Gathering Strength:. Peggy Kelsey

amazingly successful. Within one season and with no outside help, opium production fell by 99%. Close local monitoring and eradication, as well as threats and the actual public punishment of both farmers and village elders who allowed poppy cultivation, all worked together to stop production.

      However, only poppy cultivation was banned. Due to a glut on the market, the price of opium had dropped so low that huge amounts were stockpiled, awaiting the better price that was quickly generated by the ban. The Taliban taxed the transport of opium, not production, so trafficking continued to provide the bulk of their income.

      The Taliban were also interested in making money from a proposed oil pipeline to run from Turkmenistan down the western edge of Afghanistan, through Pakistan, and on to the Arabian Gulf. Unocal, a California oil company, and an Argentine company, Bridas, competed for the concession. Unocal had the advantage because US and international recognition of the Taliban government, necessary for pipeline funding, would accompany its contract. US President Bill Clinton was about to grant that recognition until American feminists, moved by Afghan activists speaking out in America about the Taliban’s harshly misogynistic rule, cut him short.

      However, the Taliban didn’t become America’s enemy until late 1997, when al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden met with the Taliban leadership and persuaded them of his world view. In 1998, the Taliban expressed a willingness to expel bin Laden in exchange for US recognition, but by 1999 that window had closed.

      On October 7, 2001, the US and the "Coalition of the Willing" began to drive the majority of the Taliban into Pakistan, partly in retaliation for the infamous 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center and US Pentagon. The allies oversaw the establishment of a new civilian government. However, fighting continued in the southwest, and slowly the Taliban has re-infiltrated the country and is making a comeback. They are not the unified group they once were. In addition to new factions within the Taliban, independent but allied groups such as the Haqqani Network have gained prominence.

      On December 5, 2001, Hamid Karzai became the US-backed president of the Afghan Transitional Administration. Karzai was welcomed by many Afghans because he didn’t have blood on his hands from the civil war. Urbane, fluent in six languages, and well-educated, he came from a prominent Pashtun family. His popularity eroded as he brought human rights-abusing former warlords into the government, was unable to control increasingly widespread corruption, and began to backpedal on women’s issues. He won two popular elections, although the second was contested due to irregularities. Karzai is still President as this book is being readied for publication in the summer of 2012.

      When the history of twenty-first century Afghanistan is written, women will be seen to play a much bigger role. But perhaps the most important Afghan heroes will be the many unheralded mothers who bring up their children to respect women and value their importance.

      An old-city street in Taloqan, provincial capital of Takhar Province.

      Peggy's Story

      The Afghan Women’s Project came about by accident. Fourteen Afghan women visited Austin, Texas, on a US State Department-funded tour to get a first-hand look at American civil institutions. I was invited to a reception for them.

      Alan Pogue’s¹ photographic gallery, housed in a century-old Victorian converted girls’ school, hosted the gathering. Alan had visited Afghan refugee camps and his dignified, elegant, black-and-white portraits evoked gut-wrenching awareness of the refugees’ trauma and misery.

      But the actual Afghan women at the event made an even stronger impression on me. They were so different from the media’s portrayal of Afghans as helpless victims. Some appeared gentle and delicate; others, feisty and strong. Some seemed energetic and extroverted; others, tired and shy. At one point Alan stood on his grand staircase and talked about some of the images. I turned and saw one of the Afghan women quietly crying. Others had tears rolling down their cheeks as they recalled events and re-experienced their grief.

      The uniformly somber images, the diversity of the women, and their tears struck me like lightning. I suddenly wanted to go to Afghanistan and bring back a broader, more complete picture of Afghan women. Rather than simply raising awareness of tragedies, my goal would be to capture women’s struggles and successes through their own eyes. Alan’s portraits portrayed a truth, an important one, but only part of a reality that also encompasses many other sides of life. As a professional photographer who had lived in the Middle East, and has connections in Afghanistan, I saw I could provide a more complete picture of their lives.

      As a child growing up in the south and mid-west I never intended to travel outside the United States. I saw my country as a huge, beautiful, diverse "world" that could take a lifetime to explore. As for the rest of the world, I didn’t know much about it except that it was scary out there.

      Only as an adult have I learned to appreciate that my "normal" middle class upbringing was quite uncommon. My father, a Korean War veteran, spent his career climbing the ladder of a wood preserving company. Each promotion took us to a new part of the US and taught me to adapt to new surroundings. My mother seemed content as a housewife, raising their three daughters, until the day I came home from my sixth grade science class and shared a "fact" I’d just learned. She told me it was untrue, and began to think that she, with her science-oriented home economics degree, could do a better job than my teacher. And she did; she became a middle school science teacher and later a high school guidance counselor.

      I grew up a tomboy, inhaling TV adventures such as "Rin Tin Tin," "Lassie," and "My Friend Flicka," featuring kids going outside their normal boundaries, solving mysteries, and outwitting bad guys to save the day. These kids (and their amazing animals!) did things their own way and became heroes.

      Yet my actual life was prosaic. I was an obedient teenager. I started college in 1969 at Ohio’s Miami University and, not knowing what else I wanted to do, studied to be a teacher like my mother.

      When a social work professor lectured in one of my classes, I realized for the first time that what excited me about teaching was the one-on-one relationship with young people, and that I’d be more likely to find that in social work. At the end of my sophomore year I transferred to the social work program at Kent State and began summer school. Not incidentally, Kent State was only 35 miles from Cleveland and my boyfriend, Thom.

      In mid-summer, two students came into my class to talk about that fall’s exchange program to Iran. Two days later, Thom broke up with me. Heartbroken, I looked at him and spat, "Well, then, I’ll just go study in Iran!"

      I’d only wanted to make him jealous and regret his decision. But Thom was a serious yoga student. "Do you know how close that is to India? You have to go." Suddenly, I was considering it….

      That weekend I drove home and sat at the kitchen table with my parents, who were footing my college bills. "I’ve got something to tell you and something to ask you." They sucked in their breaths, bracing for the worst. "Thom and I have broken up." Huge exhalations; they were obviously delighted and relieved.

      "And?"

      "I want to go study in Iran." Then I launched into my spiel. After conferring, they agreed. Looking back, I can see that they were calculating that 35 miles separated Kent State from Cleveland, where Thom lived, while 6000 miles separated Cleveland from Iran. Also, the exchange was a university program and therefore should be relatively safe.

      As I was leaving the next morning to return to school, my mother gave me a look of exasperation and asked, "Why can’t you go someplace normal like Europe?"

      Iran