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By Dave Mazza
Editor’s Note: The following interview was conducted for the KBOO 90.7 FM program Voices from the Edge on Aug. 9, 2006. The following is an excerpt of that interview, printed here with the permission of KBOO and Professor Zaher Wahab.
Dave Mazza: We have a very interesting guest, Zaher Wahab, professor of education at Lewis and Clark College, and for the past five years, he has been going back to his native land of Afghanistan to assist his government in trying to rebuild their higher education system in the face of our own government’s attempt to flatten everything in that country. Good morning, Zaher.
Zaher Wahab: Good morning, David. Good to be with you.
DM: It’s good to see you safe and sound back here again. Glad you could come on down this morning. Let’s just jump right into it. Should we believe the president about what conditions are like in Afghanistan?
ZW: I’m afraid I have to disagree with Washington-speak about what is actually happening on the ground in Afghanistan.
DM: We’re not building democracy?
ZW: No, only a formal democracy. Politically speaking, it is true that there is a constitution, and there were elections for the presidency about two years ago, and for the national parliament and also the provincial councils about a year ago, but these elections were clearly managed and manipulated by the American Embassy in Afghanistan. And there were other problems. You are talking about a country with 80 percent illiteracy; a place where many places are inaccessible; security was horrible in about half of the country; and it was known that the former American ambassador was very active on the ground, encouraging certain people to vote this way and that way, and discouraging others from running against Mr. Karzai. And he also, allegedly was distributing money. Furthermore, the power structure is such in Afghanistan where the same people -warlords, drug lords, local chiefs, commanders, militia chiefs, who had power, that power structure manifested itself in both electoral processes, thus many of these people are sitting in the parliament. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, International Crisis Group, and the Afghan Independent Human Rights Organization are saying, “We know these criminals, murderers, thieves, and so forth, now sitting in the parliament, local assemblies, and high government offices.” So much for democracy. There were no political parties. Money, violence, and ethnicity were major factors in elections. The supreme court was formed two weeks ago. The informal power system reigns supreme.
DM: If you follow the press here, one would have the idea the country’s largely pacified and the “terrorists” brought to heel. True or false?
ZW: It’s a disgrace, and disservice, both to the U.S. and to Afghanistan. The country is being forgotten and marginalized, because there are more spectacular events taking place in Iraq, Palestine, Darfur, Lebanon, and in other places. Many Afghans, including the president, intellectuals, and common citizens, are worried that the United States might again forget the country, just the way it did after 1992, when the Communist regime collapsed and the country was taken over by the Mujahidin. And people actually have a reason to be concerned, because Washington would like to reduce the troop level from the current 20,000 to about 16,000 in the next few months. Washington is outsourcing the operation in Afghanistan to NATO. NATO has about 8,000 troops, mainly from Canada, Britain, and the Netherlands. The United States, the so-called Coalition of the Willing, just turned over the operations in the south and southwest to NATO. And, in terms of economic assistance, although the USAID has increased economic assistance some, but not as much as the country needs. But if you look at European and Asian press, there’s extensive coverage of events in Afghanistan, and the picture is grim.
DM: Now, did you spend all your time in the capital, or did you get a chance to get out into the countryside at all?
ZW: I went to a couple of the provinces, because we are trying to reform teacher education programs throughout the country. There are 16 four-year teacher colleges in Afghanistan. I am helping the University of Massachusetts and Indiana University and an outfit called Academy for Educational Development. It’s true that if you visit Kabul and some of the other major cities, you do see some “development” and “progress,” that is to say, some incredible and gaudy “McMansions,” hotels, restaurants, huge mansions, a few shopping malls, wedding halls, especially in Kabul. But all of these are for the expatriates and the Afghan artistocracy. Most people don’t even have power or drinking water. And most of the country subsist in the Middle Ages.
DM: Is this new construction you’re talking about?
ZW: This is new construction, and these expensive hotels where you can spend $1300 a night. You have these shopping malls in Kabul, for example, powered by generators because there’s no regular electricity. Kabul still does not have regular running water, electricity, garbage collection, sewer service or even a single traffic light. And this is a city of three and a half million people, and the Americans and westerners have been there for the last five years spending billions. But once you leave Kabul, the capital, you step into the Middle Ages; people live, farm, struggle, and suffer the way they always have. The country is desperately poor, and these three decades of turmoil have done extensive damage to roads, irrigation, agriculture, housing, schools, factories, safety and security. We were always escorted, wherever we went, including Kabul. I was not allowed to leave the guest house alone and go for a walk, for example, or go eat someplace, or get in a taxi. And if you were leaving the city, of course, extensive arrangements had to be made for security, and so forth.
DM: Incredible. What’s the relationship between U.S. troops and the average Afghan?
ZW: There’s no relationship whatsoever or rather a hostile relationship. And this is a big problem. I was about one-half mile from the demonstration, and from where this episode took place. A U.S. convoy was coming from Bagram to the city, and one of the drivers apparently lost control. Later we learned that he had been drinking. He killed six drivers an pedestrians — I could see the demonstrators coming from that area towards the center of the city and I wanted to take pictures, but my driver took off. That day about 16 or 17 people were killed by the Americans and the Afghan police. The whole city was shook up —there were spontaneous demonstrations and riots; people were attacking anything that looked foreign. We were all what we call “locked down.” All of the internationals, including myself, were ordered to stay put. Extensive damage was done to police stations, aid agencies, a TV station, hotels, and some of the Chinese restaurants which front for whorehouses, and so forth. And the demonstrators were chanting “Death to America,” “Death to Karzai,” and “Death to Bush,” because this was one in a series of allied forces killing Afghans. This happens all the time; there’s a war going on. And a lot of times they drop bombs, shell innocent people in villages, mosques, or weddings; arrest, torture, or kill in prisons. It happens all the time. There were previous demonstrations where people were shot and killed. Recently there was a revelation here about people dying when they were in American custody in Bagram. Salam Zaeef, the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, who spent three years at Bagram, Guantanamo, and in the Kandahar prison, has an autobiography in which he talks about how people were tortured to death or humiliated. There’s really no relationship between the expatriate community, whether it’s the army, diplomats, or aid agencies, and the locals No socializing, trust, affection, understanding, or dialogue. It is a colonizer-colonized relationship.
DM: Is it exacerbated by the fact they’re not receiving the sort of training and support they need in order to be effective there and at least be able to interact with the civilians?
ZW: Over the last five years I have met literally hundreds of internationals, including Americans, in my capacity as advisor to the Ministry of Higher Education. I have dealt with ambassadors, military officers, bodyguards, and I’ve had to go to the American Embassy, the USAID office, etc. So I know some things about the international community, including Americans. The foot soldiers are very young Americans — 20- and 21-year-olds, from places like Bend, perhaps, or some place in Ohio. And Kabul is like a garrison city. The internationals and the Afghan elite live in one part of the city, which is the nicer part. Everybody else lives in other places. The security situation is very bad. If you drive through Kabul, for example, you see where the internationals live, there are sandbags, high walls, armed guards 24 hours a day, concertina wires over the top, electric wires, and surveillance cameras. There are thousands of internationals, working for all kinds of NGOs and the military; most of them drive around in armored cars with tinted windows. So the only contact and encounter between the internationals and the locals are with your driver, interpreter, bodyguard, maid, cook, seamstress, gardener, and the people you work with directly. Other than that, people don’t walk around. There’s just no normal contact; and I experienced this first-hand, because I was living at a guest house for the expatriates. You can spend months there and never really talk to an average Afghan. Which is a real problem, because there’s no communication, understanding, or collaboration. And that compounds all the relationships.
DM: Sort of rings of the traditional imperialist outpost, you know, with the exception of the servants — that’s the only contact they may well have with the local people.
ZW: Right, and your servants are serving you all imported goods.
DM: Must be fine, though, because they’re bringing me my tea, so everything’s okay.
ZW: Not just tea. You can have fresh coffee, Danish cheese, Scandinavian cereals, American steaks, imported milk. I mean, everything. And the cook probably didn’t even know what we were eating. It’s a very bad situation.
DM: I assume the food supply system is not going as well for the remainder of the people in Kabul?
ZW: The heavy presence of internationals has really deformed the economy, especially prices. Prices have gone up for everything because internationals have demands and they have money. So whether it’s rents, consumer goods, food products or services — whatever — they go up, and even the Afghan middle class can’t afford any of that. This is one reason why Afghans resent the international presence, because they have made life very expensive; while their dismal income stagnates, their desires are exploding.
DM: One of the reason for you being there is to help rebuild the higher education system. How’s that going?
ZW: There are 19 institutions of higher learning in Afghanistan. A few of them are just colleges. Ranging from Kabul University which has about 9,000 students to Bamyan University which has fewer than 500 students. We’re not at the emergency level at this point. Most of the universities have some kind of a campus where you have classrooms, offices, enough chairs, maybe electricity and perhaps water and toilets - simple things like that. But some of them are just virtual universities. There’s no campus so they rent buildings here and there or someone will donate a building or a dormitory. At this point, there are about 40,000 students in the higher education system. When I first went there in 2002, there were about 6,000 students; and so some progress is being made. For example, of the 40,000 students in higher education, about 19 percent are women, especially in the big cities, but even in the provinces there are women. About 13 percent of the faculty and maybe 15 percent of the staff are women. More and more universities have some physical facilities. A handful have computers and Internet. Some of them have generators so they can power the places. But the quality is very, very poor. There are some two thousand professors in the university system. Only six percent have doctoral and maybe 40 percent have Masters degrees. About 55 percent of the professors in the universities only have Bachelors degrees. And the system has been very isolated. People have not read much. They haven’t attended conferences. There is no professional culture or professional development. Students don’t have books. Poverty affects enrollment. Dorm facilities are terrible and limited.
Part 2 coming soon
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The Portland Alliance
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