by Ray Wiss
This was extremely strange.
Since Roto 7 began, FOB Wilson has treated a few dozen Afghan civilians wounded by the war. Not one of them has been a woman. In one instance, an intercity bus either overturned or was attacked with rockets (the story was never clarified) and more than a dozen males were brought to FOB Wilson for treatment, but not a single woman. All the women who were injured were taken to Kandahar City so that they could be seen by a female doctor. Even if the delay this imposed did not lead to loss of life or limb, it was medically unsound. Pashtun-wali trumps medical expediency.
To have a woman not only show up at the FOB, but to do so unescorted by a male relative was a staggering departure from local norms.
The local culture encourages people to try to kill individuals who merely look at their women. Even photojournalist Louie Palu, who has seen more of Afghan culture than even two-tour veterans, had never seen anything like this.
The mother was clearly motivated by concern for her child. Nonetheless, she had to be very uncomfortable, so I tried to minimize her A woman alone unease as much as possible. I approached her as respectfully as I could, removing my hat and sunglasses and kneeling on the ground. I took a slow and careful history, spending extra time so that the interpreter got my questions absolutely right.
A woman alone
The mother told me an unusual story: her son had been unwell for three years, was not gaining weight or growing, and was always listless and asking to be picked up. I asked several more questions but could not pin down any constellation of symptoms that suggested a particular diagnosis. The mother went on to say that she had seen several doctors in Kandahar City, all of whom had told her that her son needed an operation on his heart or chest. She stated that she was unable to afford the surgery.
I then examined the child. He showed signs of mild chronic malnutrition, as is the case for many children here, but was otherwise normal. His height and weight put him right between his one-year-old and six-year-old siblings. In other words, he seemed to be growing normally, at least in terms of his familial context. As well, he struggled against me while I examined him and quickly ran to his mother when I let him go. There was no lethargy whatsoever.
The benign history and physical, in the light of a complaint of three years of “unwellness,” seemed to indicate that nothing serious was going on. I thought long and hard about what to say. I did not want to appear to blow off the mother’s concerns, nor did I want to disparage the Afghan doctors she claimed to have visited. I decided to tell her that what her child had would go away on its own, and that he would be a healthy boy in a year or two.
Then what had been astounding became mind-boggling. The woman lifted one side of her burka, exposing her left breast, and began breast-feeding the youngest child. She then reached out and touched the male interpreter on the knee to emphasize a point she was making.
Unless you have personally observed the hyper-conservative nature of even regular Afghans in this part of the country, it is difficult to grasp the import of that last paragraph. For pure shock value, this woman’s actions were the equivalent of walking in on your grandmother while she is having sex with a stranger . . . in public.
Here in rural Kandahar, another consideration made this woman’s actions even more astounding. What she did was not only shocking to local sensibilities, it was also a direct contravention of the rules of God, according to the Taliban. She could well be killed by them should they discover what she has done. When the Taliban were in power, they would beat women if a flash of ankle was visible beneath the burka.
I was still reeling from what I was seeing when the other shoe dropped. The woman asked if she could have money to help take care of the child. Now I understood what was happening. The only way this woman would have been able to come to the FOB on her own would be for her to be alone in the world. Somewhere in the twenty-one months between the conception of her one-year-old and now, she had lost the rest of her family, or what was left of it. She no longer had a husband, a father, uncles or brothers, since one of them would surely have accompanied her. She was as marginalized an individual as it is possible to be on this planet. The story about the child needing heart surgery was an attempt to tug at our heartstrings even more—not that it was necessary.
This put me in a difficult spot. We cannot start giving money to beggars who come to the FOB gate. This would guarantee a non-stop lineup of people seeking the same thing every day. But not to help someone like this would have required me to stifle my emotions more than I am able. In front of the other soldiers, I toed the party line and told everyone we could not help this woman. Afterwards, I caught up to her right before she left the FOB and slipped her a U.S. twenty-dollar bill.
BEGGARS IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD
In the 1982 movie The Year of Living Dangerously, Mel Gibson plays Guy, a reporter who is introduced to the slums of Jakarta by Billy, an Indonesian journalist. Billy (a male character played by Linda Hunt in a gender-bending role) visits a mother and two small children who live in a hovel in the worst part of the slum. He gives the mother some money, instructing her that this is to be spent on a doctor for one of the children. The child is quite ill.
As they walk away, Guy asks Billy why he bothers. There are 300,000 people in the slum; giving a small amount of money to one woman for one child will not change a thing. Billy replies that one must never focus on the darkness. Rather, you must try to “add your light to the sum of light.”
That one line inspired me as much as anything else I have heard in my life. It has guided my approach to charity in general and the developing world in particular. If you look at all the evil in the world, all the things that need to be fixed, you will go mad. It is far better to try to add a little light to the “sum of light” and not worry about the darkness.
Did I achieve that with my trivial offering to this desperately poor woman? Perhaps. The best advice I ever got with regard to beggars in the developing world came from a Lonely Planet guide I read nearly twenty-five years ago.
The guide grouped beggars into three categories. The first was adult males. These were to be avoided. They were likely to be experienced scam artists who might be setting you up for a pickpocket or something worse.
The next category was children. Although they did not pose any threat, the guide urged the reader not to give them any money. Child beggars, no matter how pitiful, are usually “run” by an adult. The beggar-adult relationship is likely to be exploitive.
The last category was women. The guide encouraged its readers to give these individuals small amounts of money. The rationale was that women were almost always begging to support their children. Their offsprings’ hunger was the best guarantee that the donation would be put to good use.
The guide suggested that it would be educational to watch what the locals did. I did so and watched a woman begging in downtown Lima for over an hour. Sure enough, passing Peruvians would regularly give a small coin or two.
Was I right to give the woman the money? Will it give her unrealistic hopes about what will happen the next time she meets a Canadian? Might it even cause her more problems, as the other villagers inquire as to her new-found wealth?
Or did I add my light to the sum of light?
JUNE 24 | Unfriendly Fire, Part 1: Naquibullah and the Dead Talib
MORNING
This morning I saw Naquibullah again. He is a thirteen-year-old boy, the son of a farmer who lives near Howz-e-Madad, a village about ten kilometres west of here. He was wounded by one of our tragic but very uncommon screwups. In late May, one of our artillery shells struck his home. His two younger siblings were also wounded, one of them fatally.
Naquibullah was hit by a shrapnel fragment that tore into his right knee. The injury was serious enough that he needed orthopedic surgery, which we provided at the KAF hospital, a Canadian-run facility that is the main Coalition hospital in southern Afghanistan. He was discharged the next day and returned home. Since then, the FOB
Wilson UMS has been managing his dressing changes and after-care. This was his fourth such visit since I have arrived.
I first saw Naquibullah ten days ago. The wound was healing well, but he was not able to fully bend the joint. I showed his father how to do simple physiotherapy exercises and saw him again twice in the next three days. A week ago things seemed to be improving, so I scheduled their next meeting for today. The wound still showed no signs of infection, but I wasn’t satisfied with the joint’s mobility—Naquibullah could not fully extend his knee, as shown in the following photograph.
I contacted one of the military orthopedic surgeons at KAF, Major Max Talbot. Max and I did our basic medical officer course together and became fast friends. He holds the record for most time in Afghanistan by any Canadian military physician, having spent a total of over a year at KAF since 2006. He even spent a month at an American FOB that had a surgical capability, becoming the only Canadian military surgeon to have done time “outside the wire.” Max shared my concern and asked for Naquibullah to be transferred to KAF for further evaluation. This is standard. Any civilian wounded by Coalition forces will receive the best care we are able to provide. We will also pay monetary compensation for these incidents.
A victim of war
It took two hours to arrange the transfer to KAF. With the help of a very good interpreter, I took advantage of the delay to speak at length with Naquibullah’s father, Mr. Rahkman. I know what you’re thinking: how honest was this man going to be when we were treating his wounded son? What were the chances that he would honestly tell us what he thought?
It turns out that the chances were pretty good. Mr. Rahkman did criticize the Taliban severely, and said that he was happy we were here to help get rid of them. Even if we discount those words as flattery, the other things he said had the ring of truth. Although he maintained a calm and pleasant demeanour throughout our time together, he was blunt in telling us the things he did not like about us.
His complaint centred on his recent losses. Mr. Rahkman accepted that what had happened was an accident, but he was still very angry at us. He was also very critical of various branches of the Afghan government, particularly the police, who he felt were corrupt.
What struck me most about an exchange like this one was that it occurred at all. Mr. Rahkman was in a room full of armed Canadians, and yet he did not show any hesitation in criticizing his government and its allies. For a democratic society to be able to function, it is essential for the population to feel that they can voice their criticisms openly. Free societies are secure enough that their governments can take a few shots (figuratively). Things were very different under the Taliban.
AFTERNOON
This afternoon, a dead Talib* was brought to the main gate of the FOB by the ANP. For some reason, I was asked to examine the man and declare him dead. I had never been asked to do this before. I wondered whether the Canadians at the gate were also in unfamiliar territory and had reacted as non-medical people often do in these situations: call the doctor.
The Talib had been discovered while attempting to plant an IED. An alert ANA soldier spotted him and shot him once through the head, killing him. The body was in the back of a police pickup truck, along with the evidence of his crime: a 155 mm artillery shell, some wiring and a detonating device. You could tell at a glance that the man was dead, but I went through the motions of placing my stethoscope on his chest anyway. After the prescribed period, I announced that he had passed away.
The memorable part of the event came next. An Afghan policeman from the detachment based at our FOB had been kidnapped by the Taliban yesterday and executed. The Taliban and the ANP were now engaged in negotiations to arrange for the bodies of their respective soldiers to be exchanged.
There is an individual in the district who acts as a middleman in these situations. I wondered how on earth anyone would get started in such a business.
Addendum, June 27: The body exchange has taken place. Around midnight last night, the “body exchanger” came to collect the dead Talib. With the heat of the past three days, he had started to rot and stank to high heaven. I assume the police have gotten their man back as well, in a similar state.
Muslims try to bury their dead before sundown of the day they die, so it was notable that both sides were willing to neglect that covenant to be able to get their man back.
Every body goes home.
JUNE 25 | Unfriendly Fire, Part 2: Barali
Ninety-four per cent. In nearly every field, that would be a pretty good number.
Barali was the one-year-old brother of Naquibullah. He had also been caught by the blast of the artillery shell that wounded his older brother. He had been seen by my predecessor at FOB Wilson, who had noted a small laceration to a leg. There were no other apparent injuries.
Before he returned home, his oxygen saturation was checked and found to be 94 per cent. The rest of his vital signs were normal, and he seemed comfortable. Two days later he coughed up a blood clot. Then he died.
Oxygen saturation measures the percentage of red blood cells that are carrying oxygen. Anything that impedes the ability of the lungs to transfer oxygen to the blood stream will be detected by a decrease in the oxygen saturation. Normal oxygen saturation varies between 95 and 100 per cent. In other words, this child had only the subtlest indication that there might be anything wrong.
Given the history of blood clots being coughed up, it is likely that Barali had a condition called “blast lung.” The shock wave of the explosion caused a multitude of tiny rips. These rips started to bleed into the lung tissue. Barali drowned in his own blood.
His father was seen today by officers of our provincial reconstruction team. Given the proximity of our artillery strike to his home, there is little doubt that our actions at least partially contributed to Barali’s death. Compensation has been authorized.
What do you say to the man whose child has been killed by the actions of your army? How can we put a price on his loss? There are no good sides to the story, but there are two important points to make about the people we are fighting.
The Taliban place their bombs in areas where civilian casualties are almost guaranteed. When this occurs, their position is that it was glorious for the civilians to die for their holy cause. No compensation is paid.
And what do they do when our side harms civilians? The boy’s father told us that some Taliban soldiers came by his dwelling after his child had died.
He says they laughed.
Addendum, June 29 : His father brought Naquibullah back for another follow-up visit today. Max had not wanted to change anything in terms of the treatments I had prescribed, so we set him up with enough supplies for two weeks of dressing changes. Max will see him again after that.
Before leaving, Naquibullah’s father complained that word of the compensation he was to receive for the death of his son had leaked out and been broadcast on a local radio station. He fears this will attract the attention of the Taliban. I asked the translator how bad that could get. He answered: “Very bad.” I took that to mean “Fatal.”
The money that Naquibullah’s father will receive will be in the order of five thousand dollars. He has told us that he wants to use this money to move to a safer place (read: closer to the FOB). Now he has to make a choice. Accept the money and be seen as a traitor by the Taliban, with potentially lethal consequences; or stay in the middle of an active combat zone, one that has already killed one of his children.
JUNE 26 | Divine Wind in Kandahar
We captured a suicide bomber today. I’m not going to discuss how we figured out who he was, where we captured him and what is happening to him now. But the phenomenon of suicide bombing is worth examining in greater detail.
The military histories of the Western world have occasional examples of men who, in the heat of battle, have chosen a course of action that condemned them to death. The majority of these actions occurred when individuals sacrificed themselves to save one or more comrad
es. A soldier will dive onto a live hand grenade to protect other soldiers in the same trench. A pilot will give his parachute to another crew member, then keep his burning plane flying straight and level long enough for his buddy to bail out. A sailor will close a watertight door to prevent a submarine from sinking, even though he will be trapped in the flooded compartment.
The Western mind can comprehend this, but it cannot accept suicide as a tactic to achieve a limited military objective. You might wonder how we could ever defeat an enemy willing to do such a thing. To answer that question, we must first understand the motivation of the suicide bomber.
Many suicide bombers are not driven by deep philosophical or political convictions. On the contrary, a large number of these individuals are mentally handicapped people who do not realize what they are about to do. Many others are pressured into this role, often to pay off a family debt of some sort. These people are being used as weapons by utterly callous individuals. The only way we can stop them is to kill or capture the men who manipulate or coerce them.
The suicide bombers we need to understand are those who are of normal intellectual capacity and who are convinced of the rightness of their actions. The best explanation for this was articulated by Lawrence Wright, who wrote The Looming Tower, the best work on the origins, evolution and philosophy of Islamic extremism.* In a presentation he made in Toronto, Wright explained the appeal of martyrdom.
Consider what the life of a young man is like in a country such as Saudi Arabia, where all aspects of social life are controlled by Islamic fundamentalists. What outlets are there for these individuals?
The economy is barren. The total economic production of the entire Middle East is less than that of Mexico. If you take oil out of the equation, it is less than the Nokia phone company. There are few productive activities one can engage in.
Social interactions are even more limited. There is very little in the way of theatre, music or arts. Worst of all is the way that women have been removed from public life. There are none of the moderating influences that women exert on society, and none of the social interactions that occur when both sexes must share the public arena For many of these young men life is spent living at home, with interruptions for trips to the mosque. It is a life devoid of challenge, of any possibility of expressing oneself, of any chance of making a mark on the world.