A German aid worker recently opened a school in rural north Afghanistan with financial support from the Netherlands. A grammar school no less. So that rural children also get the chance to go to university. Until recently that was unthinkable in this province and in this country, one of the poorest in the world. But Dr. Sybille Schnehage proves that nothing is impossible. She even does business with the local Taliban.
Talk to Taliban, not to al-Qaeda
Twenty schools including a grammar school, 770 waterwells, 60 kilometre of roads and bridges, benefits for 300 widows and the building of 170 (mud) homes. These are a few of the humanitarian achievements of a remarkable German woman, who has been helping a rural community in the north Afghanistan province of Kunduz since 1994.
Dr. Sybille Schnehage is the key figure in a small private aid organisation: the Katachel humanitarian aid association, named after a town in Kunduz. In the area, a minority of Pashtun live, the same group which forms the majority in southern Afghanistan including Uruzgan and from which the Taliban movement comes.
Hearts won
When she came here in 1994, a devastating civil war had been raging between the warlords, and the aid organisation started with the construction of seventy houses for people who had lost their homes in the fighting.
She won the hearts of the local population with her work. And did not lose this position when the Taliban came to power in 1996. On the contrary in 'her' village the Taliban allowed ‘her’ girls to go to school.
And it wasn’t just the local Taliban, the leadership in the southern town of Kandahar also gave the green light:
"Even during Taliban rule, I had a letter from Kandahar in southern Afghanistan which said my girls could go to school, I even had two girls’ schools"
Standards and principles
Since then, Dr. Sybille Schnehage has got to know the Pashtun and the Taliban well – probably better than any other foreign aid worker in Afghanistan. She speaks the language and knows the Pashtunwali, the Pashtun’s century-old system of norms and values. On the education of girls during Taliban rule, she says,
"The Taliban are scared that something will happen to their girls. The Afghans are very frightened and suspicious people. But once you have their trust, once they really know that it is a decent school where their girls are safe, then the girls are allowed to school. You just have to win their trust first, and as it were let them see you belong to the Pashtunwali family. Then there is no problem."
When Dr. Schnehage starts up a new project, she has to talk to all the parties involved first – usually this involves the local Taliban. The talks take one or two weeks, and meanwhile there is time to relax. Time to make a few jokes, eat something, or play a game, she tells Radio Netherlands Worldwide.
NGOs as a bridge
Besides, Sybille Schnehage does make a strict distinction between the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. You can talk to the former, but not with Al-Qaeda. She believes that private aid organisations (non-governmental organisations or NGOs in the jargon) should act as a bridge between parties.
Ms Schnehage does business with the local and provincial government, the Taliban (now underground) and the German NATO troops in the province. A Taliban commander would never talk to the German troops himself, she says, but an NGO like hers can.
Highest honour
The work of Dr. Schnehage has been praised by all sides in Afghanistan. She has been given an honoury degree from Kabul University and is bearer of the Malalai medal, Afghanistan’s highest honour for women, named after a mythological young woman, who at the end of the 19th century spurred on her own troops against the British. But she remains modest about it: after the grammar school in Katachel in 2007, there is a new project in the pipeline for 2008, which is also partly financed by the Netherlands: a primary school elsewhere in the province.
By Defense and Security Specialist Hans de Vreij *RNW translation, Copyright Radio Netherlands
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