After three months in Afghanistan, Alison Long returned to share her findings with the Women's College Club of Princeton on Monday, October 16, in the parish hall of All Saints' Church.
Introducing Ms. Long, Barbara Johnson of the WCCP said, "We are so proud of you and so thankful that you have returned safely to us."
"Before I went to Afghanistan, I had never lived in a Muslim country," said Ms. Long, before launching into a report of her experiences with the Oruj Learning Center in Kabul.
She spoke of the difficulties facing girls' schools in a country in which the literacy rate for women is 13 percent. Besides the legacy of the Taliban, the terrain and climate of Afghanistan, where temperatures range from 110 degrees in the heat of summer to below freezing in winter, are also harsh obstacles to change.
With teaching experience in the United States and in Vietnam — where she taught ESL (English as a Second Language) after graduating from Princeton University in 2000, Ms. Long, was readily accepted for fieldwork with the Oruj Learning Center in Afghanistan, through a program, Interns Without Borders, run by a Washington D.C. nonprofit, The Advocacy Project.
"Interns Without Borders is an amazing opportunity for graduate students to get really substantial fieldwork experience in conflict zones and, most importantly, experience in working with local, grassroots organizations involved in the social/political movements of that country," she said.
Oruj Learning Center
Founded by Afghan women who returned to their home country from exile in Pakistan after the end of Taliban rule, the Oruj Learning Center — Oruj is the Pashtu word for "hope" — supports four girls' schools in the remote provinces outside of Kabul, the country's main city.
In addition to observing conditions in the field, Ms. Long spent much of her time applying for grants for school construction and teacher training.
"Only yesterday," she said, "I heard that one of those grant applications to the Embassy of Lichtenstein for $20,000 has been successful." The grant will bring young women from the provinces to Kabul for much needed teacher training.
Schools Targeted
The Taliban's fundamentalist version of Islam regards the education of women and girls as a punishable sin that should be prevented by force. Since the Taliban was ousted from power five years ago, Afghanistan's children, girls and boys, have been going to school.
An estimated 1.8 million girls are now receiving an education they were once denied. As a result, Taliban supporters have targeted schools.
During the last year, Ms. Long said, the situation in Afghanistan has worsened with a backlash against what is seen as a foreign invasion and the "foreign concept" of educating females.
Two of Oruj's four girls' schools were burned down last fall. Since then, Oruj holds classes in tents or outside on a piece of tarp.
"Fewer and fewer families are willing to risk their daughters' safety in sending them to school, often a two or three hour walk through abandoned country," said Ms. Long.
Princeton Education
Until her experiences in Viet Nam, Ms. Long had spent little time out of the United States. She attended Community Park Elementary School, John Witherspoon Middle School, and the Hun School.
"Living in a rural village there was an incredibly educational experience and opened up all sorts of horizons and opportunities to me that I would never have been exposed to if I lived the rest of my life in New Jersey."
At the Hun school she was influenced by history teacher Tom Wilcox, and English teachers Rob Myslik, and Jim Kerr. "I learned that the best way to change the system is to work within it," she said.
Her experiences abroad brought home to her the benefits of her Princeton and American education, she said by e-mail. "Not everyone has it as good as Princetonians, or Americans in general."
On her return from Vietnam, she taught at the Pennington School for four years and is currently working toward a master's degree in ethics, peace, and global affairs at the School of International Service of the American University in Washington, D.C.
Trained as an anthropologist, Ms. Long questions power structures and the "natural order" of things with a view to understanding "the ideologies that contribute to the oppression and subjugation of certain groups, women in particular."
Observations on Development
On Monday, Ms Long also shared her observations about the process of development in Afghanistan. "For the last several years, Afghanistan and Afghan women have been the center of the international community's attentions and efforts," she said. "There are so many resources here and so much potential to make a difference and improve people's lives."
In spite of this, she reported on a sense that the international community's development efforts are floundering with respect to improving the status of women in Afghanistan, where local organizations or individuals often only pay lip service to the concepts of human rights-based and gender-sensitive aspects of development programs from foreign organizations and donors.
In most cases, real sustainable change fails to materialize because western ideals for change "almost always conflict with local interests and beliefs," she said.
In most instances, too, she said, big development agencies recognize this but do not change their strategies, which she finds disillusioning.
"International aid organizations and foreign donors must accept and publicize their role as advisors and a source of funding — not as initiators or ultimate authorities on development," she said.
In spite of these observations, however, Ms. Long is optimistic, especially when it comes to local grassroots groups such as Oruj.
"The drive and capacity of local development organizations, should be enhanced and financed."
Because the education of girls is still viewed with suspicion in a traditional Islamic society like Afghanistan, Ms. Long believes that training local staff such as the teachers of Oruj is the way to persuade Afghan society that educating girls benefits all people in the long-run and is compatible with the teachings of Islam.
In addition to Oruj, she spoke highly of the efforts of such women's groups as RAWA (Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan) which continued to operate underground during the Taliban years and whose women leaders are doing so much to educate their countrymen that education of women is perfectly consistent with Islam.
"Those women are so articulate and have a remarkable ability to strategize and negotiate," she said. "They can argue you into the ground about women and the Koran."
She suggested that sustainable change will ultimately come when Afghans desire, initiate, and carry out those changes themselves.
Tempered Optimism
Describing the substantial obstacles to girls' education, Ms. Long cited the worsening security situation that restricts their mobility. The shortage of female teachers is also a handicap since, as girls mature, they and their families are less willing for them to be taught by male teachers.
And wearing a burkha, as Ms. Long attested, is a severely limiting option that prevents interaction with a teacher and limits vision. Because of the lack of women teachers, girls won't attend high school and so there are few to train as teachers in what has become a self-perpetrating situation.
A third major difficulty is the lack of secure and durable buildings and of adequate instructional materials.
"The Afghan Ministry of Education has been working on a zero budget for several years so the government has been able to provide little to no support in most of these areas."
Ms. Long hopes some day to return to Afghanistan. "Despite all the obstacles and resistance, the families of girls continue to send their girls to school and NGO workers and government employees continue to work to promote and support girls' education," she said. "It is truly inspiring."
Ms. Long hopes that by reporting her observations she will build bridges between groups advocating for women and education in Afghanistan and the United States.