Tag: anti-terrorist

Opinion column: Afghanistan: help at any price?

Solidarités International carries out actions for water, hygiene and sanitation in Afghanistan. Credit: Solidarités International, Oriane Zerah

I begin these lines without really knowing where they will take me, so serious is the dilemma and so divided am I deep down inside. All of us who are sensitive to the situation of the Afghan population are faced with a dilemma that has been expressed many times on the Boards of Directors of humanitarian NGOs. How far should we go in making concessions to the Taliban? Where do we draw the red lines? Our propensity to want to support at all costs the populations who call for help – and who often trust us more than a regime that deprives them of their freedom – leads us to push back these famous red lines a little further every day as soon as they are crossed.

Concluding such a debate is not for me. It seems to me that only a certain pragmatism can guide us, while avoiding dogmatism. Perhaps, however, we shouldn’t let ourselves be blinded by some of the rhetoric, some of the music being whispered in our ears.

We’re all familiar with the idea that the Taliban were bound to change. I’ve already heard it from eminent writers in ’96 and ’98. Even then, we were promised the reopening of girls’ schools. We never saw it.

Education for Afghan girls, a real challenge in Afghanistan (Photo : AFRANE)

The distinction between moderate and radical Taliban is also well known. Specialists in revolutionary movements may contradict me, but I have the impression that in non-democratic movements it’s always the radicals who win out. The others are traitors. And has there been the slightest inflection in the attitude of the current regime in the two years it’s been in power?

This is when the discourse becomes more perverse. Some of the Taliban’s leaders, happily followed by other do-gooders, suggest that, in fact, if the supreme leader inevitably pursues his black line, it is the fault of “the West”. Blithely reversing the direction from cause to consequence, they claim that it is international sanctions that are provoking the regime’s intransigence. Basically, it’s us, the Westerners, the humanitarians, who are responsible for the population’s misfortunes. And we, crushed by our very Christian sense of guilt, are ready to melt and apologize.

But I can’t help thinking that the lifting of sanctions, or any form of recognition of this oppressive regime – oppressive not only towards women, but also, as we often forget to mention, towards ethnic groups other than the one in power, and even of the latter – would be a new victory for the Taliban, this time without a fight, at the sole price of reinforced oppression. It’s hard to see why this would encourage the regime to make concessions.

Delegation of Taliban leaders @UN

So what can we do? Once again, I don’t know. For my part, I’ll stick to trial and error, but with a few guidelines. Firstly, not to let myself be corrupted by relativistic ideas that, basically: you can still work, there’s more security (and for good reason!), there’s less corruption (this remains to be demonstrated), “they” have accepted that a woman comes to do the housework on condition that she doesn’t meet a man, etc. Secondly, to try to help with as little interference as possible. Then, try to help with as little interference as possible with the regime, so as not to reinforce it even indirectly. Continue to make known what is intolerable. And remember that, even for a starving person, freedom remains a supreme good. As a child, I was influenced by the fable of the wolf and the fox:

“Tied up?” said the Wolf: “So you don’t run
Where you want to? – Not always, but what does it matter?
It matters so well, that of all your meals
I don’t want any,
And wouldn’t want even that much treasure.”

But that’s for the Afghans to decide. Not mine. My role is to listen to their expectations of bread, education, health, respect, solidarity and freedom.

Etienne Gille

Former teacher in Afghanistan from 1969 to 1978, co-founder of AFRANE (Amitié franco-afghane), of which he was president from 1996 to 2013 and is currently vice-president. Author of Restez pour la nuit (L’Asiathèque and CEREDAF) and 80 mots d’Afghanistan (L’Asiathèque).

Etienne Gille on Défis Humanitaires :

Orient in crisis 

Etienne Gille’s article raises the question of whether or not to act at all costs in Afghanistan. As we know, the response from associations is diverse, with some providing support and others refusing to do so. We have already published an opinion piece on this subject by Jean François Riffaud of Action Contre la Faim (ACF).

If you would like to take part in this debate, please send us your testimonial (defishumanitaires@gmail.com), which we will use to the best of our ability. We look forward to hearing from you.

A “Magnifique” book

Interview with Jean-Félix de La Ville Baugé, author of “Magnifique”.

AB: Jean-Félix, you’ve just published a book, Magnifique, set in Rwanda. How did the idea of Rwanda come? You seem to know a lot about the country and what happened there, so what is the origin of the novel from a personal point of view?

Answer: It’s always difficult to know the origin of a novel, I’m always surprised by novelists who know why they wrote such and such a thing at such and such a time for such and such a reason… I think it’s all mysterious, I only know one thing: I was in Rwanda in the summer of 1994, on a mission for Solidarités International. I also know a second thing: I write by sitting on a sofa, closing my eyes and waiting for something to happen, for a voice to speak to me. In writing, I transcribe in fact the voice that speaks to me. Over the past 30 years, between each of my four novels, there has been a voice linked to Rwanda that has spoken to me; one moment it was a Rwandan woman, the next a French officer, a Hutu priest or a Tutsi officer. These voices were of all kinds, but they fell silent, and then, at some point, the voice of Magnifique spoke out and didn’t stay silent. I wrote twenty-six drafts of books about Rwanda, and on the twenty-seventh, it was Magnifique’s voice that spoke to me from the first page to the last, without shutting up. That’s how the book was born.

AB: You’ve carried out many missions for humanitarian associations in various countries in crisis. Did the genocide in Rwanda, and your experience there, help you to understand what had happened and to put it across in your book? Did this mission play a more specific role than the others?

Answer: It’s true that I started in Rwanda, with Solidarités, then in Cambodia in the Khmer Rouge zones, so another genocide, then two years in Darfur, a zone where genocide was not characterized but where large-scale massacres took place, and then in Chechnya – there’s no need to describe this crisis… Two things struck me in Rwanda. Firstly, it was a genocide carried out with knives. There’s a difference between pressing a lever in a gas chamber, ordering a bombing raid on the Ukraine or taking a machete and chopping up a person you often knew. The second thing that really struck me was the incredible efficiency of this genocide. It’s linked to the first. In 100 days, we managed to kill between 800,000 and 1 million 200,000 people with bladed weapons, far more efficient than the Nazis with their gas chambers, trucks and machines.

AB: Without giving away the story, there are two main characters: Magnifique, which is the title of the book, and Jérôme, the ICRC delegate who meets Magnifique, a victim of the genocide. How do you introduce readers to their story?

Answer: My first novel was about a Frenchman who got lost in Asia, the second about a child who was raped in France in the 1960s, the third about a Russian grand duke in exile, and the fourth about Marilyn Monroe. People tell me that, basically, these are books where hope is not very present… This book, “Magnifique”, is a turning point in my work, because it brings hope. But what kind of hope? Is hope simply a story about a man and a woman building a life together? No, that’s not what hope is.

The hope is that one day, an ICRC delegate, who spends a lot of time in offices as part of a classic humanitarian life, will get bored. To distract himself, he has papers to sign at the hospital. One day, he’s signing hospital admission orders when he sees a truck lowering a woman onto a stretcher. He immediately rushes to the woman for no reason and follows her. She’s unconscious, doesn’t say a word, but for weeks he tells her stories. For me, that’s where hope lies. In other words, we don’t know why a man fell in love with a girl in an unlikely place, and the story goes on. Perhaps the image I keep of this hope is the fact that this woman wakes up from time to time and sees a head of hair above her, she doesn’t understand at all what this head of hair is doing there. She goes back to sleep and every time she wakes up, she sees this guy saying “Hello Miss! How are you?” and she goes back to sleep… for me, there’s hope!

AB: “Magnifique”, thank you Jean-Félix!

 

Publisher : Télémaque 

Book available in bookshops or on ligne

Jean-Félix de La Ville Baugé

Jean-Félix de La Ville Baugé has published four novels, including Dieu regardait ailleurs (Plon, 2013) and Votre fils (Plon, 2004). In the summer of 1994, he was sent by Solidarités International to the Gikongoro region of Rwanda. From 2004 to 2008, he headed Solidarités International in Darfur, then Médecins sans frontières in Chechnya. In 2009, he took charge of a newspaper in Moscow. In 2023, a new mission for MSF takes him to Iraq.