Help the Afghan Children Archives

There are many challenges that Afghanistan relief workers face on a daily basis in Afghanistan. These challenges include, but are certainly not limited to, lack of substantial coordination, lack of an established infrastructure in the country, increasing psychological stress factors (escalated by recent security concerns), and of course the ever present challenge of finding funding to keep programs operating. The obstacles and the uncertainty, at times, seem so looming that questioning the value, effectiveness and, in colder terms, feasibility of relief work in Afghan becomes inevitable. But amidst the difficulties there are gestures taken by individuals and communities that bring back the focus to the original purpose of Afghanistan relief work.

Recent events at Kohak Primary School, located in the Province of Kandahar and sponsored by Help The Afghan Children (HTAC) for the last year and a half, illustrates this point. Kohak Primary School is located 10 kilometers northwest of Kandahar City in the District of Arghandab. This 20 classroom school was built by Tear Fund upon the request of the local community. The sponsored school has a total of 530 students (520 male, 10 female) and 14 teachers (all male).

The overwhelming challenge in operating this school has proved to be the continued security concern. Kandahar and its neighboring provinces are major areas of operations for both the US military and forces opposed to the central government. There have been several instances where NGOs (Non Government Organizations), their respective projects, and their staff working in these regions have been targeted. The attacks have been carried out primarily to cause disruption and instability in the country and presumably because the attackers associate the NGOs with the military operations of the United States. The fading of lines between military operations and humanitarian work caused by the US military’s use of humanitarian relief to win public support in its “hearts and minds” campaign has not helped the issue.

April 25th, 2005, Allahdad, one of Kohak School's fifth graders, was stopped by several un-identified individuals on his way to school. The un-identified individuals tore his school books, and warned him not to attend school anymore. Two days later, HTAC’s Liaison Officer, was awakened by gunfire directed at the school. Several of the bullets hit the main entrance, but the majority of the shots were targeted at the outer walls. The local police department was contacted but failed to respond, stating that it would be too dangerous for their officers to travel outside of the city at night.

April 28th, the Liaison Officer and the Educational Director of Arghandab called an emergency meeting of the Community Shura (a council of locals that is established by HTAC in each project site to promote local ownership) to discuss the recent incidents. After the meeting, members of the Community Shura, along with the Educational Director, traveled to the District Government and asked for assistance in curbing future incidents. Citing the small number of police officers, the District Government said they could not do anything more for security and that the villagers had to rely on their own resources.
It is these kinds of incidents, where everything seems to be working against the people, which pose the greatest challenge to aid workers. This is where one begins to ask the cardinal questions: what is the purpose, why am I here and what is the value of our small intervention in the face of obstacles as tall and as rugged as the mountains? However, what happened in Kohak village shortly after this incident is where the energy to continue working, even in the most difficult of areas, gets rejuvenated.
These steps do not mean that the problems of Kohak School have disappeared. The security will continue to be a concern, low enrollment of Afghan girls will remain an issue, and getting the teachers trained at the school will be the biggest challenge and perhaps the biggest sign of success. However, knowing that Allahdad has continued to come to school, not missing a single day, after his life was threatened, brings the hazy confusion surrounding relief work back to its original focus.
Relief work is not about feasibility studies, “hearts and minds” campaigns for military purposes, target areas, enabling environments, funding priorities or the other thousand and one jargon that has clouded the purpose of relief work in the last decade. Neither is relief work about air-lifting “miracle pill” style solutions to be force fed to people thousands of miles away with the false promise that it will make their troubles go away. Relief work is about lending a helping hand to enable individuals and communities to solve their own problems, in their own ways; it is knowing that our small interventions are best when it becomes a tool in the larger context of the local solution rather than the local people becoming a tool of our interventions. The ultimate value of Afghanistan relief work is not measured by projects successfully completed and phased out but rather by knowing that we extended our helping hands, in an independent and impartial manner (as stated in the International Humanitarian Law), without any strings attached, to another fellow human being in his/her time of need. With this definition, we can judge the value of our charity work in no uncertain terms.