The People of Bamiyan

The people of Bamiyan Province are Hazara, an ethnic minority in Afghanistan. Historically, they had been discriminated against and treated as lower-class citizens, but their fierce stance against the Taliban leadership from 1996 through 2001 earned them a grudging respect from their countrymen and a target on their backs from the Taliban.

The Hazara are indeed different from most other Afghans. Physically, they have an almost Oriental appearance, with broad, flat faces and deep-set, almond eyes, lined with slashes of black kohl. The women wore loose pants and large, colorfully embroidered dresses topped by exquisite, delicately sewn vests covered with tiny mirrors and sparkly beads. On their arms were sparkling jewel-encrusted bracelets, and on their dresses precious antique amulets. Though they covered their heads and sometimes even their faces with a veil, they rarely wore the full covering of the burqa. On their feet were the local, flimsy plastic sandals that I also wore. Unlike so many Afghan women who preferred to fade into the background, the Hazara were outgoing and friendly, and eager to talk to foreign women. The men, too, though bearded and dressed in the traditional loose pants and large shirt of all Afghans, were much more open than men in other parts of the country. And though they’d always struggled here in Bamiyan, they remained optimistic and kind, generous and grateful, for whatever small help they were afforded.

Bamiyan, home to centuries of Buddha sculptures carved into the mountainside, had once been a tourist destination and a bustling, busy town, but in the spring of 2001 the Taliban had blown up the long-cherished statues. There was an international outcry for the statues’ fate, but none for the people who’d been targeted, none for the massacre of large groups of villagers and destruction of homes, crops, and animals. Despite the ferocity of their acts, the Taliban were never able to crush the spirit of the Hazara population, who lined the streets and celebrated when the American soldiers arrived and the Taliban were sent running. When I arrived, Bamiyan was just emerging from years of misery, still struggling to get back on its feet.

The village center consisted of one long dirt road with simple mud or sometimes wooden structures lining either side. The mostly one-story buildings held everything you might need in a small village—a tailor, a music store, a butcher, a variety store where you could buy English tea, French soap, Chinese toilet paper, or an antique Persian carpet. In front of many small shops were wooden hitching posts to tie up your horse or donkey if you were lucky enough to have one. There was even a busy restaurant called Mama Najaf’s (in Dari, mama means ‘uncle’), which served only beef kebabs, bread, and rice and was popular with locals and foreigners, who sat side by side on the floor of the rustic eatery.

On the surface, the village seemed to be a peaceful spot, the scent of wood cooking fires in the air, the sound of children laughing, but the surrounding landscape told a different story. Littered with burned-out Russian tanks, Taliban trucks, abandoned shells of homes and thousands of land mines, Bamiyan was still a dangerous place. The work of the mine detection and clearance teams was painstakingly slow, and there were daily explosions of newly found ordnance. To mark roads that had been cleared, the mine teams placed small piles of white rocks. In areas that had yet to be cleared, rocks painted red ringed the spot. Most areas were dotted with red-colored rocks. A local prison held more than one hundred Taliban prisoners. It was amazing that the Hazara people had survived at all.

Thousands of the villagers whose homes had been destroyed were living in the caves surrounding the hollows where the Buddha statues once stood. They had crafted ladders from bits of old wood, and to get to the higher caves, they climbed up the ladders and maneuvered over the crevices, carrying food or laundry or buckets of water. They cooked in pots placed inside their little caves, fanning the smoke out through the small opening. A trace of soot lingered on most who lived there.

In early spring, the Afghan government announced that they planned to evict the cave dwellers, but these families had nowhere else to go. Their homes had been destroyed by the Taliban or had been collaterally damaged during the US bombing campaigns. This was their village and they were determined to stay. To rebuild would take time and money, resources they didn’t have yet. To remain in the caves, they had to become invisible, which meant that anything that might attract attention, even cooking, was a danger. It was a primitive and demanding existence. There was so much time and effort spent on simple survival here that there was no time left for anything else.

MSF could offer only health care. We supported the village hospital and clinic and several outlying clinics in distant villages. We also ran mobile clinics, which meant that we hiked from the outlying clinics to more remote, less accessible areas to see those people who would otherwise have no access to medical care. The outlying and mobile clinics were my favorite places to work, places where the need was great and we were able to provide basic health care, even with limited resources. We carried only the absolutely necessary medicines, such as common antibiotics, skin preparations, anti-worm and other stomach medicines. We not only provided medical care in these villages but we were also able to recognize potential outbreaks such as typhoid and provide early intervention to prevent large-scale epidemics.

When I first arrived, MSF was in the midst of dealing with a typhoid outbreak in several remote villages. It was quickly contained, and though we were on the lookout, there was no large-scale outbreak again, aside from scattered cases. By early July, there were few new reported cases of typhoid.