The Lovers (49 page)

1
.   A million afghanis, about eighteen thousand dollars.

2
.   Women for Afghan Women’s website is at www.womenforafghanwomen.org.

3
.

4
.   Article 398 reads, “If a person sees his wife or any of his female relatives in the state of committing adultery, or sharing a bed with another person, and in defense of his honor abruptly kills or injures one or both of them, he is exempted from the punishments of death or lashings, and will be given the punishment of imprisonment for not more than two years.”

5
.   Online video about the lovers by the
New York Times:
“On the Run in the Hindu Kush,” http://t.co/9tJ29wsUqe; “Video Notebook,” http://nyti.ms/1nbHO4q; “Searching for Zakia and Mohammad Ali,” http://nyti.ms/1jIRjRx.

6
.   Several NGOs, including the Aga Khan Development Network (www.akdn.org/afghanistan), have been pouring money into developing skiing in Bamiyan, including programs to train Afghan women in a sport that even Afghan men have never participated in (“female empowerment” programs of almost any nature are guaranteed generous Western funding). It also requires learning how to ski or snowshoe uphill, since there are no real lifts; Afghanistan’s mountains are far too craggy and often too dry, even in winter, to have ever fostered any sort of alpine or snow sports. In the winter of 2014–15, commercial flights by East Horizon Airlines into Bamiyan were canceled for aircraft repairs, though a few foolhardy Western skiers still came along a highway from Kabul that was periodically threatened by Taliban roadblocks.

7
.   The Mountain to Mountain organization’s website is at http://mountain 2mountain.com. See also Molly Hurford,
Bicycling,
Feb. 12, 2015, “Afghan Cycles, Mountain to Mountain, and Pedaling a Revolution,” www.bicycling.com/culture/afghan-cycles-mountain-mountain-and-pedaling-revolution.

8
.   Habiba Sarobi, governor of Bamiyan Province, was at the time the only woman governor in Afghanistan; she stepped down to run unsuccessfully for vice president in 2014.

9
.   That year Ben Solomon would go on to share in the paper’s Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the Ebola epidemic.

10
.   Amina’s case is discussed in detail in chapter 3, beginning on p. 65.

11
.   
New York Times,
Aug. 5, 2010, p. A6, “Portrait of Pain Ignites Debate Over Afghan War,” www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/world/asia/05afghan.html
.
See also
Time,
Aug. 9, 2010, “What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan,” http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20100809,00.html.

12
.   More on Soheila’s case can be found in chapter 14.

13
.   John F. Burns,
New York Times,
Feb. 14, 1996, “Cold War Afghans Inherit a Brutal New Age,” www.nytimes.com/1996/02/14/world/fiercely-faithful-special-report-cold-war-afghans-inherit-brutal-new-age.html.

14
.

15
.   “On the Run in the Hindu Kush,” http://t.co/9tJ29wsUqe.

16
.   Diego Ibarra Sánchez’s photos of Zakia and Ali are in the photo insert. His sunbeam-lit portrait of them is on the book jacket.

17
.   
New York Times,
Apr. 22, 2014, p. A4, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/22/world/asia/afghan-couple-find-idyllic-hide-out-in-mountains-but-not-for-long.html.

6: MYSTERY BENEFACTOR

1
.   For example: The lowest-paid employee at the
New York Times
bureau, a cleaner, makes five hundred dollars a month, the pay of a colonel in the national police. The bureau lost a two-thousand-dollar-a-month Afghan journalist to the Ministry of Interior, where salary supplements underwritten by foreign donors brought his pay as a public-relations adviser to five thousand a month—more than the usual starting salary for that profession in America, but a fortune in Afghanistan, where two hundred dollars a month is considered a livable wage.

2
.   Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR), Quarterly Report to Congress, Jan. 30, 2015, www.sigar.mil/pdf/quarterly reports/2015-01-30qr.pdf.

3
.   SIGAR Quarterly Report, Apr. 30, 2014, www.sigar.mil/pdf/quarterly reports/2014-04-30qr.pdf.

4
.   BBC News online, Mar. 8, 2013, “Zinat Karzai, Afghanistan’s ‘Invisible’ First Lady,” www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-21699353.

5
.   WAW has offices in the United States and in Afghanistan, where it runs an extensive network of shelters and other facilities dedicated to helping Afghan women. See www.womenforafghanwomen.org.

6
.   Alissa J. Rubin,
New York Times,
Mar. 3, 2014, p. A1, “A Thin Line of Defense against Honor Killings,” www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/world/asia/afghanistan-a-thin-line-of-defense-against-honor-killings.html.

7
.   United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees website, “2015 UNHCR country operations profile, Islamic Republic of Iran,” at www.unhcr.org/pages/49e486f96.html.

8
.   Bakhtar News Agency, www.bakhtarnews.com.af/eng/politics/item/241-deadline-for-afghan-refugees-in-iran-will-remain-open.html.

9
.   Human Rights Watch, “Unwelcome Guests: Iran’s Violation of Afghan Refugee and Migrant Rights,” Nov. 2013, www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/iran1113_forUpload_0.pdf.

10
.   Joseph Goldstein,
New York Times,
Dec. 11, 2014, p. A1, “For Afghans, Name and Birthdate Census Questions Are Not So Simple,” www.ny times.com/2014/12/11/world/asia/for-afghans-name-and-birthdate-census-questions-are-not-so-simple.html.

11
.   Western Union also requires a last name; the field cannot be blank. Afghan banks accept the father’s tribal name in that field if it shows up on the person’s
tazkera,
so in Ali’s case he was first name Mohammad Ali, last name Sarwari.

12
.   
New York Times,
Apr. 22, 2014, p. A4, www.nytimes.com/2014/04/22/world/asia/afghan-couple-find-idyllic-hide-out-in-mountains-but-not-for-long.html.

13
.   
New York Times,
Mar. 31, 2014, p. A6, www.nytimes.com/2014/03/31/world/asia/afghan-couple-finally-together-but-a-storybook-ending-is-far-from-assured.html.

14
.   According to a source in the Bamiyan women’s ministry who preferred not to be identified.

15
.   May 4, 2014. p. A10, www.nytimes.com/2014/05/04/world/asia/in-spite-of-the-law-afghan-honor-killings-of-women-continue.html.

16
.   
Time,
Aug. 9, 2010, “What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan,” http://con tent.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20100809,00.html.

17
.   UN Dispatch, 2011, “Afghan Government Cracks Down on Women’s Shelters,” www.undispatch.com/afghan-government-cracks-down-on-womens-shelters.

18
.   Maria Abi-Habib,
Wall Street Journal,
Aug. 3, 2010, “TV Host Targets Afghan Women’s Shelters,” www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704875004575374984291866528.

19
.   
New York Times,
Feb. 15, 2011, “Afghan Official Says Women’s Shelters Are Corrupt,” www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/world/asia/16afghanistan.html.

20
.   At the time the contractor was known as DPK Consulting, but is now Tetra Tech DPK. It is one of a host of private aid contractors, most of them moneymaking entities whether or not they are officially nonprofits; none of them are considered by the United Nations and the NGO community to be independent, charitable aid organizations. They often act as the implementing agencies for government bodies, particularly for the biggest donor in Afghanistan, USAID. See www.tetratechdpk.com/en/countries/11-asia/72-afghanistan.html.

21
.   Literacy among recruits to the Afghan National Police is 10 percent, even lower than the Afghan population’s literacy rate of 15 percent (38 percent among those over age fifteen). See
New York Times,
Feb. 2, 2010, “With Raw Recruits, Afghan Police Buildup Falters,” www.nytimes.com/2010/02/03/world/asia/03afghan.html. Literacy data can be found in the
CIA World Factbook,
“Afghanistan,” online at www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/af.html.

22
.   
New York Times,
Sept. 25, 2010, p. A4, “Afghan Equality and Law, with Strings Attached,” www.nytimes.com/2010/09/25/world/asia/25kite.html.

23
.   
New York Times,
May 26, 2013, p. A10, “Foreign Projects Give Afghans Fashion, Skate Park and Now 10,000 Balloons,” www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/world/asia/western-aid-finances-afghan-projects-from-silly-to-sublime.html.

24
.   Ibid. A trenchant correction was appended to this piece: “An earlier version of this article misidentified the ‘Sesame Street’ character with whom Ryan C. Crocker, the former United States ambassador, was photographed in Kabul. It was Grover, not Cookie Monster.”