Fatima exits the bus and enters Islam Qala’s transit camp in western Afghanistan amid the blazing heat and uncertain future. She is one of the 10, 000 Iranians who have arrived that day and the 800, 000 who have over the past six months. She rushes her three children to a parking lot, slumps onto the sand, and covers her family with bed linens. When questioned about where she might go from here, she claims a brother might visit her hometown.
The camp receives hot food and medical care from the Afghan Red Crescent Society in the form of donations from the IFRC. Some money is provided by UN agencies. However, it’s time to depart after a day. Afghan cities and towns are called out by bus drivers. Fatima transports her cases to a bus to Owbeh, in the province of Herat. Her three children follow her closely. She claims that she was forbidden from traveling with any materials or tools despite having studied carpet weaving in Iran. She enquires as to how she can start from scratch without any funding. And who, in her village, would purchase her carpets anyway? They are in charge. not even food.
Although her exit from Iran was painful, the real challenges lie ahead. There won’t be any jobs for her in the public sector when she arrives in her hometown. Due to the laws and rules governing hiring women, men will be reluctant to hire her. Her only chance of surviving will be to launch her own business. She will require start-up funding for that. She might also need brother’s assistance with accessing markets. There will be a challenge, but more Afghan women are stepping up to the plate. Fatima could, too. She’d be better off having access to credit.
Will anyone able to purchase her goods, though? Her neighbors will largely depend on agriculture, which will depend on irrigation and rain, like most Afghans. Because of the drought, irrigation is becoming impossible in a large portion of Herat province and throughout the nation. Dust accumulates in rivers. Water sources in the ground are drying up. Men travel to cities in search of daily work when there is no farmland, only to discover that there is also a raging battle for water there. According to Mercy Corps, the city could run out of accessible groundwater in five years because half of Kabul’s boreholes have dried out. Only significant investment in water conservation, rain vats, storage dams, and check dams could slow down or stop this trend. Just the kind of money Afghanistan is trying to raise.
If Fatima can focus on her children’s education if she can make a little money and reside close to the water. A madrassa will be required for her daughter. She will experience a significant decline in her Iranian education. However, it might be one of the many madrassas that is already offering classes through the 12th grade and introducing more varied subjects. There might also be other options, such as vocational training and online courses, if she is resourceful and willing to put some money into action. Although she will face extreme odds of maneuvering, she will also have some old ones. They represent a long-running conflict between patriarchy and the cities, between self-realization desires and deep rooted patriarchy. Foreign aid may be able to aid in quietly promoting multiple and flexible opportunities for learning and exchange while acknowledging that the ideological battles will take place among Afghans themselves and will take time. Some organizations are attempting to accomplish this, but they don’t have a scale.
For Fatima to have access to clean drinking water, education for her children, and investment in her social enterprise will require a lot of luck. Unfortunately, it is much more likely and the outcome is grim. She’ll likely be without food in a few weeks, like most new arrivals. She won’t have access to the exclusive business support opportunities. The villages she touches will disappear if there is no water. Her health will suffer if she persists. Too expensive or too far away will be medical care. She might be forced to marry her daughter early and force her boys to do daily, cheap work. This is taking place throughout the nation. She will try to return to Iran if she can to prevent such a terrible fate.
Can international aid assist Fatima and the millions of people who depend on her? In spite of all the reservations, humanitarian funding has been generous over the past four years. Assistance has been allocated more than $7 billion. Enough to support the creation of small businesses by tens of thousands of women. Enough to have water stored across the nation, deepened boreholes, and irrigated farms. Enough to have provided children with thousands of alternative learning options. Humanitarian organizations have tried to assist in all of these areas, but the majority of the funds have been used for emergency relief, and many donors have been reluctant to invest in anything more substantial because they fear it will come off as a deceitful figure in the eyes of those in power.
It is compelling to need a new strategy. Due to aid cuts, there is currently less money available, but what is still available can be used to fund locally developed initiatives in areas of livelihoods, water infrastructure, health, and education. This might give those like Fatima a sense of hope for the future. As much as its resources allow, IFRC will concentrate on this.
If the moral justification for that isn’t compelling enough, it’s worthwhile to consider that the historic repatriation to Afghanistan that took place this year is likely to be the start of a much bigger exodus in the years to come. It would be far wiser to invest now and give people in their home countries a chance to prosper than to invest significantly more in anti-trafficking projects and refugee camps.
