Afghan Enclave Seen as Model for Development

Written By: SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: November 12, 2009

JURM, Afghanistan — Small grants given directly to villagers have brought about modest but important changes in this corner of Afghanistan, offering a model in a country where official corruption and a Taliban insurgency have frustrated many large-scale development efforts.
Since arriving in Afghanistan in 2001, the United States and its Western allies have spent billions of dollars on development projects, but to less effect and popular support than many had hoped for.

Much of that money was funneled through the central government, which has been increasingly criticized as incompetent and corrupt. Even more has gone to private contractors hired by the United States who siphon off almost half of every dollar to pay the salaries of expatriate workers and other overhead costs.

Not so here in Jurm, a valley in the windswept mountainous province of Badakhshan, in the northeast. People here have taken charge for themselves — using village councils and direct grants as part of an initiative called the National Solidarity Program, introduced by an Afghan ministry in 2003.

Before then, this valley had no electricity or clean water, its main crop was poppy and nearly one in 10 women died in childbirth, one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world.
Today, many people have water taps, fields grow wheat and it is no longer considered shameful for a woman to go to a doctor.

If there are lessons to be drawn from the still tentative successes here, they are that small projects often work best, that the consent and participation of local people are essential and that even baby steps take years.

The issues are not academic. Bringing development to Afghans is an important part of a counterinsurgency strategy aimed at drawing people away from the Taliban and building popular support for the Western-backed government by showing that it can make a difference in people’s lives.

“We ignored the people in districts and villages,” said Jelani Popal, who runs a state agency that appoints governors. “This caused a lot of indifference. ‘Why should I side with the government if it doesn’t even exist in my life?’ ”

Jurm was tormented by warlords in the 1990s, and though it never fell to the Taliban, the presence of the central government, even today, is barely felt. The idea to change that was simple: people elected the most trusted villagers, and the government in Kabul, helped by foreign donors, gave them direct grants — money to build things like water systems and girls’ schools for themselves.

Local residents contend that the councils work because they take development down to its most basic level, with villagers directing the spending to improve their own lives, cutting out middle men, local and foreign, as well as much of the overhead costs and corruption.
“You don’t steal from yourself,” was how Ataullah, a farmer in Jurm who uses one name, described it.

The grants were small, often less than $100,000. The plan’s overall effectiveness is still being assessed by academics and American and Afghan officials, but the idea has already been replicated in thousands of villages across the country.

Anecdotal accounts point to some success. There have even been savings. When villages in the Jurm Valley wanted running water, for instance, they did much of the work themselves, with help from an engineer. A private contractor with links to a local politician had asked triple the price. (The villagers declined.)

Even such modest steps have not come easily. Jurm presented many obstacles, and it took a development group with determined local employees to jump-start the work here.
One basic problem was literacy, said Ghulam Dekan, a local worker with the Aga Khan Development Network, the nonprofit group that supports the councils here.
Unlike the situation in Iraq, which has a literacy rate of more than 70 percent, fewer than a third of Afghans can read, making the work of the councils painfully slow. Villagers were suspicious of projects, believing that the people in the groups that introduced them were Christian missionaries.

“They didn’t understand the importance of a road,” Mr. Dekan said.
Most projects, no matter how simple, took five years. Years of war had smashed Afghan society into rancorous bits, making it difficult to resist efforts by warlords to muscle in on projects.
“They said, ‘For God’s sake, we can’t do this, we don’t have the capability,’ ” Mr. Dekan said. “We taught them to have confidence.”

Muhamed Azghari, an Aga Khan employee, spent more than a year trying to persuade a mullah to allow a girls’ school. His tactic: sitting lower than the man, a sign of deference, and praising his leadership. He paid for the man to visit other villages to see what other councils had accomplished.

“Ten times we fought, two times we laughed,” Mr. Dekan said, using the Afghan equivalent of “two steps forward, one step back.”

When it came to women, villagers were adamant.

But forcing conditions would have violated a basic principle of the approach: never start a project that is not backed by all members of the community, or it will fail.

“People have to be mentally ready,” said Akhtar Iqbal, Aga Khan’s director in Badakhshan. If they are not, the school or clinic will languish unused, a frequent problem with large-scale development efforts.

Five years later, the village of Fargamanch has women’s literacy classes and a girls’ high school. Over all, girls’ enrollment in Badakhshan is up by 65 percent since 2004, according to the Ministry of Education. The number of trained midwives has quadrupled.
Health has also improved. Now, 3,270 families have taps for clean drinking water near their homes, reducing waterborne diseases.

The councils are also a check on corruption. When 200 bags of wheat mysteriously disappeared from the local government this year, council members demanded they be returned. (They were.) When a minister’s aide cashed a check meant for a transformer, Mr. Ataullah spent a week tracking down a copy. (The aide was fired.)

“The government doesn’t like us anymore,” Mr. Azghari said, laughing. “They want the old system back.”

While Badakhshan’s changes are fragile, the forces of modernization are growing. Televisions have begun to broadcast the outside world into villages. Phone networks cover more than 80 percent of the province, triple what the figure was in 2001.

Perhaps most important, Afghans are tired of war, and seeing the benefits of a decade of peace might be enough to encourage new kinds of decisions.

Ghulam Mohaiuddin, a farmer, seethes when he remembers the past.
“The jihad was useless,” he said, sitting cross-legged in his mud-walled house.
Suddenly, a loud blast went off, startling his guests. He laughed. It was the sound of canal construction, not a bomb.

“Now we’ve put down our weapons and started building,” he said, smiling.

Villanova University

Yesterday I had the pleasure of sharing the documentary, Beyond Belief, with a group of students and faculty at Villanova Univeristy. Stephanie Sena, a history Professor worked with other departments to bring a diverse group of students to the screening. The turn out was great and it was exciting to be a part of the University if only for an afternoon.

I am always energized after doing Questions and Answers around the film. Although I often get many of the same questions (it's only natural after seeing the film), there are always a few that suprise me. Oops the baby just woke up. I guess I will have to finish this post later...

Opinion by Malcolm Potts

The war for Afghanistan's women - It's not worth risking U.S. lives unless we raise the status of Afghan women.

By Malcolm Potts
August 23, 2009

There are two wars going on in Afghanistan. One is to defeat the Taliban, and that war is not going well. The other is to liberate women, and that war has hardly begun. If the first war is won but the second is lost, Afghanistan will turn into a failed state -- a caldron of violence and misery, home to extremism and totally outside the Western orbit of influence.

Last week's election, however imperfect, is welcome, but it means little as long as women remain enslaved in this patriarchal, tradition-bound culture. In most of the country, a woman needs her husband's permission to leave her home. Domestic violence is tragically common. Indeed, the government elected in 2004 passed, and President Hamid Karzai signed into law, legislation legalizing marital rape. Older men use their wealth and power to marry young women. In April, according to news reports, when a teenage Afghan girl called Gulsima eloped with a boy her own age instead of marrying an older man, she and the boyfriend were shot to death in front of the mosque in the southwest province of Nimrod.

Currently, Afghanistan is one of the worst places in the world to be a woman, and -- as is the case everywhere women's rights are nonexistent or in decline -- the birthrate is high. Afghan women have an average of about seven children, and the population has been doubling about every 20 years. Today it is 34 million. According to U.N. estimates, by 2050 it could reach a staggering 90 million. That rapid population growth and the demographics that go with it drive most of Afghanistan's worst problems.

All too often, demography is overlooked in developing countries, as I experienced in 2002 when I wrote the budgets for a U.N. agency working to rebuild Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban. Part of our job was to write a 10-year financial plan. As my colleague from the World Bank was closing his computer, I said, "You do realize in 10 years' time there will be almost 50% more people needing healthcare?" He hadn't. After an expletive and some more hitting of computer keys, the budget totals rose considerably.

I made my first visit to Afghanistan in 1969. Even then it was clear that slowing population growth was a prerequisite for feeding Afghanistan, for its socioeconomic progress and for any shred of hope for a stable democracy.

One result of rapid population growth is that two-thirds of the Afghan population is below the age of 25. The primary role models for the volatile, testosterone-filled young men in this group are local warlords. The reason Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden (who, incidentally, is the 17th child of a man who had 54 children) have found a haven in Afghanistan is largely because of the mixture of loyalty and anger generated among males in such a society, in which there are no genuine economic opportunities for advancement. The word "taliban" means "student." The men who condemned Gulsima and her young boyfriend were probably 18 or 19 years old.

So in a country where women have had their fingers cut off because they painted their nails, where the Taliban threw acid on girls trying to go to school, is there any possibility of improving the status of women? Yes.

When Karzai signed the law demeaning and controlling women, he did so as an ugly deal to buy the support of the very traditional Shiite minority in the west of the country. But linguistically, culturally and religiously, this population is simply an extension of eastern Iran. And Iran happens to be a powerful example of how family planning can liberate women and change a society for the better.

In the 1980s, the typical Iranian woman had almost as many children as her counterpart in Afghanistan today. Even an oil-rich country could not support that rate of population growth. The Koran mentions contraception in a positive light, and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the religious leader and founder of Iran's Islamic Republic, endorsed family planning. Iran began to offer a full range of contraceptive choices and even voluntary sterilization. Before young couples could marry, they were required to receive family-planning instruction.

The typical Iranian woman now has 2.1 children. The transition in Iran from high to low birthrates was as rapid as that in China, but without a one-child policy, and it has had similar social benefits. Maternal and infant mortality have fallen, and, despite repressive politics, the U.N. Human Development Index, using such measures as education and individual wealth, shows that the country is better off.

How would this translate to Afghanistan, which is far behind Iran in so many ways? From my experience, I know that teenage girls in Afghanistan want to be in school, despite the cultural obstacles. And having seen firsthand Afghan women suffering from botched abortions, I am sure some, at least, want fewer children. In addition, Westerners are training female health workers. Private pharmacies often dispense drugs smuggled from neighboring countries. It would be possible to introduce contraceptives, even in remote areas.

A stable, modern and functioning Afghanistan is the West's goal. But it is not worth risking the death of one more American or British soldier fighting there unless there is a bold, achievable plan to educate women, enhance their autonomy and meet their need for family planning.

This feudal, fundamentalist, warrior society will never join the 21st century -- or even the 16th century -- unless we win the war to liberate women. Unless women are given the freedom to choose whether or when to have a child, by 2050 there will be millions more angry men age 15 to 25 in Afghanistan. If only a tiny percentage are potential insurgents or suicide bombers, no Western army, however large and however strongly backed at home, has the slightest chance of prevailing.


Malcolm Potts is a UC Berkeley professor and the chairman of the university's Bixby Center for Population, Health and Sustainability. His latest book is "Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safe World.

"Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times

Beyond the 11th makes $50,000 grant to Arzu

I am so pleased to announce that Beyond the 11th just made a $50,000 grant to Arzu. To date, most of our grants have gone to income-generating programs that help widows learn a skill so that they can stand on their own two feet. This grant is a little different. This money was earmarked specifically for the construction of the Dragon Vally Women's Community Center. It feels great to have been able to help in the building of something concrete. Of course we hope to make grants in the future for programming for the center but for now, it feels great to be able to point to something very specific - an actualy building. Of course the building is so much more than bricks and mortar...


Few places in the world are less hospitable to women than Dragon Valley. With a climate dominated by a frigid winter, and no central heat, plumbing or electricity in homes, women rarely if ever manage a reprieve from grueling household chores and childrearing. Work for income is rarely an option. A life expectancy of 46 is far too easy to imagine for women in this village cradled by the northern mountains of Afghanistan.


For a growing number of area women, however, the nonprofit Arzu, which means “hope” in Dari, has delivered opportunity by revitalizing the ancient art of rug weaving. Many women had the skills but no looms or quality wool. Arzu delivered both, cultivated a market for the beautiful rugs in the United States and beyond, and in addition to a generous wage that could be earned from home, provided desperately needed health care and education opportunities for rug weavers and their families. Now, Arzu will increase work opportunities and address quality of life issues for local women through construction of the Dragon Valley Community Center.

Beginning in November, rug weavers, many of them widows, will have access to a warm, safe facility where they can take classes, do laundry, bathe, use a flush toilet, collaborate with other weavers in a bright, spacious loom room or just sit for a moment in a chair and sip a hot cup of tea. For the women of Dragon Valley, these are unimaginable luxuries. The Community Center will give women who are among the poorest in the world a sense of value and will provide the chance to improve their weaving skills or train for additional life-changing job opportunities.

I promise to share pictures as soon as they are available.

A Closer Look at Afghanistan’s Controversial Shia Law

From Lauryn Oates...

In March 2009, news of the Shiite Personal Status Law reached international leaders gathered in London for the G20 conference, which included many donor nations to Afghanistan. A handful of the law’s 249 articles included restrictions on the rights of Afghan Shia women, and the issue exploded in the international press, galvanising heated responses from a variety of stakeholders.

An AREU study has sought to examine another angle of this story: the inception, preparation and parliamentary passage of the law. The aim has been to identify what this experience can illustrate about lawmaking in post-Bonn Afghanistan, and the political culture and capacity surrounding it. Respondents included MPs, Shia academics, civil society representatives, Shia women who demonstration against the law, a Supreme Court judge, and representatives of independent media outlets, the international community, and the Ministry of Justice.

The resulting report, A Closer Look — The Policy and Law-Making Process Behind the Shiite Personal Status Law, identifies a number of important irregularities in procedure, including that the final law was not formally passed by Afghanistan’s lower house of parliament, and notes that public inclusion was missing from the process. It also delivers a number of recommendations for improving procedures and better enforcing parliamentary rules, facilitating a peaceful pluralism in matters of fiqh (jurisprudence), and reforming Afghanistan’s single non transferable vote and political party systems.

The report is available for download at www.areu.org.af and will be available in hardcopy from the AREU office.

The report’s author Lauryn Oates is available for telephone interviews (English), as is a member of the research team (Dari). Representatives of the media seeking more information are encouraged to contact:

Jay Lamey, AREU Communication Editor: jay@areu.org.af or tel. 0795462011


The Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU) is an independent research organisation based in Kabul. AREU ’ s mission is to conduct high-quality research that informs and influences policy and practice. AREU also actively promotes a culture of research and learning by strengthening analytical capacity in Afghanistan and facilitating reflection and debate. Fundamental to AREU ’ s vision is that its work should improve Afghan lives .

www.areu.org.af / +93 (0) 799 608 548 / areu@areu.org.af

Beyond the Bike

As we set out yesterday with the rain pounding down on us, the wind in our faces and our shoes filled with water, I had a huge smile.

Everyone arrived at our home in Needham as individuals but we set out as a group. Our community was built as each new rider arrived and tried to cram into the garage. Strangers quickly became friends, “should I wear long pants or shorts? Do you have an extra set of gloves? Have you ever ridden in the rain before?” – we were quickly bonding. After the kids played the Star Spangled Banner (twice), the energy of the room shifted again. Pride. Pride in ourselves. Pride in our country. Pride in knowing that with each rain drop falling on us, we were one step closer to our goal of raising $50,000 for the construction of the Dragon Valley Women’s Community Center in Bamiyan Afghanistan.

As we rolled away from the house with 62 wet miles ahead of us, we stuck together and worked as a group. We helped each other with flat tires, we pointed out sharp turns and Bs along the route and we rode at whatever pace meant that no one had to ride alone. This feeling of community of being a part of something larger than ourselves is the same thing that I hope for for the women in Afghanistan.

The Community Center is nearing completion. In just about 6 weeks, women will have an opportunity to come together in a safe, warm place where they will have access to clean water to do their laundry, a tearoom where they will be able to socialize, classrooms for programs that teach new skills and a community garden where they can grow food. Our hope is that this building will be more than bricks and mortar. We hope that it will be a life changing community with a soul.

So thank you for the energy you brought to the day. Thank you to ALL of the volunteers that helped to make the day go so smoothly. Thank you for the donations you made and for the fundraising dollars you brought in. And thank you for your continued support.

I hope you are excited for 2010 back here in Needham and then 2011 – from NYC back to Boston…

Peace,
Susan

Hingham Screenig of Beyond Belief - a HUGE success

What a night! Thanks so much to Caitryn, our amazing intern this summer. She did an incredible job putting together a screening of Beyond Belief at the Patriot Cinemas in Hingham, MA. We filled the house and then some. We had to turn away about 100 people and others chose to watch the film on a flat screen TV in the lobby. In addition, we raised over $5500. All of the money is going to the construction of the Dragon Valley Women's Community Center in Bamyan, Afghanistan.

I do plan on going back to Hingham since the interest was so high. If anyone is interested in helping to organize another screening, please let me know. Or, if you are interested in helping to do a screening in another city/town, please contact me.

The Truth Behind Afghan Insurgency

By Ralph Lopez
Reprinted from the Boston Globe

ON A RECENT TRIP to Kabul for our nonprofit organization, Jobs for Afghans, Najim Dost and I made a startling discovery: There is no true Taliban insurgency.

Yes, there is a Taliban leadership, many of whom are “foreigners,’’ meaning, non-Afghans. Yes, there are many fighting-age men who fight because they are paid to do so, by the small cadre of Taliban and Al Qaeda commanders who have plenty of opium money. They fork out the excellent wage in these parts of $8 per day for “insurgent work.’’


But a die-hard, dedicated army of fighters who pledge allegiance to the Taliban ideology and cause? It’s not there. Even Vice President Joe Biden acknowledged last March, “Roughly 70 percent are involved because of the money.’’ And General Karl Eikenberry, former commander of US forces in Afghanistan, said to Congress in 2007: “Much of the enemy force is drawn from the ranks of unemployed men looking for wages to support their families.’’


The dirty little secret is that the renewed insurgency could have been avoided. The vast majority of Afghans still hate the Taliban. They remember the days of heads and hands getting lopped off in the National Stadium, and men flogged because their beards were not long enough. No one is eager to see them return. But in a nation with 40 percent unemployment, working for the Taliban is the only job in town. As the saying goes, you might not like the work, but that’s who’s hiring.


How did we get to this pass? Fighting a renewed insurgency eight years after the Taliban government was soundly trounced, to the cheers of 90 percent of the population? The first thing that happened was that, out of the relatively small amount of nonmilitary assistance that was sent to rebuild this bombed-out place, almost half wound up as profits for big contractors like Dyncorp, Louis Berger Group, and KBR. They were building substandard schools, roads, and clinics (with no doctors) when what the country needed was jobs, jobs, jobs. Not fancy jobs. Jobs paid in cash by the day or by the week, at less than $10 a day, clearing canals still clogged with debris, digging drainage ditches with shovels along miles of roads, and the countless ways men can be employed to keep their families from semi-starvation.



The UN says 35 percent of Afghans are malnourished. You can’t have business development if you don’t have stability. And you can’t have stability when you have nearly half the work force unemployed. Add to this the Taliban’s willingness to pay $8 a day to those who will pick up a gun, and the renewed insurgency becomes less of a mystery.


There are countless instances of Taliban fighters saying they will trade their guns for a job. What makes this war even more senseless is how little it would cost to provide such jobs, say, for a year, to stabilize the country and allow the free market to flourish. It would cost less than one-tenth of what we are spending now on military operations each year, which is running close to $50 billion. Why is this approach not being talked about in Congress? Call me cynical, but war is profitable. The beauty of cost-plus, no-bid contracting is hard to find in the normal business world.


A widespread, stability-enhancing cash-for-work jobs program, which would save the American taxpayer the hideous cost of war, both human and financial, can work in Afghanistan. We saw such projects on a small scale. Perhaps most telling are stories like Mahmud’s, who told a reporter in Helmand that joining the Taliban gave him a chance to save up enough money to start his own small business, buying goods in Lashkar Gah and selling them in the district “mila’’ or markets. Mahmud said, “Now that I have work, I am not with the Taliban anymore.’’
This situation is the true definition of insanity. Top commander General Stanley McChrystal just said jobs could induce many Taliban to drop their weapons. How many more of our soldiers must die before sense takes hold in the Obama administration?


Ralph Lopez is co-founder of Jobs for Afghans.
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

Ice Cream Social at Whole Foods

Thanks to everyone who came to Whole Foods on Wednesday to support Beyond the 11th.

From beginning to end - it was a wonderful evening. From the the ice cream - to the music (thanks to Plugged In) to all the people who stopped by to chat. A special thanks to Whole Foods. I've always been a fan of the store but now even more so.

Not only did we raise money for Beyond the 11th, I think we were able to enlist a few more cyclists for Beyond the Bike...

U.S. Commitment To Afghan Women

VOA, 6 July 2009- “Women in Afghanistan are critical to progress and stability in their war-torn country.” So said U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s issues Melanne Verveer [meh-LAHN ver-VEER]. “We know,” said Ms. Verveer, “that no country can prosper if half its people are left behind.” And as President Barack Obama said in his Cairo speech, “we recognize that our daughters can contribute as much to society as our sons.”

The truth is, said Ambassador Verveer, “that countries that repress women also tend to be backward economically, and are more likely to be failed states.” That’s why United States is intensifying its efforts to help Afghan women participate more fully in society. One example of this is a new twenty-seven million dollar U.S. funded program of small, flexible, rapid response grants targeted to empower Afghan women-led non-governmental organizations at the local level. Programs range from economic development, literacy training, skills training, and healthcare.

Political participation is critical to empowering Afghan women. Currently, Afghanistan is in the midst of an election campaign for both president and provincial councils. There are two women running for president and more than one-hundred running for council seats. The U.S. has called for a campaign that is credible, inclusive, and secure, where men and women candidates can participate with no restrictions on their freedom of movement and be assured of protection.

An ongoing concern for Afghan women is security. Violence against women and girls, said Ambassador Verveer, is endemic and much remains to be done, including access to institutions of justice, civic education, and prosecution of crimes. More girls are in school, but the Taliban have eroded some of the progress. Last year alone, they burned or shut down more than seven-hundred schools, and thousands of girls are now without access to formal education.

As Ambassador Verveer made clear, “Progress in Afghanistan must be measured not just in military terms, but also in terms of social, political, and economic participation of women in rebuilding Afghanistan and in the safeguarding of their human rights.”



Jasteena Dhillon,
jasteenadhillon@yahoo.com + 1 757 215 8231 / skype - jasteenadhillon /
info@zolazen.com /+1 416 8281486 / www.zolazen.org

Register for Beyond the Bike

Oops. I forgot to put a link to register for Beyond the Bike

To register, please go to: http://www.firstgiving.com/beyondthe11th

Beyond the Bike - Fundraiser

Please join us as we raise both money and awareness for widows in Afghanistan.

Beyond the Bike
Date: Saturday, September 12th
Time: 9:00 am
Distance: 100K (62 miles)
Start & Finish: 38 Ellicott Street Needham, MA
Fundraising commitment: $500 minimum ($1000 recommended)
Questions: Call (781) 465-6464 or email info@beyondthe11th.org

Beyond the Bike is specifically raising money for construction of the Dragon Valley Women's Community Center in Bamyan, Afghanistan.

This center will include:
* laundry facilities
* shower room with a latrine
* tea room/lounge
* classroom
* community garden
* job training

Any one of the above resources would better the lives of women, but combined, the center will truly be life changing for the women who become a part of the community.

More Information on the Dragon Valley Community Center:
Few places in the world are less hospitable to women than Dragon Valley. With a climate dominated by a frigid winter, and no central heat, plumbing or electricity in homes, women rarely if ever manage a reprieve from grueling household chores and childrearing. Work for income is rarely an option. A life expectancy of 46 is far too easy to imagine for women in this village cradled by the northern mountains of Afghanistan.

For a growing number of area women, however, the nonprofit Arzu, which means “hope” in Dari, has delivered opportunity by revitalizing the ancient art of rug weaving. Many women had the skills but no looms or quality wool. Arzu delivered both, cultivated a market for the beautiful rugs in the United States and beyond, and in addition to a generous wage that could be earned from home, provided desperately needed health care and education opportunities for rug weavers and their families. Now, Arzu will increase work opportunities and address quality of life issues for local women through construction of the Dragon Valley Community Center.

Beginning in November, rug weavers, many of them widows, will have access to a warm, safe facility where they can take classes, do laundry, bathe, use a flush toilet, collaborate with other weavers in a bright, spacious loom room or just sit for a moment in a chair and sip a hot cup of tea. For the women of Dragon Valley, these are unimaginable luxuries. The Community Center will give women who are among the poorest in the world a sense of value and will provide the chance to improve their weaving skills or train for additional life-changing job opportunities.

Video on Afghan Widows

Please take a moment to view this heartwrenching video about the lives of widows in Afghanistan. I think it sums up why we at Beyond the 11th continue to work so hard for these women.

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/04/15/world/1194839517084/a-mans-world.html?emc=eta1

Temple Emanuel

Last night, I had the opportunity to speak to the sisterhood at Temple Emanuel in Andover, MA. What a fabulous evening! The turnout was phenomenal - about 150 women. Many in the group had seen the documentary, Beyond Belief which made for a great Q & A.

No matter how many times I tell my story and explain why Beyond the 11th is so important I still tend to get emotional. The group of women made it a really safe environment though which enabled me to share a lot.

I can't say enough great things about the incredible women I met last night. I hope that the many offers to help truly work out to be long lasting relationships...

I've heard from Sahera!

Beth has retunred home from Afghanistan safely and brought with her a DVD of her meeting with Sahera. During their hour long conversation, Beth was able to get a pretty good update on how Sahera has been over the past 3 years. Bascially, it seems like all is good. Her children are all in school. Her eldest son is thinking about going to college. It was unclear to me if it was a money issue or a distance issue that has kept him from attending but I will investigate that further.

Sahera is no longer a part of the poultry rearing program. She actually sold her chickens after some of them had gotten sick. With the money from the chickens, she started a small tailoring business. It seems as if she has been pretty successful.

I also learned that Sahera's mother-in-law passed away a couple of years ago. For those of you who saw Beyond Belief, she was the woman who had lost 6 sons to war and illness. Since her mother-in-law died, Sahera no longer wears a burqa! I believe Sahera felt pressure from her to wear it.

During Beth's visit, she showed Sahera the video that I had made and Sahera spoke directly to me at one point. It was truly amazing to have an opportunity to see Sahera again - even if it wasn't real time.

The next time Sahera and I communicate, it might just be via phone. I've been told that she has a cell phone - yeah!!!

September 12th Bike Ride - Fundraiser

Beyond the 11th is thinking about holding a fundraiser this Saturday, September 12th. It will be a one day bike ride with two options - 100 and 50 miles. We are also considering having a kids ride of maybe 5 or 10 miles.

Why are we doing the fundraiser? We are very interested in making a grant to Arzu for a women's community center that they are building in Bamiyan. In order to help in a significant way, we need to raise $50,000. I promise to share much more information on this amazing project in the weeks to come.

If anyone is interested in riding or volunteering, please let me know. Thanks!

NEW YORK TIMES ---- Karzai Vows to Review Family Law By CARLOTTA GALL and SANGAR RAHIMI Published: April 4, 2009

Kabul, Afghanistan — President Hamid Karzai ordered a review on Saturday of a new law that has been criticized internationally for introducing Taliban-era restrictions on women and sanctioning maritalrape. The president defended the law, which concerns family law for the Shiite minority, and said Western news media reports were misinformed. Nevertheless, he said his justice minister would review it and make amendments if the law was found to contravene the Constitution and the freedoms that it guarantees. “The Western media have either mistranslated or taken incorrect information and then published it,” Mr. Karzai said at a news briefing in the presidential palace on Saturday. “If there is anything in contradiction with our Constitution or Shariah, or freedoms granted by the Constitution, we will take action in close consultation with the clerics of the country. ”If changes are needed, he said, the bill would be sent back to Parliament. Human rights officials have criticized the law, in particular for the restrictions it places on when a woman can leave her house, and forstating the circumstances in which she has to have sex with her husband. A Shiite woman would be allowed to leave home only “for a legitimate purpose,” which the law does not define. The law also says, “Unless the wife is ill, the wife is bound to give a positive response to the sexual desires of her husband.” Critics have said that provision legalizes marital rape. The law also outlines rules on divorce, child custody and marriage,all in ways that discriminate against women, said Soraya Sobhrang,commissioner for women’s rights at the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. While the law applies only to Shiites, who represent approximately 10 percent of the population, its passage could influence a proposed family law for the Sunni majority and a draft law on violence against women, Ms. Sobhrang said. “This opens the way for more discrimination,” she said.Mr. Karzai signed the law last week after a vote in Parliament last month, Ms. Sobhrang said, adding that she had seen a copy of the law with his signature. However, the presidential spokesman, Homayun Hamidzada, would notconfirm that the president had signed the law and said only that thehe was still reviewing it. Mr. Karzai’s decision to review the law came after a storm of criticism in recent days. Canada called in the Afghan ambassador for an explanation, and NATO’s secretary general questioned why the alliance was sending men and women to fight in Afghanistan when discrimination against women was condoned by law. Asked about the law at a news conference in Strasbourg, France, on Saturday, President Obama called it “abhorrent.” “We think that it is very important for us to be sensitive to local culture,” he said, “but we also think that there are certain basic principles that all nations should uphold, and respect for women and respect for their freedom and integrity is an important principle. ”Also on Saturday, Italy’s defense minister said Italy was consideringa temporary withdrawal of the women serving in its force in Afghanistan to protest the law, Reuters reported. The United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay,said the law represented a “huge step in the wrong direction.” “For a new law in 2009 to target women in this way is extraordinary,reprehensible and reminiscent of the decrees made by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in the 1990s,” Ms. Pillay said in a statement posted on her agency’s Web site. “This is another clear indication that the human rights situation in Afghanistan is getting worse, not better. ”In addition to the clauses on when women may leave the home and must submit to their husbands, Ms. Pillay said she was concerned about a section that forbids women from working or receiving education without their husband‘s permission. Ms. Sobhrang, who has been working on the issue for the last two years, said women’s groups and the human rights commissions had worked with Parliament to introduce amendments but then the law was suddenly pushed through with only three amendments. The bill as originallydrawn up by Shiite clerics barred a woman from leaving the house without her husband’s permission, she said. The parliamentary judicial commission amended that provision to say that a woman could leave the house “for a legitimate purpose. ”Mr. Karzai cited that provision in a news conference on Saturday, pointing out that the final version of the law did not ban a woman from leaving her house. But Ms. Sobhrang said even as amended the law contravened the Constitution, which recognizes equal rights for men and women. The term “for a legitimate purpose” was open to interpretation, she added. She said Mr. Karzai had supported women’s rights in the past but seemed to have given that up in recent months. Some Western officials have speculated that he signed the law to win the support of conservative Shiite clerics in coming presidential elections. Yet the leading cleric behind the Family Law, Sheik Muhammad Asif Mohseni, complained last week that he was dissatisfied with the amendments that Parliament had made to his original draft. Speaking on his own television channel, Tamadun Television, he objected to the introduction of a legal age for marriage, “16 for women and 18 for men,” saying that people should be able to decide for themselves. Human rights officials consider raising the marriage age a critical step toward ending the common practice of forced marriages and the marriage of young girls. Another amendment gave women longer custody of young children in the case of divorce. In the original draft, women could have custody of a son until he was 2 years old, and a daughter until she was 7. The amended version raises the ages to 7 for boys and 9 for girls. Ms. Sobhrang criticized both versions for not taking into account the interests and desires of the children.

Where is the OUTRAGE?

Afghanistan's current constitution guarantees women's equal rights, but also allows a separate Shia family law based on religious traditions. A new law just recently passed by parliament and signed by President Hamid Karzai, legalizes minority Shi'ite family law and what was passed is shocking!
Please read the attached article(s) to learn more.

http://www.reuters.com/article/asiaCrisis/idUSL2330877

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,511860,00.html

Where is the OUTRAGE? Is this 2009 or 1999? Didn’t the United States invade Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban and stop the war on terror? When a woman is stripped of basic human rights – that is terror! If here in the United States, women had to receive permission from their husbands before leaving the house – there would be outrage. If girls as young as 9 years old were allowed to be married off – there would be outrage. If husbands had the RIGHT to have sex with their wives whenever they want (we call that rape here in the United States) – there would be outrage.
Where is the outrage?
Is the U.S. government going to back President Karzai? Is he really the right person to be leading Afghanistan? If he is going to sign laws to please the Shia JUST for votes – I say let’s get another candidate!

Renewing Our American Dream after 9/11

A few months ago, Meriam Lobel from the Tribute World Trade Visitor Center called me to tell me about a new exhibit the museum was planning and asked if I’d like to be a part of it. To be honest, I didn’t even know that the Tribute Center existed. I’ve only been to Ground Zero a handful of times – and it was usually linked to the bike ride I did heading from there back to Boston. As I learned more about the museum and specifically about the new exhibit they had in mind, I was excited to be a part of it. The new exhibit, called Renewing Our American Dream after 9/11, shares the experiences of 12 people (clean-up workers, family members who lost loved ones, community leaders, educators, and students) in their own voices and images. For my part, they wanted me to share my story – why I decided to reach out to Afghan widows after Dave was killed.

The new exhibit opened on March 5th, and not longer after that, I had an opportunity to go to NYC for the weekend. I visited the Tribute WTC Visitor Center on a Friday afternoon and was shocked by how crowded it was! I suppose I forget how curious people are about the events surrounding the tragedy. Sometimes it feels so personal to me that I forget its affect on the rest of the world while other times it feels like 9/11 belongs to the world and has nothing to do with me and my family. Anyway, on that particular day, I felt a little overwhelmed by everything. I was visiting NYC with friends from high school and really did not want to be in a “9/11 place.” So, I basically kept my head down, ran downstairs to the exhibit where I was featured, looked around (the other people featured are amazing), and ran out. Out of the corner of my eye, I did see a part of a plane (I think it might have been from American Airlines Flight 11). I didn’t have the energy to go to that place but, at some point, when I can devote quality time to really take it all in, I know that I will go back.

If you’re interested in visiting the museum, it’s located at 120 Liberty Street (right across from Ground Zero). Their website is http://www.tributewtc.org/

I just found out they recently welcomed their one millionth visitor!

About the Tribute WTC Visitor Center
The Tribute WTC Visitor Center is located at 120 Liberty Street along the south side of the World Trade Center site. The center was created by the September 11th Families’ Association to share the personal stories of victims, survivors, rescue and recovery workers, volunteers, and residents of Lower Manhattan. By engaging visitors in the authentic experiences of those most affected by the events of February 26, 1993 and September 11, 2001, the center’s five galleries and its walking tour program convey the courage, loss, heroism, and grief of those who responded to the tragedy.

Summer Intern to Begin in May

Caitryn McCallum, a Junior at the University of Virginia, will join Beyond the 11th as a summer intern in the middle of May. We already have a list of projects we would like Caitryn to work on, including updating our website. Not only would we like a fresh new look, we are also hoping to reorganize the site and add some new sections. Caitryn will also be working on creating Beyond the 11th chapters on college campuses and will work with us on our next fundraising project.

This will be our first summer intern and we're excited to have her join our team.

Sahera and I are going to "video conference"...

Beth Murphy, who created the documentary Beyond Belief, is heading back to Afghanistan. While in Kabul, she has generously agreed to deliver a video message from me to Sahera, one of the women that I met in Kabul back in May of 2006.

Sahera is a beautiful woman, inside and out. Although I only spent an afternoon with her, I felt a real connection with her. Sahera's children are the same ages as my kids and I guess I was just able to see myself in her. The process of making the video to send to her was a bit rough. I cried a lot and had to do a few takes before I was coherent. It's been three years since we met and so much has happened in that time. I've gotten remarried and had a baby. I'm hopeful that Sahera has found happiness these past few years but I am fearful that providing for herself and for her children has been a struggle.

Beth arrives in Afghanistan in about a week. I can't wait to hear all about her trip - especially her visit with Sahera!

Welcome to the Beyond the 11th Blog

Hi,

I am very new to the blogging thing. I thought that it would be complicated to create a blog but apparently it only took a few clicks of the mouse to get this started.

My hope is that Iwill create posts every couple of weeks to make updates about what we're working on...

I want to post this message so that I can see what it looks like and then I will add a real post soon...