Still, backing out of the trip wasn't an option. If I were to have backed out then, I may as well have closed the cooperative myself � ��" because if I was unwilling to risk Kandahar for just a couple of weeks, how could I ask our Afghan members to keep it going indefinitely?
So I did what I tell my 13 year-old daughter to do on a regular basis: I sucked it up. Pushing myself through security in St. Thomas, I then sucked down three beers at an Atlanta airport bar and washed up in Kandahar some 40 hours later. The guys greeted me with a stone colored burqa they had borrowed from one of the Arghand women and told me to climb into the back seat. I complied. My life was in their hands now. Removing my eyeglasses to accommodate the burqa, I struggled to take in what I could of the dusty, blurry landscape through the nylon mesh grid.
Sarah arrived four days later and we immediately got down to the business of collectively examining our situation. The position of the three guys had not changed. Working at Arghand had badly endangered their lives, and so they still thought the best course of action was to shut down. They were scared, and that fear had opened their eyes to harsh realities and practical concerns. Afghanistan, which was very clearly coming apart, was unlikely to improve any time soon. On the contrary, they expected the Taliban to regain control of the south, but not until after quite a bit more blood had been spilled. And because Arghand was built to flourish in the progressive environment they had all envisioned, rather than in the hideous one that was lapping at their front gates, the prognosis for our experiment was becoming poor. The new land and building was a pipe dream at this point, despite Canada's support. If we couldn't expand toward real sustainability then what was the point? Wouldn't it be better to divide up what was left of our assets and flee to safer ground? Wouldn't it be wise to quit while we were all still alive than to sit around making soap, waiting for the unthinkable to happen?
The guys' anguish was excruciating, palpable. Back in 2001 when the Americans first liberated Afghanistan from the Taliban, their hopes for the future had been so high that they couldn't have imagined they would see such dark days of violence and paranoia again within their lifetimes. They felt in their hearts that the time was right to build something beautiful and expandable that would showcase the natural resources of their country while at the same time contributing to its economic development. They viewed the cooperative as a microcosm of what Afghanistan had the potential to become, complete with men and women working side by side and fair compensation for hard work. But now that their ambitions had become incompatible with the realities of the external world, it wasn't only fear that haunted them; it was the bitter taste of foolishness as well.
I heard what they said. I understood. I cried. Still, I couldn't bear the thought of closing Arghand after everything we'd struggled to achieve. For most of us, the cooperative had long since transcended a job; it had become a way of life, a system of thinking, a family. More often than not, it was first thing I thought about when I woke up in the morning and the last thing I thought about before I fell asleep at night. Those of you who know me well have probably heard me rail against American values reflected in a culture where people are too often judged on the basis of their material worth and can think of nothing more important than to advance their private agendas. And yet, I am a product of this environment. My instinct is to stay the course and persevere no matter what � ��" refuse to let the bastards win. So I told Sarah that we couldn't let three people determine the fate of 15, no matter how dangerous the situation had become for them, and she agreed. The women, who outnumbered the men two to one, were still happy with their jobs. Their families depended on the money they earned, and because as women they were essentially invisible, they didn't feel any more personally threatened than they had a year ago.
Knowing that if the political climate in Kandahar did not change sharply for the better, and soon, we might be forced to evacuate, Sarah and I decided that we were not ready to pack it in just yet. So we went back to the guys with several options: We told them that they could take their share of the money out of the cooperative and leave; or we could relocate the three of them to a satellite office in Kabul where they could do their portion of the work in relative safety; or we could send them to the United States for approximately one month, during which time they could escape the pressure, explore the country and gain a first-hand sense of Arghand's commercial potential in the west. They had all expressed great interest in traveling abroad in the past, but we had put it off in an effort to prioritize capital investments like the new soap making facility. Now that the new space wasn't looking especially realistic, however � ��" at least not in the short run � ��" we thought that it might be a good time to invest in our human resources. The terrible political situation had crushed the guys' spirits; perhaps we could reignite their enthusiasm by bringing them to the source of the demand, passion and support.
To our surprise, none of the guys so much as entertained the prospect of a trip to the U.S. Unless they could get visas that would allow them to emigrate, they said, it would be a waste of money. They also rejected the Kabul option on the grounds that the logistics were too complicated; they couldn't get their minds around the problem of trucking oils and half-made soap between the two cities on roads that were too dangerous to drive. So we came up with yet another option, which was for everybody to keep working at Arghand in a reduced capacity but at a slightly higher rate of pay for the next six months.
The idea behind option number four was for Arghand to drop under the radar by down-shifting from expansion mode into survival mode. We were about to ship enough soap to last through Christmas and into early spring, which put us in a good position to scale back production for a period of six months. During this time we could mitigate the risks by reducing our hours of operation, and changing them on a regular basis. The three guys who were in the most danger as a result of their public association with Sarah and, by extension, ISAF, would get two months off a piece so they could lay low or get out of town. Meanwhile, Sarah and I would work on expanding the cooperative � ��" not by increasing membership but rather through the development of new products like shower gel and skin cream � ��" that would require far less labor to produce. At the end of six months, we would all meet back in Kandahar to reassess the situation.
One by one, each of the three guys decided against taking their share of the money and running. They decided to give our six month plan a shot. Given the security concerns, I'm still not entirely sure why they chose this option, although my guess is that it came down to some combination of down-home Pashtun loyalty and a reluctance to extinguish our dream in spite of their hard boiled cynicism. Besides, circumstances were changing in real time. While Sarah and I were in Kandahar, the UN sponsored Electoral Complaints Commission finally submitted its findings that Karzai had not won enough legitimate votes to avoid a run-off to the Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan, which upheld the verdict by throwing out more than a million votes. Then, in a breathtaking affirmation of the politically aggressive US policy that Sarah has been advocating for the past two years, John Kerry and Hilary Clinton forced Karzai to accept the election results by suggesting that if he didn't comply, international support for his country might collapse. The objective was misguided, but their success was some indication that Karzai was unprepared for an ISAF withdrawal, and therefore at least somewhat malleable.
Meanwhile, I was dreading our meeting with the CIDA program officers who had guided me through the onerous process of securing funding for Arghand's now improbable expansion. But they seemed to genuinely understand, and quickly amended our contribution agreement to reflect the current circumstances. They encouraged us to accept the funds for salary and the rose alembic, assuring us that doing so would not oblige us to construct the new building. If, on the other hand, Kandahar security were to improve, that option would remain firmly on the table.
Is Kandahar security likely to improve any time soon? It's hard to say. It is looking increasingly likely that Obama will send additional troops to Afghanistan within the next few months, though maybe not the full 40,000 that General McChrystal has requested. It also seems likely that at least some of these troops will be used to secure major population centers, of which Kandahar is at the top of the list. Even so, the extent to which the United States government seems to understand or is willing to accept the hard line it must now take in dealing with Karzai is debatable. Kerry and Clinton squandered much of the leverage they gained after the ECC and IEC election results were announced in a herculean effort to force Karzai into a run-off election from which they expected him to emerge as a credible leader � ��" without acknowledging that this would not improve his standing with the Afghan people. Fortunately, Dr. Abdullah defiantly criticized his opponent as he reluctantly dropped out of the race, and in so doing handed the international community an unforeseen gift: Hamid Karzai would have his second term, but not as a legitimate leader, and so the Obama team gained even more leverage than if he had won a second round fair and square.
To my relief, President Obama seized this opportunity by inviting his Afghan partner to open a new chapter by cleaning up his act. This was a good start. But now the White House must not back down. We must stop worrying about our reputation as a country that doesn't do � ���"the foreign occupying power thing� �� � for long enough to demand compliance. We can make American guns and money conditional on Karzai's prioritization of accountable governance, protection of civilians and removal of the worst abusers of political power. We can, as Sarah suggests, force Karzai to report to a commission of Afghan and international statesmen. We can and should stand firm when he tries to whip up anti-American sentiment by claiming foreign interference, knowing that the Afghan people have been expecting us to interfere on their behalf since 2001 when they welcomed the American troops that emancipated them from the Taliban with open arms. And we can probably cash in our last big bargaining chip, too, by threatening to withdraw and meaning it, because if the Afghan people don't start to see improvements on the ground soon � ��" perhaps in the form of not being shaken down for bribes every time they apply for a passport or a driver's license � ��" then even 100,000 additional troops won't help to defeat an insurgency that is literally being spoon-fed by the heinous government we Americans helped to create.
And so, here we continue to be, on life support with the most powerful solar generator in all of Kandahar and 1000 kilos of soap finally en route to the United States and Canada. Pashtoon will go back in December and will try to hire at least one new male member who is trustworthy and can drive, in the event that some of the others decide to leave after all. Sarah and I have already started to work on formulas and source packaging for our new skin creams and liquid soaps. We badly want to succeed. We don't want to surrender our years of hard work to a sinister enterprise. We want to finish what we started. And yet, there comes a point at which you begin to realize that you just can't do it alone. Like the international community, we need reliable Afghan partners who feel as determined as we do, if not more so, to raise this cooperative through a field of thorny obstacles. Because at the end of the day we can push and prod, encourage and facilitate, cheer and console " but we can't ask people to lay down their lives � ��" for us. They have to decide for themselves what they're willing to fight for. They have to need to prevail.
Peace to You All,
jennie
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