Oxfam America Blog

Raima's family has been displaced many times during the years of conflict in Afghanistan. Soon after they returned to Kabul in 2003, her husband was killed in a suicide attack. Photo by Ashley Jackson/Oxfam

In his address to the nation on Afghanistan last night, President Obama said the US will support ministries, governors, and local leaders that deliver for the Afghan people and combat corruption.  For many Afghan civilians, the cost of war has meant ever deeper poverty with half of Afghans impoverished.

“We just finished a survey that went all around Afghanistan, including the insecure parts, 700 people in places like Kandahar and Helmand. They said their top issue in terms of what’s driving the insurgency is poverty followed by the weakness of the Karzai government, the corruption in Kabul,” said Paul O’Brien, Oxfam America’s vice president for policy and advocacy, in an interview Tuesday with CNN International’s Christiane Amanpour.

“If we do development well and we do it for its own sake, we may well end up with a safer Afghanistan, which is for everyone’s benefit,” O’Brien added.

Watch the full interview here.

I just wanted to share this striking photo from a slideshow related to The Cost of War, a new Oxfam report documenting the human cost of chronic conflict and disorder in Afghanistan. Taken by Travis Beard, it shows women shopping for new burqas in a bazaar in Herat.

At first glance, I thought it was a beautiful image, the stiff folds of fabric falling like drapes in a Renaissance painting. Then I read a little more about women’s experiences in Afghanistan under extremist rule, and the more haunting elements—the cold blue light, the claustrophobic space, the bent and faceless figures—came to the forefront.

When the Taliban came to power, most Afghan women were banned from work and not allowed to leave home without a male escort and a full-length burqa. These draconian laws left many women considering suicide.

“During the Taliban period, our life was bad, because we didn’t have the freedom to go outside,” said one Kandahar woman. According to the report, 42 percent of women surveyed in Kabul now meet the conditions for post-traumatic stress disorder.

More than 700 Afghan people spoke to Oxfam and partners about their experiences for the report. Check out more of their photos and stories in our new slideshow, Lives Interrupted.

Oxfam launched this message for ministers meeting in The Hague. Photo by Ton Vrijenhoek

When dozens of ministers from countries around the world met in The Hague yesterday to talk about the future of Afghanistan, the fate of 8.5 million people hung in the air. That’s the number of Afghans who face chronic uncertainty about whether they will have enough to eat. Already the health of more than a million young children and 500,000 women is at risk because of malnutrition.

Those numbers hit hard when you weigh them against the findings in a new field report from Afghanistan produced by Oxfam America. The report says that the US spends 20 times more in military activities and operations in the country than it does on development. And the money that does go to development isn’t always well coordinated:  The report cited one case of two separate contractors, both funded by USAID who, by chance, discovered they were doing almost the same project in the same place. Read the rest of this entry »

Equipped with cameras and a quick lesson on how to use them, 20 Afghan women and their children fanned out to record their lives last year in a project sponsored by Oxfam and its partner, the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief. The images they captured—and the words they used to describe them—are filling my mind now as I read about a high-level  meeting on the future of Afghanistan that’s set to take place tomorrow in The Hague. Read the rest of this entry »

At the goat market in Moyale, Ethiopia, this goat herder gets ready to part with a prized posession. Photo by Sarah Livingston

“No more caffeine!” said the email from my husband at mid-morning. I’d been up since 5 a.m., gulping coffee and fretting. It’s always this way before I take a trip. Would my visa come on time? Would I remember to take the malaria medicine? Where was my yellow card? Was the Ciprofloxacin—the stomach-bug-cure-all—still good? Would I need that water bottle with the filter and iodine tablets? Read the rest of this entry »

As 2008 winds down, we’re highlighting photos we think best capture Oxfam’s work this year. Here is one of my favorites–with an explanation why. More to come from others.

Loko Dadacha, photographed by Sarah Livingston

In this supposed season of joy, trouble fills our world: a cholera outbreak and widespread hunger in Zimbabwe, a food crisis in Afghanistan that’s threatening five million people, bursts of violence in the eastern provinces of Democratic Republic of Congo that have forced a quarter of a million people from their homes, a conflict in Darfur that has dragged on for nearly six years and wrecked the lives of millions of Sudanese—the list goes on. And that’s the killer. Where is the hope in this bottomless pit of suffering?

I think I know. Read the rest of this entry »

Sub-Commissioner Blanca Lidia Figueroa of the National Police, El Salvador. Photo by Claudia Barrientos/Oxfam America

Earlier this week I read an excellent article in the NY Times by Carlotta Gall about Bamian, Afghanistan. Gall writes that women are driving cars, working as police officers, and there is even a woman governor there. As violence has diminished in this corner of the country, peace it seems, opens doors for women to stage “a quiet revolution.” But it is still not easy for women to take on non-traditional roles outside the home. One police lieutenant, after five years on the force, says “I had some problems at the beginning.” I’ll bet she did, and probably continues to. But at least the Taliban are not active in Bamian: Last month in Kandahar they murdered Malalai Kakar, a well-known female police captain.

Read the rest of this entry »