The Syrians at Our Thanksgiving Table!

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Quote from Emma Lazarus used for pedestal on the Statue of Liberty

One of my favorite American holidays is Thanksgiving. It’s a day where family and friends all over America gather and share a meal together and in their own way express their gratitude for whatever they are thankful for. Some are thankful for democracy and freedom, some are thankful for having food on their table and some are thankful for good health.

My first Thanksgiving was spend at the house of an American family who had at her table a hodgepodge of people of different races and ethnicity, she was Italian, her husband was Dutch-Indonesian, there was a German, English, Russian an African American, a native American and of course us, Iranians! Bottom-line, we were all Americans gathered around one single table and sharing a meal. One of the things I remember before we partook of our food, was that we went around the room and mentioned one thing we were thankful about and most were thankful for being around that table with their friends and loved ones. I think I was just thankful to have survived my first year in America! Just like the first settlers who came to the United States fleeing persecution and yearning freedom.

Every Thanksgiving I am reminded of that first Thanksgiving where I was introduced to the diversity of America, where America’s unique make up and identity was represented around that table. We were all from different parts of the world and somehow through destiny, through the uncontrollable historical and personal events, we found ourselves becoming citizens of one nation. With all its greatness and shortcomings, America is a place where people from far and near and from all four corners come to seek refuge. America’s strength lies in its ability to open its arms to people who seek a better life and a better future. It is this openness that makes America the great country it is. Its diversity energizes its growth and fuels its ever-advancing progress in creativity and innovation.

As we approach this year’s Thanksgiving my thoughts are with thousands of refugees who are struggling to survive the harsh realities of a life without a country and without a future. There are many amongst us that don't want the Syrians in America. Their opposition not to allow them in is based on fear perhaps based on their forgotten family history that they too came to the US from another part of the world, either fleeing war or economic deprivation.  

They believe that amongst the thousands of Syrian refugees that might come to the US there might be some who will commit act of terrorism on US soil! 

Refugees who come to the US go through special security screening, people don’t just get up and buy a plane ticket and get here. Syrians will go through the same process. Most of them are families, mothers, fathers, children, no place to go…How can we as a nation think of them as terrorist and keep them from our shores? Were all the previous groups that came to our shores seeking refuge… perfect? Let’s not open our nation’s can of worm!!!  

As Americans we should step up to the plate and lead all nations in accepting the most number of Syrian refugees! Because where else would a refugee seek refuge other than a nation founded by refugees? 

The Syrians are culturally diverse and culturally wealthy people who are descendants of an ancient civilization. How can a people who have kept cities bustling for thousands of years be a liability to a young nation such as ours! How can a people with great cuisine, a great sense of style and sophistication and a thirst for knowledge and education not be allowed to find safety and a place to strive in America?  

We are a nation of abundance not only in material wealth and resources but more importantly in compassion.

So this year at our Thanksgiving meal let’s remember the thousands of Syrians fleeing war and violence and pray that by next year we will have a place for them at our Thanksgiving table.

Afghan Government and its Population Must Create a Peace Partnership!

Karim Afghan was one of the first people I met when I arrived in Shindand District in 2009. He was in his late 30s, an Afghan nationalist, and a community leader. He wrote and recited poetry in both Pashto and Dari and had a great sense of humor. Karim had a music shop in Qanati market and hustled day and night to provide for his large family. As the USAID Representative, I relied much on Karim’s contacts and smarts when doing my work. He was one of main reasons for the successful execution of our programs in Shindand.

One day I asked him, “Karim, why doesn’t the violence in Shindand and Afghanistan end?” He replied, “Because you foreigners don’t want to end it!” He went on to say that the usual suspects, Pakistan, India, Iran, US, the Russians, the Jihadists, use Afghanistan to wage their wars against each other. He said the worst part is not only that the Afghans suffer the brunt of this violence in terms of loss of life but it also fragments and divides the population. These scuffles and the games played by various powers push individuals and groups to become agents of these governments and do their bidding. It becomes a daily game of survivals for the ordinary Afghan. Karim went to on to say, throw in a weak Afghan government, which is corrupt, lacking resources and politicians who are incapable and at times not interested to unify their people, and that is why this cycle of violence, instability and war continues. He ended by saying, “Let’s forget about these things, lets drink some tea and listen to Naghma (Afghan singer)!”

What Karim told me that day is believed by many Afghans and non-Afghans. Afghanistan is located at the cross-roads of civilizations. Its a place where competing powers come to settle their scores. It was England vs. Russia, US vs. USSR, Pakistan vs. India, US vs. Al-Qaida and so on. Throw in the Afghan struggle to run its own affairs, create a modern state with its own national identity and a society in the era of globalization, and you can appreciate why peace, security and stability continues to elude this ancient land.

So what is the solution? Today, as the violence continues, the Afghan government has tried to engage the Taliban and their main sponsor Pakistan in peace talks. Though that’s a start, the fact is, those talks have not yielded any concrete results. The senseless killing continues.

To bring peace, the Afghan government must make its own population, its main partners in the peace process. Afghan traditional local peace councils must be re-established from the Kabul-level to the village-level. Those who are part of this violence and its enablers, both as Talibs or other groups in each community must be invited to lay down their arms and brought back into the fold. And unlike other attempts made previously, those who come back must see their acceptance back by their community as a reward. In other words their bad behavior is forgiven, they are now again a full member of the community and should in no way be rewarded by been given land or any other resources.

It’s time the Afghan government turned to its own population to bring peace to the land. Pakistan or any country will not give peace to Afghanistan, it’s only the Afghan government along with its population that can demand it and bring it. This action if taken by the leaders of Afghanistan will strengthen nationalism and unity and create an avenue for those gone wayward to return to their communities. Prioritizing peace will ultimately and in the long run bring all the business and development needed to pull Afghanistan out of the poverty that ails most of its population.

For those of you, who want to know what happened to Karim Afghan. Karim was killed a couple of years ago by the Taliban while on his way to his shop. Let’s work for peace in Afghanistan for Karim Afghan’s sake and the millions that have been killed senselessly during the past decades.

Amitabh Bachchan: Our Hero for All Times!

It was January of 1979, I was 11 and our Air India flight from Karachi was about to land in Bombay (now named Mumbai) International Airport. Our trip had taken us from Tehran to Karachi and after two days in Karachi we made it to Bombay. After we landed there, we were driven to Poona (Pune) and onto to Panchgani, a hill station in the western State of Maharashtra where my sister, my brother, I would attend, New Era High School, an international boarding school.

One day we were in Ahvaz, in the comfort of all that was familiar to us…our city, our home, our language, our food and above all, our family and friends…in what seemed to be, a blink of an eye, we were taken away from it and put in India. Fortunately for us, we went to a boarding school where most students were our age and came from all over the world, from Iran to Canada, United States to Ethiopia, and Somalia to Australia. Exposure to this rich mixture of diverse cultures at a young age developed within me the ability to mingle with all peoples and see diversity as a strength and looked for it rather than avoid it! Give me a work force from 10 countries, 50 cultures/tribes and a table with chicken briyani, Awaze tibs, chelo-kabob, goat curry, and Tuo Zaafi with bito soup and Guinea Fowl meat on it and I am as happy and productive as can be!

That was the campus of New Era High School….But outside of that, there was India. India with its populations of 700 million (1979)! The wealth of Indian culture was immense, this wealth was a direct reflection of its diverse population. Different languages, nationalities, tribes, religions, food, music and geography, all within this huge land mass. For me as a kid, nothing and no one brought these difference into one arena as did Bollywood and its incomparable hero, Amitabh Bachchan.

 

 

Amitabh Bachchan became our hero. I remember the first movie I saw with Amitabh in it. It was in the city of Sholapur and the name of the movie was “Suhaag”. The movie was “house-full”, no seats available! A few minutes into the movie, Amitabh finally appears on the screen, with him drinking a bottle of whisky and the theater erupted…as if he was standing on the stage in person!! People started to throw coins towards the screen! The best a Hollywood megastar could do was get a clap or two!! Whether you were an 11 year old kid like me or a 50 year woman sitting behind us, we were all taken over and mesmerized by Amitabh baritone voice, acting, singing and dancing. And when the movie came to an end, it was as if you woke up from a dream! It was an amazing feeling. The songs from the movies were all around us, whether walking in the bazaar or in school. We would try to imitate Amitabh’s dance moves and the term “hero” and “Amitabh/Amit” were interchangeable in our lingo…Ultimately, Amitabh’s heroism on the screen infused some of us with the wealth of Indian music, and our love for it.

 

In 1984 when my siblings and I left India for the United States, we brought with us a piece of India, which was our love for Amitabh Bachchan, Bollywood and its music which had sustained our childish spirit during the five years we lived in India.

Till today, when the times are tough or when my days are not going well, one of the avenues I turn to for spiritual upliftment and motivation is an old Amitabh song and dance number! So it was in 1989, my first semester at Holyoke Community College, when taking one of my first international affairs classes. It was mid-terms and we had to write a paper. Let’s just say my professor did not like my paper, she came quite hard on me, and told me “what the hell is this?” She used the word “hell’ because she was too polite to use the “F” word! I took the paper came home and just fell on the couch, depressed and looking at the ceiling. Not knowing how to get myself up and motivated after that very negative encounter with my professor!  I simply got up and took a cassette and put it in the video player and turned to Amitabh, the hero of my childhood to save the day and put some motivation back into my being!! It just took a song from the movie “Mr. Natwarlal” where Amitabh Bachchan and Rekha sing and dance to the song, “Oonchi Oonchi Baaton Se”! A week later I stood in my professor’s office and she turned to me and said, “This is what I was looking for, much better…good job”.

If I told her what was behind the better performance, she would have never believed me!

The Date Palm at the Entrance!

“Where are you going?” asked Azanpoka, “I am going to Bolgatanga” I replied. I had not walked more than 20 meters from Mr. Tony’s house, where I lived, and Azanpoka was the third person asking me where I was going!! Such was the culture in Namoo, a small village, located in Bongo District, on the Ghanaian border with Burkina Faso. Asking where you were going was a way for the community to make sure they knew where you were at all times and if you did not come back they would know where to start looking for you. Since I was a visitor they felt an extra sense of responsibility for my safety!

Having cleared five-levels of Namoo security! I got to the roadside waiting for the taxi. The taxi having crossed from the village of Yelwongo on the Burkina Faso side into Ghana, had already pick up 5 passengers. The taxi driver stopped, having recognized me as Anamoo (local name given to me by the Chief of Namoo), he looked around in his taxi and asked the passengers to shift around and make room! I was able to fit myself inside this beat up Nissan. I got very close to the passengers, we all got too close… but hey as my dad used to say, “Cheltaa Darvish tooyeh yek Poosteh Gerdoo Zendegi Mikardand!” “40 Dervishes lived in a walnut shell!” For those who are trying to understand what does 40 dervishes in a walnut shell have to do with 6 passengers in a beat up taxi, basically it means that if we live simple like a dervish, then there is always room for everyone….OK…never mind!

So the taxi started to move. Bolgatanga, the regional capital of the Upper East Region in the north most part of Ghana, was about a 45 minutes ride from Namoo. As we passed by the village of Sambolgu towards Zoko, I saw a beautiful palm tree, and for a second I remembered the palm trees filled with dates that use to decorate Ahvaz, the city of my birth, in southwest Iran. And at that moment I craved those sweet dates we use to eat with no end in sight!!! If you put a million dates in front of us, we would finish them all!!

We got to Bolgatanga and were dropped off at the the Namoo/Bongo transport yard. I got out of the taxi..a bit soar, a bit dusty and a bit nostalgic! I started to walk towards the town center, where I would usually stop by the Traveler’s Inn, a small restaurant/shop. This is where I would get a cold Coke to drink, a luxury considering that Namoo at the time did not have electricity and therefore no cold drinks to enjoy! And with temperatures well above 100, anything cold was heaven send.  As I sat there with a bottle in my hand, the thought of the date palms of Ahvaz lingered in my mind. I looked around and then suddenly out of nowhere appeared a woman with a big round tray on her head!

“Sir, do you want to buy?” she said as she brought down the tray and long behold there was a tray full of dates!!! I looked at the woman and asked, “Are these dates?” asking for a second opinion in case my mind was playing tricks on me or I was hallucinating…maybe someone had put something in my bottle of Coke! Out of nowhere had appeared a woman with a tray of dates…”Where did you get these dates?” I inquired and she pointed to the sky and said, “by Bawku side”. I later found out the dates were from Niger. But at that moment I was so excited I did not care where they had come from. I bought everything or almost everything this woman had on her tray and made her a very happy person, she did well that day!

In matter of minutes I ate most of the dates, but I did control myself enough to save a couple of pieces for Mr. Tony. I returned to Namoo that evening and sat with Mr. Tony eating our dinner of Tuo Zaafi (TZ) with Bito Soup and Guinea Fowl meat. After dinner I introduced him to his first date! He ate it and liked it. After a few days when the excitement of eating the miraculous dates had died down and I had gotten back to my senses! I remembered that I had saved some of the seeds and brought them back from Bolgatanga. I went to Mr. Tony and said why don’t we plant these seeds and see if they will grow, he readily agreed. Mr. Tony was desertification’s worst nightmare! He would plant any seedling or seed he could get his hands on!! So he called Ibrahim and Abdulai, two of the kids in our house to come and dig a small hole in the ground and we brought the seeds and planted them. From that day we all kept a close eye on the spot that perchance we could get a sighting of sprouting vegetation, after weeks of not seeing any growth we stopped looking.

Then the rainy season started, when after about 7 months of no rain, windy weather, and extreme heat, the brown, parched earth was revived and born again. One evening, a few weeks into the rainy season, I heard a bit of commotion, and soon after I heard a knock at my door, it was Ibrahim, who said, “Mr. Anamoo come on, come on and see”! So I followed Ibrahim to the front of the house where he and the rest of the kids had gathered looking at and pointing to the ground! I looked down and there out of the ground were two baby leaves that had shot out from where the date seeds had been planted! We again continued to keep an eye on this small seedling. The dry season came around and Mr. Tony made sure the baby plants were getting their fair share of water. Soon after I left Namoo and Ghana and returned to the United States, leaving behind a home, a family, and a village which was my community for two years and had contributed greatly to who I had become. That was November of 2000.

 

Ten years later I was back to Ghana and made my way back to Namoo to visit Mr. Tony.  The next morning after we arrived, he took me to the front of the house and pointed me to a tree and said, “do you remember the date seeds we planted? Here it is! And there stood in front of me a small palm tree that looked like it had struggled to make it! The seeds that had been planted all those years ago had grown to a youthful date-palm!

Five years later, again I am back to Namoo and our palm date has grown into adulthood! She stands next to the entrance of Mr. Tony’s house as if to welcome the visitors. We found out that the tree is a female and needs a male next to it to produce dates. As the saga continues, we are looking for a husband to be planted next to her! One day she will bare dates for all to enjoy, the same enjoyment I experienced, on that miraculous day in Bolgatanga!  

The Armenian Genocide and Humanity's Conciousness!

 

“Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formation in readiness – for the present only in the East – with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space (Lebensraum) which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” Hitler August, 1939

We flung the door wide open and ran outside into the hot and humid Ahvaz summer day. It was time for my sister, brother and I to meet up with the rest of the kids of our neighborhood, a neighborhood in what today would be termed as diverse. We spend the late afternoon to late evening playing our local games, one of the favorite kids were the Armenians, Albrik and Mari Hakoopian. Their uncle Alan, who was older would often teach us new games to play and coach the older kids on new bike tricks. These early play-dates with my Armenian neighbors, would, as I grew up, expose me to the fascinating and at times dark but ultimately triumphant history of Armenians as a people.    

As I left Iran and eventually made it to the US, I got to know more Armenians, who shared with me their family history. It seemed each family, though always successful in their adoptive country, had walked a painful path to get there. Today’s Armenians are scattered everywhere, the main reason for which is the genocide of 1915, carried out by the Ottoman Turks. The total killed was around 1.5 million.

What makes the Armenian Genocide, important historically, is that 100 years after it was carried out, the international community, continues to debate whether it was a genocide or not!! The Armenians have proven themselves, as survivors and strivers. This commemoration for the Armenians, though extremely painful, is also about their survival as a community.  Now all is needed, is for the rest of us and our collective consciousness as humanity to once and for all give the respect to those who made the ultimate sacrifice, and recognize this dark chapter as a Genocide.     

 

 

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!    

 
 

Shindand District: Working with Women in Rural Afghanistan!

Rahimah stood up and started to speak about the needs of the women in her community. Her head looked straight up, her voice was loud and clear. This was my first time meeting with women in Afghanistan. Rahimah belonged to a women’s group located in Shindand Town, whose aim was to organize women and provide them with literacy classes and vocational training.

The gender issue is one of the most sensitive topic to address in Afghanistan, but it gets even more difficult when you are working in the rural area. Steeped in traditional, cultural and local interpretation of Islam, women are not to be seen or heard from, their roles are to be played out in their own space, behind the walls of their homes. They are to be seen by their husband, brothers, and only certain members of their male family members. A friend of mine from Shindand told me that a woman’s place is either in her house or in her grave! It was against this background that I attempted to engage women in my work.  

One thing I learned was that though all of the communities within the district were traditional in the view of gender equity, their level of conservatism differed. The other issue was that, because  of the violence in the district, many families had lost their male relatives. These families now depended on their extended family (usually their husband's family) to take care of them. Unfortunately the extended family in most cases were poor and could not support the extra burden.  Because of their economic burden, communities were looking for alternative ways to support the now women-headed families. They were open in participating in women-focused activities. The other factor in Shindand was that many during the past three decades had left Shindand and had lived in big cities of Iran and Pakistan and had been exposed to urban life where women played an active role outside the home and girls went to school. Finally, many Shindandis were part of the Afghan military (Shindand Airbase is the second biggest airfield in Afghanistan) and got their training during the Afghanistan Communist government’s aggressive effort to educate women in rural areas. These former military personnel had been exposed to the topic of women empowerment and some had interacted with women military personnel. Taking all these factors into consideration, and despite the conservative cultural and religious belief, there was a critical mass of people who would support women-centric programming. They needed some entity or someone to facilitate programming according to Afghan rural cultural realities. The most important condition the people of Shindand asked for was, no military nor any foreign men (especially soldiers) should be allowed around the women participating in the programs. They said the mere presence of this group would jeopardize the project.

Unfortunately, there were those in the Coalition Forces and civilian sector who believed that if, you were paying for a project or giving resources to it, you had the right to go and see it. They also thought it would make great photos for folks back home in the US, UK or Italy to see. And ultimately believed that through these photos, they would understand how much their military or their government was doing to advance the cause of the downtrodden women of Afghanistan!!! Basically, they were saying we will help you but I need you to shake my hand and take photos!

The Wrong Way and the Right Way

My phone rang and it was Farzana, who ran a small organization, focused on young women. She sounded a bit frantic, and I asked her what was going on? She said basically, one of the American military units had shown up, unannounced, and brought them sewing machines!! Though she was thankful for the sewing machines, Farzana said, she could no longer work in her office, because the presence of American military units being seen around her office with male soldiers coming into her organization’s compound (usually to escort the female American soldiers) made it impossible to continue her work and she had to close down at least for a few months. This military unit thought it was doing the women there a favor by providing them sewing machines, but in reality all they did was to undermine the efforts of Farzana and her group. What the unit needed to do was ask around and find out if their action was appropriate! This happened in 2011, almost ten years after operations in Afghanistan had begun, I am sure someone had trained these soldiers on the technique of working with women in Afghanistan.

 

A few months after that, one of my USAID colleagues, contacted me and told me that the US Special Forces wanted to conduct community health worker training for women in Zerkoh Valley. Zerkoh Valley was the most violent area in Shindand District and the most underdeveloped. The condition of women in Zerkoh Valley was abhorrent specially related to their health. This project could help them get access to health workers who could assist them and their families to resolve their health issues, specially related to postnatal and prenatal health. I told my colleague that it would be a very useful project, but if they wanted to ensure some level of success, they had to keep all military personnel away from the training site. The soldiers don’t need to come there and take any photos, and if they really want to know how the training is going, I will go myself, check on the training and talk to the beneficiaries. Once that condition was agreed upon, the training began. I monitored the project remotely through my trusted group of local contacts. After a while when the training was in full swing, I decided to visit the site and speak to the women directly. Dressed in my local Afghan clothes, I made my way to Zerkoh Valley, which was about 45 minutes from the Shindand Airbase. The training took place at the Parmakan Village Clinic. After talking to the men (there was 30 women and 30 men being trained). I went to visit the women. I remembered how amazed I was to hear from the women, and how good they were in answering the question about what they had learned.

 

Dealing with gender issue in rural Afghanistan is challenging. All it takes is knowing the cultural and the societal landscape related to women, listening a bit to both men and women and see how they want us to work with them. Then implement programming that makes sense and puts a dent on issues that ails them and their communities.

Maybe one day we'll learn!