Although Bosnia and Afghanistan are very different in geography, size, natural resources, and cultural history, the two countries show certain similarities. As post-war "broken" nations, they show the characteristics of disintegration, chaos, corruption, and overwhelming human need. In both countries, power has devolved to an unacceptably local level so that it is difficult to establish centralized institutions and the concept of the "common good" is lost. The revenge cycle still strongly dominates the thinking of many people, further hindering the construction of a coherent political entity. The post-war situation offers a temptation and a challenge to the "international community." Non-governmental organizations--as well as military ones--tend to surge toward these countries and attempt to fix--piecemeal--the problems. Instead, the international community should move cautiously and intelligently in such highly sensitive areas. A new coordinating agency at the UN level could help systematize, professionalize and prevent duplication or overlap of aid for these countries. Through this agency, personnel could be screened for background, expertise, and training relevant to the great challenges at hand, and tasks could be more adequately matched to organizations with proven track records of successful experience. In this way, an ethics of intervention might be offered, where discipline, sensitivity, know-how, and high interpersonal skills were top priorities.
In Salt Lake City, the Gandhi Alliance for Peace is raising money for the Adopt-a-Team program in Afghanistan. The program matches an American community with an Afghan de-mining team to clear landmines from the heavily mined areas of Afghanistan. We believe that this program is concrete, "doable," and completely devoid of corruption. It has an administrative cost of only 3%. Thus fully 97% of raised funds goes to the de-miners in Afghanistan. If you would like to help, please contact Virginia Delaney, and she will forward this information to us. We have slides and various materials to share with groups in our community.
Dr. Sue Baker