What Do You Think?

Today was another enlightening day in the office. I finally got the opportunity to ask Esman and Hasat what they thought about the United States’ presence in their country, and how that affected their lives. Their views were not exactly what I had expected.

They both talked about the fact that they had known little but war and conflict during their entire lives. Esman told of his family’s trek from Kabul to Herat, which his family believed to be the safest place in the country at the time – safe from roaming bandits and tribal lords and lawless people. The trip across the country, which might be the size of Texas, took seven days on a bus. The bus continued to be held up by different groups of highway robbers, who held the people on the bus hostage until the passengers coughed up enough money to satisfy the robbers, who then let the bus continue. That was about 15 or 16 years ago.

They were both on the cusp of “teenhood” when the Taliban took over after the civil war here and after the Russians left. They both tell stories regarding what people were allowed and not allowed to do. Girls were not allowed to go to school. If a man’s hair was too long, Taliban representatives cut the hair by force. Televisions were banned. Anything that might represent the20th century was not tolerated. So both these young men have little to compare as far as what life might be like except to look at what their lives have been like for the past five years or so.

They told a story about a cartoon showing three people sitting around a table. The moderator asks the people what they think about the food shortage in the rest of the world. The first person (whose nationality I can’t remember) says something (see, this is why I can’t tell a joke). The second person, a European, says that he knows nothing of a food shortage. The third person, an American, says, “The rest of the world?” The idea is, of course, that America is myopic about what is going on outside our borders. They both thought that Americans tend to look inward rather than outward; however, both appreciated the American’s efforts over the time our country has been in this one.

They both thought that while the military force was helpful, it would have been better to come in and spend some of our military money on infrastructure instead. Why? In some of the more rural provinces, electricity is unknown. So is running water. So is the idea of paved roads. They both thought that with those kinds of life improvements, people here would have been able to see Americans make a difference. They also would have been able to become more mobile and travel to a city and see things that do not exist in a rural village. The young men both thought that even television would be a help, so that people in the villages could see what some of the rest of the world is like. When the American military leaves, it leaves. We will have some presence here, but the main thrust of what we have offered over the past now almost eleven years will be gone. Had we put time and money toward roads or power-generating dams, those would be our country’s legacy, Hasat and Esman believe.

Both Hasat and Esman also thought that our country needed to educate more of our soldiers and contractors about their culture, which, as I explained to them, would be fine, except for two things: 1) some of the things we need to know about their culture are far beyond anything an American could understand; and 2) regardless of any education or training, “cowboys” exist – and I am talking about people such as the soldiers who are currently in trouble for urinating on the bodies of some dead Afghans and taking pictures of themselves doing it. What kind of behavior is that, other than that which engenders bad will and anger?

Both Esman and Hasat are aware that some things that happen in their country are beyond the pale – things such as a woman being lashed 80 times for committing adultery. Talk about your scarlet letter! They explained some of those things to me: The Koran does provide for lashing in the event that people are caught committing adultery. Here, however, is the catch. The lashing is for BOTH the woman and the man, but the punishment is traditionally exacted on only the woman. Further, in order to accuse a person of adultery, the act itself must be witnessed, actually witnessed, and testified to by four separate people, and those four must testify to exactly the same thing. And if a person accuses without such evidence, the accuser must suffer the lashing.

I told them that this was a very clear example of something that could be drummed into someone over and over, but that it would still be incomprehensible to someone in the United States, because adultery is not a crime and is punished only in the lives affected by the act. I also asked them if it could be possible that the proscription was kind of like the question asked in the New Testament: How many times should I forgive someone who wrongs me? Not seven times seven. Seventy times seven. That has been explained to me as not literally 490 times to forgive, but instead an admonishment that we are to forgive because we are forgiven, and so we shouldn’t be keeping count of forgiveness; we must find forgiveness in our hearts always.

I wondered, then, if the Prophet had been saying to leave it alone. The likelihood of finding the required evidence to accuse someone of adultery was so cumbersome, I wondered if the Prophet was just saying, “Hey, don’t you have better things to do?”

They both had heard of the Hebrew punishment for adultery, which was stoning, but I told them of Jesus’ protecting the woman who was to be stoned by standing in front of her and telling the crowd that the one among them without sin could cast the first stone. And then, of course, the stoning party broke up. Esman and Hasat were unaware of that story.

They also told me that when the Americans arrived, and for a while afterward, the soldiers would search, or frisk, women. That was unforgivable to the family of the woman, and when something like that happened, some of the woman’s family would go join the insurgents or the Taliban in order to avenge the family’s honor.

I told them that we Americans certainly couldn’t understand that, just as much as I couldn’t understand why a movie, insulting as it seems to have been (I didn’t see it because it was blocked in Afghanistan), or a cartoon, as insulting as some seem to have been (I haven’t seen the cartoons, either), would incite people to kill other people or to riot or act mob-like, and generally behave in a way that is vastly disproportionate to the insult. I also can’t understand the same kind of reaction when copies of the Koran were burned early last year by accident. They agreed that such behavior is uncalled for, and then told me of another provision in the Koran that says if a person kills an innocent person, he kills the world, and if a person saves a person’s life, he saves the world. This means, of course, that there is no room for killing someone who has caused no harm.

We all agreed that extremists in both religions, and in both countries, hurt the abilities of people to come together and work together. They thought that Americans could make a huge difference in the lives of people in Afghanistan if they came to the cities and taught English, for example, or went to villages and provided medical care, because most people in villages would rarely, if ever, see a doctor.

We also all agreed that what we are doing – working together for the betterment of the justice system, so that the law is fair and so that people can count on the justice system working for them – is important for the continuing stability of the country. We also think our working together is excellent evidence that when our differences are reduced to our discussing them person to person, we can see each other as human beings, with different ideas, different cultures, different faiths, but connected by our common goal to live together peacefully on the planet.

I have learned so much from these special young men. I hope my working with them is as enlightening for them as it is for me.