Pages

Mar 31, 2011

Blood on your hands

Would you drink tea with a man who is responsible for the death of more than 100 civilians? Do you consider the man whose militia controls and tyrannizes tens of villages as a partner for peace? Is the family that has earned millions of dollars over the backs of their fellow countrymen by exploiting their suffering a table partner?


Preferably not, but the answer to these questions is always ‘yes’. When I was working in the west of Afghanistan I could still largely ignore the ‘black side’, but now in Kandahar, Uruzgan, Zabul and Daykundi it is quite impossible to implement the program without a friendly smile for people who, under any other circumstance, should face trail in The Hague.

The small examples are the local strongmen who can provide my staff save passage though certain areas, or not. They and their men have been fighting for the last 30 years for every conceivable side and have not always behaved like perfect gentlemen, which I use as an understatement for having gallons of blood on their hands. You know that the guy sitting opposite from you is from a family that until very recently slowly strangled their opponents with glass-covered kite-line, today, however, he makes it possible for our staff to do incident investigations in a village where no one has been for the past two years.

One of the most interesting men to ‘cooperate’ with is the strongman of Uruzgan, Matiullah Khan: warlord and Pontius Pilate in one. The Dutch army had some rather interesting encounters with him during their Uruzgan tenure for ISAF and most of the international projects in the province would not have been implemented if it weren’t for his blessing. Without any official deal or handshake he allows us to use his secure convoys for free and protects our staff and office. Recently, the head of the Uruzgan provincial council stole assistance we had provided to some of our beneficiaries and ‘arrested’ our local coordinator. If that is the way the head of a governmental council behaves, who can you go to…but a certain local power-holder.

All of these men, whether they are now in official positions or running the show with support from their private militias, say that they only steal from you to redistribute it more fairly; they only skim off salaries to help the poor, and; they only behead someone because he stands in the way of an Afghan paradise being established. If this is your choice for partner, who do you tango with? The most important consideration isn’t really whether someone is a war criminal, but whether you further legitimize him by cooperating with him and if that is actually a bad thing for Afghanistan and its people.

I choose to ‘use’ a man with more blood on his hands than I ever held for possible, whilst the other option doesn’t carry any less responsibility for human suffering. You’ll have to choose…or just do nothing at all.