The Bailiwick should accept its fair share of Afghan refugees

In 2002 and 2003, I was part of a two-person team employed via the Asian Development Bank to assist Afghanistan’s recovery after the fall of the first Taliban regime. My job was to report and advise on problems at Afghanistan’s borders and make recommendations that could allow the resumption of international trade and the safe passage of travellers. Afghanistan has many borders and I focused on relations with, and the borders to Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. My colleague undertook the same work but with Iran and Turkmenistan.

We arrived in Afghanistan not knowing what to expect. There were many surprises, not least the vacuums that existed within the Afghan Government – though I have to say this was complemented by the resourcefulness of the Afghan people, who seemed able to overcome all manner of difficulties – they were now a people who really had little time for the normal roles that Government could play in their lives. On one memorable trip to the Pakistan border, I arrived to find just one person manning the frontier. Prior to the civil upheavals he had been the ‘statistician’. When I asked what he did now, he said simply: ‘I let them in’. Statistics? – he had none.

During those early post-Taliban months, we mixed freely with Afghans. We did not hide in armour-plated vehicles. We were invited into the homes of quite ordinary people and we exchanged views on our different ways of life. We hired a translator, Fahim, and it is his story that is probably the most important. At about the time the Taliban had seized power, Fahim had graduated with a degree in English from Kabul University. His family and friends were educated and in the early days of the Taliban regime had maintained a degree of normalcy behind their compound walls. Those walls concealed a television and a satellite dish and Fahim and his family held parties and brewed illicit hooch. Eventually, however, life became intolerable and the risks from defying the new zealots too great. Fahim and his family sought refuge in Pakistan. With the fall of the Taliban Fahim was, however, quick to return. He wanted do what he could to rebuild his country.

In 2003, eighteen months after the fall of the Taliban things were, however, beginning to change. Almost no-one had been killed, but the security ‘advisers’ were moving in. The US were first. They began to retreat behind tall walls and they would no longer mix. They would not even share transport with myself – they required armour plated 4x4s with powerful radios and tinted windows and neither I nor my colleague had these. They lived in guarded compounds, where Afghans could not enter. I was advised that the Park Hotel where I was staying was unsafe (it was overlooked by a partially completed tall building shell which the advisers said could become a home for snipers). The Asian Development Bank, who had operated from simple, accessible to all, premises, would now not let Fahim through the gates. And Fahim who had invited us into his home was understandably upset. This did not, however, alter Fahim’s view that life was improving and that only good things could now happen. I did not, however, consider this ‘apartheid’ wise. If we were to succeed in a new relationship we needed to talk, to understand and to trust one another.

I left Afghanistan in April 2003. I don’t know what happened to Fahim. We emailed for a while, but gradually I lost contact. His dream was to settle in France. I don’t know why he looked there, but he was learning French and we had practised together when we travelled.

There are of course, thousands of Fahim’s in Afghanistan. If we have given up on the wider battle, we owe them protection. And surely it is simply hypocritical to be memorialising the victims of the Nazis while turning a blind eye to the problems of our own generation. The Bailiwick (and Alderney) should do its bit.

JAMES DENT

Alderney