Now available at Amazon.com!
Review by Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, authors of “Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story”
In his inspirational book, Peace Moon over Afghanistan: Ordinary Citizens Try to Stop a War, Ralph Lopez presents the true story about why he was compelled to help “ordinary” Afghans suffering from four decades of war. His journey connecting to the soul of Afghanistan surprisingly started at Ralph’s job in Harvard Square. While working as a salesman he was assisting a customer named Najim, an Afghan who was a graduate student at Harvard. That chance encounter led to a deep friendship that bonded Ralph to Najim’s crusade to help his fellow Afghans regain their sovereignty. It was when they realized that the greatest problem facing “ordinary” Afghans was lack of employment; they knew just what to do. Ralph and Najim created an innovative and inexpensive jobs program. But as they attempted to activate the program that Afghans so desperately needed, Ralph came up against a shocking cause for the program’s difficulty getting up and running. The American political establishment had no interest in making this simple and effective program come to life for “ordinary” Afghans. In writing Peace Moon over Afghanistan, Ralph is delivering a critical message to Americans; “ordinary” Afghans today are suffering far more from misdirected American policy than any other cause. This is a message that “ordinary” Americans need to hear over and over again and must never forget!
Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould are the authors of “Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story,” “Crossing Zero: The AfPak War at the Turning Point of the American Empire” and “The Voice.” Visit their websites at invisiblehistory and grailwerk.
Amazon.com description:
A stunning photojournal of two friends' quest for a deep understanding into what is really going on today in Afghanistan. This book goes beyond the American media stereotypes and shows the Afghan people as they really are, up close, in day-to-day life: peace-loving, poor, and caught in an international chess game. The author probes the question: if most Afghans want peace, why is there still war? And after hundreds of billions of dollars in US military spending, why are Afghans still among the poorest people in the world, combating heart-breaking levels of child malnutrition, rampant hunger, and unemployment? The authors' investigation shows that, although there is corruption on both sides, the lion's share is where one might least expect it: among US and Western contractors more concerned with enriching themselves than helping rebuild the country. This contributes to a vicious cycle of war for which the Pentagon and the US government is most responsible, but which, it turns out, is very profitable for some. This is ultimately a story of hope. Of a future for humanity without war.
Epigraph:
Save for madmen, none should come visit my resting place
If a sober one should approach somehow
Tell him to quicken his pace
For the sane know nothing of love
- Rahim el-Ham, Inscription on a tombstone
CHAPTER ONE
I met Najim at a job in Harvard Square where I was working as a salesman, as he was beginning his graduate school program at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. As verification for a routine transaction I needed a copy of his passport. He gave it to me. I opened it. "Afghanistan." Wow. This guy is from Afghanistan.
Maybe it was that my son-in-law had just joined the Army. He had already shipped out to Afghanistan and come back, and would probably ship out again. I had missed Vietnam, too young for that war and too old for Iraq. A lucky generation. But I had been a peace activist all my life. Those people you see holding signs and marching whenever a war breaks out, that was me. I had always thought of war as the most senseless, futile, unjust, vicious and barbaric enterprise known to man, where the wrong people always get hurt and the truth, as they say, is the first casualty. My dad went to the Vietnam War, and came back with a strange reluctance ever to talk about it. Knowing my dad, a rational and thoughtful man, my sense was that it was the stupidest thing he had ever seen, and something best left buried and forgotten.
Whatever the reason, at the time I met Najim I was feeling that I had to do something. There was a war I had to stop. It was a stalemate, no, worse than a stalemate. It was getting worse. The year was 2009, and after a period of peace, casualties were rising on both sides. Taliban attacks were increasing.
I had heard that no one really liked the Taliban. They really did cut off hands for stealing. For many crimes there was only one punishment: death. There was very little street crime under the Taliban. I found myself talking to Najim as if he was an old friend, pouring out my thoughts about the situation in his country. I wanted to go there, see things, find out what was really going on.
"You can go," he said. "Anybody can go. It's an open country. Just ride around in taxis."
Lights went on in my head. Personally I thought the US should not be there. We had gone in after bin Laden, stupidly let him slip away, thanks to orders from the Bush White House, and now we should go home. 1
"Anybody can go to Afghanistan," Najim was saying, standing in the cellphone store where I worked, with a view of Harvard Yard just across the street. "There are no laws stopping you."
I hesitated. This was shaping up as a chance to put my money where my mouth was. But Afghanistan was a war zone.
I just wanted U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, quickly. I had a personal stake. Family. I did not want to helplessly worry about my daughter becoming a widow at a young age. I was the father. The father is supposed to make things alright. I thought after Vietnam there would never be a war like that again, a quagmire. Now here it was, and all the mistakes of previous generations seemed to be happening all over again. Had we learned nothing? Besides, I thought, how could anyone go through life without trying to do at least one great thing? I would try to find out what people were missing about this worsening mess, find out what perspective was missing. Find the magic bullet, and tell the world.
1. See CBS 60 Minutes interview with Special Operations soldier "Dalton Fury," October 2, 2008, "Elite Officer Recalls Bin Laden Hunt."
FROM CHAPTER THREE
As we prepared to land in Kabul, I remembered the words of a couple of US Army soldiers on their way back from Iraq, on a flight to El Paso, near where my parents lived. I sat with them and heard them chatting. One mused aloud during bad turbulence and a somewhat hairy landing, "at least no one's shooting rockets at us."
Steps were rolled up to the Kam Airlines plane on the tarmac. As we emerged I saw two men standing on either side at the bottom of the stairs, wearing dark suits, sunglasses, and earpieces. They were looking hard at every person stepping off the plane. There were no smiles. They were all business. I stood myself up straight and thrust out my chest, like a boss. It wouldn't do to quail before men like these. As I walked past I felt their eyes hard on me, doing whatever job it was theirs to do.
As a Mexican-American, I was in an unusual position. I fit in well, in terms of appearance, with the population, this black-haired, walnut-skinned, people. I could travel and even walk about without
attracting attention, as long as I kept my mouth shut. I spoke not a word of the language and even if I did my accent would give me away. I was at little risk for a kidnapping, unless I was stupid. I would see what I could see and mind my hosts and Najim, and not take any crazy chances.
Almost immediately after setting foot on the tarmac I heard the unmistakable, deep-throated thwok- thwok-thwok of a military helicopter overhead. I looked up and saw the big camouflage-colored machine, rising and dipping over a mountain. Even though I had grown up on military bases, it was different to know this was the opposite port, one of the places all those aircraft were headed to. I was at the farthest edge of the empire. Over here was the pointy end of the spear. This is where the guns were all loaded, and manned by nervous men.
The sky was an other-worldly blue. I had found a sky which in 2009, was still untainted by heavy pollution. The heavy thwok-thwok-thwok receded into the distance.
I wasn't in Kansas anymore.
CHAPTER FIVE
The first thing I did when I checked into my guest house, the Park Residence, was to explore my window which faced onto the street and had a narrow, balcony-like ledge outside it enclosed by plexiglass. I practiced crawling out the window. I stood on the second floor ledge and looked down, judging what kind of distance it would be for a jump, in case I wanted to get out in a big hurry. Almost a year later, this very guest house was the target of a Taliban attack, in which nine guests were killed, including an Italian diplomat, a French film-maker, Afghan police officers, and Indian nationals. I read that the attackers went room to room kicking down doors and rolling in hand grenades, and shooting anyone they saw.
But aside from men with automatic rifles or machine-guns posted everywhere, at hotel entrances, at the entrances of shops or on random corners, it did not really feel like a war zone. You got used to seeing the guns. Guards and soldiers lounged casually in metal fold-out chairs and chatted with passersby, and my brown Mexican skin and black hair blended in spectacularly well. No one gave me a second glance.
The room was clean and sparse, a twin bed in a corner and a writing desk. The water coming out of the tap and shower in the small, modern bathroom was hot and clean by Afghan standards, although you still could not drink it. I would be brushing my teeth with Sprite if that’s all I could find, and drinking only bottled water or canned soda. I kept my mouth closed tightly under the shower. In countries like this just one exposure to a pathogen can turn a trip into a nightmare of cold sweats, cramps, and never being more than a few steps away from the bathroom.
My host, the head of the organization which had brought Najim and me here to talk about making jobs in Afghanistan, was a tall man who had been a Mujihadeen against the Russians. He had done well in business abroad after the Russians withdrew. He had now returned to his country to help the rebuilding. He and his organization were part of the civil society, not affiliated with the government, doing the real work of rebuilding the country. The man, whom I will call Hakim, had built a non-profit, entirely Afghan- run, which worked in the most remote parts of the country, building modest homes, winterizing existing homes against the brutal Afghan winter, building schools, planting trees, and all kinds of projects which, in contrast to the foreign NGOs, (non-governmental organizations,) actually made struggling, poverty- stricken Afghans' lives better. As opposed to the US “reconstruction,” which was virtually non-existent.
Even in Kabul where the security situation was stable, many roads were mud pits in the rainy season, the city lacked a sewage system, and buildings were pockmarked with rocket holes and were in shambles everywhere from 40 years of war. There was no shortage of work to be done in Afghanistan.
This was the puzzle. After nearly ten years of US occupation, despite the spending of a few billion dollars each year on what were supposed to be reconstruction projects, the life of the ordinary Afghan was miserable. Malnutrition was everywhere, especially among children. The streets were filled with children begging for food or money to buy food. At every traffic light, children ran up to car windows saying "I'm so hungry," and bony shoulders and thin wrists confirmed underweight bodies.
I was haunted by the image of a little girl in the Marwais Hospital clinic in Kandahar, in film footage taken by The International Council on Security and Development, a think tank working in conflict zones. The film, taken in 2007, shows a little Afghan girl in the late stages of starvation, sitting upright, ribcage showing, arms and shoulders all skin and bone. She rocked back and forth, something starving children do in one phase, to release endorphins to counteract the pain of organs shutting down, and the body eating muscle for calories. Outside, convoys of fabulously nourished, if tired and frightened, American soldiers went about their business fighting the Taliban. The contrast was stark, shocking, and obscene.
Then, in the winter of 2012, an intrepid New York Times reporter confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt some heartbreaking news from the refugee camps in and around Kabul, where thousands of people lived in tents with no heat during the brutal Afghan winter. At least 22 children under the age of 5, including many infants, had frozen to death in the night, in one camp, Rod Norland confirmed, who went to see with his own eyes the tiny bodies and to talk to the parents. Without heat, the parents' bodies and the blankets they owned could not keep the babies warm enough, as, already malnourished, body heat was lost rapidly. With much more body mass, an adult holds more heat, and has more to lose before hypothermia sets in. Tiny bodies lose their heat in a fraction of the time.
It did not help that the children had no warm winter clothes, which were expensive, or many warm blankets. The world, for once, was outraged, as the BBC and then other outlets picked up the story. How could this happen in the middle of a place where the US was spending upwards of $2 billion a week on war matériel? In Kabul, not some remote province? One Afghan politician, at least, manned up and said he had no excuses. He, and his government, had failed. But that would not bring back 22 dead babies, including an infant whose father said of him, he never knew what it was like to be warm even once in his life.
One reason for optimism in this world is that there are times in history when people show greatness, and are pricked by the collective conscience into action. One of these examples of greatness I saw was a result of a few emails put out to people I by now knew in the Afghan ex-patriot community, and people I have come to call Friends of the Afghan People, many Americans and others I met from around the world, who came to support our work, in different ways. These people heard our arguments and wanted help for ordinary, poor Afghans, which was most Afghans.
In short, a few weeks after a few inquiring emails asking if anyone knew of any way we could help, people and small organizations had kicked into action and raised five tons of winter baby clothes, blankets, and supplies, and with the help of one particularly generous man, a Mr. Myron D. Stokes, an American air cargo businessman, we even had a cargo plane which would be waiting on a runway to fly it all over to Kabul. The pilots had volunteered for the mission into the war-zone, jumped at it. I had never been so moved in my life as I watched it all unfold. If I had helped trigger this, even in a small way, I could feel my life had meant something after all, even if I died tomorrow.
We named the cargo of gifts after the youngest baby who had frozen to death in the camp, Ismail. Ismail's Flight. One month old. Never warm a single day in his life.
Now available at Amazon.com!
Over 100 stunning color photographs, of Afghanistan and Afghan daily life!
Review by Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, authors of “Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story”
In his inspirational book, Peace Moon over Afghanistan: Ordinary Citizens Try to Stop a War, Ralph Lopez presents the true story about why he was compelled to help “ordinary” Afghans suffering from four decades of war. His journey connecting to the soul of Afghanistan surprisingly started at Ralph’s job in Harvard Square. While working as a salesman he was assisting a customer named Najim, an Afghan who was a graduate student at Harvard. That chance encounter led to a deep friendship that bonded Ralph to Najim’s crusade to help his fellow Afghans regain their sovereignty. It was when they realized that the greatest problem facing “ordinary” Afghans was lack of employment; they knew just what to do. Ralph and Najim created an innovative and inexpensive jobs program. But as they attempted to activate the program that Afghans so desperately needed, Ralph came up against a shocking cause for the program’s difficulty getting up and running. The American political establishment had no interest in making this simple and effective program come to life for “ordinary” Afghans. In writing Peace Moon over Afghanistan, Ralph is delivering a critical message to Americans; “ordinary” Afghans today are suffering far more from misdirected American policy than any other cause. This is a message that “ordinary” Americans need to hear over and over again and must never forget!
Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould are the authors of “Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story,” “Crossing Zero: The AfPak War at the Turning Point of the American Empire” and “The Voice.” Visit their websites at invisiblehistory and grailwerk.
Amazon.com description:
A stunning photojournal of two friends' quest for a deep understanding into what is really going on today in Afghanistan. This book goes beyond the American media stereotypes and shows the Afghan people as they really are, up close, in day-to-day life: peace-loving, poor, and caught in an international chess game. The author probes the question: if most Afghans want peace, why is there still war? And after hundreds of billions of dollars in US military spending, why are Afghans still among the poorest people in the world, combating heart-breaking levels of child malnutrition, rampant hunger, and unemployment? The authors' investigation shows that, although there is corruption on both sides, the lion's share is where one might least expect it: among US and Western contractors more concerned with enriching themselves than helping rebuild the country. This contributes to a vicious cycle of war for which the Pentagon and the US government is most responsible, but which, it turns out, is very profitable for some. This is ultimately a story of hope. Of a future for humanity without war.
Epigraph:
Save for madmen, none should come visit my resting place
If a sober one should approach somehow
Tell him to quicken his pace
For the sane know nothing of love
- Rahim el-Ham, Inscription on a tombstone
CHAPTER ONE
I met Najim at a job in Harvard Square where I was working as a salesman, as he was beginning his graduate school program at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. As verification for a routine transaction I needed a copy of his passport. He gave it to me. I opened it. "Afghanistan." Wow. This guy is from Afghanistan.
Maybe it was that my son-in-law had just joined the Army. He had already shipped out to Afghanistan and come back, and would probably ship out again. I had missed Vietnam, too young for that war and too old for Iraq. A lucky generation. But I had been a peace activist all my life. Those people you see holding signs and marching whenever a war breaks out, that was me. I had always thought of war as the most senseless, futile, unjust, vicious and barbaric enterprise known to man, where the wrong people always get hurt and the truth, as they say, is the first casualty. My dad went to the Vietnam War, and came back with a strange reluctance ever to talk about it. Knowing my dad, a rational and thoughtful man, my sense was that it was the stupidest thing he had ever seen, and something best left buried and forgotten.
Whatever the reason, at the time I met Najim I was feeling that I had to do something. There was a war I had to stop. It was a stalemate, no, worse than a stalemate. It was getting worse. The year was 2009, and after a period of peace, casualties were rising on both sides. Taliban attacks were increasing.
I had heard that no one really liked the Taliban. They really did cut off hands for stealing. For many crimes there was only one punishment: death. There was very little street crime under the Taliban. I found myself talking to Najim as if he was an old friend, pouring out my thoughts about the situation in his country. I wanted to go there, see things, find out what was really going on.
"You can go," he said. "Anybody can go. It's an open country. Just ride around in taxis."
Lights went on in my head. Personally I thought the US should not be there. We had gone in after bin Laden, stupidly let him slip away, thanks to orders from the Bush White House, and now we should go home. 1
"Anybody can go to Afghanistan," Najim was saying, standing in the cellphone store where I worked, with a view of Harvard Yard just across the street. "There are no laws stopping you."
I hesitated. This was shaping up as a chance to put my money where my mouth was. But Afghanistan was a war zone.
I just wanted U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, quickly. I had a personal stake. Family. I did not want to helplessly worry about my daughter becoming a widow at a young age. I was the father. The father is supposed to make things alright. I thought after Vietnam there would never be a war like that again, a quagmire. Now here it was, and all the mistakes of previous generations seemed to be happening all over again. Had we learned nothing? Besides, I thought, how could anyone go through life without trying to do at least one great thing? I would try to find out what people were missing about this worsening mess, find out what perspective was missing. Find the magic bullet, and tell the world.
1. See CBS 60 Minutes interview with Special Operations soldier "Dalton Fury," October 2, 2008, "Elite Officer Recalls Bin Laden Hunt."
FROM CHAPTER THREE
As we prepared to land in Kabul, I remembered the words of a couple of US Army soldiers on their way back from Iraq, on a flight to El Paso, near where my parents lived. I sat with them and heard them chatting. One mused aloud during bad turbulence and a somewhat hairy landing, "at least no one's shooting rockets at us."
Steps were rolled up to the Kam Airlines plane on the tarmac. As we emerged I saw two men standing on either side at the bottom of the stairs, wearing dark suits, sunglasses, and earpieces. They were looking hard at every person stepping off the plane. There were no smiles. They were all business. I stood myself up straight and thrust out my chest, like a boss. It wouldn't do to quail before men like these. As I walked past I felt their eyes hard on me, doing whatever job it was theirs to do.
As a Mexican-American, I was in an unusual position. I fit in well, in terms of appearance, with the population, this black-haired, walnut-skinned, people. I could travel and even walk about without
attracting attention, as long as I kept my mouth shut. I spoke not a word of the language and even if I did my accent would give me away. I was at little risk for a kidnapping, unless I was stupid. I would see what I could see and mind my hosts and Najim, and not take any crazy chances.
Almost immediately after setting foot on the tarmac I heard the unmistakable, deep-throated thwok- thwok-thwok of a military helicopter overhead. I looked up and saw the big camouflage-colored machine, rising and dipping over a mountain. Even though I had grown up on military bases, it was different to know this was the opposite port, one of the places all those aircraft were headed to. I was at the farthest edge of the empire. Over here was the pointy end of the spear. This is where the guns were all loaded, and manned by nervous men.
The sky was an other-worldly blue. I had found a sky which in 2009, was still untainted by heavy pollution. The heavy thwok-thwok-thwok receded into the distance.
I wasn't in Kansas anymore.
CHAPTER FIVE
The first thing I did when I checked into my guest house, the Park Residence, was to explore my window which faced onto the street and had a narrow, balcony-like ledge outside it enclosed by plexiglass. I practiced crawling out the window. I stood on the second floor ledge and looked down, judging what kind of distance it would be for a jump, in case I wanted to get out in a big hurry. Almost a year later, this very guest house was the target of a Taliban attack, in which nine guests were killed, including an Italian diplomat, a French film-maker, Afghan police officers, and Indian nationals. I read that the attackers went room to room kicking down doors and rolling in hand grenades, and shooting anyone they saw.
But aside from men with automatic rifles or machine-guns posted everywhere, at hotel entrances, at the entrances of shops or on random corners, it did not really feel like a war zone. You got used to seeing the guns. Guards and soldiers lounged casually in metal fold-out chairs and chatted with passersby, and my brown Mexican skin and black hair blended in spectacularly well. No one gave me a second glance.
The room was clean and sparse, a twin bed in a corner and a writing desk. The water coming out of the tap and shower in the small, modern bathroom was hot and clean by Afghan standards, although you still could not drink it. I would be brushing my teeth with Sprite if that’s all I could find, and drinking only bottled water or canned soda. I kept my mouth closed tightly under the shower. In countries like this just one exposure to a pathogen can turn a trip into a nightmare of cold sweats, cramps, and never being more than a few steps away from the bathroom.
My host, the head of the organization which had brought Najim and me here to talk about making jobs in Afghanistan, was a tall man who had been a Mujihadeen against the Russians. He had done well in business abroad after the Russians withdrew. He had now returned to his country to help the rebuilding. He and his organization were part of the civil society, not affiliated with the government, doing the real work of rebuilding the country. The man, whom I will call Hakim, had built a non-profit, entirely Afghan- run, which worked in the most remote parts of the country, building modest homes, winterizing existing homes against the brutal Afghan winter, building schools, planting trees, and all kinds of projects which, in contrast to the foreign NGOs, (non-governmental organizations,) actually made struggling, poverty- stricken Afghans' lives better. As opposed to the US “reconstruction,” which was virtually non-existent.
Even in Kabul where the security situation was stable, many roads were mud pits in the rainy season, the city lacked a sewage system, and buildings were pockmarked with rocket holes and were in shambles everywhere from 40 years of war. There was no shortage of work to be done in Afghanistan.
This was the puzzle. After nearly ten years of US occupation, despite the spending of a few billion dollars each year on what were supposed to be reconstruction projects, the life of the ordinary Afghan was miserable. Malnutrition was everywhere, especially among children. The streets were filled with children begging for food or money to buy food. At every traffic light, children ran up to car windows saying "I'm so hungry," and bony shoulders and thin wrists confirmed underweight bodies.
I was haunted by the image of a little girl in the Marwais Hospital clinic in Kandahar, in film footage taken by The International Council on Security and Development, a think tank working in conflict zones. The film, taken in 2007, shows a little Afghan girl in the late stages of starvation, sitting upright, ribcage showing, arms and shoulders all skin and bone. She rocked back and forth, something starving children do in one phase, to release endorphins to counteract the pain of organs shutting down, and the body eating muscle for calories. Outside, convoys of fabulously nourished, if tired and frightened, American soldiers went about their business fighting the Taliban. The contrast was stark, shocking, and obscene.
Then, in the winter of 2012, an intrepid New York Times reporter confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt some heartbreaking news from the refugee camps in and around Kabul, where thousands of people lived in tents with no heat during the brutal Afghan winter. At least 22 children under the age of 5, including many infants, had frozen to death in the night, in one camp, Rod Norland confirmed, who went to see with his own eyes the tiny bodies and to talk to the parents. Without heat, the parents' bodies and the blankets they owned could not keep the babies warm enough, as, already malnourished, body heat was lost rapidly. With much more body mass, an adult holds more heat, and has more to lose before hypothermia sets in. Tiny bodies lose their heat in a fraction of the time.
It did not help that the children had no warm winter clothes, which were expensive, or many warm blankets. The world, for once, was outraged, as the BBC and then other outlets picked up the story. How could this happen in the middle of a place where the US was spending upwards of $2 billion a week on war matériel? In Kabul, not some remote province? One Afghan politician, at least, manned up and said he had no excuses. He, and his government, had failed. But that would not bring back 22 dead babies, including an infant whose father said of him, he never knew what it was like to be warm even once in his life.
One reason for optimism in this world is that there are times in history when people show greatness, and are pricked by the collective conscience into action. One of these examples of greatness I saw was a result of a few emails put out to people I by now knew in the Afghan ex-patriot community, and people I have come to call Friends of the Afghan People, many Americans and others I met from around the world, who came to support our work, in different ways. These people heard our arguments and wanted help for ordinary, poor Afghans, which was most Afghans.
In short, a few weeks after a few inquiring emails asking if anyone knew of any way we could help, people and small organizations had kicked into action and raised five tons of winter baby clothes, blankets, and supplies, and with the help of one particularly generous man, a Mr. Myron D. Stokes, an American air cargo businessman, we even had a cargo plane which would be waiting on a runway to fly it all over to Kabul. The pilots had volunteered for the mission into the war-zone, jumped at it. I had never been so moved in my life as I watched it all unfold. If I had helped trigger this, even in a small way, I could feel my life had meant something after all, even if I died tomorrow.
We named the cargo of gifts after the youngest baby who had frozen to death in the camp, Ismail. Ismail's Flight. One month old. Never warm a single day in his life.
Now available at Amazon.com!
Over 100 stunning color photographs, of Afghanistan and Afghan daily life!
