Living and working in Afghanistan for 18 months can be exciting, enlightening and dangerous.
Those were just a few of the thoughts expressed by Erica Isaac, who was the guest speaker at a recent meeting of the Harmony Chapter of the Brandeis University National Women’s Committee.
The meeting was held in the clubhouse of the Four Seasons at Metedeconk adult community.
Erica’s mother, Stephanie Isaac, introduced her daughter to members and guests of the Harmony chapter.
“In her first career Erica produced documentary films,” Isaac said. “One day Erica said, ‘Instead of being the creator of the films, I want to be the person whom they make the documentaries about.’ So as only Erica can do, she switched careers and went in a totally different direction.”
Working with the Afghan Women’s Network, UNIFAM, and the United Methodist Committee on Relief and having become a Methodist, Erica Isaac presented her story.
“The landscape and the people are diverse, confusing, beautiful and controversial,” Isaac said of Afghanistan. “There are year-round snow-capped mountains, endless rock forges and amazing canyons. There are open air schools being run in bombed out buildings, potato fields surrounded by people living in tents, mountainous foothills strewn with abandoned tanks and suffering cities full of street children. That’s what it’s like.”
Taking photographs is not easy in a country like Afghanistan, because the ruling Taliban has outlawed the practice, she said, noting that people are still very uneasy around cameras.
Photos showed Afghan people living in tents and playing musical instruments. There were children at school and participating in numerous other activities.
“Living in Afghanistan is not the Afghanistan you see on the news,” said Isaac. “The Afghanistan that I lived in was not marred by guns and violence.”
She said there was a power that came with being an outsider living on the inside.
“The situation in Afghanistan has undoubtedly deteriorated, said Isaac, who was awakened early one morning and told that the leading women’s rights activist in the country, Safia Amaden, had been executed in front of her children and grandchildren on the way to work.
“I was sitting at my desk when I was told that 20 or more police recruits were blown up in front of one of our local organizational partners that runs a school and recreational facilities servicing about 8,000 street children and war orphan workers,” Isaac told the audience.
She noted that U.S. convoys have been targeted across Afghanistan, resulting in dozens of deaths.
“As I watch the death numbers mount and as I speak about them with friends and family I am struck with the realization that field work, for those of us who do it, is an indescribable privilege,” she said. “While I can see what all of you see and read what all of you read, I can also see past the images of conflict and instances of violence and murder to an Afghanistan that is bigger than suicide bombs, tanks and coalition forces, both good and bad.”
Two Afghanistans
It is Isaac’s opinion that there are really two Afghanistans and they may remain at odds for a very long time.
“One is an Afghanistan of passionate men and women, sheltered schools, people shopping and laughing and the dependency that comes with working with people,” she said. “It is a country with hospitality, reciprocity and a willingness to share its stories. It’s an Afghanistan committed to freedom, the pursuit of their own democracy, education, health, justice and living free of violence.”
The second, said Isaac, is unfortunately an Afghanistan that is struggling to accept progress and all of the shifts that come with social change.
“It’s a country that is terrified of losing its culture, its religion and losing its identity,” she said. “It’s a country of men who are terrified of losing their place in society, terrified of seeing their children lead a life that isn’t part of what they have known for centuries, terrified of the real influences that come from participating in a world with no boundaries or limits.”
That second Afghanistan is one which is violent with honor killings, suicide bombings, school burnings and illiteracy every day.
“This is an Afghanistan that is unforgiving and unjust,” said Isaac, “but it is also an Afghanistan that can be understood and can be addressed and must be confronted.”
The speaker said she has learned that in order to support the first Afghanistan and heal the second Afghanistan and have a lasting change, there must be time.
“If you want a permanent [change for the good, you can’t enter a country and tell the people what they need,” she said. “I have learned that people are resilient and forgiving and generous if you offer them respect and honor their history.”
Change, no matter how welcome it is, means losing part of what you know, she said.
“Time is free and easy to come by,” said Isaac, “but it is one of the hardest things to offer.
Isaac said time is all that a developing nation has.
“It’s a natural resource,” she said. “It is also the one thing that the western world has taken off the table. It is the one thing we can no longer offer We demand change now. We demand results now. More time means more terrorism, more insecurity, more instability and more uncertainty. We want to feel safe now. We want to know that our efforts are changing lives now. We want the effects of war washed away now.”
But, she said, “We can’t expect a country that has been at war for decades and has lost two generations of men and women to oppressive regimes to be literate, healthy and tolerant in five, six or seven years,” said Isaac. “We can’t undo what has for some been violence, vice and darkness with elections and quotas, the ratifying of a constitution and the signing of treaties.
“People are dying, women’s health is declining and nation building is failing,” she said. “[We] have to stop debating whether we should have invaded Iraq or boiling everything down to money, oil, religion and culture. We need new diplomacy and new strategy and I believe these will come from new players and new voices,” Isaac said.
Women’s Rights
Working on a local level has given Isaac access to stories, faces and details that do not make it into the press or make it onto the United Nations agenda.
“It has brought me into living rooms, training centers, formal schools, government offices and army bases and most recently to a women’s prison which has not been visited by aid workers or the government in about a decade,” she said.
The active prison houses 12 women, Isaac said, 10 of whom are pregnant or have children.
“Most of the women are incarcerated for running away from home, homes where they were being raped, prostituted and beaten by husbands, their mother-in-law brother-in-law and other family members,” she said. “Most ended up in jail after appearing before a judge and were sent to prison because of rules that were at times unspecified.”
The women are jailed with their children, she said.
Isaac said she visited a women’s prison where the prisoners ranged in age from 18 to 81. Some of the women expressed feelings of injustice and anger, but most expressed the thought that prison was the safest place for them.
“Living in prison keeps them safe from family and community members who consider them to be dishonorable,” Isaac said. “Living in prison allows them to keep their children who are technically the property of their husbands.”
After leaving the prison, Isaac said, she was blinded by the hopelessness and anger that came from spending a day with the forgotten, with women who are “so far away that their loudest screams will never be heard.”
“Where will they go?” Isaac asked the audience. “They can’t go back to their community. They will see isolation at best or death at worst. Exoneration doesn’t exist. Relocation is not a reality. The problem is far greater than hiring a lawyer or calling the international press.”
She said there is a lot that has to be done and everything will take time.
“Prison officials have to be trained how to manage prisons and their employees,” she said. “Women have to be taught about their rights. They have to be taught that they deserve these rights. Training and education and an increased willingness to be able to talk about traditions and beliefs is the way forward for the women, the men and the children of Afghanistan.”
Action
A one-year education and advocacy incentive for local governments, religious leaders, teachers and prison officials has been formulated.
At the end of one year all women’s cases are expected to be documented, prisons are expected to be inspected and education of men and women’s rights and responsibilities are expected to begin.
It will take time and it will not be easy to measure success, Isaac said.
Isaac’s work focuses on widows, refugees and their families as well as focusing on women’s rights. She works in small communities and works with local leaders to identify who is need of basic aid, sanitation, clean water and food.
“I hope these communities will one day see the light at the end of the tunnel,” she said.
The Brandeis University National Women’s Committee raises money for medical research at Brandeis University, Waltham, Mass.
The Harmony chapter has received awards for community service and for surpassing membership and financial goals and for new chapter achievement. During the past year the chapter has raised $14,115.