Grassroots groups aim to resolve conflicts

Photo: After a tie for the position of deputy representative, there was a run-off election to determine the winner.

Yesterday I attended the inauguration of the female side of the Conflict Mitigation Committee of one of the sites where we are presently implementing a conflict resolution project. The premise is simple, two communities are in conflict over natural resources (in this instance the right to a river that flows near both communities), we set up a conflict mitigation committee that comprises 50% men and 50% women with equal representation for each committee. It is the task of this committee to conduct meetings to actively try and mitigate the conflict and come up with a solution. A self-identified, jointly-implemented development project acts as catalyst for the communities to work together to improving the conditions for both. These are some photos from the event; this is democracy at its truest grassroots level as women vote.

Photo: Ballots are counted for the positions of Chair, deputy Chair, and Secretary

Anyone who has worked in Afghanistan will tell you the significance of an event such as this. Not only for the overall participation of Afghans in their future and the governing of their communities, but more so even, because of the participation of women in the process. What made this particular event even more significant, was the difference between the two communities, one which is predominantly Pashtu, the vast majority ethnic group of Afghanistan, while the other is the much-discriminated against Kuchi people. In this unique instance, the mostly nomadic Kuchi community settled in this area many years ago, and is now embroiled in a conflict over natural resources with the newer, yet more powerful and more educated Pashtu community. So to bring the women from these starkly different backgrounds together in a room, and to have them vote for a joint committee to represent all of their interests, is to say the least, remarkable.

Street-side

I share some of my recent photographs with you. These are taken in Maymana City bazaar. The young man was very keen to have his photograph taken.

The older man in the next photograph was sorting through a pile of potatoes with his colleagues when we approached for some greetings and pleasantries.

The final picture depicts the early-morning bargaining at the carpet bazaar between local women from the villages who come to the city to sell their kilims to the men who run the carpet bazaar shops. If you come in early enough you can buy directly from the women. Average price for a 2x1m kilim from the women is about $20.

Photo pick?

I took this shot through the back window of a circa 1970s Jeep while in Maymana City, Faryab Province. I love the expression on the men's faces, and once in Photoshop I got to playing around with different focal points and hues...I would like to get your comments on which one you prefer - I have been thinking about submitting some of my photographs to amateur outlets - also, if you have any suggestions of publications that might be looking for submissions, or competitions and such, do share.

Here we go, I present four different options of the same photograph:

Option 1:

Option 2:

Option 3:

Option 4:

The ice cream shop

Despite the limitations on women, particularly in public, those fortunate to live in moderately affluent homes, manage to enjoy a fairly active social life. They have innovative ways to enjoy a day in the bazaar, shopping with friends, and even stopping for a much-needed ice cold refreshment - a welcome break from the heat of the burqa in 35+ degree Celcius weather.

This particular ice cream shop is approximately three meters wide and about twenty meters long. At about the half-way point, it is divided by a curtain that stretches across the width of the room. Women head straight for the curtain, alleviated from the heat of their chandris as they emergy on the far side to lift the blue or white burqas over their heads exposing warm and friendly faces. The room is small with tables and benches packed tightly for maximum capacity. On the walls are the faces (sometimes in erotic fashion-advertisement style) of favorite Indian movie stars. There is a plastic container with complimentary water, and soon a young boy emerges through the curtains to collect the order.

The ice cream is a somewhat icy soft-serve type served either in a pink or yellow cone, or in a bowl with a spoon. The taste has a distinc cardamom flavor, not unpleasant. I am informed that the ice cream is "from the milk from the cow."

Heavy load

I snapped this sequence of photographs near the big mosque in Kabul. I have long been amazed at the size of some of the loads that the Afghans carry...here you see a man helping another to his feet as he struggles to lift a heavy load of goods onto his back.

Market Hour

Just north of Kabul we pass through the bustle of the morning market. It is just after 0600 on a Saturday and I am moving to Mazar e-Sharif to take up my position as Area Coordinator (Regional Manager) for northwest Afghanistan which covers the provinces of Balkh (Mazar), Jawzan (against the Uzbekistan border), Faryab (close to Turkmenistan border) and Samangan (the beautifully mountainous area between Kabul and Mazar).

Back in the market we are fifth in line of what I imagine to be an infinite row of north-bounders who get stuck behind about ten of the brightly decorated tok-tok trucks now greedily muscling their way into a barely-there alley way into the belly of the market. Thousands of brightly colored fruits and vegetables are carefully stacked on one of an army of pushcarts, or loaded onto barrows who battle one another and the commuters to cross the used-up road.

A pair of long legs carries a bag of potatoes the size of my driver. The hunched figure attached to the bag is somewhere between thirty-five and seventy-five. In this place where the average life expectancy is only forty-three, it is not uncommon for people to look much older. I suppose that life doesn't "begin" at forty for everyone.

The burqa clutches the baby in the median break. We haven't moved an inch. Drivers emerge from preceding vehicles to facilitate a negotiated escape from between the bumpers of these beasts. The man occupying the middle front seat of a yellow corolla station wagon hands the boy with the banana-loaded push cart a dirty note of Afghanis. Behind him four more companions on the back seat and one more in the trunk look on as he receives his bananas through the window.

We sputter to a crawl as we too slide in between the two trucks currently occupying all of the driveway. Further up the road to the roundabout where hundreds of men (mostly Asian-looking, Mongolian is my guess) line the curb propped up next to their caked-up paint buckets and tired brushes hoping for a job for the day. Not surprisingly it is, what with an unemployment rate of 40% and no natural resources nor industry, Afghanistan is not a land of prosperity.

Further even the small boy drags the young cow by the nose. Under a tree a goat ram looks up into his shady haven as if waiting for the second coming, ostensibly aiming to reach up for something to eat. Into the next town and another market where we are suddenly swallowed by a sea of three-wheeled motorcycle type canopied taxis. A cynic will say those on bicycles in Afghanistan have never actually learned how to operate the two-wheeled soviet-era, solid steel mode of transportation, at least not judging by the swaying and swerving that swings the rider from side to side and into dangerous positions in front of vehicles operated by questionable drivers themselves. On the other hand I suppose you could consider them experts in the trade, after all how many of us could transport a family of four on a single-speed steel horse.

The markets are packed. Bikes, taxis, laborer, burqas, toddlers, vendors, boys with bread, girls with water, and onions, everywhere the onions. Tons of onions. Turns out there was a severe shortage of inions in 2006, so everyone with a square foot of land to spare planted onions.

Leaving the strong urge for French onion soup behind we start the climb into the mountains past the painted fuel truck with the ominous warning "DANGRS PETROL". Herds of goats and sheep are coaxed out of our way by Kuchis with sticks. I settle into my seat for the remainder of the nine hour drive. The river still flows strongly. It is a nice morning.

The people I see on the Hindu Kush...

Photo right: breakfast of lamb kebabs, fresh bread and strong tea at the foot of the Hindu Kush.

Headed back over the pass. This time it is only myself, the driver and our HR local manager returning from vacation. It is an absolute magnificent day for a drive in die Hindu Kush. In any other situation, this could be a great trek on an adventure vacation that Chris and I would surely be first in line to sign up for. With something of a National Park feeling to it, the mountains rise up and pierce the bright blue sky.

Through the open windows on the backseat of the old Toyota with its rug-covered seats, I watch people go by as we crawl up to the top of the world at an angle surely a few degrees outside the normal road standard. The river changes lanes on the mountain as herders steer their cattle in green pastures on the left, while a group of turbaned men sit down a la Monet for a picnic edge-side.

Soviet-era tanks litter the hillside along with the green flags planted sporadically in memory of Northern Alliance soldiers who perished in these parts while fighting against the Taliban in the 1990s. All remnants of the impossible-to-forget recent history that only adds a thin layer on the disaster that is Afghanistan's past.

Photo left: A decorated truck emerge from one of the landslide tunnels with the 22,000 foot mountain tops in the background.

It is cool up here. A pleasant relief from the 36 degrees Celsius weather in Phuli Khumbri. The Toyota chuggs along past brightly painted long-haul trucks, so decorated I am told for protection, a tradition originating in Pakistan. The smells are many - over the driver's Super Seven cigarette smoke there is a strong rubber presence as the trucks make the hours-long descent in their lowest gear. Sweet-smelling soap of vehicles being washed road-side permeate my nostrils as I close my eyes and take it all in. There is still the dust. There is always dust. But not nearly as bad as it can be. We are almost to the top, past another group of men. The scent of hash trails them as they throw a glance in our direction, but only briefly.

This time of year is also the time when the Kuchis ("those who are on the move"), a nomadic tribe of Baluchi and Pashtu speaking tribes of Afghanistan are out in force. You can spot them easily across the pastures and hillsides. Simple little tents made of white canvas perched on traditional Afghan rugs and nothing else. Their brightly colored costume-like outfits turn the green fields into a paint palette of bright fuchsias, reds, oranges and blues. The men coax small herds of sheep roadside while women and children gather around a water source with a myriad of water jugs.

Chugg-chugg up the mountain. I am mesmerized by this place with the people from all over. Mongolians, Pakistani, Indian, Asian, Uzbek, Tajik...a world in a country. Being excluded from lunch based on my gender by a provincial politician who visited a refugee shelter site with us that afternoon, I suddenly realize that I am quite hungry...I start to look forward to dinner in one of the Kabul restaurants with Chris where we can talk about it all over a glass of wine.

Photo: Green pastures along the Salang Pass