Radio Prague reporter on the ground in Afghanistan

The Czech NGO People in Need have provided relief and development assistance to the people of war-stricken Afghanistan since 2001. Radio Prague’s reporter Christian Falvey is now in Afghanistan covering the work of the NGO and spoke to us earlier today about the situation on the ground.

“I am in northern Afghanistan and in the last couple of days I have been in the town of Mazar Sharif –that’s the fourth largest town in Afghanistan –about 75 kilometres away from the Uzbek border - which is well-known for some battles that took place there with the Taliban in 2002. Now we are headed south into some villages where People in Need works and we are now in a small, very beautiful town called Aqupruk in the foothills of the Hindu Kush. We are talking to the local governor, just establishing good relations and we are off to look at some projects in the villages.”

You are obviously moving around, what is the security situation like?

“Well the security situation is kind of funny. It seems to be safe on the one hand, especially here in the area of Masar Sharif. Here there hasn’t been any real fighting since 2002 and people are quite used to that, they feel quite comfortable and so if you ask what the situation is like then they tell you that it is very good, that they feel safe here and they do not feel like they are living in a war zone, But in the next breath they will tell you that you cannot go down that road because Taliban insurgents are operating in that area and they could kidnap you. And there are also armed groups wondering around and criminals and that kind of thing so we have very stringent security. There are security checks everywhere constantly, everyone is constantly stopping your car and if you go to the airport you are body checked at least seven times so you become very aware of the security situation.”

What is life like now in the villages and how is People in Need helping?

Christian Falvey

“They are helping in a lot of ways. For example they have built a clinic and a school in the area that we are going to now, but the main thing that they are working on is livelihood projects, as they call them. They teach the locals bee-keeping for example or wool spinning, wool processing. They teach these skills to the locals and then they provide them with the basic equipment that they need so that in a few years’ they can sustain themselves – with an orchard or with bee keeping, or making Afghan carpets for example.”

So there are no problems with food or drinking water or basic necessities?

“There are problems with basic necessities, but for the most part the people they are working with are farmers. So they are able to sustain themselves but they make about one to two dollars a day and with the help of these projects they can make two, three, four, five dollars a day, but they have families of eight to nineteen people living in their quarters from what I have seen so far. So, at least at surface level, you do not see outright hunger, but it is a very tough situation that they are in and the thing about People in Need is that they go out into the most remote areas where nobody has been at all so far. So they are finding newer and newer cases of extreme poverty and distress deep in the mountains of Afghanistan.”

How are they responding to this assistance? Are they not weary of foreigners?

“I’d say that from the beginning they are weary, but they have plenty of experience with the whole reconstruction project –even in the places where nobody’s been they have heard of it. Czechs are actually in a particularly good position because they had a lot of their products here in the 1980s, there were Czech teachers here and Czech people. So the Afghan people are actually acquainted with Czechoslovakia and when People in Need come here and say they are Czech they don’t need too much explanation.”