As I noted in an earlier
diary on mortality, life expectancy, and healthcare in Afghanistan, the country has the world's second highest infant mortality rate.
I just finished reading Asne Seierstad's incredible work, The bookseller of Kabul, which details family life, especially for women, after the fall of the Taliban. In the book, she discusses health care in detail. She says that the primary reason for stillborn births is due to lack of prenatal care, but the 25% mortality rate is mostly caused by diarrhea - when babies and small children become afflicted with diarrhea, families stop giving them food and drink, figuring "it will only come back out anyway" and that the way to "cure" diarrhea is to allow the child's system to "dry out." The children die of dehydration due to lack of basic medical knowledge by their parents. Imagine what good we could do with a program for prenatal and early pediatric care! It would be just one way to help ameliorate the despair and hopelessness that contributes to the development of terrorist ideology.
Seierstad also details what it is like to be a Western woman in Afghanistan now. She stayed with an upper middle-class Afghan family and notes that as a Western woman, she was allowed to interact with both men and women in this still very traditional and striated society. (NOTE: I'M HIDING THIS BOOK SO MY HUSBAND DOESN'T READ IT BEFORE I GO. HE'S GOT ENOUGH CONCERNS ABOUT MY TRIP AS IT IS!) She writes about her overall impressions and experience:
My aim was really to find out about the life there. I realized that you just have to forget about the Western lifestyle -- the showers in the morning or your bicycle and all the small things that make you feel that you're having a good life. And, of course, wine or food. All these things -- the practical things I could cope with -- the fact that it was cold, that we had no running water, no electricity at times. You get used to that. I could never get used to the total system of humiliation of women -- their subjugation -- denying them real simple human rights, the right to decide things for yourself, the right even to leave your house when you want.
In the Western society, especially the Americans, the individual has value in itself.... Nobody can say that some people are worth more than others. But in this society that was so hierarchical and with such a double standard -- it made me very angry. It was something I could never get used to, but I had to. I didn't want to get into quarrels with people. I wasn't there to change people. I wanted to report exactly how it was.... I'm probably more compassionate when talking about the women. It was so tiring to be there -- so emotional.
I understand exactly how she feels. It is primarily the reason why I am going to Afghanistan in March - in addition to perhaps getting to see my soldier son.
In other recent news, US and NATO troop casualty rates doubled from 2004 to 2005, and it does not look like peace is at hand, but rather, things are deteriorating more rapidly.
Things are getting more violent in the Southern and Eastern regions of Afghanistan, the traditional Taliban stronghold areas. One recent story of teachers being attacked and even beheaded:
Suspected Taliban guerrillas have beheaded a schoolteacher in southern Afghanistan, the latest in a series of attacks on teachers and schools, an official said on Wednesday.
Abdul Habib was beheaded on Tuesday night after being dragged from his house outside Qalat, capital of insurgent-troubled Zabul province, by four Taliban gunmen, provincial spokesman Gulab Shah Alikhel said.
"It was the work of Afghanistan's enemies," he said, using the term officials use to refer to Taliban insurgents and their Islamist militant allies.
Taliban officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
The attack was the latest in a series of insurgent attacks on schools and teachers in recent weeks.
Last month, guerrillas dragged a teacher from a classroom of teenagers in Helmand province and executed him at the school gate after he ignored their orders to stop teaching girls.
Two days later insurgents attacked another school in the same southern province, killing a teenage student and a guard.
Overall, an estimated 1500 people have been killed in terrorist bombing attacks during the past year in Afghanistan. This is a fraction of the number killed in the Iraq insurgency, but it is not an insignificant number (125 people per month!)
A good resource for those of you who are teachers - OxFam has a good bit of information and on life in Afghanistan that educators can use in their classrooms.
That's all for now...gotta get back to reading and writing my dissertation!
Read more about my upcoming trip to Afghanistan, including how you can help in my research and get a DVD of the trip at my previous diary here.