burning houses to the ground, killing local leaders and sending people fleeing into the mountains with just the clothes on their backs. That summer, CAI helped the Barg-e-Matal refugees, delivering tents, food, shovels, and other emergency supplies via helicopter.
Since then, Afghan forces have regained control of Nuristan’ s populated areas,“ maybe 30 percent of all the province,” said Abdul Hanan, a Nuristani elder and businessman. But Taliban control of the road makes getting to those areas virtually impossible— especially for anyone attempting to help the local people.
EDUCATION The Nuristani elders are undeterred. They want at least one school, maybe two, in Barge-Matal and / or Kamdesh districts.
A few years ago a Provincial Reconstruction Team( PRT) working in the area tried to help. PRTs were internationally funded efforts to build support for the Afghan government with quick-impact reconstruction projects. The Nuristan PRT issued a contract to rebuild a Barg-e-Matal school destroyed by the Taliban.
But the effort failed miserably, Ghulam Allah said. The construction company’ s owner just poured a cement foundation and then“ ran away with the money,” he said.“ The government said it could not do anything about that. The PRT is out of Afghanistan. Money is wasted.”
Government corruption is also an issue. Early in 2014, the Nuristan governor, Tamim Nuristani and the head of his disaster-management and rural-development authorities were accused of misusing hundreds of tons of wheat given in foreign aid to the province, Khaama Press( Afghanistan) reported. [ Despite Nuristan’ s bounty, wheat is not produced in abundance given the lack of flat land.] The officials were summarily dismissed.
The government is not going to be helpful, the elders concluded.
They resumed their lobbying of CAI last spring. They contacted Wakil Karimi, CAI’ s Kabul-based program manager, whom they knew from the 2010 refugee assistance effort, and asked for help. Karimi lined up a meeting with CAI Co-Founder Greg Mortenson in Kabul in June. The results were promising.
The elders told Mortenson that they have local labor and building materials in abundance, and that they would protect any school from insurgents.
“ We are really trying to accommodate the Nuristanis’ request for a school, given that no
Typical Nuristani construction includes timber. schools have been built there in recent years, as it is one of the most difficult-to-access places in Afghanistan,” Mortenson said afterwards.“ This is the culmination of years of relationship building, but it is an extremely complex project and will need support from many sectors— including local shura, the district, provincial and national governments, CAI, and the militants in the area.”
BARG-E-MATAL & KAMDESH The elders— male and female— agree with CAI’ s premise that girls’ education is a priority.
“ Girls’ education is no problem,” Hanan said in August.“ Nuristanis are bright-minded people and they are OK with girls’ education. In Barg-e-Matal we have many women teachers. In Kamdesh, girls study, but in the mosque because there is no school. We understand why girls’ education is important. We much like. We are progressive for such isolation. Even the mullah, he is a powerful man in all Nuristan, he wants education for girls.”
Rashidi concurred.“ There is no difference between girls and boys for education.”
There was a girls’ high school in Barg-e- Matal, but it was destroyed three years ago, said Hanan’ s wife, Atifa Nuristani, a provincial council member.
“ When I was a student, we had a 16-room girls’ high school in Barg-e-Matal, but after I graduated it was burned by the Taliban,” said Atifa, who left the area for two years to study medicine in Jalalabad before returning home to marry, have a child, and win election to the
Nuristan Province
( also spelled Nurestan or Nooristan)
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Geography: This remote mountainous province bordering Pakistan on the southern slopes of the Hindu Kush is one of the most impassable regions of eastern Afghanistan. Only in the extreme south and southeast does the mountainous terrain— which composes 98 percent of the province— flatten out to form the Kabul River basin. The area gets sufficient rainfall to sustain lush forests— in stark contrast to the barrenness of other parts of Afghanistan— and irrigate crops directly or through a network of canals. However, limited natural resources have, in some cases, led to centuries-old feuds between clans.
History: The area was known as“ Kafiristan”( Persian for“ land of the nonbelievers”) until the 1890s because its inhabitants practiced an older form of Hinduism mixed with animism, polytheism, and shamanism. In1895-6 Amir Abdul Rahman Khan forcibly( at sword point) converted the population to Islam and renamed the region Nuristan, or“ land of the enlightened.”
Alexander the Great passed through Nuristan on his way to India in 331 [ or 337 ] BC, and made note of the fierce-fighting mountain tribes. It is thought that some of his soldiers intermarried with
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