People in Need Foundation runs humanitarian aid programmes in Afghanistan

The recent shooting incident at the Czech military field hospital in Basra, Iraq, attracted media attention again to the Czech humanitarian mission in that particular country. But Czech humanitarian workers are also helping to restore civilian infrastructure in other areas of conflict around the world - places which over the past months have been somewhat overshadowed by the events in Iraq. Since November 2001, the People in Need Foundation (Clovek v tisni) has been running a humanitarian mission in Afghanistan. Pavla Horakova contacted the People in Need's office in the Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif over satellite phone and spoke to humanitarian worker Pavel Vesely about the current activities of the Czech mission.

People in Need Foundation runs humanitarian aid programmes in Afghanistan

"There are only four of us living in Kabul and Mazar-e Sharif and what we do is we construct schools and clinics and we try to organise some educational programmes, like teaching and training. We are currently constructing 1,600 houses for vulnerable people, basically returnees coming from Pakistan and Iran. We assist these people, provide them with material and they build basic houses with two or three rooms. This is in Kabul and Mazar-e Sharif."

You said you construct houses - it doesn't mean you build them with your hands...

"Well, unfortunately not. Most of my time I spend in my office in front of a computer screen and I only organise some labourers. We have some engineers and we contract local construction companies. So my work is much more boring than it seems when I talk about it. So, we only provide work for the other construction companies, we are the middlemen."

Speaking about construction companies, are they only local companies or are there any Czech companies working in Afghanistan now?

Distribution of pens and schoolbooks, photo: www.clovekvtisni.cz

"There is one Czech company, the CzechTrade company that's focusing on importing machinery from the Czech Republic. But basically, we are the only ones coming from the Czech Republic that work and operate here. Actually, being from the Czech Republic is kind of a comparative advantage because during the communist regime of President Najibullah, Czechoslovakia was one of the countries that contributed a lot to the industrialisation of Afghanistan and people have good memories of our friendship then. So we can actually allow ourselves to travel to the south of the country that is considered unsafe for most of the ex-pat community and we also have maybe better advantages compared to other foreigners in the country."

How do you communicate with the locals?

"We have a couple of translators and interpreters. Half of our staff are Russian-speakers, half of our staff are English-speakers. And then we also communicate what we can in Dari, which is the language in the northern part of Afghanistan. Pashtu, which is spoken in the southern part of the country, is much more difficult. I completely gave up all hopes that I would ever learn it. But every ex-pat who's working for People in Need has to know basic Dari because drivers and other staff only speak Dari."

You can find more information on the Czech humanitarian mission in Afghanistan at www.clovekvtisni.cz.