“I don’t think my blood has more colour than a soldier’s, we are all human.”

My name is Jalaluddin Yaftali.

I am 41 years old and I am a commander in the Afghan Special Forces.

Our mission is to stop civilian casualties whilst respecting the Afghan culture and traditions. We are taking over responsibilities from the foreign forces. It is a model for other special force units across the region. Our recruits are taken from the police force, security services and the army. We select the smartest, fittest, most mentally strong – the best. We take around 1000 people for the selection and only 50 of them pass. There are around 1500 soldiers in the unit.

Afghan nature has always been different to other people. We are passionate, searching for glory. If something is hard it is a matter of pride to be involved, national pride. Wherever we go there are always people volunteering to serve in the Special Forces unit. No one has ever refused us. Every time someone fails selection he cries. NATO and ISAF have helped us in improving the unit. They have given us training, equipment and support. We have been able to learn from their experiences. Now our Special Forces unit is able to act independently.

The other day there were terrorist attacks at three different points across Kabul. They had taken hostages and were threatening to kill civilians. Within half an hour my crew had surrounded a building the terrorists had taken. They knew we would come, it wasn’t our first time. It is my job to work out the most effective and fastest way to neutralise the target. We have freed hostages from the Taliban many times. We beat our enemies, killing almost all of them, and all of the hostages were freed. It was a very dangerous situation for us. Sadly one of my men died and two of them were injured in the fighting.

I have always wanted to be a soldier, when I was young I dreamed of being a great commander. I was always the leader when we played battle games when we were kids. As soon as I could, I became involved in Jihad. I am proud to say that I was one of Ahmed Shah Massoud’s men. I took up a gun against the enemy when I was around 18, and I quickly became one of his commanders. I fought with him against the Taliban. I had a key role in the resistance. When the Afghan National Army was formed in 2002, I joined.

Every time I am in a battle I always want to be right in the thick of it in the most dangerous place. My nature is different to other commanders who hide behind their men. I always try to be with my men on the frontline to encourage them and keep them moving forward. I don’t think my blood has more colour than a soldier’s, we are all human. I’ve been injured several times. Shot in my legs, my thigh and taken shrapnel to my back. I don’t think about it, my injuries don’t hurt me anymore.

I am proud to be a commander for the Special Forces. We are not afraid to show our faces, the Afghan people are completely behind us. My body, my blood, every part of me; I am ready to sacrifice it for my country.

One of my best memories was when I was a commando. We were fighting Pakistani soldiers on the Afghan border. Like always I was right in the heart of the battle, shooting at the other side. As the enemy realised we were going to beat them they started to run away in fear of us. We chased after them to make sure they kept going over the border. As I went over I suddenly saw an Afghan flag fluttering right on the border. It was like a sign because we’d won. I’d been through such a battle, but it was that flag that made me cry. I will always remember that day.

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  # 063 – Who is the Police Commando?
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  # 064 – Who is the Human Rights Head?
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  # 058 – Who is the Meditation Teacher?

“I’ll never forget when they played the Afghan national anthem… we we were all crying.”

My name is Raes Ahmadzai.

I am the head of the Afghan Youth Cricket Support Organisation (AYCSO). I was the last captain of the Afghan National Cricket team.

When I was very young my family emigrated to Pakistan. We lived in a poor community with no TV, radio or electricity. We knew nothing about cricket, but in Pakistan it is very popular and I started to learn all about it. We had no money for equipment so we would use bits of wood, and pile our sandals up to make wickets. I remember in 1992 when Pakistan won the World Cup everyone was celebrating. Everyone was so happy and they were firing bullets in the streets.

I returned to Kabul in 2001, people didn’t really play cricket. They all thought it was a Pakistani sport. I played in Kabul with 15 other boys who knew the game. Actually cricket is an English sport, they started playing three or four hundred years ago. I found out on the internet that there was an English cricket match in Kabul in 1810.

Fortunately now all Afghans like cricket and know that it’s not a Pakistani game. And I can tell you something about Afghans – if they improve in something the whole of Afghanistan will follow. And we have improved very much. Our team is now ranked 13th in the world.

When we defeated the Pakistan team everyone congratulated us including the President. As an Afghan I am very proud to have beaten the country where I learned the sport. It is like a student against his teacher. The day we defeated the US team was a historical day for Afghanistan. That day there was no news of bombings or war. All of Afghanistan was praying for us. Even the insurgents were praying for us.

There have been matches where we have been so happy that tears came out of our eyes, but the most memorable one was when we got to play in the World Cup. I cannot forget when we played the Afghan national anthem. We were waving our flag and we were crying. Even now I am getting emotional thinking about it. I grew up in the poorest community in Pakistan and I have taken the Afghan Cricket Team to the World Cup. We won the match and also proved to the world that we are peaceful and talented people.

I am proud of myself, my family is proud of me and the whole of Afghanistan is now proud of the Afghan cricket team. Afghans know all the members of the cricket team. People who see us at parties or on the streets respect us. And they look at us like champions. I am very proud that our people know, respect and pray for us.

We have people from all different tribes and provinces in the team. We have cricket agencies in 30 provinces of the country and we have provincial matches. I personally never play for my tribe; I play for the three colours of the Afghan flag. I have gone and visited many countries of the world but I never feel good unless I am in Afghanistan. When I am here I know my country and I feel it. I feel its happiness and its problems.

Now I have resigned from the national team because I want to work to get more young people playing cricket so they stay away from drugs and fighting and hopefully they will be the best players we’ve ever had. I am working on solving the problems we have, like not having cricket grounds or money for equipment. I want to tell the President it is time to do something for our youth.

I have been nominated as the face of peace by UNICEF. I am very happy and I will work for Afghan youth until I die. My message to Afghans is that they are a very talented people. They have hidden talents. We should all unite; the construction and destruction of Afghanistan is in our hands, so let’s get together and make our country.

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  # 002 – Who is the Golf Pro?
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  # 008 – Who is the Bodybuilder?
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  # 014 – Who is the Taekwondo Teacher?

“Instead of getting buried, in the ground the rubbish gets reused and new things are made.

My name is Gul Khan

My job is to collect rubbish for recycling. I moved from Baghlan to Kabul to do this a year and a half ago.
There are many poor people in Afghanistan doing this. I was jobless when I was in Baghlan, but I have a better life now I am in Kabul. I came here to join some relatives who have been collecting rubbish for five years.
We have rented some land to live on. There are 30 of us living and working together. We are all from the same tribe. We share the rent of 25,000 Afs every month. We live here in tents – they are not very good but it is okay for us. Four or five people sleep in each tent. This is what life is like if you are poor. We make just enough money to feed ourselves. In winter it is really hard. We sleep with just a simple blanket. There is no wood or anything like that to throw in a heater. We cannot afford it. To make a fire we burn shoes that we collect and the rubber around power cables – we sell the metal inside.

There is an alleyway where we live. We have put up curtains so that women and children passing by will not see the dirt we have here. We don’t want people to be uncomfortable.

We leave home at 5am and go to the rubbish tip. We get home around 7pm. At night we separate the different types of rubbish into plastic, aluminium, metal. We collect it for three or four weeks until we have a lot and then we sell it to another relative. He will crush the rubbish and then sell it in Pakistan where the big money is. He buys it separately per kilo – for example plastic is 2 Afs per kg, metal 5 Afs, aluminium 12 Afs and shoes 1 Af. Everyday we make around 150-200 Afs each. We make less in the winter when it is snowing and raining – it is very hard to work then, but we are forced to.

My family is still in Baghlan. I have one brother and five or six sisters who are all smaller than me. About 14 years ago my father left to go to Saudi Arabia – it has been four years since we heard from him. We don’t know if he is alive or dead, but we heard he was in prison over there.
I always hoped God would help me become someone good, but I didn’t have time to study and become a teacher or an engineer. My brother and sisters relied on me to bring home money for them to live on. I still hope that one day I will be able to study, but that’s up to destiny. Anyway for now, I can work and support my family. Every month or so, when we have sold all the rubbish I have around 5,000 Afs to take home to the family and they can buy oil and flour and things to feed themselves.

Obviously there are diseases connected with this work. We try and stay clean – we wear different clothes to collect the rubbish and wash when we come home. We are used to it, but there are some who get sick and have lots of problems. I am ill right now. It is a dirty job but we can’t find any other work. I don’t think anyone would enjoy this job. I thank God that my hands and eyes and feet are healthy and I can still work.
Our work is good for our country. We keep it clean. Instead of getting buried, in the ground the rubbish gets reused and new things are made. But there are a lot of people who look down on what we do.
Everyone has big dreams and my dream is that God will help me make enough money not to be dependent on others. I hope to have a better life so that when I have children they can have one too.

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  # 021 – Who is the Phone Card Seller?

“If they ask for my license I tell them ‘what license? My beard is my license.”

My name is Syed Faqir.

I am 84 years old and I have been a taxi driver for 55 years. Before 1953 there were only 16 taxis in the whole of Kabul. Now there are more vehicles in Kabul than there are people. You can find any type of vehicle, any model, all the high class ones.

I leave home at around 8.30am and work till 1pm. I rarely work the whole day, I am not that strong. I stay at home with my grandsons in the afternoon. It’s spring now; we have flowers and vegetables. I water the plants.

Sometimes I make 1000Afs in one hour and sometimes nothing in a whole day. Petrol is expensive; I don’t always cover the cost. The Mafia owns the oil. Prices change all the time – there is no one controlling it. Sometimes they sell water and pretend its gas.

It was 1959 when I married. I have 4 sons and 2 daughters. We all live together. My sons are very nice. We won’t get separated. We have dinner all together. I am so happy with them.

Driving is very dangerous. It’s too hard to drive in this city. If you have an accident, you are gone. You have to drive slowly. But when you drive 120 Km/h, it’s nothing but death for you. It’s all filled with danger. I don’t like it at all but I am forced to do it. I don’t know how to do anything else, I never finished school. But God looks after me and I can handle it.

It’s hard to be a taxi driver. Everyone is a thief – whether they are stealing your food, your taxi or pretending to be a taxi driver and stealing your fares. I have to pay an annual tax of 20,000 Afs but if you have an important family you only have to pay 1,500 Afs. Like the ministers’ children, they all run private taxis with their nice cars. Even Karzai’s car works as a taxi. These guys have 2010, new models. Mine is 1972. It’s such a mess.

The only thing this government has done for us is to bring too many cars and too many televisions. Such thieves, the government, all they know are dollars. Such thieves with such big tummies that they can’t get into a car. They have forgotten God. I’m so sick and tired of it all. If there is a NATO contract to build a road for $10 million, $5 million goes to Mr. Minister and $5 million to Mr. Director.

A minister goes to the toilet and blocks the road and 100,000 cars are stuck. In the past, we used to go to a minister just like that; his door was open. Now we can’t even see the minister on TV. These guys don’t even allow you in their offices. His soldier will hit you with a machinegun.

That is what they made for us. Now that these Americans are here, let them work and build the country. We are stuck in this tragedy. At least they give us money – like the Communists – they loved the country. They fed the poor. They looked after jets and tanks. They were building the country but they were called “Infidels…infidels…” The Americans are infidels too, but nobody cares because of the dollars. Once a Canadian man left $70,000 in my taxi. I kept it until he came back for it three months later.

My best memories are from when Zahir Shah was King. If someone was killed he would bring in the whole tribe or district and beat them or throw them in the river until they told him who did it. But now nobody cares.

In 1973 after the coup against Zahir Shah I saw his family being put on a flight. The police left them with nothing. That scene made me cry for a few days. The day after that I hit 30 sheep on the road because my mind wasn’t calm. I had gone insane after I saw that scene.

A person has two good times in his life – once when he is a small child, people will love him then. And once when he is old – people respect me now. I can do what I want because I am so old. I can even insult people and they will do nothing. Everybody is so nice to me. The traffic police and soldiers leave me alone. If they ask for my license I tell them ‘what license? My beard is my license.’

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  # 028 – Who is the Bus Driver?
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  # 050 – Who is The Traffic Control Kid?
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  # 062 – Who is the Driving Instructor?

“Chips Burgers were originally made by Afghans. We prefer them because they are healthier.”

My name is Mohammad Naim.

I have a juice and burger shop in Shar-e-Naw. I have had this shop since 2003
When I was little I wanted to work in security with my brothers, but then the Taliban took over and it became impossible and I went to live in Iran. I stayed there for about six years. The jobs I did there were very hard, I had nowhere to live and I used to sleep at work. I was so tired all the time.
I returned to Afghanistan 11 years ago to get married. The situation was bad; there was nothing but Mullahs with big beards. However on the day of my wedding the Taliban collapsed. It was an historic day.

We started with a fruit stall but now I have a small shoo, our competitors like Chief Burger have much better facilities. If I had more space we could make pizzas, anything, but for now it’s just juice and chips burgers. It’s a good business though; we sell a chips burger for 40 Afs. A kebab costs 120 so a lot of people come here. Our burgers taste better and kebabs are very bad for your health. They use bad meat that makes people sick. People would rather come here and eat our healthy burgers.
The bread we use is Paraki. Sometimes we even add one more slice of bread to one burger to make people full. We have more customers because we use special spices and herbs. And when you taste it, everyone loves it. That is the reason we are so popular.

We start work at 6am and finish at midnight. Sometimes I start a little later. We don’t have holidays at all because we have to keep the shop going and pay our staff. My brother who works with me takes Fridays off and spends time with his children. My children see this and they want me to do the same, they tell me, ‘you are never off, it’s always shop, shop, shop. Stay here for just one day.’ But it’s not possible.

We have some young boys working with us. My brother gets angry with them sometimes but I never do. I have sympathy for them because of the problems I had when I worked in Iran. One of them is an orphan. He sleeps inside the shop and is there every day and night.

Sometimes people don’t behave well in the shop but we have to tolerate them. We get a lot of drunken people coming in and talking dirty. My boys say we should beat them for it, but I tell them not to mess with them and just ignore them.

The thing is, if we sell enough we would be really joyful, but when we don’t it makes us sad and it feels like we work for nothing. Materials and supplies keep getting more expensive but our customers don’t like it if we put our prices up even a little bit, so it’s difficult to make money.

This is my life. I will work as long as I have the energy for it. I don’t have a fixed job like working for the government, so there won’t be retirement after 30 years. It’s hard for me. I would be good to open a construction company or something and have a better life.

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  # 036 – Who is the Bread Silo Director?

“When I first went to Bamiyan when there were no paper guides, and no two-legged ones either!”

My name is Nancy Hatch Dupree.

I first came to Kabul with the American Embassy many years ago. Then I married Louis Dupree, who was an archaeologist, and ended up spending most of my life here.

I became a Historian by accident, when I was working with an Afghan tour company, Garzandoi. I went to Bamiyan when there were no paper guides, and no two-legged ones either – even though it’s one of the wonders of the world.

So I told the president of Garzandoi, “This is a scandal. You are trying to attract tourists but you don’t have any information about the most important tourist site in Afghanistan.” He smiled and said, “Well, you do something about it.” So I went to all the caves and studied everything, and then I wrote the guide to Bamiyan.

After that I became a guide writer. I wrote on Kabul and then Herat, the north, and then finally, I published a general guide to all of Afghanistan.

Afghans respect foreigners, or they used to. They respect women also. So I had no trouble travelling alone. People were always very, very hospitable and they wanted to help me.

Much of the time I was collecting information for the guidebooks, and my husband was looking for pre-historic caves in the same areas. He also he was my photographer. It brought us closer together.

The Kabul museum is very dear to my heart. To see it looted the way it was during the war was very disturbing.

But now, everything is money, money, money. People give speeches about preserving the culture of Afghanistan. But are they really? What can happen now is far worse than what they did during the war when they were plundering the archaeological sites.

It’s like Khair Khana district of Kabul. It produced three fantastic marble statues of the Hindu Zair period, which we don’t know much about, but now it’s all cement. We will never know what Khair Kharna could have told us. If enough of us raise our voices, we can slow down this destruction of heritage.

The exploitation of minerals is now paramount. Afghanistan needs to improve its economy and there are many people who are looking at the mines as the base of future economic prosperity.

They have blinkers on, so all they see are the trillion dollar contracts. The soil of Afghanistan is so rich in archaeological heritage. There should be something in the contracts that says if you find something, you’ve got to stop. But there isn’t.

We have Mes Aynak, the site of a major ancient monastery, which we didn’t know anything about. The pieces coming from there are gorgeous; they make your jaw drop. It’s very disturbing that this is being excavated as an emergency, because the Chinese have a contract to open up a big copper mine there. They should be doing a thorough excavation over 20 years but they have to do it in two or three years.

In the 1950’s people had a sense of responsibility. They were building a road near Puli Kumri and found a rock that looked funny. It turned out to be something like the Rosetta stone for the Kushan language. It was their responsibility to show it to the archaeologists, which resulted in them and the government changing the route of the road. If they had just said ‘no we’re going to bulldoze this’, we still wouldn’t know about the Kushani language.

Now I am setting up the Afghanistan Centre at Kabul University. It is a collection of 60,000 documents related to Afghanistan, that Louis and I collected over the last four decades.

There wasn’t much preservation of information, and that’s one of the reasons for ACKU, my centre. I’m collecting the things that everybody is working, all the research that is being done now. Because usually what happens, with these big agencies, they bring a reporter or a consultant, pay them big money, and they write a report and they circulate it for a short time and then it disappears. So all that information is wasted. So we collect, or try to collect, all the reporting that is being generated.

These documents are no use unless somebody takes them off the shelves and reads them. So in order to distribute more widely, we’re digitizing them, we are three quarters done now. We put all of this digitized material on DVDs, and we send them to Herat, Mazar, Kandahar, Khost, wherever there is a university, wherever there is the facilities to use it.

I have about 23 people who are working here: the digitizers, cataloguers, finance and IT. All are Afghans, except me. I’m going to be replaced with a very superior Afghan who will be joining us in October. I’m very happy about that.

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  # 056 – Who is the Minister of Culture?
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  # 061 – Who is the Cultural Attache?
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  # 068 – Who is the Conservationist?

“The world has become such a small place and we all really need each other.”

I am a madrassa teacher at Khatam Al Nabi mosque.

Our work at this holy place is related to cultural and religious studies. I am not really involved in politics.
Our work starts at 7am every morning and it goes on until the work is finished. I don’t have fixed working hours, I serve this school 24/7; but the official day ends at 4.30pm.

This centre took six years to build. It was finished in 2008. The 23 years of war in Afghanistan had torn apart the cultural foundations so our founder decided to start a centre to develop the people’s culture. Hopefully when people are culturally richer then can have better financial growth as well.

We have the capacity here for around 1500 faculty students, but we currently have 300. This is because we are quite strict on selection of the students. The students come here for four years to study their religion and culture. But there are many more who come here every day for Quran studies. Our graduates often go into the judiciary or government. The general aim is that they go out into the community. They go to mosques and serve the society there.

Not only do we not take money from our students but we also pay them pocket money. The male section has dormitories here and they are given all their meals. Our support comes from religious people and businessmen.
I personally don’t receive a salary, this is volunteer work. My work is to provide services to people and I really enjoy it. I think I am lucky that God has given me this opportunity to help people with their issues regarding this world and the hereafter. There is a poem that says, ‘Hundreds of angels will kiss the hands that untie a knot in the community; it is not enough for me to serve the people, I will only be happy when I know that God and the people are satisfied with what I do.

I love to see thousands of people coming to us every day and leaving relaxed and recharged. The best memory I have is when the President visited us here and said ‘The day I am no longer President, it will be enough for me if I could build a place like this.’

There was a recent incident where the Quran was burned in our country. I disapprove and denounce this at the highest level you can imagine. Insulting Islam is insulting mankind and all religion. I would never accept it if someone burnt the bible. But this is a test by those who are anti-religion or anti-Islamic to see Muslims reacting badly. I hope the foreigners will not only apologise, but take action against those who did it. We don’t want constant apologies it really doesn’t mean anything. It’s very sad that the foreigners not only insult us but also shoot us from their helicopters.

Despite this I believe that we cannot say, we want nothing to do with England, Pakistan or the US. The world has become such a small place and we all really need each other. There must be a two way connection between us and the rest of the world, we are all part of each other’s destiny.

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  # 046 – Who is the Quran Maker?
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  # 047 – Who is the Shia Imam?

“This is a place where you start life again. It’s maybe a painful place, but it is a place of hope.”

My name is Alberto Cairo.

I work for the International Committee of the Red Cross, and I am head of the programme for the rehabilitation of the disabled in Afghanistan. I used to be a lawyer, but I changed my job and became a physical therapist. I came to Afghanistan by chance; I just applied to work for the Red Cross anywhere and they sent me here.

I arrived in 1990 at the Hospital of the Red Cross for War Victims. We provided patients with physical rehabilitation and with artificial limbs and arms.

There were days when the influx of the patients was so big that you had to work eighteen-hours a day. You had to be fast, and sometimes the quality of your work was not that good. It was difficult. People came in terrible condition, sometimes 200 to 300 patients a day. You had to do triage, distinguish between those who could be helped immediately, those who could wait, and those for whom there was nothing to do. It seemed cruel but it was the best way.

I was scared at the beginning I had never seen so many patients wounded at the same time. It was unbelievable for me, but I felt useful, and that was fantastic. But you can never prepare yourself to work with war victims unless you have done it before

The government allowed us to take Mujahidin casualties across Kabul and through checkpoints, to bring them here and treat them. The hospital was considered a safe and secure place, where the government did not come to arrest people. Once treatment was over, we took the patients back to where they came from. It was a very well equipped hospital – a neutral zone with full respect of the emblem of ICRC.

When the Mujahidin took Kabul in 1992, the Red Cross hospital was handed over to the government. I left the hospital and came to the rehabilitation center. This is where people come for prosthetics, orthopedics and rehabilitation. It was new, and I had to learn many things.

We are still busy today. We have more than 100,000 people around the country using our prosthetics. The quality is good. We try to manufacture everything inside the country to create jobs and to make them cheap.

We now don’t just help war victims. We are open to everybody. People said, “What is the difference between this person paralyzed by polio and this person paralyzed by shrapnel?” You cannot answer because both of them are disabled.

To show everyone that a disabled person is a normal person, we decided to employ only people with disabilities, the cleaners, the gatekeepers, the doctors, the nurses and the orthopedic technicians. We have 700 people working, almost all of them former patients. It’s a policy of positive discrimination. Disabled people must have a chance in life. A disabled person is an asset to society, not a burden.

People who first come to this place say, “Oh my god, look at these people without legs, without arms.” Then they see that we laugh a lot. If you have come here for treatment, it means you have had a difficult experience. This is a place where you start life again. It’s a painful place, but it is a place of hope. The fact that everybody here is disabled creates empathy, a feeling of solidarity between the patients and those assisting them. It is a unique, special place.

We have been through five regimes: the Russian occupation, the Communists, the Mujahidin, the Taliban, and now the present government. We never had any problem with anybody because we are useful. You can come here with a big turban or long beard or dressed in a uniform, but at the end of the day patients are patients.

I have been here for 21 years now, and I am still happy to be here. It’s a fantastic job, to see people crawling, or people coming in very poor condition, and then after one, two, three months, they are walking. They are again moving around with pride. That is so satisfactory, so rewarding. This job gives sense to my life.

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  # 029 – Who is the Fixer?
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  # 064 – Who is the Human Rights Head?

“I pray that every parent will give their daughters the freedom of learning.”

My name is Razia Jan

I am the Founder and Director of the Zabuli Girls High School.

I was born outside Kabul. I left in the 70’s to study, and returned in 2002. My wish was to come back here and work with the women because I know that women and girls have suffered the most in Afghanistan.

The school was built in 2008 in historic Deh Sabz, with a free piece of land from the Ministry of Education. In the 1900s, Amir Amanullah Khan built the first boys primary school here. After almost a century we built a girl’s school, which is amazing.

There were many elders that I had to face. Many times that I came to look at the location, and men said to me, “Please go inside and sit with my wife and have a cup of tea, and we will decide what to do.” And I said listen, if you can’t deal with me, then you are a loser. I am not interested to have a cup of tea with your wife. I am interested in standing next to you and deciding how this place is going to be built.”

After a while they were ok with it, and they could talk to me. We have meetings two or three times a year at the school. There are twenty-five men that come and I am the only woman. I am very determined and I know what’s best for the girls. They now agree with me.

The school is in the heart of community and they look out for the school – who is coming in, who’s going out. They take care because we have a lot of families that come from these communities. One family has four daughters here; another has twelve grandchildren here. These past four years we never had any problems.

We are the only private school that is 100% free. Our school is also number one in record keeping of any school. We have about 370 girls this year. The teachers come from Kabul or were refugees in Pakistan or Iran, where they could not study. They are now in teacher’s training at university, and I pay for them to take computer and English classes so they can teach the students. We also pay their transportation.

My philosophy is to keep the girls in school as long as I can, so the school operates eleven months a year. If I let them go home for three months, they will not return. Every child should have a basic education. If she can do more, that would be wonderful.

I want every woman, every girl to know how to write their name. The first day of school, I teach the kindergarten children how to write their father’s name. They write it one hundred times. When they go home and show their father his name, and the father can’t read or write, it makes all the difference. Talking to their fathers, their uncles and grandparents, they are very proud. It is great for them to see what the child knows.

The girls behave exactly like students in any other part of the world. They are so happy, active, and positive. They want their rights and have started the same thing with their families; they question them and try to stand up for something. In Afghanistan a woman has no place, so this makes me happy and grateful.

I work maybe twenty hours a day, seven days a week. I have a regular job, and I work for my nonprofit foundation, Razia’s Ray of Hope. I also design and make clothes to sell. All the funds go to the school. The board members of my foundation are Afghans and foreigners. Whether I am here or not, this school should keep on going.

I have a five-year old girl, and somebody asked, “What do you want to be?” She said, “engineer” and then she said, “Do you know what an engineer is?” She said, “No, when I become an engineer then I will come and tell you what is an engineer!” My girls have ambition. And I am there to help them. My goal is to help them fulfill their dreams. Hopefully one day some of them will do what they want to. It’s a slow process, one day at a time.

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  # 007 – Who is the Female Army General?
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  # 068 – Who is the Conservationist?

“History has shown that civilisation will grow where there is security.”

My name is Abdul Waseh Najimi.

I work as an architect restoring and preserving old buildings. I work for the Aga Khan Cultural Foundation. I became interested in historical architecture in 1974 while I was studying architecture. After graduation I took some students to Herat where we got involved in a UNESCO project surveying the old city and restoring the palace. I went abroad to do my PHD in the preservation of old Islamic cities.

I started to work in Afghanistan again in 1986 but my work then was not always on historical sites. Before 2002 there was little money and very few restoration projects. I worked with other organisations on things like the development of cities. Throughout this period, every once in a while, there would be a UNESCO project or I would organise something myself which would give me the chance to travel and study historical sites. I went to Bamiyan once or twice and was in Herat for two years from 1993 reconstructing significant sites. In 2002 the Aga Khan Foundation opened an office in Kabul and I started working with them.

I have worked to restore historical mosques, public baths and silk markets in Kabul and Herat. Two of the most important projects in Kabul have been the revival of Bagh-e-Babur palace and the Timor Shah monastery and garden. I first saw Bagh-e-Babur in 2000 during the Taliban time. The garden was completely destroyed and all the surrounding houses were in ruins. When I returned with the AKF in 2002 we did a deep survey and developed a design which can be seen there today. To the greatest extent possible the technical work has been done by Afghans, but AKF naturally wants to work to international standards so we had international advisors and experts to advise us.

Local people have known about the value of historical sites since the 1920s when tourism began flourishing in Afghanistan and many foreigners came here. Unfortunately during the war there were many limitations – poverty was increasing, roads were closed. It was hard to travel to sites and there were very few historical experts in the country. With no one in charge, the people became careless with their history. During war all decisions are quick decisions, and while taking quick decisions one can’t make decisions for the future, so many of our important sites and artefacts were lost. Many of the historical buildings were used for fighting and have been more or less destroyed.

There is very little funding for preservation work. The people who could work on them, engineers and architects, often go to private companies instead where they can get bigger salaries. In order to preserve our history we need to educate the youth. We have to train architects in this field who want to work for cultural heritage. Since 2009 the AKF has collaborated with the Kabul University. I go there regularly to teach architecture students about preservation and restoration to motivate them to have a career in this field.

Security impacts everything and makes it hard to access historical sites or send professional staff. In more insecure places it is hard to make a real impact. History has shown that civilisation will grow in a place where there is security. Where there is peace in an area civilisation will grow, progress will happen and the economy will flourish.

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