Aid worker says Afghan citizens just want to achieve peace

JON HELGASON/Arizona Daily Wildcat

UA alumna Barbara Rodey, a United Nations consultant and aid worker who spent several years working in Afghanistan, speaks last night about her experiences in the war-torn country. Rodey said the Afghan people are in favor of seeking a peaceful ending to the war.

Though the situation in Afghanistan is constantly being reported on the national news, personal account of life in the war-torn country have rarely risen to the surface.

Barbara Rodey, a UA alumna who spent several years working in Afghanistan, is seeking to remedy this problem.

Rodey, a United Nations consultant and aid worker, spoke yesterday evening at the Economics building to students and members of the public about America's recent involvement in the war in Afghanistan. The event was sponsored by the Baha'i Association, Beyond Tolerance and Eye on Diversity.

Rodey has worked in Afghanistan since 1998, most recently as the regional program manager for the UN Center for Human Settlements.

The program provided jobs for more than 6,000 Afghan men and women, with Taliban approval. These jobs, primarily manual labor paid for in quantities of food, ultimately improved the water supply and infrastructure of Mazar-I-Sharif, a city in northern Afghanistan.

At the talk, Rodey offered solutions for a peaceful resolution to the American-Afghan conflict.

"I believe we are living in a pivotal point in the history of humanity," said Rodey said. "The actions we take in (the Afghanistan) crisis can set us on a path of building a peaceable, more equitable world for all humankind, or can lead us into a global conflict that will take humanity to its knees."

Rodey said she was speaking in order to fulfill a promise she made to the people she met in Afghanistan, to tell the American people about the situation there.

"It is everything they say it is when you listen to the news," she said, "there is no exaggeration."

Rodey said the nation is war torn and many of its cities lie partly in rubble. She said the poverty there is abject and that children can be seen picking grass in the lots in the city - grass they are reported to bring home to their families to eat.

Rodey continued saying the hospitals there do not have blankets, much less medicine and that the Taliban - explain what this is - rules by force and terror and is despised by the Afghani people.

Attempting to solve these problems is why Rodey said she came to speak

"The Afghan people are longing for peace," she said. "We cannot find resolution to the situation in Afghanistan without the support of the Afghan people."

And they are capable people, she added. She said the youth in Kabul hold poetry readings, sporting events and published letters about their rights despite the inadequacy of public and higher-level education.

"The spirit of freedom and expression is all there," Rodey said.

To illustrate, she told a story about a time she gave a boy a copy of "Les Miserables" that was written in Persian. She said the boy was stunned and when he brought the book back to her he said, "are there other books in the world like this?"

Finding a resolution to the situation in Afghanistan, Rodey said, will involve the erosion of the Taliban from within.

She said the Afghan people realize that without peace, they will not be able to survive or feed their families. She said they also know they will never achieve this peace under the rule of the Taliban.

She said America needs to support the Afghan people by providing them jobs, food and tools that will allow them to rebuild their lives.

The UNCHS program cost $1.5 million, including the food that was used to pay Afghan workers- an amount that sustained 225,000 people for five months. Rodney said this amount is approximately what our country pays for one and a half missiles.