Empty promises

Negotiating with the Taliban is likely a futile endeavor - unless they are prepared to ensure equal rights for Afghanistan's women. They must be required to "frankly state their position on the status of women, particularly with regard to health, education, access to justice and above all political representation," writes Orzala Ashraf Nemat, an activist from Afghanistan, for The Guardian. 

Firm conditions must be set before any negotiations begin. And the negotiators in this case should be required to post a bond of some sort, held in escrow, to prevent walking walking back on promises.  

Some members of the Taliban may be prepared to renounce extremism and be prepared to compromise and live with decisions that are not exactly to their liking.  And they should prove this by walking away from the organization.The Taliban are few in number. And the opinion of a minority group that does not respect majority rights should not be over-weighted in global or regional circles.

But negotiators can't even be sure that the Taliban gathering in Qatar are representative of the region's Taliban.  The BBC reports that the group of 20 men includes no Taliban of Pakistan. "For years, the Afghan government and its Western backers have been trying to contact the Taliban, but they did not have a known address," reports the BBC News. "As a confidence-building measure, providing protection to those Taliban leaders participating in peace talks and finding them a permanent address became a priority for the US and the Afghan High Peace Council." The Taliban chose Qatar and the United States and Afghanistan went along. The Afghan government is rightly worried about the Taliban using the new base for promotion, recruitment or fundraising.

A few members of the Taliban are in a new locale, enjoying luxuries not available to them in Afghanistan. There are no guarantees they speak for other so-called Taliban in Afghanistan or have control over putting a top to extremism - convincing others to abide by political process.

The Qatar office could be nothing more than a scam.  


NATO troops are withdrawing, and Afghans must choose the type of society they want. Most in the country probably do not want to go backward. 

Photo of Afghan man beating a woman for removing her burqa in 2001, courtesy of RAWA and Wikimedia Commons.

Bias?

As the author of a mystery novel set in Afghanistan, I have often wondered if my internet wanderings have triggered alarms among analysts at the National Security Agency. And as reports emerged abut PRISM, I filed a request with the NSA’s convenient online form – inquiring about any files with my name or the title of my fourth book. 

I would not be surprised if the months of research for the novel, Fear of Beauty, set in Afghanistan, didn’t hit some nerves. The story is told from conflicting points of view of a rural and illiterate Afghan woman and an Army Ranger, with a plot focusing on extremism, varying interpretations of the Koran, weapons and war, conflict among members of a provincial reconstructions team, surveillance and more. So I headed to the National Security Agency’s web page on the Freedom of Information Act and found: “If you are seeking personal records on yourself (i.e., security, medical, personnel, applicant, etc.) or the reason why you were denied a position with this Agency, you will need to submit a PRIVACY ACT (PA) request instead of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.”

After filing a request, I stumbled on the advice from the National Security Archive for filing a FOIA request – and that advice could be a model for the National Security Agency as they go about the business of collecting and storing vast amounts of our personal phone and internet data.

The archive warns the public seeking FOIA requests that obtaining records can take a long time and be costly.   Many documents are already public available – and alternative sources should be checked first. “Overly broad requests are wasteful in time (yours, and the government’s),” the site notes. Appeals can be filed, and the public is advised to check in occasionally, but not harass the FOIA officers.  

Long delays can be expected and the site notes that “agencies that handle national security information have delays ranging from a few months to several years…. Delays are exacerbated by the fact that, for most agencies, FOIA is not an agency priority -- budget or otherwise.”

Finally, the archive advises:  "Don’t send frivolous letters or file pointless appeals; they will delay the processing of yours –and others’ – requests."  My request was not frivolous, and the NSA and our political leaders need to know that a huge range of Americans, of all ages and backgrounds, are concerned.

A response arrived in less than two weeks, notifying me the request was denied.  I won't appeal, but Congress must review these programs, and eventually much of the methods and data collections will be declassified to truly determine what works and what doesn’t. Transparency could contribute to ongoing public support of the widespread surveillance while eliminating the many questions and concerns. 

To conduct blanket sweeps on internet and phone conversations or not?  Blanket sweeps are time consuming and may not be helpful and the analysts have many alternative avenues to investigate. Opponents of gun control in the United States insist that blanket applications of background checks are ineffective – and that’s for actual weapons.  And perhaps that justifies outlawing the most lethal weapons, military-style assault rifles, just as government prohibits bombs, tanks and other military armaments. 

Of course, blanket searches of any type may eliminate some bias of targeted searches and profiling, but not the labeling and stereotyping that may go on among thousands of analysts with minimal education and training who have access to our data.

And that’s the most troubling aspect of these programs. Hundreds of thousands of contractors with questionable backgrounds seem to have access to data, with so much potential for misuse and a lack of accountability among the managers who devised this unwieldy system.

Congress needs to get straight answers on the operations of the National Security Agency – determining what kind of data should be collected, the appropriate number of analysts who need access, and the proper level of training. The House of Representatives hearing on NSA surveillance was a start.

NSA headquarters at night courtesy of the NSA and Wikimedia Commons. 

Facial recognition

Survivalists suggest that "A human face is a dead giveaway to the trained eye against a heavily forested background."

Actually, the face of any creature attracts attention, particularly a big creature like a bear. Leaving a state park on one of Michigan's rural peninsulas, I noticed a face peering at me over a road sign, and my brain immediately registered curiosity and bear. Ducking, the bear moved out of sight and I thought I must have seen a stump.

Then the bear crossed the road.

Perhaps it was not the face, but the eyes - and the reason I initially registered an emotion over the creature  itself. Another survivalist page advises carrying sunglasses: "Being able to look into someone's eyes gives you a lot of insight into what they are feeling and thinking."

Human eyes do still out more than others because of the ample white color surrounding the iris and pupil - which allows others to determine what our eyes are staring at even if our head is not pointed n that direction. " Knowing what another person is looking at provides valuable information about what she is thinking and feeling, and what she might do next," wrote Michael Tomasello, co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, for the New York Times. "If I am, in effect, advertising the direction of my eyes, I must be in a social environment full of others who are not often inclined to take advantage of this to my detriment — by, say, beating me to the food or escaping aggression before me. Indeed, I must be in a cooperative social environment in which others following the direction of my eyes somehow benefits me."

The cooperative eye hypothesis might explain why in some societies women don veils, covering the entire face, even the eyes, and why veils in other societies expose the eyes.   

Photo by D. Olsen

NSA - a hiring scandal

Employers routinely dismiss applicants who are older than 50 years or even 40 years. Political and industry leaders alike repeatedly suggest that the young are automatically better at handling technology than the old. It's not true. It doesn't have to be true.

I might prefer putting my research questions - and yes, my personal and national security - into the hands of a skilled librarian of any age than into the hands of a so-called systems administrator, in his or her twenties and lacking in formal training. I wrote about reorganization of the FBI post-9/11, and the same argument applies to the National Security Agency post-Snowden leaks.

"Reorganization of the FBI requires fundamental change and not just a reshuffle of administrators and agents," noted the opinion essay for The New Haven Register in July 2002.  "In truth, the director must consider hiring a new sort of intelligence agent. Avid readers with meticulous indexing and organizing skills offer potential for uncovering terrorist plots on domestic soil - and no one fits that career profile better than librarians."

The Bureau of Labor Statistics describes the position: "May perform in-depth, strategic research, and synthesize, analyze, edit, and filter information. May set up or work with databases and information systems to catalogue and access information." Yet the numbers hired by the federal government and industry, as reported by BLS, are dismal.

Modern library science requires mastery over a wide range of technology, and it's one of the many ironies of innovation that this same technology is reducing the number of librarians in the community setting and beyond. "Library Science has the fourth highest unemployment rate at 15% and the fifth worst median salary at $36,000," wrote the Annoyed Librarian in 2011 for Library Journal.

Brett Bonfield wrote about the quandary over whether the US is educating too many or too few librarians for In the Library with the Lead Pipe (quite the title - reminds me of Team Crowbar, whose creator insists there is no crowbar except by way of metaphor): "Library science is part humanities, part social science, and, at times in the past, and perhaps in the near future as well, part information science, and even computer science. Figuring out how these tensions might be balanced has everything to do not only with the producing an appropriate supply of new librarians, but also ensuring these new librarians have the requisite skills to meet the demands of the marketplace."

As I wrote back in 2002, government agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigation as well as the National Security Agency and Homeland Security could immediately improve intelligence gathering by hiring librarians with technology backgrounds as analysts. Journalists who are adept with technology might come in second place.

Time and time again, industry and political leaders are fooled by the fast talkers and new, shiny toys. Too many tech administrators create a false aura of complex secrecy to bill for unnecessary hours while librarians are eager to train and educate others regardless of their skill level. Cross-training is essential for efficiency.

Bias against these skilled librarians lingers, compounded by bias against women and older workers.

Jennifer Bushong, president of the Federal and Armed Forces Libraries Roundtable, wrote about my Register essay in Fall 2002 for the Federal Librarian and offered a theory:   "For some reason modern managers and organizational developers don't like the title "Librarian". They know what we can do and they know that today's world needs our skills and services, but they can't bring themselves to call us what we are. So they give us titles such as knowledge managers and information specialists, avoiding the world librarian."

Again, I'd prefer a librarian monitoring intelligence-gathering, all the while expected to respect civil rights and privacy, over Edward Snowden and other technicians who share his background. The most alarming aspect of these leaks is NSA hiring policies and strange reliance on contractors and uneducated workers, and fortunately, a few in Congress may pursue these questions.

Another hiring scandal that threatened our economic security: Financial analysts and ratings agency officers who issued reports knowing their analysis is bogus.  Mike Taibbi writes about "The Last Mystery of the Financial Crisis" for Rolling Stone, and quotes one Standard & Poor's analyst: "[T]his has to be the stupidest place I have worked at. As you know, I had difficulties explaining 'HOW' we got to those numbers since there is no science behind it."

People employed in positions lacking in productive tasks, with hours and procedures designed to mislead clients and the public, should speak up or quit.    

Photo courtesy of Raysonho and Wikimedia Commons.

Complicity?

Can it be that giving funding to the wrong folks is far more destructive than no funding at all?

Anna Badkhen argues that the iniquities in Afghanistan are grotesque, particularly for women. She urges the international community "look squarely at our own complicity in the shameful circumstances of Afghanistan's women, billions of international aid dollars and 12 years after U.S. warplanes first bombed their ill-starred land." She is the author of The World Is a Carpet, a book that describes a year spent in a remote Afghan village and the dreams of women and children who work at weaving carpets.

Many schools have opened over the past decade, but progress in the country of 31 million is uneven with threats coming from all directions. Many girls eventually stop attending school. 

Aid flows to those in power rather than vulnerable women. Badkhen calls for an end to violence, but also questions the withdrawal of NATO troops. Those troops remain targets for extremists. More than 195,000 Afghans have been trained, along with 5,000 special forces and thousands of police and security officers. More money will not help. The time has come for Afghans to resist bullying and stand up for the society they want.

Photo, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and USAID, "Widows in the Adraskan District of western Afghanistan voted to form an association to produce and market traditional wool carpets in a USAID funded project."

Risk

Afghanistan has taken the top spot in the world in risk for money laundering, reports the Basel Institute on Governance and Samuel Rubenfeld in his blog for The Wall Street Journal.

The ability to transfer money - making it appear to come from legitimate sources - allows crime to flourish.  "The launderer might choose to invest the funds into real estate, luxury assets, or business ventures," notes the inter-governmental Financial Action Task Force. Without money-laundering outlets, "international organized crime would not be able to function," explains Investopedia.


The non-profit Basel Institute on Governance is based in Switzerland and focuses on prevention of corruption in public and corporate governance, prevention of money laundering and the recovery of stolen assets.


The Basel Anti-Money Laundering Index is not a crime report: "As the Basel AML Index is designed to assess the risk of money laundering, the fact that any of these countries received a high ranking does not necessarily mean that they experience the most money laundering or terrorism financing.... It is indeed important to note that money laundering and terrorist financing cannot be quantitatively measured since most of it occurs, due to its illegal nature, in absolute secrecy."

The index assessed 149 countries, assigning scores from 1 to 10. Afghanistan is rated 8.55, Pakistan at 6.53, the United States at 5.24 and Norway poses least risk at 3.17.  The index excludes countries lacking in data so a few like North Korea are not on the list. Afghanistan is new to the list.

Basel AML indicators cover adherence to financial and accounting standards, transparency, rule of law, judicial strength and more. A possible sign of erosion in the availability of public data is a reduction of index indicators, from 15 to 14: "Euromoney’s sub-indicator on political risk has been removed as it is not publicly available anymore." That indicator represented less than 2 percent of the overall index. Compiling and presenting data require money and time, and such public reports could be targets as indebted nations search for cost reductions.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime has estimated that proceeds from money laundering at $1.6 trillion, or 3.6 percent of global GDP. The estimates may run low.

"Launderers are continuously looking for new routes for laundering their funds," the task force warns. "Economies with growing or developing financial centres, but inadequate controls are particularly vulnerable as established financial centre countries implement comprehensive anti-money laundering regimes."

Curious?

I just filed my Privacy Act request with the National Security Agency. The NSA makes filing such requests very convenient - you can do so online, fax or mail.

Of course, filling out the form probably means that I'm connecting new dots for NSA analysts regarding my many old emails, addresses and phone numbers.

After researching a novel like Fear of Beauty - set in Afghanistan, told from conflicting points of view of a rural and illiterate Afghan woman and an Army Ranger, with a plot focusing on religious extremism, weapons and war, conflict among members of a provincial reconstructions team, surveillance and more - I'd be surprised to have not hit some nerve. The same goes with writing and researching material for YaleGlobal Online,  a job that entails reading reports of all types from around the globe, including the offerings of WikiLeaks, and posting a full range of opinions on numerous topics, with equal measure of praise and criticism for US and other country's methods in their global dealings.

And then there is today's Facebook posting that suggests the leadership of NSA should be held responsible for devising a system that extends access to so much personal data to hundreds of thousands of contract employees, at excessive wages, including a young man who dropped out of high school. The NSA's leaders have lost control of this system as was predicted back in 2006 when details first emerged. All responsible should be fired.

With luck, I'd also expect the analysts to quickly spot my long background in mystery writing and shelve specific concerns about me as a security risk.

One can only hope.

June 13: The Des Moines Register reiterates my reaction of two days ago that more than one person is responsible for this leak.  "It seems the leak is the result of the government’s slipshod management of classified national secrets.... the true scandal is inside the NSA and the CIA: Based on Snowden’s telling, the United States government entrusted a high school dropout who began his career at the National Security Agency as a security guard with some of the most sensitive national security secrets with potentially explosive international repercussions."

Dangerous

Fiction promotes new ways of thinking, suggests Neil Gaiman, journalist and prolific writer. "Fiction is dangerous because it lets you into other people's heads," he said, speaking at BookExpo 2013. "It shows you that the world doesn't have to be like the one you live in."

We can imagine new ways of doing business, relationships and choices - and our imagination is the first step to making new ways a reality. And it's now wonder that those who support the status quo demand authenticity in their fiction.

Illustration, courtesy of Peter Kemp, Nuvolo set and Wikimedia Commons.  

Order

Sometimes nature prefers order, too.

Provincial Reconstruction Teams are wrapping up their work in the provinces of Afghanistan and saying farewells. US Army Spc Brian Smith-Dutton writes a beautiful article for Clarksville Online about the agriculture PRT in Khowst.

“Our emphases has been row planting, basic crop rotation, soil management for pest control, animal care, crop selection, green house management and low tunnel green house development,” said US Army Major Gregory Motz.

The team convinced some Afghan farmers that planting corn in rows would produce a larger crop. And one young Afghan farmer had a wager with his father over rows - and by the end of the season could show that rows produced more corn with half the seed. 

In the article, Motz described the work as the best job he's had in the Army. "To be able to see the progress the Afghans have made in a year and know that it isn’t because we did it for them, but with them."

Fear of Beauty tells the story of a fictional Provincial Reconstruction Team, struggling to provide similar agriculture advice in a remote part of northern Helmand Province - and of course, one of the characters is keen on wheat.  And as Motz suggests, the most successful team members are those who focus on "working with" rather than "did it for them."

Photo of corn field in Afghanistan, no rows, courtesy of 1stLt Kurt Stahl, US Marines and Wikimedia Commons; corn field row in Indiana, courtesy of Huw Williams (Huwmanbeing) and Wikimedia Commons.

GMO

Distributing genetically modified wheat seed to Afghan villages divides US aid workers in Fear of Beauty. One character wants to push large-scale projects while others support moving slowly with small, manageable, sustainable projects to build trust.

Of course, full understanding about biotech crops - the science, the economics and the law - is not high in the United States let alone developing countries like Afghanistan.

"U.S. lawmakers are pushing measures to require labeling of products made from genetically modified crops, citing health and environmental concerns, a proposal opposed by farm groups and sellers such as the Grocery Manufacturers Association, a Washington-based trade group," reports Jack Kaskey for Bloomberg.com.  

Why oppose disclosure labeling unless there is something to hide? Consumers do have a right to know what they are ingesting.

More attention is directed to GMO crops after a stray wheat plant, left over from Monsanto research nearly a decade a go, was found in an Oregon field. Japan and South Korea suspended orders of US wheat until the shipments can be inspected. Property owners should inquire about possible consequences to pesticide-resistant crops - and neighboring property owners should not have to endure unwanted intrusions of pollen from GMO plants.

The reports give a whole new meaning to patrolling wheat fields.

Photo of US and Afghan soldiers patrolling a wheat field, searching for IEDs in Ghazni Province, courtesy of Sgt. Michael J. MacLeod, US Army and Wikimedia Commons.

Peace by piece

Every individual has a role in ensuring peaceful communities - with no toleration for bullying. Before offering any critical comment, we could pause and strive for a tone that achieves support and compliance rather than resistance.

There is so much to be learned at school, it can be overwhelming for teachers and students alike. But how to treat fellow human beings should not be neglected. Most families teach these lessons at home, but we cannot count on that.  A culture of bullying can quickly develop and take hold of communities, as described in Fear of Beauty: "More often than not, we stood back and watched as fellow villagers were bullied, hoping to avoid such encounters. Ashamed, I didn't blame Mari and Leila for resenting the rest of us."

A Piece Full World offers eloquent reflection on the complexities of bullying and offers reminders that we can all do better, one individual at a time, one school at a time, one community at a time.

Drawing of the schoolhouse, courtesy of a Piece Full World.

Extremism

A few blame many for a senseless crime, and perhaps that's one definition of extremism. Yasmin Albhai Brown writes for the Independent about receiving hate mail regarding the murder of British soldier Lee Rigby on a London street:

"What’s it got to do with me or the millions of other blameless British Muslims? We hate Islamicist brutes more than any outsiders ever could. They ruin our futures and hopes. And at moments of high tension, the most  liberal and democratic of us fantasise about transporting them all to a remote, cold island, their own dismal caliphate  where they could preach to each other  and die....

"Around the world one finds disaffected Muslims who are consumed with bloodlust,  who have lost the capacity for dialogue and  compromise, who seem to have given  up on the best of human virtues – compassion, tolerance, freedom, diversity –  and who are disconnected from enlightened, earlier Muslim civilizations. Grievances have mutated into generalised brutishness."  

The only way to defeat such extremism is for the tolerant, fragmented as we may be, to link with others who may not think exactly alike, but who do promote tolerance.  And of course, that's what happens in Fear of Beauty, when strangers find they have more in common, in an alliance against extremism, than they may with family and friends.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and AgnosticPreachersKid.

Unreported crime

Reporting criminal acts combined with enforcement keeps crime at bay.

"Following a seven-year investigation, the Department of Education has fined Yale $165,000 for failing to report four incidents of forcible sex offenses in 2001 and 2002, according to an April 19 letter to the Yale administration," reports Cynthia Hua for the Yale Daily News.

The Clery Act is not new and has been in force in the United States since 1990.

Failure to report campus crimes - and how a ruthless staff member takes advantage of that - was the topic of my first book, Alaska Gray, published in 1994. Jane McBride arrived in Sitka, expecting to begin working as finance director. But she arrives and the job vanishes. She stays and asks questions and that results in the murder of a student on campus - a young native artist.

Hiding or downgrading reports of criminal activity do not protect an institution. The criminal acts will continue unimpeded, whether it's in Alaska, Afghanistan, or institutions of higher education like Penn State and Yale University.

Transparency is essential. If institutions cannot endure transparency, they do not deserve to last.

Malice Domestic 2013

Invisible sleuths, whether hidden, inconspicuous, discounted or vulnerable for any number of reasons, have advantages with an investigation. As others disregard their presence, the invisible sleuth - so often women - can quietly observe a scene. If confident, the invisible sleuth can form her own independent analysis without undue influence from others.

James Lincoln Warren, far left, drew out these contradictory qualities  as moderator of the panel "The Invisible Woman: Sleuths Who Hide in Plain Sight" at Malice Domestic 2013.  Two of the sleuths yearn for literacy - and the other two are quite skilled but marginalized. Such sleuths often earn respect from those outside their immediate environment where their abilities are taken for granted.

In Fear of Beauty, Sofi has little choice but to be invisible. Her community depends on power, hierarchy, outspoken religious devotion and secrecy rather than the rule of law. Illiteracy compounds the horrific effects of bullying. In Afghanistan, women do not have equal standing to men, and Sofi must keep her ambitions, opinions and suspicions to herself. She is a progressive in a true sense - wanting to improve her community for her children - while others see power and safety in maintaining the status quo. But of course, she must work in secret or otherwise put her family at risk.

Lucy Campion in A Murder at Rosamund's Gate by Susanna Calkins (red sweater) is a chambermaid in a magistrate's household in 17th-century England. Like Sofi of Fear of Beauty, Lucy cannot forcefully protest the accepted assumptions about women, as voiced by a religious leader in her community: "Woman is a weak creature, not endued with the like strength and constancy of mind as men. They are prone to all manner of weak affectations and dispositions of mind..." Of course, Lucy's character and her own experiences defy such broad pronouncements.

Daniel Stashower's book, The Hour of Peril, is a nonfiction historical study and focuses on Allan Pinkerton, the methodical investigator who uncovers and disrupts a conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln in February 1861.  The panel focused less on Pinkerton, himself a fascinating character of American history, and more on widow and assistant Kate Warne. Of all the invisible sleuths, Warne probably has the most choice and control, as well as respect from her peers. Joining the Pinkerton team in her early 20s, she became known as the first female detective - and as such was invisible to others during the course of the investigation, capable of passing herself off as woman from Alabama, collecting intelligence from Baltimore women who are Confederate sympathizers, and passing along secret correspondence between investigators and Lincoln's staff.

The Loser series by Peg Herring (turquoise), including Killing Silence and Killing Memories, features a homeless woman who barely speaks and does odd jobs in exchange for food, while watching the world pass her by on the streets of Richmond, Virginia.  "People have rules different from mine, and they make judgments based on those rules." Escaping what must be a troubled past, the woman tries to keep her mind clear of thoughts, but of course that is not easy. "Thinking of nothing worked for a while, but the mind has a mind of its own." By shedding personal possessions and attachments, Loser can determine who appreciates her for what she is willing to share.

The invisible sleuths in each of these books offer comment on social problems of each time period and location. Each woman has her own way of handling the very old process of globalization and the spread of new ideas and ways of thinking. With every century and technological innovation, globalization gains greater speed, followed by the outpouring of praise and condemnation. Individuals, especially the curious and aware, are open to new ideas and immediately decide which may work best for them. Others who fear change and shifting power resist these protagonists' observations.

Four very different protagonists and stories, yet James Lincoln Warren tied them together with his thoughtful questions in remarkable ways. Malice Domestic ranks high among my favorite mystery conferences.

Photo by D Olsen.

Under construction

A Tweet from one of the great teachers in my past, Bob Reich: "Laws not backed by sufficient enforcement resources are aspirations, not laws. Cutbacks at OSHA, SEC are repeals."

Restoring rule of law is an uphill climb after a reduction in enforcement. A breakdown in enforcement in one area spreads to other areas, as government employees and citizens cut corners and rationalize wrongdoing. Inconsistencies build, and citizens quickly lose faith in the system. Restoring the rule of law and citizen trust is more time consuming than destroying these systems.

And so it is with the Constitution of Afghanistan. 


Article Seven maintains, "The state shall prevent all kinds of terrorist activities, cultivation and smuggling of narcotics." Article Seventeen suggests the country "shall adopt necessary measures to foster education all levels, develop religious teachings, regulate and improve the conditions of mosques, religious schools as well as religious centers." Article Twenty-Two forbids "any kind of discrimination" and "The citizens of Afghanistan, men and woman [sic], have equal rights and duties before this law."

Article Twenty-Three:: "Life is the gift of God.... No one shall be deprived of this except by legal provision."  Twenty-Four: "Liberty is the natural right of human beings. This right has no limits unless affecting others [sic] freedoms as well as the public interest, which shall be regulated by law."

Article Twenty-Five maintains that "Innocence is the original state," that the accused are innocent until proven guilty by an authoritative court."

Torture is illegal. Persecution is forbidden.  Freedom of expression is inviolable.  There is a right to privacy around correspondence.  Personal residences are immune from trespassing without official court orders. Forced labor is forbidden. "Education is the right of all citizens of Afghanistan, which shall be offered up to the B.A. level in the state educational institutes free of charge by the state," according to Article Forty-Three, and Forty-Four encourages programs to "foster balanced education for women, improve education of nomads as well as eliminate illiteracy in the country." 

Those who would over-ride any of these articles can point to Article Two, which enshrines Islam as the state religion and prohibits any law that may contradict those beliefs. Even though Islam might endorse all the other articles of the constitution, the extremists develop their own interpretations to defy the rule of law. Stability in Afghanistan will depend on imams with the courage to speak out against manipulative, partial use of the religion to defend criminal acts.

Yes, laws that go unenforced are no longer laws.

And the difficulty of obtaining an online photo of the Afghan capitol building is notable, apparently a security measure. 

Photo of Kabul's largest mosque, Abdul Rahman Mosque, from Joe Burger and Wikimedia Commons.

Routines

An interview is only as good as the questions asked - and Kristen Elise delves into the writing process, research, how a plot can unwind from our life experiences, interactions with others and observations of our local communities.


The interview touches on the mystery of daily routines, under constant threat from globalization's constant march of change. We take these for granted - until one day they are snatched away - and the memories are haunting reminders of loss and our own mortality.

The routines we adopt from day to day are our research for future books, and as mentioned during the interview, my "best research was going about daily routines, thinking deliberately about every modern item we enjoy and stripping such details from my writing."

Murder Lab is a must-read blog for writers.

Photo of an Afghan family on routine stroll, courtesy of DVIDSHUB and Wikimedia Commons.  

The Onion

Satire in The Onion, as typical, hones in on the big picture - that terrorism is not cool, not smart, not useful in gathering support for one's religious or political beliefs.

"Sayed told reporters that instructing the 27-year-old in the goals of global jihad and providing philosophical justification for carrying out terrorist attacks against innocent civilians in the West is 'pretty much a lost cause at this point,'" notes the article Islamic Extremist Gives Up on Radicalizing Dim-Witted Friend. "At press time, Sayed had zeroed in on another individual, a lost, highly impressionable 19-year-old boy with no moral center and a broken family who the extremist said would be 'absolutely perfect.'"

And such are the antagonists in Fear of Beauty, brutal and ignorant bumblers who contribute only chaos and pain for the communities they visit. The book offers insight into the courage and unity required to stand up to these bullies.

Censorship

Fiction can be both truth and a product of imagination. But some unimaginative readers and reviewers automatically, arrogantly, dismiss a book for lack of authenticity if the author has not traveled to the locale, if the author does not share a protagonist's ethnicity, career or religion, and yet they can offer no other detailed criticism.

Ian Reifowitz writes for In the Fray and Truthout:  "But fundamentally, this line of criticism — that artists or writers can’t tell a particular story because they are of a different ethnic background from the subjects of the film or history — is a form of prejudice, too. It may not have the life-and-death stakes of the kind of prejudice that motivated George Zimmerman, but it is prejudice nonetheless."

Yes, it's prejudice and also censorship, a form of control to limit uncomfortable stories that need to be told. And we can only pity those who refuse to let their imaginations soar.

More about my quest for authenticity on the blog from Dina Santorelli, author of Baby Grand:

"Fiction goes beyond the reporting of facts. Writers can be obsessed with small details and miss the larger truths. As Stephen King once suggested, an author can become 'too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside.'"

Image by Fear of Beauty.

Globalization

The story of Project Artemis is one that shows globalization's many intricate twists.

A man is in charge of training pilots, US and foreign, including those fighting under Chiang Kai-shek, during World War II and decides that Americans could use a school that emphasizes trade and global connections. He obtains an airbase in Glendale, Arizona from the US War Assets Administration with the condition that the property be used for a school "for instruction in foreign area studies, business administration and international relationships." The school's international enrollment drops after the 9/11 attacks on the US, planned within Afghanistan. A few later, the school starts a training program for Afghan entrepreneurs - and that helps boost international enrollment once again.

Connections, expected and unexpected, emerge from trade, education, war and other diverse forces of globalization.

Photo of Lt. General Barton Kyle Yount, Thunderbird founder, courtesy of the Arizona Memory Project.

Parallels

The number of parallels between The Colour of Milk and Fear of Beauty are many and stunning.

Both books focus on women raised in small farming communities, though one is set in 1831 England and the other is set in circa-2012 Afghanistan. The women are illiterate, find reason to learn how to read and write and tell their stories.  Men twist religious texts to control and abuse women. The protagonists are exceptionally intelligent, aware of the challenges for women and their communities. Their families resist discussing those challenges. Both authors toy with grammar to emphasize that these are new writers expressing their thoughts.

Most eerie are the final sentences for each book, the first one published in May 2012 for the UK and December 2012 for the US, the other drafted in 2009 and published in January 2013 for the US.

For Color of Milk: "and so I shall finish this very last sentence and i will blot my words where the ink gathers in the pools at the end of each letter. and then i shall be free. For Fear of Beauty: I have only one certainty in a world that never stops changing - that more must be learned and accomplished. This lack of certainty and the search are my freedom.

Education, the ability to place one's story in the context of our times, is liberating.

The major difference of the two novels? The Colour of Milk is bleak in how the protagonist Mary must take control. Fear of Beauty, in the modern setting, can afford to be more optimistic. Afghan women have role models elsewhere in the world.

To think what our forebears endured from unequal societies ... The author of Fear of Beauty highly recommends The Colour of Milk by Nell Leyshon.

Reeling in readers

Gratitude to Debbie Campoli for reviewing Fear of Beauty in Women's Book Review: "You find yourself rooting for Sofi and admiring her strength. The story keeps a reader wanting for more, and the author does an excellent job of reeling you in."

Now Debbie Campoli has some stories to tell - and we would like to read a book from her!

Photo courtesy of John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland and Wikimedia Commons.

Analysis

What was most fun in writing Fear of Beauty? Switching back and forth in point of view between two diverse characters, an illiterate Afghan woman and an Army Ranger in charge of security of a nearby outpost. First-person point of view suits Sofi, and the more distant third-person suits Joey.

Kristen Elise of Murder Lab analyzes the back-and-forth point of view in Fear of Beauty. She explains that the book's "two subplots mesh at the beginning of Chapter 7" and describes the "approach of juxtaposing the first- and third-person perspectives as hallmarks of independent subplots" as "a fabulous way to include the intimacy of a first-person perspective while, in parallel, allowing the reader to observe scenes that the first-person protagonist would not have been privy to."

Her analysis is sharp, maybe because of her scientific background as a cancer drug discovery biologist within a major pharmaceutical company and as author of The Vesuvius Isotope and The Death Row Complex.

Those who write a book discover that reading other books is never the same. Writers are judges. Do check out Murder Lab.

Image courtesy of Murder Lab.

Lessons

Once again, life imitates art. Fear of Beauty describes an Afghan woman who is desperate to learn how to read after the death of her son - and she finds a teacher with an aid worker - a Bengali-American whose goal is to empower Afghan women though agriculture training.

Women understand that education ultimately improves communities - and Parth Shastri with The Times of India describes women of India heading to Afghanistan to teach. One source describes many similarities between Afghan and Indian ways of learning.

Shastri's article describes a group of 16 consultants and teachers attending a two-week workshop at the Centre for Environment Eucation in collaboration with the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan. Lessons were given, connections made, without complaints about language barriers or two weeks being too short of period. As Fear of Beauty suggests, much can be learned in two weeks, with motivation fired up. Determined students and  teachers overcome the language barriers - and never say can't.

"If Afghanistan has a fresh crop of woman scientists and linguists two decades from now, educationists in that country will have to thank their Indian counterparts," Shastri writes.

We can only hope that we are reading similar stories a year from now - and beyond.

Photo of Afghan teacher at the Nawabad School in the Deh Dadi district, courtesy of Sandra Arnold, US Armed Forces and Wikimedia Commons.

Divided partners

Fear of Beauty and this blog describe the role of the provincial reconstruction teams - groups of civilian and military specialists - in Afghanistan as they provide technical advice and support in agriculture, education, health care, construction and many other areas. Of course, some teams have produced great achievements and others have been less successful. Philosophies differ, as demonstrated by the quarrels between Cameron and Mita in Fear of Beauty. So much depends how the teams worked with local governments.

Alexandra Gheciu details and analyzes NGO concerns about the PRTs in an article "Divided Partners: The Challenges of NATO-NGO Cooperation in Peacebuilding Operations" for Global Governance:

"From NATO's point of view, the contemporary blurring of boundaries between civilian and military actions in peacebuilding operations can be seen as an opportunity to bring into the sphere of humanitarian activity some of the advantages of the military culture of efficiency. But from the perspective of many NGOs, the existing blurring of boundaries is a deeply problematic development that should be contained and, as much as possible, reversed. What is needed, according to this logic, is a clear separation between the military and humanitarian norms and activities, and an affirmation of the leading role of humanitarian organizations in the definition of the rules of the game in activities that involve assistance to civilians in war-torn countries."

Gheciu concludes that a lack of coordination will only lead to more disagreements, wasted resources and "growing disenchantment both in the territories undergoing postconflict reconstruction and in the international community - with international peacebuilding operations."

Strong opinions are the norm. People quarrel, institutions quarrel - and with luck, communities progress.

Saffron project

A pilot project for distributing saffron seeds has been successful throughout Helmand Province and agriculture officials expect cultivation to continue and the small flower to eventually become a common crop.

Agriculture Director Abdullah Ahmadzai also reported that the new program will train 40 farmers in growing techniques. The director explained the climate in Helmand  is favorable for the crop that needs less water, in a report for Pajhwok Afghan News by Shams Jalal.

One concern among farmers - as detailed in Fear of Beauty - is competition among farmers and villages and finding enough markets for the expensive golden spice.

And to read authentic news coming from Afghanistan, both good and bad, but refreshingly local, then head to Pajhwok Afghan News.

Photo courtesy of  Gut Gimritz (Germany) and Wikimedia Commons.  

Trade and peace

It's tough to kill the entrepreneurial spirit, though the Taliban in Afghanistan sure gave it a good try before 2001. Project Artemis, hosted by the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Arizona, hosts Afghan women for an intensive two-week business skills course.

Matthew Hilburn, reporting for Voice of America, describes a woman who ran a secret honey-making business during the Taliban era. Women entering the program run businesses for embroidery and saffron. Hilburn writes: "While Afghan businesswomen still have many hurdles to overcome - they still may need to rely on men for many external dealings such as negotiations and making deliveries - Artemis is making progress toward changing how women are viewed by society at large.

Artemis pairs the entrepreneurs with mentors. Check out the stories on their site - again, they are inspiring. The project operates in other countries, too, including Peru, Jordan and Pakistan.

Secrecy and saffron are part of the plot of Fear of Beauty. Trade, business, a sense of purpose provide security and stability for communities.

Photo of Afghan woman weaving carpet courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and US Marine Corps.  

Rule of law

The only recourse against bullies is the rule of law, according to professionals in the West. But sometimes the bullies oversee judicial systems. So naturally a problem emerges when wronged individuals do not have access to fair courts. 

 The United States Institute of Peace writes about Afghanistan:

"An estimated 80 percent of all criminal and civil disputes in Afghanistan are resolved outside the formal legal system through various community forums known as shuras, jirgas, and jalasas. Disputants often prefer to have their cases resolved by community dispute resolution mechanisms that are popularly viewed by most Afghans as more accessible, less costly, more legitimate, and less corrupt than government courts. Many Afghans find the latter more in tune with cultural values promoting consensus and reconciliation, rather than punitive retribution alone."

Unfortunately, half the population - women - are excluded from overseeing these proceedings and the decisions rendered. Women still prefer the traditional forms of resolution.

The institute also takes pains to point out that individual interpretations can vary. One adjudicator may emphasize forgiveness and another emphasizes compensation or punishment. Evidence can be found in acceptable documents  to support a range of alternative narratives:  "USIP seeks to establish an understanding of the Afghan-Islamic normative values of Islamic jurisprudence. USIP is also expanding its programming to examine land dispute resolution and promote efforts to improve community legal awareness of rights and criminal law by engaging youth and media."

The rule of law is essential for Afghanistan to achieve security and stability. The US Department of State also lists other programs on the rule of law.

Photo of Kunar Judge Ansarullah Mawlawizada updates supreme court judges on Afghan law in 2010, courtesy of US Army Spc. Richard Daniels and Wikimedia Commons.