DIARY FROM AFGHANISTAN (6)

(Alfredo García Morales)

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

Purgatory

Herat – Afghanistan - 25/03/2009

When in purgatory, one does not know if one is to go to heaven or to hell, if one's karma will cause him to evolve, or to devolve. Religion aside, the mention is relevant because in Afghanistan, one is always just one step from either of the two destinies - heaven or hell, to evolve or not to evolve…
Although this country is "on the road to recovery", it has been forced to exist between two worlds - The two options here can be as simple as life versus death, or working for life as a whole versus working for "one's own" life.

The international community (which does not live up to it's name, in so much as it has a lot of the "common" but little "unity") has arrived in this country, although it does little more than show off its wealth to the natives. After so many years, they look on with indifference and resignation, seeing how "their cause" is the excuse of so many to experiment on the village. It is clear however that this village does not need experiments but that it does need what we all already know it needs - help. Simple, selfless, help.
But this help doesn't arrive, doesn't accomplish, but outrages, and above all disheartens those who think experiments require mice and monkeys to find out their result. This village is neither a mouse nor a monkey, it is simply one like the rest that life has punished with all its might.

Purgatory gives us the chance to redeem ourselves (I only refer to the concept, not to the religion nor the theory to which it belongs), but what is seen here is that in this purgatory, one can begin a new life - It is a place where one comes to purify, but never achieves that purification - instead, one restarts with all of one's "human" weaknesses.
The greater part of those who come on missions to Afghanistan do it with the good intentions of contributing to a country that really needs it, that is clearly on the edge of the precipice and is still being pushed. The people who come to these places wanting to put into practice their interest, vocation or desire to serve, without giving up their own life (as is logical), those who without a shadow of a doubt stand out from the majority for their values and conviction, do not cease to be a test of personal ego through which we channel our need to serve. Moreover, we direct this wish to help (which is definitively ours and not that of some one else), towards what we feel relevant in the majority of cases.
 
Afghanistan is today worse than yesterday and better than tomorrow, the Taliban are surrounding cities and now control a large part of the country. The festering corruption makes its impression on every level - drugs now account for 90% of GDP - it takes hold wherever it can. Injustice - impunity is absolute. 30 years of war have impeded the doing of justice and the executioners are still those who rule. The international community has invested so much money in this country that if it had been used in a good way, each and every Afghan would today be teaching us how to live.

Aid destined for security (where immense sums are spent) counts in the "help" given to the Afghan people although with this same money, 4,000 Afghanis have been killed "by mistake". And these are not just numbers, they are more than 4,000 true stories, like that of a 14 year old who goes running out when she feels aeroplanes coming, and after the bomb falls sees bits of her mother, father and brothers go flying over her head.

Where so many armies are financed that they even shoot each other since they are not even organized, and they are in so much fear that they run when faced with the slightest doubt, no questions asked.
This is why from the macro to the micro, this country continues to "suffer" international aid, from monstrously large international organisms, whose objective is so diluted that its work becomes useless, to a community of countries that want to "help" the village by donating food, though this is now sold in the shops and benefits only those who are always "alive".

Behind all of this "help" there are people, educated people, the most professional of the international community, with salaries that leave nothing to be desired, but that nonetheless do not realise that more than seven years of help have only caused pain to the Afghan people and shame for the international community.
People who now are not working for life as a whole, but for their own lives, continuing to do a bad job when they should instead have a bit of self-criticism and denounce, not carry on occupying positions that they don't know how to occupy or that after so many years have not produced results.

This country is not a country that accept mistakes, nor experiments. One should not take advantage of this situation in order to get oneself promoted and make a profit.
If it is true that purgatory exists, and serves to inform people of their destiny, this place is called Afghanistan, and those who go down are more numerous than those who go up to heaven.