Diary from Afghanistan (1)

More Diaries - 2006 - March 2008 - June 2008 - November 2008 - January 2009 - March 2009

14-11-2006

Roya and Alka Sadat
alka_sadat@yahoo.com; sadat_roya@yahoo.com;

We met the Sadat family in Herat. There are four sisters, and all of them are artists. The oldest, Roya, is a movie director. Her hobby started during the Taliban regime when she was locked in her house with a book and movies. She recently participated in a meeting of young directors in North Korea, and a Spanish reporter has done a documentary covering her life. Alka, the second sister has followed in her sister’s footsteps and is majoring in documentary film direction. We met her in the burn unit of the Hospital of Herat when she was filming part of a special that she has sold to a local women’s association. She was awarded a prize in a meeting concerning human rights and peace in Kabul. The two younger sisters' main occupations are music and poetry. 

14-11-2006

Confronting self-immolation in Afghanistan by developing strategies for dealing with the problem.

www.medicamondiale.org; www.aihrc.org.af;
 

The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission organized the first regional conference on the topic of self-immolation which took place from November 14-16, 2006 in Kabul. Lecturers who participated in the conference came from India, Iran, Kurdistan, Uzbekistan, Bangladesh, Tajikistan, and Sri Lanka. They presented the situations in their own countries.

There were representatives from the Afghan government and members of the civil society. During the last day, ACAF participated in one of the five work groups that formulated proposals and social recommendations directed at the institutions and organizations who are responsible for implementation in all Afghanistan.

We think it was an important step because there was an open discussion concerning the problem of suicide and self-immolation in front of a large audience of both men and women and it caught the attention of all types of local and international media.

We are thankful for the courage and bravery of the Afghan woman survivor who told her story, defeating the humiliation and stigma that persecutes these women in the country.
 

12-11-2006

The two reporters, the camera, and the editor, all of whom did a 30 minute television report, returned to Spain. We’re all happy because they filmed more than 8 hours. We have interviewed key Afghans such as the delegate from the Herat Ministry of Health, who is also the director of the hospital, the delegate from the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, the director of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, students from two faculties, and all of the currently hospitalized patients from the burn unit. We were also in four private houses filming women who had previously burned themselves, which is a true accomplishment because the Afghans don’t let just anyone into their houses, let alone foreigners with cameras. We did it! Then, we had an extraordinary opening and conclusion to the report. We were at the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) base with the Spanish Minister of Health who welcomed us exclusively after visiting the field hospital. She was interested in our work in the area and she wants us to keep her up-to-date when we return to Spain. Lastly, the four of us went to Kabul to interview Francesc Vendrell, EU Special Representative in Afghanistan, and he has asked to speak to us again before we leave the country. He wants to know more about our work, and he will introduce us to the delegate of Human Rights so that we can work in conjunction with her. In my opinion, Mr. Vendrell is one of the people who knows the most about Afghanistan, and it was a privilege to be able to meet with him.

Eva and I have been working hard, but I think that it has been worth it. Now we’re ready to leave, as we go home at the end of November, and next week we’ll be in Kabul for five days because we have been invited to participate in the first international meeting about self-immolation. There will be guests from other countries that also suffer from this problem such as India, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan. We have been asked to present our conclusions about the forms of social intervention to help the women who light themselves on fire. We are very satisfied that they have invited the Association for Cooperation with Afghanistan (ACAF).

Before we go, we will have established the first Afghan association of burned women, and we will leave two people working on the topic. The headquarters will be located in the Ministry of Women’s Affairs building, where we have already been given an office. The association will be supplied and supported by the local resources of other associations, and the burned women, those with whom we have already been in contact, along with those hospitalized in the future, will benefit from the Association. The doctors from the hospital will redirect the women to the Association and that way they are guaranteed to continue receiving physical therapy and all other forms of aid, both legal and social. We believe that this is the most logical plan of action in this closed, fragmented society..

I think that the hardest part is over. Every single day we leave the hospital sick and crying. There’s a more difficult case with every patient. Last week, two patients died in two days (if my numbers are correct, since we’ve been here, 14 women have died, and that’s just in the hospital.) It didn’t look like Mina had to have that end after she was given skin grafts. She lit herself on fire because her husband was jealous, and he constantly beat her with a stick. Another case was that of Zeinab, whose husband came home drunk and hit her with the Koran, telling her that she was impure. She threatened to burn herself, and as her husband’s answer was that he didn’t care what she did, she sprinkled oil all over her body and lit herself on fire. She told us that even when she was in flames, her husband continued to hit her. And there are other stories just like these… more and more and more…

25-10-2006

It’s been days since we’ve been able to write, but the truth is that the last three days we haven’t been able to leave the house. The security measures have been tightened due to the end-of- Ramadan parties and the attack by a warlord in the Shindand Province of Herat, and there were fears of retaliation in our area.

We’ve taken advantage of this time to get up-to-date with our photos, notes, interviews, thoughts and, above all, our feelings. The truth is that our folders, both paper and those on the computer, are growing, and they are being filled with codes, numbers, stories, names, and addresses, but also our minds are being plunged into a reality that we want to understand and dissect, but in a society that is so tired, behind the times, and closed, it isn’t easy to do.

We continue our struggle, determined to understand in order to help to the best of our abilities even if we never end up comprehending the reason behind so much violence.

08-10-2006

Esther, from the orthopedic center of the International Committee of the Red Cross calls us because Farzaneh has gone there to pick up medications and bandages for her wounds. We can’t miss this opportunity.

Farzaneh waits for us with her brother and she agrees to speak with us and tell us her story.

She’s 18 years old, and she looks very shy. She’s never gone to school, and she comes from a family of farm laborers. At age 13, she was forced to marry a friend of the family who was 22 years old. She went to live in her in-laws’ house with two brothers-in-law, their wives, and four children. From right after the wedding on, she suffered insults and beatings from her mother-in-law because she didn’t know how to do household chores. A few months later, her husband also started to abuse her because of her arguments with his mother. It’s now been two years since the afternoon that her mother-in-law threw a pot of boiling water on her because she didn’t like the food that Farzaneh was preparing. Farzaneh became pregnant again, after having already lost her two-month-old baby because her mother-in-law wouldn’t let her hold him or feed him

Her husband’s brother and his wife took her to the hospital of Herat; she had deep burns over 85% of her body. She was hospitalized for six months, and after she spent two months in the orthopedic center of the International Committee of the Red Cross where they helped her recover by giving her physical therapy and free medications.

Her mother-in-law was in prison for six months and her husband for two, but they paid and were released. Now Farzaneh lives at home with her family, and her in-laws have been banned from having any contact with her. She came with her brother.

She was operated on in Kabul to cut the strips of skin that connect the shoulders with the ears, but there’s been little improvement, plus she has very limited arm movement. Now her brother has sold a part of their father’s land, and they want to go to Iran for a new operation.

We helped her obtain a letter from the hospital certifying that it’s not possible to do anything else in Herat and that she needs to be treated in another country. We spent three days in lines and going to and from different offices to get the letter, but it will facilitate the process of getting a passport and an entrance visa for her.

SHE LEFT US TODAY? Thursday, October 12, 2006

Parisa

She’s 18 years old, and she arrived at the hospital of Herat ten days ago with 95% of her body burned by self-immolation.

When her father died, during the Taliban regime, her mother took her children, who were still very young, and she went to work in Iran, where Parisa could attend school (until 4th grade of elementary school) with her two older sisters.

She got married when she was 16 to a first cousin who was two years older than her. He works as a baker and is illiterate. According to Parisa, he suffers from mental illness due to his father’s abuse when he was younger. They live with her in-laws and their four children who are still young. The father-in-law has a small grocery store.

After three months of marriage, her husband had already started to abuse her daily, but she seems to forgive him because of his mental disability. In the house, there are two groups, one of men and one of women (her mother-in-law who is also her aunt always defends her) but the men deny the women any basic necessities (food, clothes, shoes) and freedom of movement.

Parisa’s mother had tried to intervene in the conflict by talking to her son-in-law numerous times, and even on one occasion she ended up reporting him to the police, who took him to the station where they beat him up and returned him to his house. The situation didn’t get any better; it only worsened.

The father-in-law had told his son that if he didn’t kill Parisa then he would do it personally.

The day that Parisa lit herself on fire, her mother had gone once again to their house to talk to her son-in-law. He and his father ended up attacking the woman. They threw her out of the house, impeding Parisa and her fifty-day-old son to leave with her. The father-in-law locked the door to the house, and Parisa sprayed cooking oil all over herself and began to threaten that she would light herself on fire if they didn’t open the door and let her leave. Her father-in-law told her that she could do it because he didn’t care if he went to prison.

Parisa did it. Her mother-in-law and a cousin came to her aid and took her to the hospital.

Her husband and father-in-law went to prison, but it seems that they are already free. The baby is being cared for by the mother-in-law/aunt. There is very little hope for Parisa, but if she leaves, she says she’ll go live with her mother. The doctors keep repeating to us that there is no hope, but we still have it. Today she’s eaten a little, and she’s walked a bit also.

5-10-2006

The sand storms have already started; in the middle of the afternoon a diabolical wind drags away everything in its path… chairs, tables, papers… it even bothers the spoiled housecat, but the worst is the sand that is two fingers deep on top of any surface, like what happened yesterday with our laptop computer…

We continue with the immolations; two more women have been admitted to the hospital. In four days there have been three self-immolations just in the hospital of Herat. We ask ourselves how many women are there who don’t make it to center, and how many are there whose families deny them the right of being aided?

Sara will be discharged tomorrow- she’s the girl stretched out in the bed with her son at her side- she purposely burned herself on her chest and stomach. Between the adults and children, twenty people live in her in-laws’ house. She doesn’t get along with her mother-in-law, which is the reason she intentionally injured herself. She’s letting us visit her next week in her house- she’s going back to her in-laws’...

2/10/2006

We want to express ourselves or… scream, I’m not sure which is the right word. We want to be heard. What’s happening in Afghanistan is really awful, women are burned by their husbands, mothers-in-law and even by themselves and there’s no one putting a stop to it. There’s a need for self–immolation prevention campaigns, for educational campaigns. ¿is it a lack of money that causes these women to burn themselves]  NO NO NO, it is because of the intolerance, chauvinism, misunderstood religion, and all the imaginable adjectives that affect the segregation of women and the violence towards them...

Yesterday our cook’s sister committed suicide by lighting herself on fire, just 22 years old; her husband used to hit her.

Today in the hospital we saw a woman, burned by her husband and mother-in-law, who is about to die, the doctors give her fewer than two days; we left with her screams of pain resonating in our ears.

2/10/2006

We’ve now been moving about the city for a week. We have a vehicle, driver and translator; with them and our cover-it-all attire we feel more integrated, we haven't lost our desire to help. In Herat most women continue to wear the blue chadarhi (burqa) and because of the fasting, the work day has been drastically reduced, ending at 3pm.

We’re women and we’ve come from very far (some 7000 km) with the intention of offering support and the need to understand the many women who one day opted to burn themselves in response to a situation that they could no longer bear. Which is it, a lack or an excess of information in a society that barely permits, or completely ignores, the human rights of women?

We ask a lot and listen even more. Attempting to commit suicide by lighting oneself on fire is a well-recognized problem by the authorities and all the civil associations of Herat and the whole Western region; it is also a taboo and a humiliation for the victims and their families.

Because of the number and magnitude of priorities and the lack of witnesses and resources, Afghan and international associations have decided to confront the problem through more general public awareness campaigns and prevention of violence against women campaigns.

But the Provincial Hospital of Herat (with the only Intensive Care Unit for burn victims, reference center in a region of some three and a half million people) doesn’t benefit from the long-term objectives because it has only 21 beds, one medical team consisting of two surgeons, one anesthesiologist, and seven nurses… gauze, saline solution, and the assistance of two cleaners.
After numerous days of meetings, we obtained the support of the hospital directors and finally we have access to the list of admitted patients of the burn unit.

In 1384 (March 2005 to March 2006) 540 cases were recorded, half of which were women. So far this year 1385 (March 2006 to March 2007) there have already been 423 cases of which 91% are women… and children.

Doctors say that in their experience approximately 14% of the women admitted are there because of self-immolation while we calculate that the mortality rate of all hospitalizations has decreased this year from 20% to 12%.

This week we’ve also learned, unfortunately, that these cold, arbitrary figures are the closest illustration/only reflection of the reality; a reality just as cruel as the lack of medication and treatments against pain and to help self-esteem.

From now on, our objective is to help the burned women, no matter how they obtained their injuries: in a domestic accident, suicide, or as a result of aggression. We already know some of the ones that have survived and remain in the hospital. The involvement and commitment of some of the centre’s workers encourages us to persevere.

25/09/2006

We landed in Kabul on September 15, 2006, the 26th of Sunbula of 1385 (26/06/1385). It’s Friday, the day of rest and prayer in Afghanistan. There are very few people in the streets.

- “Such calm for a city that is so noisy, crowded and chaotic as Kabul”

- “It’s a shame that the country has returned to how it was, the extreme poverty, begging…”

It’s been a tense week in Kabul, Afghans and members of the international community have commented on 2 suicide attacks, one that occurred on Jalalabad Road and the other against the US Embassy, plus it was the anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks. There are rumors of more suicide attacks and you can feel the uneasiness in the air.

We won’t spend much time in the capital, just enough time for the government visits. We legalized ACAF (Association for Cooperation with Afghanistan) before the authorities and we presented the Ariana Project to the Afghan Ministry of Women’s Affairs which is thankful that the focus of the project deals with such a neglected problem and one for which they don’t have the resources. The director of the department in Herat will provide us with the available information for the commencement of our work.

We settled in on the 17th of September in Herat, the province in which the first phase of the Ariana Project will develop over the next three months.

In this first week, we have had the opportunity to share information with representatives from ministries and public health centers, and women’s and human rights associations. The project is well-received wherever we go; the doors of cooperation are opening…

We’ll be prudent; two hours after our visit to the blue mosque of Herat there was a suicide attack directed at the deputy police chief; he and the imam of the mosque are severely injured, and six police officers and seven civilians were killed in the attack. As our first week in Afghanistan ends, there is discomfort because of the declarations of Pope Benedict. Ramadan has started.