The Good Afghan: Race, Ethnicity and Diversity in Foreign Service!

Bill stood up and said, “we are now going to have a session on Pashtun cultural norms!” And now Bill, our trainer, started to tell us, a number of USAID field program officers working in western Afghanistan, how the Pashtuns behave! Bill, was a former military personnel who, after coming back to the US, had hung up his boots, came back to Afghanistan, and was hired as an Afghan expert! The problem with him speaking about the Pashtun culture was that, in our group of trainees, we had five Pashtuns, who were more than capable of presenting a view of their own culture. They worked for USAID, they were all educated and the cream of the crop in their respective field. But still it was Bill, who perhaps lacking a bit of "situational awareness", stood up and gave us a superficial understanding of a very diverse and complex culture. During his presentation, he never alluded or asked the opinion of the real, live, Pashtuns who sat with us. Can you imagine if Jumah Khan, from Farah, Afghanistan, flew to Mississippi and told Bill and his family about the American culture?!!! This example underlines one of the fundamental problems with foreign aid, development and diplomacy, where local expertise are often ignored. Race and ethnicity determines who is an expert and who is not, who should lead and who should not, who should be trusted and who should not.  

If there is a “local” expert hired, he/she can’t “act” too local! If your name is Mohammad, you better change in it to “Mo” because the Country Director who is from Iowa can’t pronounce the world’s most common name! The local expert is only considered an expert if he or she can push the goals and the agenda of the donor. If you show or care too much in finding solutions to the problem of the local communities then expect to be sidelined!! I know people, in this case Americans, who changed their “ethnic” names because they were afraid that there would bias against them. They worked for agencies, who go around the world and tell people about the importance of diversity, yet it has created a system that does not allow room for the “other”!  This is not 1492, when Christopher Columbus met the “Red Indians” this is happening in 2015, when Barak Hussein Obama is in the White House!

In 2009, before flying out to Afghanistan, we were given a series of training to prepare us for our work there. Our main trainer was a retired US Diplomat, another “expert” on Afghanistan. The last slide that he showed us before sending us to improve the lives of Afghans, was something that still shocks me!!! The slide had on it, the image of an old American family, riding a horse-pulled wagon, surrounded by the US army, and in the horizon were the Native Indian horsemen with their spears drawn out coming to attack the family!! Our diplomat and “Afghan expert”, ended by saying, “this is how you will feel when in Afghanistan!” We, the USAID, State Department folks were the good guys, whose lives were being protected by the US military against the savages, the Afghans. If he was trying to show his cultural “sensitivity” he did not do a good job. His last slide is an example of how the local population and the “other” is looked upon! To be feared, subdued and civilized, and shaped like us, whatever that is!

 

Hopefully those who are hired to work in the Foreign Service and foreign aid will be hired based on their skill sets, their mutual respect and understanding of their own culture and the local culture, and most importantly to truly work for a world that people's diversity is valued not feared! Until that day more resources will be wasted and the voices of the real “experts” silenced!