian he knows that a few will struggle without the structure of the service family to support them. A few more will struggle for other reasons.

Plunkett is matter of fact about what the Armed Forces offer and what frontline service in particular involves. As Second in Command, Brigade Reconnaissance Force (QRL) he has had responsibility for the career management and training of 105 officers, senior NCOs and men. Plunkett and his troop spearheaded a major offensive against the Taliban over a seven-month period. In that time he witnessed first hand the effects of IEDs, losing limbs or having them mangled beyond use. He knows how long the physical rehabilitation process takes, the seemingly endless operations, hours of physio and subsequent shuttling between medical facilities at Headley Court and Selly Oak hospital, following friends and colleagues through their recovery

Military service is not for life. At some point all servicemen and women – injured or not - find themselves out of the Armed Forces and re-branded as ‘veterans’, a label they will wear until they die. In this capacity responsibility for their wellbeing passes into the hands of the Welfare State and the 3,000 charities that offer help and support to those who have served. At the cutting edge of these is Veterans Aid.

On 31 January Plunkett plans to embark on a venture to raise fund for what he describes as ‘the welfare model for life after the Army’. At the beginning of February he will cycle from Gibraltar to Hereford, covering 1,583 miles through Spain, over the snow laden Pyrenees, up through France and more snow. He plans to take the ferry from St Malo to Portsmouth and finish at the memorial clock in 22 SAS Camp outside Hereford, in March.

So why Veterans Aid?

“It’s just the nature of the charity” says Plunkett. “The work it does is lost on most people. They think about the ‘here and now’, see the casualties of current conflicts, not the welfare of the individuals’ long term in life after service. There is publicity about PTSD – and it is a problem for some people – but case by case everyone who leaves the Army is different.”

CEO of VA Dr Hugh Milroy points out that there are more than 5 million veterans in the UK, men and women of all ages. “Most transit seamlessly from service to civilian life, but a small minority, for a variety of prosaic reasons, end up in crisis. And it’s a myth that military service actually causes subsequent misfortune.

“Life in Britain today is hard – for everyone. Veterans are not a ‘protected’ species, but they are a resilient breed with a very family ethos. And that’s what this charity is about – veteran helping veteran; with debt, relationship breakdown, mental and physical health problems, and addictions. Whatever the problem, we are here to help.”

The charity survives and flourishes because of its supporters, from ‘official’ funders like ABF-The Soldiers Charity to individuals like Ed Plunkett who learn about its work and are inspired to do something personal to contribute to it.

Plunkett’s team will include his future brother in law Rob Kendall – a civvy – and, at some stage, fitness permitting, one or two of the lower limb amputees from his unit.

“ They are still receiving treatment so we’re keeping a watching brief at the moment. The current plan is for them to join us when we cross the Channel and complete the last phase of the cycle ride to Hereford. It’s a colossal challenge but our aim is to raise £10,000 for Veterans Aid.

“On 9 May 2010 in Helmand province Sergeant Andrew ‘Mandy’ Carlton was involved in a PPIED (Pressure Plate Improvised Explosive Device) incident in which two servicemen received critical injuries. He lost his left leg below the knee and suffered extensive damage to his remaining leg. He has since taken every opportunity to overcome his disability and I would maintain that he is almost as agile as he was before his loss! We really hope he can join us.

“We think Veterans Aid is a fantastic and inspirational charity. It supports ex-servicemen and women who have fallen on hard times, and are in dire need of food, shelter, clothing, psychological support and/or stability.”

Although a fit individual, Plunkett has only recently taken up cycling and the area around his current base (Catterick, North Yorkshire) has provided excellent training facilities. “However much we train I expect the first week will be hard; that’s when we will really cut our teeth, develop sores, aches and pains. The Pyrenees will be the real challenge and it’s the obstacle that we’re most psyched up for”.

There will be no ‘soft landings’ after that though – the two men plan to camp rather than waste money on hotels, putting Plunkett’s experience as expedition leader through the Jebel Akhdar and the Wahiba Sands of Oman to good effect. “We will make the occasional ‘wash stop’ to clean up our kit though!”

His Just Giving page (http://www.justgiving.com/rocktoclock) has already attracted donations of more than £1,300 and words of encouragement from supporters.

And Plunkett’s fiancé Henrietta “Well, she’s not over the moon about this, just six weeks before the wedding, but she understands why I am doing it,” he laughs.

*Veterans Aid plans to keep in touch with Ed and Rob via email as they cover the 1,583-mile route, blogging on BFBS (http://www.bfbs.com/news/blogs/veterans-aid%E2%80%99s-blog-20133.html) and posting pictures of the pair at various stages of their journey. You can also follow their journey on Facebook and Twitter.

Donations to their Just Giving site can be made at any time. Media interviews arranged through media@veterans-aid.net or by calling Glyn Strong on 07806 920087.

A video appeal from Ed and Rob can be seen on (*To follow)

The right place at the wrong time

2011-12-05T03:21:00.000-08:00

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23969165-peers-wife-i-hid-in-cupboard-as-taliban-searched-hotel.do

In 2011 NATO initiated Inteqal – the process of transition of security responsibilities from ISAF to the Afghan state and its forces. It was launched on the assumption that the Afghan Army, Police and governance system, at national and local level, would have progressed to the point where handover was tenable. President Karzai formally announced transition arrangements to the Afghan people and in March it was welcomed in a joint statement by Foreign Secretary William Hague and Defence Secretary Liam Fox.

NATO aims to complete the transition by 2014, reducing its military presence but retaining a ‘footprint’ in the country beyond that date. Since the announcement of Intequal Osama Bin Laden has been killed – and ‘talks with the Taliban’ have rarely been off the agenda. Heady stuff – but what do these events mean to Afghanistan’s female population? One British woman went to find out. This is what happened to her.

Fiona Hodgson and her friend walked out of the bloody siege of the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul wondering how they had escaped death.

They’d survived the bloodbath in which Taliban gunmen killed 11 people by hiding in a cupboard while slaughter and mayhem took place around them.

Fiona had gone to Afghanistan to connect with women’s organisations and activists and see for herself what women’s hopes and fears were about transition and its security implications for half the population.

In February this year a travel reviewer wrote of the ‘Intercon’ - “There are often large official events because of its secure location and plentiful armed guards. There have been no Taliban attacks and the last major incident was a shoot-out in 2003. So, by Kabul standards, it is very safe.”

For those who know the Afghan capital this is not such a surreal recommendation, but when I watched my friend walk out of this ‘safe’ hotel on a TV news channel I was stunned. As the story of the siege and suicide bombing unfolded I knew she was physically unharmed, but it wasn’t until she arrived back in London that I understood how close to death she had been.

Fiona and her companion from Action Aid spent nearly six hours in hiding listening to the sound of gunfire, explosions and screaming just yards away from them.

“I honestly thought we were going to die,” she recalled. “My heart seemed to be pounding so loudly I felt the gunmen could surely hear it.”

So how did this Kensington mother of four find herself at the epicentre of a bloody siege? Call it displaced guilt, but I feel (very slightly) to blame!

We met a few years ago when I had just returned from a trip to Helmand. Fiona was then Chair of the Conservative Women’s Organisation and already alert to the plight of Afghanistan’s women. From our different perspectives, but with shared interests, we joined forces to co-author The Female Face of Afghanistan, a series of largely unedited opinions from a diverse range of contributors. Fiona became very keen to visit the country, meet some of the women and hear first hand how they felt.

We talked about going together but could never quite co-ordinate it so travelling independently, at her own expense, she went alone. First stop was Kabul where she stayed with Ana Hozyainova, a founder member of the Afghanistan Public Policy Research Organisation. Seven days, eighteen meetings, several private visits and a joyful Afghan wedding party later, her nightmare began.

Over tea in the garden of her West London home Fiona re-counted the most frightening six hours of her life. In this most English of settings, with Monty the family dog chewing his favourite toy at our feet, a story of horror, courage - and even occasional humour - unfolded.

“Ana helped me meet some wonderful women in Kabul – mostly from NGOs, activists, former refugees and even a TV presenter. My admiration for these women grew as the week progressed but they are very, very worried about transition. There is generally enormous alarm about what would happen if the Taliban came back.

“Some said they would leave; one said she would get a gun and flee to the hills. A particularly impressive group was Young Women for Change – aged mainly in their early 20s. One told me ‘It would be like slow death’. They know that activism identifies them but feel they have no alternative and quote the depressing proverb ‘Afghan women belong in a house or a grave’ as their spur.”

On the eve of the suicide bombers’ attack Fiona left Ana’s quiet home in a residential district for the Intercontinental Hotel where she was to meet her new hosts.

“The Action Aid representative had flown out that evening. I was tired but excited and looking forward to the next part of my stay. We were due to leave for Bamiyan early the next morning and had a full programme.”

After a buffet dinner with members of the Action Aid team and Kabul MP Shinkhai Karokhail, Fiona and her friend retired early to their rooms on the second floor. The hotel is on a hilltop and Fiona had left her curtains open to look at the panoramic view of Kabul.

Then the gunfire started. She crawled to turn her bedside lights out before cautiously leaving her room. “I remember there was a man in the corridor, his body language was all wrong – he turned and looked at me, his arm flapping, then he ran past me. I knew then that something was going on and banged on my friend’s door.

“I don’t know why but I said ‘we’ve got to get into the cupboard’ – it was behind the door to the room which would swing back against it. And so we sat there, in the dark, still dressed in the clothes we’d worn to dinner while the firing continued. We rang the Action Aid security officer who had only recently left and he said he’d come back for us straight away.”

But it was to be nearly six hours before the women were able to leave. Huddled in the confined space they heard shooting above them, on the ground floor, in the stairwell and along their own corridor. At first they thought it was the hotel security team fighting off attackers. The shouting was harsh, aggressive and close, but incomprehensible.

“We put our phones on silent because we were terrified of being discovered,” recalled Fiona whose strangest moment was seeing a call come in from her husband Robin. “ I decided not to take it. Then he sent a text – and I replied saying that I was fine. I didn’t want to worry him.”

A man whose calls she did take was to prove a rock that night. “I suddenly remembered that we had registered our visit to Afghanistan with the FCO and had a number to call at the Embassy ‘in emergencies’.

“Rather hesitantly I rang it, thinking how mad I would sound saying ‘Hello, this is Fiona Hodgson; I’m in the wardrobe of Room 206 in the Intercontinental Hotel’ .”

The man at the Embassy did not laugh however, he simply asked for details. “He was wonderful; very professional and calm and as the night went on it was reassuring to have him to talk to. Sometimes he asked us to leave the phone on so that he could hear what was happening, but he told us not to move until someone official came for us.”

Alternately whispering and lapsing into silence the two women strained to hear what was happening; the gunfire was intermittent but the stillness too was threatening. Then the unimaginable happened - it got worse.

“Suddenly we could hear doors being kicked in and shots. Then the helicopters came and the most massive explosions. The hotel rocked and we felt the floors below were giving way. We’d no idea what was going on. We were past thinking and in extreme terror. Later we learned that the explosion above us was what set the hotel on fire. We felt helpless but between us we managed to hold it together!”

A loud knock and a voice in broken English told the women to come out. “But we were beyond movement until the man on the phone ‘instructed’ us that it was alright. I slid the door open and put an arm out first, then went into the corridor where there was an Afghan soldier and a line of people. A New Zealand Special Forces soldier met us at the stairwell, we went through the lobby and into the kitchen.”

At last they were allowed to leave. “Dawn was coming up and we just walked down the hill towards the police checkpoints and past them. I still didn’t feel safe; I feared there could be gunmen in the bushes but when we got to the second police barrier the Security officer from Action Aid was waiting for us. He had been there all night.”

He drove the women to a rendezvous with the Embassy vehicle where they were provided with body armour. Fiona laughed. “I thought ‘we could have used this last night’!”

The journey home was not comfortable for either woman. Luggage at Kabul airport suddenly looked sinister; the clatter of suitcases pulled along a hotel corridor in Dubai sounded like gunfire. While we spoke in Fiona’s garden sudden noise on a nearby construction site made her twitch.

At Gatwick the women were met by their husbands and the CEO of Action Aid. Fiona said “They took us to a quiet room and that was when I was able to tell Robin the full story. I‘m fine talking about it all, but perhaps part of me is in emotional lockdown. So as for how I really feel – I don’t know. For a while I was numb. It’s OK for me – I can get on a plane, but for the people I’ve left behind, it’s different. So many women are psychologically damaged, so many are fearful. No woman will vote for the Taliban. ”

After Fiona’s return I spoke to Afghan journalist Bilal Saraway in Kabul. He said “The gunfire could be heard by residents in all the surrounding neighbourhoods and it has shattered confidence in security. Everyone is asking how this could have happened. What was pretty upsetting was that the Minister of the Interior had been warned of a possible attack and despite that they were able to get in through the back entrance, past a police checkpoint.

First to die was a hotel driver and an old guard who had worked there for more than 50 years.”

Saraway added “There were renovations going on in the main lobby which may account for the lack of security, but people are asking senior police how it is they managed to take in so many heavy weapons – nine people are understood to have had RPGs while the Afghan police were only lightly armed with AK47s.

“It’s clear too that the attackers were prepared for a long siege; their backpacks contained cans of Red Bull and biscuits. But if there is a positive aspect to this, it is that the Police Chief arrived straight after the attack; local forces did well.”

Fiona echoed this. “I don’t blame anyone; we were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Everyone was wonderful – Action Aid, the Embassy staff, the Afghan police/army and the New Zealand Special Forces. I just feel so very sorry for those who lost loved ones or did not survive.

“Will I go back? I hope I have the courage to return and finish what I set out to do. I don’t want this tragic incident to overshadow the real issues, Afghanistan’s women must not be forgotten. We can help them in all sorts of ways, through networking and information hubs as well as practical support. Women must be involved in the peace process in a meaningful way and not just as window dressing. ”

Her companion doesn’t want to be identified but added "The best way to ensure that the rights Afghan women have gained over the last 10 years are not swept away is to make sure that women are at all peace and reconciliation negotiations and are able to represent their interests. This is their right, but it is also the only route to a just and lasting peace. Any deal that excludes women does not deserve the name of peace."

So, as the Intequal process takes it’s course all eyes should be on those women and the West’s ears open to their very real concerns about a return to the ‘ground zero’ of human rights abuse in Afghanistan. To many, exhausted by the demands of yet another long engagement in a country where no-one has ever ‘won’ a war, the death of Bin Laden might signify ‘mission accomplished’. If it leaves Millennium Development Goals for Women unaddressed it will be a job far from done.

ENDS

Lady Fiona Hodgson is a member of the Conservative Human Rights Commission and the Chair of the Advisory Board of GAPS: (Gender Action in Peace and Security), President of the National Conservative Convention and former Chair of the Conservative Women’s Organisation. She is also a patron of Afghan Connections. She is the wife of former Tory MP Lord Robin Hodgson.

http://www.conservativehumanrights.com/reports/

CITRICA PAIR AIM TO CLEAN UP FOR VETERANS AID

2011-07-22T09:49:00.000-07:00

The Business Development Manager of top UK cleaning company, Citrica, is taking four days off work to raise funds for Veterans Aid (www.veterans-aid.net )

Accompanied by his brother Tom, Jack Buckley is swapping his city suit for cycling gear in a bid to complete a sponsored 300-mile cycle ride for the London-based charity.

Between them the Buckley brothers hope to raise £7,000.

“We’re absolutely delighted by what they are doing for us,” said CEO of Veterans Aid Dr Hugh Milroy. “This is real commitment and an amazing gesture for two busy men to make.”

Privately owned Citrica is the UK’s Greenest Commercial Cleaning Company, renowned for the comprehensive and professional service it provides to many SME’s and blue chip clients. It is also a staunch supporter of Veterans Aid and has provided help quietly, behind the scenes, in a variety of ways. This time its efforts will be more public however as Jack and Tom need as much sponsorship as possible to reach their target.

“We’re leaving on 10 August from Crystal Palace” said Jack “and our ride will end at the Arc de Triomphe, in Paris.”

The brothers will depart at 0630, covering around 100 miles a day, passing through small villages, towns and magnificent countryside.

Both are already fit but putting in regular practice sessions to get in peak form for the ride. They’ve done a gruelling 10k run in the past but this will be their first charity cycle ‘marathon’.

“We’ve always had mountain bikes so didn’t have to buy anything specially for this,” said Jack. “We run four times a week and we’re doing a long bike ride together too before the event.”

Citrica has excellent CSR credentials and has helped many organisations on an ad hoc basis since its foundation, but after discovering Veterans Aid the company, headed up by Tom and Jack’s father Danny Buckley, decided it had found ‘the one’.

Jack said, “I believe that this is a great charity and I know that anything donated will not be spent on expenses or the management’s next pay rise. It will go to the people who need it the most. It will pay for anything from housing, medical help, rehabilitation to a warm meal a bath or some clean, new clothes.

“We’re doing this as a personal challenge, but we’re also championing VA because we’ve had a good insight into what it does and know it’s a worthy cause.”

“Veterans Aid has been around for almost 80 years and represents everything that a charity should be about, supporting those who need help during times of crises, who are homeless or likely to become homeless. While the name suggests giving immediate help to ex-Servicemen, woman and their families, the ultimate aim is to get people back on track and leading a stable lives. Veterans Aid’s staff really are at the real sharp end of charity work.”

If you’d like to help please publicise this wonderful gesture wherever you can and visit the Just Giving site to support Tom and Jack. Everything raised will go directly to the ex-Servicemen and women seeking help from Veterans Aid.

http://www.justgiving.com/JackDanielBuckley

http://www.justgiving.com/Tom-Buckley

Paranoia and Photography

2011-07-21T04:15:00.001-07:00

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DFJH9F7Hcluo&h=RAQCjujxk

The right place at the wrong time

2011-07-13T12:33:00.000-07:00

http://www.ukprogressive.co.uk/the-right-place-at-the-wrong-time/article13402.html

Double vision, double standards.

2011-06-12T09:41:00.000-07:00

Picture by John Turner

A friend from Gloucestershire sent this image to me. He took the snap after listening to a news item about alcohol control zones.

The sign to the right threatens fines of up to £500 for drinking 'in this area' - just yards away from the advertisement in the supermarket window promoting half price booze.

* * *

US blocks visit from Malalai Joya

2011-03-18T10:58:00.000-07:00

Malalai Joya at London's Frontline Club with Sue Turton in 2008

Pictures by Glyn Strong

Just nine days after International Women’s Day internationally acclaimed Afghan human rights activist Malalai Joya has been refused entry to the United States – allegedly because she is ‘unemployed and living underground’.

Joya - an author, former member of the Afghan parliament and one of TIME magazine’s ‘100 most influential people in the world in 2010’ - was due to begin a three week book tour to promote an updated version of her memoir ‘A Woman Among Warlords’ on 20th March.

At the age of 27 she was the youngest woman elected to Afghanistan’s parliament in 2005. Because of her harsh criticism of warlords and fundamentalists in Afghanistan, she has been the target of at least five assassination attempts.

Sonali Kolhatkar of the Afghan Women’s Mission (AWM) said “Malalai has never before been denied a visa to the US. She has come to the US several times at our invitation with no problems. AWM is a lead sponsor for this latest tour – we sent her the formal invitation letter for the visa and bought her air tickets to and from the US. Frankly I’m shocked that she would be denied. What are the immigration authorities afraid of? I can only speculate that they are afraid of the effect of her words at a time when the US war in Afghanistan is more unpopular than ever – in fact a majority now favor withdrawal.

“The reason Joya lives underground is because she faces the constant threat of death for having had the courage to speak up for women’s rights – it’s obscene that the U.S. government would deny her entry.”

Kolhatkar, co-author of the book ‘Bleeding Afghanistan’ continued “Malalai’s visa denial also exposes the hypocrisy of the US’s stated desire to liberate Afghan women. What does liberation mean when in reality the government is busy silencing Joya? I hope they do the right thing and allow her into the country for the mere three weeks she was scheduled to be here. Audiences in 13 different US states have worked so hard to organise a national tour so that she can shed light on what’s really happening in Afghanistan.”

Malalai Joya with MP Jeremy Corbin (left) and

Derrick O'Keefe outside Portcullis House, London.

Ms Joya has twice visited London – first in 2008 to receive the RAW in WAR annual Anna Politkovskaya Award and again in 2009 to promote her book, published in the UK by Ebury Press. During that visit she met MP Jeremy Corbin and Baroness Warsi who warmly commended her efforts to get justice on behalf of her people, particularly its oppressed women and girls.

Her calls for NATO troops to withdraw from Afghanistan have made 32-year-old Ms Joya a controversial figure outside her country. Internally she has dangerous enemies - but also many supporters .

On 21 May 2007 Joya was indefinitely suspended from parliament after she criticised it for failing to accomplish enough for the Afghan people, saying, "A stable or a zoo is better [than the legislature], at least there you have a donkey that carries a load and a cow that provides milk. This parliament is worse than a stable or a zoo."

She had no faith in the recent electoral process and declined to stand for re-election. In 2009, at the wedding of a young rape victim to one of her bodyguards, Joya confided that she planned to channel her energies into activism on behalf of her people.

Alexis Gargagliano, at US publisher Scribner said of the visa decision “We had the privilege to publish Ms. Joya, and her earlier 2009 book tour met with wide acclaim. The right of authors to travel and promote their work is central to freedom of expression and the full exchange of ideas.”

‘A woman among warlords’ has been translated into over a dozen languages and widely acclaimed. Ms Joya has toured widely – to Australia, the UK, Canada, Norway, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, and the Netherlands – to promote it and state her case.

Colleagues of Joya report that when she presented herself as scheduled at the U.S. embassy, she was told she was being denied because she was “unemployed” and “lives underground.”

Organisers of the latest US tour argue that the denial of Joya’s visa appears to be a case of what the American Civil Liberties Union describes as “Ideological Exclusion,” which they say violates Americans’ First Amendment right to hear constitutionally protected speech by denying foreign scholars, artists, politicians and others entry to the United States.

Events featuring Malalai Joya are planned, from March 20 until April 10, in New York, New Jersey, Washington DC, Maryland, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Minnesota, Oregon, Washington and California. Organizers of her speaking tour are encouraging people to contact the Department of State to ask them to fulfill the promise from the Obama Administration of “promoting the global marketplace of ideas” and grant Joya’s visa immediately.

The quality of mercy is not strained . . . but it’s often tested!

2010-12-17T10:49:00.000-08:00

In the New Year an ex-submariner who slept on a park bench for seven years is due to start a degree course at Ruskin College . . . a former RAF engineer who spent last Christmas sleeping in a car is looking forward to a successful acting career and an ex-soldier whose addictions and violent behaviour were ruining his life has a job and a future. All three say they owe their new lives to Veterans Aid.

On a scale of 1-10 ‘veterans’ are pretty high up the worthy causes list. Whatever, as individuals, we feel about current operations, most of us are objective enough to realise that the men and women involved in them are doing a difficult job in dangerous and hostile conditions.

So donating to veterans charities is a no-brainer, right?

Well, maybe. The fact is that an alarming number of people in Britain today don’t actually know what a ‘veteran’ is. This may seem a strange thing to say in the wake of 11/11 and Remembrance Sunday, but it’s true. And what’s even more alarming is that if they did know they might be less likely to support charities for those in crisis - like Veterans Aid.

The official definition of a veteran in the UK is “Anyone who has served in HM Armed Forces at any time, irrespective of length of service (including National Servicemen and Reservists). ”

There are around 5.5 million veterans in the UK – teenagers and octogenarians; most transit seamlessly from Service to civilian life and never need help. But a tiny number do. Veterans are not all brave young men who have seen active service, or proud elderly gentlemen sporting chests full of medal. The decorated and the injured are humbling reminders of the sacrifices made – but there is another war, one that scars people equally visibly; one that many of us would rather not know about. And it is taking place all around us.
Imagine – a Friday afternoon in summer. Drinking weather. The video entry phone at Veterans Aid has framed a succession of faces; some familiar, some first time callers, some aggressive and drunk. This is the face of a tense young woman. Moments later, as she manhandles her buggy up the almost vertical stairs to VA’s cramped, shabby offices, the baby tucked under her arm begins to cry. This is a woman at the end of her tether. With only the clothes she stands up in, and a bag of baby items, she faces a night on the streets.
The sequence of events that led her to VA’s doorstep had nothing to do with military service . . . just a sudden eviction, a lost wallet and a broken marriage.
But this young mother was a veteran, who served honourably for three years in the British Army. She needed nappies, reassurance and food – and she received all three, instantly. Within an hour the pair were in a taxi to a hotel where they would remain until her problems were sorted out.
Most of the people who come to Veterans Aid are male, middle aged and ex-Army. Some have had lives derailed suddenly, without warning – others have more deep rooted problems that have worsened over time. Typically those who seek help do so many years after discharge, ranging in age from 19 to 85. Generally life, poverty or social isolation brings them to VA - not PTSD or Service-related issues.
Some are what, in 1563, would have been described as ‘the deserving poor’ (i.e. “Those too old, young or ill to work”). Somehow this phrase has become embedded in our consciousness, becoming a permission slip to ignore the scruffy, smelly supplicants who roam our streets or ambush us outside supermarkets. Disturbingly, some of these people wear items of military clothing or veterans’ badges.
A light year away from the homecoming heroes of Afghanistan, a tiny number of them really do share the right to call themselves ‘veterans’. Yet they, along with many other victims of life, have ceased to be attractive recipients of the nation’s largesse. To some people this presents a dilemma. It’s easy to understand why heroes should be supported, but the most courageous thing some veterans have done is pluck up the courage to ask for help.
Perhaps, as Christmas approaches, it’s time to revisit the stereotype of a veteran. Do former Guards Officers become alcoholics or get into debt? Do ex-Servicemen on six-figure salaries ever become mentally ill or unemployable? Do female veterans ever face life on the streets? Indeed they do. Some are heartbreakingly deserving, astoundingly resilient and almost too proud to ask for help – others would be deemed, by some, definitely ‘undeserving’ . . . but they are still human beings in need.

CEO of Veterans Aid Dr Hugh Milroy says, “We represent the military family looking after its own. Our philosophy is ‘hand up’ not ‘hand out’. Yes, we address basic needs like provision of new clothing, food and accommodation, but some problems are deep rooted and nuanced. Our staff has the patience and expertise to guide people through the slow ‘unpacking’ process necessary to deal with more complex issues.”
And that expertise includes the services of a barrister, a drug and alcohol adviser, a military psychiatrist and a social worker. Milroy himself is a Gulf War veteran and Senior Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College.
Veterans Aid doesn’t care how people arrive at its door – only how they leave. It’s there for all ex-Servicemen and women - anytime, at any stage of their life; not just at Christmas, or around Remembrance Day. It knows that for many Veterans Aid is the Last Chance Saloon - but it has an astounding track record of success in mending broken lives.
‘Nigel’ who was homeless and ill for 30 years now lives in Fulham, in his own home. “I would be dead now if it hadn’t been for Veterans Aid” he reflects, recalling the bitter winter day he moved into the charity’s New Belvedere House hostel.
A film about Nigel and two other formerly homeless veterans who’ve trod the same path is being released for Christmas. ‘Veterans Voices: A Christmas Carol’ will be on www.veterans-aid.net from Christmas Eve.)
ENDS

Afghan Wedding: A Film by Glyn Strong - Ch4 News

2010-08-17T23:12:00.001-07:00

Glyn Strong

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid62744310001?bclid=581589527001&bctid=587326721001

Human croquet in Absurdistan?

2010-07-08T02:14:00.000-07:00

(First published http://www.ukprogressive.co.uk/)

The ‘most famous woman in Afghanistan’, Malalai Joya, has decided not to stand for re-election to Parliament because it is too corrupt, the commander of multinational forces, General Stanley McChrystal, has been dismissed and American politicians have temporarily cut off aid to the Afghan government after it emerged that billions were being ‘redirected’. Coalition deaths are above 1,800, Afghan civilian deaths are unknown – and there are fears that Afghan women may be airbrushed out of yet another key International Conference in Kabul on 20 July. Against this depressing background a wedding took place that gave some small cause for hope.

PICTURES by David Gill.

IMAGINE a drama, co-authored by Franz Kafka and Lewis Carroll, in which a dark game of human croquet is played daily. The game has no point and there are no winners, because every evening the human ‘hoops’ that have been negotiated move. The play is called ‘Contradictions’ and the imaginary country it is set in is called Afghanistan – a place where answers neatly segue away from questions - and half the population (i.e. the female half) is virtually mute.

For nine years this theatre of the absurd has played to global audiences. Transfixed by rhetoric about human rights, counter-terrorism and drug eradication Western ‘theatregoers’ – politicians, journalists, military personnel, security staff, civil servants and aid workers – have bought their tickets to watch or participate.
But recently there have been rumblings, that this long-running drama might be nearing its end. With a fatal review by ‘Rolling Stone’, a new leading man cast in the role of ISAF Commander, a British coalition Government disinclined to bankroll indefinite performances and a body count more bloody than Macbeth, the augurs are not good!

Not long ago there was a much-vaunted Peace Jirga. In the expat compounds of Kabul, where diplomats, NGO staff and hacks congregate, a ‘Mask of the Red Death’ mentality obtains. Poe would have loved Absurdistan! In the homes of ‘ordinary’ Afghans a more ‘pig with lipstick’ attitude prevailed. Another triumph of experience over hope.

Two days before it started, when security in the city had already started to ramp up, Farah Senator Belquis Roshan said, “I condemn it. It is just way of ‘squaring the circle’ of getting the Taliban back into Government. But these warlords and Taliban are killers who have raped women, children and boys . . . they should be in jail. The devastation of Kabul reflects their crimes. The evidence is all around us.”

In fact, the debate was nugatory. The Taliban failed to show up then . . . and have since indicated that they have no desire, or need, to sit round the table with an ‘enemy’ who has nothing to offer them.

The jirga’s start was not auspicious. Its 1,600 delegates, gathered in a huge air-conditioned tent, soon came under attack despite days of police planning. A few RPGs were lobbed into the surrounding area; there were armed clashes, but no delegates were hurt. Even the protests, it seemed, were off the mark.

President Karzai called the gathering “the hope of our Afghan nation to reach a peace agreement” and appealed to the Taliban to join the peace process. But to women like Roshan and suspended MP Malalai Joya his words were hollow.

Roshan, a single woman and former provincial council member for Farah Province, was cynical and disillusioned. Like Joya, of whom she speaks with pride and admiration, she is tough, blunt and has reason to be concerned for her personal security. From the safety of a supporter’s house in Darulaman, she showed me her invitation to the jirga and laughed scornfully.

“In 2001 we (Afghans) accepted foreigners in our country for the first time in 30 years, to rebuild our country and its infrastructure. They have let us down – brushed aside our hopes. They do these token PR exercises pointing out what they have done, but we didn’t get any real benefit. Crime increased, corruption rose, poppy production grew.”

Like Joya she advocates NATO withdrawal, claiming that in many ways things were better under the Taliban rule. “Of course it was bad for women, but at least they had rules and there was security of a kind.”
Today she describes Afghanistan as a series of fiefdoms, ruled by gangsters, and claims the word ‘taliban’ is meaningless and no longer describes any discrete entity.

“The US and NATO allies take credit for building schools for girls, but four years ago there were schools all over Afghanistan. Now people still want education but are too afraid to send their daughters.”
“Two years ago, in the Khak Safed District of Farah, one of the local warlords had a teenage girl murdered just because she left home. Nothing happened to him.”

IWPR reports catalogue routine interventions by Taliban taking a cut of aid funding. Explanations of why it should – and should not – be tolerated are predicated on pragmatism rather than ethics. This is Farah, not Utopia!

Roshan and Joya believe that 2001 was NATO’s chance to win the hearts and minds of Afghanistan’s people by arresting its many war criminals. Roshan said “In Iraq they had no compunction about hunting down and executing criminals. Here such men were allowed to take seats in Parliament, where they sat with their guns and pistols.”

They subsequently voted themselves amnesty from prosecution and crudely intimidated anyone who opposed them. Joya, who openly condemned them in her now famous speech to the Loya Jirga, became a particular target. She later described her experiences in parliament as ‘pure torture’.

To Joya and Roshan the Peace Jirga was simply the next step in the process of legitimising Taliban and other criminal elements. Roshan said “I asked a question in the Senate recently and was told ‘We will give you the answers after the Peace Jirga’. I said, no – this is wrong. You should say now how we want things to be, not wait to be told.”

The picture painted by both women is bleak. They describe the Presidential elections as a farce citing their own province as an example. Farah is a large, lawless area, sandwiched between Pakistan and Helmand
Roshan said through her interpreter “In some areas there were no polling stations, yet votes were returned. It is well known that deals were done and votes bought. The Governor and local warlords bought votes for Karzai; Dr Abdullah Abdullah – he also bought some votes. Only (Ramazan) Bashardost got true votes. In Farah some Talibs even fired rockets into the city to stop people voting . . . this is not democracy.”

I put it to her that untimely NATO withdrawal would simply leave a power vacuum that criminals, warlords and Taliban would quickly fill, turning the country into a battleground again. She acknowledges this and concedes that corruption and fear rule out any hope of security or an honest rule of law being delivered by the Karzai Government. “In fact we have no ‘government’” she says dismissively.

But this didn’t, in Roshan’s eyes, excuse the Peace Jirga’s role as a reconciliation platform. “My point of view is the same as that of my people. They don’t want Taliban back in government where they can (legitimately) use their powers against the us. This ‘Peace Jirga’ – I condemn it! The foreigners should have supported us – but they didn’t. The US and its Allies are doing just the same as the Taliban – killing local people with their air strikes. Our people are fed up of foreigners. People want them to withdraw from Afghanistan because civilian casualties are increasing day by day and the security is getting worse. Secondly, if foreigners really want to help Afghanistan become a democratic state they should support democratic minded people in and take our views to their leaders.

“We don’t want their troops to die here – they are also victims. Ordinary people in the international community should put pressure on their governments to support true democrats. They arrested Saddam Hussein in Iraq – why can they not do the same with Dostum, Sayaaf and the other criminals here!”
In the event, Roshan did go to the Peace Jirga. As it drew to a close she tried to speak. She was told it was not appropriate and microphones were switched off. Only two media outlets reported her attempt. Hopefully more are aware of it now.

WEDDING

Two days before meeting Roshan I had attended a wedding. Hosted by Malalai Joya it celebrated the marriage of a rape victim from the northern province of Sar-e Pul. It was a seminal event in Afghanistan where violated women are socially annhiliated by rape.

Friba, a spokeswoman for RAWA (The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan) – an organisation that profiles and publicises human rights atrocities – told me that there were no reliable statistics available on rapes in Afghanistan: “Because first rape usually goes unnoticed and in most cases the victim and families try to keep silent because they think if the case is made public, it will be a “shame for the family”. We have cases where the rape victim has been killed by guardians to “keep their honor” in society.

“We have seen rare cases where rapists were prosecuted . . . . but most of the rapists are warlords and powerful men that Afghanistan’s corrupt and rotten system can’t bring to justice. And unfortunately, due to backward tradition in Afghanistan, a rapist does not feel any shame and many of them proudly announce that they raped a girl or a boy, but again the rape victim is regarded with shame in the society. And if they file a case against the rapist, they will be victims in the court too and the powerful rapists may pressure them to keep silent.

“Even more tragically you can find women in Afghan prisons who have been raped and then arrested and charged for committing ‘Zena’ (”adultery”), while the actual rapists are free. And many imprisoned women are raped while in custody.

“Last year, two sons of a powerful warlord in Helmand province, raped a small boy and also filmed their savage act, then they proudly released their film in public, although the family of the boy filed a case and raised their voice for justice, but no action was taken against the rapists because their father is a warlord and their mother (Bibi Laeiqa) is a member of Provincial Council of Helmand.”

When I told her about the wedding of Joya’s bodyguard and his sweetheart she was incredulous. “We have never heard of any rape victim ‘make a full recovery and marry’. Especially those whose cases are public, their entire life is bleak and we have examples where the victims commit suicide.”

The wedding that Joya facilitated was a rare beacon of hope for women whose fate once featured so prominently in talk of Millennium Development Goals for Afghanistan. Roshan was also one of the guests. She said later “This wedding was special and I applaud what the bodyguard did. Really, Faramarz is a hero because here in Afghanistan no-one marries a raped girl. This does not come from the Koran, its just a tradition – people think that women are second-hand if they have been raped and we must struggle to change this view.”

The weight of prejudice is oppressive. How can attitudes be changed? Roshan’s interpreter says “It is only possible with positive attitudes, coming from politicians, and the provision of education. Things are a little better in Kabul, better than in Kandahar, Helmand and Farah; they are the most conservative provinces.”
Roshan believes there are ‘good laws’ for dealing with rape, and in theory married men who commit rape attract even more even more severe punishments. “The problem is that there is no implementation” she shrugs.

Joya’s critics will probably dismiss the wedding she brokered as a publicity stunt, but to was clear to everyone who attended the ceremony, and spent time with the couple in the days following their marriage, that the only thing Joya ‘arranged’ were the formalities and logistics.

The bride and groom were obviously in love. A handsome, and immediately likeable man, Faramarz is one of Joya’s most loyal bodyguards and clearly has great admiration for her. He described his new bride as “a victim, a holy girl, a wholly innocent young woman”. When she agreed to marry him he recalled “I was so happy I didn’t know whether I was in the clouds or on the earth”.

As he led his bride out of her parents house, on the day of their marriage, the sun momentarily blinded him. As he blinked, our eyes locked, and he gave me a smile of pure happiness.

YouTube video still records the days after his bride’s assault. Abducted by eight men, she was gang raped and marked for death. She escaped and her family tried repeatedly to get justice. In the byzantine ways of ‘Absurdistan’ her father ended up being arrested for bringing the reputation of a powerful local businessman into disrepute. The family now live in safety – and grinding poverty – in a suburb of Kabul.

That this is a familiar tale, eliciting no more than sighs and shrugs in some quarters, is an outrage.

Roshan and Joya are iconoclasts – brave individuals who want to appeal directly to the people of the international community who have become stakeholders in their destiny. Roshan said “My message to the people of the USA and UK is that we are not such conservative or people; if our own people can provide security, in my village for example, all the men and women will allow their sons and daughters to go to school.”

Joya is a self-confessed ‘secular moslem’ who sees education as the key to liberation of Afghanistan’s women. After the wedding she translated for me as Faramarz explained that one of his hopes for his new bride was to get some proper schooling. “Education is the best revenge on those cruel, evil men who hurt her” he says. “ And I will help her. "

*In the run up to the Kabul Conference on 20 June women are battling to get a voice, wider represenation and a guarantee that five key issues of development ( higher education, employment, leadership/management, agriculture and security) are both on the agenda and addressed. At the request of organiser Dr Ashraf Ghani a group led by activist Palwasha Hassan of wrote: “The Kabul Conference is an occasion for the Government of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to reconfirm its commitments to its people and realign its development priorities to their needs. Women’s civil society groups in Afghanistan have always contributed to these discussions by clarifying the needs and concerns of women who constitute over 48% of the population. The aim of this document is to urge the Kabul Conference to contribute to the empowerment of women through enabling immediate implementation of commitments that the government has already made in various policy documents such as the Constitution of Afghanistan, the Afghanistan National Development Strategy, the National Action Plan for Women in Afghanistan, the Millennium Development Goals reports and the Communiqué of the London Conference among others.”

The paper concludes with a positive suggestion: “Select at least three hundred to five hundred of the brightest girls in Afghanistan and invest in their education overseas in various fields such as foreign diplomacy, agriculture, medicine, engineering, civil service, natural resource and mines management, etc. This way, the country will be sure to have at least 300 top notch professionals to fuel the growth of this country. This kind of program, in fact, should continue over a period of 15 years until such time that the country has a critical mass of young women who could lead the country.”

Just days before the conference Dr Vic Getz, a sociologist and gender adviser based in Kabul, asked the question on everyone’s lips – “Where are the women? “ And she added “There has been zero gender analysis in or attention to women’s voices in the preparations for the Conference.

FOOTNOTES:Kandahar’s SurgarWeekly recently reported: “In the first quarter of 2010, 44 cases of violence against women have been reported in Kandahar, which shows an increase in the violence against women in the same period last year.

Rolling Stone, in the now infamous McChrystal feature, quotes Andrew Wilder, an expert at Tufts University who has studied the effect of aid in southern Afghanistan: ”Throwing money at the problem exacerbates the problem. A tsunami of cash fuels corruption, delegitimizes the government and creates an environment where we’re picking winners and losers” – a process that fuels resentment and hostility among the civilian population. So far, counterinsurgency has succeeded only in creating a never-ending demand for the primary product supplied by the military: perpetual war. There is a reason that  President Obama studiously avoids using the word “victory” when he talks about Afghanistan. Winning, it would seem, is not really possible.”

Why this war is about women - and one in particular.

2010-02-15T23:35:00.000-08:00

Reprinted from UK Progressive - 15 February 2010

by Glyn Strong

Inter-Parliamentary Union: Committee On The Human Rights of Parliamentarians. (Case No AFG/01 – Malalai Joya – Afghanistan)

The Inter-Parliamentary Union’s Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians holds its next session from 27 March to 01 April, in Bangkok. That will be its last chance to call for the reinstatement of suspended Afghan MP Malalai Joya whose term of office ends in September.

Joya has been in an administrative wilderness since her expulsion in 2007, but has not been silent – and as news broke that NATO’s much-publicised Operation Moshtarek had already claimed the lives of 12 Afghan civilians, she repeated her claim that ‘defenceless and poor people’ would be its principal victims.

Parliamentary sketches are fun and functional. They remind us that politicians are human and shouldn’t take themselves too seriously - or the electorate too lightly. Recently one of them targeted the Commons Defence Select Committee for making the plight of Afghan women “one of its chief concerns.” The Committee was berated for avoiding any mention of equipment, casualties or logistics . . . while fretting about “the burqa-clad memsahibs.”

A point nicely made by its (male) author, perhaps, but one that struck a jarringly discordant note.

There is nothing funny about having to wear a burqa. And those same ‘memsahibs’ are the mothers and widows whose disaffected offspring make it so easy for the Taliban and other private militia to recruit.

Sixty percent of Afghanistan’s population is under the age of 25; anecdotally, around 70,000 widows are believed to be begging on the streets of Kabul and more than half its 37,000 street children have widowed mothers.

These children have grown up knowing nothing but the grinding poverty or abuse that Afghan women without a male protector have to endure.

The unintended consequences of ignoring these women are legion and frightening. What the Afghan Government, NATO and a plethora of NGOs operating in Afghanistan fail to address, others will.

It’s hard to grasp the bigger picture, or make informed lifestyle choices, when you are homeless and starving.

Far from ridiculing MPs for “raising worries about Afghan wimmin” (sic) with the CDSC, parliamentary sketch writers might be better occupied reflecting on how effective ‘asymmetrical targeting’ of the country’s youth and female population might be - if addressed strategically.

Malalai Joya is one of the more notable ‘memsahibs’; a woman whose polemic speech in the 2003 Loya Jirga made her both a marked woman and a thorn in the flesh of the unreconstructed warlords and drug traffickers she would join in Parliament just two years later, as the country’s youngest MP. She despises the burqa and wears it only for her own safety.

Joya may have been the people’s choice for Farah Province, but her persistent attacks on her fellow parliamentarians earned her only death threats and, in May 2007, suspension from Parliament.

Three years later she inhabits a dangerous limbo, despite repeated calls by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) to reinstate her. During that time, many of the things Joya predicted have come true: civilian and military casualties have mounted and corrupt elections have further eroded Afghans’ faith in the democratic process.

Apparently only one Afghan woman was invited to the recent London Conference, an event that Joya dismissed as a meeting of vultures hovering over the prey that was Afghanistan.

She said afterwards “The Afghan Government begs for funds from the so-called international community in the name of Afghan people, but the billions of dollars poured into the country are looted by warlords, drug-lords, national and international NGOs and government officials, and much of it goes back into the pockets of the donor countries.

“According to US Government sources, since 2001, over $60 billion in aid has been given to Afghanistan. Such a huge amount could change Afghanistan into a paradise if it was properly spent. However, little of it reached the needy people, so I am sure any other amount sent to Afghanistan in the future will have no impact on poor Afghans. Instead it will only widen the gap between rich and poor.”

Joya is a controversial woman. A correspondent from the IPU asked her Defence Committee if she planned to stand for re-election in September adding “This would certainly be a very perilous exercise for her.”

Against the wider background of the war on terror, elections, conferences and troop surges the fate of one woman may well seem irrelevant, but the ‘Joya effect’ is seismic. She is a bellweather for Afghanistan’s future and those who have mocked or ignored her would do well to consider this.

Many of the women who have put their heads above the parapet have been threatened; others like activist Sitara Achakzai and policewoman Malalai Kolkhar have already paid with their lives. Women are much needed in the Afghan National Police force (ANP) which, alongside the Afghan Army, is seen as a key element of post-Moshtarek ‘re-building’.

Joya’s views on this are, as ever, unequivocal “They are very weak and ill-equipped. And more importantly the former warlords are the main actors in both forces, so in fact this is an army of warlords. The Chief of the Afghan, Army General Bismullah Khan, is a former Jehadi commander - a key man in the Northern Alliance who has placed many former Jehadi warlords in key Army posts. And recently (President) Hamid Karzai reassigned the infamous Rashid Dostum as the Army’s Chief of Staff.”

She describes a scenario where ANP members watch helplessly while historical artifacts and drugs are trafficked into Pakistan – too ill-equipped or corrupt to intervene. “The Afghan police force is the most corrupt institution in Afghanistan. Bribery is common and if you have money, by bribing police from top to bottom, you can do almost anything. In many parts of Afghanistan people hate the police more than the Taliban. In Helmand, for instance, people are afraid of policemen who commit violence against people and make trouble. The majority of the police force in this province is addicted to opium and cannabis.”

RIGHT TO SPEAK

Whether people support Malalai Joya, or passionately disagree with her, few would challenge her right to speak – and it is this right that is being ignored, with impunity, by an administration whose actions indicate no will to respect the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which it is a party.

Publication of her book (‘Raising My Voice’), where she characteristically ‘names names’ at international level, has sparked a new wave of threats and anti-Joya articles. If assassinated she will become a martyr, if allowed back into parliament she will once more have an official platform from which to accuse.

Many feel it is far better hobble the process of reinstating her until her appeal is timed out.

The IPU’s exhortations to expedite Joya’s case have achieved little. Over the period of her suspension they have:

Recalled - that parliamentary colleagues who called her a prostitute and a whore and called for her to be raped or killed were neither suspended nor asked to apologise to her.

Drawn attention - to the fact that Article 34 of the Afghan Constitution guarantees freedom of expression and that, in accordance with Article 101, members of the assembly should not be prosecuted on account of opinions they express.

Deplored - the fact that she has not been reinstated. In failing to do so the House of Representatives has prolonged a situation that infringes its own Standing Orders and continues to violate her right to exercise the mandate entrusted to her by her constituents and their right to be represented in parliament.

Some Afghan MPs have gone on record in media interviews saying Joya’s suspension is illegal and contrary to the rules of the house. Among others she cites Ramadan Basherdost, Gul Pacha Majidi, Dr. Mohammad Ali Stegh, Saima Khogeani, Shukuria Barakzai, Ahmad Behzad, Mir Ahmad Joenda and Sardar Rahman Ogholi.

Quietly confident that media coverage of one woman’s appeal will have no chance of deflecting attention from wider NATO activity, all Joya’s enemies have to do is sit and wait. And most Afghans are good at waiting; even Joya, whose impatience and frustration frequently erupt into passionate outbursts.

In Paragraph Three of its January summary the IPU expresses its fear that “her prosecution has not so much to do with a quest for justice, but rather the forthcoming election campaign and effort to eliminate her from the political process in Afghanistan.”

So what does the future hold for Malalai Joya? Supporters in Afghanistan urge her to her to stand for re-election and she says she will announce her decision soon.

She is resigned to the fact that her reinstatement is highly unlikely and is contemptuous of the recent presidential election - “A game full of fraud and double-dealings.” She fears the parliamentary election will be the same: “Warlords are much more powerful and have the upper hand in all official posts of the State so they will strongly influence the votes and there will be large scale fraud in the coming election.”

If Joya is not re-elected she will continue her fight for justice and against the warlords in other ways. Many of her Afghan supporters ask her to form an organised party in Afghanistan so they can formally join it and work together.

“Whatever it is,” she insists, “I want something practical not just something existing in name only.”

Republished with the permission of Glyn Strong © January 2010.

Counting the cost of Op Moshtarek

2010-02-14T23:12:00.000-08:00

Joya Condemns 'ridiculous' military strategy - by Glyn Strong

The Independent - 15 January 2010.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/joya-condemns-ridiculous-military-strategy-1899547.html

"It is ridiculous," said Malalai Joya, an elected member of the Afghan parliament. "On the one hand they call on Mullah Omar to join the puppet regime. On another hand they launch this attack in which defenceless and poor people will be the prime victims. Like before, they will be killed in the Nato bombings and used as human shields by the Taliban. Helmand's people have suffered for years and thousands of innocent people have been killed so far." Her fears were confirmed when Nato reported yesterday that a rocket that missed its target had killed 12 civilians at a house in Marjah.
Dismissing Allied claims that Nato forces won't abandon Afghan civilians after the surge, she said: "They have launched such offensives a number of times in the past, but each time after clearing the area, they leave it and [the] Taliban retake it. This is just a military manoeuvre and removal of Taliban is not the prime objective."
Ms Joya believes that corruption is endemic, citing uranium deposits and opium as incentives for Nato and Afghan officials to retain a presence in Helmand. Operation Moshtarak is described as an inclusive offensive, depending for its longer-term success on involvement of Afghan forces. But Ms Joya said: "The Afghan police force is the most corrupt institution in Afghanistan. Bribery is common and if you have money, by bribing police from top to bottom you can do almost anything. In many parts of Afghanistan, people hate the police more than the Taliban. In Helmand, for instance, people are afraid of police who commit violence against people and make trouble. The majority of the police force in this province are addicted to opium and cannabis."
The suspended MP was not invited to the recent London Conference that discussed her country's future, but she is pessimistic about its outcome. Politicians regard Joya as a loose cannon: quick to criticise but slow to suggest solutions.
Her uncompromising position has, however, earned her legions of supporters. It has also gained her enemies and, after allegedly insulting her fellow parliamentarians in 2007, she was suspended from operating as an MP.
Reflecting on the London Conference, Joya said: "Ordinary Afghan people say it was like a meeting of vultures coming together to discuss how to deal with the prey which is Afghanistan." Joya sees moves towards any reconciliation with the Taliban ' an exclusively male and cruelly anti-female group ' as a betrayal.

The Female Face of Afghanistan - Edited by Glyn Strong and Fiona Hodgson

2010-01-02T00:30:00.000-08:00

http://www.glynstrong.co.uk/files/The%20Female%20Face%20of%20Afghanistanf.pdf

(*Please be patient - this 60 page booklet may take a while to download)

Launched at the House of Commons on Human Rights Day - 10 December 2009.

“Discrimination lies at the root of many of the world’s most pressing human rights problems. No country is immune from this scourge. Eliminating discrimination is a duty of the highest order.”

Navi PillayUnited Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”. These first few famous words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights established 60 years ago the basic premise of international human rights law. Yet today the fight against discrimination remains a daily struggle for millions around the globe. Nowhere is this more evident than in Afghanistan where the international community is actively and publicly involved.

Ashraf: A stay of execution?

2009-12-16T08:07:00.000-08:00

Yesterday (15.12.09) Khalil Abadi, 44, stood in the December chill of London’s Whitehall, just 100 yards or so from the Ministry of Defence, not far from Downing Street and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

It was a bleak day; the day Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki had declared that Khalil’s relatives in Iraq’s Ashraf refugee camp, along with the other 3,400 men women and children who had lived there for nearly 24 years, would be forcibly relocated to a grim former prison camp in the desert.

Khalil is one of many Iranian exiles, and British supporters, who staged a hunger strike outside the US Embassy in London’s Grosvenor Square at the end of July, in protest at the brutal assault on Ashraf by Iraqi security forces. Weak ,after more than 70 days without food, he and his companions were eventually rewarded by news that the 37 hostages taken in that attack had been released.

Yesterday the thoughts of Khalil and his companions were once again focused on Ashraf as Lord Robin Corbett (pictured) waved a statement from the Iranian Embassy - attributed to ‘The Closure Committee of the New Iraq Camp’ - and berated those politicians ‘across the road’ whose failure to act had allowed the parlous situation to develop.

Ironically the year long media ban on entering Ashraf was lifted by Baghdad just days before the scheduled eviction and an escorted tour of the closure preparations hastily arranged. A reported bomb blast near an area where reporters were gathered was quickly blamed on the PMOI (People’s Mujahedeen Organisation of Iran) to which Ashraf’s refugee resident’s belong.

Spokeswoman Laila Jazayeri, in London supporting the rally, said “It’s pathetic to try to blame the PMOI. We have wanted media to have access to the camp for months. This is just a government attempt to crudely spin publicity and frighten them away.”

In Iraq, police with loud hailers drove around Ashraf reminding residents of the deadline set by Prime Minister Al-Maliki for their removal - but PMOI representative Mehdi Farahi told Iraqi officials that residents would not leave the land they had bought and lived on for so long.

He said "Any attempt to expel us forcibly will lead to the same clashes and confrontations as those of July 28 and 29. The manner in which the Iraqi Government is acting is contrary to international law."
As Khalil and others started to assemble in London, later to be joined by Lord’s Robin Corbett and Brian Cotter, and lawyers David Vaughan and Nigel Pleming, 37 police vehicles had already entered the camp with officials from the Iraqi Committee for Closing Ashraf (CCA). Journalists and photographers were allowed in with them.

Ashraf’s residents offered no resistance and left all doors and buildings open for visits by the police, Iraqi officials and reporters.

After a meeting between CCA officials and PMOI representatives Iraqi forces took to the streets distributing pamphlets and announcing through loudspeakers that “the Iraqi Government is determined to relocate the residents of this camp to another location” and “willing individuals can refer to the police station or any one of the patrolling vehicles.”

Residents were invited to leave Ashraf and move to ‘luxury hotels in Baghdad’. According to the NCRI not one of the 3,400 residents responded to the offer and the minibuses which had come to displace them returned empty.

By mid afternoon all Iraqi forces had left Ashraf, taking with them all the journalists they had brought.
With nothing resolved, but a growing awareness that the eyes of the world are now on Ashraf both sides are uneasy. Back in London Jazayeri said: “The threat of violence is still very real as the Iraqis could attack the camp and do what they did last time at any moment. There are no guarantees, no written assurances about this. These people are all 'Protected Persons' under the terms of the Geneva Convention and all they are asking for is their basic international and humanitarian rights to be respected by the Iraqi Government. ”

In a ‘relocation’ as questionable as that which saw Germany’s Jews transported to concentration camps in WW2, Ashraf’s population of men, women and children have been told that their new home will be Neqrat al-Salman, a desolate military prison that has been compared to the notorious Abu Ghraib.

A grim fortress in the as-Salman desert region of Al-Muthanna it was used by US forces until last year. Neqrat as-Salman has housed many political prisoners over the years and thousands have died there. It is several days walk from the nearest oasis and the closest location with drinking water is approximately 90 miles away. Hellishly hot in summer it inhabits a landscape replete with snakes, scorpions and no vegetation.

Iraqi army Colonel Bassel told journalists "Camp residents have been aware since October 19 that they are to be cleared out and moved elsewhere while respecting international human rights standards. If they refuse, a high committee will decide what measures to take and we will resolve the problem in a peaceful manner," he added.

The statement from the Iraqi Prime Minister announcing the camp's closure was released on 10 December ; it said “We have taken the decision to get them (the PMOI) out of Iraq . . . and the process of their moving to Neqrat al-Salman is a step on the way of taking them out of the country.

"Their presence in Ashraf represents a danger because of their historical relations with certain political groups, notably with the remains of the former (Iraqi) regime and members of Al-Qaeda."

The United States said last week that it expected the Baghdad government to act legally and humanely when it relocates the camp residents. "The Government of Iraq has assured us that they would not deport any of these citizens to any country where they would be having a well-grounded fear of being treated inhumanely," said State Department spokesman Ian Kelly. But he did not question Iraq’s right to move the refugees.

As Tuesday’s protestors in Whitehall dispersed Khalil’s thoughts were with his relatives. Curious pedestrians attracted by flags and impassioned speeches began to drift away as the speeches ended. “What was that all about then?” a passing photographer asked me.

Laila shrugged. “People should know what is happening. Why is the UN Secretary General silent. Why are the media silent? Why is the UK Government silent?”Sir John Chilcot’s inquiry into events between 2001 and 2009, covering the decision to invade Iraq, is headline news – a retrospective scrutiny of a conflict that is already becoming part of history. Ashraf’s parlous future, and Iran’s hold over the Iraqi regime, is part of its legacy.

Ashraf: Countdown to genocide . . .

2009-12-13T13:32:00.000-08:00

“We’ve got to do all we can to raise awareness of this so that people will know what is going on – but more importantly, so that the Iraqi Government knows that the world is watching and that if what they did in July is repeated there’s going to be, again, a huge question mark about why British troops, men and women, gave their lives to give a new chance for Iraq to build a society that’s free and democratic.” – Lord Corbett of Castle Vale, 10 December 2009

Ten days before Christmas more than 3,000 people face eviction from their home of 20 years in what Labour peer and civil liberties champion Lord Robin Corbett has described as ‘a pact with the devil’.
The men, women and children facing forcible displacement are Iranian refugees, members of the People’s Mujahedeen Organisation of Iran (PMOI), a pro-democracy group granted safe haven under the Geneva Convention. They live in Ashraf, an isolated desert encampment 60km north of Baghdad, dependent on deliveries by road for its survival. Their forced removal comes with the endorsement of Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki whose website publicised a 15th December ‘deadline’ for the evacuation.
While the Iraqi Government now claims that ‘agreement’ has been reached with Ashraf residents the message from those inside is that this is untrue and they are under siege. For days deliveries of meat, vegetables, medicine, fuel and hygiene products have been blocked. Food rots outside the gates. Doctors and journalists are denied access.

To some Iraq’s fixation with a refugee camp in the middle of nowhere is perplexing and dismissed as a domestic issue. But as Iran’s nuclear capability comes under increasing scrutiny and Iraq’s internal stability is shaken by bomb attacks on the capital a bigger picture becomes clearer.

During Iran’s sham elections Ayatollah Khamenei officially demanded that the Iraqi President and Prime Minister agree to expel the PMOI from their country as soon as possible.

President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, in a message to British supporters, explained “Ashraf is the frontline bastion in defending democracy and human rights in Iran. If the regime is defeated in its bid to destroy Ashraf, it cannot contain the people’s uprising.”

Ashraf has achieved iconic status among freedom-loving Iranians, exerting an influence well beyond its geographical boundaries. Paradoxically, this was enhanced by the Iraqi assault on its inhabitants in July.

Mrs. Rajavi told British peers and MPs “The UN High Commission for Refugees, the International Committee of the Red Cross and UN Assistance Mission Iraq has warned repeatedly against forced displacement of Ashraf residents in violation of international human rights law.

“The mullahs are horrified at the rising protests. They insist on distancing Ashraf as far from the (Iranian) border as possible in order to eliminate the dedicated women and men who act as inspiration to the Iranian people’s struggle for freedom. The inhuman siege on Ashraf is the prelude to this plot.”

Speaking only hours ahead of the publicised eviction deadline Lord Corbett asked why the Iraqi president was so exercised about removal of refugees when the country’s capital, Baghdad, was being wrecked by explosions.
“Is this all President Al-Maliki has on his mind? The young, struggling democracy that people are trying to build in his country is still under threat from extremists and one finger we know is in that pie, determined to make life difficult for the new Iraq, belongs to those across the border (in Iran) who, in this pact with the devil, have demanded that whatever force is needed will be used against Camp Ashraf.”
Addressing a cross party assembly of MPs, peers and guests Lord Corbett expressed his disgust at the British Government’s inertia and lambasted Ivan Lewis, Minister of State for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, who still regards the refugees as members of a terrorist organisation.
(In fact the “terror-tag” was formerly lifted from the PMOI last year by the POAC (Proscribed Organisation Appeal Commission). The then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith’s appeal against the POAC decision was not only thrown out but branded by the Appeal Court as “capricious and speculative”).
Lord Corbett said “I wrote to Ivan Lewis at the end of last month (November), to make sure he knew about the threat to Camp Ashraf made on the 29th of October. He treated with contempt the decision of the POAC and the Court of Appeal and the Council of Ministers of the European Union . . . . The FCO hangs on to stale allegations about the PMOI that have no current relevance. And in many cases the source of the allegations cannot be confirmed.
“When Ivan Lewis wrote back to me, on December 2nd, his letter didn’t even mention the threat to use force against Ashraf in 120 hours time. I find this shaming and I have written to tell him so.”
“I said please do not waste time repeating the many undertakings Iraq has given about its responsibility in ensuring the safety and security of Iranian dissident refugees in Ashraf. Its government violently breached those in a brutal attack on defenceless residents on the 28th of July; residents who offered only passive resistance against thugs in security uniforms who attacked with chains, axes, poles and live ammunition, killing 11 and wounding 500.”
To suggestions that there was no evidence Lord Corbett said “He has had – as have others in the FCO – a DVD of those events. And the Embassy in Baghdad has had copies of the DVD because I gave it to someone in the FCO who said his colleague was going out there the next day.”
Quoting from his latest letter to Ivan Lewis at the FCO he read “We will not support Iraq dancing to Iran’s tune. The UK is part of the coalition still in Iraq and silence on the issue of proper respect for human rights and international law is no adequate response. Your silence at this looming outrage will shame our Government.”
Frustration about FCO inaction and seeming lack of interest by the British media has baffled many people including Lord Corbett. His response to FCO appeals to ‘trust Iraqi undertakings’ is scathing: “They are not worth the paper they are written on. While the (Iraqi) Minister for Human Rights is giving these assurances to our Embassy Staff, the Prime Minister is making it clear that come December 15th, whatever force is needed to remove people from Ashraf and to raze it to the ground, they are prepared to use.”
And the consequence of further non-intervention is something he is clear about.
“If this attack takes place there will be murder in the desert. The only real way to stop this massacre happening – and that’s what it’s going to be – we really must see a UN force of some kind stationed at Ashraf.
“We’ve got to do all we can to raise awareness of this so that people will know what is going on – but more importantly, so that the Iraqi Government knows that the world is watching and that if what they did in July is repeated, there’s going to be, once again, a huge question mark about why British troops, men and women, gave their lives to give a new chance for Iraq to build a society that’s free and democratic.”
The PMOI opposed both the Shah and the equally undemocratic fundamentalist clerical regime that replaced him. In the 1980s they were accused of orchestrating a bombing campaign against new Islamist leadership in which many senior officials were killed. As exiles the PMOI were welcomed by former Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, who was at war with Iran at the time. He funded and armed the PMOI's military wing, the National Liberation Army of Iran, which fought alongside Iraqi troops.
But in 2003, following the invasion of Iraq, the PMOI disarmed and, following an investigation by the UN in which every resident was individually interrogated, the people of Ashraf were duly accorded “protected person” status under Article 4 of Geneva Convention.

A US force was tasked with overseeing this, but its protection was withdrawn in January 2009 and six months later 36 Ashraf residents were detained by the Iraqi authorities after a violent assault on the camp. The attack was captured on video that showed Iraqi police and soldiers shooting and beating camp residents with clubs and chains. The film, shot by residents using mobile phones, recorded the violence that resulted in 11 deaths and many injuries. It also showed US troops looking on passively before driving away in their humvees.

The July assault provoked a worldwide protest and, in the UK, a 72-day hunger strike outside the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square supported by the Archbishop of Canterbury and multi faith leaders from across London.

Although it resulted in release of the Ashraf hostages the victory was short-lived. Pressure to isolate the residents continued.

Members of the British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom see the threatened transfer of the refugees to Murat al-Salman, near the Saudi border, as appeasement of the Iranian regime, the prelude to slaughter and the first step in exile or destruction of the group seen as a beacon of hope to dissenters in Teheran.
Former Home Secretary Baron David Waddington QC, a former Conservative MP, said “The Iranian regime continues to defy United Nations and world opinion as, hand-in-hand with the expression of dissent in the country . . . it carries on with its programme of uranium enrichment. How much longer can our government afford to tolerate this defiance which, if allowed to continue, will allow Iran and the mullah’s to become a nuclear power with weapons threatening the peace of the Middle East and far beyond?
“As to Ashraf; Britain and America have a special responsibility here and it is to restrain the Iraqi authorities from illegal action against the residents. There is no doubt that the people of Ashraf are entitled to protection under international law, as has recently been recognised by the National Court of Spain. What is clear is that if America and Britain do not act to bring home to Iraq its responsibilities under international law, they themselves risk having to accept responsibility in the court of public opinion for what may well turn out to be a terrible tragedy.”
“Already the people of Ashraf are being denied medical supplies and assistance – assistance even to those who suffered under the attack in July. Already there have been further cuts in the supplies of fuel, with tanker drivers attempting to get in being arrested and put in jail.”
Laila Jazayeri, spokeswoman for the National Council of Resistance, later issued a statement: “While the international community has been enraged by plans to forcibly displace Ashraf residents and Amnesty International has strongly denounced such an act, some international media have told the Iranian Resistance that the spokesman of the Iraqi government had told their correspondents based in Baghdad that the government had reached an agreement with the residents of Ashraf on their displacement, planned for December 15, and had obtained their consent. This claim is totally unfounded and untrue.

“It is only intended to deceive the public opinion.”

END

Remember, remember . . . .

2009-11-05T08:06:00.000-08:00

Photograph: Glyn Strong

Guy Fawkes for some, poppies for others. Remembrance Sunday approaches and the familiar blood-red blooms appear on the streets . . . . later tonight fireworks will illuminate the London sky. To the uninitiated it sounds like gunfire, but if you've heard the real thing it's a benign parody.

The man pictured above, on the left of the crowds, is a volunteer from Veterans Aid ( http://www.veterans-aid.net/ ) a Victoria-based homelessness charity that does exactly what it says on the tin. From 6.30am he and ex-Servicemen like him have been 'tin-rattling'. Or rather, they haven't. For the most part they stand quietly, waiting for people to approach them. Nigel (above) speaks Italian and is able to satisfy the curiosity of a visitor who asks what the poppies mean. He explains patiently and simply. She is young but nods and buys one.

An older man, wearing a Veterans badge, also stops to speak. He doesn't need to buy a poppy - but pauses to acknowledge a fellow veteran. Something unspoken passes btween them. They have never met before, but for that moment they share something. A recognition.

Many people simply pass by in a blur - heading for their offices, looking for hotels or taxis, ears glued to Blackberries or blocked by earphones that plug them into private worlds.

Many of the commuters who pass Nigel will go home this evening to bonfires celebrating a failed attempt to send a message to Parliament. Nigel, who suffers from Parkinson's Disease, will go home to his 'family'. They are ex-Servicemen men like him who live in VA's Limehouse hostel.

The military mantra 'man down' is something that veterans understand.

Nigel's story, like that of every former homeless veteran, is unique. This is it:

http://www.rewritetomorrow.eu.com/reflections/personal-stories/my-unwanted-friend/

Hungry for justice - dying to tell

2009-10-02T10:25:00.000-07:00

Watch film on:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDEeufl-aQA

Lord Brian Cotter who described himself as 'dumfounded' at the lack of

action over Ashraf speaks to the Foreign Office from outside the US Embassy.

Picture and film: Glyn Strong

CAMP ASHRAF PROTEST – DAY 68

Dear Mr Obama . . .

Twenty hunger strikers outside the US Embassy in London’s Grosvenor Square will be joined by hundreds of supporters tonight (Saturday, 3rd October) between 6.00pm and 8.00pm. Some of those fasting have not eaten for 68 days and are seriously unwell.

Since the original 12 friends and relatives of those living in beleagured Camp Ashraf started their vigil many non-Iranians have joined them, for short or extended periods, including British barrister Margaret Owen and activist Leon Menzies Racionzer. Similar protests are taking place around the world.

Appeals by Amnesty, Reporters Without Borders, the Chartered Institute of Journalists, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carlile, Lord Cotter, Lord Clarke and many MPs and MEPs neither the British, nor the US governments have engaged with the protestors.

An open letter to Mr Obama, signed by hundreds of concerned supporters people and all hunger strikers, will be presented at the event this evening. There will also be a performance showing how the 36 hostages have been forcefully removed from prison by Iraqi security forces and taken to an unknown location in Baghdad. Many were injured in the original assault on Ashraf - all are weak. Fears are mounting that they will be tortured and deported to Iran.

On Tuesday, 29 September 2009 AFP reported: “Iraqi authorities have refused to allow 36 Iranian dissidents seized in a July raid to return to their base despite a court ruling they must be released, a judicial official said today.The members of the People's Mujahedeen, an exiled opposition group, were arrested by Iraqi police during a raid on Camp Ashraf, in Diyala province north of Baghdad, which left 11 camp residents dead. "I released them; I said that they should go back to Camp Ashraf," Judge Ali al-Timimi told AFP, referring to a decision he delivered on Sunday.

A judicial official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Iraqi authorities had refused to release the group because they considered them having illegally infiltrated Iraq. "It ... became clear that the allegations were unfounded from the start and were meant for covering up the crimes against humanity that took place in Ashraf," People's Mujahedeen spokesman Shahriar Kia said in an e-mailed statement. Earlier this month, US Ambassador Christopher Hill vowed to press the Iraqi government, which the Mujahedeen say answers to Tehran, to live up to assurances to treat the residents humanely and make sure they are not repatriated to Iran.

The group was founded in 1965 in opposition to the shah of Iran. It has subsequently fought to oust the clerical regime which took power in the 1979 Islamic revolution. The group set up Camp Ashraf in the 1980s - when former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was at war with Iran - as a base to operate against the Tehran government.”

British barrister joins London hunger strike

2009-09-26T13:48:00.000-07:00

A British barrister and activist has joined Iranian hunger strikers protesting in London about the savage attack on Iranian refugees in Iraq. Seventy seven-year-old Margaret Owen, (left) Director of Widows for Peace through Democracy, started a fast of her own two days ago when it became apparent that neither the British Government nor mainstream media were interested in the fact that 12 men and women were starving themselves to death on the steps of the US Embassy. This is a shortened version of her appeal which will appear in full on the Open Democracy site:

"I too have started a (short) hunger strike on behalf of the people of Ashraf and the Iranian hunger strikers now into their 62nd day. Answer the following questions and we will all stop.

- What is the real reason for the ominous blanket of silence in the UK media about the brutal “pogrom” at Camp Ashraf on the 28th and 29th July?

- Why has there been no reference to these atrocities, perpetrated in flagrant breach of humanitarian law, clearly orchestrated by Iran in collusion with Iraq, even when every day now the iniquities of the Teheran regime are making front page news and generating a mass of comments?

We and the US are physically still there – in Iraq –and our governments are well aware of what occurred and what may yet happen any time now in the following days. How can we wash our hands of responsibility as if, to misquote Neville Chamberlain “ this is happening in a far-away country of which we know nothing”

(Fuller accounts of the background to these events, and the statements of Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Chartered Institute of Jornalists etc appear on their respective websites)

3, 400 Iranian refugees (including 1,000 women), members of the PMOI (People’s Mujahadeen of Iran), who oppose the fundamentalist regime in Teheran, have lived in Ashraf for the last 20 years. In a desert area some 60 km north of Baghdad, they built themselves a city where equal rights, justice and democracy flourished, and where the excellent health and education services were made also available to the surrounding Iraqi population. When the US invaded Iraq in 2003, the PMOI disarmed, and, following an investigation by the UN in which every single resident was individually interrogated, the people of Ashraf were accorded “protected person” status under Geneva Convention IV.

In the meantime, PMOI members in Iran have been systematically hunted down, tortured and killed although there is ample evidence that as a body, the PMOI have renounced violence, so there are well-grounded fears that if anyone in Ashraf was forced to return, his or her fate would be sealed.

The “terror-tag” was formerly lifted from the PMOI last year, the ruling of the POAC (Proscribed Organisation Appeal Commission) confirmed by the Court of Appeal throwing out our Home Secretary's appeal against their verdict as “capricious and speculative”. But do David Miliband and Barak Obama still want to regard the PMOI as terrorists in order to “appease” Iran?

Built into the January 2009 agreement that the US would withdraw from its occupation role in Iraq and release sovereignty to the Iraqi government, was a guarantee that the Iraqis would respect the Geneva Convention and continue to protect the people of Ashraf.
Alas, in June of this year, Iraq, in a bilateral treaty with Teheran, undertook to deport the 3,400 refugees back Iran. In the meantime, the Iraqi Foreign Minister assured Teheran, “we will make their life intolerable”.

And so they did, obstructing the delivery of food and medicines into the city – so that people began to fall sick and die, and refusing to allow either relatives or journalists into Ashraf.

From the moment that the US released responsibility for Iraq, the fears of the Ashraf people grew, terrified each day of a massive Nazi-like forced deportation, although such acts would be contrary to the principle of “defoulement”, which prohibits deporting people to where they are likely to be tortured or killed.

Then on July 28th the inevitable happened, but more brutally than anyone could possibly imagine. The BADR (Iraqi Security Forces who are thought to be under the direct orders of Iran and actually were heard speaking farsi) stormed the camp with bulldozers, and, armed with guns, axes, chains, ropes, and wooden planks, set about to cause maximum suffering to the residents.

Women who linked arms peacefully, carrying white flags, bravely attempting to protect their men, their houses, their possessions were brutally beaten. The videos from mobile phone pictures are shocking as they show the bleeding heads, and beaten bodies, the shattered houses, the horror like a sort of Kristalnacht. Worse still, the BADR seized, at random, 38 hostages, capturing them by lassoing them with ropes used to tether animals. Several of these men had been shot.

On July 28th they were taken away and kept in detention in a police station in Al-Khallas, some 30 km away from Ashraf. In spite of three rulings by the Iraqi Criminal Court in Al-Khallas – the last only last week - that the detentions are unlawful as there were no grounds for the arrest, and the men should be immediately released and returned to their homes, they remain captive, and, reports say, are on hunger strike, many with untended gunshot wounds. All this some 60 days since the day of the invasion.

It is quite clear that the US remains responsible Article 45 of the Geneva Convention IV for ensuring that these Iranian refugees remain “Protected Persons” in international law. The UK is also responsible and it is bitterly shameful that both governments have sought to shift their responsibility on to the government of the pro-Iran Shia government of Maliki.

There is now not another moment to lose. The people in Ashraf, wounded, without food or medicine, are living in terror, fearful that any day the BADR will be back and they will be thrown into the living hell of torture followed by agonising death.

But if the press will not cover events in Iraq, they should surely be reporting on what is taking place on the streets of London.

Every day, for the last 62 days since the attack on Ashraf many Iranians have been on hunger strike, rallying outside the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square, as the NRI (National Resistance of Iran) calls for the immediate release of the hostages, for the UNAMI (UN Mission in Iran) to enter Ashraf as a monitoring force, and for the US to fulfil its obligations under international law by formerly taking back responsibility for Ashraf since Iraq has broken its guarantees. As in the other 25 countries around the world where Iranian émigrés are on hunger strike, a further humanitarian tragedy is waiting to happen. The London hunger strikers are weak; several already have organ failure. A young woman had a heart attack and another is going blind and some have been hospitalised

Yet while people are risking death through voluntary starvation on a fashionable square in London’s Mayfair, our political leaders – Tory, Labour and Lib Deems – and our media remain silent. Even when distinguished lawyers have clearly set out the legal obligations of both the US and the UK governments. (By contrast the German press has been following the story in some detail)

On Thursday, the 24th September, again outside the US Embassy, a press conference was called to hear members of the Church of England Clergy adding their voices to the protests, endorsed also by a statement from Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Inside the tent, prone on camp beds and covered with blankets, lay those among the hunger strikers who were still j able to make it to the press conference. But when the priest from St James Church Piccadilly asked those who were press to raise their hands, it was clear that not a single journalist had turned up.

It was at that point that I decided I would start my “short” hunger strike, hoping that by so doing others would follow suit and in this way we could persuade those already so ill to cease their strike, take food, recover and find other ways to express their protests.

I am only on to my 2nd day, taking tea and water, and hoping and praying that someone from the BBC, or from the press will think it worthwhile to write about why I am doing this, and so finally break through the conspiracy of silence and get the action now urgently needed.
Our newspapers fully covered the breaches of humanitarian law in Burma, on the streets of Teheran – even in Sri Lanka. But about this, not a word.

Born of Jewish parents, whose own parents fled “pogroms” in Eastern Europe in over a hundred years ago, I don’t need to be told what the word means. And as the Jewish Fast Day of Yom Kippur approaches on Monday, the 28th September I am hoping that Sir Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, might join the Catholic and the Church of England Clergy in pleading with the UN and our government to take action. Is the real truth that both Barak Obama, Hillary Clinton, Gordon Brown and David Miliband still, on this issue, need to “appease” Iran for the sake of oil and the nuclear energy negotiations? Shame on them!

Margaret Owen Director Widows for Peace through Democracy

Footnote: Despite warnings by British parliamentarians such as Lord Corbett, who have kept closely in touch with the situation in Camp Ashraf, that the complete withdrawal of the US and Britain would place the residents in mortal danger, the handover to the Iraqis was allowed to proceed. Even if the occupying powers accepted Iraqi assurances in good faith, they were cynically and culpably deceived, as the tragic outcome makes only too evident.

This is a desperate human crisis. There is no time to lose. The US and British governments must now urgently implement Article 45 of the Fourth Geneva Convention to protect the Camp Ashraf residents from further violence and from eviction. They must enlist the assistance of the United Nations and in particular the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) to establish a full-time protective presence within the camp.

When a planning application is more newsworthy than a hunger strike . .

2009-09-17T00:43:00.000-07:00

This morning BBC Breakfast news ran an item about the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square getting planning permission for new premises. They showed a picture of the roof and the flag. They didn't mention that only feet from the steps of the Embassy 12 people were entering the 50th day of a hunger strike aimed at drawing attention to the Iraqi assault on Camp Ashraf.

It's hardly a secret - but someone made the judgement call that the planning application was more newsworthy than the hunger strike.

Some media outlets have covered the protest - the mainstream broadcasters and publications have ignored it.

Whatever the history or politics of the PMOI may have been, 12 men and women care enough about the safety of their friends, relatives and fellow countrymen in Iraq's Camp Ashraf to put their lives at risk.

Maybe as far as the UK and US is concerned Iraq is a case of 'job done' - but not for those trapped in Ashraf. The deaths, injuries and arrests that took place between 28-30 July are a legacy of coalition involvement. Are we so morally bankrupt that we would rather give airtime to a planning application than the fact that 12 people are prepared to starve to death for what they believe in?

See: PMOI The attack on Camp Ashraf

http://www.mojahedin.org/pagesEn/

http://www.mojahedin.org/pagesEn/detailsNews.aspx?newsid=5889

By Melanie Phillips

SPECTATOR UK.

8th September 2009 - I wrote here about the attack at the end of July by Iraqi forces against the Iranian Opposition group the People’s Mujahideen Organisation of Iran (PMOI) ...

Ashraf protestors starve outside US Embassy

2009-09-11T23:50:00.001-07:00

Fatemeh Khazeri, 44, holds a picture of her son and sister. Her sister is in Camp Ashraf.

Fatemeh had not eaten for 45 days when this picture was taken.

Photographer: Glyn Strong

A few yards away from the steps of the US Embassy 12 men and women are on hunger strike. Police keep a distant eye on them, passers-by and people queueing for visas cast curious glances at the makeshift shelter that has been their home for more than six weeks. Their mute appeal is a desperate attempt to get help for their friends and relatives in the refugee enclave of Camp Ashraf.

Laila, who has been battling furiously to attract media attention to their plight told me: "The people in Ashraf are the cream of Iranian society. They are intellectuals, enlightened and secular - the antithesis of Islamic fundamentalism. Their leaders are women, they believe in equality and freedom."

Their suffering is documented in a book that makes sobering reading. It lists the thousands who have died or disappeared, picturing many of them and the tortures they endured. Some of the hunger strikers point to the names or pictures of family members. Laila's husband is one of them. This chilling book of the dead is called "Fallen for Freedom. 20,000 PMOI Martyrs".

At the end of July Iraqi security forces launched an assault on Iranian refugees under their protection in Camp Ashraf, a relatively unknown enclave situated in Diyala province, 120 km west of the Iranian border and 60 km north of the Baghdad.

Eleven were killed, 500 hundred wounded and 36 taken into custody. Since then no international journalists have been allowed access to interview eye witnesses or victims.

Fears of a second, even bloodier massacre, are mounting unless the International community intervenes.

Ashraf is a ‘safe haven’ where residents were recognised in 2004 as protected persons under the 4th Geneva Convention. They are members of the People’s Mujahedeen Organisation of Iran (PMOI), a group politically opposed to the current regime and, for their own safety, living in exile.
The camp’s uniformed attackers used live ammunition, truncheons, axes, sickles, tear gas, hot water cannons, and bulldozers against the defenceless residents. US forces allegedly stood back and filmed the carnage but no media were present. Despite protests from Journalists Without Borders no unaligned reporters have been allowed into the camp since the assault. Only Iranian TV, the Arabic channel of Al-Alam and the Press TV have been given access and all reported in favour of the Iraqi police.

Extensive video evidence of the attack was captured on mobile phones and widely posted on the internet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqC61sddaFs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJwiK5S_W1s - Iraqi police beat unarmed civilians in Camp Ashraf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMnPSqesQlg - Civilians shot and killed by Iraqi police in Camp Ashraf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPhD1wotzzQ - Iraqi police with gun aiming at people
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1thwPuuRoQ - Head injuries in Camp Ashraf medical centre
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1bKngVzLO8 - Seriously injured civilians in Camp Ashraf medical centre
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVmdFDvShpc - Civilians shot by Iraqi police in Camp Ashraf http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6DKL3-f4aQ - More attacks on Ashraf residents http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdGH_Ic88Xc - The second half of this short clip shows Iraqi armoured vehicles trying to run over the residents
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi_dc3rJ82c - Female residents of Ashraf attacked by Iraqi police
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02cx4X6Lyzk

The lack of international response and paucity of media coverage sparked worldwide protest among outraged relatives of the Ashraf victims and other Iranians and in London 12 are on hunger strike. For some their fast is entering its seventh week.

They are beginning to experience acute symptoms- internal bleeding, loss of vision and multiple organ failure. One woman has suffered a heart attack. The youngest is a 19 year old girl.

In a statement issued on 11 September 2009 Amnesty International expressed its deep concern to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki about the killings and other abuses committed by Iraqi security forces and the continuing detention without charge or trial of the 36 camp residents.
In its letter to Prime Minister al-Maliki, Amnesty International urged him to establish immediately a full and independent investigation into the methods used by Iraqi security forces when taking control of Camp Ashraf, and to make its findings public as soon as possible, The organisation urged him also to ensure that members of the security forces and other officials found responsible for using excessive force and committing serious human rights violations were immediately suspended from duty and promptly brought to justice.

The US disarmed Ashraf residents and signed an agreement with each of them to guarantee their protection until final determination of their status, but it handed over protection of Ashraf to the Iraqi government at the start of 2009.

Article 45 of the 4th Geneva Convention says “If a government fails to carry out the provisions of the Convention in any important respect, the government by which the protected persons were transferred (in this case the US) shall, upon being so notified by the protecting government, take effective measures to correct the situation or shall request the return of the protected persons. Such request must be complied with.” After the massacre in Ashraf, the US has a duty to request that Iraq hand back protection of the camp.

UN Security Council resolution 1883, adopted in August 2009, gives the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) a mandate and responsibility for the case of Ashraf.
Prominent UK lawyers have produced a legal report, supported by international colleagues, that outlines the legal requirements for UN and US intervention – as well as the criminal ramifications of the action of the Iraqi forces.

The hunger strikers demands are:

1. Iraqi police withdraw from Ashraf and release the 36 people taken hostage and allow the residents access to lawyers, doctors, journalists and their relatives.
2. US forces temporarily assume protection of Ashraf under Article 45 of the 4th GC until an international force can take over.
3. An international force takes over protection of Ashraf and the UNAMI immediately stations an international monitoring team inside the camp to prevent further attacks.
4. UN bodies reiterate clearly that the “principle of non-refoulement” forbids forced displacement of Ashraf residents within Iraq.

Freedom for one - a prison for millions

2009-09-07T13:14:00.000-07:00

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/free-at-last-student-in-hiding-after-karzais-intervention-1782909.html

Suspended Afghan MP Malalai Joya was one of the first to react to the release of journalism student Parvez Kambaksh. She said “My first thought when I heard of his release was relief that his months of detention and pain were over.

“Karzai kept him in prison to gain the support of fundamentalists and keep them happy until the voting was over. Now, he has freed Kambaksh in a bid to present the rigged and fraudulent elections as free and fair – to throw dust in the eyes of the world and fool people into thinking that freedom of speech is not dead in Afghanistan. But this does not mean that the Afghan people enjoy democracy.

“Journalists continue to be threatened, murdered and forced to flee the country. They are constantly under pressure from the fundamentalists and cannot publish a single word against any of them. Censorship is rampant. The only newspapers allowed to be published are those that do not target foreign occupiers, fundamentalist criminals and druglords.

“I hope that while benefiting from the situation in the West, Kambaksh never forgets that Afghanistan, dominated by Northern Alliance, National Front, Taliban and Al-Qaeda terrorists, is still a huge prison for millions of his oppressed people.

“Thousands of his supporters, within and outside the country, are looking to him to continue his struggle for independence, freedom and democracy against the fundamentalists and their masters.”

The life and death of Sitara Achakzai

2009-08-02T03:42:00.000-07:00

Sitara Achakzai was a vivacious and intelligent woman, one of only four female members of the Kandahar Provincial Council. Although she worked hard to improve the lot of her constituents, as a member of the Afghan government she was a target, and the "enemies of Afghanistan" (a.k.a. the Taliban) gunned her down one afternoon in April this year (2009). I didn't have the privilege of knowing her personally but thankfully someone who did made a remarkable film. It is now on view at:

http://galleries.lernerphoto.com/sitara2 <http://galleries.lernerphoto.com/sitara2>

And also on :http://theworld.org/2009/07/29/the-life-and-death-of-sitara-achekzai/ <http://www.theworld.org/2009/07/29/the-life-and-death-of-sitara-achekzai/>

A tribute to Natasha

2009-07-19T04:52:00.000-07:00

Malalai Joya was the second recipient of the RAW in WAR Anna Politkovskaya Award in 2008. The first recipient, Natalya Estemirova who handed it on to her, was assassinated just a few days ago (July 15th).

A courageous human rights defender and freelance journalist from Chechnya, 'Natasha' was kidnapped and murdered because, like Malalai Joya, she refused to keep silent or abandon her commitment to exposing injustice in her country.

Since 2000 and throughout the armed conflict in Chechnya, she worked for Memorial, Russia’s biggest human rights organisation. Natasha was Anna Politkovskaya's close friend and colleague. She was Anna’s most frequent companion during travel and investigations in Chechnya. They investigated a number of cases together – about which Anna wrote for “Novaya Gazeta” . Natasha wrote for Memorial’s website and for local newspapers.

Half-Russian, half-Chechen she also acted as Anna's interpreter in Chechnya and went everywhere with her. After graduation Natasha taught history in Chechen schools, then in 1991 she became one of the leaders of a teachers’ strike demanding better pay and better conditions.

During the armed conflict between the Russian Republics of Ingushetia and North Ossetia in 1992, Natasha helped bring refugees to safety and helped free hostages. During the first war in Chechnya in 1998, she collected testimonies from civilians who were tortured by the Russian forces in unofficial detention facilities, the so-called “filtration camps”. She produced a TV series and wrote articles in the Chechen newspapers about the prisoners in those camps.

Her last published article in the UK, on the abductions and abuses still going in in Chechnya under President Ramzan Kadyrov, appeared in The Independent on Friday 17 July, 2009. It was written in August 2008 but never published.

Bombs will kill women in Afghanistan

2009-07-08T11:27:00.001-07:00

Bombs will kill women in Afghanistan

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Malalai Joya - Raising Her Voice.

2009-07-04T00:22:00.000-07:00

“A burqa is like a shroud for the living” Malalai Joya told me two years ago, “yet it has often saved my life”.

Joya is not her real name. It was adopted in homage to another visionary Afghan activist, Sarwar Joya, who after a lifetime fighting for democracy, freedom and women’s rights, was imprisoned and later murdered for his ideals. So far Malalai has survived five assassination attempts and expects more.

At 25 she was the youngest member of the Afghan Parliament and it is a miracle that she has reached the age of 30. This year she has to decide whether to stand for re-election. If the people of Farah province wish her to, she probably will, but the suspension that denied her a salary, office, staff or official protection has only increased her contempt for the ‘mask of democracy’ that she claims is worn by the Afghan Government. Her ‘crime’ was comparing Parliament to ‘a stable or a zoo’ in which some members behaved like animals. This ‘insult’ effectively prevented her from operating as an MP for most of the parliamentary term; something of an irony given that those who publicly threw bottles at her in the chamber and threatened her with murder and rape were never disciplined.

To some Afghans she is a heroine, like the legendary Malalai of Maiwand, who rallied faltering forces to drive out the British in 1880; to others she is well meaning but ‘too radical’. To powerful enemies she is a nemesis, a Fury who refuses to be silenced about unpunished rapes, murders, acts of corruption or intimidation. To me she is a brave and most remarkable woman.When we first met, at the house of a supporter in Kabul, Malalai was accompanied by just one female companion. Unfailingly gracious she thanked us for coming to Afghanistan to hear her story and offered us tea and refreshments.

Over the days that followed I marvelled at the stamina of this tiny woman who rarely seemed to be ‘off duty’, had little sleep and virtually no personal possessions. As we got to know each other she shared her life story with me; exiled at the age of four to a refugee camp, separated by conflict from her father who was injured by a landmine, she was hungry for education from an early age. By her late teens she was back in Afghanistan, operating covertly as a teacher of girls in Herat, under the harsh regime of the Taliban.“Another thing the burqa was good for was hiding books,” she once confided, “although I always found it difficult to walk in one and my father said he could always recognise me because I waddled like a penguin!”During my first visit I tried on Malalai’s burqa. It was too short, but I instantly felt the claustrophobia she had described, the disorienting lack of peripheral vision and clamminess that accompanied being swathed in a garment of man-made fibre in a hot country.

Since losing her official status and diplomatic passport Malalai has found it difficult to travel freely in Afghanistan and out of it. But supporters worldwide have embraced her and she has been honoured in many countries including Germany, Italy, Holland and the UK. Six female Nobel Peace Laureates have called for her to be reinstated.In spite of the dangers and difficulties Malalai continued to champion the cause of abused women and girls, men as well as women who had been intimidated by warlords and child rape victims.

One of the many she introduced me to was 12-year-old Bashira who she describes in her book.“I met Bashira and her father in Kabul in the presence of British journalist Glyn Strong, who later made a short documentary about the case. Bashira was so distraught after the rape that she tried to burn herself to death. Her hands still bore the scars when I met her. Her lovely young face was creased with worry as I held her against me and listened to her agonising story.
“Everyone was weeping as she and her father described the assault and the horrors that followed. Her father said that his daughter’s rapists tried to bribe him to drop the case, and when he refused, they had him beaten so badly he spent two weeks in hospital. But despite his complaints, the authorities and the courts turned a blind eye to his plea for justice. When Glyn asked Bashira why she came to see me, she said, while crying bitterly, ‘Because she speaks the truth.’ This poor girl and her father could find no one to stand up for them.”

Malalai Joya visited England for the first time last year to receive the Anna Politkovskaya Award for human rights activity. This year, at the end of July, she is due to return, to launch the book that tells the story of her life – ‘Raising My Voice’.It is as simple and uncompromising as Malalai herself; an engaging but unembellished account of a close family displaced by war, reunited then forced apart again by danger. The world knows Malalai Joya the activist, but she is also a wife, a daughter and a sister - a young woman whose life is so different from that of her British counterparts that it defies description.She travels alone, conscious of how much capital her enemies seek to make out of every journey she takes. She is uncompromising and has told British politicians to their faces that their troops are an occupying force that has become part of the problem, not the solution.“One country cannot donate freedom to another” she regularly tells journalists.

Recent American bombardment of her own (Farah) province resulted in countless civilian casualties, something she finds difficult to speak of. Instead she urges President Obama to focus on an exit strategy rather than a troop surge: “Escalation will only create more terrorists and more hatred of the United States, while bringing only more misery and devastation to my country.” Joya says “At one time America was spending $100m a day in Afghanistan for the war; this amount will have increased, but figures have not yet been published. Total international aid for reconstruction comes to only $7m a day, the vast majority of which falls into corrupt hands, never reaching those who need it.

“Afghanistan needs real humanitarian aid and help with reconstruction. The Congressional Budget Office says that the United States will spend 2.4 trillion dollars over the next 10 years on the ‘war on terror’. If, instead, they spent this money properly and honestly, not only could Iraq and Afghanistan be made into heaven on earth but, also, world poverty could be eliminated.” To Joya, the fact that they do not is simply further evidence that US/NATO involvement is driven by regional, economic and strategic interests rather than altruistic concern for the Afghan people. “As it stands, huge sums of taxpayers’ money are being poured into a counterproductive war, while urgently needed social spending at home is neglected. I have seen the poor and the homeless on the streets of wealthy Western cities. The homeless are humans too – I do not understand how their governments can ignore their suffering. The money needed to alleviate their pain never reaches them, just like the money that has poured into Afghanistan has never reached the poor who so desperately need it.”

Malalai and I were together in 2007 when the deaths of two British troops were announced. She didn’t want them in her country but she expressed sorrow for their families. “Loss of loved ones is something we understand” she told me.

*When I started writing this piece 167 British troops had lost their lives in Afghanistan. Before I finished it a 168th had been added – the beloved son a friend who was serving with 2 RIFLES in Helmand. Even more have died since.

*RAISING MY VOICE by Malalai Joya is published by Rider on 16 July 2009, priced £11.99.

MALALAI JOYA www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/3668254/Malalai-Joya-courage-under-fire.html http://www.malalajoya.com/

GLYN STRONG http://www.glynstrong.co.uk/

BASHIRA’S STORY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABPSao6S_7A

Women of Darfur

2009-06-13T10:58:00.000-07:00

Fourteen thousand feet above the barren landscape of Sudan an 18-year-old Antonov 30 carries some of the country’s most powerful women to Darfur. Among them are doctors, academics and the president’s legal advisor. They are heading for Al Fashir, the Northern capital, for a groundbreaking summit on challenges facing the region’s women.

It’s hard to grasp that this group of brightly dressed ladies being served refreshments in a small VIP charter aircraft are changing the face of the largest country in Africa. But this is no mile-high tea party and these are no ordinary women. Travelling with them is a voyage of discovery that dispels myth after myth and reveals some surprising facts about political realities in Sudan.

For instance, the fact that President Omar Al Bashir, the man recently indicted for war crimes by the ICC, (International Criminal Court) and represented as a bloodstained dictator by elements of the international media, is widely loved and respected for his role in empowering women. Secretary General of the National Council for Children’s Welfare, Amira Elfadil, says “He comes from within us all. He has a military background but he is a simple man, a man of the people, with good Islamic values. He speaks from his heart.”

Not all the conference’s 250 female delegates share her unqualified admiration for the man, but most of those I speak to admit that he and his coalition party offer the best hope of achieving enduring stability and peace in Darfur. When the ICC indictment was announced, women took to the streets of the capital to protest.

For many westerners Sudan, and Darfur particularly, represents a place where life for women is as harsh as its terrain. Victims of conflict, rape and violence, they are consistently depicted as helpless and rarely considered as a political entity. Yet female activism in this country is well established. Darfur was the first region to elect a female MP, Zakia Abdul Rahaman, in 1976. The Sudanese Women’s General Union was formed more than half a century ago and one of its members reminds me that in ancient times the old kingdom was “ruled by a queen, even before the pharoahs”. It is a tradition that fills them with pride.

They are proud also that a British politician has taken up their cause - Pakistani-born Lord Ahmed of Rotherham, who became the United Kingdom’s first Muslim life peer in 1998 and took his oath on the Koran. Controversial Ahmed, who owns up to a childhood more ’chip butty than silver spoon’, has become a champion of Darfur’s women. He operates as a neutral peace-broker under the banner of British Moslem rather than party politician, but he has clearly captured the hearts of many Darfuris and is welcomed in Al Fashir.

Ahmed’s initiative means a lot to Sudan’s women who are instinctively mistrustful of any UK/US intervention in their country. Ironically the ICC charge has united them in support of President Al Bashir and convinced many of those who were ambivalent that the international media are either too lazy to come and see for themselves how things are in Sudan, or already committed to an agenda.

Ahead of the main event Ahmed is a guest at the Sudanese Women’s Activity Centre in Khartoum, a city at the confluence of the Blue and White Nile and tipped by some to be the next Dubai.

The Centre was funded entirely by women, for women, and features a conference centre with simultaneous translation facilities, meeting rooms, and guest accommodation. Government Minister Theresa Siricio Iro speaks eloquently about the role conflict has played in the empowerment of Sudan’s women and adds: “There must be positive discrimination. We thank our government for listening to our problems. In the coming elections there will be a quota of 25 per cent for women, but we can get even more. ”

The conference in Al Fashir is a big deal for Darfur and the first of its kind. The delegates from Khartoum deplane to a reception worthy of royalty. Blinking into sunlight it takes several seconds for the images before us to resolve into what is clearly a huge welcoming crowd of women. Warm, friendly they sweep us along on a wave of excitement for refreshments and a brief meeting with the Wali (Governor). It’s the start of a surreal experience that deconstructs much of what is written about Sudan.

In Al Fashir it takes in two days of impassioned debate, a visit to IDP camp Abu Shouk, an interview with President Al Bashir and the man who tried to tell Chatham House about the real issues facing Sudan, Dr Ghazi Atabani. Atabani is leader of the majority National Congress Party; an urbane polymath he is adviser to the President and active in strategic studies and leadership training.

In August it will be 10 years since the US bombed the Al Shifa pharmaceuticals factory in Khartoum alleging intelligence that it was making weapons for Osama Bin Laden. This was soon disproved and the bombing seen as an act of malice and aggression by appalled Sudanese. The destruction created mass unemployment.

Atabani said at the time: “Workers, who a few hours before the incident had been happy and treasured hopes in this world, became jobless, with thousands of their dependants affected. Sudan as a whole, the sick, the poor, humans and animals, lost a precious source of medicine. It was a factory which was making available 50 to 100 per cent of various types of medicine for Sudanese citizens, and at affordable prices for the poor. In just a second this hope was shattered and the factory turned into a miserable scene of destruction and ruin.”

Today he is equally articulate about the ICC’s indictment and recent outcry about expulsion of 13 NGOs. “From our perspective it is an instrument of Western subjugation. Our culture is one where reconciliation is the rule and that is the spirit of what we are trying to achieve in Darfur. The ICC is seen as an organisation that is vindictive and retributive. That is alien to Africans.”

He points out that while more than 60 per cent of UN Security Council business concerns Africa, there are no permanent African representatives on the Council and Africa has no veto: ICC judgements are “ handed down as punishments” to countries unwilling to toe the US line, regardless of wider risks to ongoing peace and security processes.

The fact that Articles 13 and 16 give the UN Security Council freedom to step in and suspend proceedings that it does not approve of makes a mockery of its impartiality according to Atabani who wryly offers the Orwellian wisdom that while all animals are equal, some are ‘more equal than others’.

Dismissive though he is of the ICC ruling he is clearly frustrated by its effect on the ongoing peace process. “Why should the rebels sit down and negotiate with the Government when they can just wait for the ICC to do their job for them. Some rebel factions will use it as an excuse not to come to the peace talks.”

President Al Bashir acknowledges that there are big security problems in Darfur. “They started with the insurgency against the Government. We gave priority to finding a peaceful settlement and only after exhausting all possibilities did we decide that there was no option to military action.

“Wherever there is conflict civilians want to flee and look for secure places . . . in Darfur these citizens moved from conflict areas to Government controlled areas. The Government has a duty and responsibility to look after its people, provide them with shelter, food, water and basic services. The fact that it does this surely belies allegations that the Government practices ethnic cleansing, rape or genocide?”

An officially sponsored summary of what the government has achieved in Darfur includes “prosecuting suspected individuals from regular forces who committed violations against human rights”. Some were jailed; others, allegedly, sentenced to death.
In Abu Shouk many people are unsure who drove them out of their homes; some are past caring and simply accept that the camp offers a degree of safety. Some rebels have sought refuge in, or infiltrated the camps but security there is generally good and in 2007 there were only four murders.

Kaltoum Hamid is 45. She and her seven children have lived in Abu Shouk for six years. A four sqm sprawl it once housed more than 50,000 displaced persons. That number has reduced to just around 38,000. The camp has 17 schools, clinics and commercial activity based around a market, furniture manufacture and variety of cottage industries.

Kaltoum sells vegetables to survive and supplement the aid that is distributed. Driven out of her home in Korma she says it would be ‘too humiliating’ to go back. The family’s home was burned; her husband is now in Khartoum. Who drove them out ? She shrugs, looks around. “They wore military uniforms. Maybe Government troops? Janjaweed?”

It’s not a conversation she wants to have.

Elsewhere I meet Matar Mohammad and his family of 14.They live in a house with just two rooms. They came to the camp in 2004 from their home in Taweela. We had a good life,” he tells me. “I was a farmer growing tobacco, sorghum – now we depend on relief.”
He’s a proud man whose wife and children make us welcome, but sceptical about the prospect of speedy return. Security is the main problem. It’s a political game. Even the Janjaweed can’t control what happens in war.”

Matar lost relatives in the fighting and he’s unforgiving about Government failures. Although not a fan of Al Bashir he concedes that, with compensation, reconciliation could be possible, but only if security is assured.

Boundaries between the camp and Al Fashir are fluid; the refugees are not captives. Just a short drive away the women are starting the second day of their conference. Each has a personal issue; some burn with such passion to use this unique platform that they tussle over the microphone. Some have travelled for hundreds of miles to be there and they intend to be heard. They may speak from their hearts, but their presentations are underpinned by research and have academic rigour.

These are ardent, politicised women, fluently articulating concerns about violence, rape, education, healthcare, media manipulation and increased profile for women in the political process. They may not all see eye to eye, but unlike the region’s men they are willing to set aside their differences to pursue the greater goal of peace.

Any thoughts I had that this might have been an exercise in window dressing are rapidly dispelled as first the Wali of North Darfur, Osman Kibit, then later the President acknowledge their relevance and power. Kibit told them: “The Holy Koran says that a man who honours women is an honourable man. The women of Darfur have a special role - they are our nurturers, mothers, wives, sisters, providers of food and clothing, agricultural pioneers, carers of animals. Our women are influential through their poetry and their understanding; their energy can be a strong positive force if harnessed. God created this land for these beautiful creatures – but sadly they are also targets and violations happen in war.

“We need to tackle the issues with neutrality and comprehensively - not just in terms of the IDP camps but the whole community of Darfur. The eyes of the world are on Darfur; the decisions made here by Sudanese women can have far-reaching effects. The challenge is to harmonise local efforts with those at national level.”

Community Development Association delegate Saffa Adam echoed this: “We have good laws but we need women to put them to good order and use politics as a tool to rebuild our communities. Sudan has no real future until Darfur’s issues are resolved.”

Amira Elfadil is a lifelong supporter of Al Bashir. An attractive, 42-year-old mother of four from central Sudan she is well-travelled and educated. She first visited Darfur 10 years ago and has an outsider’s perspective on developments there. “It’s better in many ways – not in others. Just a year ago it was impossible to enter the camp (Abu Shouk). It was just five minutes from the airport, but ruled by factions. Now that has all changed.”

Like many Elfadil believes that the constant conflict and insecurity has also changed Darfur’s people. “Before the wars they were different; dignified, hard working, traders, builders and farmers. But events have changed the fabric of society here; people sit in the camps doing nothing; their children either leave to beg or join the rebels. Or they just sit and wait.”

No-one understands better than women how important children are to Darfur’s future. Elfadil says “In a post-conflict society many fathers are either dead or have fled; 30 per cent of households are headed by women. Many children drop out of school, get caught up in street violence or recruited by rebels. Then they are taken over the border to places like Chad and trained as soldiers.

“One rebel gang fighting the Government started the conflict; now, according to the UN, there are at least 16 factions and it is no longer a local issue but a global one. ”
In response to this Darfur’s peace hungry women want action and are bullish about driving it from community to capital. It’s easy to forget that they are subject to the same Sharia Law that is used to subjugate their sisters in Afghanistan. Amira, whose first degree is in sociology, has a theory.

“We are different because we are African/Arabs and when Islam came here in the 13th century it came through trade, not war. When I go to places like Saudi Arabia I thank God that I’m Sudanese. "

Women are represented in most professions, including the police force. The Wali has a female advisor, the state has a female high court judge, the government has appointed women prosecutors in the IDP camps to trace violations of women’s’ rights and investigate cases of violence. “Men are preferred when it comes to promotion, but no jobs are restricted,” says Amira.

Is the support of one foreign male significant I wonder, as the conversation turns to Lord Ahmed’s British Moslems’ initiative and presence at the Women’s Conference. Surprisingly her answer is an emphatic “Yes”.

“Last time he came people were surprised. There were reports on TV and it had a big impact. I don’t think he’s naive. His support won’t solve our problems, but it really counts.”
International media reportage is a big issue and the conference delegates make much of how the Darfur issue has been ‘spun’ to seduce celebrities, charities and play into the hands of groups with their own agenda. This latter claim is made again by President Al Bashir when we meet in Khartoum.

Nimaat Bilal, author of a conference paper on information handling, is as scathing about the double standards of the Western media as Al Bashir and Atabani are about the ICC’s targeting of African indictees. She says “The West moves in accordance to (sic) specific strategies in which the information battle is the first step to achieve its goals and ends. The information media are used to prepare the community to accept political decisions and be ready for military intervention as necessary.” A technique familiar to all who recall the hysterical headlines about Saddam’s WMD capability.

Bilal goes further, claiming that within their own territories, Western media are committed to the principles of responsible journalism like ‘fact, depth, balance and fairness’. When dealing with the Third World, however, these principles are sacrificed on the altars of paranoia, Islamaphobia, political expediency and reluctance to look further than the well-rehearsed views of others. Western media ignore these principles and work according to their own purposes and desires.”

Some heavyweight issues get an airing at this landmark summit; outside the conference room another celebration is in place – a traditional circumcision ceremony for young boys celebrating the rite of passage from childhood to manhood. By evening the two events have converged and raised index fingers are waved to the peace chant of ‘Salaam, Salaam, Salaam Darfur’.
As the women prepare to leave for their flights to other countries or various parts of Sudan I wonder whether anything will change as a result of this event.

As euphoria gives way to practicality we are reminded that this is a country with a coalition government, serious domestic problems and an election scheduled for 2010. The peace of the Wali’s compound is, perhaps, illusory. Can the women really make a difference?

Flying back to Khartoum I sit with one of the most respected delegates, Rajaa Hassan Khalifa, Secretary General of the Sudan Women’s General Union. Re-elected twice, not even her huge popularity can get her a third term at the helm of this 3 million-strong organisation with its 27,000 branches throughout Sudan.

As pressure groups for women’s’ rights go, WGU is monolithic, networking between NGOs on health, education, economics, peace and awareness raising. Rajaa is in no doubt that what the union has achieved in all these areas is considerable . “But we want the world to know about the women of Sudan and their work in Darfur. We are glad that people like Lord Ahmed come because we know that others care and want to help and that is good for morale.”

On my way back to London I travel in the company of another impressive Sudanese woman; Amna Akeelo, a mother of seven now living in Loughborough. Born in Ed Da'ein, in North Darfur, she has been married to an Englishman since 1984, but visits her extended family in Sudan regularly. Amna’s conversation revolves around a more domestic perspective of what’s needed such as facilities to help the disabled, and those suffering from depression.

“My family have not ever been refugees but many have had to relocate for economic reasons due to the recent history of Darfur. It is true to say we have all shared in the suffering of our Darfur brothers and sisters. They feel more secure now but so many people need help with things like aids to study and work.”

Amna is happy in Loughborough but Darfur is where her heart is and she speaks poignantly about childhood evenings enjoying the peace by firelight. A woman of many talents she has recently opened a shop in Loughborough offering products from Darfur and services based on skills she learned there.

“When I was young we sat under the trees and learned many skills like hair braiding and hand painting with henna. In the shop we also do these things and sell home-made perfume, sandalwood, dilka, Sudanese products and abayahs.”
The shop is very much a family affair and Amna’s eldest daughter Zara, 23, is heavily involved in it.

Amna may have been a long time away from home, but listening to her describe the entrepreneurial skills that she is developing to help her family and her people I realise that I have met yet another phenomenal Sudanese woman!

ENDS

NOTE: The conference on Challenges Facing Women in Darfur was organised by the Sudanese Women’s General Union & International University of Sudan in co-operation with the British Moslems Commission. It was held in Al Fashir, the capital of North Darfur, May 23-25,2009.

Bourj al Bourajneh: Whatever happened to Pauline's people?

2009-06-13T02:34:00.000-07:00

(Pictures by Glyn Strong)

Twenty four years ago, a young Hertfordshire surgeon was caught at the epicentre of a war. In her darkest moments she expected to die.

Today, on a bright spring morning, Dr Pauline Cutting and her Dutch GP husband Ben Alofs reflect on that time from the sunny farmhouse kitchen of their rambling Welsh home. This former rectory, surrounded by trees and set well back from the main road, has been a haven to them for 15 years. Their two children have grown up here. A large, cream Labrador grunts and snores in a basket on the floor. The location is peaceful, but the conversation is becoming increasingly animated. We are talking about Gaza, Palestine and the 61-year-old elephant in the room that no-one wants to acknowledge.

Two decades ago Cutting was thrust into the limelight by bloody conflict when she brought the siege of Lebanon’s Bourj al Bourajneh refugee camp to a disbelieving world. Through a makeshift radio/telephone link, set up by one of her medical colleagues, she broke the news of how the camp’s inhabitants were being systematically starved to death. Before the impact of her words had sunk in, images followed. A few photographers and journalists had got into the camp and seen the refugees’ plight for themselves. The situation was desperate. Cutting and her colleagues were eating dogs to survive.

As a volunteer surgeon she was part of a small medical team trapped in the camp and under siege by the Amal militia. Like 80 per cent of those in Gaza today, its inhabitants were dispossessed Palestinians.

Wandering round its gloomy, labyrinthine alleys, ducking under dangerous low-hanging loops of electrical cable , I wonder what went wrong. Why, after the reportage that so dramatically highlighted their plight in 1985, did Cutting’s ‘Children of the Siege’ disappear from the world’s radar?

Of course, Cutting was only a minor player in a political drama that has run longer than The Mousetrap. Her abiding memories are not of the medical challenges, gnawing hunger or daily danger, but the “small acts of kindness” from families who had next to nothing. No artillery rains down on the camp now, nor is it under siege, but the Palestinian community of Bourj al Bourajneh still has next to nothing .

In my memory Cutting is the slim, sharp-featured young doctor with a curtain of long hair, whose features dominated the evening news for a period of weeks during the ‘eighties. Today she is 57 and slightly less lean, but no less passionate or articulate.
As a volunteer with MAP (Medical Aid for Palestine) Cutting spent 18 months in Lebanon, performing emergency surgery in makeshift operating theatres, treating sick and wounded men, women and children.

Against a background of bombardment and sniper fire she and her medical comrades worked tirelessly, as supplies of food and drugs dwindled away. Cutting got head lice, lost so much body weight that she was often faint and watched mothers feed their starving children with grass.
As conditions deteriorated Cutting famously said: “We will stay with the people of the camp until the danger is over. We will remain with them – to live or die with them.”

Many did die. Some lost limbs or, like seven year old Bilal, were paralysed by a sniper’s bullet.
Others just starved. A (Time) magazine report on 23 February 1987 described Bourj as being “on the brink of cannibalism”. Residents had already resorted to eating rats. A Sunni cleric sought clarification on whether it would be permissible to eat human flesh if it became necessary for survival. Eventually the siege was lifted and Pauline Cutting came home.

But the real story didn’t end there and more than 20 years later the camp still exists; it is still dependent on organisations like UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency), NGOs and volunteers. It is still a ‘temporary’ home to people who dream of returning to places that exist only in their hearts and minds.

The journey that took me to North Wales and then Beirut - where many Palestinians still speak with warmth of ‘Dr Pauline’ - was prompted by the aftermath of Operation Cast Lead , the Israeli Defence Force’s three week assault on Gaza , ostensibly to stop Hamas firing rockets into Israel and prevent it from re-arming. It began on 27 December and ended 22 days later.
During this onslaught too, hospitals and medical volunteers came under fire; once again civilians were killed and maimed. Journalists and outraged NGO workers protested, bloggers and social networkers went into print with frenzy. But, paradoxically, it was probably the BBC’s decision not to screen a Disaster Emergency Committee aid appeal that brought the scale of the casualties to mass public attention in the UK. Briefly, thoughts of recession were put aside as Briton’s dug into their pockets to help Gaza’s victims.

At a MAP event in London, to mark the launch of The Lancet’s damning report on Palestinian Health in Gaza and the West Bank, Dr Swee Chai Ang projected a series of images that made her audience wince – the head of a decapitated child, lying in rubble like a grotesque football; a torso, so crudely stripped of limbs by an explosive device that it resembled raw meat; children with skin burned and seared by white phosphorous.

The real cause of this latest humanitarian tragedy pre-dates Cutting’s birth. It is a legacy of the 1948 Palestine War that resulted in establishment of the State of Israel. Celebrated by Jews worldwide the creation of this ‘homeland’ had another, less happy, outcome – the exodus of an estimated 700,000 Palestinians. Some fled voluntarily, intending to return as soon as the fighting ended; others were forcibly expelled. There are conflicting and contested accounts of how many left and why, but they are all deeply disturbing.

UN Resolution 194, passed in 1948, states that Palestinians have a right to return to their homes if they are willing to live in peace with their neighbours. Palestinian refugees want it implemented. Israel is resistant, seeing the possible return of millions of refugees as a threat to its existence. If Israel’s hope was that that the problem would go away as first generation exiles died, or the Palestinians become absorbed into their host countries, it was a vain one.

The Palestinian diaspora extends to Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the West Bank. Sixty years after the event that created them their numbers have grown to over four million; at least 400,000 are in Lebanon – 10 percent of the population - and above 20,000 (officially the population of a large town in the UK) still in Bourj al Bourajneh.

Palestinians refer to their exile as the Nakbah (‘catastrophe’) – an event highlighted in the controversial drama ‘Go to Gaza, Drink the sea’ and Scottish artist Jane Frere’s powerful and haunting exhibition ‘Return of the Soul’. Both claim to be neutral statements about how things are; both have been attacked for being anti-Semitic. It is a subject that polarises opinion dramatically. Even Cutting and Alofs, in a clearly often exercised debate about forgiveness and war crimes, don’t always see eye to eye.

Palestinian children born during the camp siege that Cutting survived are still confined to the square kilometre that contains Bourj al Bourajneh. This foetid shanty town exists within, but apart from, the bustling cosmopolitan city of Beirut; its walls are not physical, but they are very real. They cut Lebanon’s Palestinian refugees off from 80 per cent of the country’s jobs, the freedom to travel, buy property and vote.

In effect, the camp is an open prison. It’s here that I meet another remarkable woman, Olfat Mahmoud from WHO (the Women’s Humanitarian Organisation). An activist, scholar, and vehement fighter for the Palestinians’ Right to Return to be recognised, she was born in Bourj al Bourajneh in 1960 and once worked alongside Pauline Cutting. Apart from overseas work and study trips, she never left.

“In the ‘60s, even as Palestinians we needed a pass to go from one camp to another, there were formal entry points and walls. Now we just have psychological walls. Today there are no checkpoints, but people feel safer inside the camps so they isolate themselves. In summer many Palestinians come here to Bourj al Burajneh, to visit their relatives. Instead of spending money on hotels they stay with their families and buy them TVs and fridges. People do watch the news, particularly during catastrophes, but in real terms, they have no idea what is going on outside, especially with women’s issues; they are not socially or politically aware.”

Smartly dressed and articulate, Mahmoud is not typical of the camp’s women. Through WHO, and in partnership with Lebanese charities like Al Jana (the Arab Resource Center for Popular Arts), her mission is to empower them. I meet her fresh from a meeting with the city’s mayor, in the ‘home’ she grew up in as an ‘exile’.

She’s a busy woman, but she’s also keen to talk about issues that are close to her heart . She’s unapologetic about her views – on Islam, Israel, the Nakbah, and on the plight of the refugee community’s women who suffer unique deprivations.

Mahmoud, who’s studying for a PhD, has just authored a paper [1] on the subject. It examines conditions and coping strategies and makes sobering reading. It is based on Bourj al Bourajneh but has application for all 12 of Lebanon’s camps. The country has the highest percentage of Palestine refugees classified as living in abject poverty and who are registered with the UNRWA’s special hardship programme.

Unlike other refugee populations, the Palestinians do not benefit from the protections and guarantees afforded by the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees. Doubly damned they are anomalies even within the refugee population. UNRWA says: “They do not have social and civil rights, and have very limited access to the government's public health or educational facilities and no access to public social services. The majority rely entirely on UNRWA. Considered as foreigners, Palestine refugees are prohibited by law from working in more than 70 trades and professions. This has led to a very high rate of unemployment amongst the refugee population.”
The WHO workers have to contend with the legacies of tradition, culture and religion and need to tread carefully when dealing with all three.

Mahmoud sighs: “People say ‘Oh it’s a sin to do that!’ but when I ask them to explain why, they don’t know. Usually there is nothing in the Koran to support or explain these beliefs, they are just the products of tradition. “Many men use the Koran to frighten women. With the support of other groups and social workers we hold legal workshops to explain this. We went to the sheikh of the mosque here and said we wanted to see marriage and divorce explained to them properly from an Islamic perspective. There are lots of things people believe in that are not true and it makes their lives difficult. For example when you sign the marriage contract (and most sheiks don’t explain it) there is a question about whether you wish to make any conditions.

“Women can put any conditions they want, but usually they (the sheiks) don’t ask and women don’t know that they have that right. They can say ‘If we get divorced I want my children to be with me’. If the man disagrees then they know where they stand, and can refuse to get married. It is a proper contract, but not widely known about because everything is controlled by men.

“Then some women do know but are afraid or ashamed to ask because they think people will say ‘Even before marriage you think of divorce? What does this mean!’ So they dare not. We try to raise awareness of this. We say ’It is not shame; you need to protect yourself. It is your right.
The sheik here supports this, and he and a female charity worker run a workshop one and a half hours every week to explain these things.”

But with generations occupying the same households, and tradition being a part of the glue that holds them together, change does not come quickly.

Mahmoud is tackling issues that are challenging anywhere; in the closed world of a refugee camp they are intensified both by social problems and by the fact that anything to do with Palestinians seems to cause discomfort in the international community. She confronts both. “We want to reassure the organisations who fear what we do; we are not against Islam, only those people who try to use it. Islam is now always associated with terrorism and, I am being honest with you now, some NGOs are frightened about their future so they start to avoid touching on any Islamic point – but this is wrong. I say by doing this maybe you please western supporters, but you are losing your local community.”

Mahmoud is a true child of the camps, but she is also a rare and strong individual; rooted in Palestinian history she is, by dint of curiosity, hard work and determination, a powerful force for change. “My grandmother died in 2004 and she was 95 years old. Whatever I did she compared it to her life in Palestine, even after56 years. Every time I had a baby she would come and tell me about how she had her children in Palestine, never about her children born here; it’s as if her life here did not count, was not real. I inherited this house from her. It is the biggest house in the camp, but always she would complain and say ‘I used to have a big house, why am I in this sardine tin?’ Her generation were in this frozen state.

“My father was 12 and my mother around 10 when they left: every night we sat around the heater and they would tell us about Palestine - blindly I can describe my village; I have never been there but I can! Really they tell you every detail so always you have this spiritual link. My generation, we learned to fight – not with weapons, but against obstacles.

“The generation born during the civil war in Lebanon were just busy trying to survive. I too was born in a camp but I felt safe – my parents were so calm and they spent time with me. I compare it with nowadays and it’s not the same. Even in spite of the bombing and everything we felt protected. This generation just want to flee, to migrate, to get out.”

Like Cutting, Alofs and all medical staff who work selflessly through the dangers of war and conflict Mahmoud is dismissive of her own bravery but proud of her small triumphs. “I remember once many children had been injured. One girl had lost all her brothers and sisters. She was bleeding badly and urgently needed an operation. Her blood was AB negative, which is rare and we had none and there was heavy bombing . I said ‘Give me an ambulance and blood kit and I will get you blood’ and I went to all the military bases because that is where to find people. I tested all their blood and it was no, no, no - but by midnight I had been successful and managed to bring blood.

“This was in 1981, I was still a student, not even a qualified nurse. But I always believed in fate: if something will happen, it will happen - and that’s a strategy for coping.”

Years later, in July 2006, when Mahmoud was married with four children, she sat at her home near Beirut’s Arab University listening to bombing once again. Her heart was in the Bourj Al Barajneh refugee camp because it has surrounded by a bombardment areas in the southern suburb of Beirut.

“My husband is a director and Cinema photography – he was filming in Syria. I said to my children ‘ I can’t stay at home , I have to get to the camp. You know, people in the camp refused to leave their homes. They said: "we have been refugee once and we don't want to repeat it. Also where to go!" They witnessed 33 days of war - day by day - just ‘next door’. I told my children ‘You stay at home and look after each other, if something goes wrong you go the neighbours’.
“ The airport road was empty apart from my car – I was the only one who was driving on it. It felt so strange. When I got to the camp we tried to organise things. I came every day for a whole month even Sundays.”

Before becoming a community worker Mahmoud qualified as a nurse and clinical trainer, studying in the UK , and Australia, but her returns to Lebanon always seemed to coincide with some kind of conflict. She laughs: “My friends used to say ‘When you travel, let us know please, so we can prepare for an emergency ’ . ”

Mahmoud got back to Lebanon from London in time for the February uprising in 1984 and from Australia for the first camp war. She had previously been working in the Palestinian Red Cross maternity hospital in Sabra camp and initially planned to stay there with a friend on her return. Luckily, because she had to rise early for work, she didn’t. The hospital was destroyed that night.

“It was 6.30, the first day of Ramadan,” she recalls. “My brother, who likes to sleep, was already up, so I asked him what was wrong.”

He told her that two bombs had fallen overnight in Bourj camp but Gaza hospital was damaged. Mahmoud said: “Just Last night I was in Gaza Hospital - Ramallah was Sabra’s maternity hospital, Gaza dealt with surgical cases but both of them are connected and known as Gaza hospital - this can’t be. He said ‘Believe me, everything is a mess, do not go and its not working anymore’.”

They put the radio on to hear reports of more bombing and heavy fighting. ”My mother of course went to the bakery for bread; this is the first thing women do, shop for war!”
For two more hours the family listened to confused reports of escalating violence until her second brother came home. “Why are you not at the hospital’’ he asked her. He didn’t mean the one in Sabra though. Haifa hospital in Bourj al Borajneh, where Mahmoud had been born and where later Pauline Cutting was to work, was full of casualties.

Mahmoud pauses. “He took me there and – oh my God – that is why I later quit nursing. It was dreadful.

“At that time, in 1985, it was not a hospital, just a polyclinic. It had a small first aid room for home accidents and a ward for disabled people. No staff nurse, and just one, young, Palestinian doctor who had qualified in Bulgaria. I felt very sorry for that doctor.” She found casualties piled up - the dead, the dying and those with only minor wounds mixed up together. It was a scene that recalled to her student images of Florence Nightingale, passing through the grim wards of Scutari with her lamp.

Pragmatic as ever, Mahmoud began to organise a triage assessment to prioritise the injuries. The clinic was pitifully ill-equipped to deal with the scale of the carnage. For a month she did “what nurses did not do”- removing bullets and shrapnel, debriding wounds and dealing with gangrene. The body count rose to 17 but there was no morgue . “It was the beginning of summer and getting hot. All we could do to help with the smell was to cover the bodies with lime.”

The Red Cross were allowed to enter just once. In desperation young people from the camp were trained to do simple first aid – prepare drips so that when there was heavy bombing the team was as ready as it could be. Eventually the bodies were buried together, around a memorial statue dedicated, ironically, to the Unknown Soldier.

Mahmoud’s memories of this day are accompanied by the muezzin’s call to prayer that echoes over the rooftops of Beirut. It adds to the poignancy of a recollection that still affects her profoundly.

This first camp war – and the intense period from May to June 1985 – predated significant MAP involvement or Pauline Cutting’s arrival. “There were no doctors during that war “says Mahmoud. “ I remember, one guy was injured in his back, so badly you could see the nerve ends. It was such a painful and sensitive wound. I said, ‘we can’t touch him, just change the dressing’. He had to lie on the floor because there were no beds. ”

His temperature soared and they thought he would die. Eventually, at five o’clock one morning when the snipers took their break, Mahmoud found time to examine him again. The wound was alive with maggots. Using saline applied by syringe, and a debriding knife, the team cleaned and dressed the man’s wounds. They did this again each morning, in the quiet hours when firing ceased for a short while. Against all odds, he lived. And today he is fine. He works in a bank,” she tells me with pleasure.

Eventually Walid, a staff nurse, joined the team which made a huge difference. They performed surgical procedures and dealt with femoral artery bleeding so successfully that doctors from Beirut later asked how they had managed to control it for seven days.

I too am intrigued! Mahmoud laughs. “I used pressure, fear – and ice! And it worked. Sometimes the blood spurted right up to the ceiling, but many of the people we saved are still alive, running around here, in this camp. One man is now in Sweden or Denmark I think - he was injured here (the groin) and all he kept asking was whether his (peals of laughter!) you know, was still working! That is a man. I said ‘you ask this silly question when you may die!’. But it was a bad time.”

“My generation were survivors. Today’s generation see themselves as victims, never knowing what is happening from day to day. And this is a big problem."

But what do they want to survive as, I ask her; as Lebanese citizens? “No, no. I always say this: Lebanon is my second homeland. I was born here but I always look at it as my second home. The right to return is ours whether we exercise it and live in Palestine or not. We should be able to visit it; to have no other nationality, but Palestinian. And the first step is recognition. We know it is a process which means it will take time. It’s not a miracle that will happen within 24 hours, but you can’t ask someone to suffer while you are solving their problem.”

In the short term she believes that the refugees in Lebanon should be given the right to be in the country legally and be given Palestinian passports until details of the right to return are worked out. “At least they should give us this. After 61 years it brings great shame on the world not to have solved the problem.”

Bourj al Bourajneh camp has grown since Cutting and Alofs’ time; not outward, but upward, with rooms tacked on to already unsafe structures. When the refugees first arrived they lived in tents, expecting to leave at any time. Later when houses were built they were still seen as temporary structures; flimsy and cold in winter their thin walls soon displayed cracks and the tracks of running water.

On the roof of Mahmoud’s old home women are now being given the chance to do aerobics. “But first we need to put up screens,” she explains, “because they can be seen from everywhere at the moment.”

Physical exercise is difficult in a cramped warren with no space and little sunlight, in a culture where modesty is important. Inertia, frustration and chronic health problems perpetuate depression, feeding the edgy disaffection that permeates the camp. Another problem is the cycle of domestic violence that occurs.

WHO Youth Co-ordinator Zeina Salhani who works with Mahmoud says “We have to tell the children that a ruler is for making lines, not for hitting – and sometimes we have to tell the teachers also.”

Leaving the camp is like crossing an invisible line. Unlike the brick footprint that describes where the Berlin Wall used to run, Bourj’s boundaries are intangible. Within feet of its perimeter traffic flows, normal life goes on. Travelling by car to meet another former colleague of Pauline Cutting it is hard not to reflect on the irony of how impenetrable invisible boundaries can be.
Dr Mohammad Osman, is Secretary General of the Palestine Red Crescent Society, part of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. The Federation is the world's largest humanitarian organization and its millions of volunteers are active in 185 countries.

Osman is based at Akka Hospital and, like Mahmoud, does not live in a refugee camp. His memories of the camp wars, between 1985-87, are vivid. “Sometimes we got permission to visit the hospitals – and this is how I met Dr Pauline, at the beginning of the war. I met her in Haifa hospital. Later on we became very good friends. We appreciated her and were also proud of her because she remained with us during very dangerous and difficult times, through the shelling of the camp, when there was no food.

“Through her and Ben, who was then a nurse and later became her husband, they made many appeals and through them we got support – medical supplies, medicine and sometimes equipment. During the cease fire we managed to get a generator for the hospital, but the most important thing was the moral support.

Images of events in Gaza were brought to world attention by technology that didn’t exist in the 1980s and without a fragile radio link the outcome of the camp wars could have been even worse as Osman recalls.

“Dr Pauline helped us through the media, by talking on the radio. At that time I was in the Red Cross HQ, where the media were camped – we couldn’t get to her but I talked to her by radio. There were many journalists here and when she talked they believed her – more than us! We had already said that people in the camps were eating grass and rats, but when she said it they believed her.

”The radio was the only way to contact our hospitals inside the camps – Bourj al Bourajneh and Shatilah where Dr Christoferou was. It was his suggestion. We spoke daily about the numbers of casualties, what was needed, all that was going on inside the camp, through this radio.” It was the radio that was to connect Cutting to her parents and then the outside world. “I still have it now!” says Osman.”Not to use – just as a memory.”

The significance of that lifeline for those trapped in the camp is something Osman will never forget. “At that time in all Lebanon there were no rules, nothing. It was chaos” he recalls.
After the camp wars ended he fell in love and, like Cutting and Alofs, married. The friendship forged in desperate time endured. “ Twice Pauline visited me – once with Ben, then with the children. We have photos together, their family and my family.

“After the camp wars we reconstructed our hospitals, field hospitals and primary care centres. Now we have five hospitals distributed around all Lebanon, and nine health centres, all for Palestinians – some inside the camps, some outside. Now we can concentrate on teaching the staff because, you know, during the war we just had to focus on the wounded people.

“Salaries are funded by the Palestine Liberation Organisation; others by NGOs and national societies, like MAP UK. And I must tell you, Dr Swee, from MAP, she was a hero. She drove our ambulance and met Pauline inside the camp. She is a great woman and I respect her like Pauline Cutting; she is fantastic, tiny but strong, very strong.”

Osman concedes that things have got better, despite the psychological problems and depression that afflicts many of the refugees. “Obviously it is much healthier and safer than it was during that time. The hospital has improved a lot, socially life got better, people were able to leave and repair their homes which were destroyed during the camp war. But in general the life of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon is miserable. “I always say to foreign visitors and journalists, there is a big difference, between what you see on the TV what you see with your eyes on the ground. When you see the truth you can express it more.”

“The Palestinian refugees here in Lebanon are deprived of all kinds of rights, human rights, civil rights, but inside the camp they work. And we are very proud of our women, they have sacrificed a lot and keep Palestine in the minds of our children and protect our heritage.”
Can they qualify as doctors? He smiles ruefully: “Of course – if they have money! For example I qualified as a doctor in Moscow.” Like Mahmoud he won a scholarship, something that is now very difficult.

“I was born in Lebanon. I studied in UNRWA schools, but like all Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon we came from Palestine, from the area surrounding the city of Safad.”
Osman is a serious man who chooses his words carefully: “ I’m sure Palestinians will return, maybe not in our lifetime, but one day it is coming, the chance to go back to our homeland. Our village now is destroyed, but they did not build anything there. My father had land and I am not ready to give it to the Zionists. We are not against the Jews. Jews are people like us, but we are against the Zionistic movement.”

Each Palestinian’s experience of exile is different; but when we discuss Gaza all reactions are the same. Osman is quiet. After a deep breath he says “ There are no words to describe it . . . it is unbelievable. Killing the children it is . . . barbaric. Children, women, destroyed in cold blood; what is this! There is no justice in this world.

“The conscience of the British people should go back 60 years . No – more; to the Balfour Declaration in 1917. But let me tell you, when they came to make the documentary about Pauline (reference), on their last day I invited them for lunch. There was a – cameraman. I said ‘Your government is responsible for our Nakbah’ and he said ‘I am sorry Dr Osman. We are here to repair the wrongs of our grandfathers’ and I said ‘OK, I can drink with you now!’ It was a good day.

“We hope the day will come when those who think Palestinians are occupying Israel will know the truth about who occupied whom and how they took our land and would not even share it and have two states. They want to take everything . . . this situation is impossible.”

As I prepare to leave Dr Osman says “Tell the truth; what you see, what you hear yourself about the Palestinian refugees everywhere and especially here in Lebanon because it is the most complicated situation. For instance I am a doctor, but I cannot open my own clinic in Lebanon. We are not asking too much, just to have the minimum of dignity and social and civil liberty. No-one is asking for Lebanese passports, we are ready to live as refugees until there is a just resolution, but we want to feel we are human beings, able to bring up our children without war, and without suffering what we suffered. They have the right to live like any other children in the world, peacefully, to have a good education and participate in building a good society.”

In another part of Beirut, I meet a man whose life is dedicated to supporting that right.
Moatas Dajani, the founder of Al Jana, is a self confessed book hoarder. The fruits of his lifetime love affair with archaeology and other passions line the walls of the room we meet in. He shows me one called Moshe Dayan’s Collection, featuring artefacts from antiquity. “So what makes them Moshe Dayan’s eh? Where did the Israeli General acquire them from?” It is a rhetorical question.

Dajani is a Palestinian who has Jordanian citizenship, but his life is spent networking amongst the organisations dedicated to helping Lebanon’s disadvantaged communities, through creative activities.

A fourth generation of Palestinian children is now coming to terms with the reality of being born with refugee status. They face a political and economic future far bleaker than that which confronted their forebears, and with considerably weakened social and cultural resources to sustain them. Anger, frustration and the question ‘Why me?’ is almost inevitable.

Each year, older community members, who have been repositories of folklore, transmitters of collective memory, and links to the Palestinian past, become fewer. Camp schools concentrate on basic education and are poorly resourced to teach Palestinian culture, history, and folklore – the things that help to build young refugees' sense of identity, and self-esteem. Al Jana’s conflict transformation program has been trying to address this since 1990.

Back at Bourj al Bourajneh I had seen evidence of these efforts and heard from Zaina about the short holidays it brokered. “The last was six weeks ago. We had 141 children and young people. We went to Faria, Jeita to the snow where there is the skiing and then we went to the fun fair, in Beirut. Although it’s only a short distance away in the heart of the city, camp children would never normally visit it. "

There are no gardens in Bourj al Bourajneh. Children of the camp are as much prisoners of its invisible walls as their parents says Zaina. “In the summer we take them to the river. Most of them like nature and whenever we go somewhere where it is green they love it. At the beginning of April we take them to the zoo, because we try to link our outdoor activities with something. We had a project showing them how to use the internet for research. Each child had to research an animal. At the zoo they saw the animal they had researched for real. Then we collected the research projects and made them into a book that will be kept in our library. Now children can learn directly from each others’ work.

“On our last trip we took parents and they enjoyed it as much as the children. The man at the fun fair joked that there should be a sign saying ‘Play Area For Mothers’ as well. Last summer we went to the beach, and a restaurant where they all sat down to eat and they were very, very happy. Without organisations like Al Jana these children would never do these things.”

Dajani believes that marginalised societies are very rich in terms of creative problem solving strategies and very culturally dynamic , even under siege. “There is no welfare state in Lebanon but we have a network of over 66 organisations working with children and youth and much of what we do is based around networking.

“We have four programmes; an active memory programme; an active learning and creative expression programme which uses the arts, like cinema, photography, film and music; since 2006 we have a conflict transformation programme and a youth media programme. So, primarily we are about producing learning materials based on cultural contributions.”

He shows me a project started in Bourj al Bourajneh and Shatila camps in 1998. It looked at issues that were of interest to the camps’ children and how they could express them through photography art, film-making and writing. “It was a four year process during which they made three internationally award-winning films and a publication that has been translated into four languages, which is all their own work - their photography, their art their reflections. It is called ‘I wish I were a bird’. The title is self-explanatory.

But Dajani is a pragmatist. What he – through Al Jana – has achieved is astounding; it even includes the founding of an international film festival. But it’s not without poignancy. One film is called ‘Neither here nor there’ – a touching record of how young Palestinians hoping to escape their prison found rejection in another country which also saw them as outsiders.

The Nakbah didn’t just affect those who left Palestine in 1948. It reached down the years to blight lives of future generations, robbing adults of dignity and self respect, depriving children of a childhood and a future.Richard Cook, Director of UNRWA Affairs for Lebanon, describes a situation of chronic underfunding for decades, particularly the last two. The world’s longest running refugee crisis has notched up a bill of around $10.5 billion since the agency’s inception in 1950.

Olfat Mahmoud believes that the passage of years makes no difference. “The problem of return is not about time or having the space. Of course there is space for Palestinians to return - and not only to Gaza and the West Bank, but to all Palestine. Most people would accept at least acknowledgement of this right, but you can’t keep a people suffering and not knowing what to do just because you have not agreed how to solve the problem!”

Recently a Palestinian embassy opened in Beirut, but Mahmoud says it is too early to say whether it will make a difference to those in the camps. She believes the international community paid attention to the building of the Palestinian Constitution but forget about the refugees.

“As Palestinians we lack any structure or representation in the camps. We are fed up with our situation, but over the years the world has been distracted by so many other situations, in Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Our case is older but it has been set aside.”

The Palestinian refugee situation should have been resolved decades ago. It is one the international community have shied away from repeatedly, engaging only on an ad hoc basis when spikes of military activity, and the ‘collateral damage’ that comes in their wake, make it impossible to look away.

ENDS

[1] “Palestinian refugee women in Lebanon: Conditions and Challenges in Bourj al Bourajneh Camp. A study by WHO, authored by Olfat Mahmoud 2009.

How Veteran's Aid can help the soldiers of misfortune

2008-12-17T11:51:00.000-08:00

Words: Glyn Strong Pictures: Richard Baker

Many Armed Forces veterans find it difficult to reintegrate into society. Some end up homeless and without hope. For these men and women, the charity Veterans Aid is a life-saver. Glyn Strong visits its headquarters and hostel.

Adrian Eddison-Stone still has vivid memories of the night he became homeless. 'Rough sleeping in the infantry is not the same as rough sleeping on the streets,' the 42-year-old former Coldstream Guards lance corporal reflects. 'I was f***ing scared - not about the future, but about what was going to happen to me immediately. For the first couple of weeks, I stayed around Chelsea Bridge, because it was quiet there. There was no one around to interfere with you.'

Adrian Eddison-Stone, a former Coldstream Guardsman, is one of 57 ex-servicemen currently living at Veterans Aid's New Belvedere House hostel

The son of a Royal Navy fleet chief - 'a hard act to follow' - Eddison-Stone left school aged 16 and signed up for the infantry. After basic training, he joined the Corps of Drums and became involved with ceremonial duties in an environment that seemed a million miles away from civilian life. He served for eight years, finally leaving in 1989 and drifting in and out of various sales jobs.
Two years later, after the first Gulf War had started, he re-enlisted with his old battalion and was soon deployed to Saudi Arabia, initially with responsibility for handling prisoners of war. He found the going hard. 'It was really scary, in the middle of the desert with alerts going off all the time, Scud missiles going over - everything happening so fast.'

Eddison-Stone's was one of the last regiments to return home, and he spent a further four years serving in Northern Ireland, Germany and Bosnia. He got married, but the relationship quickly began to fall apart. 'The girl I married made it clear that she didn't want to be part of Army life.' He made plans to return to the civilian world again, but not in time to save his marriage. He had lost everything - his military family, his wife, he had even become estranged from his brother. With nowhere to live, he spent his first six weeks out of the Army sleeping in his car on Brighton seafront.

Yet Eddison-Stone is one of the lucky ones. While taking refuge at the Passage, a Christian day centre for homeless people in London, he spotted a poster on the wall for the charity Veterans Aid. It runs New Belvedere House, a hostel for the ex-Service homeless in Limehouse, east London. A nondescript building on the outside, the inside of New Belvedere is smart, spotless and more reminiscent of a sergeants' mess than a hostel.

Eddison-Stone arrived last year with just his guitar and the clothes he stood up in. He is now one of 57 military veterans living there. People stay for varying amounts of time, graduating either directly to homes of their own or via the adjacent Rectory, a halfway house made up of communal flats where residents get to experience independence without isolation.

Eddison-Stone becomes emotional when he recalls the reception he received at New Belvedere. 'I can't describe it. I suddenly realised that there was somewhere for me to go. I've seen hostels and this is not like any other. Something about it just shouts, "This is a safe environment".

Someone who shares that view is 55-year-old Martin Riley, the son of a regimental sergeant major in the Royal Engineers. His childhood was spent in Army camps and he admits to enlisting to get some kind of recognition from his father. He worked in bomb disposal and mine clearance; dangerous and exacting work. 'I don't know why - I'm certainly not a hero,' he reflects. 'It seemed exciting at the time, though.' Drugs proved to be Riley's undoing and the start of a spiral into addiction. Today he is off heroin and although he hated the hostel at first, he now describes it as 'an absolute bloody life-saver'.

New Belvedere is the focal point of Veterans Aid, a specialist London-based charity with a rad ically different approach to helping members of its military family. It may be a minor player alongside monolithic institutions such as the Royal British Legion, but it is rapidly becoming the most dynamic driver of change in the battle to honour the military covenant, a historic government pledge, first drafted in the 19th century, to support and provide care to all British soldiers, sailors and airmen and women in return for the sacrifices they have made for their country.

A groundswell of opinion, from the media, senior military figures and politicians, has criticised the Ministry of Defence for abandoning vulnerable ex-soldiers. Last September, the Conservative leader David Cameron spoke out about the covenant in the House of Commons, stating that it was 'an unbreakable common bond of identity, loyalty and responsibility, which has sustained the Army throughout its history. Are we fulfilling it today? I believe we would be very hard pushed to answer "Yes".

An investigation published in March 2007 revealed that more than 21,000 full-time servicemen and women and reservists who had served in Iraq suffered from anxiety and depression as a result of their experiences. A not insignificant number of those end up sleeping rough, and that is something that Hugh Milroy, a former RAF wing commander and military welfare specialist, the chairman of the cross-agency Ex-Services Action Group and the chief executive of Veterans Aid, is not prepared to tolerate. He is a believer in immediate and enduring solutions for all homeless servicemen and women.

The Combined Homeless and Information Network (Chain) estimates that about six per cent of all homeless people are ex-Service. Others speculate that the real figure is much higher, though Milroy has no time for statistics. 'We constantly get the media asking us to confirm its view that 25 per cent of the homeless are ex-Service,' he says, as we chat inside Veterans Aid's modest administrative headquarters near Victoria Station. 'It is almost as if they want this claim to be true and that saddens me greatly.'
What matters to him is the welfare of those who have served their country and now need help to cope with life away from the Armed Forces.

'I get angry when I hear people saying that rough sleeping will be ended by 2012,' Milroy says. 'That's almost laughable. Homelessness is related to poverty and poverty is on the increase in this country. Some of our veterans will inevitably be in that group - so what will the Government be doing for them? They need to do something genuine for veterans to secure their future. No veteran should be forgotten or lost in modern Britain.'

Formerly the RAF's senior welfare specialist, and the architect of its groundbreaking community support network, Milroy earned his PhD researching the causes and prevention of military rough sleeping. The 1,400 or so calls for help that Veterans Aid receives each year come from all over the country; this is not a 'London problem'. Only about 15 per cent of those whom Veterans Aid helps have a history of mental health problems. Soldiers, sailors and airmen and women fall victim to homelessness gradually, for a variety of prosaic reasons.

Kashim Adeniran, an ex-private in the Pioneer Corps, is self-sufficient thanks to Veterans Aid

Causes range from the invisible, such as psychological or behavioural disorders or loneliness, to the highly visible, such as drug or alcohol abuse, family breakdown, poverty or physical injury. Cold and hunger can be the least of a rough sleeper's problems; violence and struggles for existence are commonplace. Milroy explains that he deals with a former Royal Marine who regularly sells his body for sex to fund his drug habit, while Eddison-Stone points out that those on the streets are either prey or predators.

Milroy himself is a 52-year-old working-class Scot who does not mince words. A small man with neat grey hair, a keen sense of humour and a low tolerance for bureaucrats, his studies for a BA in theology introduced him to the subject of pastoral care. After that he joined the RAF, reaching the rank of wing commander in less than 11 years. Milroy served in the first Gulf War and admits that leaving the military was not easy. 'It takes time to adjust, but thank goodness most manage to make the transition successfully - sooner or later.'

On his return to Britain, he led a team of 65 staff providing welfare services to more than 4,000 RAF personnel and their families, and was also responsible for managing the return of those who had served in the Gulf. He has been the head of Veterans Aid since November 2005.

Veterans Aid, which until last November was known as the Ex-Service Fellowship Centres, began life as a canteen and recreation room for destitute ex-servicemen, which opened in Lambeth, south London, in January 1932. Today, Milroy explains, it is unashamedly an operational charity unburdened by bureaucracy or costly overheads.

Milroy manages the charity's website himself to save money. Food, accommodation and new clothes are provided at point of need. What it saves in 'corporate comforts', it funnels directly into practical expenditure to ensure that physical and emotional triage is a given - the 'extras' that go towards restoring the veterans' self-respect and dignity are unquantifiable.

Alongside Milroy, the eclectic Veterans Aid team includes Geoffrey Cardozo, MBE, a former cavalry colonel, John Boyle, a sponsored social worker from the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association (SSAFA), Debbie Langdon, an outreach worker and the wife of a former Welsh Guardsman, plus a military psychiatrist and a barrister who both work as volunteers. The skills blend is diverse and powerful.

Over at New Belvedere, residents come under the jurisdiction of Pat O'Connor, MBE, a no-nonsense northerner. 'We're all afraid of Pat,' Bob Gordon, a reformed alcoholic, says. A former physical training instructor with the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, Gordon, 58, now sells the Big Issue in Covent Garden and lives in the Rectory. His fall from grace is not untypical. After he left the Army in 1990, his 'social drinking' got out of hand. Gordon recalls coming out of rehab to be met by his regimental sergeant major bearing 'a glass of whisky and my divorce papers'. Today he is lithe, upbeat and employed. He is slightly apprehensive about living alone but with IT skills under his belt, a college course in the pipeline and the knowledge that Veterans Aid is there in the background, he is optimistic. His respect for O'Connor is echoed by everyone; many backsliders speak of their shame at having 'let Pat down'. And no wonder: if O'Connor says you are out, you are out.

Milroy tells me that Veterans Aid focuses on three things. 'The first is to have a place where veterans support veterans in a real and immediate way; it is about helping members of our family, the military family. The second is that we are completely non-judgmental. If you are one of us, and something has happened to drive you towards the streets, we will step in to help - regardless of who you are, or what you've done. Thirdly, we are very determined to provide help and guidance on a national basis to veterans themselves or others working with vulnerable and homeless veterans. This is a new role in homelessness prevention and we're already well along that path.'

The human dramas that play out daily in the Veterans Aid headquarters sabotage any chance of an uninterrupted interview with Milroy. He pauses our conversation to take a phone call from a colleague who explains that Eric, an ex-soldier who regularly drops in at Victoria, has forgotten to take his medication and is causing a disturbance in a nearby cafe. Immediately, someone is dispatched to 'sort it out'.

In an adjacent room sits Vincent, who had been explaining to Milroy why he cannot face returning to his family in Africa. Currently of no fixed abode, he was recently discharged from the Royal Navy - not because he failed to make the grade, but because he felt afraid to admit to being homosexual in an environment he found hostile and oppressive. He is tearful, desperate, homeless and broke.

We talk about some of Veterans Aid's other 'clients': John, who has 109 offences involving crack cocaine to his name; Dave, whose smell alone could stop a rocket-propelled grenade in mid-air; Sandy Ulrich, who not long ago was dysfunctionally alcoholic. Most charities would find it difficult to provide these people with practical help - but not Veterans Aid, for whom Ulrich is a singular success story.

After leaving the RAF, Ulrich, a 55-year-old senior aircraftman from Pitlochry in Perthshire, attempted to run a pub, which ended in alcoholism and financial ruin. 'I was drinking a litre and a half of Bacardi a day, seven days a week,' he recalls in disbelief. Now he is not only dry, employed and living independently, but is also one of the mainstays of New Belvedere and one of O'Connor's most trusted assistant managers.

Sandy Ulrich, an ex-RAF aircraftman, now works at New Belvedere where he was once a resident

My chat with Milroy is interrupted by the arrival of Ray, which sparks immediate action. A heroin user whose gaunt face and shabby appearance is instantly recognised on the blurry screen of the video entry system, Ray is admitted quickly; once inside, he collapses. In clear distress, he clings to Milroy for comfort.

There is no lecture, no forms to fill in and no calls to the police - only the most practical questions. 'When did you last eat? When did you see the doctor? Where are you staying?' A bacon sandwich is proffered, followed by a gentle inquisition about his latest failed rehab. Milroy is kind, but honest. 'If you go on like this, you are going to die.'

At the Union Jack Club in Waterloo, a very different members' club for ex-servicemen, the Veterans Aid's chairman and president, Brigadier Johnny Rickett, is telling me about the time, 18 months ago, when he 'lost' half an hour of his life. He had just completed a television interview about the Falkland Islands, where as a lieutenant colonel commanding the Welsh Guards he lost 32 men, when it was as if a switch tripped in his brain.

'I wasn't in the real world. And I still, frankly, don't know where I was for half an hour from leaving my office until my wife came to collect me. I was re-living the Falklands all over again, which I've never done before.'

Disturbed by the episode, Rickett sought help and was advised that his 'condition' was caused by one of three things: lack of breakfast, use of beta blockers, or post-traumatic stress disorder. It was a defining moment. He knew that if he could remain traumatised by events that occurred two and a half decades ago, there would be plenty of others in similar - and much worse - situations. 'I pray for my men every night,' he says. 'If this could happen to me 25 years after the event, I can't imagine what some of them must have gone through.'

The Ministry of Defence acknowledges that a minority of ex-servicemen struggle to adapt to life away from the military, but plays down the problem. 'The majority of people who leave the Armed Forces each year make a successful transition to civilian life,' a spokesman says. 'But we recognise some are vulnerable to homelessness.'

The veterans minister Derek Twigg recently visited New Belvedere House to see the reality of life for homeless ex-servicemen and women trying to rebuild their lives. He was impressed by the support that Veterans Aid provides. 'It is unusual for someone to be homeless after they leave the Armed Forces and the Ministry of Defence goes to great lengths to help the 23,000 people who leave the Service each year to prepare them for their return to civilian life, including finding accommodation,' he said. 'We work closely with all interested charities to both prevent new Service-leavers becoming homeless and to provide an effective safety net for existing vulnerable and homeless ex-Service personnel.'

But what about those who slip through the net? It is 7am, just a few degrees above freezing and barely light. Westminster's street sweepers are still at work while early commuters emerge from Charing Cross Tube station. Inspector Malcolm Barnard and his team of eight officers from the Metropolitan Police Safer Streets Homeless Unit are on their daily 'wake and shake'. Barnard has close links with Veterans Aid and now routinely asks vulnerable homeless people if they have ever served in the Armed Forces. If the answer is yes they are immediately directed towards the sanctuary of Veterans Aid.

We are looking for one man in particular, whose overnight home is nearly always the same stretch of pavement, within easy reach of a McDonald's breakfast. At 7.15 we find him, just south of Covent Garden. A former gunner who served in Korea, Tommy is 74 and an alcoholic. His craggy face is partly obscured by a flat cap and he is huddled inside a sleeping bag. Predictably passers-by give him a wide berth. Barnard nudges him awake to make sure he is all right. Tommy sits up, rubs his eyes and says, 'Good morning,' before taking a quick swig from a near-empty half bottle of whisky and preparing a roll-up.

Although Tommy claims never to have been ill in his life, Barnard is concerned about his health and his safety. 'We need to get you into a shelter; we can't have you out here like this. What about Veterans Aid?' Tommy politely declines the offer and explains that he needs to go for a pee. 'But I'm not telling you where.'

Barnard and his team see many rough sleepers during their patrols and on average one a month is referred to - and helped by - Veterans Aid. However, like Tommy, not everyone is ready or willing to be helped. Not everyone can be helped either. Last year, Veterans Aid provided nearly 20,000 nights of shelter for ex-servicemen and women. Milroy is convinced that with additional funding, it could do considerably more.

Martin Riley, a former bomb disposal expert with the Royal Engineers, said New Belvedere iwas a 'life saver'

Major General Sir Evelyn Webb-Carter, the controller of the Army Benevolent Fund, which provides financial and practical assistance for soldiers, former soldiers and their families, believes that with adequate support Veterans Aid could transform the way ex-servicemen and women are helped. His organisation provides some of Veterans Aid's vital funding and has given it carte blanche to spend whatever it needs on finding beds for veterans who are sleeping rough.

More than 260 British soldiers have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since those conflicts began, and more than 4,000 seriously injured. But Sir Evelyn is 'really worried' about the growing number of 'mental causalities'. He also believes that public support for former soldiers has waned since the beginning of the war in Iraq. As the Services shrink in size, there is no shared experience of war on the home front; the toll taken on those who serve is largely unappreciated. Others agree.

'The fight in southern Iraq or in Helmand is, both literally and figuratively, thousands of miles away from the average person living in Britain,' the shadow defence secretary Dr Liam Fox says. 'Consequently, unless you have a close friend or family member in the Armed Forces, the general public has a reduced interest in the welfare of our troops because the war does not impact on their day-to-day lives.'

Milroy believes that it is essential that the veterans themselves be given a voice. 'The time is right for a national debate about what it means to be a veteran in Britain today,' he says. 'We need to ask veterans what they expect from their country: this shouldn't be the view of any particular ex-Service charity or government think-tank, but the voice of veterans themselves. And then we need a clear statement from the Government about what they intend to do about those needs.'

No one doubts the immense psychological pressure faced by the men and women currently serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, whose lives are constantly under threat for the duration of their six-month deployment, undergoing prolonged fighting for days or weeks at a time. The current operational tempo leaves little time for service personnel to go home and come to terms with their experiences.

And while a report published by King's College London last year suggested that the Ministry of Defence's policy on tour intervals was right, it conceded that the Services' own 'harmony guidelines' (which balance rest and recuperation with deployment) were not always being met. The report concluded that a quarter of those who have served in Afghanistan and Iraq develop mental problems.

Perhaps surprisingly, the number of homeless ex-servicemen has not been swelled by the hundreds of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans suffering from mental trauma. 'We're not seeing evidence of it - yet,' Milroy says, 'but we're well aware that we could do, and we're ready. We find that many people come to us several years after discharge. We are helping people who have served in the Second World War, Northern Ireland, the Gulf and the Balkans.'

Someone with practical and clinical experience of dealing with this delayed trauma is the milita ry psychiatrist Ian Palmer, who left the Army in 2003. Now a visiting professor at the Institute of Psychiatry, he is also a volunteer at Veterans Aid. 'I was attracted to Veterans Aid because it was run by ex-Service personnel and was robust, military in its methods and focused on solving problems. The whole ethos of the organisation is based on respect for self and others and the positive military values of commitment, taking responsibility, persevering under adversity and working together.'

Private Kashim Adeniran, who served for three years with 5th/8th Royal Pioneer Corps, is one of hundreds who owe their new-found self-respect and self-sufficiency to Veterans Aid. He recalls his three years in the corps with pride but admits his transition to civilian life was hard. As the sole proprietor of Midas Touch Metal Polishing, he polishes door furniture and nameplates at some of London's most prostigious addresses. 'This is a safe house,' Adeniran tells me in Milroy's office. 'People who come to Veterans Aid are blessed.'

The Last Commando - General Mohammadzai Khatool

2008-09-30T14:19:00.000-07:00

Picture (c) Anastasia Taylor-Lind

“How old am I? Give a guess!” She may be a general in the Afghan Army, its most senior woman and its only female paratrooper, but Mohammadzai Kahtool is not going to tell me her age. Handsome, with black hair and a uniform weighted with honours, she sits behind a heavy wooden desk, surrounded by bright artificial flowers and photographs of her famous exploits.

To reach the General, who is based at Kabul’s Ministry of Defence, several check points and searches have to be navigated. Unlike our own MoD, Afghanistan’s counterpart is like a military camp where armed male soldiers are seen everywhere. One hovers in the background bringing us tea – and later food that General Khatol will eat alone in her office. Curtains are drawn creating an atmosphere of intimacy and gloom, at odds with the bright sunlight and heat outside.
It is hard to imagine this veteran of more than 500 official parachute jumps - and injuries that include a broken neck - ever wearing a burqa or submitting to the restrictions of the Taliban era, but she did. In fact she is fatalistic about many things; brothers killed and a husband dying before their only child, a son, was 40 days old. When I sympathise she shrugs: “Don’t be sorry. It’s OK. This is a temporary life. And it was a long time ago.”

Her own childhood was untypical for a girl in any Islamic country; one in which sport and martial arts featured prominently – she has black belts in Judo, Tae Kwondo, Karate. Unusually, too, she was encouraged by a father and uncle who told her she was “very brave” and should do whatever she was capable of doing. Academically she shone; at Kabul’s Ariana School, then the capital’s Jamal Mena University where she studied law before joining the Army.
“It was always my ambition to join the Army; at that time Afghanistan was a democracy, Najibullah was President – a good , honest man. There were more ladies in training school then, but I always came top,” she adds matter-of-factly. “ Now it’s hard for people in Afghanistan to see a woman the Army.”
“It wasn’t so difficult for a woman to succeed once, but when the Taliban period started they said women couldn’t work so I had to sit at home doing things like tailoring.”

The image of this intrepid woman making ends meet by sewing is hard to come to terms with. “I had a baby and I looked after children,” she explains. “I taught ladies, girls and little boys at home, I wrote and I made drawings.” Again that fatalism: “The most important gift that Allah gives humans is life – he gave us a brain. We should use it, live life to the full and be brave.”
Imprisoned physically at home, her active mind was free. She could no longer jump out of aircraft but during her darkest days she revisited the memory of that exhilarating freedom - and what she could no longer do, she drew picture of and wrote about.

While the General takes a phone call our interpreter, Darwish, points out a hand-written Scroll of Army Discipline on the wall; exquisitely executed, it reveals that calligraphy is another of her talents. “This work, it is very difficult” he whispers. “She has a great skill.”

Returning to our conversation General Khatool explains that although times were hard under the Taliban she never left Kabul to take refuge in Iranian or Pakistani refugee camps like so many other Afghans. “I love my country. I stayed here; I said ‘I’ll die if necessary, but I will stay in my country’.”

She’s been back in uniform for around eight years and although women occupy other senior roles General Khatool is now the only female commando. “There are others who want to be, but there is no capability to train them” she says, touching the cherished parachute emblem like a talisman.

Strangely for a senior military officer she has no English but speaks Urdu, Dari and some Russian as well as her native Pashtu. To have achieved her rank and sustained it is a staggering achievement for an Afghan woman – parachute jumps notwithstanding. The 500 training drops she is credited with are augmented by many hundreds more for sporting and public display purposes; jumping from fixed wing aircraft or Russian M8 and M17 helicopters into tight drop zones.

During the freedom festivities held to celebrate signing of the country’s new constitution she was the only female member of the six ‘Afghan Heroes’ parachute display team that jumped, Koran and flags in hand, into Kabul City Stadium. Pictures of this event join other fading snapshots on her office wall and, between translations, her attention strays to the looped slideshow of other nostalgic moments that flickers across her computer screen.

Undoubtedly she is a heroine and national icon, yet in a curious way she is also isolated; the only one of her kind. This is something reflected in her frequent sorties into the past; perhaps the only safe place for someone who repeatedly insists that she won’t answer any political questions?
Not long after our visit the country’s most senior policewoman, Lieutenant Colonel Malalai Kokar, was shot dead by Taleban gunmen in Kandahar as her teenage son prepared to drive her to work. Like Mohammadzai Khatool she had been the subject of many media reports and was famous throughout Afghanistan for her bravery. The mother of six carried a weapon and had survived several assassination attempts.

In Kabul’s Ministry of Defence, where the male soldiers all carry guns, General Khatool doesn’t even waer a sidearm. She shakes her head when I ask about protection. “I have been threatened,” she admits, but is disinclined to meet gun with gun. In a classic ‘bring it on!’ situation she describes rounding on a would-be attacker with bare arms. Whether brave, foolhardy or stoical it is hard to judge; she is, after all, a formidable martial arts practitioner.
The tough soldier and the fiercely protective mother are different sides of the same coin; when her sister’s husband disappeared leaving her with three children, General Khatool took them in.

She had her own memories of being left alone with no husband and understood the difficulties.
In the dim, artificial light of this over-furnished room we see a proud, intelligent woman treading a diplomatic tightrope. “Educated people are proud of me, but men from poor uneducated backgrounds find it hard to take orders from a woman. During the mujahadeen era men with large beards watched me leap from aircraft in disbelief muttering, ‘She’s magic – or maybe she’s really a man. How could a woman jump from an aircraft’!

“During President Najubullah’s time there were lots of women in the Army, perhaps 10 per cent? Now, I don’t know, much fewer – but whoever has ambition can join and there are many opportunities.”

I explain that in the UK women are not eligible to join the Parachute Regiment or the ‘teeth arms’. “No, really?” she says.”I think we are very lucky then that all positions are open to women! Commandos are the ‘first’, the elite, in every country. I am a very lucky woman in Afghanistan, because I am a general and a commando! ”

Yet there is a paradox here: She confirms that in the Afghan Army men and women undergo similar basic weapons training, military skills and fitness but when we stray into the area of frontline involvement it’s a different story. Even General Khatool with her considerable athletic skills and commando pedigree, has never been deployed operationally.

“I have never been involved in fighting; am a peacekeeper, a sportswoman. I pray that everyone will have peace and health. God gave us the gift of life; it is sweet and sour – beautiful, if only people would understand. Time is golden and we should seize every minute of it, because we will all die.”

Mohammadzai Khatool is a complex women and I’m aware that communication through an interpreter inevitably blunts the nuances of our respective languages. She struggles to convey things that she feels passionate about; between us we navigate the semantic labyrinths of operational security, gender and politics. One minute gentle, wistful and confiding – the next strident, and authoritative, she is a woman conscious of just how many forces are at play in this interview.

We take a break while our cups are refreshed. Suddenly there is a commotion outside the window; shrieking and raised voices. With surprising speed General Khatool and the soldier serving our tea rush out of the room, closing the door behind them. We are told to stay put.
After some moments a sheepish trio of women are women are brought in.

Earlier in the day Latifa, Basira and Fawzia had professionally frisked us and searched our bags for weapons. Then we were potential assassins; now we are the General’s guests. There is reluctance to explain the cause of the ‘incident’ but Darwish perseveres. The security post has indeed been breached it seems; not by terrorists posing as western media . . . but by a mouse.
I am urged not to make much of this incident but as the three female soldiers prepare to return to their post Latifa makes the universal ’hands apart’ gesture to indicate the size of the rodent. “She is saying ‘I think perhaps it was a rat’ ” Darwish translates.

Sitting informally on the settee with me as our time comes to a close General Kahtool becomes more philosophical: “Most countries see Afghanistan only as a really dark place, somewhere where there is no education, and life is very hard; but we have Afghan braveness, our hearts are big. We really want our country to go forward and we will fight for that. We have patience.”
So should Afghan women look to an Army career?

“My message to Afghan women is this; to be a good mother first, look after your babies and children while they are growing up because they are the future. Secondly Afghanistan must be rebuilt. Women should not forsake the house, but when they go out they should show men what they can do. It’s not about whether a woman wears a burqa, but whether she has courage.
“Our people need to join together; they should build factories to provide work and rebuild our country, but in the right way. In most other countries what is life about? A mother brings children into this world with hope, she looks after them, cares for them - but in Afghanistan life is nothing. Someone just walks outside and there are suicide bombers.”

Picking up on this recurring theme of instability and fear of movement I try one more ‘political’ question before we part and ask if she feels NATO/ISAF troops are making a positive contribution to her vision of a better Afghanistan. General Kahtool smiles and I am told politely: “She cannot answer this question.”

Policing the Poppy

2008-09-30T11:27:00.000-07:00

Eleven hours after retiring from his post as Head of The Serious Organised Crime Agency’s Tactical Firearms Division Dave Wright, 50, was on a plane to Afghanistan, bringing 31 years experience as a British policeman - and looking for a “last great adventure”. He ‘retired’ as a Superintendant; today he works at the most basic levels to support and develop Helmand province’s fragile police force.

As the man charged with mentoring the Counter Narcotics Police - Afghanistan (CNP-A) Wright’s daily battle isn’t about bombs, bullets and airstrikes. It’s about creating a force for law and order that people can trust and respect. In Helmand that means seeing that police officers are paid, literate, trained, drug-free . . . and equipped with uniforms.
He says: “Nothing could prepare you for working in the Afghan environment, it doesn’t matter how much you read or what people tell you – until you come out here you can’t begin to understand the country, the people and the conditions they live in.
“I had the opportunity to do something completely different to my old job, but still use all the skills I had learned over a long career. Some of my former SOCA colleagues would like to follow me, many are curious - some think I am mad!”
And it’s a view his wife of 23 years, Christine, has some sympathy with, although she, too, was a career police officer: “We weren’t keen on the idea of him going at first. It was an important year for the girls with University and GCSEs coming up. I suppose you could say we weren’t exactly supportive! And we thought, why there; why Afghanistan?”

With 8,000 troops in Afghanistan the UK is the second largest military contributor to the international community’s efforts in the country and the second largest bilateral donor. International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander, talking recently about the move from stabilisation to state building, praised the soldiers and civilians, like Wright, who are involved in that process. He said: “They take those risks in pursuit of one shared mission: to help Afghans to secure, govern and develop their country, for themselves.”

And the last seven years have seen real progress towards that goal as Wright explains: “We have recently had huge successes with opium recoveries. In the last month we recovered 750kgs, 1,600 kgs, 1,420 kgs and last week another 650 kgs. These were by British Army-mentored Afghan patrols operating in the desert. The prisoners and samples of the narcotics are flown back to Lashkar Gah where they are collected by the CNP-A who interview and process them through the criminal justice system. The remainder of the narcotics, and the smugglers vehicles, are then blown up by explosives to ensure they are destroyed.

“ Last week the CNP-A operating in Lashkar Gah City raided a house and recovered 48kg of pure heroin together with over two tonnes of precursor chemicals in a drugs laboratory. It takes 10kg of opium to manufacture 1kg of heroin. This was an example of intelligence-led policing - a totally Afghan initiated and led operation. “It is things like that which make it all worthwhile.”

Squaddie graffiti, scrawled on the inside of a suffocatingly hot portaloo at Kandahar Airfield says: “Afghanistan is an illusion caused by lack of drugs and alcohol”. And while it may not rank among the most uplifting of sentiments about Afghanistan – it does reflect certain truths about the country.

The irony is that while there is definitely a lack of alcohol (the British military bases are ‘dry’ in every sense of the word) the surrounding countryside suffers from no shortage of drugs.
Adjacent Helmand Province produces up to 90 percent of the world’s heroin. According to Wright a number of the police are drug ‘users’ of some description. He says that until recently 6ft cannabis plants grew on the doorstep of many police posts and corruption was rife.
This sounds depressing, but Wright is upbeat and optimistic. Aided by his mentoring, root and branch reform of the force is well in hand and he claims with authority that the CNP-A are “100 per cent clean.”

They are also 100 per cent male.

Helmand has a police ‘tashkeil’ or establishment of 2,000 - just six of them are women. There would have been a seventh, trained as a counter-narcotics specialist, but she was kidnapped on Lashkar Gah’s east-west Highway 601 earlier this year and murdered. Her assassins cut her throat, in front of her son, and then they shot her in the face.
Like many other women who put their heads above the parapet in Helmand, she had received threats and warnings, but with 90 per cent of her training completed, she was determined to finish it.

Wright, who hails from Washington, Tyne and Wear, and still bears traces of his North East accent, is reluctant to talk about her. It’s a painful issue. “She was a very brave woman, but don’t take it from me; ask her colleagues.”

The role of Afghan women in the world of counter narcotics is new. “We’re helping to move the Counter Narcotics Police from a static, reactive role to one that is intelligence led,” he explains. Historically featuring only in the poppy harvesting process, women also appear on the drugs landscape as addicts or prisoners. In both roles they are largely victims of poverty, fear and a male dominated society. Now operating as police officers and prison guards they are beginning to become part of the solution as well as the problem. But there’s a long way to go.

It is a cultural paradox that while male officers are unable to search women for arms and drugs, Afghan men discourage the recruitment of females who could fulfill this role. Wright introduces me to one of Lashkar Gah’s best female officers who has had singular successes and is keen to tell her story. “It was at a checkpoint, a year and a half ago. One woman had an AK-47 under her clothing (burqa) and 250 rounds of ammunition. Another had a grenade and explosive material. This lady tried to attack me, and then she bit me!”

A wrist is offered, showing scars of what are unmistakably teeth marks.
I was asked not to name the officer and no photographs of she or her colleagues were allowed. We met at a literacy class. Joining the ANP provides access to education as well as income, something the women particularly value.

Wright comes from a household of women: his wife, Christine, is also a retired police officer; the couple’s daughters Amy, 18, and Sophie, 16, are used to his absences. “He’s always worked away,” says Christine. “I suppose we’ve become very independent – but we knew that if there was a problem he could always come home.
He is supposed to work a rota of six weeks on and two weeks off, but it doesn’t always work out that way and there are inevitable trade-offs. “He came home on (GCSE) results day, but that meant he wasn’t able to be here when Amy went up to university,” says Christine .

“When I was with SOCA I worked in London during the week, traveling from Durham to Kings Cross on a Monday morning and returning for the weekend,” explains Wright. But ‘coming home’ from Helmand is a bit different. “I fly by RAF helicopter from Lashkar Gah to Camp Bastion, then by C130 Hercules to Kabul, then a flight to Dubai, then an Emirates flight home. It can take 5 or 6 days to get in and out – they are epic journeys!”

Another downside for his family back home is the fear. “We worry every time something comes on the television news” admits Christine. “Just recently there was something about a suicide bomber infiltrating a police unit and until we found out where it was, it was difficult.”
Wright’s admiration for the brave Afghan women taking on the difficult role of policing in Helmand is obvious.

“They travel to work in burqas” he explains. “When I first arrived I asked about uniforms. They said they would be proud to wear uniforms, like female police officers in Kabul, but they had never been offered any.”

The police command posts are like small forts and although the women are not armed, the men they work alongside are. Wright arranges for us to visit one and, with the obligatory armed guards, we leave the military base to meet two female officers on duty.
It ends in frustration; despite painstaking arrangements to catch them on shift, neither is there. Wright although clearly annoyed, is unfailingly diplomatic.

These check points, east and west of Lashkar Gah, are unprepossessing. Men with glazed eyes and ill fitting uniforms share a room with sacks of potatoes, RPG launchers, AK-47s - and a single wooden crutch resting against a wall .Yet in the last 12 months more than 1,000 members of the ANP have lost their lives fighting for their community and to gain some respect for their tarnished profession.

The rewards are poor and the risks considerable. The country’s 82,000 police are a popular target for militants; less well armed and trained than the Army, they travel in small groups in hostile territory.

In 2008 the numbers killed nationally represented half the size of Helmand’s entire establishment. Earlier Wright has admitted how much he would love to see a ‘bobby on the beat’ system in Helmand, but with police officers responsible for many crimes, and public signs urging people to report mistreatment at checkpoints, it will take time to build trust. Or what Douglas Alexander describes as both short-term stabilisation and long-term state-building.
Minister for Education Hanif Atmar described Afghanistan’s four great problems as narcotics, poverty, insurgency and weak governance. The UK, currently the lead nation of the Helmand Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) of which Wright as a EUPOL officer works alongside, is actively involved in addressing all these issues.

DFID is the lead UK Department on development; it has provided £7.2 million since April 2006 to support the implementation of projects to provide immediate and visible benefits to the people of Helmand. And increasingly it is being recognised that specialists like Wright have a unique contribution to make. Engagement with the local community is a key element of counter-insurgency which cannot not be won by force and ‘quick impact’ ventures alone. Douglas Alexander said: “They have brought much-valued civilian skills to the job . . . of identifying immediate priorities with the local population. Their military colleagues are not only providing reassurance for local communities by patrolling areas that have been subjected to attacks and criminality, but also working with civilians to train hundreds of Afghan soldiers and police to take charge of security themselves.

These Afghan-led operations, acting on Afghan intelligence, are making real headway in improving security for local citizens.” It’s this element of the job that give Wright most satisfaction. He describes its rewards as ”Seeing the Afghan Police achieve spectacular results through their own efforts, witnessing their will to learn and understanding that the average CNP-A police officer wants to do a good job, wants to have the respect of the public and despite all the obstacles in his way still attempts to achieve this.”

Wright walks a tightrope Helmand, as do so many of the British civilian and military staff involved in long-term reconstruction. Offend cultural sensitivities and you are back to square one. Several times I see Wright reign-in impatience, but he is an experienced copper supported by an MBA and ears of experience on regional and national special squads.
He’s been at the top of his profession in the UK – here he argues patiently for women officers to be allowed to fill in data-capture forms and get their wages on time. Does he miss anything I wonder?

“Obviously my wife and family. And when you have had a bad day at work a pint of beer always helps!” he observes wryly. Helmand is dust-bowl dry in the summer and despite having air-conditioned accommodation, the heat is energy sapping.

Sickness is a constant headache for UK troops and civilians and before each meal at Lashkar Gah diners, without exception queue to wash and then sanitise their hands. Food is good and plentiful, but the hygiene regime is strict.

One senior civil servant who has been in Helmand for a year tells me that while the issues are “massively complicated” she is “continually optimistic”. “The national drug control strategy is a good thing and an integral part of establishing the rule of law.”
British military units have also been involved in drug raids, but that is not their primary role. Earlier this year Royal Marines from 40 Commando destroyed a drugs factory in the Upper Sangin Valley along with 1.5 tonnes of morphine base. The operation’s purpose was to deny Taliban groups a possible safe haven and to prevent them regaining the ability to mount attacks against the town of Sangin.

But in terms of enduring reconstruction, Wright echoes Douglas Alexander; it is about enabling Afghans to do things for themselves.
The HQ of Lashkar Gah’s counter narcotics unit is sweltering; most of the time there is no electricity. This is not unusual. There is not enough oil or diesel for the vehicles and no cash to repair the broken window in the detention cell. Computers with English keyboards gather dust until Dari/Pashtu replacements can be found.

Helmand Province’s drugs busters have no body armour and travel in soft-skinned vehicles. An IED recently destroyed the front of one but left the occupants unscathed – they were lucky. If it had been travelling faster they would all be dead.
Wright takes me to the office of Colonel Abdul Qadir, a genial, bearded family man who offers melon and thanks me for my interest in his problems. Somewhere in this compound 142 kilos of heroin are secured - the fruits of a recent raid in the Marjah area of Helmand
Outside he has shown us sacks of chemicals used in the process of heroin production, drums and tanks confiscated from a home laboratory.

This is heartening in a region where many people believe that the police are corrupt. The basic wage for an officer is $100 per month, rising to $130 for a sergeant. There is no pension scheme and no medical insurance for those injured on duty. Later Wright points out an officer who was shot through the neck and side only a week earlier. He is not in uniform but is attending police literacy classes that attract a further $20 a month “as an incentive”. The entrance and exit wounds below his hairline are healing well, but plain to see.

Wright explains how rigour is being injected into the training system through introduction of an eight week Focused District Development course. It teaches standardised police skills, law, ethics, survival training and use of equipment. (It also guarantees that those with a drug problem go cold turkey for two months!) All ranks go through the process.

The opium-centric economy has made Helmand unstable and unsafe. The vicious circle of poverty and fear is perpetuated by narco-traffickers who advance money to farmers to buy seeds, then guarantee farm-gate purchase of their crop. Wheat, chillies or other legal crops would be just as easy to grow, but the dangers of getting them to market, paying bribes on the way and securing a buyer make them hazardous and unattractive alternatives. Building a strong police force won’t solve anything overnight – but it’s a significant step in the right direction.
Wright’s tour was fixed term, but Afghanistan gets under the skin. Will he stay I ask? “That depends very much on my family. I have a one year contract and I am now more than two thirds of the way through it. However I feel I have now reached a position where I have gained the trust of the local Afghan Police and the results I am achieving now are by far and away greater than in my first 6 months. Continuity and trust is vital in this policing environment.”

Doing time in Kabul

2008-09-01T09:39:00.000-07:00

Zaraf Shan is a career policewoman, mother of six and the senior female officer at Kabul’s new Prison/Detention Centre. At 42 she is slim, attractive and well groomed; no hijab covers her glossy chestnut hair and in terms of both running a tight ship and presenting a modern image, she literally ‘wears the trousers’.

Any lingering fears that this relatively new jail will conjure up images of ‘Midnight Express’, or even Kabul’s own notorious Pul e Charkhi Prison (described as “a slaughterhouse” during the period of Russian occupation) are soon dispelled as Zaraf introduces us to what can only be described as a model detention centre.

The new facility was handed over by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), to the Afghan Ministry of Justice, in January 2008. As Zaraf show us around it seems that there are no ‘no-go’ areas; cell doors are open or ajar but still she knocks briefly before entering. The rooms are large, lined with bunk beds and bright soft furnishings; they are en suite, have televisions and as we speak to the women, young children play at their feet.

Zaraf’s own children provide a bond with the women many of whom hardly qualify as criminals by UK standards. Most are Afghan but 32-year-old Numthip is from Thailand. “You must speak to this sister,” urges Zaraf, putting a friendly arm around Numthip’s shoulders,” she speaks some English.” How are things here, I ask? “Much better than Bangkok I think!” grins Numthip.

Other women have been incarcerated for leaving their abusive husbands - one very elderly lady admits to murder. The 'victim' was her husband.

“Sister” is not a word usually used in Afghanistan about women who have fallen from grace, but we hear it again and again in the prison. After declining offers of tea from the inmates I return to Zaraf’s office where she starts to look at her watch; it is weekend and she wants to get home to her family.

Female prison guards in Kabul are drawn from the ranks of the ANP (Afghan National Police) in which Zaraf has served for 18 years. Her husband is also a police officer and she never wanted to be anything else. “From childhood” she repeats to make the point, “it was my dream. It is a very hard job for a woman, but my family support me and so I don’t feel the problems so much. I love police work and if you want to do something very much you never get tired of it.”

Trading her police uniform for a burqa during the Taliban era was the hardest thing she has ever done. “ I wasn’t sure if I would ever be a policewoman again; we were almost without hope. I will always remember after they left seeing thousands of people on the streets again. I thought, ‘What’s going on here?’ and I cried with happiness under my burqa.”

Today Zaraf is responsible for 15 staff managing security in the women’s prison, patrolling, looking after administrative issues and looking for ways to make things better. Four doctors are attached to the prison and the women have access to advice on birth control, female health, STDs and hygiene training.

She has lived through turbulent times; I wonder what her hopes are for her own daughters? She is emphatic: “I want her to be anything that she wants to be. I know how upset I would have been if I could not have been a policewoman. Freedom is the important thing.”

ENDS

Women of Courage

2008-07-07T01:23:00.000-07:00

“Do not wait for leaders: do it alone, person to person. Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.” - Mother Teresa

Throughout its history Afghanistan has been defined by two things – men and war. The men have included politicians, religious leaders, foreigners and warlords: The wars have been waged by them, or on their behalf.

Today the country is still beleaguered, but for the first time women are in the front line of the fight to define its future. Some would argue that they always have been, but their contribution has been either invisible - or so far off the radar of international awareness that it has been unacknowledged.

Described variously as a failing or failed state Afghanistan is once again the focus of world attention; once again a battleground. Fundamentalism, poverty, internecine tribal rivalry, greed and the drug trade have taken their toll with painful familiarity. But something is changing - through the bravery, determination, compassion and political awakening of women. Some are elderly, some are very young; some are uneducated, others have university degrees and speak several languages; many are Moslem, some are Christian; not all have grown up in Afghanistan.
These are some of the people and places I visited, with photographer Anastasia Taylor-Lind, in Kabul, Kandahar, Helmand and Samangan.

KABUL – FATIMA & ARIFA
There is edginess to the city today. A suicide bombing followed by a demonstration in the streets has made people nervous. We’ve been invited to Fatima Mohammadi’s curtain shop in Kabul but our driver is not keen to linger, or for us to be seen in the bazaar. Fatima is unconcerned however and keen to show off her products.

She is 38 but looks younger; soberly dressed and dignified. We first meet at the offices of MISFA – the Microfinance Investment Support Facility for Afghanistan – where Fatima explains how she qualified for the loan of 10,000 AFS (about £100) that enabled her to launch and develop the small business that changed her life.

Like many Afghan women whose lives were disrupted by war and exile, Fatima had little formal schooling. Married to Rostam, a metalworker, and mother of three children aged between nine and 19, she found it difficult to manage financially and give her children the things they needed.
“One day my neighbours told me about an organisation that provided loans to deserving families so I went along and applied for one. It made a significant difference to my life and I applied for a second loan, of 15,000AFS (£150).

“Business is flourishing. Each day I get more and more customers. Because of the extra cash my son is in school and able to complete 12th Grade; I have enrolled him in English and Computer classes. This is a big achievement for me.

“My husband too is very happy. He encouraged me to get the loans. We have all benefited.”
Life in Kabul is often brutally hard for ordinary people and even those with jobs have little left for luxuries. The daily realities of random bombings, loss of electricity, chaotic traffic and poor roads conspire to make even getting to work a major undertaking.

Fatima’s days start early with morning prayers. For six days a week she makes breakfast for her children and sees them off to school. She is in her shop by 7am and doesn’t leave until 7pm, but she has no complaints. The success of her small business has meant work for other women as well. “I have had eight trainees for a period of three months; now I have another one. It is good for everyone.”

At home Fatima’s 14-year-old daughter Zahara prepares the family’s evening meal. When we talk about her Fatima becomes emotional. She has hopes for her daughter that she never dared voice during the Taliban period but is passionate about them now: “I was unlucky because I never learned to read or write, but I have dreams for my daughter; I want her to be educated, to be a doctor.”

Sitting beside Fatima is 39-year-old Arifa, who has also turned her life around thanks to a MISFA loan. A mother of seven, she is married to a civil servant and works from home, producing exquisite embroidered goods that she sells to retailers. “All my children (aged between four and 17) are in school. It is hard to cope with constantly rising food prices and this is the only way I have been able to keep up. Before we had nothing but essentials – no TV even. Her face broadens into a smile: “Now we have TV and a washing machine.”

Both women have been matter-of-fact about describing their daily routines and upbeat about what the small MISFA loans have enabled them to do, but afterwards as we drink tea and chat with other women at the centre they become more animated and strident. They insist that security in the city is deteriorating day by day due to internal conflicts.

“I don’t care who these warring factions are, but it is because of their disunity and lack of a strong government that things are so,” says Arifa. ”We need the international community to bring peace and pressurise them into settling down and becoming reconciled.
“Women are the most severe victims of conflict. We try to be optimistic and hopeful of reconciliation, but until it comes I cannot concentrate on my work. Reconciliation is the real key to stability and peace.”

RAHINA
Rahina Samim would not look out of place on the Kings Road, with her stylishly cut dark hair, moderate display of bling and expertly applied make-up. Her head is uncovered and her manner is anything but subdued. She is 36 and single.

Rahina is an Afghan woman, but she has grown up in world light years away from the one that shaped the lives of those she now helps.

Programme Director of MISFA and a trained economist Rahina grew up in Switzerland. Today she looks after nearly 90 female entrepreneurs like Fatima and Arifa – assessing the suitability of candidates, then monitoring and mentoring their progress.
The process involves assessing the security of an area, negotiating with local ‘malekes’ (local elders) so that ventures selected are acceptable to the community, investigating markets and ensuring that money is not given to women whose husbands will squander it.
Help can take the form of cash advances or provision of seed, fertiliser, lambs or tools. Training is provided and Rahina takes care to point out that no interest or repayment is sought until enough time has passed for embryonic ventures to find their feet and show a return
An articulate woman, she speaks (in English) with passion and conviction about what Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) loans have done to change the lives of Afghan women – but she has no illusions about the problems.

“We are women and we work for women: what we do here is full of challenge, but when I see the results I am so happy! There is this woman I will tell you about – a woman who opened a bakery. Her husband is paralysed.

Smart, cosmopolitan and feisty, Rahina’s decision to return to Afghanistan was, she admits, traumatic. Her parents, both doctors, fled their homeland when she was eight and her image of Kabul was one plucked from her mother’s memory of another epoch. “She studied here, 40 years ago, and told me that Afghanistan was beautiful and that we had gardens, many intellectual people and poets. I came back and saw all this destruction and disaster and it was all very sad, you know – and depressing. I called my mother and I said ‘I don’t recognise this Afghanistan’ and she said that that was understandable because she had been away for so many years. She said “I can’t come back now because I know I would not survive the shock. I’ve seen it on television. I would rather live with my memories’.”

Rahina felt gloomy and negative as reality kicked in. “Ninety percent of Afghans are victims; you can get away with anything here” she says, recalling an earlier job at a Kabul bank where she was first bribed then menacingly ‘advised’ not to rock the boat by reporting the institutionalised corruption practised by her staff.

Today she shrugs off her bitterness, as so many Afghan women do: “I am a very positive person and I try always to keep my hopes. The day I lose my hopes I will not be alive. Also hope is part of our religion, Islam, you know.”

What some describe as Afghan complacency Rahina dismisses emphatically: “Yes, people look – lazy, is that the word?” ”Passive?” I volunteer. “Yes, yes – but they are actually very strong. They look around and say ‘God is great, God is here.’ When you understand what bad experiences they have had (30 years of conflict), and see they are still smiling, you think ‘How do they DO that!’! I think if I had been in this place during that time I would be crazy, in a psychiatric hospital, but they smile and say ‘Tomorrow is another day’.”

Again the conversation drifts away from the business of MISFA and into politics; to Afghanistan’s most controversial woman, suspended MP Malalai Joya. “She’s a very strong lady. These politic guys say she’s crazy, she’s not normal – because she tells the truth! She has lots of enemies, believe me.”

Rahina’s male colleague Sultan has met Joya: “Her message is everybody’s – we don’t want to see the faces of warlords in parliament; men who have committed war crimes and killed hundreds of innocent people. Again and again Joya stresses this point, so she faces huge critics. But oh my God, it is good that we have such strong women here!”

SHAFIQA, HALIMA & SAMIYA
There’s a story about the way business is done in Afghanistan that illustrates how complex life is there and why so many ‘western solutions’ simply don’t work. It’s related by a former British policeman, presently attached to Helmand Province’s Stabilisation Unit. Dave Wright is mentor to the emergent Afghanistan National Police and based in Lashkar Gah – a long way from the ANP’s administrative HQ in Kabul.

When I naively ask why so many routine documents have to be physically transported from the capital to local police offices, Dave laughs. He has already been down this road!
“I used to say, ‘Why don’t you email them?’. I was told ‘We have no computer’. And it continued. When the computers arrived there was no electricity, so even faxing was not an option.

A generator was purchased. Soon the fuel to run the generator ran out. Dust gathered on the computers (which well-meaning donors had provided with Roman keyboards, unfamiliar to the Pashtu-speaking Helmandi).

This is a country of paradoxes. Freedom of movement is fraught with difficulties and electricity, which brings light, warmth and the means to cook and communicate, is either erratic or non-existent. Yet mobile phones abound. The country’s infrastructure is shattered yet, like post-war Germany, it is has a unique opportunity to start afresh.

In Kabul a company committed to ‘Creating Electricity and Empowering Women’ is dedicated to doing just that. TZA ( Tolo-e Zanan-e Afghan), in partnership with the Department of Renewable Energy, gives women the chance to build on their engineering training, develop new skills and give the country something it desperately needs – reliable, cost-effective energy.
By harnessing the country’s wind, solar, geothermal and hydroelectric resources, and acknowledging the untapped ‘power source’ that is Afghanistan’s women, engineers like Shafiqa, Halima and Samiya are enable to earn a living and transform the lives of ordinary families.

Their work involves importing and testing renewable energy products from all over the world, checking them for quality and reliability and assessing them in terms of value for money.
The three women have agreed to meet us to talk about their lives and work. Initially reserved they are introduced to us before our interpreter, Akmal, has arrived and in the way of curious women everywhere we communicate with smiles, sign language and the rituals of hospitality. In Afghanistan this is tea – black or green and usually served with sweets instead of sugar. When Akmal joins us we pile into a taxi to the small showroom on Kabul’s airport road, where the women work.

Modest and exquisitely polite, the women wear headscarves and bright, pretty clothes. Halima, 35, is a widow whose wage has to keep her and her three children. Shafiqa, 30, a blonde a mother of four, is the most extrovert. She radiates enthusiasm about her work and is keen to explain how, after finishing high school, she studied to learn all about renewable energy. “This field attracted me and I took an engineering qualification, because power is so important; everyone in the community needs it.”

After a bewildering introduction to the properties of photovoltic batteries, electrical power invertors and solar devices that can be adapted to run a variety of items from fans to radios we walk the short distance to the workshop where the three women and their colleagues test load controls, assemble solar lamps and check equipment.

A five volt panel that absorbs sunlight all day can power four light bulbs for an entire night enabling children to read and study. Isn’t cheap by Afghan standards (5,750 AFS/??) but it’s reliable and once purchased, attracts no further running costs.
A job at the solar project for Samiya, 25, means that one day she may be able to live with her children again.

Elegant and attractive, dark-haired Samiya was forced into marriage during the Taliban era by a man who spotted her in the bazaar. “One day he followed me home and told my parents ‘I want to marry your daughter’. He already had a wife and I didn’t want to marry him, but my parents were scared. He was an important man. Now I want to divorce him. I live with my parents but they have no room for my children and I cannot afford to rent anywhere.”

So seven-year-old Mustafa and 6-year-old Mujtaba now live in an orphanage in Kabul’s District 6 where Samiya visits whenever she can. We make a detour to see them; the unexpected interruption of lessons and arrival of their mother is a happy interlude.

Independence for these women comes at a price as Gul Rasool Hamdard explains. As Head of the Engineering Department (Renewable Energy) for Afghanistan he is keen that I take a message back.”Twelve women were trained for one year, in production of solar energy. It was a partnership with the Ministry. The scheme attracted good women and we could do more if we had the money. Our society desperately needs more power and this is a good investment – but we have no budget. Fifty dollars (US) funds one woman’s salary for a month. Please, tell people to help us.”

VICTORIA
Afghanistan will not meet any of the Millennium Development Goals set for it. These include a bid to reduce by three quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality rate. Many births are not attended by skilled health professionals and many women suffer or die needlessly because of pregnancy related complications. If they can get to Kabul for treatment, they are lucky. If they can get to the Cure Hospital, and come under the care of Victoria Parsa, they are blessed!

Victoria, 27, a mother of three, has been married for 11 years and Head of Midwifery at Cure for less than one. He career started at the city’s Estafan Hospital but she aspired to higher standards than it then offered and transferred five years ago to Cure, originally known as Hope Hospital. There were just three doctors and two midwives. Recalling the early days of Cure’s ownership Victoria smiles: “There were a lot of changes; now when I go to a government hospital here I make comparisons between the professional standards. I wanted to become a midwife because I wanted to help mothers and babies. I read some books about maternal deaths; postpartum haemorrhage is a big problem. In Kabul now some NGOs are working to improve things, but in the provinces it is bad. There are no proper facilities for transport, few female doctors and lack of midwife care.”

Shortly before our visit Cure Hospital’s Medical Director, Dr Jacqui Hill moved on leaving not just a temporary skills gap but an ache in many hearts. Victoria’s is one. Even talking about ‘Dr Jacqui’ is difficult for her. “She was a good teacher and special for me. When I came to Cure Hospital there was no ob/gyn doctor, then she came. In my opinion she was the foundation of ob/gyn excellence here. There is no-one like Dr Jacqui: I worked with her, she was a very kind, a good teacher, trainer and good friend to everybody.”

Tears and emotion momentarily halt our conversation. Victoria is gentleness personified, but a tenacious self-improver who juggles domestic and professional demands with commitment to developing PowerPoint, Excel and presentation skills.

Victoria’s journey to work takes her past the ruins of the Palace of Zahir Shah; it’s still imposing structure a ghostly reminder of the city’s once impressive architecture. Dust, neglect – and allegedly itinerant drug addicts - may have reclaimed this shell of the past, but across the road another structure rises; the campus of the new American University.

Victoria’s focus is not on history though, only the daily demands of her job and family. She rises at 4.30am and is in work for 7am. “I like to be on time,” she says, admitting that her recent promotion has brought challenges. Home life for she and husband Gullamnabi, a laboratory technician whom she met as a student, is also busy. “I don’t think about being tired, here there are the mothers and babies who need me here and at home my own children. There is not much time to sit and talk with my husband and always paperwork for tomorrow! Maybe 5 minutes to watch TV.”

Pioneering treatment of fistulas, ob/gyn training for GPs and development of an excellent midwifery department is something Cure Hospital is justifiably proud of, but culturally there are is still a way to go. Victoria takes us to see Musuna, 27, who has just given birth to quads by C-section. All will live although two of the tiny babies are still in incubators. She is anaemic and needed a blood transfusion the previous evening. How will she cope, I ask, knowing how poor the family are. “She already has three children” Victoria tells me, “so now one boy and six girls.”
The following evening we dine with Victoria’s family who are a further revelation. Close knit, warm, hospitable and generous they represent values that are rarely found in the UK.

FARZANA
It’s the end of a busy day. Dr Farzana Wali Gibran is clearly tired and ready to leave for her transport home. She is also gracious and patient – generous with her very precious ‘free’ time.
Farzana, 36, has been practising for 15 years. Recently she completed a one year ob/gyn Fellowship Training Programme at Cure Hospital of which she speaks glowingly. Like everyone at this special place she is dedicated and loyal; married to a doctor and with four children between four and 13, she has a lot to be happy about. But like many Afghan women, her ability to pursue a fulfilling career as well as run a home, is due in part to her husband.

“My husband is a good friend – always he is supporting me, he looks after things at home so I can work at the hospital. My three children are also very helpful; they look after the small one and I am really grateful. I’m really busy, all the time. I have no time to listen to the news or watch TV, but he helps me and so do my children.” As she talks about her family Farzana smiles and laughs at the picture of herself as a multi-tasked whirling dervish.

“I suffered a lot to become a doctor. Towards the end of my training the security, day by day, became worse and worse. Rockets rained down on Kabul. Sometimes the doors of the hospital were closed, but I was committed to my work and always my husband encouraged me to continue.” Because of the instability Farzana’s training took longer; she was fearful but never left her country. “We tried to help all the poor ladies and I will never forget the night duties interrupted by explosions launched by the Americans against the Taliban. The conditions were not good emotionally!”

During this period she had to ‘dress modestly’ like other women – but weighed against the wider problems it was not onerous. “The first thing we worried about was security; the second was education of the children. We could deal with the burqa she laughed! God spared my husband, which is the most important thing. He spent four years of his life as a soldier; 62 young boys from his area were taken; only two came home, my husband and his friend and his friend had lost a hand. One day it was my husband’s turn to travel in a helicopter but a friend who had never flown asked to take his place. After the aircraft took off it was blown up by a rocket and everyone on board killed. “So, I think God spared my husband to be a doctor.” For both of them, it is a vocation.

Being accepted on the intensive Fellowship course at Cure Hospital helped Farzana fill the gaps in her training. “I have worked hard because we represent hope for people; now as a trainer I want to transfer my skills and my knowledge to my students.

“My own children are very smart and intelligent, although my youngest has development problems; I want them all to have a better childhood than me, I don’t want them to suffer what I suffered. I want them to have the same opportunities as children educated in America or London. That is my hope.”

PAKTYA - MAHERA
Just days before I meet Mahera news of two Taliban executions has broken in Ghazni, adjacent to her home province of Paktya. Two burqa-clad women, believed to be involved in providing sexual favours to American servicemen, have been shot in the head. Graphic pictures taken immediately before and after the killings are posted on the internet, a stark reminder that summary ‘justice’ can still be meted out with impunity

At 50 Mahera is an unlikely activist; she has a long memory and recalls the periods of Russian and then Taliban rule as ‘dark times’ for all Afghans, not just women. “But the Taliban turned back time,” she says, “before they came, women were free.” Like many she had high hopes of the Kharzai government; like many she is now disillusioned. “We were happy to have democracy, but unfortunately it has not happened.”

Mahera describes her family as ‘modern, professional and enlightened’. Middle class, middle-aged and educated she is married to a doctor and enjoys a more comfortable life than many Afghan women. She doesn’t need to put her head above the parapet; but she does.
“I have many projects that I plan daily, weekly and monthly; they include literacy classes and accelerated learning programs for women.” Travelling around her province she works to establish women’s shuras (consultative councils) in each village and encourage dialogue with their male counterparts.

In practical terms this encourages women to challenge decisions previously made and actioned only by men. Feuds between families, often resulting in violence and solved by arranging a marriage, are common. “By organising themselves, and having a voice women, are able to say ‘It is not fair to give a young innocent girl to an old man’. Meetings with larger shuras got endorsement but often there were problems with the men.”

Centuries of cultural conditioning endorsed by a regime that effectively airbrushed women out of any public debate did not yield easily and Mahera had enemies. “It was hard, but we persevered,” she said.

Fear of retribution does not appear to be an issue for this determined mother of six whose pride in her own children’s professional achievements is considerable. “”My daughter will carry on my work, whether I live or die,” she tells me. “It is important, and my message to women in the UK is please help and support us. Women have no influence here. I’m happy that ISAF and NATO forces are in our country – if they leave the Taliban will come back and things will be really bad, but I wish they would be more sensitive about our culture.

ZARAF
Zaraf Shan is a career policewoman; she’s also a mother of six and the senior female officer at Kabul’s new Prison/Detention Centre. At 42 she is slim, attractive and well groomed; no hijab covers her glossy chestnut hair and in terms of both running a tight ship and presenting a modern image, she literally ‘wears the trousers’.

Zaraf joins us as we chat to the prison’s director, Brigadier Zahir Hamidi, who is explaining why we can’t photograph the female prisoners or their accommodation.
Any lingering fears that this relatively new jail will conjure up images of ‘Midnight Express’, or even Kabul’s own notorious Pul e Charkhi Prison (described as “a slaughterhouse” during the period of Russian occupation) are soon dispelled as Zaraf introduces us to what can only be described as a model detention centre.

The new facility was handed over by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), to the Afghan Ministry of Justice, in January. Generous funding from Italy was clearly well spent and as well as cells the prison was equipped with furniture, sewing machines, kitchen and catering equipment.

As Zaraf show us around it seems that there are no ‘no-go’ areas; cell doors are open or ajar but still she knocks briefly before entering. The rooms are large, lined with bunk beds and bright soft furnishings; they are en suite, have televisions and as we speak to the women, young children play at their feet.

Zaraf’s own children – three boys, three girls – provide a bond with the women many of whom hardly qualify as criminals by UK standards. Most are Afghan but 32-year-old Numthip is from Thailand. “You must speak to this sister,” urges Zaraf, putting a friendly arm around Numthip’s shoulders,” she speaks some English.” How are things here, I ask? “Much better than Bangkok I think!” grins Numthip.

“Sister” is not a word usually used in Afghanistan about women who have fallen from grace, but we hear it again and again in the prison. After declining offers of tea from the inmates I return to Zaraf’s office where she starts to look at her watch; it is weekend and she wants to get home to her family.
Female prison guards in Kabul are drawn from the ranks of the ANP (Afghan National Police) in which Zaraf has served for 18 years. Her husband is also a police officer and she never wanted to be anything else. “From childhood” she repeats to make the point, “it was my dream. It is a very hard job for a woman, but my family support me and so I don’t feel the problems so much. I love police work and if you want to do something very much you never get tired of it.”

Trading her police uniform for a burqa during the Taliban era was hard for her. “I wasn’t sure if I would ever be a policewoman again; we were almost without hope. I will always remember after they left seeing thousands of people on the streets again. I thought, ‘What’s going on here?’ and I cried with happiness under my burqa.”

Today Zaraf is responsible for 15 staff managing security in the women’s prison, patrolling, looking after administrative issues and looking for ways to make things better. Four doctors are attached to the prison and the women have access to advice on birth control, female health, STDs and hygiene training.

Another swift look at her wristwatch reminds me that we are trespassing on Zaraf’s precious family time. She has lived through turbulent times; I wonder what her hopes are for her own daughters?
She is emphatic: “I want her to be anything that she wants to be. I know how upset I would have been if I could not have been a policewoman. Freedom is the important thing.”

SAMANGAN - KHADIJA
We are late. The long and rather fraught seven-hour drive from Kabul, at breakneck speed, has left little time to eat, get our bearings or exchange more than the basic courtesies with our hosts at Afghanaid’s compound in Aybak. From there we make a further short journey, to meet the woman who I first heard about in London, weeks earlier.

She is 31-year Khadija Haideri; poet, mother and teacher – a woman who married for love and left her home in Mazur-e-Sharif to run a child peer group in Samangan province. The tiny village of Hazrat-e-Sultan, where Khadija and her girls wait for us, bakes in the afternoon heat. We are hot and rumpled; Khadija looks cool and elegant.

Nothing stirs in this arid place where the sky goes on forever and the mountains stand like sentinels in the distance. Khadija’s’ classroom’ is reached via a gateway in a mud-walled enclosure where a sign acknowledges the support of Comic Relief. As we approach there is a flurry of activity; 16 brightly dressed girls rise to their feet; I am given paper flowers, tea and a seat at the front of the group.

On a silent cue the young voices combine to sing an earnest song. I don’t understand the words, but the delivery is faultless, the refrain emphatic and the message clearly serious. It is a song about their hopes, for themselves and their country, for a brighter future.
As the ubiquitous chai sabz or saih (tea, green or black) is served Kahdija invites me to talk to the girls. Several want to become doctors or teachers, midwives; one wants to be a judge – another, quietly announces that she intends to become president. There is much laughter, but it is not the sceptical kind. Halmina believes that this dream is within her reach, which speaks volumes about what the peer group project has achieved.

The group meets three times week; those attending receive an education, instruction in handicrafts, children’s rights, women’s rights and business. Khadija nods, showing me their bank book with everyone’s name in it. “They are saving as a group; they want to invest in a shop where they can sell their own products.”

Afghanaid draws up guidelines, co-ordinates, monitors progress, evaluates and reports; 95 % of its staff are Afghan and it works with the National Solidarity Programme. Funding, however, comes from other sources and in Samangan alone is spread over 195 projects related to water provision, training for women, carpet weaving, tailoring, establishment of kitchen gardens and agriculture.

Competition for funding is keen and people like Khadija are key to delivery. She is a woman of rare value however as I discover when I meet her husband, who runs the parallel boys peer group, and their children Pakiza, 7, and four-year-old Parniyan.
The couple, who come from different ethnic backgrounds (Tazik and Pashtun), married during the Taliban period when music and dancing was forbidden. “I was very sad about that “says Khadira. Her quiet dignity belies a great strength and like many Afghan women she is passionate about the value of education. “When I was a student we studied under bombings; it was difficult but I persevered. My message to other women is to take courage and fight for themselves. They cannot wait for others to do things for them.”

She and Shefiqa work six days a week; officially from 7am to 4.30pm but Khadija later reveals that she runs classes at home for those unable to attend during the day. School, for some poor families, is a luxury they cannot afford.

There is an obvious rapport between husband and wife and a shared pride in their own children who are obviously bright; Pakira, who is in Grade Three at school, coaches children from Grades Two to Four in the evening, alongside her mother.

The couple met when Shefiqa was working as a photographer. “We already had family connections but then I noticed that he kept taking my photograph,” she said with a smile. Both are committed to crafting a better future for Afghanistan. Shefiqa worked as a journalist before they came to Aybak and completed a short BBC-sponsored training course in Afghanistan. Khadija graduated with a BA and became a teacher and published poet, but hopes her daughters will “go further”. “I had many obstacles when I was young and although we can’t predict the future I hope that things will get better in this country so that their dreams can come true.”

Her poems - the four line ‘rubay’ verse form, published in Dari under the title ‘Appearance and Words’ - reflect this. When she had children herself she became even more aware of how great the need for education was, describing it as the “key to everything”. So whose decision was it to leave their home in Mazur-e-Sharif and commit to teaching the next generation in Aybak? “A joint one” they say, in unison.

NAJIBA
Najiba laughs as she shakes the almond tree; dappled with sunlight she is a picture of happiness. Her small son Mehran mimics her mirth as he dodges the falling nuts and leaves. This garden, invisible from outside the dried mud walls of the compound that contains it, is idyllic.
It is also a thriving commercial enterprise that owes its existence, in part, to Afghanaid, a charity that has been active in the country for more than 25 years. Najiba’s garden is in the village of Q’Mazar Bala in Samangan province, around 250 kilometres North West of Kabul. The province is conservative and women routinely wear the burqa outside their homes.

Five years ago a study revealed that Samangan had one of the lowest levels of access to safe drinking water in Afghanistan and 62 per cent of households suffered health problems related to poor diet. In some areas children spend their entire day walking to a water source and returning home with it.

Poverty and malnourishment go hand in hand but projects sponsored by the EC, Afghanaid and the National Solidarity Programme have achieved much towards combating it. Projects targeted specifically at women have had singular success.

We travel along arid, dusty roads to a village that from a distance, and to western eyes, looks primitive and uninhabited. Dwellings made of dried mud hug the earth closely beneath the blinding sun. Accompanied by Afghanaid’s Women’s Co-ordinator in the Aybak area, Khori Gul, we prepare to see an example of how female empowerment is bearing fruit.
The home that 28-year-old Najiba shares with her husband Zainuddin and three children, contains a 12,000 square meter garden that has quite literally ’borne fruit’ – in abundance and in an idyllic setting.

Najiba’s garden is a breathtaking testament to what can be done with advice, provision of quality seed and cookery lessons.

Petite, curious and initially shy Najiba becomes animated as she warms to her subject. “This is the first year of the seed programme. I grow lettuces, radishes, onions, tomatoes, leeks, and squash – all sorts of things. I’m very, very pleased! There is so much – already I have sold some vegetables and given some away to my neighbours. And I’ve learned how to make new dishes - cooked and raw food - and how to pickle and preserve things.

“In winter it s very, very cold. There’s lots of snow and rain; it’s very hard here, hard to move around."

Najiba’s husband is unable to work but clearly takes pride in what he and his wife have achieved in their garden, a plot that reveals an abundance hard to imagine from outside the high walls that enclose it. Through the square vegetable garden and behind the main house Najiba leads us across a stream to an orchard where grapes, almonds and peaches grow. Another area extends beyond for further cultivation.

As ‘sisters’ communication is so tactile and intuitive that it is easy to forget how conservative this area is until Khori Gul explains that Najiba would like us to eat, take tea and meet some of the young women who have learned sewing and carpet weaving skills in her Aladdin’s Cave of a house. This poses a problem because Amin, our interpreter, is male and not welcome in ‘the women’s room’. I want to speak to the two teenagers who have crafted the intricately embroidered dresses and waistcoats hanging on the walls. A compromise is reached: Amin cannot come in, but he can stand outside the open window . Perching on the sill, he continues to translate for me.

Parwan, 19,and Rojan, 16, are the seamstresses who have made the glittering waistcoat and hat that will be worn by a young boy at a family ceremony. It took three days to make; the materials cost 300AFS and it will sell in the bazaar for 800AFS, turning a profit of 500AFS. Afghanaid provided the training, trainer and raw materials in consultation with the local community that decides what products are needed. “Before it took one week to make a handkerchief that sold for 50AFs,” says Najiba.

Twenty women did the training course; each trainee passed on skills to two others. It’s a slow process, but this is an area where change does not come quickly and all progress is significant.

HELMAND - FATIMA
When Fatima found out that her husband had decided to take a 14-year-old bride she was not happy. In fact she was livid. “ I tore my clothes and cried; she was an orphan with just one sister, and he didn’t even tell me! Now we fight all the time.”

It’s hard to imagine Fatima distraught; warm, extrovert and irrepressible she displays none of the reserve that characterises most women at Lashkar Gah women’s centre. Her eyes sparkle with mischief, her hands are everywhere – touching clothes and hair, patting the settee and pulling me over to sit beside her. “Now, I will tell you my story,” she says without bidding. “It is good and it is bad. I expect you will wonder how I survive!” This announcement is delivered with laughter, enthusiasm and not a trace of self-pity.

Earlier in the week Fatima had featured as an inaugural member of the town’s first Women and Children’s Justice Group attended by PRT (Provisional Reconstruction Team) Justice Advisor, Fraser Hirst. A mover and shaker in her own town of Gereshk, she nodded enthusiastically as he gently led the more reserved ladies through the process of selecting a leader, suggesting what qualities they should look for and how a deputy might also be elected if more than one obvious candidate was proposed.

Fatima was not a candidate for office; she is already committed to a women’s shura in her home town where she is principal of the local school. But her experience and confidence do much to move things along in a process utterly alien to many of the members.

When we catch up with each other again Fatima is waiting for a car to take her back to Gereshk. Travel is fraught with difficulty in Helmand and without transport and a driver she would be unable to attend the Lashkar Gah meetings. Determined to make the most of our time she seizes me with the compulsion of Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner to tell her tale.

“I have six children; four boys and two girls. That is quite enough! I am educated; I finished 12th Grade and became a teacher. When I had just two children my husband took a second wife who gave him five children.”

This arrangement seemed to work and the family lived together in relative harmony until the surprise third wife was introduced. The three women get on well: “I do not fight with them, but with him!” she insists, adding matter-of-factly that he beats her “like an animal”.

“I earn money, I have a good job – but I have to give it all to my husband.”

We touch on the subject of divorce and Fatima laughs.”Oh no, no ; it is not our custom. But it is good to say this to you; women here never talk about these things.” It occurs to me that while Fatima’s story sound grim, it has done nothing to dampen her spirits, any more than the death threats she receives for raising the profile of women in the province.