Sayyid Abdullah Hashemi is trying to reform Afghanistan's infamous orphanages, writes ROD NORDLANDin Kabul
IN A country desperately in need of a hero, Sayyid Abdullah Hashemi would like to apply for the job. It would be difficult to find a more wretched place to go to work on that goal than at the national directorate of orphanages in Afghanistan’s ministry of labour, social affairs, martyrs and the disabled, where Hashemi became the director seven months ago.
He wasted little time shaking things up at an agency that had become infamous for orphanages where caregivers stole food out of children’s mouths and mattresses from under their bodies.
Whether he was motivated by altruism, ambition or some mix of the two may matter little given the importance of his work. But how Hashemi fares over the long term may be an important sign of whether a reform ethic stands any chance in Afghanistan.
First, Hashemi focused his energy on the two major government-run orphanages in Kabul, nightmarishly run-down places with dismal reputations.
One, the Tahya-e-Maskan Orphanage, was notable for having poisoned its children en masse, serving them milk so far past its expiration date that it nearly killed several of them.
Now, the Tahya-e-Maskan Orphanage is a tidy and obviously well-maintained place. It offers computer science and English classes, with 36 graduates sitting for university entrance exams this year and 44 children on scholarships for study abroad.
“In the 12 years I’ve been here, I’ve never seen a director like him,” says Wahidullah Hamid, an orphan who at 17 speaks English so well that Hashemi hired him as an English teacher as soon as he graduated from the orphanage’s high school.
Hashemi is a lean, short man, wiry and restless, with a dark beard that makes him look older than his 29 years.
He has a sense of self-esteem that seems to come easily to many called Sayyid, a name that identifies its bearer as a descendant of the prophet Muhammad’s family. It is not difficult to read his confidence as arrogance, and his detractors do, accusing him of high-handedness and being driven by personal ambition.
Hashemi is an orphan himself; his father was killed fighting the Soviets during the occupation in the 1980s. “I understand what orphans are suffering,” he says.
His early efforts drew the attention of a venerable Afghan charity, Parsa. Best known for its physical rehabilitation work with the war wounded, Parsa has for the past six years also been running an orphanages programme.
Unlike most charities in that field, “we wanted to work within the government system”, says the group’s executive director, Marnie Gustavson. It proved to be six years of “beating our heads against a wall”, she says.
Then came Hashemi, whom she describes as “someone we could believe in”.
Hashemi decided to do something that Gustavson calls unprecedented: he actually travelled beyond the capital to visit the orphanages for which his directorate is responsible.
Early in December, he turned up unannounced at the orphanage in Faizabad, in the remote northwestern province of Badakhshan, at supper time. There, 150 boys shared 10 rooms, sleeping on boards.That was bad enough, but it was their food that really got his attention.
“We send them 75 Afghanis [€1.20] a day per child, and it’s not enough; but if spent properly, it is at least enough for adequate, decent quality food,” Hashemi says.
But when he arrived, he found the children eating a thin soup that contained maybe an ounce of beans for each of them, plus half a piece of bread. It was clear that even the paltry daily stipend was being siphoned off by the adults at the orphanage.
“The children were emaciated; some of them had hair falling out from malnutrition, skin diseases,” Hashemi says.
What happened next is a matter of some dispute, though it is certainly an example of how complex making real change here can be. Hashemi recounts it simply: “It is our duty not to take the food from our orphans, so I threw a bowl of food in the director’s face and fired him and the cook.”
Parsa’s national director, Yasin Farid, who was present, confirms that account. But the orphanage’s director, Sayyid Abdul Wahab, remembers it differently. “We had a quarrel, but it was not very serious,” Wahab says. “He had a bowl with him, but he did not throw it at me intentionally. He just spilled it at me.”
Hashemi made sure the children were fed, buying them food before he left. Then he left them money for extra food and firewood, and arranged a way for them to contact him regularly to report on how they were being treated.
At an orphanage in Takhar province, he visited on a Friday, the normal day off, and found no staff members looking after 40 boys younger than 10, he says. They had a 13lb sack of potatoes, their only food for the day.
Later, the director threatened to expel the children from the orphanage if they did not swear to Hashemi that they had had a big breakfast of eggs and milk that day, which they duly did.
Hashemi’s videographer, however, surreptitiously recorded the entire encounter.
In Parwan, Hashemi barged into the orphanage at 1am and inspected the beds. “Sheets are supposed to be washed and changed every two weeks,” he says. “These had not been washed for three years and smelled like it.”
He returned to Kabul, having left a trail of firings in his wake, but he repeatedly ran into political problems. It soon became apparent that most of the directors he had dismissed were still holding on to their jobs.
“For me, they are fired,” Hashemi says. “If they still insist on coming to work, I will have to talk to the minister about doing something.”
There are still 29 orphanages he has yet to inspect. “These ones I visited were in the secure areas,” he says.
"Imagine what they're like in insecure areas." – ( New York Timesservice)