Update -- First Lt. Demetrius Frison, 26, was killed in action Tuesday in Afghanistan. He was a native Philadelphian and a graduate of Millersville University. His wife told The Philadelphia Inquirer that when he learned that U.S. forces had killed Osama bin Laden, he was happy but told her he "still had a job to do."
Hassina Sherjan is the country director of Aid Afghanistan for Education, a nonprofit group that has educated more than 3,000 Afghan girls. Sherjan also runs Boumi, a home décor company based in Kabul that uses Afghan cotton and other indigenous raw materials. Sherjan was born in Afghanistan and was raised there and in California. When the Taliban took over the country in the 1990s, she returned and has lived there since 2001. She co-authored a book last year, Toughing it Out in Afghanistan, that delves into the tactics used to battle the resurgent Taliban and the reforms needed to ensure democracy.
Joyce Davis, president of the World Affairs Council of Harrisburg, met Hassina years ago at a U.S. State Department forum on the plight of women around the world. "Hassina has been an extraordinarily strong advocate for literacy for women in the Middle East, especially in Afghanistan. Hassina was a brave soul who got back into Afghanistan to make sure women and children were able to at least educate themselves."
In October 2001, America responded to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 by invading Afghanistan, a country that had provided safe haven to al-Qaeda . The goal was to rout the Taliban, hunt down Osama bin Laden and remove any support structure for al-Qaeda's terrorist training camps. U.S. troops overthrew the Taliban government, but over the next few years, they retook key parts of the country and began an insurgent campaign. And so, ten years later, we still have about 100,000 U.S. troops on the ground fighting and dying and many of them suffering horrendous wounds from the IEDs favored by Taliban fighters. When the Navy SEALS killed Osama bin Laden last week, they ended one major chapter in our country's involvement with Afghanistan. Some members of Congresswould like to see our involvement in Afghanistn (and the $10 billion a month needed to sustain it) come to a quick end. But President Obama made it clear last week that he plans to proceed with a phased withdrawal of our troops starting this summer.
"Across Afghanistan, we've broken the Taliban's momentum. In key regions, we've seized the momentum, pushing them out of their strongholds. We're building the capacity of Afghans, partnering with communities and police and security forces, which are growing stronger," the president told troops last Friday at Ft. Campbell. "And most of all, we're making progress in our major goal, our central goal in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and that is disrupting and dismantling — and we are going to ultimately defeat — al-Qaida. We have cut off their head, and we will ultimately defeat them."
Hassina Sherjan's mission to improve the lives of Afghan women and children continues. Joyce Davis arranged for Sherjan to visit Central Pennsylvania this week to provide members of the World Affairs Council with a deeper understanding of the complex events unfolding in that critical part of the world and how we might help. "The society there is something we need to be concerned about," Davis notes. "We're there because we want to bring stability to the country. Part of that stability involves how they're treating girls – the educational process. We know you can't have a democracy without having an underpinning of some sort of education and information being made available to the public."
Also joining the conversation tonight will be John B. Craig, former U.S. ambassador to Oman under President Bill Clinton and now a partner and chairman of the board of The Jadwin Group, a business consulting firm based in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. He also directs the Center for Global Citizenship at Elizabethtown College. Ambassador Craig is enroute from Cairo with fresh observations of the democracy uprisings across the Middle East. He previewed his thoughts on Afghanistan in an email from the Netherlands, writing, "... we "liberated"Afghanistan from the Taliban and installed (President Hamid) Karzai as the George Washington of Afghanistan. However, we did not then and have never given Karzai a full deck to play the development process with. We always favored the warlords because we hoped that they would help us capture OBL. Much of the money appropriated for economic development in Afghanistan has not been spent. So we worked all these years at cross purposes to ourselves, if you what I mean, and that has lead to a really messy situation.
"The major issue going forward," Craig continued, "is the poppy culture. We have allowed the poppy culture to thrive because it provided funding for the warlords. A monster has been created. Even Iran is threatened by the poison of the drug trade. The problem is that we have never seen an effective poppy eradication program because the substitute crops are never enough to provide an income. Probably the biggest losers from the OBL adventure will be the warlords. We just don't need them anymore. National reconciliation to include the Taliban is probably the answer. And we do have allies in this. The Saudis are close to the Taliban and have good positive influence with them."
Dr. Mehdi Noorbaksh, associate professor of international affairs, also will weigh in on the U.S. interests in Afghanistan and the greater search for peace and democracy in that region.
By the way, Joyce's next foray to the Mideast will take her soon to Tunisia where voters will elect their first democratic leader since ousting long-time dictator Bin Ali. "We are looking at perhaps starting an English-language radio service to that country to hopefully have some information provided by American experts as we lead up to their elections in July.
"Now it's just a cauldron of activity and ideas, and as you can imagine, this is a crucial time. There's a lot going on and political parties are cropping up, and Islamists and radicals are cropping up, and so it is a time of ferment, democratic ferment, in the country. And it would be a great thing if we could also ensure that American voices were in the mix."
