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A Letter from the Field

Patricia Omidian, Afghanistan country representative

Why I Am Still Here

Dear friends and family,

I thought I would share with you a bit about my thoughts and maybe a bit about why I am still in Afghanistan. I have no exit plans, even though I keep visas current should the need to make a fast retreat from Kabul occur, God forbid.

A few days ago 5 aid workers were killed in a remote area of Northern Afghanistan, 2 Afghans and 3 internationals with MSF (Doctors without Borders). This agency is the first in and the last out in all crisis areas. Yet they are deciding to pull back on their programs and reduce their presence here in Afghanistan for a while. That is unsettling.

Of those who did this horror, I cannot even imagine what they are thinking they are doing or accomplishing. I cannot even imagine them. But the poor Afghan in the remotest area and who depends on some NGO to bring them even the smallest bit of help, is the most wounded in this struggle for power by warlords and neo-Taliban. But the Afghan reaction needs to be heard and listened to.

In the news we got this report:

Everyone is touched by violence; therefore, it matters how we respond to this violence. If we respond with violence, we will see more of it, at even greater levels...

Weeping Afghans meanwhile gathered around the clinic — which the victims had helped run — where the bodies were kept overnight. ‘‘They are as sad as if they had lost their own children,'' Naibzada said.

I think this sums up what I have seen each time an international aid worker is killed in Afghanistan. The same outpouring of grief came when Bettina was killed last November. And in my office, the staff were stunned. Several of them cried for the outrage and the tragedy of someone coming to help and being killed just for giving aid.

These tragedies touch us all in different ways. The senseless killing shows how fragile peace and hope can be. Those who kill do not want peace and have forgotten how to care about other humans, Afghan or international. Their agenda is one of power and control at any cost. They sometimes hide behind rhetoric but more often than not, they just move to gain power and are not pretending to bring any kind of goodness with them. And this year to date, more Afghan aid workers have been killed than in all of last year. We do not know if peace can last, but we do hope.

But, with all the violence (and Kabul is still very calm and secure) why would I stay? I stay because of that outpouring of grief. As long as Afghans can mourn the loss of the life of someone coming to help them, it means that there is still hope for peace and hope for a future here. It means that no one in the world should give up on the Afghan people, the people of this poor battered country. We cannot abandon them to a fate of such cruelty as would come if drug and warlords took full control.  

But Afghanistan a very clear warning to us, in the West. There is no country in the world that is safe from the fate that Afghanistan has suffered at the hands of war makers and those bent on destruction. If 11 September showed nothing us else, it should have shown us that we are all connected in this world and violence does not belong to someone else, nor is it located somewhere "out there." Everyone is touched by violence; therefore, it matters how we respond to this violence. If we respond with violence, we will see more of it, at even greater levels--Afghanistan has shown us this, as well.

But Afghanistan shows us also how strong and resilient humans can be. We can look at and learn from the Afghans but we cannot abandon them. Because if we do, we abandon ourselves, as well.

Just some thoughts: In Peace and with Love
Pat

"...The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiples it..." - MLK

About Patricia Omidian

Patricia Omidian has been living in Pakistan and Afghanistan since 1997 and undertook a study of Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan. She served as Children and War Advisor for Save the Children US. In 2001-2 she worked as the Technical Advisor for the Comprehensive Mental Health Program, Coordination for Humanitarian Assistance (CHA) Afghanistan Program where she developed the first community mental health program in Afghanistan. She has also worked with the UNICEF, Afghan Women's Network, the International Rescue Committee and UNIFEM, as well as other agencies.

Patricia holds a Ph.D in Medical Anthropology from the University of California San Francisco and the University of California, Berkeley (1992). She has received training from Focusing Resources, Berkeley and with the Focusing Institute, New York, and is currently a trainer in training.

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