Monday, 05 October 2009

• Sad day

  8:02: Email saying that Adam Motiwala was injured in a suicide attack in Islamabad which killed 5 UN World Food Program workers.
  
  

  '"There was a huge bang, and something hit me. I fell on the floor bleeding," said Adam Motiwala, an information officer at the U.N. agency who was hospitalized with injuries to his head, leg and ribs.'
  
  Adam had emailed me 12 days ago to find out about my Masters programme at Fletcher. Although he seems reasonably okay, he lost five colleagues providing humanitarian assistance.
  - AP report
  
  

  As Joya, a hall-mate who spent 5 years in Islamabad because her dad was posted there for the World Food Programme, wrote:
  

  
  "If aid agencies have to fear for the security of their staff (regardless of whether they are foreign or national staff), then they wont go to troubled areas, and subsequently the people in most need of aid will be neglected."
  

  
  

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  10:52: Email from my friend Niaz in Pakistan entitled 'Our bad':
  
  

  "I have a friend here in university from South Korea he is also my hostel fellow. [ . . . ]
   

  Just two days ago a Pakistani who was working [in his and his compatriots'] office took away 2000 dollars from accounts [ . . . ] his friends are now wraping their business and they have decided to go away to a new market because they say its difficult for them to continue business in Pakistan because of such things, Ameen said my friends didn't wanted to hire people from Pakistan but it was because me who recommended Pakistani and asked my friend to hire Pakistani people.now he is ashamed of [ . . . ] living in Pakistan.'
  

  
  

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  16:17: An email from Fletcher Dean Bosworth announces the death of a Fletcher alumnus killed in service in Afghanistan. Richard, my Ugandan suitemate, explained that he brought the death to the administration's attention. He had witnessed the killed alumnus in action in Uganda, and had seen his commitment to humanitarian work.
  
  

  'Dear Fletcher Classes of 2002, 2003 and 2004:
  
  It is with deep sadness that I write to inform you of the loss of one of
  your Fletcher classmates, Ben Sklaver, F03. As many of you may know, Ben
  was an Army Captain who had worked at the Center for Disease Control and
  was deployed to Afghanistan for his second tour of duty. He was on
  patrol this past Friday in Muscheh, Afghanistan, when his unit was
  attacked.
  
  While at The Fletcher School, Ben focused on Security Studies and
  Humanitarian Studies. In 2007, while working at the CDC in Atlanta and
  serving in the U.S. Army ROTC, Ben founded the Clearwater Initiative, a
  non-profit that works to bring clean water to thousands of people in
  Uganda. Fletcher alumni, Chamsai Menasveta, wrote to us and said that
  Ben, "personified in every sense the 'leader with a global perspective'
  that is the hallmark of Fletcher."'
  

  
  
  

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  16:21: Email from Niaz in Pakistan again:
  
  

  'I am a pukhton living in Islamabad for my studies here. When i hear about discrimination with muslims and specially Pakistani students in UK or USA or any part of the world when they talk on such topics and talk against these countries i just smile on them,i smile because they want justice from foreign countries and they condemn discrimination but they dont know the way they discriminate us here in islamabad.They dont want to be friends of us they joke on us and they call us terrorists as the operations are going on in NWFP, how i feel when they say such words.these people should think positive about us,first they shouldn't discriminate then they can complain about rest of world.I was Class Representative in my first semester which is just as a class leader and i was forcely stepped down by them because i am pukhtoon."
  

  
  

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  16:30: I see this video posted on one of Joya's recommended blogs. It's of a Polish engineer, speaking to the camera before he was beheaded by the Pakistani Taliban.
  
  

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  Besides feeling sad, I am thinking about why I feel so very, very discouraged.
  
  It is because I am, essentially, at a missionary school, surrounded by people who will join or rejoin international organisations to bring about change in foreign lands. I myself want to bring about change in Pakistan, and yet these killings say that our help is not wanted.
  
  But Richard tells me not to give up on "my" people, that those who killed were wrong, but they did so to feel empowered and to get their point across: they do not want outside interference. And I now remember words that Sharon sent me while she was training midwives in Afghanistan, the words of Lao Tsu. 
  
  

  Go to the people

  Live with them

  Learn from them

  Love them

   

  Start with what they know 

  Build with what they have

  But with the best leaders

  When the work is done 

  The task accomplished

  The people will say 

  "We have done this ourselves!"

  
  

  For all the good intentions of humanitarian organisations like the U.N., they make no effort to maintain a humble presence. For the time being, at least, it seems that the conspicuous approach does not fit well in a violence-plagued land of wounded souls.
  
  Social business is an unexplored way in Pakistan. When social businesses are owned by employees and locals, they not only empower but also have the potential to improve lives inconspicuously. Feeling sad, yes. But not yet the time to feel deflated.
  

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