Governor Kaine's Mideast Journal, cont'd
A group of three provincial governors met with us at the U.S. Embassy, and
the challenges they face – basic infrastructure, tribal hostilities,
trying to eradicate poppy grown for drugs – are enormous.
I realized again, as I did during the time I spent as a missionary in Honduras in 1980, that our challenges are relatively small compared to those that burden great swaths of humanity.
Leaving the provincial governors, we went to the Palace for a meeting with President Hamid Karzai, the first democratically elected president of Afghanistan. We sat in an ornate meeting room, conversing in English with this very learned man.
The mountains were visible on a nice spring day all around us. At sundown, a distant voice began singing evening prayers.
Karzai was very realistic about his challenges, and we half-jokingly commiserated with him about learning how to work with a legislature that was still trying to determine its proper role. But I was struck by how formerly warring factions appear to be genuinely trying to work together to make a new political reality in Afghanistan.
More than 90% of the world’s heroin and opium originates in Afghanistan, and President Karzai was equally realistic about his efforts to eradicate poppy production, which represents, by most estimates, over 50% of the economic activity in Afghanistan. Unlike other agricultural products, which spoil over time, poppies can be stored for years and still be sold or used for drug production.
It is difficult to eradicate the drug trade without provoking a farmers revolt in this country, where the average per capita income is less than $200 per year. President Karzai must pursue a delicate balance of eradicating drugs while creating other opportunities for poor people to earn a livelihood.
When Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen asked him how we could help Afghanistan’s transition to a more democratic culture, President Karzai’s answer was simple and dramatic: “Do not leave.”
After the visit with the President, we drove over to Camp Eggers in Kabul
and visited with troops from our states. I chatted with another group
of about ten Virginians, including one who grew up six blocks from my former
home in Richmond’s Ginter Park neighborhood.
At breakfast the next morning, I met a young Hispanic woman serving in the
U.S. Marine Corps. She told me came to the United States when her parents
emigrated here illegally from Honduras 15 years ago. This young woman
was one of the undocumented people – the illegal immigrants – who
we hear so much about in the American media and in state legislatures across
the nation.
Eventually, she said, her mother was able to get a green card with the help of her employer. Once her mother had obtained legal status, she helped her daughter earn it as well.
As soon as she was a legal citizen, this young woman told me she did what she had always wanted to do: she enlisted in the United States Marine Corps.
As I was leaving, she called out to me, “Please don’t make it hard for people like me who want to participate and serve in this great country.”
We left Kabul, driving through its frenetic commercial center into the countryside to visit a new school for young girls formerly denied an education by the Taliban. In this tiny country school, no more than 50 girls, aged 10 to 18, were learning basic skills of math, science, language, and geography.
A welcoming committee of young girls sang to us upon our arrival, so I felt compelled to return the favor, playing “You Are My Sunshine” on my harmonica.
The other governors and I sat-in on a geography class, where the students were learning about watersheds in Afghanistan, and we all noticed the same excitement and nervousness on those young faces that you can see in any grade school classroom in the United States.
We finished our time in the country by driving to the air base in Bagram, a former Soviet airfield now converted into the largest military base for the joint American effort in Afghanistan, and departed for NATO Headquarters in Brussels. Our long flights fell into a comfortable pattern, with the four governors alternately sleeping, reading and talking about initiatives, problems, and past and future campaigns.