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For the past two decades Afghanistan has been embroiled in conflict, involving both foreign aggressors and political factions within the country. More than twenty years of violence has taken a huge toll on the country’s socioeconomic development. In the 1990s, the six-year Taliban-led regime aggravated already dismal conditions with its stringent restrictions on the mobility, education, and employment of women.
Traveling east to Jalalabad from Kabul includes a steep descent of nearly 5,000 feet around hairpin cliffside turns and frequent dodging of huge commercial trucks that neither stay on one side of the road, nor slow down for oncoming traffic.
However, I was more than willing to brave the daunting road conditions to finally see some of the country after a week spent in Kabul. Until that point, my impressions of Afghanistan had been limited to what I could see sideways through my headscarf while riding through the city streets to and from the IMC office.
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We traveled on the newly paved highway. Everyone I talked to in Afghanistan mentioned this new road to Jalalabad with excitement. It was one of the first tangible pieces of reconstruction since the fall of the Taliban, and seemed to symbolize a brighter future for the country.
Until the road was built earlier this year, all cars and trucks were required to take an alternate, unpaved eyesore full of potholes and large, sharp rocks. Both routes are 85 miles long, but where the old route takes five hours, the new one takes only two—making it easy to see how much basic infrastructure helps a country and its economy save time.
In Jalalabad, I met with the area education director about a new IMC school-based nutrition project. The project will provide health and nutrition programming in primary schools, and also help increase girls' enrollment rates. It is a small step towards plugging the huge gap in female education. Under the Taliban, no girls attended school, and female literacy rates hovered between two and 10 percent.
I learned from the education director that repairing and constructing school buildings was the biggest need; 105 schools in Nangarhar province alone have no buildings at all. Sometimes a concrete slab becomes a makeshift school; other times students must sit in the dirt, surrounded by bricks or stones, with a few desks and chairs under a tent awning.
Hundreds of schools were converted to paramilitary bunkers under the Taliban, and have since fallen into disrepair. Incorporating children with special needs into schools is also a unique challenge for the Afghan school system. As a country recovering from longstanding violence, thousands of children have lost arms, legs, and eyes from landmines.
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Compounding these educational challenges is the absence of adequate nutrition. In some areas of eastern Afghanistan, more than half of children are malnourished, which only further compromises their ability to concentrate at school.
Later that day, I visited the temporary settlement of Sheikh Mesri that in many ways typifies these and other needs of countless Afghans. The camp was established in March 2005 for 600 families returning from refugee camps in Peshawar, Pakistan. After living marginal lives outside their own country for 10 years, these returning refugees have no money, jobs, or resources on which to rely. Their own fragile government is unable to provide education, health care, or an economic safety net. Many of the children are malnourished. I met two people handicapped from war who could not work at all.
IMC runs a mobile health clinic there, and UNICEF has drilled six water points for the community. These are the only services. People live in mudbrick one-room houses, makeshift shelters, or tents.
IMC runs its mobile clinic out of a large tent three days a week, bringing two doctors, a nurse, and a pharmacist. The pharmacist stocks a temporary pharmacy in the back of the tent, where he answers questions and provides essential medicines for pa
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Always overflowing with people waiting to be seen by a doctor, the mobile clinic has become a gathering place for the community. The elders stand and discuss the day’s news, Afghan politics, and the community’s plans for the future. Children run around outside--the boys playing with handmade kites, or kicking around a soccer ball brought by an IMC nurse, the girls peeking through the windows of the tent walls, giggling and talking to one another. When I smile at them, they pull their headscarves around their faces, but their eyes sparkle with laughter. The women, many of whom are cradling babies, sit or stand in line, waiting for health check-ups, antenatal supplements, medicines, and other health services.
The elders echoed the education director’s concerns to me, describing the low literacy levels of the community, and asking if I knew how they might find a teacher to come out to their remote settlement if they provided the space.
Their children had never been to school, they said. The kids were bored, with nothing to do and nowhere to go. They told me that they prayed for their children’s futures each and every day. It struck me then this community’s experience, as much as the new road to Jalalabad represented the future of Afghanistan.
While IMC continues to provide health services in Sheikh Mesri, it needs your support to meet the additional needs of the community. Please help IMC provide health and education services for Afghan returnees in Sheikh Mesri and throughout the country.
Margaret Orwig, who works in IMC’s Policy & Planning Department, traveled to Afghanistan in August 2006 to visit IMC’s health programs and assist field staff in designing a nutrition project targeted at malnourished schoolchildren and food-insecure communities in eastern provinces of Afghanistan.
