Global Geneva • Winter Edition 2018/2019 • Issue #5

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DESTRUCTION OF CULTURAL HERITAGE

When Eliminating the past becomes

cultural genocide POLAR QUEST

Voyage to the edge of the North Pole DAVID BURNETT

A Photographer’s Odyssey

JEFF DANZIGER

A Cartoonist On the Frontline

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What’s in this issue?

WINTER EDITION 2018/2019 SEE MORE ONLINE @ WWW.GLOBAL-GENEVA.COM

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EDITORS Nurturing Global Responsibility in Schools: More toys, or credible knowledge?

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ERASING HISTORY When eliminating the past becomes cultural genocide

AFGHANISTAN:

17 | Struggling to Preserve a Country’s Heritage

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LETTER FROM GHAZNI: The Palace in the Brush

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LETTER FORM KABUL

PROVOCATEUR: 22 | AGENT Oped by David Nabarro

Afghanistan from Past to Present to Past Again

27 | Inside the Afghan Labyrinth BOOK REVIEW

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ABDUL HAQ: The Afghan commander who could have led to peace

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DAVID BURNETT A Photographer’s Odyssey

36 | BREXIT: Staring over the precipice

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Crowdfunding the books you want, and disrupting big business

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GLOBAL GENEVAN Alain Gachet A water wizard for the planet

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MILITARIZATION OF CONSERVATION: An army of occupation, not protection TRAVEL & ENVIRONMENT

49 | Might we fall in love again and still save our forests?

51 | POETRY Padraig Rooney FROM RWANDA 52 | LETTER A Privileged Engagement

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JEFF DANZIGER Cartoonist in the frontline

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POLARQUEST2018:

EXPLORING THE ETHICS OF CULTURAL IMMERSION:

62 | Mutual exchange or cultural dilution at theedge of the Earth

Voyage to the edge of the North Pole

SWISS JOURNEYS

65 | A weekend in the Valais -

culture, vineyards & thermal baths BREXIT AND TRUMPEAN POLICIES

69 | The attraction of Europe’s International schools

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CHANTAL AKERMAN

In Search of Lost Culture

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CHAMONIX France’s Premier - and almost Swiss - Mountain Capital

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SHORT STORY Whispers of War

EDITORIAL

NURTURING GLOBAL RESPONSIBILITY IN SCHOOLS:

More toys, or credible knowledge?

Global Geneva is seeking to help youth improve their writing skills as well as to better understand the importance of planetary awareness. Thanks to a generous support grant from the Swiss Fondation Caris, we are launching a Young Journalists’ and Writers’ Programme with Switzerland’s international schools. Editor Edward Girardet explains why it is crucial to invest both in young people and quality reporting.

WHEN AN AMERICAN JOURNALIST FRIEND – a veritable gadget freak with the latest technology – had his birthday, a group of us presented him with a T-shirt. It depicted a boy surrounded by computers, mobile phones, headsets and drones with the caption: “The kid with the most toys wins.”

This obsession with ‘toys’ increasingly appears to be the way both private and public sectors, including UN agencies, are seeking to reach out to potential audiences. Most important, their targets include our kids, the Millenniums or Generation Z, who have been brought up with social media. There is now even a second post-2000 wave described by some as the “snowflake” generation; young people whose attention span melts at the slightest distraction.

TECHNOLOGICAL SHORT-CUTS ARE NOT THE ANSWER Unfortunately, many organizations believe that ‘informing’ the public can now only be achieved through innovative technologies, whether the latest tablet or generation-appropriate apps. Yet such short-cuts often come at

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the expense of side-lining or even abandoning credible content. It’s as if Tweets, Likes, Instagram, or YouTube alone will help people better understand what knowledge is all about, whether history, culture, science or geography.

This is something that Global Geneva is particularly concerned about. And one which we would like to help remedy. While mobile phone users may indeed scroll down on internet visuals or texts, it does not mean that they are absorbing the information. Nor do Facebook ‘Likes’ even remotely suggest that content is being read.

While social media have revolutionized the spread of communication platforms, the question at hand is whether we are more globally aware – or informed – today than, say, 20 years ago? For example, do Thais and Malaysians, among the world’s most switched-on social media users with an average of five hours a day on their mobiles, have a better grasp of what is happening? And if yes, does such access prompt people into taking action? Or change behaviour, such as no longer using throw-away plastic bags which are now polluting the rivers, canals and oceans, or being better prepared for tsunamis?

HOW CAN YOUNG PEOPLE DISCERN WHAT IS REAL, AND WHAT IS NOT? Being sceptical of social media is not a matter of refusing all technological innovations. In a world where ‘alternative facts’, untruths and blatant propaganda are increasingly becoming the norm, how can we expect teenagers, who have never experienced the comfort of growing up with largely trustworthy newspapers or TV programmes, to discern what is reliable and what is not?

The danger now is that we are at risk of losing an entire generation – or two – to false news, triviality and virtual egos unless we can involve young people more effectively. For the news industry, too, there will be no future readers unless we do this.

According to some high school teachers, this may already be happening. We are failing to help young people better understand the need for reliable information. Or to impress upon them the importance of genuine civic and personal responsibility. Clearly, many young people make the effort to be involved. But many 18-24-year-olds do not vote, often because they feel ignored. This should not be an excuse to opt out.

A GROWING LACK OF WRITING SKILLS As some universities are pointing out, growing numbers of high school graduates suffer from poor reading, writing or even basic communication skills. As one American professor told me: “Some of these kids have no idea how to write a proper sentence. Their knowledge is also superficial, based on watching YouTube videos rather than reading books. For me, that’s a problem.” It will also affect the way future entrepreneurs, civil servants, scientists and even teachers operate.

Some US law professors are now banning computers and iPads from class, requiring students instead to take notes on yellow legal pads. As Pew Foundation and other studies have shown, people have a far better retention rate of information by reading off-screen or writing by hand. One leading British surgeon recently noted that while medical students today may demonstrate exceptional knowledge, they often lack basic hand skills such as sewing up after an operation. The same goes for airline pilots, who, according to one veteran Swiss airlines’ instructor, are trained primarily on flight simulation rather than also an ability to fly a plane without computer support. It is doubtful that Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger would have been able to land US Airways flight 1549 on the Hudson had he not known how to pilot a glider.

JOURNALISM IS NEEDED TO HELP NATIONS TALK TO THEMSELVES Whether parents or journalists, we should be investing in youth at the high school level by getting back to basics. This includes a greater focus on credible content

and global awareness rather than gadgetry. As Swiss president Alain Berset pointed out to a group of foreign correspondents in November, journalism has a critical role to play, particularly when viable democracies are under threat. Citing American writer Henry Miller, he said journalism is imperative to help nations “talk to themselves”.

Of course, this is easier said than done. At a time when most news organizations are struggling to gain new – and younger – audiences, only select media such as the New York Times, Washington Post, The Economist and The Atlantic appear to be succeeding in re-establishing the role for reliable journalism in the public interest.

Much of this has been prompted by increased manipulation of social media. Or blatant lying and misrepresentation. People are realizing that a return to trusted media is crucial if we are to counter such abuses or to remain informed. This is what we need to convey to our children.

Some are doing this by broadening the media platform but without losing their focus on reliable content. National Geographic, for example, which has been around for 130 years, is fervently trying to reach young people through its use of platform-specific approaches such as Wattpad, IGTV (Instagram’s new home for ‘long-form’ video) and Snapchat. According to Jill Cress, the magazine’s chief marketing officer, this is vital if they are to engage younger audiences. While NatGeo’s median reader age is 47, those under 24 make up only 13.4 per cent.

As a result, NatGeo is re-purposing its content for events and social media. Already the most popular brand on Instagram with 92.8 million followers, it is now adopting visual formats such as vertical video, explainers and “over-the-top” (OTT) video. Its Snapchat subscriptions have reportedly risen to seven million members, 1.5 million joining last year alone. The National Geographic Society, however, has always been about visual content, notably exceptional photography and documentaries, so this approach is not surprising.

It is a different matter with numerous other organizations, particularly those dealing with artificial intelligence, machine learning, crypto-currencies, PR, propaganda, or advertising. Only by constantly developing stimulating new technologies or formats, they believe, can we ‘educate’ and ‘inform’ properly.

What appears to be missing, however, is ensuring that in-depth knowledge is part of such outreach. Far too many institutions fear that young people will simply tune out unless new enticements are designed to cater to their constantly changing whims and attention spans. Actually involving them in a process to explore a broader understanding of the issues at hand – and what is really at stake – seems too brutal an option. But this is precisely what needs to happen.

ED GIRARDET, Global Geneva Editor

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Courtesy of Cartooning for Peace, Geneva

REPORTING INTERNATIONAL GENEVA THEMES & THE SDGS.

The Global Geneva Young Journalists’ & Writers’ Programme and Awards for International and Public Schools in Switzerland (2018/2019)

With support from the Fondation Caris, the top three candidates will recweive travel grants of

1,200 CHF, 750 CHF & 500 CHF TO BE AWARDED IN JUNE, 2019.

THEMES & SUBMISSIONS

CONFERENCES AND WORKSHOPS

Students (14-19 years-old) are invited to submit through their teachers articles, short stories, photo essays, videos, cartoons or multi-media projects in English. These should focus on any SDG-related ‘International Geneva’ theme: humanitarian response, environment, human rights, world trade, health, peace and security... The best contributions will be published online with the three award winners in the print/e-editions of Global Geneva.

All accepted entries will be edited and judged by a group of editors from around the world. his programme is specifically designed to help young people improve their writing skills, but also to better understand the role of quality journalism to counter false information and cyber threats.

The programme includes two one-day conferences, on both journalism and cyber space, to be held in Switzerland in early and late spring 2019 with working panels consisting of top journalists, writers, cartoonists, photographers… ***

For further information, please go to The Global Geneva Young Journalists’ and Writers’ Programme on: www.global-geneva.com or email editor@global-geneva.com

INTERNATIONAL SWITZERLAND’S WINDOW TO THE WORLD

GLOBAL GENEVA IS AN INDEPENDENT PRINT AND ONLINE MAGAZINE of quality journalism in the public interest with compelling writing, unusual lifestyles and new ideas. Our primary aim is to make “International Geneva” and SDG-related themes more accessible to world-wide audiences with a special emphasis on young people.

EDITORS Editor & Founder Edward Girardet (Geneva) America’s Editor William Dowell (New York) Contributing Editor Peter Hulm (Geneva) Francophone Editor Daniel Wermus (Geneva) Digital Editor David Breed (Geneva) Assistant Editor Chris Woodburn (Geneva) Photo Editor Tala Skari (Paris) Publishing Director Timothy Weaver (London) CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Leyla Alyanak (Geneva), Edward Barnes (New York), Jeff Carmel (San Diego), Mary Fitzgerald (Marseille), Julian Gearing (Bangkok), Elizabeth Kemf (Miami), Luisa Ballin (Geneva), Peter Kenny (Geneva), Donatella Lorch (Ankara), Jean MacKenzie (Cape Cod), Mort Rosenblum (Paris), Mark Schapiro (San Francisco), Peyman Pejman (Paris), Charles Norchi (Maine) CARTOONISTS Hani Abbas (Geneva) Jeff Danziger (New York) POETRY EDITOR Carla Drysdale (Geneva) VISION & GOVERNANCE Caroline Hunt-Matthes (Geneva) DESIGN, WEB & LAYOUT Nathaniel Daudrich (Paris) ADVERTISING & DISTRIBUTION For further information, contact: editor@global-geneva.com EXECUTIVE ADVISORY BOARD Veronique Barbey, Xavier Cornut, Michael Keating, Anselm Zurfluh EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Jonathan Randal, Ahmed Rashid, Kim Gordon-Bates

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DESTRUCTION OF CULTURAL HERITAGE IN TIME OF WAR

ERASING HISTORY:

When eliminating the past becomes cultural genocide

The deliberate destruction of cultural heritage in time of war is not new. What has changed is the growing conviction that destroying landmarks of the ancient past amounts to a crime not just against a specific group, but against all of humanity.

The annihilation of archeological monuments and ruins has received wide coverage in social media, writes William Dowell, but the increased publicity has not kept perpetrators from attempting to erase history. In fact, it may even be encouraging it.

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Like Pompei, Nimrud is a snapshot of a moment frozen in time. Excavations at the site eventually produced many of the Assyrian sculptures and artefacts now in the world’s leading museums. They bear witness to a period in human history that was characterized by fierce brutality and an astonishing artistic refinement. We look at these ancient works of art now and tend to forget the price that went into making them.

REIGNS OF TERROR WHILE CREATING EXQUISITE ART At one point, I was impressed by a relief sculpture. It portrayed an endless line of soldiers paying tribute to the king. Each carried the severed human head of a presumed enemy. Another relief showed a totem pole of skulls imposed on a stake. Inscriptions boasted of the king’s readiness to dismember his enemies, to put out their eyes, cut off their hands and feet and to build towers whose walls were made with the flayed skin of enemies. These towers were filled with the bones and dismembered bodies of those who dared to rise up in rebellion.

The ancient Assyrians, in short, had instituted a reign of terror that might intimidate even today’s ISIS, and yet they, or their slaves, were capable of creating exquisitely refined works of jewelry and art. I asked one of the archeologists who had provided the finances for the excavation of this exceptional site. “Saddam Hussein,” he answered. Then he added, “I guess he is looking for his roots.”

PUBLIC DESTRUCTION OF CULTURE ON SOCIAL MEDIA, WHILE SELLING ON THE BLACK MARKET

Islamic State militants looting in Palmyra. (Photo: UNESCO)

THE WHIRLWIND OF DESTRUCTION in Iraq and Syria that followed the invasion by ISIS (also known as DAESH from its Arabic acronym) was dedicated to obliterating preIslamic history. Among the sites badly damaged was the former Assyrian capital at Nimrud, 30 kilometres south of Mosul. ISIS bulldozers and earth-moving equipment flattened the mudbrick walls that were once part of an Assyrian palace nearly 2,000 years old.

I had driven a rental car from Baghdad to Nimrud in 1990, when British archeologists uncovered what they suspected might be the tomb of the daughter of Sargon, a powerful Assyrian king. The entrance to the mudbrick palace was guarded by two enormous lamassu – statues with a human head and the body of a bull. They represented Assyrian gods protecting the city.

An archeologist explained that Nimrud was particularly interesting because Babylonians, Hittites, Scythians and others who had had been ravaged by the Assyrians had converged on the city and burned it to the ground in a single day.

ISIS insists that its destructive campaign was intended to prevent the worship of idols. UNESCO, curator of the World Heritage list, and most Westerners did not see it that way.

ISIS video tapes of the destruction on YouTube appeared senseless and its efforts to erase history were denounced as “cultural genocide”. In the end, it looked more like grand larceny. Many of the smashed sculptures showed up with relatively little damage in art markets in Switzerland, London and other major capitals. ISIS had videotaped itself destroying copies and then sold the originals. The profits, according to Interpol and other sources, went to buy weapons on the black market. It did not take long before the dreams of the Caliphate evaporated much the way that Nimrud had.

I was struck, nevertheless, by the issue of cultural genocide. ISIS is not alone in wanting to erase all memories of the past. The Taliban in Afghanistan blew up the gigantic, statues of Buddha, nearly 50 meters tall, arguing that the statues were a violation of the prohibition in the Koran (and the Bible) against the worship of idols. Protests by both the West and Afghans fell on deaf ears and even encouraged the Taliban to deliberately destroy the statues. This they did first by rocketing (to no avail), then forcing locals to climb the artefacts in order to place explosives.

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FOCUS | Erasing History: When eliminating the past become cultural genocide

Digitization of Manuscripts of Timbuktu, Mali by SAVAMA-DCI, an NGO, as part of the rehabilitation of the city’s cultural heritage. Photo: © MINUSMA-Marco Dormino/UNESCO.

ISIS-backed rebels in the battle for northern Mali in January, 2013 also set fire to and ransacked priceless Islamic manuscripts in the library at Timbuktu, another UNESCO heritage site. They bludgeoned to pieces the shrines of Sufi saints, which failed to fit their interpretation of Islam. Fortunately, a group of archivists managed to hide tens of thousands of medieval documents just before the militants entered the city.

And then there was the damage done to the ancient Roman site at Palmyra, notably the Temple of the god Bel or Ba’al, in Syria. Known as “the Venice of the Sands”, Palmyra was built between the first and third centuries AD and remained largely intact for nearly 2,000 years, making it one of the best preserved Roman sites from antiquity. Until war broke out in 2011, some 150,000 tourists visited the site every year. ISIS relied on social media to make certain that the world learned of its destruction of the temple, ostensibly because it was a symbol of polytheism which is anathema to their interpretation of Islam.

Cultural destruction is a growing trend in modern warfare these days, and it is not restricted to Islamic radicalism. Staffan de Mistura, the UN’s special envoy to Syria, recalled in a conversation with Global Geneva’s editor, Ed Girardet, that he had had a powerful reaction to the destruction of cultural artefacts during the war in the Balkans. “The deliberate destruction of cultural heritage,” de Mistura said, “is the destruction of a country’s soul, its heritage, its past.”

When a Serbian artillery officer boasted about shelling the medieval Croatian port city of Dubrovnik, de Mistura asked him why he was so anxious to destroy the city.

“Oh, you don’t understand,” the Serb reportedly told him.

“We’re not destroying the city. Dubrovnik represents the Croatian woman. We’re simply scarring her face.”

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DESTRUCTION DEPENDS ON WHO’S IN CHARGE Destruction of the past does not need to be motivated by ideology. Expedience, greed and sheer ignorance can cause just as much damage. During the 2003 Gulf War, US and Polish troops insisted on building a military depot on a site covering part of the ancient city of Babylon, despite protests by the British Museum in London. Allied troops have been guilty of trafficking looted artefacts. Recent fighting in Syria has also damaged the Crac des Chevaliers, which had been one of the most perfectly preserved crusader fortresses dating back to the Middle Ages. An even greater loss was the Syrian town of Maloula, which was attacked by the al Qaedalinked Al-Nusra Front, in 2013. Maloula was one of three remaining villages where a version of Aramaic, the language of the New Testament, was still spoken. It was a resource for the world’s linguists. It had once held an important library of manuscripts in Aramaic, but that burned to the ground in a dispute between Christian factions.

The urge to destroy cultural heritage usually depends on the message that the artefact represents and who is motivated to do the destruction, or more to the point, who happens to be in power at a specific moment in time. After deposing Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the American occupying forces made a major show of US soldiers pulling down a gargantuan statue of Saddam Hussein. No one at the time considered the destruction of a statue of Saddam to be a major loss to civilization, yet the major difference between the destruction of a contemporary statute and the Lamassu at Nimrud is timing and the message the sculpture conveys.

The destruction of history is not limited to Iraq and Afghanistan. I remember walking through an art fair on the river that runs through Moscow. Behind a warehouse, I found a graveyard filled with discarded statues of Stalin.

Obviously Stalinism is politically incorrect in today’s Moscow and the statues were, to say the least, an embarrassment.

Yet on another trip, this time in the Romanian countryside, I walked behind a peasant cottage and discovered a bust of Stalin. An admirer had laid roses in front of it.

More recently, the southern states in the United States have been embroiled in contentious debates over what to do with statues that commemorate the Confederate southern states’ rebellion against the North in the American Civil War. To many southerners the statues paid respect to those officers who had fought a heroic but doomed struggle to protect their home states and southern honour. To most African-Americans, the statues were a painful reminder of slavery, racism, white supremacy and more than 4,000 lynchings that took place in the years that followed the Civil War. Ignorance as well as a careless disregard for a site’s historic importance can be as important a factor as ideology when it comes to the destruction of monuments.

In 1687, a Venetian military expedition damaged much of the Parthenon in Athens, when a mortar hit a stockpile of gunpowder, which the Ottoman Turks had stored inside the priceless architecture.

Americans and Europeans universally denounce ISIS for its destruction of historical sites, but President Donald Trump turned a deaf ear to both cultural preservationists and native American tribes when it came to saving the Bear’s Ears National Monument, which preserves spectacular landscapes that include more than 100,000 important archeological sites. Trump slashed the size of the area, which had first been settled by the Clovis people some 13,000 years ago, by 85 per cent. Trump’s motivation seems to have been spurred by nothing more than a determination to reverse the political decisions of his predecessor, Barack Obama, who had declared the 1.3 million-acre (5,260 square kilometers) territory a national monument the year before.

Trump also halved the area of another national monument, this one created by President Bill Clinton in 1996. The Escalante Grand Stair Case National Monument in Utah covers one of the most inaccessible areas in the country, yet its status as a national monument suddenly produced tourist traffic that brought thousands of jobs into the state. The reason for destroying it was ostensibly to open the land for coal mining, even though the market for coal is declining sharply. For Trump, the monuments were nothing more than a token sacrifice intended to appeal to voters in a political chess game. In that, it could be argued that his approach shared a common logic with ISIS.

Damaged manuscripts in Mali. (Photo: UNESCO)

explained myths as the easily accessible, cultural glue that holds societies together. They identify the things that we value in traditional systems and point the way forward. A myth, in short, is often an allegorical diagram of our beliefs.

Monuments and historical artefacts and ruins are the visible reminders of those beliefs that existed in the past.

They remind us of where we came from, and in a very real sense, they can strengthen our sense of identity. Of course, the early myths stretch credibility. No one seriously believes today that the half-man, half-bull Lamassu existed in real life. But we can recognize that the statue was a visible placeholder for an idea, in this case, the Assyrian determination to defend the palace and the city-state that it guarded.

Campbell warned that as we pick holes in myths, the structure of the society that they were intended to support weakens, loses its sense of organization and eventually descends into chaos. It is that structure of society, even inertia of society, which ISIS and the Taliban sought to erase and replace with their own ideas concerning the Caliphate.

THE POWER OF THE MYTH: WHO DOES CULTURE REPRESENT – AND BELONG TO?

DOES CONTEXT MATTER? OR DOES IT DEPEND ON POLITICAL CORRECTNESS OF THE DAY?

The importance of cultural destruction is obviously in the eye of the beholder. That said, ISIS and the Taliban were clearly onto something when they contended that the visible symbols of a culture are emotionally powerful. The British historian, Arnold Toynbee suggested that history is basically a myth that we all agree on, while Spanish-born philosopher George Santayana noted that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” But it was Joseph Campbell, author of ‘The Power of Myth,’ who

Where does all of this leave us? Perhaps, the importance of saving these monuments and ruins would be clearer if we thought more deeply about who the people who made them really were, what they stood for, and how that knowledge fits into the context of our lives today. The importance to history is undeniable, but how their cultural message is interpreted can be just as important.

Erasing a monument in an effort to erase the history it represents depends very much not only on what riddles of

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FOCUS | Erasing History: When eliminating the past become cultural genocide

The partially destroyed Colonnade at the World Heritage site of Palmyra. © UNESCO.

history we want to understand, but also on which values we want to promote. In some cases the original purpose of the monument may have been long forgotten. When I attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the entrance to the campus was guarded by a statue of a Confederate soldier holding a rifle. The statue was nicknamed “Silent Sam”, because in their rough ways, the male students joked that the statue would fire its rifle if a virgin passed in front of it.

The statue’s original homage to the Civil War had long been forgotten, or simply dismissed as irrelevant. If anyone had a reason to object to it, it would have been the female students on campus. All that changed after Dylan Roof, a 21-year old white supremacist, shot nine AfricanAmericans in the middle of a church service he attended in Charleston, South Carolina. When a white supremacist rally turned violent in Charlottesville, Virginia, the Confederacy suddenly became an issue again. Silent Sam began to represent something considerably more serious, and before long students mobilized and tore it down.

A general cleansing of Confederate monuments and academic buildings named after once important figures who had supported slavery has gathered momentum across the south.

Cleansing the past nevertheless raises serious questions, not just in the US but elsewhere as well. Is it justifiable today to look at historical figures out of context and to destroy the legacy of a particular group because it reminds another group of past injustices? In Zanzibar, for instance, UNESCO wants to preserve the island’s Old Stone Town, filled with narrow passageways and historical buildings dating from the islands past, which coincided with its role as a hub for commerce and slavery.

The island’s poorer inhabitants are understandably less enthusiastic about preserving a reminder of the oppression their ancestors suffered.

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The controversy over the statue of Cecil Rhodes at Cape Town University, which was removed in 2015, is another example. For many, it represented a despised colonial past; for others, a legitimate part of southern African history. It could be argued that leaving such statues – as those of Lenin and Stalin in Russia and the Ukraine – might prompt public debate in future generations.

ISIS and the Taliban, after all, are far from the first to try to erase the past in order to remake the future. The French Revolution decapitated the statues of the saints on the façade of Notre Dame, and then went further than that. It tried to change the names of the months in the calendar in an effort to make a fresh start and to counter a royalist cultural inertia. In Cambodia, Pol Pot, following the French example, took a similar approach, but ended by creating the slaughter of the killing fields.

After the American War of Independence, Noah Webster was so incensed at Britain that he forever changed the spelling of numerous English words when he compiled his dictionary.

Occasionally, some of these revolutionary ideas work. Most of the time, they don’t. History judges, and its judgment is often final. In the end that may be the most powerful argument of all for saving these remnants of our history. We need to remind ourselves of that observation by Edmund Burke: Those who fail to understand history are condemned to repeat it. These reminders of the past provide vital clues as to who and what we once were. More important, they help explain why we are the way we are now and who we are likely to be in the future.

WILLIAM DOWELL is the Americas editor of Global Geneva based

in Philadelphia. He has reported widely across the globe for TIME, ABC News and other media.

AFGHANISTAN:

Struggling to preserve a country’s heritage

As part of a special FOCUS series over the next few months, Global Geneva is exploring the impact of war in the destruction of cultural heritage around the world. This article

by Jolyon Leslie, a renowned Central Asian cultural expert from South Africa, examines how it has affected Afghanistan and the region.

Dilapidated vehicle in front of the now renovated Kabul Museum. (Photo: Jolyon Leslie).

THE STONE STUPA AT TOPDARA IN THE FOOTHILLS above the Koh-e Daman plain north of Kabul is testament to the rich cultural heritage of the region. It is one of a string of sites visited by Buddhist pilgrims on their way from the Indian lowlands in the east to Bamiyan, a key religious centre from as early as the 1st century AD. Many other sites along this pilgrimage route – Hadda near Jalalabad and Goldara in Logar province – have been damaged and looted. Topdara survives, as one the best-preserved examples of Buddhist architecture in Afghanistan.

Since late 2016 the site has been the focus of a lowkey conservation project implemented by a group of experienced Afghan professionals and craftsmen, with a labour-force drawn primarily from nearby villages. The topography of the steep mountain valley precludes the use of machinery. So the conservation process largely mirrors techniques employed by the original builders some 1,500 years ago, with stones lifted by hand 30 metres up to the dome where they are laid in lime mortar.

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FOCUS | Afghanistan: Struggling to preserve a country’s heritage

The bucolic setting of Topdara belies the contested political landscape in which this and other efforts to safeguard Afghanistan’s cultural heritage play out to today.

In 2000, for the first time in its history, the UN Security Council cited the need for ‘respect for Afghanistan’s cultural and historical heritage’ in a resolution (1333) imposing sanctions on the Taliban administration due to its alleged support for terrorism.

THE EQUIVALENT TO CULTURAL SNUFF MOVIES Despite this, the Buddha figures in Bamiyan were destroyed months later. The threat to cultural heritage was subsequently incorporated into the justification for international military intervention in late 2001. Grainy footage of the act of vandalism in Bamiyan has since become a defining image of the vulnerability of the country’s cultural heritage, with video footage of the incident – likened by an Afghan friend to a ‘cultural snuff movie’ – endlessly re-used by campaigners.

The longevity of this video footage from Bamiyan owes something to the stated objectives of the foreign intervention, which was to ‘rescue’ the Afghan people from a humanitarian crisis and human rights abuses.

Safeguarding their heritage from the ‘other’ (i.e. Taliban) was folded into a liberation narrative that heralded, among many other things, greater freedom of cultural expression.

For the Afghan poets, artists, musicians and others who worked quietly through the repressive rule of mujahideen factions, whose excesses spawned the rise of the Taliban, this offered a glimmer of hope. Since 2002, many have taken advantage of opportunities opened up for cultural work and had their achievements recognized both domestically and abroad.

DONORS: NO INTEREST IN HISTORICAL DETAILS A great deal, however, remains to be achieved. Among the key challenges is a politicization of cultural issues and, as a consequence, a tendency towards revisionism. For example, Afghan officials routinely assert that the Taliban looted and destroyed the National Museum, despite ample evidence that this was carried out by fighters loyal to factional leaders – many of whom are now senior politicians – who battled over Kabul during 1993-94. As a senior Ministry official admitted to me at a recent event at the Museum ‘our donors are not interested in the historic details, and we need to keep them engaged’.

Along with official denials of the surge in illegal excavation of archaeological sites and trafficking of artefacts (of which there is ample evidence), such distortion of facts hinders efforts to safeguard cultural heritage by rendering it hostage to politics rather than serious analysis.

This is especially apparent in the rhetoric of ‘them and us’ that since 2001 has been a core message of the international military campaign against the Taliban and other insurgent groups, and whose goals are increasingly conflated with official development objectives.

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MUSLIM VILLAGERS ARE THE ONES PRESERVING BUDDHIST HERITAGE The consequence of this in the cultural realm is a siege mindset; we are often asked by Kabul-based diplomats or journalists whether our work at Topdara is ‘under threat’, implying that all surviving Buddhist heritage in the country is somehow vulnerable. When we explain that the site has been effectively safeguarded by generations of villagers, who happen to be Muslims, they seem perplexed.

It is little wonder therefore that, for a cultural project to stand a chance of funding today, donors routinely require an explanation of how it will ‘combat violent extremism’, irrespective of its intended objectives. Increasingly confined to securitized enclaves and therefore denied meaningful interaction with ordinary Afghans – especially outside of urban areas – officials, donor representatives and UN personnel are increasingly limited in their ability to comprehend local dynamics and assess actual needs. And their horizons seem to be gradually shrinking as security worsens.

Cultural initiatives, in contemporary Afghanistan as elsewhere, by their very nature need to be exploratory and if necessary to take risks, rather than conforming to imposed quick-fix ‘solutions’ that tend to preclude the continuity required for a real impact on people’s lives. As Afghans face an upsurge in violence and sense a wavering in the commitment of the international community to their cause, it is more important than ever to acknowledge and render long-term support to cultural initiatives that have the potential to contribute to building confidence within and between communities, to shaping a sense of shared identity, and offering Afghan women and men some degree of hope – on their own terms.

EXPLORING THE POTENTIAL OF CULTURE TO UNITE, RATHER THAN DIVIDE Observing a pair of Afghan archaeologists carefully measure sections of the original 5th century masonry of the stupa plinth at Topdara before our masons embark on painstakingly stabilizing the structure, assisted by dozens of villagers of all ages, reminded me of the need to remain focused on basic principles: to support Afghans who genuinely value their heritage, to explore the potential for culture to unite rather than deepen divisions between communities, and to ensure that investments contribute to improving the lives ordinary people. As a wise village elder emphatically put it to me while surveying the site at Topdara before we initiated the conservation work: “This is our heritage”.

JOLYON LESLIE is an architect who lives in Kabul and has worked

for the UN, NGOs and as an adviser to the Afghan government. He was involved in efforts to limit the looting of the National Museum and in lobbying to prevent damage to the Bamiyan buddhas in the 1990s. He has subsequently contributed to a range of cultural initiatives. He now advises the Afghan Cultural Heritage Consulting Organisation.

LETTER FROM GHAZNI:

The Palace in the brush

Exploring the historic ruins of the fabled Afghan city of Ghazni, Vanni Cappelli reminds us of a great culture that once existed but which may be denied to both Afghans and the world as war continues to shatter what is left.

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FOCUS | Letter from Ghazni: The Palace in the Brush

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, IN SEPTEMBER 2003, I journeyed

to Ghazni, whose name means “jewel,” situated on Highway 1 south of Kabul. A trading and transit hub for central-eastern Afghanistan, it is now a city of 270,000 people sitting on a plateau 2200m above sea level. Its towering citadel and ornate, honey-coloured twin minarets dating back to the 12th century bear witness to the days when it was the capital of a vast empire and a major cultural centre of medieval Islam. Places like Ghazni remind us how relative such terms as “medieval” and “renaissance” are.

It had colleges, libraries, schools of scholars and poets, palaces of marble and statues of bronze at a time when the Italian survivors of the Roman period were still huddling for safety amidst the ruins of their fallen empire.

Firdausi, whose epic poem the Shah-nameh soars as an Eastern Aeneid, and Al Biruni, the empirical polymath whose mathematical, astronomical, mineralogical, and anthropological studies made him the Leonardo da Vinci of his age, strolled through its splendid gardens where “wine flowed like water,” as the historian Baihaqi relates.

“The environs of the present Ghazni would prove a perfect archaeological mine to those interested in and acquainted with Muslim history and architecture,” wrote the pioneering British scholar Major Henry George Raverty. And indeed they have – in happier times.

Yet, as Rome and Ghazni show, history has its tragic reversals, and it was another type of mine entirely that drew me there on a late summer day two years after the Twin Towers fell in 2001, at a moment when the world could still hope for another Afghan Renaissance.

A CITY THAT HOLDS THE KEY TO KABUL My trip to Ghazni was as a guest of the Mine Detection Dog Center in Kabul. It uses highly-trained German shepherds to discover sophisticated land mines that would otherwise escape metal detectors. I was writing a feature on making dangerous places wholesome again. As a journalist who always tries to gain a full cultural and historical sense of any country I cover, I made sure to take along Nancy Hatch Dupree’s matchless 1977 guidebook, An Historical Guide to Afghanistan, which has a particularly rich chapter on this city, “the all-important key to the possession of Kabul,” as she put it.

As we drove southwest from the capital – an hour and a half jaunt according to the book, but one that took four times as long, due to the fact that the war-ravaged main highway was just beginning to be reconstructed – I asked my hosts how Ghazni’s great monuments had fared over the last quarter century of war.

“We had a Buddha too,” sighed Hakim, the local demining chief and a Ghazni native. “It reclined instead of standing, and even had pillows to rest its head on – very special. It was 18 metres long. The Taliban blew it up at the same time they destroyed the twin Buddhas in Bamiyan, right before September 11th. The citadel is a military fortress, and so sustained much damage, but it is big, and can take it. The mausoleum of Sultan Mahmud is untouched, but that of his father Sabuktagin up on the hill was devastated. The twin minarets still stand, though the one built

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by Bharam Shah took a direct mortar hit near the top, and has a big black hole there, like an empty eye socket.”

I winced at the thought of all that intricately-worked terracotta flying through the bright, clear mountain air, spewing fragments of its perfect geometric patterns over the ground.

Standing atop the highest point of the citadel, one can behold a lush panorama of many shades of green articulating the river valley and surrounding mountains. Yet this picture of natural fertility is deceptive. In recent years, the region has been hit by persistent drought, among other plagues, and the trees hide many arid, pale brown, and even grey fields.

One of these just north of the city was our first stop: a wheat field that had been turned into a mine field by the mujahideen during the Soviet invasion. It was sown with high-grade plastic mines supplied by the Italian government as one of its contributions to the international support for the Afghan resistance. It was then forgotten, as Afghanistan’s agricultural potential was disregarded in the Pakistani aggression that put the Taliban in power and the world blinded itself to the consequences.

A band of Kuchi nomads had recently lost several camels and sustained serious injuries while traversing the field. Now the mine detectors were trying to fix it.

A DIFFERENT TYPE OF EXCAVATION: THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL REMAINS OF A RICH CULTURE I saw a well-delineated rectangle, marked at precise intervals by small red and white flags to indicate which areas had yet to be cleared and those which had already been demined. They stood out against the dun ground like splashes of blood and panels of marble. In the crimson area four dogs and their handlers worked methodically, the canines doing a graceful backflip after they smelled the explosives, to be rewarded with treats. The team would then withdraw as diggers came forward to remove the mine from the grey field. “It’s been a minefield for twenty years,” said Hakim, “but next spring they will sow wheat here again, God willing, though they will have to irrigate it.”

After several days of observing the demining operations, I made time for some sightseeing, The prospect was all the more exhilarating since I was aware that the Italians had once been responsible for excavations of a very different kind in Ghazni: the recovering of a rich cultural history. As Dupree relates, in 1956 the Italian Archaeological Mission in Afghanistan had taken up Major Raverty’s challenge, and did brilliant work until the communist coup of 1978 in Afghanistan. I was determined to see what remained of the Italians’ discoveries.

Following a sumptuous lunch of seekh kebab, a lamb dish for which the city is famous, we set out for Ghazni Citadel. The arduous ascent and descent took several hours. At the end the view alone was worth it. Then we went on to the mausoleum of Sultan Mahmud, the greatest of the Ghaznavid emperors, whose conquests and patronage made possible the life and legend of the city. Unlike most Islamic art, the Ghaznavid style was iconic, heavily

influenced by Persia and India. The tree-shaded lane leading to the tomb was graced by marble lions and rams, from whose mouths gushed refreshing streams of water.

At the entrance, a small boy dressed in spotless white offered us some naan roghani bread. When I politely declined, the boy insisted: “Please sir, it is our tradition. All who The town of Ghazni. (Photo: Vanni Cappelli). visit the shah shall receive. It was the way in his time, and it is the way now.” I could not deny FORTY YEARS OF WAR: WILL THE NEW GENthose sincere eyes or the wholesome logic behind his plea.

ERATION BE ALLOWED TO TRANSITION FROM I was glad I conceded. It turned out to be the most richly BLOOD TO MARBLE? delicious bread I have ever tasted in Asia.

THE PALACE OF SULTAN MAS’UD III: FROM A FRAGMENT OF MARBLE TO HIDDEN MOUNDS By the time we reached the twin minarets, known as the “Towers of Victory” as monuments to Afghanistan’s greatest empire, the sun had begun to set. It is a wonderful time to see them. They seem to gather all of the waning light unto themselves, soaring like golden shafts against a deepening blue sky. Yet, for all their grandeur, I could not dwell on them. I was also here to find a hidden splendour which I knew to lie nearby.

Perhaps the Italians’ greatest accomplishment at Ghazni was the excavation of the palace of Sultan Mas’ud III, which was said to be located somewhere between his minaret and the main road. It was quite elaborate, with a throne room, government offices, royal apartments, gardens, and even its own mosque and bazaar, all arranged around a courtyard of delicately carved marble.

However, as I scanned the grey plain of gravel and brush from which the minarets rise, no hint of it was visible to the naked eye. So I had no alternative but to head towards the point on the map in the guidebook that shows its relative position, and then to tramp around.

This my hosts were very reluctant to do. They were, after all, demining experts who had no definite information about the safety of this out-of-the-way spot. Still, they yielded to my enthusiasm, and I was soon bounding about the jagged ground, with Hakim and his men following cautiously. As I had hoped, a fragment of marble revealed the place leading to human-made mounds beneath the brush.

I yelled to my companions, who scrambled over to see, then received an improvised lecture on the palace from me.

After a pregnant silence, Hakim spoke, visibly moved.

“We have lived all our lives in Ghazni, but we never knew this was here, or had even heard of it. Interesting, the way the name ‘Mas’ud’ keeps recurring in Afghan history.” he said, referring to the legendary mujahed leader Ahmed Shah Massoud from the Panjshir. “We thank you for giving back to us a part of our tradition that was lost.”

As we drove back through the city to the demining compound past groups of ragged and dirty children, I wondered whether they were going to be educated about the totality of their heritage and given the chance to emulate the achievements that these monuments embody, as the world had promised them. All their lives they had known only blood. Would they be allowed to strive after marble?

Over half a century ago the American scholar Arnold Fletcher wrote that Afghans “are a people of dynamic energy, quick to learn, fiercely patriotic and determined to prove their worth in the modern world”. Forty years of continuous war have not altered this reality, and the talent and spirit are still there.

Yet a decade and a half of blindness on the part of the United States and its Western allies has produced a negative answer to this question. By refusing to recognize the tragic truth that it had defeated Soviet political extremism on terms set by Pakistani religious extremism, then walked away from its responsibilities and suffered the consequences on September 11, 2001, America for the second time threw away its victory in Afghanistan. Yes, those years saw the Americans launch many rebuilding and reconstruction projects in Ghazni, most notably the Lincoln Learning Center that strives to reach out to 4,000 citizens every month. However, without security, what has taken years to build can be destroyed in an instant.

Earlier this past summer, an estimated 1000 Pakistani-backed Talib militants devastated Ghazni over six days of savage fighting, burning bazaars and law courts and killing hundreds in yet another climax in the collapsing security situation around the country. At the same time, a suicide bomber walked into a high school classroom in Kabul filled with impoverished students from Ghazni taking a college preparatory course. He killed at least 48. The classroom’s blood-spewed whiteboards were crammed with the algebraic equations upon which Al Biruni had laboured so diligently in the splendid gardens of their hometown a thousand years before.

VANNI CAPPELLI, an American freelance journalist, is the president

of the Afghanistan Foreign Press Association.

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AGENT PROVOCATEUR: Global Geneva’s Oped

SUN & 4SD for food While there is more than enough food available for a properly-fed world, writes British doctor David Nabarro, co-winner of the 2018 World Food Prize, one in ten human beings remain poorly nourished.

At the same time, nearly another one in five consume too much.

OVER THE PAST DECADE, the importance of proper nutrition, especially between the moment of conception and the second birthday, has become abundantly clear. The right nutrition during this 1000-day window helps ensure a well-developed brain and strong body. Poor nutrition undermines that human capital.

It programmes the body for slowed growth with less learning and lower earning later in life. At the other end of the spectrum, too much nutrition (and obesity) increases the risk of debilitating illness – such as type 2 diabetes.

As a doctor interested in public health, I would like everyone everywhere to have the opportunities they need to be healthy and to have long, fulfilling and joyful lives, both now and in decades to come.

FOOD SYSTEMS NEED TO WORK FAR BETTER AND INCLUDE ALL SECTORS One of the key strands of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) envisages that every person in our world is able to access the nutrition they need, and that food is produced in ways that benefit producers and the planet. For that to happen, however, food systems need to work far better. This means linking food production, processing and distribution in a more effective manner. Farmers, fishermen, ministries, transport and storage companies, investors, health specialists and other of the numerous stakeholders need to agree on priorities, while aligning their efforts.

Since 2010 more than 60 nations have joined the Movement to Scale Up Nutrition (SUN), of which I served as coordinator for four years. Each nation has brought together different interest groups, such as government, science, civil society, education and businesses, to agree on how to make their collaborative efforts more sensitive to the need for better nutrition, but also to pursue common results and to measure progress.

We have evidence that this is already contributing significantly to better.

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The longer a country has been within the SUN Movement, the better the in-country nutritional environment, and the greater the improvement in children’s nutritional status. On the other hand, in conflict-ridden countries where violence dominates, there is no link between time in the SUN Movement and nutritional outcomes. The SUN Movement has seen the greatest impact of efforts to improve child nutrition when they encourage self-reliance among adolescent girls and women.

COLLABORATION ONLY WORKS IF PEOPLE GET TOGETHER TO DISCUSS THEIR DIFFERENCES The SUN Movement sees value in different groups finding ways to collaborate more with each other, a locality or nation, for example. Through this effort and despite their differences - they are more likely to agree on what works best. They are then better able to align their plans leading toward more decisive action agendas. In turn, this leads to food systems that are not just about enabling people to refuel themselves, but to access food that is both nourishing and healthy; it is also produced in ways which regenerate ecosystems and mitigate climate enabling producers to have prosperous and resilient lives.

However, dialogue and collaboration only happens if there are places where members of different groups who do not agree are able to explore ways to collaborate and align. These places are sometimes referred to as “safe spaces”: I believe they are needed whenever different groups are debating how to respond to complexity, whether at local, national and global levels.

This offers opportunities for those who would not normally set aside their institutional positions to work out how to make alignments. This approach is now being advanced both internationally and within countries through the Food Systems Dialogues.

WORKING COALITIONS ARE THE KEY That is why I am now working with coalitions that focus on how food, land, ocean and water systems can benefit all people and be sustainable. This involves encouraging dialogue on how these systems can best

be nudged into place. Through a new entity based in Switzerland, 4SD, which stands for “Skills Systems and Synergies for Sustainable Development”, I am engaging regularly with some of those responsible for advancing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

This means listening to the challenges they face and offering them advice which reflects the context in which they are working and the experience that I myself have gained over the years. This mentoring approach benefits clients – because the advice is situation specific. And it is great for me because I am constantly learning from those with whom I interact.

VISIT US ONLINE!

DEVELOPING SKILLS THROUGH MENTORING

THE #METOO MOVEMENT: TURNING UP THE HEAT

4SD enables leaders who work on the 2030 Agenda to develop their skills through mentoring, tailored learning materials, and managed networks. An in-person workshop is offered to ensure that the mentoring responds to their needs and circumstances.

Our four learning themes include, first, radical listening, using emotions effectively, public speaking and presenting. Our change management section covers change processes and transformations, measuring progress, and managing expectations. The implementation phase covers prioritization, organization, and reporting, plus decision making: synergies & trade-offs.

Coalition building is the fourth learning theme, focusing primarily on systems mind-sets, moderation and facilitation, inclusivity and dispute resolution. Within 4SD we are building our mentoring community: scheduling a residential immersion workshop on Living Systems for Sustainable Development for potential mentors for 5-7 November 2018.

Our Leadership Mentoring Programme will be initiated during 2019. Participants will include professionals from local and national governments, international organisations, civil society, media, and the business community. The mentors offer strategic guidance and assist with personal development. Written materials and interactive learning modules are made available: these collate experiences and approaches which contribute to success.

All this can help leaders in the 2030 agenda respond more pertinently to the needs of people they serve. Or to partner them with stakeholders with whom they do not normally work. Such approaches are crucial for encouraging the kinds of transformation required for making the 2030 Agenda a reality.

DR. DAVID NABARRO, is a medical doctor, international civil

servant and diplomat. He served as special advisor to the UN Secretary General on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Climate Change. Nabarro is one of two recipients of the 2018 World Food Prize, which is shared with Dr. Lawrence Haddad, Executive Director of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition. In 2016, Nabarro was nominated by the UK government to stand for the post of Director-General of the World Health Organization.

As the movement becomes mainstream, the world’s number one footballer, the US Supreme Court, the UK Government and Bollywood are consumed with #MeToo – the UN’s aid sector is experiencing a similar fate.

BY CAROLINE HUNT-MATTHES READ ONLINE

www.global-geneva.com/the-metoo-movementturning-up-the-heat

RILKE’S VALAIS: ‘I HAVE THIS COUNTRY IN THE BLOOD’ Arguably the 20th-century’s finest lyric poet, Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) was an absolute charmer to both men and women, by all accounts, though some tales make him sound like the perennial bohemian freeloader. Ninety years after his death he still bewitches the Valais.

BY PETER HULM READ ONLINE

www.global-geneva.com/rilkes-valais-in-switzerlandi-have-this-country-in-the-blood

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LETTER FROM KABUL:

Afghanistan from Past To Present To Past Again

One of Afghanistan’s most intrepid and long-term observers in the region is Canadian journalist Kathy Gannon of the Associated Press. In April, 2014, she was severely injured in an attack against her vehicle while covering the war with Geneva-based AP Pulitzer prize winning photographer, Anja Niedringhaus, who was mortally wounded.

Here Gannon shares her thoughts on covering this never-ending war from her base in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad.

IT’S BEEN MORE THAN 30 YEARS since I first came to Afghanistan. Then, like now, Afghanistan was at war. The Soviets were the invaders then, and the mujahideen, or Islamic holy warriors, were backed by the United States and heralded as freedom fighters by U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

At the time, the University of Nebraska had devised a curriculum to teach Afghan refugee children in camps in northwest Pakistan the English-language alphabet.

It went like this: ‘I’ is for Infidel, ‘J’ is for jihad and ‘K’ is for Kalashnikov — all terms used in the battle to fight the godless communists, who had invaded their homeland.

Mathematics was little different. It was taught with problem-solving questions such as: If you have 20 communists and you kill 12 Communists, how many Communists do you have left?

That was then.

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THE MUJAHIDEEN OF THE 1980S ARE TODAY BOTH FRIEND AND FOE

Today the United States and NATO are often referred to as invaders. Those same mujahideen of the 1980s are today both friend and foe. Some are now Taliban, the enemy, and some are mujahideen-cum-warlords-cum-politicians, supposedly friends, who either influence or are members of the present-day U.S.-supported government in Kabul.

Over the past four decades, Afghans have lived through successive governments, all of whom who have come to power through violence. The Russian-dominated Red Army invaded in 1979 claiming to be invited to protect the pro-Moscow government of Babrak Karmal. Just 10 years later, unable to defeat the U.S.-backed guerrillas, the Russians negotiated their departure, primarily through talks initiated by the United Nations and International Committee of the Red Cross. It now appears that far more than the

official figures of 15,000 to 25,000 Soviets may have died during their decade long intervention. (As with many statistics in Afghanistan, reliable figures are often difficult to come by).

Kabul’s Communist PDPA (People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan) government hung on for another three years, until Reagan’s freedom fighters took power. The names of those mujahed leaders, who were installed in Kabul, will sound familiar to anyone following today’s Afghanistan. They were Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Hamid Karzai, Abdur Rasool Sayyaf, Ismail Khan, Atta Mohammad, Rashid Dostum… The list goes on.

BIN LADEN: BROUGHT BACK BY A MEMBER OF TODAY’S AFGHAN GOVERNMENT Canadian journalist Kathy Gannon in Kandahar, 2013. (Photo by Anja Niedringhaus)

At the time they came to Kabul, they had promised to be unified but instead they spent the next four years bitterly fighting each other. More than 50,000 Afghan civilians died during their rule, while whole swathes of the capital Kabul were reduced to rubble. Corruption was overwhelming. The mujahideen-cum-warlords had carved Afghanistan into personal fiefdoms.

It was them - and not the Taliban - who had brought Osama bin Laden back to Afghanistan. During the 1980s, Bin Laden had operated out of Peshawar, first as a supporter of humanitarian action, then a fund-raiser and coordinator for Arab and other foreign jihadists. Bin Laden left when it was clear that he and his ‘Arabi’ were no longer welcome.

Afghan fundamentalist Abdur Rasool Sayyaf’s men, however, went to Sudan to invite bin Laden back to Afghanistan. Operating out of Khartoum, Bin Laden had become a thorn in the side of the Americans, who warned the Sudanese government against harbouring him. Today, Sayyaf, who also inspired southeast Asia’s Abu Sayyaf terrorist group, is a powerful player in the present-day U.S.backed government in Kabul.

Also of note is the fact that the terrorist training camps, which operated during the Taliban, were a legacy of the 1980’s anti-communist war. These same camps flourished during the four years that the mujahed government was in power. The Taliban inherited them.

Post-2001 Afghanistan: the same thing all over again The Taliban, many of whom were former Soviet War era insurgents, were the next to rule Afghanistan. They came together out of a frustration with the runaway corruption of the day and the ferocious infighting among the ruling mujahed groups. Their movement gained momentum. When the Taliban eventually took power in 1996, they ruled with an iron fist. They imposed a radical interpretation of Islam that denied girls education, established an unforgiving judicial system that often resulted in limbs amputated for stealing, while also disarming militias and ending drug production.

Then came 2001 and the cycle began all over again.

The mujahideen-cum-Taliban were driven out by U.S.

and NATO armies. It was November 13, 2001, when the Taliban finally fled Kabul. I was in Afghanistan that day, having returned to Kabul three weeks earlier on October 23, the only foreign journalist allowed back into Afghanistan by the Taliban. Afghans were jubilant at the departure of the Taliban. They had lived through successive governments and with arrival of each new regime came the hope that – perhaps – this one would (finally) be better than the last.

This time – as before – was no different.

Their hopes soared, their expectations were unrealistic, but with the world at their side, Afghans were sure this time there would be a new future of peace and prosperity.

They were wrong.

THE WEST IN AFGHANISTAN: EXPECTING A DIFFERENT RESULT BY REPEATING THE SAME MISTAKES It’s now been 17 years since the terrorist attacks in the United States sent the U.S. military and NATO to Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. At peak strength, 42 countries had a combined military force of 150,000 soldiers in Afghanistan. But the U.S., NATO and the United Nations ignored history and chose to continue to do the same thing again and again, somehow expecting a different result.

Many of the same mujahideen-cum-warlords, who had ruled before the Taliban and the rise of this new Islamic movement, were returned to power in Kabul post-2001. In 2014 the United States cobbled together a so-called Unity Government forcing a power-sharing agreement on Afghanistan’s leaders. As in the past, unity eluded them. Instead, their rule, which continues today, has been marked by bitter bickering and widening fissures along ethnic lines. The same thing had happened during the 1980s when both Washington and Islamabad sought to impose their own visions on what the Afghan resistance should be about.

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FOCUS | Letter from Kabul: Afghanistan from Past to Present to Past Again

AFGHANISTAN: A DISILLUSIONED PEOPLE AND COUNTRY

who shot us was representative of only himself, not Afghanistan. The millions of Afghans who have struggled through decades of war, found the courage to endure loss and suffering. They are the ones who define this extraordinary country. For me, they’re also the ones whose voices go unheard.

What we do when we tell their stories is we reveal the real awe-inspiring courage of those who choose to speak out, who live with chaos and tragedy, and who soldier on because they must.

What worried me the most when I returned to work

Today, in the fall of 2018, the country remarkably resembles the Afghanistan of 1992 to 1996. Haroon Mir, an analyst in Kabul, says the only reason rockets are not raining down on the country’s capital today is because of the presence of foreign forces in Afghanistan.

Afghans are disillusioned. They say the money that flooded Afghanistan after 2001 fed the country’s corrupt.

Poppy production is at an all-time high with government officials enriching themselves as much as the insurgents. Violent attacks are relentless. The Taliban are stronger. A fresh hell has been inflicted on the country by an Islamic State affiliate and, once again, all of Afghanistan’s neighbours – Pakistan, Iran, China, India and Russia – have their hand in the game.

But the greatest tragedy of today’s Afghanistan is the dwindling hope of so many Afghans that something better is possible. For numerous Afghans who never left their homeland, not when the Communists came, nor the mujahideen, nor the Taliban, are now trying to find a way out.

Many are afraid. They look around at their impoverished country devastated by violence and graft. They wonder at how it hapAuthor Kathy Gannon with Afghan tribal elders. (Photo: Anje Niedringhaus) pened despite the involvement of after the attack was that I would look at people differently. a superpower, dozens of other countries and the world’s I was afraid that fear would cloud my perception. I was best militaries. afraid that the real joy that I had always felt going out into A friend of mine who worked and stayed in his homethe field would be replaced by this fear. But it hasn’t. If land through each of these successive regimes always inanything I feel stronger than ever that what we – as joursisted: it will get better. He was forever optimistic; that nalists – do is a privilege. is, until an attack on the American University in Kabul.

On a recent visit to Kabul I was sitting on the floor in He waited until 4 a.m. to learn whether his son, who was the home of a mother who had lost her son in an exploinside, was alive or dead. As he stood outside, watching sion.

I watched her kiss and kiss over and over the picture bodies being carried out, the injured helped to safety, he of the lost child and saw in her real courage. It was a courswore that if his son lived he would send his family away. age that enabled her to face life without her child and to His son survived and the family is now in Turkey. know that her other children risked dying, each time they One day my friend, who still lives and works in Kabul stepped outside the door. to support his expatriated family, hopes to bring them I also often recall something that Sabeen Mahmud, a home. But this may only remain an unconvinced asserPakistani activist, and a woman, who was shot and killed tion. “I was always optimistic,” he told me later. “But no in Karachi three years ago, once said: “Fear is just a line more.” inside your head. You choose on what side of the line you want to be.”

REPORTING IN AFGHANISTAN: A PRIVILEGE

When I was shot in Afghanistan in 2014 and my friend and colleague, Anja Niedringhaus, was killed people asked: “How can you go back?”

My first thought was: “How can I not?”

Seven bullets shattered my upper body but even as I healed I understood that war – and in my case, war injury – does not define a nation or a person. The person

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A native of Timmins, Ontario, KATHY GANNON is senior correspondent for the Associated Press for Pakistan and Afghanistan based in Islamabad. She has been reporting the region for the AP since 1988.

Gannon also has covered the Middle East, including the 2006 Israeli war against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and the war in northern Iraq.

Gannon is the winner of a number of awards. She is also author of I is for Infidel: From Holy War to Holy Terror in Afghanistan.

BOOK REVIEW

Inside the Afghan Labyrinth What happens when you have been kidnapped and eventually released, but then discover that the naïve interpretation of why it happened is completely wrong and at odds with what mainstream news readers want to believe? Jere Van Dyk’s latest book: ‘The Trade: My Journey Into the Labyrinth of Political Kidnapping’ comes to a stark conclusion about his captors: “They all wanted money, and were using religion as a cover and a shield”. Trade is a darkly significant pun, as Vanni Cappelli of the Afghanistan Foreign Press Association points out.

JERE VAN DYK IS ONE OF THE MOST DISTINGUISHED of Afghan hands. In The Trade: My Journey Into The Labyrinth Of Political Kidnapping, he shows he is as fearless in the pursuit of truth as any tragic hero. A veteran American journalist who first journeyed to the country in 1973, he returned in 1981 to venture deeply into danger with the mujahideen during the Soviet invasion, and then went back in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

Van Dyk travelled across the Pushtun tribal lands of southern Afghanistan into Pakistan hoping to gain insights into the Taliban’s views and motivations, only to be betrayed by his fixer. The Trade, however, is not an account of his kidnapping in February 2008. That trauma, and all the psychological torture it entailed, was vividly described in his previous book, Captive: My Time as a Prisoner of the Taliban, published in 2010.

His aim here is to answer the question: “Who kidnapped me and why?” For, as his subsequent investigations from Washington to Kabul to Islamabad discovered, the subtitle of his initial memoir was far too naïve.

There is a profound irony here. As a sagacious observer whose deep knowledge and consciousness come from decades of an intensely lived life and assiduously connecting the dots, Van Dyk would seem to be the last person who would be stumped by fundamentals.

For instance, he is blunt and unambiguous about the role of the Pakistani military and its intelligence service, the ISI, as the masters of the Taliban and other militants.

He outlines their decades-long brutal campaign to destroy traditional Pushtun tribal culture by promoting Islamic radicalism and systematically assassinating dissidents and tribal chiefs.

And he is equally direct concerning the extent of American ignorance and denial about this reality and its effect on the war effort: “The US public didn’t know or was not interested to know that the United States was giving billions to the Pakistani army which was backing the Taliban and al Qaeda.”

He also quotes an ex-State Department official as saying: “There is no institutional understanding of Afghanistan and Pakistan because people change jobs every three years.”

Yet it is Van Dyk’s very understanding that the mainstream view – that “nonstate actors” are behind most of the terrorist mayhem of the post-9/11 world – is ludicrous that causes him to probe the darkest corners of this particularly twisted labyrinth. There he only finds confusion.

Personal histories, family ties, blood feuds, rumours, claims – and accusations that the various Afghan, Pakistani, American, and British players in his drama work for intelligence agencies, have ulterior motives, or were even complicit in his kidnapping – make discovering a straightforward narrative impossible, though he does come to a basic existential conclusion about his captors: “They all wanted money, and were using religion as a cover and a shield.”

He engages in frank self-criticism and later seeks to connect with other former hostages and the families of those who were killed by their captors. Here we see unambiguous humanity, free from dissimulations, especially when these survivors try to create something good out of their ordeals. This includes participating in the James Foley Foundation, named for the journalist killed by the Islamic State in Syria in 2014. The foundation focuses on conflict journalists and seeks to educate the public about the true nature of their work, the dangers they face, and the critical value of their efforts, all necessary if we are to have an informed democratic discussion regarding conflicts that may seem distant yet nevertheless affect us all.

By the end of his book, Van Dyk has concluded that such kidnappings take place in a labyrinth in which the unspooled thread that is supposed to lead one out into the sunlight in fact has too many tangled splices that just go round and round, with no sign of a deliverance. But his readers will have gained illumination into some of the most terrible, tragic, and ultimately – if honesty prevails – remediable issues of our time.

VANNI CAPPELLI, an American freelance journalist, is the presi-

dent of the Afghanistan Foreign Press Association.

The Trade: My Journey Into the Labyrinth of Political Kidnapping

by Jere Van Dyk, New York: Public Affairs, 448pp, $ 28.00

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FOCUS 40 YEARS OF WAR IN AFGHANISTAN. AN ONGOING SERIES

ABDUL HAQ: The Afghan commander who could have led to peace On October 26, 2001, Abdul Haq, a renowned Afghan guerrilla, or mujahed, commander was captured by Arab Taliban in the rugged mountains of eastern Afghanistan. Accused of spying, he was hanged and his body riddled with bullets before being dumped on a road. Even now, 17 years later, questions remain as to the exact time and circumstances of his death. And equally crucial, who was involved, including whether nearby U.S. special forces could have rescued him or not. What is known is that Abdul Haq – together with Ahmad Shah Masoud, one of the last remaining leaders resisting the Taliban, who was assassinated by Al-Qaida six weeks earlier on 9 September – had been negotiating for nearly two years with Talib commanders, many of them tired of Pakistani and Al-Qaida supporters’ dominance. By the end of summer, 2001, more than half were believed ready to change sides. While often uncomfortable rivals, both Haq and Massoud, one a Pashtun, the other a Tajik, were two of the country’s most influential and forward-thinking leaders. And yet both were largely ignored by the West. With Massoud’s death, it was up to Abdul Haq to continue the initiative. Former New York Times correspondent, Donatella Lorch, knew Haq well from covering the Soviet war and remained in close touch with him until his final days. She looks back at this extraordinary man who was the last hope to bring about an Afghan solution to this ugly conflict.

I HAD CALLED ABDUL HAQ from Washington D.C. a few days before he entered Afghanistan. Gone was his habitual jovialness and offbeat sense of humour that had marked our 14-year-friendship. He was frustrated by the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan that had just begun days earlier on 7 October 2001, and his conversation was marked by deep sighs.

“How can I convince Taliban commanders to defect and help create a new, peaceful government when they think America is going to invade?” he said.

I often think of Abdul Haq in the context of the many missed chances for a durable peace in Afghanistan.

American bombing, he said over and over, would only tear apart his country. Only an Afghan solution, he believed, would be accepted by Afghans. That October, 2001, Abdul Haq, an unorthodox commander with a strong loyal following, had pleaded with his American contacts to briefly delay the start of the bombing. He needed more time to mobilize Taliban commanders. (Editor›s note: See Lucy Morgan-Edwards› book, «The Afghan Solution: the inside story of Abdul Haq, the CIA and how Western Hubris Lost Afghanistan»).

Afghanistan’s war has now raged for nigh 40 years, ever since fighting against the communist regime in

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Kabul first broke out in the summer of 1978. Seventeen of these years have formally involved – and still involve – American soldiers (the U.S. first intervened with support of the mujahideen in mid-1979) but the conflict still grinds on. There is no clear exit. Nor is there any sign of a viable political or military solution despite renewed possibilities of talks between Washington and the Taliban.

Afghanistan: A litany of failed initiatives Afghanistan is an unrelenting string of gut wrenching tragedies, of civilian and military lives lost, of misdirected, shortsighted, dysfunctional and failed international policies. Billions of dollars of military and international aid have fed a fragile government mired in corruption.

Like his country, Abdul Haq’s narrative varies depending on who tells it: the U.S. military and its allies, the CIA, the Pakistan military intelligence service (ISI), the journalists...

But then, I think that Abdul Haq, even when he was maligned, understood the value of being an enigma. Unlike most other mujahed leaders, he knew how to fit into two worlds: the one of conservative tribal Afghanistan and the political realms of the western capitals.

I was 26 when I met Abdul Haq. He was 30. This was in 1988, by chance. Although over time, I have realized that

nothing in Peshawar (the Pakistani border city with Afghanistan that served as headquarters for the main Afghan political resistance groups) really happened by chance. I’d first seen him on one of those heroic-looking public relations posters printed by the mujahideen, a romantic headshot of a tanned, bearded young man with a headful of curly windblown brown hair framed against an Afghan mountain. The man I met was older. He’d lost his curls, his hair was fast thinning and he’d packed on weight.

A maverick of independent thinking – and actions Born Humayun Arsala, his nom de guerre became Abdul Haq (servant of justice) but his men all referred to him reverentially as Haji Sahib (Haji denoting that he had been on the Haj or pilgrimage to Mecca). Abdul Haq was a Pashtun, born to a wealthy landed family in eastern Afghanistan that had close ties to the then Afghan King Zahir Shah exiled in Rome.

He had a resumé as a maverick and as a strategist. As a teenager, Abdul Haq participated in four attempts to overthrow the Soviet-backed government of Mohammed Daoud. At 17, he was arrested and condemned to death.

His family organized his escape by bribing the prison officials. By the time he was 21, Abdul Haq already had built a reputation as a talented commander by attacking the capital Kabul and running an underground network of spies and informers.

The year before I met him, Abdul Haq had walked on a landmine and lost the front half of his right foot.

By then, he had already been wounded more than a dozen times, but the loss of mobility forced him out of the field, directing most of his operations from

his Peshawar compound. When I first saw him, he was sitting cross-legged on a dark red pillow that ran the length of the wall in his compound. He was sipping green tea, rubbing the stump of his foot, and holding meetings with a room-full of turbaned, long-bearded men. He was a paradoxical man, which often left me baffled.

He spoke English (peppered at times with drunken sailor vocabulary learned from a Dutch journalist) in a short, declaratory style. He was candid at times to the point of rudeness.

The United States: a dinosaur that steps on everyone He claimed to be uneducated, but then he’d delve into analyses of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, and the problems facing American farmers. A tradition-bound Muslim, he acquiesced to an arranged marriage but he talked of a female president for Afghanistan. He had visited the U.S. several times and had met President Ronald Reagan. In late 1987, he had gone to a Pittsburgh hospital to have his maimed foot operated and in June 1989, he would go to New York to address the United Nations. His analyses were blunt and uncannily real.

“The U.S. is like a dinosaur,” he told me over tea one afternoon. “It’s a huge animal with a little brain that steps on everyone indiscriminately.”

Abdul Haq liked to do everything with flair. He was a bear of a man who hurled himself into chairs, square and burly and balding with thick paw-like hands and a big round belly. French diplomats and relief agencies called him L’Ours, the bear. Our meetings were often over sweets and lengthy meals where he downed gallons of green tea and what he referred to as his one western

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FOCUS | Afghanistan: 40 Years of War

vice: diet coke. He had a voracious appetite both for food and life.

HOLLYWOOD ‘HAQ’: AN OUTSPOKEN CRITIC OF THE CIA AND ISI In my two years based in Peshawar covering the resistance side of the war during the nearly decadelong Red Army occupation of Afghanistan, I travelled with his men to the outskirts of Kabul as they rocketed the capital. A few months later, in 1989, he had me smuggled into Kabul disguised as an Afghan woman to write about his underground network. I also witnessed meetings of major commanders in rebel-controlled areas. Abdul Haq was blunt and daring and gave me the impression of moving into the unsettling unknown with great pleasure.

His men both in and out of his presence worshipped him. Though he had been one of the CIA’s main contacts in the early war years, he later became a vocal critic of both the Pakistani ISI and the CIA who nicknamed him “Hollywood Haq”.

After the fall of Kabul in 1992, he briefly joined the new government but, sickened by the bloody and relentless inter-ethnic conflict, he moved to Dubai. In 1999 he joined with Ahmed Shah Massoud, the wellknown Tajik commander, to try and unite the country’s many ethnic groups against the Taliban. This, both of them believed, was the only viable long-term path to peace. There could be only one solution: an Afghan one.

Still, he never doubted the viciousness of his own opponents.

“We may not know how to make computer chips,” he told me. “But we do know how to do one thing well. We know how to kill.”

Donatella Lorch in Nangrahar province with translator Mohammed Shuaib. (Photo: D. Lorch)

country’s future president, though back then he was an immaculately-dressed mujahed spokesperson without any significant following. Many in the original pantheon of soullessly vicious Afghan warlords are now even more powerful, cruel, corrupt and more prominent in the present government.

Much of this had been made possible by the fact that they had been co-opted early on by the CIA, who operated primarily through ISI, who favoured their ‘own’ mujahideen. The Americans provided the guerrillas with planeloads of millions of dollars in cash, weapons and ammunition. To avoid breaking U.S. law, ammunition and weapons had to be delivered (often airdropped) in separate planes.

The bombing campaign in Afghanistan, which began in October, 2001, was called Operation Enduring Freedom. It was meant ‘to disrupt the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations and to attack the military capability of the Taliban regime.’ Today the Taliban and their Al-Qaida allies, including IS, are stronger than ever.

The American military is bogged down and extremism is spreading far beyond its borders. The only part of the campaign slogan that truly endures is an unrelenting destruction of Afghan lives, livelihoods and culture.

Unlike Abdul Haq, many of the Afghan mujahed politicians dating back to the 1980s became, after the overthrow of the communist regime - and especially after 9/11 - deeply corrupt, lavishly wealthy and powerful.

DOSTUM: A VERITABLE MONSTER NOW BACK IN OFFICE

Donatella Lorch with Afghan mujahed near Kabul during the Soviet war. (Photo: D. Lorch)

THE AFGHAN GOVERNMENT: A FAILED AND CORRUPT LEADERSHIP

For almost two decades, my work life was linked to the Afghan conflict. Afghanistan was my first war. In the 1980s, I frequently interviewed Hamid Karzai, the

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One of them, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek warlord and now the country’s first vice president, is an example of the monsters created by the belief that bombing Afghanistan would defang the Taliban and cripple Islamic extremism. In 1992, in a battle for control of a newly liberated Kabul, I saw Dostum’s men rocket and flatten entire neighborhoods, killing civilians indiscriminately. I met Dostum face to face in 2002, in northern Afghanistan, when he was accused of having suffocated hundreds of Talib prisoners held in containers.

Most recently, invited by Afghanistan’s current president Ashraf Ghani, who had once called him “a known killer”, Dostum returned to Kabul after a year of self-

IN MEMORIAM imposed exile in Turkey. He still faces charges of rape and kidnapping, brutality, human rights abuses and the killing of his first wife. Yet in Kabul, he received a royal welcome from both his supporters and the government.

ABDUL HAQ’S LAST VENTURE: A DECISION NOT IN VAIN? Abdul Haq was a pragmatist with a long-term vision.

But he didn’t want the Pakistanis or the Americans to control him. So in death as in life, they belittled his role.

For a while, even I was uncertain. Did he really know Talib commanders? It is easy to get muddled in the maze of conspiracy theories spread by all sides.

Recently I found a clue in the footnotes of a book about Afghanistan that answered many of my doubts.

Abdul Haq, it merely stated, had the backing of Khan Mir, a powerful Talib commander near Jalalabad with over 800 men. I was convinced this was the Khan Mir that I knew.

Khan Mir was the charismatic commander who had taken me many times inside Afghanistan. We had come under rocket attack together and escaped by hiking for days in snow and rain. Throughout a moonless December night, I had walked in his boot prints down a mined mountainside. I knew his wife and his children and his brothers.

Back in 1988, Khan Mir was Abdul Haq’s right-hand man. And Khan Mir worshipped Abdul Haq, the way Khan Mir’s own men followed him. He believed in Abdul Haq and what he stood for.

Maybe it hadn’t been all in vain. Crossing the border that night in 2001 was a gamble but it was not a fool’s trip. Since then, there are clear indications that many commanders – on learning that key brethren, such as Khan Mir, were also involved – were prepared to switch sides. And yet, the last thing that Islamabad wanted was an independent-minded new leadership promoting the possibility of real – and Afghan-led – peace.

Furthermore, in the belligerent atmosphere of post9/11, neither Washington and London arrogance we re really interested in an Afghan solution. Confusing the Taliban with Al-Qaida, the Afghans had to be punished. And besides, a political initiative could take months, even years. The military option, the Bush administration believed, offered the quickest ‘solution’.

And yet both Abdul Haq and Massoud (who met with US officials in Paris in April 2001) had warned the West that a military intervention would only provoke more war. The end result is that – looking back today – little or nothing has been achieved. And a huge opportunity was lost.

DONATELLA LORCH, a former New York Times and NBC correspon-

dent, has written previously for Global Geneva. She is currently based in Turkey.

ANJA NIEDRINGHAM & MARIE COLVIN

Marie Colvin (1956-2012) was a glamorous, braver-than-the-boys American foreign correspondent reporting for the Sunday Times from some of the world’s most dangerous places. but who also led a troubled and rackety life. She was killed while covering the Siege of Homs in Syria in February 2012. Fellow foreign correspondent Lindsey Hilsum of the UK’s Channel 4 TV, has just come out with an exceptional biography on Colvin, In Extremis: The Life of War Correspondent Marie Colvin

Geneva-based Anja Niedringhaus (19652014), a German photojournalist, was shot dead 4 April, 2014 by a rogue Afghan policeman while covering the presidential elections with AP reporter Kathy Gannon (See Gannon’s story in this issue on Afghanistan).

For Kathy, Anja saw the world through her heart. “Her pictures went beyond the conflict she was covering to the soul of those she photographed. She never saw herself as courageous but she saw courage in everyone she met. I miss you every day mein Schatz.”

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Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld pours a glass of water at the start of budget hearings in the Sen. Approp. committee.

With him was Gen. Richard Meyers, Chm. of the Jt. Chiefs of staff.

March 27,2003 © David Burnett

DAVID BURNETT:

A Photographer’s Odyssey

The first photographs were taken 175 years ago. Veteran US photographer David Burnett, widely considered as one of the world’s best, describes what we’ve learned since then about “writing with light.”

The earliest cameras were bulky and awkward to handle. They demanded dedication and expertise to produce a perfect image. But while these cameras were often basic in design, they were beautifully built. Each, in its own way, was a jewel. The lenses, encased in polished brass, were frequently stunning. If you look, today, at images that were made in the mid-19th century, it is hard to believe that a glass lens, designed without a computer, and ground by hand, could be capable of delivering such breathtaking sharpness and contrast.

I have spent 55 years as a professional photographer and yet I still marvel at the technical wizardry which our photographic forefathers exhibited in those early years.

My own personal journey in collecting photographic equipment began with a Pentax 35mm camera and slowly transitioned, when I could afford it, to Nikons, and then about 40 years ago to Canons, and this year to the latest, mirrorless Sony gear.

NEVER WITHOUT A LEICA Along the way, I always had a Leica slung around my neck with a 35mm lens, and black-and-white film. I was never without it. The Leica was my emergency, goto camera. It was the camera I grabbed when technique counted less than time. I lived in that 35mm world for decades. It afforded the combination of getting the job

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done and a reasonable price. There were also 36 pictures to a roll of film, which meant that I had another chance to get the picture if I had missed an earlier shot. The fact that the Leica did not weigh much and didn’t take up much space, meant that I could carry three or four cameras.

It meant, too, that I was always ready for what might happen next. Anticipation is the name of the game, just as it was 150 years ago. Photojournalism, in particular, requires thinking ahead about all the possible scenarios, and being ready when the unexpected happens.

DOES A CAMERA FEEL RIGHT? When I was on R&R in Hong Kong from Vietnam, in 1972, I bought a Hasselblad kit. By the time I finally traded it for a Pentax 67, I’d probably shot no more than 20 rolls of film. I loved the Hasselblad idea, and I loved its famous history, but I hated how it felt in my hands.

The relationship that photographers have with their cameras is mostly about how the camera feels when you hold it. Does it seem just right? Does it flow without any hiccups? That is what attracts photographers to their favorite cameras. There are so many different brands and camera formats, and so many different hands to hold them that it’s no surprise that today there are so many options.

I bounced around with a lot of Medium Format (120 roll

film size) cameras before ending up with the Mamiya 645. It is essentially a 35mm camera on growth hormones, and one which I found was particularly good at shooting sports.

A book (Angels at the Arno by Eric Lindbloom) convinced me that perhaps less was more. Lindbloom had taken the book’s photographs with a plastic Diana camera, which resembled a child’s toy. Most of the photographs were of sculptures in Florence – he had taken them on a Guggenheim grant, no less.

Inspired by the book, I began a long courtship with the HOLGA camera, a $24 plastic “everyman” camera made in China and exported around the world. It was mainly sold to photography schools in order to start students shooting photos with something very basic. The simplicity of the HOLGA appealed to me, and it often became the 5th strap around my neck, accompanying a set of Canon reflex gear.

The essence of photography began to be revealed again, this time by using this most basic of cameras, and essentially refining my vision to “seeing, aiming, and shooting.”

The HOLGA turned out to be a wonderful tool. At times, it produced photographs that were better than what I’d thought I’d actually seen.

NEW TECHNOLOGY: IT WAS POSSIBLE FOR A CAMERA TO DO EVERYTHING

US Marine Harrier mechanic (HOLGA) (Photo: Courtesy David Burnett)

With the advent of digital cameras in the late 90s, the technology of photography started to take leaps, bounds, and then even more leaps. All of a sudden it became possible for a camera to do everything but decide which picture to take. Auto exposure, Auto Focus, Auto Advance — it was all there. All you had to do was aim the camera (OK, that’s not as easy as it sounds, if you want to get everything just right….) and the camera could do the rest.

As auto-focus technology improved, a lot of people were able to become sports photographers who might never have succeeded in the era when they had to follow the subject while manually focusing a lens.

‘Follow focus,’ a cool descriptive term, is incredibly hard to do well when you are chasing a running back who has the ball. It is especially hard when your view is blocked by other players.

There are nevertheless a few photographers in the world of sport, in particular, who are masters. In the early days of digital, most of the photographers in my world (magazine and newspaper photographers) relied heavily on two lenses: the 17-35mm wide angle zoom, and the 70-200 telephoto zoom. I had already begun to be bothered by the uniformity imposed by an over reliance on these two lenses. If you looked at a picture, you could easily guess which of the lenses the photographer had used regardless of the photographer’s personal style.

Herb Gettridge – Katrina victim: Lower 9th Ward – New Orleans.

(Photo: Courtesy David Burnett)

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FROM THE FIELD | David Burnett: A Photographer’s Odyssey

Barack Obama 2008 Campaign (Speed Graphic) (Photo: Courtesy David Burnett)

Elbert Legg, in charge of Graves Registration Unit, Normandy: D Day (Speed Graphic) (Photo: Courtesy David Burnett)

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At a hearing in 2003, early on in the (ill-fated) Iraq war, I went to the Senate with my decades old 4×5” Speed Graphic, a camera. I had bought it in the 1970s when my hometown paper, The Salt Lake Tribune, was paring down its equipment closet. I paid $200– probably, a little too much for a beat-up old box, but it was my first large format camera, and the one which I used to learn the basic techniques.

The camera was designed in the early 20th century. It had earned an honest reputation as “the press camera.” In fact, it was THE camera that newspaper photographers used from the 1920s onwards. The 4×5 sheet film was handy in the days when a picture might need to be cropped without losing quality in the event that not everything had worked exactly right.

I shot a few pictures with the camera of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld standing with some senior military leaders. When I was at the lab, a day later, and saw the results, I realized that this camera was definitely something to keep in my bag of tricks.

It offered a different way of looking at a Senate hearing. I had covered these hearings for years, but there is something special about the way large format pictures look. The lenses have a longer focal length than the ones on 35mm cameras, and that the longer focal length immediately results in a narrower depth of field. It becomes easier to separate the subject from the background, and it makes it possible to place the emphasis, as I like to say “on that part of the picture I want YOU to look at.”

As the 2003-04 US presidential campaign started to heat up (there were a half dozen Democrats vying for the nomination to defeat George W. Bush in ’04) dozens of opportunities arose to make pictures that not only looked different, but that presented a different sensibility. I found nevertheless that the camera required a constant learning curve.

The Speed Graphic is the exact opposite of the modern digital camera. Using it meant that you had to frame the image despite the fact that the camera was bulky and hard to balance. Then you had to cock the shutter manually, focus an image that was upside down and backwards on the ground glass viewfinder at the rear of the camera and set the lens’ aperture, load the film holder (which traditionally carries two sheets, one on each side) and finally, you had to pull out the darkslide from the film holder, enabling the film to “see” the incoming light when the shutter was opened.

Then, assuming your subject is still about where they were when you started, you fire the shutter, and congratulate yourself, hoping you actually have an image. There are so many things which can go wrong. So many things which you could either do in the wrong order, or simply forget. And don’t even ASK about accidental double exposures. They happen. Nothing is more disheartening than to see your work ruined by your own hand.

But, when it works, it is magic. Working with a big camera is a victory when a good image emerges.

It reminds you of all the work that went into it, what you saw, or hoped to see. The mere weight and mass of the camera reminds you that you’re never going to go unnoticed. It is a statement: “I am here, and I am a photographer!”

Years ago, when Lady Bird Johnson came to Salt Lake City, she was accompanied by a grizzled, silverhaired LIFE Magazine photographer named Nig

“I am here, and I am a photographer!”

Miller. Nig walked with a discernible limp, from a motorcycle accident years before when he worked in a circus. He was a character of the first order, and I, a 17 -year-old aspiring photographer, spent every minute I could following him around like a little puppy, trying to pick up a tip or two.

Nig was festooned with at least five Nikon cameras, around his neck, both shoulders, and probably more of them stuffed into a camera bag the size of a small car. But at one point, I distinctly remember him grousing about something, and having made myself his newest friend (and acolyte) I asked: “What’s the problem, Nig?”

TRACES: KATRINA – A lone Ford Mustang, near the 17th St canal, covered in sand after the levees broke. (Speed Graphic) (Photo: Courtesy David Burnett)

“Ahhh,” he grunted, “these Nikons aren’t worth a damn.” And for a moment I think he was back in the 1950s. “Nah,” he said. “You hit somebody with it, they go down, they get right back up.” Then followed a pregnant pause. “You hit’em with a Speed Graphic, they’re gonna stay down.”

That must have been a hallelujah moment for me. I remember it as if it were this morning. And while I have yet to actually whack someone so hard that they go down, and stay down, it’s nice to know that when I’m carrying my big camera, I’m in a very safe place.

DAVID BURNETT, is a photojournalist with more than five decades

of work covering news, people, and the visual tempo of our age. He is co-founder of Contact Press Images,the New York based photojournalism agency, now entering its 42nd year. In a recent issue of American Photo magazine Burnett was named one of the “100 Most Important People in Photography.” In the spring of 2018, David was awarded the Sprague Award for Lifetime Achievement from the National Press Photographers Association. Burnett is also founder of Photographers for Hope. (See Global Geneva article by Anna Wang).

Space Shuttle Launch (HOLGA). (Photo: Courtesy David Burnett)

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BREXIT: BURNETT:

Staring over the precipice

Even though the European Union has now formally accepted Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit plan, the United Kingdom’s saga will grind on with even greater uncertainty. At the same time, there may be lessons from Switzerland’s experience with the European Union – but also from the EU itself. Global Geneva contributor Brij Khindaria explores the lessons for others who may be tempted to step off the EU cliff.

BREXIT, BRITAIN’S EXIT from the European Union (EU), began as a nationalist vote to free Britain to make its own decisions but is turning into an axe likely to chop its own legs by hurting its economy and trade. The Leave process has become a peril-filled cliff hanger at a time when the global economy faces pounding by US President Donald Trump’s trade wars with Europe and China.

As of this writing in late November 2018, British Prime Minister Theresa May faced severe challenges to her hold over the ruling coalition in British parliament. Serious analysts were suggesting that she might be overthrown as Conservative Party leader by her own backbenchers after two more cabinet ministers resigned, including her chief negotiator on withdrawal from the EU. The political crisis followed presentation of the 585-page Brexit draft withdrawal agreement for approval to the Cabinet, where 10 ministers reportedly voiced reservations resulting in several resignations, and Parliament, which is deeply divided, degenerating into uproar.

The draft agreement includes a transitional period giving until December 2020 to work out a permanent exit and permits further extensions. May’s opponents see that as the worst of both worlds because Britain would leave on 29 March 2019 without a voice in EU affairs but still be subject to almost all of its trade rules.

They think it would be like leaping in the dark with an ill-defined deal by a never-defined date.

For a while last year, it seemed that Switzerland’s bilateral accords with the EU could offer some signposts for May, but her troubles are too deep. The Bern government is following a “Mind the Gap” strategy to reach post-Brexit arrangements as swiftly as possible with Britain. Named after the gap between the platform and train in London’s underground subway system (Tube), the strategy seeks to ensure that Swiss businesses and citizens in Britain are not thrown under the train after Brexit.

PRAGMATICALLY COPING WITH A BAD IDEA As one senior Swiss government official privately noted in mid-August, “the last thing we want is for Brexit to go ahead. Quite frankly, it’s bad for everyone.”

However, the official added, Switzerland is a ‘pragmatic nation’. Bern wants pre-Brexit mutual rights and obligations to continue to apply with minimal changes. For the moment, the UK represents Switzerland’s sixth largest

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direct investor. Mutual links are strong with some 150 flights per day between Switzerland and the UK, primarily through Geneva, Zurich and Basel. Some 41,000 British citizens live in Switzerland and 35,000 Swiss live in Britain.

Citizens of either country living in the other are unlikely to be affected but business relations will require new bilateral agreements because EU rules will no longer apply. Brexit must happen on 29 March 2019, but Britain will not be able to sign formal trade deals with non-EU countries until its complete break from the EU. That would take at least 21 more months under a current understanding.

Despite earlier expectations that financial firms may flee from London to Switzerland, a Geneva-based lawyer representing British interests in Europe and the Middle East thinks they are more likely to go to Frankfurt or Luxembourg. “British companies may use Switzerland more as a location for sensitive dealing or arbitration, but the Swiss are not exactly jubilant about Brexit,” he said. “Much will depend on where companies wish to be based in a post-Brexit Europe.” With its high costs, Switzerland’s attractions seem to have more to do with lifestyle quality than business advantage.

Brexit’s fate is hanging in balance partly because British politics have become more than just a hissing vipers’ nest. A “no-deal Brexit” is on the cards, pulling Britain out of everything EU after 40 years of intertwining with the continent in almost every imaginable domain, including trade, finance, aviation, energy, environment, health care, pharmaceuticals, social welfare, regional aid, agriculture and human rights.

THERE’S NOT ONLY BREXIT, BUT TRUMP TOO This awful prospect sits atop Trump’s belligerent trade protectionism driven by his charge that Europeans have long treated Americans like “schmucks”. He labelled the EU as a “foe” on trade. Brexit supporters argue that more trade with America and members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) will far exceed losses after some initial discomfort. But Britain will be in a weaker bargaining position outside the $16 trillion EU. Transactional Trump, disregarding their special relationship, has already hinted that future American generosity depends on Britain giving a lot back. WTO chief Roberto Azevedo warned in August that quick negotiations are very unlikely for tariff and quota bilateral deals with member countries. “The moment that oth-

Will be the UK be calling for help if - and when - Brexit goes through?

er countries begin to sense an opportunity to increase the market share or increase the quota here or there, they’re going to go for that,” he told BBC radio.

THE POTENTIAL DAMAGE DOES NOT BEAR THINKING So far, Trump is careening towards a simultaneous trade war with EU and China. US trade with the EU is worth over $1.1 trillion a year, the world’s largest, and $580 billion with China. If his many threats are applied, punitive tariffs would hit over $200 billion in imports from the EU and more than $500 billion from China.

Both have vowed tit-for-tat retaliation against the US but are desperately seeking sensible negotiations.

The potential damage does not bear thinking. “It’s worth all our efforts to defuse this conflict, so it doesn’t become a war,” said German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Trump concurs saying he prefers open markets with zero tariffs and barriers, but will no longer tolerate large trade deficits with China, EU or any major country.

He put a hold on new punitive tariffs on EU trade after talks with EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in July. But the truce may collapse before year end if Europeans baulk at putting Americans first.

The US has a $101 billion trade deficit with EU, mostly Germany, and $375 billion with China, which Trump wants reduced by $200 billion within months. If China knuckles under, the EU would be forced to succumb – if only to protect European jobs should Chinese exports flood towards Europe. If no one bends, trade wars could kneecap the global economy, jeopardize billions of jobs worldwide and provoke furious social unrest, including the drumrolls for real wars.

BRITAIN STILL INFLUENTIAL, BUT AT HUGE COST For Brexit, this is the worst time; that is, unless Brussels and Beijing can pacify Trump. Britain is already

reeling. Bank of England Governor Mark Carney thinks its economy is 1.5 per cent to 2 per cent lower than it would have been otherwise. A Financial Times average of forecasts two years after the referendum that triggered Brexit found a one to two per cent drop in GDP. It revealed a fast-rising “Brexit cost” of £450 million ($580 million) a week, up from £350 million ($450 million) a week in December 2017. Worse, Britain may have to pay as much as €55 billion ($64 billion) to unravel its financial obligations to the EU. The rebels against May are incensed about several issues but the most emotion-charged is the border after Brexit between Northern Ireland and Ireland, which will continue as an EU member. Some rebels think that a new hard border with customs posts could break up the United Kingdom because the Good Friday agreement of 1998, which ended decades-long violence in Northern Ireland, started processes that made the border with Ireland invisible with little or no physical infrastructure. The Good Friday Agreement has the status of a formal treaty between the UK and Ireland and is also an agreement between the previously warring parties in Northern Ireland.

The costliest may be the City of London’s fall from being the EU’s prime financial hub. This would happen if – and when – it loses “passporting” rights that allow banks to transact with any EU-based client because all obey EU rules.

Immigration from EU countries continues to be a political bombshell. May wants a “bespoke” deal to restrict immigration while keeping trade privileges. But EU negotiators see that as cherry-picking without accepting the free movement of labour, which is obligatory for all members. The draft agreement would keep Britain in the EU’s single market while curbing immigration in exchange for obeying all EU environmental, social and customs rules, but without having a say in them.

Opponents see that as craven.

BRIJ KHINDARIA, is a columnist based at the United Nations in Geneva.

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Crowdfunding the books you want, and disrupting big business “The Intrapreneur: Confessions of a Corporate Insurgent” by Gib Bulloch is an unusual book. First, it was crowdfunded. This means that many people paid for it before it was published. It was a book they wanted to read. Its message, too, is revolutionary: companies must change from the bottom up.

GIB BULLOCH, WHO GREW UP ON the Scottish Isle of Bute, distinguished himself by leading a corporate “guerrilla movement” inside Andersen Consulting, one of the largest global consulting organizations. Now 51, he (his name is originally Gilbert, but he prefers Gib) created a not-for-profit “inside one of the most profit driven corporations in the world,” as the book’s blurb notes. But the price of success was ultimately his job, his health and a spell in a psychiatric hospital. Yet out of this experience, he created “a call to action” for a new breed of social activist working within today’s business world.

In a foreword by Unilever’s CEO Paul Polman, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals is referred to as “the world’s business plan”, with the potential to create $12 trillion in commercial opportunities and the potential to create up to 380 million jobs by 2030.

“If you work on Lifebuoy, you are not selling soap; you are saving and improving lives by preventing the spread of infectious diseases,” Polman declares. All his company’s brands, he maintains, are putting social missions at

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the heart of their businesses. “The people behind these businesses will, I am sure, be encouraged and inspired by Gib Bulloch’s story, as will many others.”

Alastair Campbell, once the ex-UK Prime Minister Tony Blair’s spin doctor, praises the book for another innovative aspect: “It’s refreshing to see business leaders like Gib Bulloch break the taboo surrounding mental health in the workplace by speaking up, openly and honestly, about their personal experiences,” he writes. Entrepreneur Arianna Huffington gives it another endorsement as “an inspiring personal account of how purpose and well-being can transform the business world.”

TOP DOWN IS NOT WORKING Unlike most business books with charts and graphs and abstract terminology, The Intrapreneur is a stirring personal tale with portraits of the important individuals in Bulloch’s life. “Top down isn’t working. The global elite of today’s multinational corporations are not, on their

own at least, going to be the primary drivers of change,” he argues. “Instead, the answer must come from the bottom up, by unleashing the power of purpose-driven corporate insurgencies among employees.”

For Bulloch, intrapreneurs are “the misfits, the rebels and the oddballs” who have “crazy ideas for a new product or service that has potential commercial and social value, but feel disempowered, disengaged or downright ignored by their business leadership”. One motive for writing this book, he says, was because “we urgently need to find ways of ‘democratizing’ the multinational corporation”.

But first Bulloch worked for BP and Mars among the world’s largest companies before joining Anderson (now Accenture). The turning point came in 2000 when he left his Porsche 911 behind with his father in Scotland travelling out to Macedonia as one of the first short-term business partners for the British Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO). “Every day was an adventure, where I never knew quite what to expect,” he recalls.

CREATING A ‘NOT-FOR LOSS’ CONSULTING BUSINESS Bulloch returned to London and Accenture management consultants with a question: Would there be enough Accenture employees interested in working on the other side of the world on half their salary as he had done? In addition, he needed to know whether the business would be economically viable and whether there was a market for Accenture’s consulting services in the non-profit world.

Luckily, he got immediate support from the company’s top level. But a feasibility study for the proposed new programme also discovered that a disproportionate number of the better industry performers across the UK were particularly interested. Creating and building Accenture’s global “not-for-loss” consulting business, ADP, kept him busy for the next 15 years.

Possible pullout quote: Conflicts are “largely symptoms of much deeper issues: the extreme and growing inequality and injustice that exist across and within nations.”

Bulloch returned to Macedonia in 2016 and found it “unrecognizable” Not only had the economy improved, but unemployment and, to a certain extent, ethnic tensions, appeared to have fallen. This deepened a conviction that he had developed: “The whole experience has left me with a firm belief that many of the conflicts we see in the world today -- East versus West, Islam versus Christianity, the rise of Boko Haram, ISIS, al-Qaeda, Al Shabaab -- are largely symptoms of much deeper issues: the extreme and growing inequality and injustice that exist across and within nations. If we don’t tackle that issue head on and offer a future to youth with no education, no job, no money and no hope, then the ideology of grievance and the gun peddled by extremists will sadly prevail.”

Bulloch’s book is no self-promotional exercise from a successful entrepreneur celebrating his career. “I was really very naive,” he writes. “I’d thought that if we were of-

Providing better logistics for development and humanitarian aid. (Photo: UN)

fering high-quality business and technology expertise at about 20 per cent of the normal price, then clients would be queuing round the block for our services.” He had underestimated the deep mistrust that existed between the for-profit and non-profit sectors; something, he adds, that continues to this day.

WITH PRO BONO, YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR Often the non-profits expected to be given services for nothing, as with other consultancies. Bulloch’s retort is: “With pro bono, you tend to get what you pay for.” But he did offer his services for nothing to Myanmar (Burma), and got into major trouble from the company bureaucracy for it. More often, ADP offered the services of some of Accenture’s best people at 20 per cent of the normal price and paid staff half what they could get from commercial contracts, and it sent them out to the countries where they were needed. He points to the aftermath of the Asian tsunami on Boxing Day 2004 as a time when ADP did some of its best work, after the media and most corporate philanthropy had moved on.

The unit helped charities improve their hiring and training processes to meet the huge demand for new staff on the ground, improved coordination among agencies through technology, and helped develop an early warning system for the next tsunami. “We worked with the likes of the UN and the World Bank to provide business support to local enterprises and start-ups. In fact, we’d find ourselves working on post-tsunami reconstruction across the region for the next three years.”

THE CHALLENGE IS HOW TO TRANSFER EXPERTISE IN LOGISTICS, MANAGEMENT AND TECHNOLOGY He also points up the lessons to be drawn from CocaCola’s Project Last Mile. Coca-Cola knew that simply delivering essential medicines and temperature-sensitive vaccines to children in Africa on the backs of trucks Cola to some local clinic or mom-and-pop shop in a village was not going to do it. “No, the challenge became how to transfer their expertise in logistics, inventory management and technology to what were mostly government-run health systems,” he maintains.

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LIBERATING IDEAS

A NEW/OLD WAY OF PUBLISHING The book came into being funded directly by readers through a website: Unbound, active since 2010 as the creation of three writers in the heart of London. To date it has published 231 books and over 175,000 people have supported an Unbound project. “If enough of you support the book by pledging for it in advance,” the founders say, “we produce a beautifully bound special subscribers’ edition and distribute a regular edition and e-book wherever books are sold, in shops and online.”

They point out this new way of publishing is actually very old (Samuel Johnson funded his dictionary this way). But the system “means readers are no longer just passive consumers of the books they buy, and authors are free to write the books they really want.” Authors also get 50 per cent of the profits, instead of the usual small percentage of the cover price.

GIB BULLOCH’S BOOK THE INTRAPRENEUR CAN BE FOUND AT HTTPS://UNBOUND.COM/ FOR $15 DIGITAL EDITION AND $20 PLUS P&P FOR THE PAPERBACK AND E-BOOK.

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ADP sent out six consultants, paid for by the Gates Foundation, to work with the Ministries of Health and The Global Fund in several African countries. “The result was dramatic savings in costs and a reduction in the lead-time for essential medicines from over 30 days to just three.”

Bulloch, who was named Sunday Times Management Consultant of the Year in 2008, is a co-founder of The League of Intrapreneurs. “When you are the boss you get a disproportionate share of the credit for things going well,” he says. But the converse is also true. “There’s a fine line between being a ‘changemaker’ and being branded a ‘troublemaker’, and intrapreneurs are no doubt a bit of both.” After 13 years he was brought down by big company bureaucracy. “There’s a macho bullshit culture in much of big business,” he adds. This leads executives to drive themselves into breakdown by overwork, he adds.

So what happened to Gib Bulloch? It’s not clear. It might have been enlightenment about the role of business in development, post-Dengue mania or a mental collapse. In any case, he ended up in a mental hospital and he left Accenture in 2016. “At its heart, however, the book is less about the mental health of the individual and more about the mental health of the organizations and the economic system in which they work,” he observes.

To explain his approach, in one chapter Gib writes of asking a business group: “What single word links the following three things?

One: fighting poverty in Kenya.

Two: Exposing corruption in Afghanistan.

Three: Tackling Obstetric Fistula in Tanzanian women.

The answers , which also included the UN, Oxfam, UNICEF and religion, are all wrong. It’s Vodafone. “Kenya was the birthplace of the mobile banking revolution which Vodafone pioneered and which has provided access to banking services for over half of the Kenyan population.”

“Secondly, a mobile banking platform was used to pay police in Afghanistan through Vodafone’s local operator. The frontline police thought they’d been given a 30 per cent pay rise when their salaries were paid electronically into their digital wallets, but they were in fact being paid correctly for the first time, without the corrupt hands of their superiors taking their cut first.”

“As for fistula in Tanzania, Vodafone’s Foundation discovered that very few women were coming forward for corrective surgery, despite an availability of trained medical facilities. (Stigma and travel costs to clinics were to blame.) Mobile technology was used to drive awareness of the availability of corrective surgery… then their mobile banking platform was able to send funds electronically to reimburse travel expenses. The net result was a 424 per cent increase in fistula operaTHE EDITORS tions in just eight years.”

“

Insightful, authoritative, and essential reading.

A dazzling and wise book.

”

—D AV I D O R R , author of Dangerous Years

AVAILABLE WHEREVER BOOKS ARE SOLD

CHELSEA GREEN PUBLISHING

the politics and practice of sustainable living

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Since 1984, Chelsea Green has been the leading publisher of books about organic farming, gardening, homesteading, sustainable living, socially responsible business, and more. Now employee-owned.

W W W.C H E L S E A G R E E N.C O M • F O L L O W U S O N

10/15/18 1:27 PM

GLOBAL GENEVAN:

Alain Gachet

A water wizard for the planet

With the growing impact of climate change, an estimated one third of the world’s population lacks fresh water. By 2050 it could well be over one half, some five billion people. That is, unless we not only improve water management, but also create new water resources. A determined French mineral engineer living in the south of France has found a way of locating massive reserves, or aquifers, beneath the earth’s surface using a mathematical algorithm that could completely change our future.

IN 2015, THE IRAQI GOVERNMENT MADE a strategic political decision. It opted to approach Alain Gachet, a stocky, white-haired geophysicist and one of the world’s top hydro specialists, to urgently find new fresh water sources. For the Iraqis, it was not only imperative to meet the country’s water needs for the future, but also to reduce its dependence – 80 per cent – on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, both of which have their origins in neighbouring Turkey.

Funded by UNESCO and the European Union, the Frenchman and his team put together a gigantic “soil hydromorphy map” indicating at least 67 new deep aquifer systems below 500 metres dating from 544 million to 2.6 million years ago (Paleozic to Neogene ages). Sixty-four of these are in northern Iraq, representing a ground water potential of 1.68 million hectares. Three other massive aquifer systems were also mapped in the Western Desert of Iraq. Together, these deep-water sources are believed to lie under almost all of Iraq.

As Gachet points out, while more exploration wells still need to be drilled to determine their full replenishable potential – the aquifers are re-charged across hundreds of kilometres from mountainous watersheds in neighbouring areas such as Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Turkey and Iran – these huge deep groundwater systems could radically overhaul Iraq’s agricultural landscape.

They could transform hitherto semi-arid zones into rich, irrigated farmland, while significantly reducing the country’s dependence on the Tigris-Euphrates river system.

“We are now completing the Iraqi project by monitoring wells in Kurdistan where it is possible to drill without being killed by ISIS,” added Gachet, whose bodyguard was murdered by the Jihadists. “ISIS still represents a real obstacle for moving ahead in the rest of Iraq.”

WATER IS GOOD FOR TWO THINGS: PEACE – AND WAR For the moment, however, it does not look as if this hydromorphic map will be put to immediate use, primarily because of ongoing political tensions, particularly in northern Iraq. “Water is good for two things; peace – and war,” explained Gachet, who runs his water exploration company, WATEX, out of Tarascon in Provence, but is keen on moving his operations to Switzerland because of its position as the world’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) hub. “So we have to be careful how we use it. And we’re not talking about geological terrain, but a very difficult diplomatic terrain.”

Historically, water always has been a contentious issue for power and wealth if not basic survival, whether control of irrigation ducts in the Swiss Alps, water access rights in the Hindu Kush or agricultural usage in the western United States. Turkey, for example, seeks to assert its control through dams over the Euphrates and the Tigris, both of which serve as agricultural lifelines for Syria and Iraq. Recently, it has used its dams to pressure the Kurds in northern Iraq. Turkey’s potential strangle-hold, however, would disappear overnight if other sustainable water resources were made available.

A RISING PROSPECT OF WATER WARS IN THE 21ST CENTURY While Swiss diplomacy is currently seeking ways to develop more appropriate international legal oversight and sharing of water resources in the Middle East and northern Africa, such efforts may not prove enough.

With a surging world population, available fresh water sources are becoming increasingly limited. Even more acute is the rising prospect of water wars in the 21st century; that is, unless more reliable – and abundant – water resources can be made available. This is a challenge that Gachet, who has revolutionized the art of finding water, believes he can help resolve. His solution? To help ‘unlock’ the massive fresh water reserves that exist throughout the Earth’s substrata.

Based on current estimates, the planet’s 500-5000 metre-deep underground aquifers are believed to contain 30 times more fresh water than above-ground lakes, rivers and streams; at least 70 per cent of these huge reservoirs are considered replenishable, meaning that with sustainable and carefully-managed exploitation, they can serve as inexhaustible sources of fresh water. Such water has been seeping through underground over millions of years from high precipitation areas, such as the mountains of Uganda, Ethiopia and Caucasus to lower arid or semi-arid regions.

“If used properly, access to these reserves could turn most of the world’s potentially cultivable land, including deserts, into rich agricultural areas,” explained the 67-year-old Madagascar-born physicist and geologist, who considers himself primarily an explorer. “But this won’t happen overnight. One also has to educate people in how to manage their reserves in a sustainable manner.”

As a means for discovering these enormous reserves, Gachet, who spent more than 20 years working with the French petroleum company Elf-Aquitaine (he left for internal political reasons), has come up with a

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roughness of rocks, he was eventually able to produce a mathematical algorithm capable of only depicting humidity and thus the possibility of underground water reserves. “For me, it’s about exploring that incredible wealth that exists beneath the surface of the earth. It’s a wealth that can change the world.”

However, it was only in 2004 that he was able to test his approach. The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) was desperately looking for water in Chad for 250,000 Darfur refugees when it heard about Gachet, the only engineer available with both the tools and appropriate innovative approach. Travelling around the desert region looking for the tell-tale rocks in combination with his satellite imagery, Gachet eventually found what he thought was the right place, which he marked with a white-painted stone. The drilling teams got to work and soon water was gushing out.

By 2005, the Americans were interested. According to Saud Amer of the U.S. Geological Survey, Gachet’s approached proved to be 98 per cent accurate. “Alain is a genius,” Amer said. “Anyone can study this, but it depends on expertise and talent.” The Americans eventually drilled 1,700 wells supplying three million refugees with water.

Both the European Union and Switzerland quickly demonstrated interest, but also expressed curious concerns. The EU considered his approach ‘dangerous’ (“you can find water in war zones”) and therefore politAlain Gachet demonstrating his mathematical algorithm for finding aquifers. (Photo courtesy: A. Gachet). ically risky. As some think tanks and NGOs point out, the moment you find water and energy expert who has collaborated with the talin a war zone, the political situation becomes even more ented and innovative Frenchman, Gachet’s achievement unstable. The local mafia also move in given that they has been to create a cross-disciplinary methodology for are often the ones providing water with their truck conidentifying deep aquifers through multiple-source revoys and delivery systems. They do not wish the probmote sensing, hard rock geology and the study of topoglem to be resolved. raphy and underlying geology, all coupled with a dose of The Swiss Development Corporation, on the other informed intuition. “He has proven the reliability of his hand, liked what Gachet had to offer, but demanded assessments at every stage and presented fresh, replenthat he simply hand over his intellectual property as ish-able water opportunities to local communities and an open resource. Gachet consistently refuses to protheir administrators,” said Ramsay. vide his approach for free. Any donor or organization that wishes to benefit should also contribute toward WATER: A WEALTH THAT CAN CHANGE THE its costs, he maintained. “If you want water, then I’ll WORLD bring you water. But the algorithm is my business, not yours.”

Gachet, who is passionate about geology and earth As Sylvie Boulloud, a French documentary producsciences, first began devising his new approach when er who spent more than two years closely following hired by Shell to look for oil in Libya. He realized that he Gachet, points out, he is the one to assume all the risks could search for water by filtering satellite and radar imwhen exploring. “Not only is he committing his own agery to the point that only humidity was shown. Comexpertise, but also each time hundreds of thousands bined with surface image analysis, such as detecting the of dollars until water is actually found. So it’s curious mathematical algorithm. It has already proved its worth by locating hitherto unknown ‘invisible’ water reserves in places such as Kenya, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan and Ethiopia. He is currently mapping deep water resources in Costa Rica, a normally water-rich country, but now suffering from drought, while in South Africa he is seeking solutions for the worsening water crisis, including working with commercial farmers, many of whom are now facing bankruptcy.

All this is being done through his development of cutting-edge technology combining NASA satellite imagery and earth-science parameters, but also applying his own broad personal experience. According to former U.S. ambassador William Ramsay, a veteran diplomat

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when donors say they want this for free.”

For Ambassador Ramsay, the trouble lies in the economics of water. “It’s not quoted on any bourse. It has only local value (you can’ t export it to some global market) and it’s a politically difficult commodity to manage.” Nor is there any mechaGachet with water pump in northern Kenya using a hidden aquifer as its source. (Photo courtesy: A. Gachet) nism for gaining exthe Kenyans had penetrated the saline aquifer causing ploitation rights over a water resource base and conthe fresh and salty water to mix. Given that nomads necting it with downstream customers. “The people do not provide enough votes, the Nairobi politicians in the business of finding water don’t like this kind of could not be bothered to rectify the problem. Nor had bullet-proof competition,” he noted. the Ministry of Environment sent a map of the water Unlike the petroleum industry, water exploration reserves to the regional governor, who might have been does not have the same financial backing. Nor do local in a position to take action. There were also suspicions engineers understand the need to be precise. And then that politically-inspired business interests were now there is the problem of political corruption by those buying up land in order to benefit once the wells are who are simply out for their own purposes, added properly drilled opening up the area to farming. film-maker Boulloud. “Once water is found, there are For Gachet, who has written a book about his often no laws to ensure that local populations are the experiences (L›homme qui fait jaillir l›eau du désert ones who should benefit.”

– The man who caused water to gush from the desert) maintains that scientists should not have to fight POLITICIANS NEED TO DECIDE WHO IS MORE windmills. “The reality is that if there is no political IMPORTANT: PEOPLE? OR THEMSELVES? will, then local people will not get their water. It makes me very angry to see one’s work reduced to nothing.”

For five years, the UN refused to engage his services And yet, despite Gachet’s success, there is a in a similar form of ‘blackmail’ – as Gachet describes problem with jealousy, suspicion and fear. While some it – but then eventually asked him in 2013 to help find governments are keen to work with him, they are water in the Turkhana region of northern Kenya. His reluctant to recognize his achievements for political methodology and test drilling soon discovered five or economic reasons. This includes France, which, huge, replenishable aquifers in Lodwar and the Lotikiwhile granting him the Legion d’Honneur, has ignored pi Plains, both of which heralded the prospect of commaking more practical use of his methods. As far as pletely transforming this semi-arid zone into fertile, Paris is concerned, noted Boulloud, water belongs to irrigated land. Easy access to water could drastically the big water companies, whether at home or globally, re-shape the lives of its primarily nomadic population, who seek to export their purification systems or who suffer from drought and poor nutrition. nuclear power stations. “This is far more profitable The new wells immediately provided water, but than the technology offered by Gachet.” Furthermore, when Gachet returned two years later he found a she pointed out, Gachet is a bit of an embarrassment, different story. The Lodwar wells drilled according an uncontrollable neutron and adventurer given that to his norms remained productive, providing ample he is able to deal with an entire country from his little water for cattle but also enabling women to no longer office with one employee in the south of France. The have to walk miles with their cannisters. However, Ministry of Environment has consistently refused to in the Lotikipi Plains to the west, where Gachet had meet with the French water engineer. discovered 4,000 square kilometres of underground As Ambassador Ramsay put it somewhat gloomily: water reserves – 20 times larger than the ones at “Alain has provided a tool for humanity to address Lodwar - the wells were closed. “Access to water one of the most serious problems of the 21st century. should be for everyone, but they’re always groups and Yet like many other artists, he may only be eventually individuals who wish to manipulate water in their own recognized posthumously.” interests,” maintained Gachet.

According to the Frenchman, his original survey EDWARD GIRARDET, who has reported wars, humanitarian crises had discovered three aquifers, one of them saline. This and development issues for over 40 years, is editor of Global Geneva meant that the wells had to be drilled carefully. Instead, magazine.

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MILITARIZATION OF CONSERVATION:

An army of occupation, not protection

As poaching of wildlife in Africa becomes more violent – rhino horn is worth more than gold or cocaine, making the stakes high – so are government countermeasures.

Contributing editor Keith Somerville explores how efforts to thwart illicit trafficking are becoming more militaristic in approach, involving the shooting of poachers, but also innocent civilians.

IN FEBRUARY 2018, the United Kingdom’s Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson announced that 20 British soldiers would be deployed in Malawi to help train game rangers to combat poachers. And at the end of May, Williamson was pictured with British soldiers and rhinos at the West Midlands Safari Park, just before the troops were to fly out. During this rather lame PR stunt, Williamson said that the troops would train ranger anti-poaching units in tracking, infantry skills, bushcraft and intelligence gathering.

He boasted that this detachment and other soldiers sent to Gabon for similar reasons would be passing on skills developed during tours of duty in war zones such as Afghanistan.

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A number of questions immediately sprang to mind on on hearing this. One: what extra skills in tracking and bushcraft would a British soldier trained in the UK, with combat experience in Afghanistan, pass on to Malawian or Gabonese rangers who grew up as well as live and work in the bush environment in which they will work? Two: the UK’s deployment in Afghanistan was hardly a resounding military success and involved British troops carrying out counter-insurgency and search-and-destroy operations against the Taliban. How are those skills relevant to conservation and anti-poaching in Africa? And three: why is militarization of conservation deemed to be a good thing?

SHOOT-TO-KILL: DIFFERENT APPROACHES IN AFRICA In stark contrast to the combat-based approach adopted by the British Defence Secretary, the new President of Botswana, Mokgweetsi Masisi, announced in June 2018 that his country would be withdrawing military-grade weapons from its wildlife rangers and ending the shootto-kill policy (which often became a strategy of shooting suspected poachers on sight) utilized by anti-poaching units and soldiers of the Botswana Defence Force (BDF) for many years in the national parks and reserves of northern Botswana.

This approach had come under increasing criticism from communities in northern Botswana since the former president Ian Khama and his brother Tshekedi Standford Khama (the Minister of Environment, Conservation, Natural Resources and Tourism) banned hunting in 2014.

This impoverished many rural communities, which relied on hunting income. It also led to an increase in poaching for bushmeat and the involvement of Botswana officials with poachers who crossed into the country from Namibia and Zambia to kill elephants for their ivory.

In announcing the change of policy, Masisi had responded to a parliamentary vote on 22 June to lift the hunting ban. This launched a nationwide consultation on ending the ban. The new president was thus responding not only to domestic criticism of the previous policies, but also years of complaints from Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe of the extra-judicial killing of their nationals suspected of poaching. This tended to involve a “shoot first and ask questions later” approaches by Botswana soldiers and rangers.

The Khama brothers were trenchant supporters of this hardline policy, which, in 2015 alone, resulted in the killing of 30 Namibians, 22 Zimbabweans and an un-specified number of Zambians. Many of those killed, particularly the Namibians, were just as likely to have been fisherman who had strayed across the Linyanti or Chobe rivers that run along the Namibia-Botswana border, but shot as poachers. The Namibian government had repeatedly protested the killings of Namibians by Botswana’s rangers, police or soldiers. Windhoek maintained that while it did not condone poaching, it objected to the policy of shooting suspected poachers on sight.

In contrast, the Kenyan government has announced it will introduce legislation to impose the death penalty for poaching. The country’s Minister for Tourism and Wildlife, Najib Balala, declared this was needed as a deterrent to the killing of wildlife for ivory, rhino horn, skins or meat, arguing that existing penalties were insufficient. What he might more realistically have said is that law enforcement and justice in Kenya are woefully inadequate in dealing with any form of crime, poaching included. The kingpins of poaching and wildlife smuggling in Kenya are rarely brought to trial in a country where corruption, including amongst senior officials, is seen as the rule rather than the exception in the police and justice systems. (In South Africa, recent allegations maintain that even the court system is involved with wildlife trafficking).

Elephant populations have dropped from 3.5 million in the early 20th century to 415,000 today. (Photo: IUCN)

Not surprisingly, the Kenyatta government in Nairobi has been very keen on linking wildlife poaching and smuggling with globally-despised insurgent groups, notably Al-Shabaab. The Kenyan president accused the Somali militant group of funding the attack on the Westgate Mall in Nairobi in 2013 from ivory proceeds.

This not only diverted attention from Kenya’s invasion of southern Somalia to fight Al-Shabaab (a likely cause of increased attacks in Kenya) but also put attention on insurgents as poachers and traders in illegal wildlife rather than on the smuggling networks that operate in Kenya under a veil of police corruption and political patronage.  The Al-Shabaab ivory connection was “uncovered” by the Elephant Action League NGO in 2013, on the basis of what was said to be infiltration and phonetap evidence. The claim that up to 40 per cent of the Islamist movement’s military activities and manpower was funded from ivory poaching and trading has since been disproved by my own research (See Ivory: Power and Poaching in Africa by Keith Somerville revealing how the illegal ivory trade is tied to corruption, conflicts, colonialism and local livelihoods); by the work of Cathy Haenlein and Tom Maguire of Rusi.org and by reports from ivory trade expert Daniel Stiles.

But the now-discredited Al-Shabaab connection has been used to build a narrative of ivory-insurgency links that have spread to unsupported reports of Boko Haram in Nigeria (See Global Geneva: Who’s behind the ivory trafficking in Africa?) benefiting from ivory poached in Gabon and the justification by people such as the British Defence Secretary that militarization of anti-poaching coupled with the deployment of British troops to train rangers in infantry tactics is necessary to combat poaching’s role in global insecurity. He asserted, without data to convincingly back it up, that “a lot” of the estimated $17bn a year generated by illegal wildlife trade goes into terrorism.

This claim that wildlife smuggling is funding insurgency is turning poaching and smuggling into a global security threat. This approach is not only uninformed, but neither realistic nor constructive. Instead, based on

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more compelling evidence, it should be considered both a conservation threat and a criminal activity.

MILITARIZATION DAMAGES CONSERVATION Militarization harms rather than helps conservation.

Successful conservation and anti-poaching cannot rely on shooting poachers or a virtual military occupation of national parks and surrounding areas. More pertinently, it needs to gain the support of local communities for conservation by providing incentives for those communities to report poachers and to protect the environment. (In Malawi, for example, allowing beekeepers back into the national parks to hang their hives – a vital source of cash income –s drastically reduced poaching because bush burning to move game also destroyed the hives, prompting local farmers to report illegals).

This can be done more successfully through the development of community conservancies (See WWF report on conserving wildlife and enabling communities in Namibia) in which local people are empowered and gain income they see coming directly from wildlife protection.

This enhanced sharing of income from tourism, including the devolution of control over wildlife in unprotected areas, is proving far more effective than the current militarization and use of counter-insurgency methods, which tend to operate against whole communities.

One of the first military-style anti-poaching operations was run by Bill Woodley and David Sheldrick in Kenya’s Tsavo Park in the late 1950s. Taking tactics from the brutal British counter-insurgency against the Land and Freedom Army (Mau Mau), they battled Waliangulu and Wakamba hunters, who had traditionally roamed the region before the imposition of colonial bans on hunting by indigenous (not European) communities. Sheldrick’s wife Daphne summed up the attitude of the anti-poaching commanders to the local communities when she argued that “almost the entire population of the Waliangulu” were in some way involved in poaching or had been in prison for it. Patently untrue, this was unlikely to elicit the communities’ help in stopping poaching.

This attitude of blaming whole communities is not uncommon. Combined with military tactics, this leads to wildlife rangers or troops seconded to anti-poaching operations becoming in what amounts to an army of occupation in and around parks or reserves. The local communities are considered the enemy.

Rosal Duffy identified this problem in her book Nature Crime, when she wrote that Malawian wildlife rangers trained by former South African military personnel were implicated in 300 murders, 325 disappearances, 250 rapes and countless instances of torture in and around Liwonde National park in 1998-2000.

The rangers to be trained by the British soldiers will work in Liwonde as well as Malawi’s Majete and Nkhotakota reserves. A convenient link and source of funding for this operation comes via the British royal family. The army team, known as counter-poaching-operatives, is partly funded by a charity run by the Prince of Wales African Parks, which manages the reserves and has law enforcement powers in

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regions around the parks, has Prince Harry as its president.

The danger posed by militarization is multifaceted.

If the rangers become an army of occupation targeting local communities as the enemy – as the pool from which poachers emerge – this can lead to violence and the killing of innocent local people. At best, it will label whole villages or peoples as suspect.

Furthermore, it introduces, through shoot-to-kill policies, an extra-judicial form of punishment. No trial, no chance of defence, just summary justice in countries which do not have the death penalty for poaching. Any idea of a law enforcement or justice-based approach to dealing with poaching disappears. It is replaced by a raw counterinsurgency approach, which rarely even has the old attributes of a just war, given that it is not a state defending itself against attack or occupation. Instead, it involves statebacked officials carrying out a war against their own people on the grounds that the crime of poaching has now become a security threat nationally, regionally and internationally.

This is not to argue that rangers should not be armed or trained in the use of arms and how to track poachers. However, counter-insurgency techniques are counter-intuitive. Rangers become the enemies of local communities in wildlife-rich areas. Local people also come to see conservation and wildlife as a threat to their livelihoods and may opt to kill animals to end attempts at the fortress conservation approach with its accompanying militarized rangers.

According to Conservation Watch, 595 rangers were killed between 2009 and 2016 in the line of duty; another 48 were killed by poachers in 2017. Militarization will only increase the death toll of rangers, and of ordinary people who become poachers through impoverishment, the desire to better the living conditions of their families and for a host of reasons unconnected with insurgency, terrorism or global security.

As observed by Professor Rosaleen Duffy of Lancaster University and head of the BIOSEC Project, which critically examines the inter-relationships between biodiversity conservation and security, we are in danger of falling in with “the increasing acceptability of human deaths in defence of animal lives. In stark terms poachers are presented as the allowable and acceptable casualties of a war for biodiversity…It plays into a much longer history of colonialism – and feeds the idea that wildlife simply matters more than African lives.”

If we do not start from the position that if local people suffer from rather than gain from the existence of wildlife, and if they develop grievances against conservation and protected areas, then no amount of militarization and use of counter-insurgency tactics will prevent wildlife from being killed. You make conservation and development problems into a war, rather than finding locally-supportable solutions that are of greater and more lasting benefit.

PROFESSOR KEITH SOMERVILLE teaches journalism at the

University of Kent and is a member of the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology at the University of Kent. His latest publications are Ivory: Power and Poaching in Africa and Africa’s Long Road Since Independence: The Many Histories of a Continent.

Scott Poynton, an Australian forester who founded what is now The Forest Trust, makes a personal plea for all of us to combine romanticism with reality as a viable means for saving not just Switzerland’s – but the world’s – trees.

TRAVEL & ENVIRONMENT

Might we fall in love again and still save our forests?

EARLIER THIS SUMMER, TWO MATES AND I set out on what turned out to be a “bridge-too-far” walking project.

Switzerland is blessed with more than 60,000 km of walking trails crowned by seven iconic National Routes. The National Route 5 (which extends as the GR5 into France’s renowned “Grande Randonnée” hiking network), but is also known the Jura Crest trail, traverses the Jura mountain range for 315km from Dielsdorf near Zurich all the way to Nyon.

Most sane people walk one of the 15 stages each day.

There probably aren’t many who set out to walk the whole thing non-stop. We wanted to raise money and awareness for the Movember Foundation – aimed at stopping young men from dying young – so we figured we needed a challenging task. Walking the whole route in eight days sounded challenging enough, so off we went.

The beauty of the trail over the first three days was truly breath-taking, as was the 35oC temperature that knocked the energy clean out of us.

FROM JURA COOL TO CALIFORNIA BURNING. The Jura’s magnificent beech and spruce forests gave us our only respite. Gunbarrel-straight trunks rose from the ground and soared above us, reminding us of the columns in Europe’s most grand cathedrals. The trees’ crowns interlinked high above to form great green rooftops that bore the brunt of the burning sun. The temperature on the ground, where we were walking, was at least 5oC cooler than the surrounding towns and farmland. It was still hot and humid, but as the trails climbed into the forests, our cooked souls were, if only temporarily, uplifted by the forest’s cool, life-giving beauty.

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Elsewhere, forests were burning. We’d started our walk with the sad knowledge that vast areas of Swedish forests had recently burnt to cinders, an occurrence so rare that few can remember there ever being such devastation so far north. In the US, particularly in California, massive conflagrations raged out of control. And in not so wintry Australia, forests burned there, too.

Trees are dying the world over en masse. Many are cooking in their own juices or falling victim to pests and disease, weakened by long droughts and excessive temperatures. All through our hike, I noticed dead and dying trees; their scorched, limp leaves turning yellow far too soon for traditional displays of autumn colour. Right across the world, people drive heavy machinery through these magnificent, green cathedrals. They are tearing them down in the name of progress, creating plantations and farms to supply agricultural commodities to an everexpanding, hungry global population.

OUR NATURAL FOREST CATHEDRALS ARE DISAPPEARING Many of us love forests and the animals and plants they support, not to mention the cool beauty they provide on breathless and sticky, hot summer days. That’s great but their accelerated demise at the hands of human inducedclimate change and development-oriented clearance represents a multiple whammy.

Trees store lots of carbon and the forest soils on which they grow, and also harbour vast amounts themselves.

When forests die – either through fire and drought, or when we people clear them – all that carbon is released back into the atmosphere. That’s not good. In fact, it is worse. Trees are no longer there to take it back out again; it’s bad news on bad.

That said, we shouldn’t just look at this through the lens of climate change. Forests, particularly in the tropics, are home to great biodiversity. They support many of the world’s remaining indigenous peoples. They also provide food, shelter, medicine and spiritual sanctuary to millions of the world’s poorest. All these things are being lost at rates so fast and over such vast distances that those working to protect the last remaining forests can’t keep up. The result is that we despair.

WHAT TO DO? I ask myself this question on a daily basis. What to do indeed?

Yes, you can sign petitions. You can stop buying foods that have a deforestation footprint. And you might even protest and throw yourself in front of a bulldozer somewhere in the world. That’s what people do. But it seems to me that few of these approaches are making much headway. So what can we do to make a difference?

If you live in a city or if you’re young, isn’t this all happening somewhere else in the world? You’re not really confronted by it, so you may consider it an issue beyond your reach. And besides, you’re a mere drop in this vast ocean of catastrophe and loss.

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Hiking in the Jura. (Photos courtesy Scott Poynton).

Physically, you may indeed feel far removed. But whether young or old, a high school student or a banker, there is something each of us can do in our own place, where we each live. We can fall in love again with the forest’s simple majestic beauty. We need to stop a minute from our rushing world and appreciate the forest’s beauty.

Experience the sun glinting from high above onto a young green leaf on the forest floor below.

And imagine pixies and fairies playing beneath the towering crowns, up and down, round and round, playing, running, dashing for cover when we humans come thumping with our big boots and puffing backpacks. Smell the scent of a forest after rainfall. Hold the hand of a loved one in the cool under the cathedral spires.

If we can experience and fall in love with a forest on our doorstep, perhaps that love can radiate to others? It’s not a traditional militant approach, but right now, such initiatives are blatantly not working. When things get complex, go simple.

We didn’t make it to Nyon in our eight-day Jura mountain march. Instead we took ten – and had a rest day to boot. It was a bridge-too-far ambition to hike so far in such a short time, but we finished with the glow of having been nourished by the magnificent forests we passed along the way. And maybe, just maybe, that radiance can light a path to protect those forests and to implore us to action to save forests everywhere. I think it’s worth a try.

Don’t you?

SCOTT POYNTON is an Australian forester who lives in Switzerland.

He is founder of The Forest Trust (www.tft-earth.org), formerly The Tropical Forest Trust, which seeks to transform supply chains for people and nature. He is still working with the organization today and is heavily involved in working with young people to make them more aware about the state of the world’s forests – and what they can do to protect them.

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POETRY WELL AWAY FROM POETS CORNER

THAT YEAR THEY CAGED THE CHILDREN

Well away from poets corner in the abbey lies the tomb of the unknown management guru, an unassuming slab of polished kryptonite on which three bullet points are bossed in gold:

That year they caged the children, sent them to “tender age facilities” along the border, provided guards tricked out as counsellors, and silver bedding invented for a moon landing.

They charged the parents as illegal immigrants, put them in camps and read them their rights.

All this done in the name of law and order.

Some protested. One guard made a sound file of children crying that went viral overnight.

A rich bitch visited them and became a meme and the government asked for understanding of the way the system operates: alien-migrants are invading our nation wrapped in tin foil and whimpering in Spanish: ir a casa señor.

• • •

… … …

The suspension dots give artful room for a wing and a prayer, possible reflection from passers-by.

Here lies one whose name is writ in shite is carved on the stone in Avenir Black Oblique followed by a mission statement in Baskerville Bold.

Next slide. In respectful silence the punters queue to write on the free Post-its supplied by management with magic markers (indelible) dangling by a string.

Installation? Tomb on a plinth project? Banksy?

It’s all a con. The tomb is empty, the budget spent.

PADRAIG ROONEY’s The Gilded Chalet: Travels in Literary Switzerland

was described in the TLS as “Brilliant. Thoroughly absorbing.” He has published four books of poetry and lives in Basel.

BREAKING IN

LETTER FROM RWANDA:

A Privileged Engagement As part of its Breaking In series, Global Geneva is placing a special emphasis on young people involved with international internships or volunteer work. By sharing their experiences, contributing youth writers can help inspire others of their generation to become more engaged.

Ashling O’Donnell (25), who joined the American Peace Corps, is in the process of completing two years working in Rwanda.

“GOOD MORNING, TEACHER,” FAINTLY ECHOES. I squint my eyes against the piercing sunlight, searching for the source of the greeting. Clambering up the slope of another hill is the barely discernible figure of a young boy. A khaki uniform marks him as a primary student. His eagerness to practice his English, despite the distance between us, is endearing. I wave and continue the hour and a half trek from my village to the market town.

It’s the height of the dry season and the dust claims everything it encounters. To my left, skeletal fingers demark the boundary of the Murambi Genocide Memorial.

Here, on April 21st, 1994, between 40,000-50,000 Tutsis and Hutu sympathizers were murdered. The perpetrators carried out the slaughter in over eight hours. The site is a haunting reminder of what this country has endured and what it is still overcoming.

MY NEW HOME: A RURAL VILLAGE In September 2016, I arrived in Rwanda, now a country of 12 million people, with the Peace Corps. After 12 weeks of intensive professional, language, and cultural training, the Peace Corps placed me in a rural village in Rwanda’s Southern Province. This village has been my home for the past 20 months. Within my community, my primary responsibilities entail teaching English in a local Secondary School and facilitating teacher trainings.

Other responsibilities and projects are self-assigned, developed in partnership with community members. Since arriving here, my learning curve has been as steep as the slopes of Rwanda’s innumerous hills, hence the expression “country of a thousand hills.” (Editorial note: Rwanda’s leading genocide propaganda broadcaster was ironically called Radio Milles Collines).

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It is no cliché to describe Rwanda as a country of contrasts. Rainy season, with its torrential downpours, abruptly shifts into merciless months of sun. Time wavers between languid and hurried: building sites that appear untouched for months are suddenly completed overnight. Nebulous space separates what is said and what is desired. Driving through the orderly and fashionable streets of Kigali, the hilly capital city, you would be surprised to discover that Rwanda ranks amongst the world’s twenty-five poorest countries.

Becoming a umunyarwandakazi: A Rwandan woman The Peace Corps emphasizes integration. To help your community, you must know the people. And yet the threads that connect us feel tentative. Stark economic and educational divisions are hard to ignore. I have not experienced or inherited memories of the genocide. I do not know how to till earth or sow beans. Despite these differences, my presence here and willingness to learn seem to be enough; community members have chosen that I belong. Grandmothers smile at my broken Kinyarwanda. Looking at our interwoven hands, they respond: “Uri umunyarwandakazi (you are a Rwandan woman).”

There is a humbling power in being claimed.

CONFRONTING THE NUANCES OF POVERTY: FROM SHRUNKEN MUD HOMES TO THE LACK OF SHOES As community members offer their stories, comfortable boundaries disappear. You are not securely removed from peoples’ hardship, debating the next capacity-building, gender equitable, environmentally conscious, sustainable, or poverty alleviating project in an air-conditioned office. Instead, torn clothes, cracked

Ashling O’Donnell’s village in Rwanda. (Photo: Ashling O’Donnell).

feet, and shrunken mud homes provide a daily reminder of poverty’s destructive and ominous presence.

Increasingly, poverty moves from the visual to the personal. It involves confronting a student who you haven’t seen at school in weeks about her absence. Her answer, she cannot come to school because she doesn’t have shoes or a family to provide money for shoes. Shoes are important here; people are judged by their shoes’ cleanliness. Sometimes you want to shut your eyes and cover your ears. Sometimes you long for distance.

SHARING COMMUNAL HOPES – AND RESPONSIBILITY Choosing to accept belonging compounds responsibility. You share in community members’ dreams and pursue hope. You share in their disappointments and feel powerless in comparison to the need. Choosing to accept belonging likewise connects you to a network of engaged teachers, students, and community members who relentlessly fight for a better future.

When longing to distance yourself, you draw strength and inspiration from the friendships you have formed around you. I think of the director of the local health center, coming to her office during maternity leave to discuss malnutrition. Her personal sacrifice is one of countless examples. Knowing you are not alone in fighting school dropouts, food insecurity, malaria, or gender stereotypes, but rather a small link in a committed network allows for hope and perseverance.

While I am grateful to be here, grateful to be able to invest in the lives of students and community members, I am undeniably privileged. This is a temporary reality for me. My belonging within my community has a set timer, scheduled to release me from my responsibilities on November 30th. And yet, I cannot help but feel that some of the bonds I have forged within my community are providential.

I am perhaps naively optimistic that these ties will transcend time and space. I think of my student Clementine and her tenacious dream of running her own multinational business. I think of my fellow teacher AnneMarie riding a bike through the village and subverting gender norms. Her logical explanation, “If a bike can get me to my destination faster, why shouldn’t I ride one?” I may be leaving, but while I still have the ability to connect community members with resources, I refuse to disengage. For once you have seen and belonged, what is the price of forgetting?

Raised in the Lake Geneva region, ASHLING O’DONNELL, now 25, is a British-American national who attended school both in France and Germany. She is a graduate of Connecticut College with a BA in International Relations and Religious Studies. This article represent’s the writer’s personal views.

The Peace Corps is a US-government-funded voluntary agency, first launched by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, which now works in more than 60 countries. Open to US nationals, more than 220,000 Americans have served since in the Corps around the world in some 140 countries.

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JEFF DANZIGER:

Cartoonist in the frontline

Veteran cartoonist Jeff Danziger has been drawing – and writing – for nearly 40 years.

While Danziger today ranks among the world’s top political cartoonists, he is also known for his often acerbic, wry sense of humour. Today, the bulk of his cartoons appear to focus on the administration of Donald Trump rather than a broad array of domestic and international politics. But then as Danziger points out, we are facing a situation not unlike Weimar 1932. Journalists have an obligation to speak out.

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NOT LONG AFTER THE SOVIETS LEFT AFGHANISTAN in early 1989, Jeff Danziger, then working for The Christian Science Monitor newspaper but with his cartoons syndicated in over 100 countries, came out with a pertinent depiction of the Afghan war. It also aptly reflected the tribal and ethnic divisions that existed – and still exist – inside Afghanistan. It was a cartoon of two Afghans, one wearing a woollen pakoul (cap) adopted by northern guerrilla fighters, the other a turban usually worn by Pushtuns from the south. One of them snarls at the other, saying: “Mohammed, now that the Russians have left, I’ve always wanted to tell you: I hate your hat.”

As Danziger, who is a member of the Geneva-based Cartooning for Peace Foundation and a contributing cartoonist to Global Geneva, maintains, this is precisely the role of the cartoonist. To capture a situation with a simple drawing and the fewest words possible.

It needs to be a visual metaphor, a recognizable scene from daily life, a caricature that reflects a subject’s character, whether an egotistical politician, a confused citizen, a brutal dictator obsessed with his own wonderfulness, or a hapless grunt commenting on the stupidity of war in a foxhole. Humanity at its best and worst. “I have always loved to draw and I have had an endless interest in politics. Cartoonists have a particular role in society that is not only healthy, but needed.”

Now in his mid-70s, Danziger is still exceptionally active. And for a journalist and artist with such a strident sense of pen and ink humour, his burly body language hasn’t changed over the years. He initially comes across as dour and gruff, a man with a lot of burden on his back, so one wonders where the incredible sense of humour comes from. But then cartoonists are not supposed to be stand-up comics, but serious commentators of life and politics using humour if not ridicule as a tool.

Christian Science Monitor in Boston. He remained as staff cartoonist for the Monitor until 1996 before returning to New York where he is now distributed by the New York Times Syndicate. Twice, he has been short-listed for the Pulitzer and was awarded – amongst other distinctions – the Thomas Nast Award in Landau, Germany, Nast’s birthplace.

For Danziger, his stint in Vietnam proved pivotal. He saw up close the results of top-down programmes that led to disaster. “This sort of thing makes a lot of people angry, including myself,” he maintains. Yet he has also travelled widely to Europe, Asia, and Russia… Such exposure emerges in much of his work with subject matter ranging from refugees and migrants to human rights abuses, military crackdowns, corruption and financial revelry. At one point, he was even contracted by the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva to travel – and draw –

THE EXPERIENCE OF WAR IS PIVOTAL

Having studied drawing both in Boston and New York, Danziger believes that his experience living in Vermont, where politics are very local and people take democracy seriously, has also flavoured his cartooning. Local newspapers – and local perception - have played a particularly key role. For one, the rise of off-set printing meant that there was a strong demand for more graphic images, such as cartoons with their combination of humour and opinion. “I like both very much. And besides, I like to see my name in print,” he asserts wryly.

For Danziger, the cartoon is initially meant to make people stop and think. “People enjoy a humorous take.

They like being provoked to think,” he maintains. Further-

Born in New York City, Danziger attended the University of Denver before moving to Vermont where he first worked in industrial films. (He still lives between New York and Vermont). But this was at the height of the Vietnam War. He found himself drafted into the military and sent to Indochina in 1969 as a linguist and intelligence officer. He later received a Bronze Star and the Air Medal.

On leaving the army, Danziger returned to Vermont where he began writing and drawing for the Rutland Herald (he still contributes to the paper) before being taken on as a cartoonist first by the New York Daily News, then The

about humanitarian crises and conflicts.

CARTOONS: THE DESSERT AFTER A MEAL OF NEWS

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more, cartoons can spur discussions amongst opposing opinions. Equally important, “they’re a way to get parents to discuss politics with their kids.”

While cartoons have the means to make one laugh or be amused, they can also make one cry or be shocked, explains Danziger. “In a way, the cartoon is a confection. The dessert after a meal of news. It’s a reward for paying attention.” But it’s also part of an intrigue for trying to figure out what the main point is, or the cartoonist’s thoughts, if he has any, Danziger adds. As concepts, cartoons do not necessarily have to be funny, but it’s a good idea if four out of five are humorous, if only a little.

Danziger considers humour a crucial component of cartooning, but it also goes hand in hand with fantasy and fiction. It’s a “bit of theatre with a scene, actors and dialogue, and, if possible, some comic relief.” For example, a cartoon depicting former US president Richard Nixon in hell, chatting with the devil. “Pure fantasy, but a political point can be made in a humorous vein about how things have gotten worse, more hellish, with Nixon seeing himself as a victim, feeling abused. This sort of thing can be very funny, and gratifying to readers who like the idea of Nixon grumpily suffering,” Danziger explains.

As a means for finding material, Danziger reads four or five newspapers a day, but also online articles from publications like Der Spiegel or Le Monde. These provide him with facts and quotes, plus overall trends in politics and the economy. The latter he finds useful as everyone experiences the economy, and they react to it. He is also one of the few cartoonists today with actual military experience. “So I like to do scenes from my disastrous time in Vietnam,” he says, regardless whether depicting Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, UN

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peacekeeping or any other military intervention. “From that idiocy, I think I know – and can point out – the limits of what can be done with military force.”

DICTATORS HATE CARTOONISTS One area that profoundly concerns Danziger is that of the apparent spread of dictatorial trends, ‘alternative facts,’ and the deliberate manipulation of information, all of which severely threaten the basic tenets of democracy, freedom of speech, and the way people, above all, young people, perceive realities. It is not just US President Trump, he maintains, but also Russia, Turkey, Asia…

As depicted in his cartoons, it’s all about political thugs trying to stifle what they don’t like, or undermining through lies, untruths, and propaganda those who dare to speak out.

Yet this is where Danziger sees cartoons as coming into their own. They have an obligation to ridicule or highlight elements that subvert society, regardless of what governments or the powers that be may think. “Dictators have always hated cartoonists, especially in areas such as Africa where language is disparate. A simple visual will communicate far more effectively than something written.”

From Tanzania and Turkey to Russia, Malaysia, and China, however, cartoonists risk their jobs, are beaten up, or menaced with years in jail.

Referring to concerns among the thinking public that Trump is seeking to undermine the press by tarring it as the “enemy of the people” (The Boston Globe and several hundred other American papers recently condemned this in a mass ‘write in’ of editorials) Danziger notes: “I

doubt Trump will be able to make any lasting dictatorial changes but he will illustrate what might happen if a dictatorial urge were in the hands of a more intelligent, capable person.”

WHY WOULD ANYONE WISH TO BE A DICTATOR? The root of these urges, Danziger suggests, is a desire for stability. Many ordinary people are willing to accept decisive dictatorial control because they believe it demonstrates firmness even if focused on blaming others for it, such as migrants. “They believe that it will resolve their problems, such as unemployment or massive personal debt. People often want this more than individual freedoms.” Such urges come from the experience of destabilization following wars or economic collapse.

Dictators will invent this destabilization to solidify their rule. “But I must admit,” muses Danziger, “I wonder why anyone would want to become a dictator. It’s a mystery to me. Seems like a hellish existence.”

And yet, the Trump administration clearly obsesses Danziger. Perhaps more so than before, his cartoons seem to dwell on different aspects of the presidency but also much of the fallout brought up with the judiciary, military, Congress, and life in general, notably the supposed need to make “America great again.”

During the editorial discussion with Global Geneva, when it wanted to feature a cartoon of Trump on its front cover, Danziger pushed for a slovenly SS-style depiction of the new US president. While liked by the editors, it was felt that such portrayal was too early for a new magazine

seeking to reach out to a genteel International Geneva community. Instead, it opted for a Humpty-Dumpty version with Trump falling off the wall. Disappointed, Danziger argued: “You need to understand what’s happening here in the United States. We’re in Weimar, 1932. We need to speak out.”

As a political commentator, Danziger does not restrict himself to cartoons. He also writes, as he puts it, “stories, opinions, funny stuff, or combinations of all three.” This includes occasional columns for newspapers or magazines, but his proudest accomplishment is a Vietnam novel, Rising like the Tucson, written in the early 1990s. He has also published 10 books of cartoons.

Writing, however, does not allow for time to do other things, such as daily cartooning. A good book – as with a good drawing, funny or serious – also commands a staying power that political cartooning cannot necessarily equal.

“Cartoons are for the immediate instance, which is fine, but I enjoy both forms. And I have great admiration for writers, particularly those who manage to mix the serious with the comic.” In the meantime, Danziger continues to produce.

The challenge now, he maintains, is that “I have no idea what I will do when I grow up.”

THE EDITORS

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TRAVEL & SCIENCE

POLARQUEST2018:

Voyage to the edge of the North Pole

Top left: Mapping the Ingelfield glacier, Svalbard, by drone © Mike Struik // Top right: Ceremony on board Nanuq at 81°14’N, 25°25’E in memory of the missing crew of the ITALIA Airship © Mike Struik // Middle right: Nanuq leaves Magdalenefjord, Svalbard © Alwin Courcy // Middle left: Bear family on iceberg, Hornsund, Svalbard © Alwin Courcy // Bottom right: Entry of the van Meijenfjord, Svalbard © Kai Struik // Bottom left: The real Kapp Nord! Chermsideøya, Svalbard© Mike Struik

Earlier this year, the Polarquest2018 expedition on board the ‘Nanuq’ (Polar Bear in Inuit) sailed to the edge of Arctic ice-shelf to investigate plastic and atmospheric pollution in one of the Earth’s last unspoiled regions. The researchers took unprecedented scientific measurements and made the first documented attempt in 90 years to locate the wreck of an historic airship that had crashed on the ice in 1928. Project leader Paola Catapano reports: OUR MAIN AIM WAS TO UNDERSTAND MORE about the physics of high-energy cosmic rays in the Earth’s Arctic latitudes. Due to the shape of the geomagnetic field, the intensity of the charged cosmic radiation in these northern parts is far higher than in equatorial regions further to the south. Working with CERN, the project also had a strong education and communication dimension, with the involvement of two 20-year-old students in the construction of a cosmic ray detector as well as their participation in onboard collection of data.

As a result, PolarQuest was more than a science experiment; it was a historical one. The expedition included a well-documented attempt to reach the location of the airship Italia, which had crashed into the ice some 120 km northeast of Nordaustlandet, Svalbard (formerly known as Spitsbergen) on its return journey from the first airborne circling of the North Pole in 1928. With one dead, nine survivors were left on the floating ice; another six remained trapped in the still drifting airship shell. Neither the shell nor any of these crew members were ever found.

For the first time in centuries and primarily because of climate change, the area in which the wreck was believed to be located was ice-free. Taking advantage of this unusual situation, PolarQuest searched a wide region for metallic wreckage using an experimental 3D multibeam sonar from NORBIT Subsea.

are inadequately charted. The second largest island of the archipelago, it still exerts a strong fascination for everyone who has studied its landscapes, wildlife and history.

Since the time of whalers, this area was hardly visited. It remained largely unknown because of its harsh climate and difficult ice conditions. For many years and well into the 1990s, it would have been impossible to sail this route with a 60-foot (18.2 m) yacht like Nanuq, closed off as it was by dense drift ice for most of the year.

“The barrenness of the country and the severe weather conditions had attached to North East Land a peculiarly evil reputation, increased by the disappearance of Schroeder Stranz and three other members of the German Arctic Expedition in 1913, and by the Nobile disaster of 1928” -- R.A. Glen, Under the Pole Star.

It is hard to imagine anything more remote and wilder than these islands. The surrounding waters are uncharted and it takes some luck to set foot on Svalbard’s northernmost islands: the weather is often bad, or the shore is blocked by ice or the beach is occupied by a polar bear or you can run onto an uncharted rock … It is amazing how many things can go wrong in these remote places, and it is now amazing that we completed our expedition safety, fulfilling close to all of our goals.

FROM ABRIDGED NOTES OF MY PROJECT JOURNAL (AUG 14, 2018) Imagine if all the ice of the planet, from both the Arctic and Antarctic ice-shelves, melted and flooded the Alps up to their highest summits. This is what the wild east coast of the Svalbard archipelago looks like: an endless ridge of pyramidal pointy peaks sprayed by fresh snow like powder sugar on a Xmas cake, interrupted here and there by tongues of gigantic glaciers dropping down directly into the sea.

And then endless walls of blue ice, like fortresses running for kilometre after kilometre along the Polar bear cub eating a seal, Hornsund, Svalbard © Mike Struik coast, often calving huge chunks in thundering “ice-avalanches”, leaving beautiful icebergs and long NOV 2018 waves in the sea. This is Austfonna, a single ice cap stretching from Kapp Laura in the Northeast to Vibebukta in the Last August, Nanuq reached the 82nd parallel and south, with a total length of 190 km, making it the longest completed the circumnavigation of the Svalbard archiglacier front in the Northern hemisphere. pelago around the ill-famed East coast of Nordaustlandet, We’re on the 80th parallel and sailing ‘south’ to comnot just thanks to the Arctic expertise, sailing ability and plete our circumnavigation of the archipelago…alone exploration talent of Genevan skipper and yacht builddown this route on the East of Nordaustlandet, a remote er Peter Gallinelli. We could sail to a latitude as high as and still quite inaccessible island. Even today, its waters 82°07’N, less than 900km from the North Pole, due to com-

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we can at least eliminate its unnecessary mass producpletely ice-free sea conditions. This enabled us to experition, such as single-use plastic, throw-away items - drinkence directly the effect of climate change. Of course, 2018 ing straws, bottles that do not degrade, coffee cups, lids has been an exceptionally warm year and dramatic shortand stirrers, cutlery and takeaway packaging: plastics that term fluctuations from year to year have been known take five seconds to produce, five minutes to use and more since men started to navigate these waters. But the excepthan 500 years to break down. tionally ice-free summer of 2018 is, sadly, more likely not to remain an exception.

FROM THE JOURNAL OF SKIPPER, BOAT OWNER This was the main message and one of the “raisons AND ARCTIC SAILOR PETER GALLINELLI. d’être” of our expedition: observing the far-reaching impact of human activities on our planet. At this time of writSince leaving Iceland on July 22, day and night merge ing, we are waiting to see the results of the analysis of the into a continuum that seems out of time. The one-week microplastic samples we collected in the Arctic Ocean by crossing of the Greenland Sea from south to north is a towing a Manta net (small plankton- or microplastics-samlong leg under a covered sky, except for the Greenland pling net) from Nanuq’s stern. coast which reveals itself under a clear sky and bright Our conclusion, however, won’t be encouraging. Desunshine. At 80° latitude North, the sun never sets at bris were visible to the naked eye throughout our entire this this time of the trip. At each landing, inyear. Despite dangers credible amounts of plasdue to poor or incomtic rubbish amidst tons plete charting, unreliof driftwood were lying able weather forecasts on these remote beaches, and potential presence which have rarely seen of sea ice… 24h daylight human feet. Every day, makes sailing in these we saw floating plastic in waters, where visibility the open sea; even while is essential, a bit more sampling sea water on accessible. the rim of the Arctic iceOn August 1st the alshelf (82°07’N), our Manpine coastline of Spitzta net caught a piece of bergen pierces the fog. blue plastic.

We soon tie up in LongWe shouldn’t be suryearbyen, the capital, prised as we know that where a change of crew most of the 300 million is planned and the rest metric tons of plasof the Polarquest team tic produced annually is ready to embark. worldwide is scattered Whilst the western across the environment coasts of the archipelaand, in particular, in go are much visited, the the oceans. Plastics can Remains of an old Soviet coal mine in Pyrmiden, Svalbard © Mike Struik eastern territories are travel huge distances much more wild, hostile, cold and inaccessible and one due to their longevity, carried by wind-driven currents has to be prepared to manage all situations without asand trapped by vortexes and down-wellings, to accumusistance. No doubt, the fact that these coastlines are usulate in remote areas. One of these currents has supposedly ally still packed in impenetrable ice during the summer created a gateway for microplastic in the Arctic Ocean, a contributes to it. It was not until 2016 that the passage “garbage patch” also called the “sixth microplastic island”. became completely free of ice in July and 2018 confirms The other five, as proven by similar samplings, remain this evolution: this year there was no sea ice at all. We scattered across the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans. cast off to begin the planned 2,500 km circumnavigaSearching for this sixth island was one of our goals. tion around the archipelago in clockwise direction on Data will tell whether we have demonstrated its existence.

August 4.

However, monitoring is just a means to show the scale of After serving as a hunting ground for centuries, then the problem, a necessary step towards resolving this proba mining field, due to its high latitude and accessibililem. And cleaning the oceans from macro-plastic is only a ty, Svalbard had become a starting point for the race to small part of it. As Stefano Aliani, our reference scientist the Pole. Many remains that are now protected cultural and world expert, put it: “We can’t clean the oceans from heritage can be found along its coastline. The earliest plastic if we don’t change the way we use it… If you have attempts to reach the pole by means of aircraft had set a bucket full of water and you want to empty it, the first up their base camps in Spitzbergen, the biggest island of thing you do is close the tap.” the archipelago, including the ill-fated balloon flight of So, should we eliminate all plastic? Plastic is necessary Andree in 1897, Amundsen’s successful Norge flight in to our modern technologies. Its production and industry 1926 and the dramatic Nobile expedition in 1928. have grown fast and are now a pillar of economics and We are now sailing on open waters where Nobile’s society. But if we can’t eliminate plastics from our lives,

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airship Italia crashed… revisiting history and commemorating the 90th anniversary of the incident. Of course, there is nothing left to see. But this is the very first visit to the exact position of the SOS launched via a makeshift radio recovered from the crash by the survivors of the Italia airship in early summer 1928. This was the starting point of a two-month odyssey on the drifting ice-shelf and the biggest international rescue effort in polar history.

Major advances in technology, be it vessels, communication, navigation and route planning make it possible to sail these waters with a contemporary standard of safety.

A century ago, such expeditions often were one-shot endeavours. Global warming has also made it easier to sail the Arctic waters that would have proved impenetrable by sea-ice only a decade ago, making it possible to reach completely new destinations. Even though, Arctic waters remain fairly unpredictable, and although we know much more about our route and environment, there still is huge room for exploration and discovery.

Our vessel is equipped with a high resolution multi-beamer echo sounder dedicated to the survey of the most likely zone to discover the hypothetical remains of the wrecked airship. Even though the data analysis is still

Nanuq Stranded in Svalbard, van Keulenfjord © Mike Struik

in progress, the most significant contribution to science is the seabed mapping giving unprecedented knowledge on bathymetry to places that have only been incompletely surveyed so far. The use of drones for reconnaissance also make landings safer as encounters with wildlife, especially polar bears, can be potentially dangerous… They are primarily used to map historical sites, nowadays threatened by ever-increasing tourism, and compose detailed 3D models of islands and glaciers, adding unique data to the knowledge of our environment and Google Earth.

After three weeks of navigation and intense field work, Nanuq eventually accomplished the circumnavigation and back to Longyearbyen, in time for a new crew shift.

Being able to conduct these projects on board a relatively small sailing vessel demonstrates that science can be done with modest budgets and low environmental impact. Even though an auxiliary engine cannot be totally avoided, passive design and maximum use of renewable energy, wind and solar, provide comfort without heating. They also offer an efficient platform to travel,

A drone flight over the Hot springs in Bockfjorden, Svalbard © Mike Struik

work and rest for long periods in remote areas with a minimum impact on the fragile arctic ecosystem.

Although not limited to the Arctic, Nanuq is specifically designed for projects, researchers and journalists.

It is particularly useful for environmental science, sailing during the Arctic summer or resting over the winter where the boat is capable of being packed into ice and provides comfort even with temperatures dropping below -35°C. Doubtlessly sailing is one of the oldest and most future-proof means of transport by making use of wind and sea. Hence one can live with nature by adapting and gaining awareness. Due to massive use of renewables, the sailboat is the only vehicle capable of circumnavigating the planet without re-fuelling. Nevertheless, a boat is also a limited system requiring a collaborative and responsible management of resources. This is exemplary to the management of our planet’s resources given that it, too, represents a limited system.

For those not afraid of loneliness or self-reliance, there is real attraction to sailing in the North. On August 13, Nanuq reached the culminating and freezing point of this summer’s expedition beyond 82° latitude north, less than 900 km from the Pole, only a three-day sailing trip when the Arctic ice shelf eventually vanishes completely.

PAOLA CATAPANO is an editor and writer with CERN in Geneva,

where she deals with the dissemination of science to the public-at-large.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR POLARQUEST? With several documentaries

soon to be aired on French and international TV channels, the Nanuq crew are also sharing their Arctic environment via a photo exhibition and a series of public events. The PolarQuest detector has begun a tour “on the road” of measurements along the Italian peninsula, collecting data at latitudes down to 35 degrees.

For further information, please check: www.polarquest2018.org FB@polarquest2018, Instagram @scienceadventurers

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ADVENTURE TOURISM

EXPLORING THE ETHICS OF CULTURAL IMMERSION:

Mutual exchange or cultural dilution at the edge of the Earth

The era of mass tourism is far from over, but a gradual trend towards a better understanding – and experiencing – of local cultures and environments is emerging.

Whether ecotourism, homestays or even grassroots adventurism in places ranging from Thailand to Patagonia, Chris Hunt of Secret Compass explores the impact of cultural immersion expeditions on both sides of the spectrum inside the Arctic Circle in northern Siberia.

INSIDE THE ARCTIC CIRCLE IN NORTHERN SIBERIA, the Yamalo-Nenets autonomous region is home to indigenous nomads known as the Nenets. With a clan-based social structure, Nenets culture follows ancient shamanistic and animistic belief systems. Stressing respect for the land and its resources, they migrate Siberia’s largest reindeer herds, owing every element of their existence to their animals, from their income to their food to their clothing.

“Nenets are proud people. They love their way of life,” explains Australian expedition leader and anthropologist Patrick Barrow. “They’re leaders in their field of animal husbandry, masters of the frozen steppe and connected to the land they steward. Herding reindeer can be profitable, and they choose to live on the tundra because they feel at home there.” (See Global Geneva article in the 2018 Summer edition by anthropologist Majken Paulen on reindeer husbandry in Lapland).

THE NENETS: AN ENDANGERED PEOPLE AND CULTURE (UNESCO) After the Russian Revolution, in 1917 the Soviet Collectivization Policy forced Nenets communities to settle permanently in towns and villages, eroding cultural identity and putting a full stop to long lines of herding

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families. Today, fewer than 50,000 Nenets are spread across a region 750,300 km². UNESCO classifies their language as endangered and the industrialization of land alongside climate change continues to jeopardize their future.

Pat’s work has for years facilitated a life of cultural exploration. Before settling permanently (at least for now) in Kyrgyzstan, as a fluent Russian speaker he spent years travelling and subsequently living in Russia including extended periods in various indigenous communities along the way. In 2016 and 2017 respectively, he spent two, two-week-long stints with Secret Compass immersed in the daily lives of Nenets communities on the Yamal Peninsula.

“These expeditions are intense, in a sense much more so than a usual expedition,” he explains. “The cultural immersion is extreme. It’s not a self-managed wilderness excursion, you’re a guest in their homes, welcomed into their lives. There are no individual tents to escape to each night, you and they are intimately exposed – habits, manners, struggles, disposition. It’s communal living, sharing chums, sleeping side-by-side, eating and washing together, spending time with family members and children. As such, a raw and uncut twoweek life exchange with the Nenets, feels like a much longer experience.”

EXPOSING ‘HOSTS’ TO THE OUTSIDE WORLD CAN BE BENEFICIAL AND A LEARNING PROCESS “Some of them mentioned that they tried living in town, but they couldn’t handle it,” Pat explains. “‘Too many buildings, no space, no reindeer, no freedom,’ they’d always say. In town they become no one, their culture is absorbed and Russified. So, while they may take aspects of Western or Russian culture and adapt them to suit tundra, they move back, to where life is white and wild. By having international guests, they genuinely learn about the world. They’re grateful to expose themselves and their children to the world without leaving Nenet herder with reindeer in northern Siberia. (Photo: Secret Compass) the tundra and very proud to have REINDEER MANAGEMENT IS STILL WHAT IT’S international guests as it’s still such a rarity on the tundra and we as visitors take away stories of the Nenets to ALL ABOUT share with the outside world.”

Possible pullout quote: “People of two strange cul“Management of the reindeer reigns supreme,” says tures, who have never met before sharing an intimate Pat. “The Nenets are well-aware of aspects of the excommunal space, there will naturally always be cultural change and weigh up the benefits and challenges of the obstacles.” (Patrick Barrow) experience. It can’t be a holiday where you’re waited It’s not by coincidence that Yamal translates into Enon. As guests, we can be respectful and contribute and glish as End of the Land. Extending north into the Kara that’s easy enough when the tasks are simple. The chalSea, the Yamal Peninsula sits well within the Arctic Cirlenge comes when, due to a language barrier or when cle. Salekhard, the peninsula’s gateway and the region’s there’s a diversion from a pre-established plan, guests capital, is 4,300km north-east of Moscow. From here, don’t know exactly what’s going or when the jobs the a seven-hour drive will take you along the Ob river to Nenets are doing are too specific or beyond our skill levYar Sale. Then, depending on exactly where the Nenets el.” are, meeting up with the brigades can take anything beChopping wood or collecting snow may seem simple, tween a couple of hours and all day on a snowmobile. but in poor conditions or when wood must be chopped The tundra is enclosed by perpetual whiteness. Temvery quickly on snow, the task becomes more challengperatures drop as low as minus 40. Frigid winds rush ing,” adds Pat. “The Nenets know we can’t compete with across the surface of the unbroken barren landscape. their wood chopping or reindeer lassoing, so while it’s Here, the survival of visitors relies wholly on the hospiokay to try, when it comes to the crunch, better to step tality of this indigenous community. aside and let them do it.”

“At times, it can be just as challenging for the Nenets Depending on their herds and weather conditions, to host us as it can be for us to visit,” says Pat. “People of the Nenets rarely spend more than a few days in the two strange cultures, who have never met before sharsame location. As such, packing-down and setting-up ing an intimate communal space – there will naturally their chums (a reindeer-hide tent) becomes a routine always be cultural obstacles. But as the time is so intask, precise and methodical in process. Loaded onto tense, relationships develop very quickly. A lot of time sleds, everything has its allocated place, only to be set is spent in conversation, exchanging stories, translating up again in mirror perfect fashion. “This domesticity and building trust, and while they tend to be pretty reprovides the Nenets with stability in an otherwise void served at first, once they see you’re just another person, landscape and the routine systems allow them to set-up they open up.” quickly in a storm or in the dark,” explains Pat. But in catering for foreign guests, no time is affordPerhaps a more grizzly aspect of the Nenets culture ed from their normal schedules. Daily life is still tough is the unequivocal killing of their own reindeer. A vital and the challenges of weather still aplenty, regardless component of Nenets diets, meat and blood is often conof their temporary company. In an unfamiliar environsumed raw. Reindeer death though, is not taken lightly. ment, there’s a fine line between the role of contributing With their heads always facing east by tradition, reinguest and a burden. deer are strangled by lasso. The herders are careful not

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to waste a drop of blood. It’s a duty reserved exclusively for male elders, systematically executed and rarely participated in by anyone outside the community.

“By the end of my second expedition I was honoured to be asked to help slaughter a reindeer,” Pat recalls. “All the SC crew were out with their families doing different jobs, and I was back at the chum with Alexei, and his father. As they started to kill the reindeer, Alexei’s father passed me his lasso – the other end roped around the reindeer’s throat. Together with Alexei, we pulled hard on our lassos until the reindeer took its final breath.

-Mark Instantaneously we began skinning the animal until the women came from the chum to help cut and manage the meat.”

As Mark Twain put it best, ‘travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness’ and seldom does the sentiment ring truer than in experiencing cultures of Earth’s farthest reaches, amongst communities for which we know so little and where Western influence is minimal. But as travellers striving for mutual cultural exchange, our responsibility lies in a mindful approach to seeking those experiences.

“Some may say that foreigners can culturally dilute a place, but a small number of travellers can definitely be positive. Ideas and skills are exchanged, money ingested by the local econTwain omy and the re-telling of the traveller’s tale educates others about a culture and history of a people who may otherwise remain unknown, sometimes capturing a fading cultural light,” says Pat. “It’s almost impossible now on Earth for a culture to exist independently of any other. It probably has been for some time. Lines have become blurred since the early days of the Silk Road and ocean travel.”

‘Culture’ long ago ceased to be a one-dimensional, stand-alone entity, he points out. Specific habits or beliefs may be unique to a particular group, but there are always other shared characteristics. In this way, all cultures are fluid. If they don’t adapt or change, they die out. “Some elements, like the telephone, will become universal, considered ‘world culture’ but aspects like reindeer herding and the need to maintain nomadism to manage the herd, will remain,” he says.

Perhaps ironically, experiencing the unfamiliar presents opportunity for genuine introspection. A chance to ponder one own’s time on Earth and our relationships with each other, such as the stories we tell of these adventures. “Spending time in the tundra forced our entire group to question who we are. In terms of gender roles within society, in relation to other travellers, Western vs Eastern assumptions and attitudes regarding a whole manner of subjects,” says Pat. “Storytelling can play a role where the minority subject has no social voice…We should always be aware of who is telling these stories and what personal, cultural or social bias – intentional or not – they may subconsciously embed in their recall. The story of the Nenets is surely best told by the Nenets – oral storytelling and passing on of traditions within their own communities are powerful tools for the continuation of a living history.”

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness”

Nenet child in northern Siberia. (Photo: Secret Compass).

CONCERNS ABOUT WESTERN BEHAVIOUR: THE BENEFITS OUTWEIGHED THE NEGATIVES Governed through strict belief systems, while these may seem arbitrary to outsiders, Nenets culture contains a maze of traditional rules, particularly around gender roles. A major aspect of women’s lives for example is sya mei, a force which puts behavioural restrictions on anyone connected with birth and death – be it newborn children, attendees of a recent funeral or post-pubescent women. Women must not step over or sit on lassos, ropes or harnesses or cross an unmarked line which runs from the central pole in the chum to the sacred pole at the back of the chum and out into the tundra.

“Some of the older Nenets women commented that when the younger children saw Westerners not strictly following all the traditions, they began to think it was all right for them to do the same. Inevitably there was some discussion about this amongst the women, but they decided that in the end the benefits of having us outweighed the negatives.”

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CHRIS HUNT, is a journalist and editor for SecretCompass, a special-

ised UK travel company with a pioneering approach toward expedition planning, risk management and leadership. It has been heading up expeditions and film projects exploring some of the Earth’s most extreme environments since 2010. For further information, see: www.secretcompass.com

SWISS JOURNEYS:

A weekend in the Valais –

culture, vineyards and thermal baths

As part of a new Global Geneva series Swiss Journeys - on what both residents and visitors can do over a weekend, journalist Luisa Ballin explores the Canton of Valais in the footsteps of the poet Rilke, renowned adventurer Ella Maillart and some of the region’s unusual artistic and culinary attractions.

THE VALAIS (OR WALLIS IN GERMAN), southeast of Lake Geneva, is one of Switzerland’s most sun-drenched cantons, offering up to 2,000 hours a year of sunlight. The protective positioning of the Alps overlooking the Rhone River and its many side valleys, and the Föhn, a strong, warm, and often dry wind, gives a Mediterranean-style climate to much of this French lower and the German-speaking upper region.

A renowned refuge for such personalities as an intrepid female explorer, a ‘gentleman’ counterfeiter who became known as the Robin Hood of the Alps, and writers such as Rainer Maria Rilke, the Valais seduces many. (See Peter Hulm’s excellent profile of Rilke in Global Geneva). The mountainous landscapes are spectacular; its thermal baths – often dating back to Roman times – are famous; and its hillside vineyards and local food products are known for their superior quality.

IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF RILKE: EXPLORING A LAND OF SINGULAR MAGIC AND CHARM Half-way up the Rhone Valley we arrive in Sierre (Siders in German). Known as the Valais’ “City of Sun”, it has more than 300 sunny days per year on average. We immediately made for the Rilke Foundation. “As I see it, the Valais not only encompasses one of the most magnificent landscapes that I have ever had the chance to behold, but also offers that extraordinary capacity of multiple links and forms to our inner world,” wrote Rilke, evoking the singular magic of this region in a letter dated 25 July, 1921 to Marie de la Tour et Taxis.

He was amazingly peripatetic and intensely rhapsodic, perhaps the greatest German lyric poet of the 20th century. Widely travelled throughout Europe, he first unloaded his bags in the Valais in 1921, later making Switzerland his home. Rilke penned some of his most famous works, notably the Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus, while staying in the medieval mini-castle of Muzot, a 13th century fortified manor house near the village of Veyras just above Sierre.

As I heard from Brigitte Duvillard, curator of the Rilke Foundation in Sierre’s Maison Pancrace de Courten (named for an 18th century soldier made a French count

by Louis XV), Rilke was also charmed by the numerous walks he took with Baladine Klossowska, mother of Balthus, the future modernist painter. Rilke wrote the preface to Mitsou, Story of a Cat, featuring the first drawings of the still very young boy. It also represented Rilke’s first published text in French. Rilke enjoyed some of his most

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SWISS JOURNEYS | A Weekend in the Valais - culture, vineyards and thermal baths

fruitful years in the Valais. After a long illness diagnosed shortly before his death as leukemia, he was buried in the churchyard on the hilltop overlooking the small town of Raron/Rarogne on 2 January 1927, aged 51.

The Rilke Foundation, which serves as a public archive, exhibition centre and museum, also offers recitals, conferences, lectures, guided visits and school trips. The museum’s book shop provides a wide selection of Rilke’s works in different languages.

PROFOUNDLY SWISS: ENCOURAGING PEACE THROUGH DIALOGUE Another crucial address for any weekend visit is the Château Mercier on the heights of Sierre. The castle, which was built only at the beginning of the 20th century, offers numerous cultural events throughout the year, and can be rented, but its international highpoint is its Rencontres Orient-Occident/East-West Encounters (ROO) toward the end of May. The gatherings, according to René-Pierre Antille, the director of ROO, “provide a space and time to encourage a broadening of horizons but also to embrace our differences which unite us” with films, exhibitions, concerts, talks and debates.

As part of ROO’s events, for example, Antille brought together key international players such as French sociologist and philosopher Edgar Morin; Palestinian writer and UNESCO ambassador Elias Sanbar; Avrahm Burg, former president of the Israeli Knesset; French Academy laureate Barbara Cassin and international jurist Mireille Delmas-Marty. “In this time of turmoil and the rigid entrenching of identities, the East-West Encounters offer a harbour of conviviality and serenity enabling one to distance oneself enough in order to think about real change, whether between art and thought, elites and the public-at-large,” noted Marie-Laure Sturm, ROO’s coordinator.

Ella Maillart in Chandolin

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ELLA MAILLART: EXPLORER EXTRAORDINAIRE – FROM CHINA TO THE HIMALAYAS OF SWITZERLAND From Sierre, we embarked on an excursion in the footsteps of the world-renowned Swiss author and adventurer Ella Maillart. This meant making our way to Chandolin, one of the Valais’s most evocative locations, facing Sierre and the Rhone Valley from the south. Born in 1903, Maillart proved one of Switzerland’s – and the world’s – most remarkable female travellers. She was also a photographer, film-maker, navigator and member of the Swiss national ski team. Chandolin, which at 2,000 metres is one of Europe’s highest villages to be inhabited all year round, was Maillart’s creative base until her death in 1997. It was also the home of the much-travelled novelist S. Corinna Bille, who was married to the writer Maurice Chappaz, and of her father, the painter Edmond Bille.

As a pioneer breaking down traditional male-only barriers, between two world wars Maillart embraced an exceptional career exploring the most inaccessible parts of central and southern Asia (Afghanistan, Tibet, Nepal.

Manchuria, Turkestan, China, India). She wrote numerous books in French and English, but also taught French in Wales, voiced over mountain documentaries in Berlin and managed Switzerland’s female lawn hockey team. Her works included: Turkestan Solo - One Woman’s Expedition from the Tien Shan to the Kizil Kum; Forbidden Journey - From Peking to Cashmir (her trek across China and Tibet also recorded by British author Peter Fleming in News from Tartary.)

On her return from India as an intrepid explorer, she discovered Chandolin in 1946. “She found here the Himalayas of Europe,” noted Anneliese Hoffmann, member of the Friends of Ella Maillart Association, who received us in the Chalet Atchala where the explorer lived six months of the year. During her early years in Chandolin, the road ended in the adjoining village of Saint-Luc. Maillart had to walk to her house along what is now known as the Calvaire Trail. In her travel diary, Maillart wrote: “...there is something virginal about this almost uninhabited region.

The same characteristics (effluves) as one finds in the Skennis Skali valley. Or above the Yatung on the return from Chumbitang: every leaf, even every tuft of moss, is the queen of the world in complete possession of her power and her beauty.”

A visit to the Espace Ella Maillart, only a few metres from the Chalet Atchala, allows one to admire the photos and objects representing this most amazing life-long odyssey: a white woolen overcoat, boots, travel rucksacks, a typewriter, a prayer wheel, a participation certificate in the Olympic regattas of 1924 signed by Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the International Olympic Committee, and a shot with Nehru, independent India’s first prime minister, who had read her books while in prison.

With twilight approaching, you can walk down the Calvaire Trail in Maillairt’s beloved Helvetic Himalaya.

Following a winding road, you reach the Chandolin Boutique Hotel, a jewel of the Swiss hotel industry. Here you are welcomed to an elegant setting where everything is

refined, ranging from the exquisite food to the outside jacuzzis. Here you can relax and look across a sea of Alpine summits, including the Matterhorn. Then, a last glance at the stars from the balcony of one’s room, where all is silent and nothing disturbs the magic of the night.

The next morning, a stroll down to the village with hiking paths leading in all directions. Finally, a slow descent into the Rhone Valley along a precipitous hairpin road with staggering drops and vaulting mountainsides.

Following a visit to the medieval castle of Saillon, dating back more than a thousand years to the reign of Charlemagne, and a break at the Café-Restaurant de la Poste, you can take in the Fol’terres, an agricultural pavilion in the nearby small Rhone river town of Fully. This is where Julian Dorsaz offers the top-quality elixirs from over 100 local wine producers. But first he invites us to taste his exquisite red 2018 Bâton Rouge Orpailleur cuvée together with creamy cheese on a piece of apricot rye bread, another local speciality.

View of vineyards and the Rhone Valley in Switzerland’s Valais. (Photo: Valais Tourism)

MARTIGNY: A CENTRE OF ROMAN HERITAGE, LEADING ART AND VINTAGE AUTOMOBILES In the old Roman city of Martigny, we visited the Fondation Pierre Gianadda, the renowned art museum this year marking its 40th anniversary. The Italian-Valaisan entrepreneur and collector, Léonard Gianadda, who is also a former journalist and photographer, created the foundation in memory of his brother killed in a plane accident. This elegant museum exhibits artworks of some of the world’s leading creators loaned by top museums and collectors.

The current retrospective of Pierre Soulages – the French painter, engraver and sculptor – in collaboration with the Pompidou Centre, Paris, runs until 25 November, 2018. Gianadda also organizes classical music concerts, such as with renowned soloist Cecilia Bartoli. Plus Switzerland’s most extraordinary exhibition of classic automobiles (a permanent feature) as well as, around the walls, Gallo-Roman artefacts discovered in Martigny itself. Following a quick snack –apricot tart with fruit of the Rhone Valley orchards – we strolled through the open-air sculpture exhibition in the Gianadda’s garden.

HOT BATHS, VINEYARDS AND LOCAL PRODUCE Local specialities, notably great wines and food products, complete the Valais’ spiritual feeling of well-being.

Then onto the vineyards of Farinet on the slopes of the Colline Ardente overlooking Saillon, a trip which you can do by car, bus, bike or by foot. This is the smallest officially registered vineyard in the world. Its vintages have been purchased for charity by the likes of Roger Moore, Zinedine Zidane, Michael Schumacher, Caroline of Monaco and over 200 other celebrities, all of whom frequented this remarkable micro-domain developed in the 19th century

by Joseph Samuel Farinet, a notorious counterfeiter from Italy who sought refuge in the Valais, but became known as the Robin Hood of the Alps for distributing his counterfeit coins to the poor and defying the authorities in Berne.

(French actor Jean-Louis Barrault later incarnated Farinet in the 1939 film L’Or dans la Montagne based on the rather inaccurate novel of C.F. Ramuz.) The vineyard was eventually purchased by the Catholic philanthropist priest, Abbé Pierre, who later granted it to the Dalai Lama, the current owner.

Following a stroll toward the bridge overlooking Farinet and a visit to the counterfeit money museum in Saillon Castle, we relaxed in the thermal baths of the Hotel des Bains de Saillon. Here you can enjoy spas, Turkish baths and saunas, pools and even a children’s toboggan in this valley haven before returning to Martigny to catch the train back to Geneva.

LUISA BALLIN is a contributing editor of Global Geneva.

Commissioned to report this piece as the first in our Swiss Journeys series, she received logistical support from the Valais Tourism Office (Valais Promotion).

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BREXIT AND TRUMPEAN POLICIES:

The rising attraction of Europe’s international schools The world’s first formal international school was created in Geneva in 1924, following the founding of the League of Nations. Ninety-five years later the charms of international schools are once again seeming almost irresistible to many parents , particularly in Europe, and even to their children. While some schools are now expanding, or preparing to expand, growing numbers of pupils are flocking to their classrooms.

In Europe alone, over 870,000 children are currently attending international day and boarding schools. Education market specialist Richard Gaskell explores this phenomenon and seeks to explain why.

IT’S PROBABLY NOT IMMEDIATELY INTUITIVE. But during the 2017-2018 academic year, 45 per cent of all students attending English-medium international schools in France were French. In Germany 48 per cent were German, and in Spain, 63 per cent were Spanish.

In Switzerland, where certain cantons restrict local students from attending its international schools, 13 per cent of students were local Swiss.

It is clear that, apart from dissatisfaction with local public schools, many parents see an international education as the best way to prepare their children to take advantage of global university options and improve their career potential.

IS CHANGE ON THE WAY? Some countries, such as China, the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia have seen a huge growth in in-

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ternational schools in recent years. Chinese are even setting up second residences in places like Singapore and Bangkok in order to take advantage of the schools already there.

But the European market, currently some 1,759 schools, has seen little change. That’s not to say that the European market is not important. With exceptional schools and boarding facilities, and an extensive range of source countries from which to attract students, it has remained very prosperous and can charge some of the highest school fees in the world.

In recent years, Europe’s English-medium international schools market has been very healthy but static – experiencing very little expansion or new development. Rich parents from Asia and Russia are still happy to send their children to international schools abroad as boarders to give them the finest education that money can buy.

NEW POLITICAL REALITIES ARE HAVING AN IMPACT

FRANKFURT: EMERGING AS A PREFERRED BREXIT RELOCATION SITE

Lately, Europe’s current geo-political environment, influenced by both Brexit and US politics, combined with the increasing dissatisfaction with public schools I have highlighted in several countries, is generating a new demand for education at international schools. So is a growing awareness by local parents of the benefits of international schooling. What is new is the choice of the cities that parents are looking at in the wake of the UK’s expected departure from the European Union.

Paris, which is now reaping the benefits of recent tax and labour law reforms, has seen a major surge of admissions enquiries at its international schools. The attraction of the city for school investors will likely increase when the European Banking Authority makes the French capital its home in 2019. Joining the European Securities and Markets Authority there, this move will position Paris as a major global financial centre, making it highly attractive to other financial institutions.

Furthermore, France, acknowledging the advantages of a multi-lingual education, supports at least 22 inter-

The European city attracting most attention, however, is Frankfurt. There the economic boom in Frankfurt’s Rhein-Main region has already impacted enrolment growth in the area›s international schools.

In addition, its favourable commercial property prices, sophisticated infrastructure, and well-educated workforce are some of the factors most often cited for its appeal as a preferred Brexit relocation site.

The first school development in response to this new and potential demand is King’s College Frankfurt, which opened in August this year (2018) for nursery to year 5 children. Following the National Curriculum of England, the school will gradually expand to grade 12 and offer IGCSE and A-level certificate education to appeal to families moving their children from schools in Britain.

Faced with a shortage of places in Switzerland, several new schools in this long-established venue for international education recently opened in anticipation of growing demand. At first it looked as

The British school in the Netherlands. (Photo: ISC)

national public schools. They range from Toulouse and Marseille to Ferney-Voltaire near Geneva. Compared to private international schools, these International Collèges and Lycées - as public institutions - cost parents comparatively little. There is also a push amongst French families to have their children enrolled despite rules that at least one parent needs to be of expatriate background. The Ferney school recently expanded with the creation of a second campus in nearby St Genis.

In the Netherlands, Unilever may well have pulled out of its planned move from London to Rotterdam, but nevertheless, the country’s leading cities are appealing to some major multinationals considering Brexit relocation. International schools in both Amsterdam and Rotterdam are already at, or close to, capacity, meaning that additional enrolment demands will have to be met by new schools or campus expansions. In addition, as some parents point out, Dutch universities offering English-language programmes are becoming increasingly attractive for high school graduates.

if they acted a bit too quickly. With certain companies and institutions curbing education subsidies, the new schools could not fill their places. Now, however, there appears to be a slight reverse trend; financial support for education is returning to relocation packages for executives, and Switzerland is rising once again as a popular business location, also in response to Brexit and new policies embraced by the Trump White House.

Almost two-thirds of Western Europe’s international schools currently have waiting lists. If the developments I have listed take place, Europe will likely see a growth of international schools in a way that it hasn’t seen for many years. For now, investors wait, primarily stalled by a sense of insecurity as regards British legislators, voters and companies: ‘Will they, won’t they, and what if?’

RICHARD GASKELL is Schools Director at ISC Research which

supplies comprehensive data, intelligence and research expertise on the world’s international schools market. www.iscresearch.com

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CHANTAL AKERMAN:

In search of lost culture Switzerland this year presides over the Alliance for the Memory of the Holocaust, for the first time. An occasion perhaps to recognize the work of Carl Lutz, the Swiss vice-consul in Budapest who saved over 60,000 Hungarian Jews in the largest rescue operation of Jews in the Second World War. He was at first criticized for exceeding his authority and not rehabilitated until 1958. Contributing editor Peter Hulm remembers another person he met in Switzerland, who was likewise marked by the destructive history of anti-Semitism in Europe. The career of Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman, he suggests, points to the unusual ways that culture can survive the worst oppression, even when all we have left is an absence and the sense of loss of a community.

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“I’ve often wanted to kill myself, but I told myself I could not do that to my mother. Afterwards, when she’s not there anymore...”

THE VARDA/AKERMAN MAGIC

PERHAPS I SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN SHOCKED to learn that Belgian film director Chantal Akerman had killed herself in October 2015, dying in Paris at the age of 65 after being hospitalized shortly before with depression.

She’d given ample notice that suicide was on her agenda. “I’ve often wanted to kill myself,” she wrote in her memoir Ma mère rit (2013). “But I told myself I could not do that to my mother. Afterwards, when she’s not there anymore,” she writes. No Home Movie (2015), Chantal’s last film, records her mother’s rapid decline and death at the age of 86.

Chantal’s mother, Natalie Akerman, a Polish Jew who had survived Auschwitz and emigrated to Brussels, apparently would declare “without anyone having asked”, that she no longer remembered much Polish.

This proved to be a key statement for Chantal Akerman in her work that became more and more focused on the relationship between mother and daughter. So much so that in 2011, she said: “The only subject of my films is my mother.”

In truth, I didn’t know Chantal Akerman very well.

She taught a couple of classes I took at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee nearly two decades ago. But she had the gift of meeting you at whatever level you approached her. She humorously allowed me to take a picture of her staring at a pair of shoes (in acknowledgement of one of her colleagues, Sandy Stone, and an ironic parody of Heidegger’s hymn to Van Gogh’s painting of peasant footwear). She refused to put on any airs. The first film-maker of the French New Wave, Agnès Varda, whom I also met at Saas-Fee, possesses the same magic and indeed makes films as unclassifiably personal and documentary in her “fictions” as Akerman’s.

As part of her course, Akerman confessed that she could not give us theory. She insisted on her instinctive approach to film-making: “I don’t have an idea,” she once said. “I have a feeling that I try to express.”

To be fair, I’ve hardly seen one tenth of her 45 films, not even the one that made her famous at 24: Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), a 201-minute opus consisting of “real-time” domestic chores carried out by a part-time sex-worker and mother, e.g, making beds, peeling potatoes and kneading veal. The New York Times described it as the “first masterpiece of the feminine in the history of the cinema”.

The Village Voice put it at 19th in its greatest movies of the 20th century. It helped make Akerman a substantial influence on feminist and avant-garde filmmakers, such as Gus Van Sant and Sofia Coppola in the United States.

Jeanne Dielman starred Delphine Seyrig, but Akerman has often been the major player in her own films.

“I can’t have actresses playing my clumsiness,” she explained. “It seems impossible for me to be in a restaurant without knocking something over: my gestures are too large, or I’m pursuing my thoughts and get startled.”

NO, NOT BORING As Max Nelson – and other sympathetic critics – recently noted in The New York Review of Books, while descriptions of her films make them sound boring, they are unfailingly full of “tension, vigour and purpose”. Jeanne Dielman shows us the disintegration of a single mother’s practised rituals. Critic Piers Marchant this year placed it second in the list of his top five films, giving it 9.3 out of 10 and five out of five for relevance.

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INTERNATIONAL SWITZERLAND | Chantal Akerman: In Search of Lost Culture

The earliest full-length study of Akerman I know, entitled Nothing Happens: Chantal Akerman’s Hyperrealist Everyday (1996) by Ivone Margulies*, misses the point of her filmmaking. It is impossible for nothing to happen, even if that seems to be the story (and Jeanne Dielman ends in an unexpected act of violence). As Chantal insisted later, it took a lot of rehearsal to give the impression of acts taking the time they would in real life.

What has not been enough noted is the way in which Akerman focuses on the destruction and boredom of the cultures we live. She told me that Jean-Luc Godard had introduced her to film-making films, and her first movie Saute ma ville (1968), filmed when she was under 18, has Godard’s Buster Keatonesque melancholic sense of humour about a girl’s setting fire to a room that ends in the destruction of a city (I say girl because it is treated as the gesture of an adolescent).

HOME WITHOUT HISTORY Fourteen years later she went back to the parts of the world her parents had escaped – Russia, Poland and East Germany. Originally, says Max Nelson, Chantal Akerman planned to make a film about the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. But what she found was an absence of history though everywhere she went “it was almost like home, or near enough – the same food on my table that my mother always made.”

What she brought home to put together in her 1992 film From the East (De l’Est) was a collection of landscapes, interiors and people – “snowy roads and sidewalks, tenants sitting in living rooms or watching television, middle-aged women cooking, dancers taking to the floor in a gloomy recreation hall, a pianist rehearsing at home, a cellist playing onstage” (Nelson): “No one speaks” – and none shows any memory of the Jewish-Polish culture that permeates the landscape without ever being evoked. It is remembered by its absence and somehow Akerman fills the screen with a yearning sense of poignancy for a flat culture she would loved to have claimed as her own.

The link with Akerman’s Jewish background was palpable. She even described the domestic chores in Jeanne Dielman as echoes of Jewish ritual life that had been abandoned or lost. For her, it brought “a sort of peace.”

Jeanne kills to restore her safe, dead world of tradition, just as the East Europeans of From the East bury their disturbing past.

Akerman never set out to film anything related to the Jewish experience in Eastern Europe, she maintained.

“But once I finished editing, I realized that the traces of the concentration camp experience were present in those images. The trains, the people with packages and luggage, waiting, motionless, like lines of deportees. All this happened, somehow, in the work. I didn’t intend it, but it’s there.”

In 1997, Forward magazine described From the East as “a minimalist road movie”. Filmed just after the

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fall of the Berlin Wall and the 1989 revolutions, “Akerman focuses her lens on the faces of people caught in post-perestroika stasis, waiting at train depots and bus kiosks, in interminable lines, often for no discernible reasons,” wrote an uncredited critic. “Occasionally,” the author adds, “they notice the camera, but more often they seem mesmerized by the social paralysis and creeping despair that surround them. The images stream past without commentary or interviews, mimicking the flow of time itself.”

“What I feel for Eastern Europe is like what Freud calls the ‘uncanny’, the sense of something at once strange and familiar, attractive and repellent…,” she told the Forward. “In my home,” she explained, “we ate the food of Eastern Europe. The way we dressed and talked all came from there. For a long time as a child, I thought that was how all Belgians lived. Only later did I come to understand the difference.”

SPIRITUALLY ACTIVE BUT INVISIBLE All this reminds me of a fellow Belgian’s words on China after the Cultural Revolution. According to Simon Leys (Pierre Ryckmans), the past is “both spiritually active and physically invisible” Akerman’s later films, after her encounter with Isaac Bashevis Singer and her re-reading of Kafka (a Jew whose Jewishness was similarly almost completely suppressed), were able to focus more directly on her “cultural” inheritance, though far removed from any religious feeling or doctrines. Between 1968 and at least 1993 she was able to explore the way in which culture in modern life is often bland and flavourless (the 62-min silent Hotel Monterey from 1972 is one of my deadpan favourites) while burying, but always inadequately, all outward vestiges of the culture that has been suppressed. This, it seems to me, has been the history of African-American cultures, particularly evidenced in jazz, not to speak of New Orleans voodoo.

We can find parallels in another lecturer I met in Saas-Fee: Claude Lanzmann, who died earlier this year at 92. A teenage Resistance fighter in the Massif Central, Lanzmann became a film chronicler of the Shoah against Jews and other unwelcome minorities during the Third Reich. Lanzmann, too, refused to restage the scenes of slaughter and oppression in Poland from 1940 to 1944 or to reproduce the few photos available of concentration camps. He filmed only the achingly beautiful scenery of today that covers the past century’s fields of horror.

Both filmmakers have given us a reminder that cultures are not as easily obliterated or forgotten as dictators and oppressors would want to believe. Nor does one require visual evidence to move us. Chantal Akerman’s exemplary recording of the banal and unremarkable vestiges of culture in a history that, however fragmentary, once discovered, can never be unlearned.

The Criterion Collection offers a number of Chantal Akerman’s films, including Jeanne Dielman.

CHAMONIX:

TRAVEL & LIFESTYLES

France’s premier – and almost Swiss – mountain capital When two intrepid Brits – William Windham and Richard Pococke – set off to visit the “sea of ice” above Chamonix in 1741, they could not have predicted their jaunt would eventually turn the isolated village into a bucket list destination for the discerning tourist.

Leyla Giray Alyanak writes how this now bustling town at the foot of the Mont Blanc in the Haute-Savoie ranks as one of the world’s most renowned – and at times still hazardous – mountaineering and adventure sports hubs.

UPON THEIR RETURN HOME, Windham and Pococke’s gushing tales found favour in the European press. The first recorded ascent of Mont Blanc was by two Savoyards in 1786. The Savoy/Savoie was then part of the Kingdom of Sardinia, but credit for conquering the summit went to a far more famous Alpine explorer from Conches near Geneva (then an independent republic): Horace-Bénédict de Saussure initiated the climb and offered a reward for anyone making the successful ascent. He himself made it to the top on his fourth attempt in 1787. As a result, in a mixture of Swiss and French history that has characterized Chamonix, the Swiss is often credited with the exploit, More legitimately, perhaps, he is considered the founder of modern mountaineering.

In a familiar trend, inns were opened and tourists began trudging up to Chamonix – albeit with great difficulty. In a letter to his friend James Forster, Charles Dickens recalled, “…you climb up and up and up [from the Col de Balme pass] for five hours and more, and look – from a

mere unguarded ledge of path on the side of the precipice – into such awful valleys, that at last you are firm in the belief that you have got above everything in the world.”

The Mont Blanc rugged terrain. Beautiful but hazardous. Some 100 people die every year climbing or walking the region.

So awful was the climb that horses were known to slip, carts to slide off the path and climbers to pitch to a certain death on the ominous approach to town.

Chamonix itself sits tightly in a valley surrounded by summits, the most famous (and the highest in Europe at 4,808 meters) being the Mont Blanc. You may not have visited yet, but you’re probably familiar with it. Your heart may have leapt at the sight of the grandiose peaks in Sean Connery’s and Michael Caine’s The Man Who Would Be King. Or perhaps your imagination was set alight by John Ruskin’s swirling landscapes, or by William Wordsworth’s description of Chamonix (then spelled Chamouny) as “…a scene more fair than what the Grecian feigns”.

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TRAVEL & LIFESTLYES | Chamonix: France’s Premier - and almost Swiss - Mountain Capital

SWITZERLAND’S LOST CHANCE TO OWN THE MONT BLANC In 1860, Savoy, which ruled Chamonix, became part of France. Many Savoyards haven’t yet swallowed this affront. At one point, prior to taking power as emperor of the French in 1852, Napoleon III (formerly Louis Napoleon Bonaparte) had been forced to seek refuge in Switzerland. With gratitude, he offered part of Savoy, including the Mont Blanc, as a present to his former hosts. However, political dithering in protestant Geneva – reluctant to have more Catholics – and in German-speaking Berne – not wanting more Francophones – prompted him to annex the region to France through a forced referendum in favour of ‘reunion’. So Switzerland lost its chance to own the Mont Blanc.

To celebrate Savoy’s annexation under the Treaty of Turin, Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie decided to visit Chamonix but after bumping and bouncing their way up the craggy mountain, they eventually paid to build a road. The muddy ruts and slick slabs they battled have now gone, replaced by a motorway – an hour’s drive from Geneva – which, while modern and far safer, still tests the mettle of the fainthearted with its sharp curves and steep angles of descent.

However well portrayed by others, Chamonix – as befits this most alpine of towns – is best seen from above, from the Dents du Midi, the Montenvers or even from the lower heights of the receding Mer de Glace; there is no shortage of transport to get to the highest vantage points. The scenery is anything but soothing and serene. It is wild and gritty and when the clouds come in, scary, hostile rather than harmonious, with domes, cracks, crevices, glaciers, cliffs, needles, scree, snow, as though the earth had hiccupped and violently burped. The mountain range is deadly: it kills a hundred climbers a year.

GETTING ITSELF ONTO THE INTERNATIONAL CIRCUIT Yet begin your descent from the mountains and that speck in the distance becomes a rambunctious, populated town, which Art Nouveau posters still celebrate as the host of the first Winter Olympics, the event which “launched” Chamonix, like a nervous debutante, into society in 1924.

Hungry for the cachet of its Belle Epoque luxury hotels and oak-panelled trains, an international clientele has not only sustained Chamonix but transformed it into an eclectic resort where contrasts fraternize comfortably. The English who once explored the region hardly seem to have left. So numerous were they at one point that an Anglican church was built for them.

Clearly, France’s premier mountain gathering place is… not very French. Raclettes and fondues are on offer in maybe half the establishments, but those dishes too are Swiss in origin.

So sit back and observe as designer-clad day trippers from Italy share cheese plates with sunburned snowboarders, and violet-haired ladies sip tea on terraces

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next to hungry youngsters wolfing down their hamburgers while trying to stuff their cumbersome mountaineering gear under the table.

A LEADING OUTDOOR ADVENTURE HUB – BUT ALSO FOR ALPINE WILDLIFE In winter, it is the jumping off point for the world’s largest ski domain and in summer, Chamonix sheds its crispy white cloak and emerges as a challenging mountaineering centre. Now touted as the extreme sports or adventure capital of the world, it increasingly attracts dedicated enthusiasts for outdoor activities such as mountain biking, trail-running, rafting, paragliding, canyoning, hydrospeeding and even tree-top zipping.

For the less sporty, the Crystal Museum, casino, shops and eateries help time fly while reinforcing their conviction that simply breathing pure mountain air is the equivalent of exercise and health. Yet, not unlike other mountain resorts across the Alps seeking to broaden their appeal to year-round visitors of all ages, Chamonix also offers less strenuous exploits such as bird-watching and mountain flora walks. There are at least a score of nearby regional parks and nature reserves. The outdoors may rule the day, but in the evening culture takes over, with concerts, travel lectures and other events on offer throughout the town.

Chamonix can officially trace its ancestry back nearly 1,000 years, when Count Aymon I of Geneva gave away the valley’s title to a nearby Piedmontese monastery. In fact, the belfry (though not the rest of the church) of the Eglise Saint-Michel dates back to 1119. While it has plenty of modern touches, Chamonix has managed to cling to its mountain charm.

The luxurious boutiques and trendy streets would be unrecognizable to generations who, otherwise locked in by winter’s snow, were forced to emigrate to find jobs.

These days the town is a job-seekers’ magnet and the population of nearly 10,000 almost doubles during the winter resort season. Growing numbers of outdoor-obsessed business professionals also base themselves here year-round, some of them shuttling to and from London or Brussels by plane on a weekly basis from Geneva.

The town’s first auberge was opened in 1770 by a Madame Coutterand. Her descendant Sylvain Coutterand remains a son of Chamonix. As the region’s foremost glaciologist, his books and conferences help conserve the region and confirm that visitors’ infatuation with this valley is as robust as ever, bringing five million of them into the resort each year. And another Coutterand from Chamonix, Leslie, has made an international name as an actress, model and documentarian. Like Chamonix, they are children of the region and though they roam, they always return. While clinging deeply to their Savoyard roots, they are equally comfortable with the international current that flows through this mountain capital’s history.

LEYLA GIRAY ALYANAK is a Contributing Editor of Global Geneva

and writes about travel at www.womenontheroad.com

SHORT STORY The following is an excerpt from the recently published book by Masood Khalili, a poet, diplomat and former guerrilla during the Soviet war. A close friend and advisor to Ahmed Shah Massoud, the renowned Afghan resistance commander who was assassinated, by Al Qaeda suicide bombers on 9 September, 2001, and during which he himself was severely wounded. Khalili is the son of the great Afghan poet laureate, Khalillulah Khalili.

Whispers of War IT IS NOW 7:20 PM. We have crossed the difficult and exhausting Kotali Zard or Yellow Pass and reached here about an hour ago. I am in the village of Korpay Taw, in the house of someone called Tooran. Do not ask me how I feel. I am so tired and exhausted that I cannot even put my sour feelings into words. After walking for more than thirteen hours, of which I rode my horse for only five, we arrived here at 6:30 pm. The last section of the pass took me an hour and a half to climb and cross. It was not that difficult but since there was little oxygen and the air was very thin, I ran out of breath. It took us about 5 hours from the top to descend to the bottom.

On the way, before reaching the first summer pasture, we ran into a group of internal refugees who were heading toward the Panjshir valley. There were men, women, elders, and children. Those misfortunate people seemed miserable but greeted Daad and me as we passed. I noticed that the children were running up and down beside their mothers and grandmothers, playing with whatever stones or pieces of wood they could find. The weather was freezing cold. I could see that the children did not have clothes warm enough to stave off the bitter cold and realized that their playing was probably more to keep themselves warm than for enjoyment. Maybe it was both.

A young man asked, “Sir, do you have any medicine to give? I have a few people who are very sick.” I did not have any medicine but in order to give him some hope, I told him that I would go to see them myself. We walked for five minutes until I saw a very old woman, a child, and a young man lying under a large boulder. Even from a distance, you could see they were sick. Perhaps they were related.

When the old woman with long white hair saw me, she pointed toward the child and the young man and said, “Please give them some medicine. They really need it.”

When I moved the blanket from on top of the young man and little girl, I saw that the one’s leg and the other’s arm were injured. Thank God, their injuries were not so serious. I could do nothing more for them but give them the few painkillers that I had left. When I gave them to the young man, he immediately handed them to the old woman and said, “She is very sick and has a high temperature.

She needs it more.” I searched in my pocket and gave the only pieces of candy I had to the little girl and left.

We passed the refugees and I decided to sit on a small boulder to rest a little. Just as we had gotten comfortable, two helicopters circled around above us and disappeared.

As we searched the skies, we saw that they were circling back around. Looking at the refugees, I prayed to myself

that they were not the targets because there were so many that it would be hard for all of them to find refuge. At this moment, I ordered Daad to quickly run and tell the refugees to take shelter just in case the helicopters decided to attack the convoy.

Anything was possible with the Soviets. Before Daad had time to get back to me, four attack helicopters appeared on the horizon. They swooped down in formation like dragons waiting to unleash their fiery breath. The noise from the four helicopters as they flew closer rose to a deafening and terrifying din. They were camouflaged but were flying so low that I could easily see the pilots inside the cockpits. These awe-inspiring dragons of destruction, circled the area around us as if they were marking their territory and getting ready to let loose their sinister arsenal. I took my rucksack from my horse and headed toward the closest boulder I could find. I had not quite reached it, when the first of the rockets hit, making the ground tremble and roar. Since I had gone ahead and run further up the track in order to take refuge, I unfortunately had a perfect view of the refugee convoy further down. Another helicopter fired a few more rockets in our direction. Out of four, only two of these dragons commenced their attack. It was already too much. One rocket hit the ground not more than 50 meters from where I had taken shelter. As I looked up, waiting for more rockets, the dragons started to circle again. They seemed even more sinister now than they did when they first appeared on the horizon.

All of a sudden, they spun their tails away from us and disappeared, probably heading toward Bagram airbase. I stayed in my place for another fifteen minutes just in case they returned. I could see nothing but plumes of smoke and fire. The gut-wrenching noise of screams and cries coming from those innocent refugees had replaced the thunderous sounds of the Soviet killing dragons. I could not take it anymore and rushed toward the smoke and screams.

When I reached the scene, my body stopped of its own accord, faced with the carnage in front of me. I do not have words for the hell that the world had become. An old man was covered in blood and a young girl’s injuries were so severe that I dare not describe them to you. A boy of about ten years was crying and bleeding profusely. Four or five other women were sobbing, weeping, and grabbing handfuls of earth and throwing it on their faces in an act of heart-wrenching sorrow. They were screaming, “Why, O God? Why has this happened to us? We leave our homes to find shelter from war, and the devils bring war upon us! Why has this happened?”

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The little children who were playing before were now crying loudly from their meager sanctuaries behind small and large boulders. Some sheep and goats were lying dead. A horse was neighing intolerably in excruciating pain from his injuries. The earth all around us was black and burnt. Some pillows and mattresses the refugees had been carrying before were still burning. I was in a sort of shock as I walked along the path, looking at horrors that I could only imagine could be fashioned in hell. I could not even think of anything else, my mind and body were numb from what I saw. The dirty smell of burned earth and flesh disturbed my senses even more.

I had to act and called out to the men to form a group in front of me so that we could see what we could do, when at that moment, Daad appeared. I was happy to see that he was still alive but what could any of us do? There were no roads, no hospitals, and no forms of transportation or communication in the immediate area. I thought, as I looked around that the whole universe was bleeding and that the screams and tears of these innocent people could be heard throughout the world. For me, this scene was the real face of war. I did not see any way of helping these people when, suddenly and fortuitously, a group of young freedom fighters appeared. They all knew me and I knew them.

Their commander came to me and as we shook hands, I told him, “It is good to see you. Please do what you can for these poor people of ours.” He simply replied, “This is why we are here, Khalili Sahib. It is good that you are alive and not injured. We will do what we can for them.” At this moment, I remembered the sick old woman, the young man, and the little girl. I decided to go see if they were still alive.

Thankfully, they were still lying beneath that same boulder, alive and free from further injury. I looked at the little girl. She was in a real state of shock. She stared with her big eyes at me and as I patted her on the head, I noticed that she was still clutching tightly one of the candies I had given her. I smiled, rummaged through my pockets, and thankfully found one more piece of candy to give to her. I left them once again and moved on.

I told Daad to try to find my horse and get ready to continue our journey. I walked slowly toward the next village. In about five minutes, Daad had found my horse, and was once again at my side. The screams and bloody images of children and innocent civilians were still fresh in my mind. It took about half an hour to reach the village where I am now. I was thinking to myself as I walked, what is the meaning of life, when a verse of my father’s came to mind: “That moment which you call life is nothing but frustration, sadness, burning, pain, and suffering.” This verse kept ringing in my mind but I concluded that despite all of these realities, one should still have hope.

Now listen to what happened as I was entering a sweetly bucolic summer pasture. A little boy of about six years, who was sweeter than a sugar cube, was playing with his goat. The women were working in and around their pasture. I called out to the small boy, “Where is your father, boy? Whose son are you?” He stopped playing, looked innocently up at me and said nothing. I asked again, “What is the name of your father? Where is he? Call him please to come and help us to find something to eat.”

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Masood Khalili talking to journalists during the early days of the Soviet-Afghan war

Again, he innocently looked up at me but kept quiet.

I felt that maybe the little boy is mute or deaf and again I asked louder, “Tell me son, where’s your father? Go and call him.” I could see that tears had now filled his beautiful eyes. It then seemed as though he was about to say something. Almost in a whisper, he said, “He has been martyred.

I have no father but I am a good boy. Do not harm me. I am a good boy. Do not harm me please.”

My dear, you cannot imagine what a burning pain gripped my soul. I thought entire mountain had dropped on my heart, telling me to cry, and I did. I went closer to him, took him in my arms, and warmly kissed his cheeks and small hands. At that moment, his friendly-looking grandmother appeared and in beautiful Paryani Farsi asked, “Would you like some tea?” Without waiting for a response from me, she kindly brought a cup of tea. In my rucksack, I had some homemade biscuits, which I shared with the little boy. I asked the grandmother what happened to the boy’s father. She said, “The communists came one day, attacked our home, pulled his father outside, and after some shouting back and forth, they shot him dead in front of this poor son of his. One minute, he was playing with his father; and, the next, his little hands were covered in his father’s blood. Since then, he has been afraid of any men who are unknown to him.”

I patted the boy on the head as he sat next to me listening to our conversation. Thank God, somehow he has started talking to me a little. The boy’s name was Mutalib and his martyred father was Abdul Qadir. He loved his father. I talked a bit with the little boy. He told me, “Thank God, my mother now has three goats that my martyred father always wanted to buy for her. She is working day and night to make me happy. She wants me to go to school, if possible.”

I filled his pockets with the all the raisins I had. I also gave him a little money. He ran to his mother. His mother called from afar, “Why did you give him the money? A poor traveler should not do that. Whatever we have belongs to the freedom fighters of this land.” Not even a few minutes had passed when Mutalib, the little boy, ran back to me and brought two big pieces of quroot, dry yoghurt balls. As I departed, I repeated twice under my breath what he wanted me to believe of him; “I am good boy, I am a good boy.”

MASOOD KHALILI s currently Afghan ambassador to Madrid. His

2017 book – Whispers of War: An Afghan Freedom Fighter’s Account of the Soviet War - is published both in English and French. Khalili also inspired the title of Edward Girardet’s Killing the Cranes book on reporting 30 years of war in Afghanistan.