Zakiya Zaki

“But ordinary people don’t just get assassinated”, I said. All wide eyed western naivete. But the truth is they do. Everyday in Afghanistan. The difference is this time it was someone I knew, had met, talked to, was inspired by, so when my colleage came in to my office this morning to tell me Zakiya Zaki had been killed last night, in her bed, that was my initial stunned response.

Zakiya Zaki was the station manager of a Radio Solh or Peace
Radio, (this is her picture that I took last week at her studio as she proudly showed me all the letters the station recieved) a community radio station in a Jabel Seraj an area in Parwan province about 1 hour outside of Kabul. I had been to visit Zakiya and her radio station just a week earlier as it is one of Equal Access’ partner stations and also because she has been very supportive of our human rights trainings in the area. And it turns out that it was just this kind of supportiveness for initiatives in her area that led to her being murdered. I have since heard that local power structures had verbalised criticism of her openness in working and dealing with NGOs and foreigners. To talk to her you would not have realized that she was under any threat. She seemed carefree, in control, proud of what she had achieved with her station. She was one of those lady’s that even if you’d only met her once, you’d remember her. I first met her at a training we gave to cultural centre and FM centre heads in the area, one proud smiling female in a woolly hat in an otherwise male dominated room. “Whose that?” I’d asked my female colleague sitting next to me “that is Zakia, she is a great woman”

And now she is dead. How can that happen? How can you be killed for being respected and admired in your community? How can loving your country be a threat to your life? I’ve never known anyone who has been murdered before. And there is no doubt that she was murdered, in the most brutal way. According to reports from my colleague, armed assailants broke into her house in the middle of the night and killed her. She had 7 children. My brain can’t comprehend it and my body is not used to the emotions that this news brought. When you hear that someone has died, you feel sadness. When you hear that someone has been murdered, assassinated, for doing good things, for helping people and for standing up for their beliefs in their own way then yes, sadness is there but there is also anger and frustration and disbelief and I just wanted to scream “No!” this can’t happen, this can’t be what happens in Afghanistan. I was in the room with my two scriptwriters when I was told. They knew her better than I did. I looked at their faces as the news sunk in and saw sadness but also more than that, I saw…not acceptance as such, but resignation I guess. This is not new to them. I also work with an Afghan American lady, she was devastated by the news and called the local Wali (important person in the village) when he heard that she was crying he said “don’t cry, we have been experiencing this for 30 years”. Pointless deaths of good people are not new to Afghans.

Although she was not killed because of the support she gave to Equal Access, her work with internationals and ngos did contribute to her being murdered. I think we as internationals here, with our big cars and our armed guards and our secure houses, sometimes forget that by and large it is Afghans who are being targeted. When the Italian journalist was kidnapped recently it was his Afghan fixer who was killed, while he was freed. Many internationals here get danger money and hardship allowance (I don’t) but it is ordinary Afghans like Zakiya who put their life on the line for the country, not the money or the kudos or the CV.

I don’t know what to do. I heard this news and there is nothing I can do except tell you all about her. I doubt you will read about her death in the international press, by our International standards she wasn’t that important but to me she was a symbol that women (and men) in this country can make a difference and her death is a symbol that Afghanistan still has a long way to go. I hope that her death does not make other women (or men) shy away from standing up for their rights, but who am I to demand that they do? How many of us would actually stand up and do something if we knew that it could end up with us being murdered in our beds. Zakiya did and it amazes me every time I meet a woman, or a man in this country who is willing to do the same.

http://www.mediumlight.com/Radio/radio.htm

The end of the Kabul social scene as we know it...

For those of us lucky enough to only have to work a 5 day (although this almost always becomes closer to a 6-day) week here in Kabul, Saturday is generally known as L’atmo day. You turn up all scarfed and culturally appropriate, walk in, de-scarf, order the BEST apricot pie I've ever tasted, a pot of tea perhaps and … relax, knowing that at some point some, if not all, of the people you know in Kabul will drop by. And everyone who has spent any time here can recall a Thursday night getting a little too drunk on L’atmo’s generous spirit portions and dancing into the wee small hours to the likes of Shakira ('hips dont lie').

Actually called L’atmosphere, L’atmo it is a bar, a restaurant, a wi-fi zone, a garden, a pool…an institution among expats here. So imagine our despair when this Saturday, towel and bikini (yes Kabul is one of the only bikini-friendly places in Afghanistan) in hand my friend and I rock up to L’atmo to find that it has closed. “Closed for an hour?” we asked the guards hopefully, “ah closed for the day” piped up another group who had just turned up for a Saturday swim…."no, what? closed? closed as in closed down…but, but, this is L’atmo??!!” And this is Afghanistan where the Ministry of Finance can do a 1 day audit and decide on rather sketchy evidence that they will close down the place unless the owner pays $500,000 in taxes. This is despite the fact the owner (a French guy) is one of the few people here that actually do pay their taxes! The word on the Kabul rumour mill (which is not that accurate at the best of times…I heard a rumour about myself and a Fijian boyfriend who was coming to Kabul to reclaim me! I have never dated a Fijian!!) is that the Adam Smith Institute who are capacity building within the Ministry, told the MoF (min of Finance) that they should make an example of a non tax paying organisation. They chose Latmosphere, an Afghan staffed, tax paying, successful business. This is the short sightedness of the Government here. Instead of realizing that L’atmo was a good money earner for the Government, they saw it as a cash cow to squeeze dry. My housemate runs another restaurant here and she has spent weeks and months jumping through various government hoops and corrupt, bureaucratic systems. Roshan, which is the Agha Khan set up mobile phone supplier and which is the biggest payer of Government taxes in Afghanistan has 5 full time lawyers, on staff, simply to deal with whatever the Government keeps throwing at them to squeeze out more money. There is no forethought, no understanding that without encouraging a successful private business sector, the Afghan economy will never get up from its knees and the Government will never be able to survive without donor money. Mark, the guy who owns L’atmo, wrote an open letter explaining what had happened…he sounded tired of fighting…his last line was “good luck to whoever tries to start a business in this country”.


Another rumour circulating on the Kabul rumour tree is that Mark, the owner, is now on a hunger strike until the MoF open L’atmo again…that sounds to me like another Fijian boyfriend of a rumour!!

I'm back

Sorry for the silence. I'm back on the blog...promise!