Afghanistan's Democrats

An excellent review in Macleans of Terry Glavin's new book, Come from the Shadows: the Long and Lonely Struggle for Peace in Afghanistan:

The book opens and closes with the students of Marefat High School, in the Daste Barchi slum of Kabul. In April 2009, they fought off a mob dispatched by a Khomeinist mosque whose members were furious because boys and girls at the school were studying together. The attackers threw rocks and sticks and demanded that the school’s principal, Aziz Royesh, be killed. Students barred the doors and stood their ground. The school remains open.

 

Glavin’s book is full of stories like this, from the sealed-off parts of Afghanistan. Blame for the obscuration that keeps so much of the country hidden can be cast widely, including among journalists. Glavin recalls speaking with a senior Canadian reporter who had been in Kandahar several times over a three-year period but had never interviewed an Afghan woman. I know of journalists whose bosses discouraged them from leaving Kandahar Airfield lest they miss a “ramp ceremony” for a fallen Canadian soldiers returning home.

I’m not sure that many of our diplomats see much more. Recently in Kabul I got a glimpse of the rules that govern travel for embassy staff. The security bubble is almost total. This is understandable, I suppose, but it’s also restricting. It means we don’t know the students at Marefat High School, and we’re less willing to fight for them. We should, and we must.