Whenever a soldier from our area of operation died, in Afghanistan, one of the immediate responses from the base commander was to shut down all outside communication. This included all phones and internet connections. The reasoning for this was so the deceased soldier’s family could be notified properly, of the death, by military authorities. In the past, several families had found out about their loved one’s death through rumor, email or even Facebook.
Although I completely understood the logic behind the “blackout communications”, it caused other complications. Namely, soldiers and other personnel on base could not contact their families. Often, the media in the U.S. reported information pertaining to attacks on bases throughout the Afghanistan. Family members, in the states, routinely saw these news reports, but were then unable to contact their loved one, to find out if they were alive and well. And, the reverse was true as well, in that the deployed person could not call or send a message to their family, to let them know they were safe. Because of the high number of deaths, during the first week of Ramadan, our base had no outside communication for six of the seven days. Many soldiers’ families were in a panic that week, unable to obtain any news of the status of their family member. Military members knew their families were probably very worried, but had no way to reassure them. On top of this, the command did not allow the soldiers to own cell phones, so that type of communication was not an option either. The lack of communication with the outside world fed into the anxiety of that first week of Ramadan. The inability to seek comfort in an email or phone call from a family member for nearly one week clearly took its toll on the soldiers.
“Hero Ceremonies” and “Hero Flights” were very common the first week of Ramadan, as well. After a deceased soldier’s body was properly identified, processed and placed into a casket, draped with an American flag, there was a ceremony. Everyone on the base was encouraged to attend the “Hero Ceremony”, which took place at the airfield. All those in attendance, both military and civilian, lined up in a large formation, at the position of attention. The group waited for a military C-130 airplane to arrive and taxi down the runway. After the plane arrived, its engines were shut off, resulting in near silence. The arrival of the plane signaled the beginning of the last journey home for the deceased. The sound of the incoming propellers always evoked a flood of tears from myself and most people who stood in those formations. Members from the deceased soldier’s unit carried the casket, past the formation, to the airplane. Sometimes an ambulance drove the casket out to the airfield, where it was then retrieved and carried into the C-130.
I attended several of these ceremonies and never saw anyone with a dry eye. I had the absolute honor of being a passenger on a “Hero Flight” one time and got to witness the ceremony from inside the plane. I, and several other passengers, rode with the “Hero” up to Bagram Airbase, where the casket was unloaded and prepared for transport to the U.S. It was almost surreal to sit next to that flag-draped casket for the forty-five minute flight. Again, the tears could not be controlled, even though I did not know whose body was under that flag. The experience really drove home the reality of being in a combat zone and resonated with me, even after leaving Afghanistan.
The bodies of fallen Afghan soldiers, and those who worked for the Coalition Forces in some manner, were treated in a similar manner (minus the American flag). Every effort was made to properly adhere to the Islamic standards with regards to death. The deceased were usually brought to the closest American base, until the family could be notified. At that time, the body was transported per the family’s request so that they could provide a proper burial according to the Muslin religion. Families of those Afghans who die while serving their country, are provided a stipend (the exact amount of which is unknown to me), to assist with burial costs and other day-to-day expenses that would have been covered by the deceased’s paycheck. The money certainly does not lessen the blow of losing a family member, but it is a noble gesture that honors the Afghan who lost his life.
WOMEN AND WIVES
I do not consider myself a staunch feminist, in that I do not believe women should receive special treatment simply because of their gender. However, I do believe in fair treatment of and equal rights for, all women. I have worked very hard, both as a military member and civilian, to never let my gender influence my abilities and achievements. I have known women who used their gender as an excuse to be physically weaker, less capable on the shooting range, non-deployable (think purposeful pregnancy) and unable to complete dangerous and demanding military missions. These women are far and few between and I am definitely not one of them. This chapter will likely convey a very pessimistic attitude towards Afghan men. I found their treatment of women horrendous. However, I also understood that family honor, culture and religion forced them into their demeaning conduct towards women.
While serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, I had minimal interaction with females from either country. However, basic observations told me there were stark differences between the two with regards to their place in their respective countries and cultures. In Iraq, on a daily basis, I witnessed women driving vehicles, with no male escort. Many wore head scarves to cover their hair, but I saw very few, if any, with their face covered. I also saw Iraqi women shopping at the local markets, putting gas in their vehicles and walking with their children on the city streets. As far as Muslim countries go, with respect to women, Iraq was fairly progressive.
Afghanistan was nothing like this. In very large cities, such as Kabul, one may see a few women walking, without a male escort, and without their faces covered. However, throughout the vast majority of the rest of the country, women do not go in public without a man by their side and they certainly do not show their faces, or any other part of their body. The preponderance of Afghan women do not drive, shop for groceries, go to school or work.
When I arrived in Afghanistan, being a female, I was not sure how the local men would treat me. I knew the males and females in their society filled traditional gender roles, to an extent. The men were expected to work, starting around age sixteen, to provide for their family. The women were generally forbidden from working outside the home, with their primary responsibility to bear children. The females did not even fulfill the typical female role in the household, as Westerners would believe. One male, out of a family, would often be responsible for taking care of the house and would not hold a traditional job. Meaning, he would go to the bazaar to buy groceries and other necessary items for the house and he would tend the family farm. Women were not even permitted to go grocery shopping! The “barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen” joke held true over there.
As most probably imagine, marriages in Afghanistan are not based on love, or anything close to it. Many couples do not even meet before their wedding day. When a man and woman married, nearly always through an arranged marriage, the couple usually lived with the man’s extended family. This included his parents, his uncles, his brothers and sisters, his brother’s and uncle’s wives and everyone’s children. Privacy appeared to be a foreign concept and I sometimes wondered how a couple even found the time or space to conceive offspring. Often, dozens of family members shared common living areas. Those with extra money had the luxury of walling off sections of a “qalat” or compound, to afford some semblance of independence and privacy. Sisters usually moved out once they married, but the brothers nearly always stayed together, in the same qalat. Those living together generally shared their incomes amongst everyone in the household and all possessions were property of the entire family, not just the person who bought them.
In the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan, it is still customary for a man to present a dowry, or monetary gift, to the father of his fiancée. This often translates into the equivalent of thousands of U.S. dollars. Obviously, most Afghans do not have this kind of money lying around. Because of this, it is very common practice for the father of a female to “trade” her for a female from a neighboring family, so two sons can marry a
nd produce children. Or, a man will trade one of his sisters, for the sister of a fellow villager, so they both can have wives. If this type of arrangement is not available, it is also common for first or second cousins to marry. This mixing of familial DNA results in children whose intelligence level is lower than normal. The Afghan population does not grasp this concept. However, the mental disabilities that result from mixing DNA in this manner was obvious to me in talking to some of the men I interviewed. Some could not comprehend basic notions or respond appropriately to simple questioning and it was not necessarily because of a lack of education. It was clear that their mental aptitude was diminished but to no fault of their own. When giving our version of the lie detector test, the machine we used measured the person’s heart rate and displayed it in real time on a computer screen. I commonly saw evidence of heart irregularities and other possible heart malfunctions. I often suspected these were also a possible result of the inbreeding that was so common throughout Pashtun tribes.
Not only are Afghan women traded to be wives, but they are also bartered to settle disputes or debts between families or neighbors, and used as a payment for crimes committed. This tribal tradition in Afghanistan called “ba-ad”. When a woman is traded in this manner, she is often forced to marry a male member of the other family and/or treated as a household slave. This centuries-old custom began with the intent to smooth over the relationship between feuding families, by uniting them through blood. This idea is rarely seen to fruition, as the traded girl is often treated even more poorly than the other women in the family. Furthermore, when a woman is traded because one of her male relatives committed a crime, the punishment and potential imprisonment, for that crime, is passed to the innocent woman. Although technically illegal in both Afghan and the traditional Muslim Sharia law, many Pashtun communities continue to practice ba’ad. The Afghan Constitution clearly states in Article Thirty-Two that “Debt shall not curtail nor deprive the freedom of the individual”. As is so common throughout the country, the official Constitutional laws are not adhered to, or, in some cases, even recognized as being in existence.
I also discovered that not only are women traded as bartering chips in matters of dispute, but a fairly new trend is arising in which a woman is forced into being an “opium bride”. Opium is produced from poppies and its illegal trade spans far and wide, not only throughout Afghanistan, but across its borders as well. As detailed above, women have been used as bargaining chips for decades. Now, with the Afghan government attempting to thwart the drug trade, scores of farmers’ poppy fields are being destroyed. Although this remedy may seem like the most logical way to shut down opium production, it has severe and unintended consequences, especially for many of the daughters of these farmers.
Poppy farmers commonly borrow money from local drug traffickers, smugglers or criminal warlords, to buy seed and fertilizer for their crop. In doing so, they promise to re-pay the money, with added fees, after the poppy is harvested and sold. However, when these farmers suddenly find their poppy fields wiped out overnight, as a result of government crackdowns, they still owe large amounts of money. Those to whom they owe do not care why the field(s) was destroyed and always come to collect their money. Without having poppies to sell, the farmers find themselves forced to resort to a most wretched form of payment: their daughter(s). Fearing death, farmers hand over their daughter(s) to the debt collector as a form of payment. Sometimes, their daughters are mere children, less than ten years of age.
In other cases, local Afghans may own a decent piece of land, but have no personal desire to be involved in the poppy business. However, some find their hand forced. It is not uncommon for drug smugglers to seek out families with usable farm land and then use the threat of kidnapping or death to force these farmers into planting poppy seeds, against their will. When the Afghan government, often backed by U.S. and NATO forces, mandates eradication of their fields, they, too, find themselves in a losing situation. Not only is their land used for purposes other than providing food for their family, but their unwanted crops are destroyed, leaving them with a significant debt to pay to ruthless warlords, insurgents and/or traffickers. In desperation to save themselves and their family, some turn to their daughters as a form of payment. When the girls are taken, they are often sold into sex-slavery or married off to much older men.
Some farmers are allowed to “buy back” their children from the men holding them, if they can find a way to raise the money. They can sometimes make an arrangement with the smugglers/insurgents/warlords to hold their daughter(s) until they can come up with enough money to pay for their release. This usually amounts to the equivalent of tens of thousands of dollars. In the meantime, while the daughter(s) is being held, she is most certainly subjected to slavery-like conditions and sexual atrocities.
One particularly vivid memory I have concerns the female cousin of a man I interviewed once. While talking with this man, who I will call Ehsan, I asked him if he owned any weapons. He informed me that he used to, but now banned all weapons from his home. I found this peculiar, since most Afghans insist on having some sort of firearm in their residence, for protection. Naturally, I wanted to find out the background leading up to this man’s aversion to weapons. He explained to me that he used to carry a pistol with him, every day, when traveling from his home to the base (locals were never allowed to bring a weapon onto base but were able to secure their weapons outside our perimeter). This was a fairly common practice due to the presence of insurgents in the local area. Like most Pashtun families, Ehsan’s extended relatives lived in the same compound as he and his parents and siblings. This included several of his aunts and uncles and their children, his cousins. One day, running late for work, Ehsan forgot to take his pistol with him and left it on the dresser in his bedroom. Later that afternoon, he received a frantic cell phone call from his father, saying a relative had been shot and Ehsan needed to come home immediately. He obtained permission to leave work and rushed out the gate to the family residence. Upon his arrival, he discovered one of his female cousins had died as a result of a gunshot wound to the chest.
As Ehsan continued with his story, I noticed tears welling up in his eyes and his voice staggered as he tried to explain. His cousin had not been the victim of an insurgent, a criminal or even an angry male family member. She was a victim of her own hand, having committed suicide with Ehsan’s pistol he had left on the dresser. Apparently, Ehsan’s cousin was doomed to a life of abuse and essentially imprisonment, as her father had demanded she marry a particular man in their village. The arranged marriage was a result of a debt owed by her father to his fellow villager. This man was known as a bully with a hot temper and though she had desperately attempted to change her father’s mind, he would not hear of it. Feeling she had no way out of the impending situation, she had taken her only road out, which was death.
Ehsan attempted to maintain his composure while telling me the story, but I could see how difficult it was for him. He often had to pause, take a deep breath, wipe his eyes, and then continue. He told me he felt solely responsible for his cousin’s death because he had left his weapon at home that day. Although death is certainly not a preferential solution to any situation, I tried to explain to him that it was not his fault. His cousin had probably made up her mind about her fate a long time ago and would have found a way to take her own life, whether he had left his pistol at home or not. In addition, she had saved herself from a miserable life of torment, cruelty and mistreatment.
The situation leading to Ehsan’s cousin’s suicide is ridiculous and overwhelmingly sad. However, suicide is not an uncommon scenario amongst Pashtun women. In fact, many women find themselves in similar situations, feeling trapped and imprisoned by their own family. They are treated like third class citizens with no rights whatsoever. Most have no access to a weapon and have found the only way to commit suicide is to light themselves on fire. Surely, this is a most painful and dreadful way to escape their state of affairs, but, in thei
r eyes, is obviously less so than enduring years of abuse on earth.
Birth control appears to be unheard of in the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan. From my experience in talking to hundreds of locals, a married couple produced, on average, six to ten children, in their lifetime. I can count on one hand the number of men I spoke with who told me they had fathered an appropriate amount of children (usually two to four) and did not want any more. I never asked about birth control, but got the feeling that these few men, who were all highly educated by Afghan standards, had discovered that pregnancy can be controlled. What a concept! I really wish I could have interviewed some of the local women to see how they felt about essentially being pregnant for a majority of their child bearing years. However, I suspected they had been brainwashed into believing this was normal and that it was their proper role in society.
The general idea behind a married couple producing so many children was for the husband to father as many boys as possible. Even though common sense dictates that only a woman can truly continue the family line, baby girls really do not count. To add to the lack of birth control, by law, a man is allowed to marry up to four women, to achieve his goal of numerous male offspring. I cannot begin to fathom the actual number of young children who live in Afghanistan.
Sometimes, I found that men with more than one wife got more than they bargained for. A man with multiple wives generally housed everyone under one roof. According to accounts from the locals I interviewed, wives of one man often did not get along with one another and engaged in arguments about a myriad of issues, including cleaning and cooking duties, childcare and allotted time with their husband. One man I spoke with, who was interviewing for a job on the base, told me he was desperate to find a good paying job. I asked him why he was so very anxious to begin work. He explained, “I have two wives, five children and no job. I need a job so I can build a second house and separate my wives!” He told me he could not handle their constant bickering anymore and was losing his mind.
there is no goat Page 16