"Most of the policy-makers knew next to nothing about the villages where 90 per cent of the Afghan population lived," he writes. "They came from postmodern, secular, globalized states with liberal traditions in law and government. It was natural for them to initiate projects on urban design, women's rights, and fibre-optic cable networks; to talk about transparent, clean, and accountable processes, tolerance, and civil society; and to speak of a people 'who desire peace at any cost and understand the need for a centralized multi-ethnic government.'"
What they don't understand are the thought processes of a village woman who has never travelled five kilometres away from home. And so most of their projects are doomed to failure.
Okay, but what ARE the thought process of a village woman who has never travelled five kilometres away from home? If you tell me, I might understand! If, instead, you just tell me that I don't understand, we're not going to get anywhere.
This is exacerbated by the fact that the photo caption in the print edition also repeats that NGOs don't understand the thinking of Afghan women. So I started reading the article specifically to find out about the thinking of Afghan women, and learned nothing about it!
I'm going to have to stop reading Wente - like make a deliberate point of not reading her even when the article looks interesting. It's just too frustrating.
3 comments:
I've stopped reading her, too, for the same reasons.
The quote, though, sounds a lot like what I've heard from many people who have traveled extensively in Afghanistan.
The quote, though, sounds a lot like what I've heard from many people who have traveled extensively in Afghanistan.
And did any of them elaborate on why?
Oops, just saw this.
Yes, they did, extensively. Their point wasn't so much that they could tell me the thought processes of that village woman, just that the people who went to "fix" Afghanistan hadn't a clue about her life and made no effort to find out.
Post a Comment