Bourj al Bourajneh: Whatever happened to Pauline's people?

(Pictures by Glyn Strong)

Twenty four years ago, a young Hertfordshire surgeon was caught at the epicentre of a war. In her darkest moments she expected to die.

Today, on a bright spring morning, Dr Pauline Cutting and her Dutch GP husband Ben Alofs reflect on that time from the sunny farmhouse kitchen of their rambling Welsh home. This former rectory, surrounded by trees and set well back from the main road, has been a haven to them for 15 years. Their two children have grown up here. A large, cream Labrador grunts and snores in a basket on the floor. The location is peaceful, but the conversation is becoming increasingly animated. We are talking about Gaza, Palestine and the 61-year-old elephant in the room that no-one wants to acknowledge.

Two decades ago Cutting was thrust into the limelight by bloody conflict when she brought the siege of Lebanon’s Bourj al Bourajneh refugee camp to a disbelieving world. Through a makeshift radio/telephone link, set up by one of her medical colleagues, she broke the news of how the camp’s inhabitants were being systematically starved to death. Before the impact of her words had sunk in, images followed. A few photographers and journalists had got into the camp and seen the refugees’ plight for themselves. The situation was desperate. Cutting and her colleagues were eating dogs to survive.

As a volunteer surgeon she was part of a small medical team trapped in the camp and under siege by the Amal militia. Like 80 per cent of those in Gaza today, its inhabitants were dispossessed Palestinians.

Wandering round its gloomy, labyrinthine alleys, ducking under dangerous low-hanging loops of electrical cable , I wonder what went wrong. Why, after the reportage that so dramatically highlighted their plight in 1985, did Cutting’s ‘Children of the Siege’ disappear from the world’s radar?

Of course, Cutting was only a minor player in a political drama that has run longer than The Mousetrap. Her abiding memories are not of the medical challenges, gnawing hunger or daily danger, but the “small acts of kindness” from families who had next to nothing. No artillery rains down on the camp now, nor is it under siege, but the Palestinian community of Bourj al Bourajneh still has next to nothing .

In my memory Cutting is the slim, sharp-featured young doctor with a curtain of long hair, whose features dominated the evening news for a period of weeks during the ‘eighties. Today she is 57 and slightly less lean, but no less passionate or articulate.
As a volunteer with MAP (Medical Aid for Palestine) Cutting spent 18 months in Lebanon, performing emergency surgery in makeshift operating theatres, treating sick and wounded men, women and children.

Against a background of bombardment and sniper fire she and her medical comrades worked tirelessly, as supplies of food and drugs dwindled away. Cutting got head lice, lost so much body weight that she was often faint and watched mothers feed their starving children with grass.
As conditions deteriorated Cutting famously said: “We will stay with the people of the camp until the danger is over. We will remain with them – to live or die with them.”

Many did die. Some lost limbs or, like seven year old Bilal, were paralysed by a sniper’s bullet.
Others just starved. A (Time) magazine report on 23 February 1987 described Bourj as being “on the brink of cannibalism”. Residents had already resorted to eating rats. A Sunni cleric sought clarification on whether it would be permissible to eat human flesh if it became necessary for survival. Eventually the siege was lifted and Pauline Cutting came home.

But the real story didn’t end there and more than 20 years later the camp still exists; it is still dependent on organisations like UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency), NGOs and volunteers. It is still a ‘temporary’ home to people who dream of returning to places that exist only in their hearts and minds.

The journey that took me to North Wales and then Beirut - where many Palestinians still speak with warmth of ‘Dr Pauline’ - was prompted by the aftermath of Operation Cast Lead , the Israeli Defence Force’s three week assault on Gaza , ostensibly to stop Hamas firing rockets into Israel and prevent it from re-arming. It began on 27 December and ended 22 days later.
During this onslaught too, hospitals and medical volunteers came under fire; once again civilians were killed and maimed. Journalists and outraged NGO workers protested, bloggers and social networkers went into print with frenzy. But, paradoxically, it was probably the BBC’s decision not to screen a Disaster Emergency Committee aid appeal that brought the scale of the casualties to mass public attention in the UK. Briefly, thoughts of recession were put aside as Briton’s dug into their pockets to help Gaza’s victims.

At a MAP event in London, to mark the launch of The Lancet’s damning report on Palestinian Health in Gaza and the West Bank, Dr Swee Chai Ang projected a series of images that made her audience wince – the head of a decapitated child, lying in rubble like a grotesque football; a torso, so crudely stripped of limbs by an explosive device that it resembled raw meat; children with skin burned and seared by white phosphorous.

The real cause of this latest humanitarian tragedy pre-dates Cutting’s birth. It is a legacy of the 1948 Palestine War that resulted in establishment of the State of Israel. Celebrated by Jews worldwide the creation of this ‘homeland’ had another, less happy, outcome – the exodus of an estimated 700,000 Palestinians. Some fled voluntarily, intending to return as soon as the fighting ended; others were forcibly expelled. There are conflicting and contested accounts of how many left and why, but they are all deeply disturbing.

UN Resolution 194, passed in 1948, states that Palestinians have a right to return to their homes if they are willing to live in peace with their neighbours. Palestinian refugees want it implemented. Israel is resistant, seeing the possible return of millions of refugees as a threat to its existence. If Israel’s hope was that that the problem would go away as first generation exiles died, or the Palestinians become absorbed into their host countries, it was a vain one.

The Palestinian diaspora extends to Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the West Bank. Sixty years after the event that created them their numbers have grown to over four million; at least 400,000 are in Lebanon – 10 percent of the population - and above 20,000 (officially the population of a large town in the UK) still in Bourj al Bourajneh.

Palestinians refer to their exile as the Nakbah (‘catastrophe’) – an event highlighted in the controversial drama ‘Go to Gaza, Drink the sea’ and Scottish artist Jane Frere’s powerful and haunting exhibition ‘Return of the Soul’. Both claim to be neutral statements about how things are; both have been attacked for being anti-Semitic. It is a subject that polarises opinion dramatically. Even Cutting and Alofs, in a clearly often exercised debate about forgiveness and war crimes, don’t always see eye to eye.

Palestinian children born during the camp siege that Cutting survived are still confined to the square kilometre that contains Bourj al Bourajneh. This foetid shanty town exists within, but apart from, the bustling cosmopolitan city of Beirut; its walls are not physical, but they are very real. They cut Lebanon’s Palestinian refugees off from 80 per cent of the country’s jobs, the freedom to travel, buy property and vote.

In effect, the camp is an open prison. It’s here that I meet another remarkable woman, Olfat Mahmoud from WHO (the Women’s Humanitarian Organisation). An activist, scholar, and vehement fighter for the Palestinians’ Right to Return to be recognised, she was born in Bourj al Bourajneh in 1960 and once worked alongside Pauline Cutting. Apart from overseas work and study trips, she never left.

“In the ‘60s, even as Palestinians we needed a pass to go from one camp to another, there were formal entry points and walls. Now we just have psychological walls. Today there are no checkpoints, but people feel safer inside the camps so they isolate themselves. In summer many Palestinians come here to Bourj al Burajneh, to visit their relatives. Instead of spending money on hotels they stay with their families and buy them TVs and fridges. People do watch the news, particularly during catastrophes, but in real terms, they have no idea what is going on outside, especially with women’s issues; they are not socially or politically aware.”

Smartly dressed and articulate, Mahmoud is not typical of the camp’s women. Through WHO, and in partnership with Lebanese charities like Al Jana (the Arab Resource Center for Popular Arts), her mission is to empower them. I meet her fresh from a meeting with the city’s mayor, in the ‘home’ she grew up in as an ‘exile’.

She’s a busy woman, but she’s also keen to talk about issues that are close to her heart . She’s unapologetic about her views – on Islam, Israel, the Nakbah, and on the plight of the refugee community’s women who suffer unique deprivations.

Mahmoud, who’s studying for a PhD, has just authored a paper[1] on the subject. It examines conditions and coping strategies and makes sobering reading. It is based on Bourj al Bourajneh but has application for all 12 of Lebanon’s camps. The country has the highest percentage of Palestine refugees classified as living in abject poverty and who are registered with the UNRWA’s special hardship programme.

Unlike other refugee populations, the Palestinians do not benefit from the protections and guarantees afforded by the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees. Doubly damned they are anomalies even within the refugee population. UNRWA says: “They do not have social and civil rights, and have very limited access to the government's public health or educational facilities and no access to public social services. The majority rely entirely on UNRWA. Considered as foreigners, Palestine refugees are prohibited by law from working in more than 70 trades and professions. This has led to a very high rate of unemployment amongst the refugee population.”
The WHO workers have to contend with the legacies of tradition, culture and religion and need to tread carefully when dealing with all three.

Mahmoud sighs: “People say ‘Oh it’s a sin to do that!’ but when I ask them to explain why, they don’t know. Usually there is nothing in the Koran to support or explain these beliefs, they are just the products of tradition. “Many men use the Koran to frighten women. With the support of other groups and social workers we hold legal workshops to explain this. We went to the sheikh of the mosque here and said we wanted to see marriage and divorce explained to them properly from an Islamic perspective. There are lots of things people believe in that are not true and it makes their lives difficult. For example when you sign the marriage contract (and most sheiks don’t explain it) there is a question about whether you wish to make any conditions.

“Women can put any conditions they want, but usually they (the sheiks) don’t ask and women don’t know that they have that right. They can say ‘If we get divorced I want my children to be with me’. If the man disagrees then they know where they stand, and can refuse to get married. It is a proper contract, but not widely known about because everything is controlled by men.

“Then some women do know but are afraid or ashamed to ask because they think people will say ‘Even before marriage you think of divorce? What does this mean!’ So they dare not. We try to raise awareness of this. We say ’It is not shame; you need to protect yourself. It is your right.
The sheik here supports this, and he and a female charity worker run a workshop one and a half hours every week to explain these things.”

But with generations occupying the same households, and tradition being a part of the glue that holds them together, change does not come quickly.

Mahmoud is tackling issues that are challenging anywhere; in the closed world of a refugee camp they are intensified both by social problems and by the fact that anything to do with Palestinians seems to cause discomfort in the international community. She confronts both. “We want to reassure the organisations who fear what we do; we are not against Islam, only those people who try to use it. Islam is now always associated with terrorism and, I am being honest with you now, some NGOs are frightened about their future so they start to avoid touching on any Islamic point – but this is wrong. I say by doing this maybe you please western supporters, but you are losing your local community.”

Mahmoud is a true child of the camps, but she is also a rare and strong individual; rooted in Palestinian history she is, by dint of curiosity, hard work and determination, a powerful force for change. “My grandmother died in 2004 and she was 95 years old. Whatever I did she compared it to her life in Palestine, even after56 years. Every time I had a baby she would come and tell me about how she had her children in Palestine, never about her children born here; it’s as if her life here did not count, was not real. I inherited this house from her. It is the biggest house in the camp, but always she would complain and say ‘I used to have a big house, why am I in this sardine tin?’ Her generation were in this frozen state.

“My father was 12 and my mother around 10 when they left: every night we sat around the heater and they would tell us about Palestine - blindly I can describe my village; I have never been there but I can! Really they tell you every detail so always you have this spiritual link. My generation, we learned to fight – not with weapons, but against obstacles.

“The generation born during the civil war in Lebanon were just busy trying to survive. I too was born in a camp but I felt safe – my parents were so calm and they spent time with me. I compare it with nowadays and it’s not the same. Even in spite of the bombing and everything we felt protected. This generation just want to flee, to migrate, to get out.”

Like Cutting, Alofs and all medical staff who work selflessly through the dangers of war and conflict Mahmoud is dismissive of her own bravery but proud of her small triumphs. “I remember once many children had been injured. One girl had lost all her brothers and sisters. She was bleeding badly and urgently needed an operation. Her blood was AB negative, which is rare and we had none and there was heavy bombing . I said ‘Give me an ambulance and blood kit and I will get you blood’ and I went to all the military bases because that is where to find people. I tested all their blood and it was no, no, no - but by midnight I had been successful and managed to bring blood.

“This was in 1981, I was still a student, not even a qualified nurse. But I always believed in fate: if something will happen, it will happen - and that’s a strategy for coping.”

Years later, in July 2006, when Mahmoud was married with four children, she sat at her home near Beirut’s Arab University listening to bombing once again. Her heart was in the Bourj Al Barajneh refugee camp because it has surrounded by a bombardment areas in the southern suburb of Beirut.

“My husband is a director and Cinema photography – he was filming in Syria. I said to my children ‘ I can’t stay at home , I have to get to the camp. You know, people in the camp refused to leave their homes. They said: "we have been refugee once and we don't want to repeat it. Also where to go!" They witnessed 33 days of war - day by day - just ‘next door’. I told my children ‘You stay at home and look after each other, if something goes wrong you go the neighbours’.
“ The airport road was empty apart from my car – I was the only one who was driving on it. It felt so strange. When I got to the camp we tried to organise things. I came every day for a whole month even Sundays.”

Before becoming a community worker Mahmoud qualified as a nurse and clinical trainer, studying in the UK , and Australia, but her returns to Lebanon always seemed to coincide with some kind of conflict. She laughs: “My friends used to say ‘When you travel, let us know please, so we can prepare for an emergency ’ . ”

Mahmoud got back to Lebanon from London in time for the February uprising in 1984 and from Australia for the first camp war. She had previously been working in the Palestinian Red Cross maternity hospital in Sabra camp and initially planned to stay there with a friend on her return. Luckily, because she had to rise early for work, she didn’t. The hospital was destroyed that night.

“It was 6.30, the first day of Ramadan,” she recalls. “My brother, who likes to sleep, was already up, so I asked him what was wrong.”

He told her that two bombs had fallen overnight in Bourj camp but Gaza hospital was damaged. Mahmoud said: “Just Last night I was in Gaza Hospital - Ramallah was Sabra’s maternity hospital, Gaza dealt with surgical cases but both of them are connected and known as Gaza hospital - this can’t be. He said ‘Believe me, everything is a mess, do not go and its not working anymore’.”

They put the radio on to hear reports of more bombing and heavy fighting. ”My mother of course went to the bakery for bread; this is the first thing women do, shop for war!”
For two more hours the family listened to confused reports of escalating violence until her second brother came home. “Why are you not at the hospital’’ he asked her. He didn’t mean the one in Sabra though. Haifa hospital in Bourj al Borajneh, where Mahmoud had been born and where later Pauline Cutting was to work, was full of casualties.

Mahmoud pauses. “He took me there and – oh my God – that is why I later quit nursing. It was dreadful.

“At that time, in 1985, it was not a hospital, just a polyclinic. It had a small first aid room for home accidents and a ward for disabled people. No staff nurse, and just one, young, Palestinian doctor who had qualified in Bulgaria. I felt very sorry for that doctor.” She found casualties piled up - the dead, the dying and those with only minor wounds mixed up together. It was a scene that recalled to her student images of Florence Nightingale, passing through the grim wards of Scutari with her lamp.

Pragmatic as ever, Mahmoud began to organise a triage assessment to prioritise the injuries. The clinic was pitifully ill-equipped to deal with the scale of the carnage. For a month she did “what nurses did not do”- removing bullets and shrapnel, debriding wounds and dealing with gangrene. The body count rose to 17 but there was no morgue . “It was the beginning of summer and getting hot. All we could do to help with the smell was to cover the bodies with lime.”

The Red Cross were allowed to enter just once. In desperation young people from the camp were trained to do simple first aid – prepare drips so that when there was heavy bombing the team was as ready as it could be. Eventually the bodies were buried together, around a memorial statue dedicated, ironically, to the Unknown Soldier.

Mahmoud’s memories of this day are accompanied by the muezzin’s call to prayer that echoes over the rooftops of Beirut. It adds to the poignancy of a recollection that still affects her profoundly.

This first camp war – and the intense period from May to June 1985 – predated significant MAP involvement or Pauline Cutting’s arrival. “There were no doctors during that war “says Mahmoud. “ I remember, one guy was injured in his back, so badly you could see the nerve ends. It was such a painful and sensitive wound. I said, ‘we can’t touch him, just change the dressing’. He had to lie on the floor because there were no beds. ”

His temperature soared and they thought he would die. Eventually, at five o’clock one morning when the snipers took their break, Mahmoud found time to examine him again. The wound was alive with maggots. Using saline applied by syringe, and a debriding knife, the team cleaned and dressed the man’s wounds. They did this again each morning, in the quiet hours when firing ceased for a short while. Against all odds, he lived. And today he is fine. He works in a bank,” she tells me with pleasure.

Eventually Walid, a staff nurse, joined the team which made a huge difference. They performed surgical procedures and dealt with femoral artery bleeding so successfully that doctors from Beirut later asked how they had managed to control it for seven days.

I too am intrigued! Mahmoud laughs. “I used pressure, fear – and ice! And it worked. Sometimes the blood spurted right up to the ceiling, but many of the people we saved are still alive, running around here, in this camp. One man is now in Sweden or Denmark I think - he was injured here (the groin) and all he kept asking was whether his (peals of laughter!) you know, was still working! That is a man. I said ‘you ask this silly question when you may die!’. But it was a bad time.”

“My generation were survivors. Today’s generation see themselves as victims, never knowing what is happening from day to day. And this is a big problem."

But what do they want to survive as, I ask her; as Lebanese citizens? “No, no. I always say this: Lebanon is my second homeland. I was born here but I always look at it as my second home. The right to return is ours whether we exercise it and live in Palestine or not. We should be able to visit it; to have no other nationality, but Palestinian. And the first step is recognition. We know it is a process which means it will take time. It’s not a miracle that will happen within 24 hours, but you can’t ask someone to suffer while you are solving their problem.”

In the short term she believes that the refugees in Lebanon should be given the right to be in the country legally and be given Palestinian passports until details of the right to return are worked out. “At least they should give us this. After 61 years it brings great shame on the world not to have solved the problem.”

Bourj al Bourajneh camp has grown since Cutting and Alofs’ time; not outward, but upward, with rooms tacked on to already unsafe structures. When the refugees first arrived they lived in tents, expecting to leave at any time. Later when houses were built they were still seen as temporary structures; flimsy and cold in winter their thin walls soon displayed cracks and the tracks of running water.

On the roof of Mahmoud’s old home women are now being given the chance to do aerobics. “But first we need to put up screens,” she explains, “because they can be seen from everywhere at the moment.”

Physical exercise is difficult in a cramped warren with no space and little sunlight, in a culture where modesty is important. Inertia, frustration and chronic health problems perpetuate depression, feeding the edgy disaffection that permeates the camp. Another problem is the cycle of domestic violence that occurs.

WHO Youth Co-ordinator Zeina Salhani who works with Mahmoud says “We have to tell the children that a ruler is for making lines, not for hitting – and sometimes we have to tell the teachers also.”

Leaving the camp is like crossing an invisible line. Unlike the brick footprint that describes where the Berlin Wall used to run, Bourj’s boundaries are intangible. Within feet of its perimeter traffic flows, normal life goes on. Travelling by car to meet another former colleague of Pauline Cutting it is hard not to reflect on the irony of how impenetrable invisible boundaries can be.
Dr Mohammad Osman, is Secretary General of the Palestine Red Crescent Society, part of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. The Federation is the world's largest humanitarian organization and its millions of volunteers are active in 185 countries.

Osman is based at Akka Hospital and, like Mahmoud, does not live in a refugee camp. His memories of the camp wars, between 1985-87, are vivid. “Sometimes we got permission to visit the hospitals – and this is how I met Dr Pauline, at the beginning of the war. I met her in Haifa hospital. Later on we became very good friends. We appreciated her and were also proud of her because she remained with us during very dangerous and difficult times, through the shelling of the camp, when there was no food.

“Through her and Ben, who was then a nurse and later became her husband, they made many appeals and through them we got support – medical supplies, medicine and sometimes equipment. During the cease fire we managed to get a generator for the hospital, but the most important thing was the moral support.

Images of events in Gaza were brought to world attention by technology that didn’t exist in the 1980s and without a fragile radio link the outcome of the camp wars could have been even worse as Osman recalls.

“Dr Pauline helped us through the media, by talking on the radio. At that time I was in the Red Cross HQ, where the media were camped – we couldn’t get to her but I talked to her by radio. There were many journalists here and when she talked they believed her – more than us! We had already said that people in the camps were eating grass and rats, but when she said it they believed her.

”The radio was the only way to contact our hospitals inside the camps – Bourj al Bourajneh and Shatilah where Dr Christoferou was. It was his suggestion. We spoke daily about the numbers of casualties, what was needed, all that was going on inside the camp, through this radio.” It was the radio that was to connect Cutting to her parents and then the outside world. “I still have it now!” says Osman.”Not to use – just as a memory.”

The significance of that lifeline for those trapped in the camp is something Osman will never forget. “At that time in all Lebanon there were no rules, nothing. It was chaos” he recalls.
After the camp wars ended he fell in love and, like Cutting and Alofs, married. The friendship forged in desperate time endured. “ Twice Pauline visited me – once with Ben, then with the children. We have photos together, their family and my family.

“After the camp wars we reconstructed our hospitals, field hospitals and primary care centres. Now we have five hospitals distributed around all Lebanon, and nine health centres, all for Palestinians – some inside the camps, some outside. Now we can concentrate on teaching the staff because, you know, during the war we just had to focus on the wounded people.

“Salaries are funded by the Palestine Liberation Organisation; others by NGOs and national societies, like MAP UK. And I must tell you, Dr Swee, from MAP, she was a hero. She drove our ambulance and met Pauline inside the camp. She is a great woman and I respect her like Pauline Cutting; she is fantastic, tiny but strong, very strong.”

Osman concedes that things have got better, despite the psychological problems and depression that afflicts many of the refugees. “Obviously it is much healthier and safer than it was during that time. The hospital has improved a lot, socially life got better, people were able to leave and repair their homes which were destroyed during the camp war. But in general the life of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon is miserable. “I always say to foreign visitors and journalists, there is a big difference, between what you see on the TV what you see with your eyes on the ground. When you see the truth you can express it more.”

“The Palestinian refugees here in Lebanon are deprived of all kinds of rights, human rights, civil rights, but inside the camp they work. And we are very proud of our women, they have sacrificed a lot and keep Palestine in the minds of our children and protect our heritage.”
Can they qualify as doctors? He smiles ruefully: “Of course – if they have money! For example I qualified as a doctor in Moscow.” Like Mahmoud he won a scholarship, something that is now very difficult.

“I was born in Lebanon. I studied in UNRWA schools, but like all Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon we came from Palestine, from the area surrounding the city of Safad.”
Osman is a serious man who chooses his words carefully: “ I’m sure Palestinians will return, maybe not in our lifetime, but one day it is coming, the chance to go back to our homeland. Our village now is destroyed, but they did not build anything there. My father had land and I am not ready to give it to the Zionists. We are not against the Jews. Jews are people like us, but we are against the Zionistic movement.”

Each Palestinian’s experience of exile is different; but when we discuss Gaza all reactions are the same. Osman is quiet. After a deep breath he says “ There are no words to describe it . . . it is unbelievable. Killing the children it is . . . barbaric. Children, women, destroyed in cold blood; what is this! There is no justice in this world.

“The conscience of the British people should go back 60 years . No – more; to the Balfour Declaration in 1917. But let me tell you, when they came to make the documentary about Pauline (reference), on their last day I invited them for lunch. There was a – cameraman. I said ‘Your government is responsible for our Nakbah’ and he said ‘I am sorry Dr Osman. We are here to repair the wrongs of our grandfathers’ and I said ‘OK, I can drink with you now!’ It was a good day.

“We hope the day will come when those who think Palestinians are occupying Israel will know the truth about who occupied whom and how they took our land and would not even share it and have two states. They want to take everything . . . this situation is impossible.”

As I prepare to leave Dr Osman says “Tell the truth; what you see, what you hear yourself about the Palestinian refugees everywhere and especially here in Lebanon because it is the most complicated situation. For instance I am a doctor, but I cannot open my own clinic in Lebanon. We are not asking too much, just to have the minimum of dignity and social and civil liberty. No-one is asking for Lebanese passports, we are ready to live as refugees until there is a just resolution, but we want to feel we are human beings, able to bring up our children without war, and without suffering what we suffered. They have the right to live like any other children in the world, peacefully, to have a good education and participate in building a good society.”

In another part of Beirut, I meet a man whose life is dedicated to supporting that right.
Moatas Dajani, the founder of Al Jana, is a self confessed book hoarder. The fruits of his lifetime love affair with archaeology and other passions line the walls of the room we meet in. He shows me one called Moshe Dayan’s Collection, featuring artefacts from antiquity. “So what makes them Moshe Dayan’s eh? Where did the Israeli General acquire them from?” It is a rhetorical question.

Dajani is a Palestinian who has Jordanian citizenship, but his life is spent networking amongst the organisations dedicated to helping Lebanon’s disadvantaged communities, through creative activities.

A fourth generation of Palestinian children is now coming to terms with the reality of being born with refugee status. They face a political and economic future far bleaker than that which confronted their forebears, and with considerably weakened social and cultural resources to sustain them. Anger, frustration and the question ‘Why me?’ is almost inevitable.

Each year, older community members, who have been repositories of folklore, transmitters of collective memory, and links to the Palestinian past, become fewer. Camp schools concentrate on basic education and are poorly resourced to teach Palestinian culture, history, and folklore – the things that help to build young refugees' sense of identity, and self-esteem. Al Jana’s conflict transformation program has been trying to address this since 1990.

Back at Bourj al Bourajneh I had seen evidence of these efforts and heard from Zaina about the short holidays it brokered. “The last was six weeks ago. We had 141 children and young people. We went to Faria, Jeita to the snow where there is the skiing and then we went to the fun fair, in Beirut. Although it’s only a short distance away in the heart of the city, camp children would never normally visit it. "

There are no gardens in Bourj al Bourajneh. Children of the camp are as much prisoners of its invisible walls as their parents says Zaina. “In the summer we take them to the river. Most of them like nature and whenever we go somewhere where it is green they love it. At the beginning of April we take them to the zoo, because we try to link our outdoor activities with something. We had a project showing them how to use the internet for research. Each child had to research an animal. At the zoo they saw the animal they had researched for real. Then we collected the research projects and made them into a book that will be kept in our library. Now children can learn directly from each others’ work.

“On our last trip we took parents and they enjoyed it as much as the children. The man at the fun fair joked that there should be a sign saying ‘Play Area For Mothers’ as well. Last summer we went to the beach, and a restaurant where they all sat down to eat and they were very, very happy. Without organisations like Al Jana these children would never do these things.”

Dajani believes that marginalised societies are very rich in terms of creative problem solving strategies and very culturally dynamic , even under siege. “There is no welfare state in Lebanon but we have a network of over 66 organisations working with children and youth and much of what we do is based around networking.

“We have four programmes; an active memory programme; an active learning and creative expression programme which uses the arts, like cinema, photography, film and music; since 2006 we have a conflict transformation programme and a youth media programme. So, primarily we are about producing learning materials based on cultural contributions.”

He shows me a project started in Bourj al Bourajneh and Shatila camps in 1998. It looked at issues that were of interest to the camps’ children and how they could express them through photography art, film-making and writing. “It was a four year process during which they made three internationally award-winning films and a publication that has been translated into four languages, which is all their own work - their photography, their art their reflections. It is called ‘I wish I were a bird’. The title is self-explanatory.

But Dajani is a pragmatist. What he – through Al Jana – has achieved is astounding; it even includes the founding of an international film festival. But it’s not without poignancy. One film is called ‘Neither here nor there’ – a touching record of how young Palestinians hoping to escape their prison found rejection in another country which also saw them as outsiders.

The Nakbah didn’t just affect those who left Palestine in 1948. It reached down the years to blight lives of future generations, robbing adults of dignity and self respect, depriving children of a childhood and a future.Richard Cook, Director of UNRWA Affairs for Lebanon, describes a situation of chronic underfunding for decades, particularly the last two. The world’s longest running refugee crisis has notched up a bill of around $10.5 billion since the agency’s inception in 1950.

Olfat Mahmoud believes that the passage of years makes no difference. “The problem of return is not about time or having the space. Of course there is space for Palestinians to return - and not only to Gaza and the West Bank, but to all Palestine. Most people would accept at least acknowledgement of this right, but you can’t keep a people suffering and not knowing what to do just because you have not agreed how to solve the problem!”

Recently a Palestinian embassy opened in Beirut, but Mahmoud says it is too early to say whether it will make a difference to those in the camps. She believes the international community paid attention to the building of the Palestinian Constitution but forget about the refugees.

“As Palestinians we lack any structure or representation in the camps. We are fed up with our situation, but over the years the world has been distracted by so many other situations, in Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Our case is older but it has been set aside.”

The Palestinian refugee situation should have been resolved decades ago. It is one the international community have shied away from repeatedly, engaging only on an ad hoc basis when spikes of military activity, and the ‘collateral damage’ that comes in their wake, make it impossible to look away.

ENDS


[1] “Palestinian refugee women in Lebanon: Conditions and Challenges in Bourj al Bourajneh Camp. A study by WHO, authored by Olfat Mahmoud 2009.

How Veteran's Aid can help the soldiers of misfortune

Words: Glyn Strong                          Pictures: Richard Baker

Many Armed Forces veterans find it difficult to reintegrate into society. Some end up homeless and without hope. For these men and women, the charity Veterans Aid is a life-saver. Glyn Strong visits its headquarters and hostel.

Adrian Eddison-Stone still has vivid memories of the night he became homeless. 'Rough sleeping in the infantry is not the same as rough sleeping on the streets,' the 42-year-old former Coldstream Guards lance corporal reflects. 'I was f***ing scared - not about the future, but about what was going to happen to me immediately. For the first couple of weeks, I stayed around Chelsea Bridge, because it was quiet there. There was no one around to interfere with you.'

Adrian Eddison-Stone, a former Coldstream Guardsman, is one of 57 ex-servicemen currently living at Veterans Aid's New Belvedere House hostel

The son of a Royal Navy fleet chief - 'a hard act to follow' - Eddison-Stone left school aged 16 and signed up for the infantry. After basic training, he joined the Corps of Drums and became involved with ceremonial duties in an environment that seemed a million miles away from civilian life. He served for eight years, finally leaving in 1989 and drifting in and out of various sales jobs.
Two years later, after the first Gulf War had started, he re-enlisted with his old battalion and was soon deployed to Saudi Arabia, initially with responsibility for handling prisoners of war. He found the going hard. 'It was really scary, in the middle of the desert with alerts going off all the time, Scud missiles going over - everything happening so fast.'

Eddison-Stone's was one of the last regiments to return home, and he spent a further four years serving in Northern Ireland, Germany and Bosnia. He got married, but the relationship quickly began to fall apart. 'The girl I married made it clear that she didn't want to be part of Army life.' He made plans to return to the civilian world again, but not in time to save his marriage. He had lost everything - his military family, his wife, he had even become estranged from his brother. With nowhere to live, he spent his first six weeks out of the Army sleeping in his car on Brighton seafront.

Yet Eddison-Stone is one of the lucky ones. While taking refuge at the Passage, a Christian day centre for homeless people in London, he spotted a poster on the wall for the charity Veterans Aid. It runs New Belvedere House, a hostel for the ex-Service homeless in Limehouse, east London. A nondescript building on the outside, the inside of New Belvedere is smart, spotless and more reminiscent of a sergeants' mess than a hostel.

Eddison-Stone arrived last year with just his guitar and the clothes he stood up in. He is now one of 57 military veterans living there. People stay for varying amounts of time, graduating either directly to homes of their own or via the adjacent Rectory, a halfway house made up of communal flats where residents get to experience independence without isolation.

Eddison-Stone becomes emotional when he recalls the reception he received at New Belvedere. 'I can't describe it. I suddenly realised that there was somewhere for me to go. I've seen hostels and this is not like any other. Something about it just shouts, "This is a safe environment".

Someone who shares that view is 55-year-old Martin Riley, the son of a regimental sergeant major in the Royal Engineers. His childhood was spent in Army camps and he admits to enlisting to get some kind of recognition from his father. He worked in bomb disposal and mine clearance; dangerous and exacting work. 'I don't know why - I'm certainly not a hero,' he reflects. 'It seemed exciting at the time, though.' Drugs proved to be Riley's undoing and the start of a spiral into addiction. Today he is off heroin and although he hated the hostel at first, he now describes it as 'an absolute bloody life-saver'.

New Belvedere is the focal point of Veterans Aid, a specialist London-based charity with a rad ically different approach to helping members of its military family. It may be a minor player alongside monolithic institutions such as the Royal British Legion, but it is rapidly becoming the most dynamic driver of change in the battle to honour the military covenant, a historic government pledge, first drafted in the 19th century, to support and provide care to all British soldiers, sailors and airmen and women in return for the sacrifices they have made for their country.

A groundswell of opinion, from the media, senior military figures and politicians, has criticised the Ministry of Defence for abandoning vulnerable ex-soldiers. Last September, the Conservative leader David Cameron spoke out about the covenant in the House of Commons, stating that it was 'an unbreakable common bond of identity, loyalty and responsibility, which has sustained the Army throughout its history. Are we fulfilling it today? I believe we would be very hard pushed to answer "Yes".

An investigation published in March 2007 revealed that more than 21,000 full-time servicemen and women and reservists who had served in Iraq suffered from anxiety and depression as a result of their experiences. A not insignificant number of those end up sleeping rough, and that is something that Hugh Milroy, a former RAF wing commander and military welfare specialist, the chairman of the cross-agency Ex-Services Action Group and the chief executive of Veterans Aid, is not prepared to tolerate. He is a believer in immediate and enduring solutions for all homeless servicemen and women.

The Combined Homeless and Information Network (Chain) estimates that about six per cent of all homeless people are ex-Service. Others speculate that the real figure is much higher, though Milroy has no time for statistics. 'We constantly get the media asking us to confirm its view that 25 per cent of the homeless are ex-Service,' he says, as we chat inside Veterans Aid's modest administrative headquarters near Victoria Station. 'It is almost as if they want this claim to be true and that saddens me greatly.'
What matters to him is the welfare of those who have served their country and now need help to cope with life away from the Armed Forces.

'I get angry when I hear people saying that rough sleeping will be ended by 2012,' Milroy says. 'That's almost laughable. Homelessness is related to poverty and poverty is on the increase in this country. Some of our veterans will inevitably be in that group - so what will the Government be doing for them? They need to do something genuine for veterans to secure their future. No veteran should be forgotten or lost in modern Britain.'

Formerly the RAF's senior welfare specialist, and the architect of its groundbreaking community support network, Milroy earned his PhD researching the causes and prevention of military rough sleeping. The 1,400 or so calls for help that Veterans Aid receives each year come from all over the country; this is not a 'London problem'. Only about 15 per cent of those whom Veterans Aid helps have a history of mental health problems. Soldiers, sailors and airmen and women fall victim to homelessness gradually, for a variety of prosaic reasons.

Kashim Adeniran, an ex-private in the Pioneer Corps, is self-sufficient thanks to Veterans Aid

Causes range from the invisible, such as psychological or behavioural disorders or loneliness, to the highly visible, such as drug or alcohol abuse, family breakdown, poverty or physical injury. Cold and hunger can be the least of a rough sleeper's problems; violence and struggles for existence are commonplace. Milroy explains that he deals with a former Royal Marine who regularly sells his body for sex to fund his drug habit, while Eddison-Stone points out that those on the streets are either prey or predators.

Milroy himself is a 52-year-old working-class Scot who does not mince words. A small man with neat grey hair, a keen sense of humour and a low tolerance for bureaucrats, his studies for a BA in theology introduced him to the subject of pastoral care. After that he joined the RAF, reaching the rank of wing commander in less than 11 years. Milroy served in the first Gulf War and admits that leaving the military was not easy. 'It takes time to adjust, but thank goodness most manage to make the transition successfully - sooner or later.'

On his return to Britain, he led a team of 65 staff providing welfare services to more than 4,000 RAF personnel and their families, and was also responsible for managing the return of those who had served in the Gulf. He has been the head of Veterans Aid since November 2005.

Veterans Aid, which until last November was known as the Ex-Service Fellowship Centres, began life as a canteen and recreation room for destitute ex-servicemen, which opened in Lambeth, south London, in January 1932. Today, Milroy explains, it is unashamedly an operational charity unburdened by bureaucracy or costly overheads.

Milroy manages the charity's website himself to save money. Food, accommodation and new clothes are provided at point of need. What it saves in 'corporate comforts', it funnels directly into practical expenditure to ensure that physical and emotional triage is a given - the 'extras' that go towards restoring the veterans' self-respect and dignity are unquantifiable.

Alongside Milroy, the eclectic Veterans Aid team includes Geoffrey Cardozo, MBE, a former cavalry colonel, John Boyle, a sponsored social worker from the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association (SSAFA), Debbie Langdon, an outreach worker and the wife of a former Welsh Guardsman, plus a military psychiatrist and a barrister who both work as volunteers. The skills blend is diverse and powerful.

Over at New Belvedere, residents come under the jurisdiction of Pat O'Connor, MBE, a no-nonsense northerner. 'We're all afraid of Pat,' Bob Gordon, a reformed alcoholic, says. A former physical training instructor with the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, Gordon, 58, now sells the Big Issue in Covent Garden and lives in the Rectory. His fall from grace is not untypical. After he left the Army in 1990, his 'social drinking' got out of hand. Gordon recalls coming out of rehab to be met by his regimental sergeant major bearing 'a glass of whisky and my divorce papers'. Today he is lithe, upbeat and employed. He is slightly apprehensive about living alone but with IT skills under his belt, a college course in the pipeline and the knowledge that Veterans Aid is there in the background, he is optimistic. His respect for O'Connor is echoed by everyone; many backsliders speak of their shame at having 'let Pat down'. And no wonder: if O'Connor says you are out, you are out.

Milroy tells me that Veterans Aid focuses on three things. 'The first is to have a place where veterans support veterans in a real and immediate way; it is about helping members of our family, the military family. The second is that we are completely non-judgmental. If you are one of us, and something has happened to drive you towards the streets, we will step in to help - regardless of who you are, or what you've done. Thirdly, we are very determined to provide help and guidance on a national basis to veterans themselves or others working with vulnerable and homeless veterans. This is a new role in homelessness prevention and we're already well along that path.'

The human dramas that play out daily in the Veterans Aid headquarters sabotage any chance of an uninterrupted interview with Milroy. He pauses our conversation to take a phone call from a colleague who explains that Eric, an ex-soldier who regularly drops in at Victoria, has forgotten to take his medication and is causing a disturbance in a nearby cafe. Immediately, someone is dispatched to 'sort it out'.

In an adjacent room sits Vincent, who had been explaining to Milroy why he cannot face returning to his family in Africa. Currently of no fixed abode, he was recently discharged from the Royal Navy - not because he failed to make the grade, but because he felt afraid to admit to being homosexual in an environment he found hostile and oppressive. He is tearful, desperate, homeless and broke.

We talk about some of Veterans Aid's other 'clients': John, who has 109 offences involving crack cocaine to his name; Dave, whose smell alone could stop a rocket-propelled grenade in mid-air; Sandy Ulrich, who not long ago was dysfunctionally alcoholic. Most charities would find it difficult to provide these people with practical help - but not Veterans Aid, for whom Ulrich is a singular success story.

After leaving the RAF, Ulrich, a 55-year-old senior aircraftman from Pitlochry in Perthshire, attempted to run a pub, which ended in alcoholism and financial ruin. 'I was drinking a litre and a half of Bacardi a day, seven days a week,' he recalls in disbelief. Now he is not only dry, employed and living independently, but is also one of the mainstays of New Belvedere and one of O'Connor's most trusted assistant managers.

Sandy Ulrich, an ex-RAF aircraftman, now works at New Belvedere where he was once a resident

My chat with Milroy is interrupted by the arrival of Ray, which sparks immediate action. A heroin user whose gaunt face and shabby appearance is instantly recognised on the blurry screen of the video entry system, Ray is admitted quickly; once inside, he collapses. In clear distress, he clings to Milroy for comfort.

There is no lecture, no forms to fill in and no calls to the police - only the most practical questions. 'When did you last eat? When did you see the doctor? Where are you staying?' A bacon sandwich is proffered, followed by a gentle inquisition about his latest failed rehab. Milroy is kind, but honest. 'If you go on like this, you are going to die.'

At the Union Jack Club in Waterloo, a very different members' club for ex-servicemen, the Veterans Aid's chairman and president, Brigadier Johnny Rickett, is telling me about the time, 18 months ago, when he 'lost' half an hour of his life. He had just completed a television interview about the Falkland Islands, where as a lieutenant colonel commanding the Welsh Guards he lost 32 men, when it was as if a switch tripped in his brain.

'I wasn't in the real world. And I still, frankly, don't know where I was for half an hour from leaving my office until my wife came to collect me. I was re-living the Falklands all over again, which I've never done before.'

Disturbed by the episode, Rickett sought help and was advised that his 'condition' was caused by one of three things: lack of breakfast, use of beta blockers, or post-traumatic stress disorder. It was a defining moment. He knew that if he could remain traumatised by events that occurred two and a half decades ago, there would be plenty of others in similar - and much worse - situations. 'I pray for my men every night,' he says. 'If this could happen to me 25 years after the event, I can't imagine what some of them must have gone through.'

The Ministry of Defence acknowledges that a minority of ex-servicemen struggle to adapt to life away from the military, but plays down the problem. 'The majority of people who leave the Armed Forces each year make a successful transition to civilian life,' a spokesman says. 'But we recognise some are vulnerable to homelessness.'

The veterans minister Derek Twigg recently visited New Belvedere House to see the reality of life for homeless ex-servicemen and women trying to rebuild their lives. He was impressed by the support that Veterans Aid provides. 'It is unusual for someone to be homeless after they leave the Armed Forces and the Ministry of Defence goes to great lengths to help the 23,000 people who leave the Service each year to prepare them for their return to civilian life, including finding accommodation,' he said. 'We work closely with all interested charities to both prevent new Service-leavers becoming homeless and to provide an effective safety net for existing vulnerable and homeless ex-Service personnel.'

But what about those who slip through the net? It is 7am, just a few degrees above freezing and barely light. Westminster's street sweepers are still at work while early commuters emerge from Charing Cross Tube station. Inspector Malcolm Barnard and his team of eight officers from the Metropolitan Police Safer Streets Homeless Unit are on their daily 'wake and shake'. Barnard has close links with Veterans Aid and now routinely asks vulnerable homeless people if they have ever served in the Armed Forces. If the answer is yes they are immediately directed towards the sanctuary of Veterans Aid.

We are looking for one man in particular, whose overnight home is nearly always the same stretch of pavement, within easy reach of a McDonald's breakfast. At 7.15 we find him, just south of Covent Garden. A former gunner who served in Korea, Tommy is 74 and an alcoholic. His craggy face is partly obscured by a flat cap and he is huddled inside a sleeping bag. Predictably passers-by give him a wide berth. Barnard nudges him awake to make sure he is all right. Tommy sits up, rubs his eyes and says, 'Good morning,' before taking a quick swig from a near-empty half bottle of whisky and preparing a roll-up.

Although Tommy claims never to have been ill in his life, Barnard is concerned about his health and his safety. 'We need to get you into a shelter; we can't have you out here like this. What about Veterans Aid?' Tommy politely declines the offer and explains that he needs to go for a pee. 'But I'm not telling you where.'

Barnard and his team see many rough sleepers during their patrols and on average one a month is referred to - and helped by - Veterans Aid. However, like Tommy, not everyone is ready or willing to be helped. Not everyone can be helped either. Last year, Veterans Aid provided nearly 20,000 nights of shelter for ex-servicemen and women. Milroy is convinced that with additional funding, it could do considerably more.

Martin Riley, a former bomb disposal expert with the Royal Engineers, said New Belvedere iwas a 'life saver'

Major General Sir Evelyn Webb-Carter, the controller of the Army Benevolent Fund, which provides financial and practical assistance for soldiers, former soldiers and their families, believes that with adequate support Veterans Aid could transform the way ex-servicemen and women are helped. His organisation provides some of Veterans Aid's vital funding and has given it carte blanche to spend whatever it needs on finding beds for veterans who are sleeping rough.

More than 260 British soldiers have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since those conflicts began, and more than 4,000 seriously injured. But Sir Evelyn is 'really worried' about the growing number of 'mental causalities'. He also believes that public support for former soldiers has waned since the beginning of the war in Iraq. As the Services shrink in size, there is no shared experience of war on the home front; the toll taken on those who serve is largely unappreciated. Others agree.

'The fight in southern Iraq or in Helmand is, both literally and figuratively, thousands of miles away from the average person living in Britain,' the shadow defence secretary Dr Liam Fox says. 'Consequently, unless you have a close friend or family member in the Armed Forces, the general public has a reduced interest in the welfare of our troops because the war does not impact on their day-to-day lives.'

Milroy believes that it is essential that the veterans themselves be given a voice. 'The time is right for a national debate about what it means to be a veteran in Britain today,' he says. 'We need to ask veterans what they expect from their country: this shouldn't be the view of any particular ex-Service charity or government think-tank, but the voice of veterans themselves. And then we need a clear statement from the Government about what they intend to do about those needs.'

No one doubts the immense psychological pressure faced by the men and women currently serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, whose lives are constantly under threat for the duration of their six-month deployment, undergoing prolonged fighting for days or weeks at a time. The current operational tempo leaves little time for service personnel to go home and come to terms with their experiences.

And while a report published by King's College London last year suggested that the Ministry of Defence's policy on tour intervals was right, it conceded that the Services' own 'harmony guidelines' (which balance rest and recuperation with deployment) were not always being met. The report concluded that a quarter of those who have served in Afghanistan and Iraq develop mental problems.

Perhaps surprisingly, the number of homeless ex-servicemen has not been swelled by the hundreds of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans suffering from mental trauma. 'We're not seeing evidence of it - yet,' Milroy says, 'but we're well aware that we could do, and we're ready. We find that many people come to us several years after discharge. We are helping people who have served in the Second World War, Northern Ireland, the Gulf and the Balkans.'

Someone with practical and clinical experience of dealing with this delayed trauma is the milita ry psychiatrist Ian Palmer, who left the Army in 2003. Now a visiting professor at the Institute of Psychiatry, he is also a volunteer at Veterans Aid. 'I was attracted to Veterans Aid because it was run by ex-Service personnel and was robust, military in its methods and focused on solving problems. The whole ethos of the organisation is based on respect for self and others and the positive military values of commitment, taking responsibility, persevering under adversity and working together.'

Private Kashim Adeniran, who served for three years with 5th/8th Royal Pioneer Corps, is one of hundreds who owe their new-found self-respect and self-sufficiency to Veterans Aid. He recalls his three years in the corps with pride but admits his transition to civilian life was hard. As the sole proprietor of Midas Touch Metal Polishing, he polishes door furniture and nameplates at some of London's most prostigious addresses. 'This is a safe house,' Adeniran tells me in Milroy's office. 'People who come to Veterans Aid are blessed.'

The Last Commando - General Mohammadzai Khatool

Picture (c) Anastasia Taylor-Lind

“How old am I? Give a guess!” She may be a general in the Afghan Army, its most senior woman and its only female paratrooper, but Mohammadzai Kahtool is not going to tell me her age. Handsome, with black hair and a uniform weighted with honours, she sits behind a heavy wooden desk, surrounded by bright artificial flowers and photographs of her famous exploits.

To reach the General, who is based at Kabul’s Ministry of Defence, several check points and searches have to be navigated. Unlike our own MoD, Afghanistan’s counterpart is like a military camp where armed male soldiers are seen everywhere. One hovers in the background bringing us tea – and later food that General Khatol will eat alone in her office. Curtains are drawn creating an atmosphere of intimacy and gloom, at odds with the bright sunlight and heat outside.
It is hard to imagine this veteran of more than 500 official parachute jumps - and injuries that include a broken neck - ever wearing a burqa or submitting to the restrictions of the Taliban era, but she did. In fact she is fatalistic about many things; brothers killed and a husband dying before their only child, a son, was 40 days old. When I sympathise she shrugs: “Don’t be sorry. It’s OK. This is a temporary life. And it was a long time ago.”

Her own childhood was untypical for a girl in any Islamic country; one in which sport and martial arts featured prominently – she has black belts in Judo, Tae Kwondo, Karate. Unusually, too, she was encouraged by a father and uncle who told her she was “very brave” and should do whatever she was capable of doing. Academically she shone; at Kabul’s Ariana School, then the capital’s Jamal Mena University where she studied law before joining the Army.
“It was always my ambition to join the Army; at that time Afghanistan was a democracy, Najibullah was President – a good , honest man. There were more ladies in training school then, but I always came top,” she adds matter-of-factly. “ Now it’s hard for people in Afghanistan to see a woman the Army.”
“It wasn’t so difficult for a woman to succeed once, but when the Taliban period started they said women couldn’t work so I had to sit at home doing things like tailoring.”

The image of this intrepid woman making ends meet by sewing is hard to come to terms with. “I had a baby and I looked after children,” she explains. “I taught ladies, girls and little boys at home, I wrote and I made drawings.” Again that fatalism: “The most important gift that Allah gives humans is life – he gave us a brain. We should use it, live life to the full and be brave.”
Imprisoned physically at home, her active mind was free. She could no longer jump out of aircraft but during her darkest days she revisited the memory of that exhilarating freedom - and what she could no longer do, she drew picture of and wrote about.

While the General takes a phone call our interpreter, Darwish, points out a hand-written Scroll of Army Discipline on the wall; exquisitely executed, it reveals that calligraphy is another of her talents. “This work, it is very difficult” he whispers. “She has a great skill.”

Returning to our conversation General Khatool explains that although times were hard under the Taliban she never left Kabul to take refuge in Iranian or Pakistani refugee camps like so many other Afghans. “I love my country. I stayed here; I said ‘I’ll die if necessary, but I will stay in my country’.”

She’s been back in uniform for around eight years and although women occupy other senior roles General Khatool is now the only female commando. “There are others who want to be, but there is no capability to train them” she says, touching the cherished parachute emblem like a talisman.

Strangely for a senior military officer she has no English but speaks Urdu, Dari and some Russian as well as her native Pashtu. To have achieved her rank and sustained it is a staggering achievement for an Afghan woman – parachute jumps notwithstanding. The 500 training drops she is credited with are augmented by many hundreds more for sporting and public display purposes; jumping from fixed wing aircraft or Russian M8 and M17 helicopters into tight drop zones.

During the freedom festivities held to celebrate signing of the country’s new constitution she was the only female member of the six ‘Afghan Heroes’ parachute display team that jumped, Koran and flags in hand, into Kabul City Stadium. Pictures of this event join other fading snapshots on her office wall and, between translations, her attention strays to the looped slideshow of other nostalgic moments that flickers across her computer screen.

Undoubtedly she is a heroine and national icon, yet in a curious way she is also isolated; the only one of her kind. This is something reflected in her frequent sorties into the past; perhaps the only safe place for someone who repeatedly insists that she won’t answer any political questions?
Not long after our visit the country’s most senior policewoman, Lieutenant Colonel Malalai Kokar, was shot dead by Taleban gunmen in Kandahar as her teenage son prepared to drive her to work. Like Mohammadzai Khatool she had been the subject of many media reports and was famous throughout Afghanistan for her bravery. The mother of six carried a weapon and had survived several assassination attempts.

In Kabul’s Ministry of Defence, where the male soldiers all carry guns, General Khatool doesn’t even waer a sidearm. She shakes her head when I ask about protection. “I have been threatened,” she admits, but is disinclined to meet gun with gun. In a classic ‘bring it on!’ situation she describes rounding on a would-be attacker with bare arms. Whether brave, foolhardy or stoical it is hard to judge; she is, after all, a formidable martial arts practitioner.
The tough soldier and the fiercely protective mother are different sides of the same coin; when her sister’s husband disappeared leaving her with three children, General Khatool took them in.

She had her own memories of being left alone with no husband and understood the difficulties.
In the dim, artificial light of this over-furnished room we see a proud, intelligent woman treading a diplomatic tightrope. “Educated people are proud of me, but men from poor uneducated backgrounds find it hard to take orders from a woman. During the mujahadeen era men with large beards watched me leap from aircraft in disbelief muttering, ‘She’s magic – or maybe she’s really a man. How could a woman jump from an aircraft’!

“During President Najubullah’s time there were lots of women in the Army, perhaps 10 per cent? Now, I don’t know, much fewer – but whoever has ambition can join and there are many opportunities.”

I explain that in the UK women are not eligible to join the Parachute Regiment or the ‘teeth arms’. “No, really?” she says.”I think we are very lucky then that all positions are open to women! Commandos are the ‘first’, the elite, in every country. I am a very lucky woman in Afghanistan, because I am a general and a commando! ”

Yet there is a paradox here: She confirms that in the Afghan Army men and women undergo similar basic weapons training, military skills and fitness but when we stray into the area of frontline involvement it’s a different story. Even General Khatool with her considerable athletic skills and commando pedigree, has never been deployed operationally.

“I have never been involved in fighting; am a peacekeeper, a sportswoman. I pray that everyone will have peace and health. God gave us the gift of life; it is sweet and sour – beautiful, if only people would understand. Time is golden and we should seize every minute of it, because we will all die.”

Mohammadzai Khatool is a complex women and I’m aware that communication through an interpreter inevitably blunts the nuances of our respective languages. She struggles to convey things that she feels passionate about; between us we navigate the semantic labyrinths of operational security, gender and politics. One minute gentle, wistful and confiding – the next strident, and authoritative, she is a woman conscious of just how many forces are at play in this interview.

We take a break while our cups are refreshed. Suddenly there is a commotion outside the window; shrieking and raised voices. With surprising speed General Khatool and the soldier serving our tea rush out of the room, closing the door behind them. We are told to stay put.
After some moments a sheepish trio of women are women are brought in.

Earlier in the day Latifa, Basira and Fawzia had professionally frisked us and searched our bags for weapons. Then we were potential assassins; now we are the General’s guests. There is reluctance to explain the cause of the ‘incident’ but Darwish perseveres. The security post has indeed been breached it seems; not by terrorists posing as western media . . . but by a mouse.
I am urged not to make much of this incident but as the three female soldiers prepare to return to their post Latifa makes the universal ’hands apart’ gesture to indicate the size of the rodent. “She is saying ‘I think perhaps it was a rat’ ” Darwish translates.

Sitting informally on the settee with me as our time comes to a close General Kahtool becomes more philosophical: “Most countries see Afghanistan only as a really dark place, somewhere where there is no education, and life is very hard; but we have Afghan braveness, our hearts are big. We really want our country to go forward and we will fight for that. We have patience.”
So should Afghan women look to an Army career?

“My message to Afghan women is this; to be a good mother first, look after your babies and children while they are growing up because they are the future. Secondly Afghanistan must be rebuilt. Women should not forsake the house, but when they go out they should show men what they can do. It’s not about whether a woman wears a burqa, but whether she has courage.
“Our people need to join together; they should build factories to provide work and rebuild our country, but in the right way. In most other countries what is life about? A mother brings children into this world with hope, she looks after them, cares for them - but in Afghanistan life is nothing. Someone just walks outside and there are suicide bombers.”

Picking up on this recurring theme of instability and fear of movement I try one more ‘political’ question before we part and ask if she feels NATO/ISAF troops are making a positive contribution to her vision of a better Afghanistan. General Kahtool smiles and I am told politely: “She cannot answer this question.”

Policing the Poppy

Eleven hours after retiring from his post as Head of The Serious Organised Crime Agency’s Tactical Firearms Division Dave Wright, 50, was on a plane to Afghanistan, bringing 31 years experience as a British policeman - and looking for a “last great adventure”. He ‘retired’ as a Superintendant; today he works at the most basic levels to support and develop Helmand province’s fragile police force.

As the man charged with mentoring the Counter Narcotics Police - Afghanistan (CNP-A) Wright’s daily battle isn’t about bombs, bullets and airstrikes. It’s about creating a force for law and order that people can trust and respect. In Helmand that means seeing that police officers are paid, literate, trained, drug-free . . . and equipped with uniforms.
He says: “Nothing could prepare you for working in the Afghan environment, it doesn’t matter how much you read or what people tell you – until you come out here you can’t begin to understand the country, the people and the conditions they live in.
“I had the opportunity to do something completely different to my old job, but still use all the skills I had learned over a long career. Some of my former SOCA colleagues would like to follow me, many are curious - some think I am mad!”
And it’s a view his wife of 23 years, Christine, has some sympathy with, although she, too, was a career police officer: “We weren’t keen on the idea of him going at first. It was an important year for the girls with University and GCSEs coming up. I suppose you could say we weren’t exactly supportive! And we thought, why there; why Afghanistan?”

With 8,000 troops in Afghanistan the UK is the second largest military contributor to the international community’s efforts in the country and the second largest bilateral donor. International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander, talking recently about the move from stabilisation to state building, praised the soldiers and civilians, like Wright, who are involved in that process. He said: “They take those risks in pursuit of one shared mission: to help Afghans to secure, govern and develop their country, for themselves.”

And the last seven years have seen real progress towards that goal as Wright explains: “We have recently had huge successes with opium recoveries. In the last month we recovered 750kgs, 1,600 kgs, 1,420 kgs and last week another 650 kgs. These were by British Army-mentored Afghan patrols operating in the desert. The prisoners and samples of the narcotics are flown back to Lashkar Gah where they are collected by the CNP-A who interview and process them through the criminal justice system. The remainder of the narcotics, and the smugglers vehicles, are then blown up by explosives to ensure they are destroyed.

“ Last week the CNP-A operating in Lashkar Gah City raided a house and recovered 48kg of pure heroin together with over two tonnes of precursor chemicals in a drugs laboratory. It takes 10kg of opium to manufacture 1kg of heroin. This was an example of intelligence-led policing - a totally Afghan initiated and led operation. “It is things like that which make it all worthwhile.”


Squaddie graffiti, scrawled on the inside of a suffocatingly hot portaloo at Kandahar Airfield says: “Afghanistan is an illusion caused by lack of drugs and alcohol”. And while it may not rank among the most uplifting of sentiments about Afghanistan – it does reflect certain truths about the country.

The irony is that while there is definitely a lack of alcohol (the British military bases are ‘dry’ in every sense of the word) the surrounding countryside suffers from no shortage of drugs.
Adjacent Helmand Province produces up to 90 percent of the world’s heroin. According to Wright a number of the police are drug ‘users’ of some description. He says that until recently 6ft cannabis plants grew on the doorstep of many police posts and corruption was rife.
This sounds depressing, but Wright is upbeat and optimistic. Aided by his mentoring, root and branch reform of the force is well in hand and he claims with authority that the CNP-A are “100 per cent clean.”

They are also 100 per cent male.

Helmand has a police ‘tashkeil’ or establishment of 2,000 - just six of them are women. There would have been a seventh, trained as a counter-narcotics specialist, but she was kidnapped on Lashkar Gah’s east-west Highway 601 earlier this year and murdered. Her assassins cut her throat, in front of her son, and then they shot her in the face.
Like many other women who put their heads above the parapet in Helmand, she had received threats and warnings, but with 90 per cent of her training completed, she was determined to finish it.

Wright, who hails from Washington, Tyne and Wear, and still bears traces of his North East accent, is reluctant to talk about her. It’s a painful issue. “She was a very brave woman, but don’t take it from me; ask her colleagues.”

The role of Afghan women in the world of counter narcotics is new. “We’re helping to move the Counter Narcotics Police from a static, reactive role to one that is intelligence led,” he explains. Historically featuring only in the poppy harvesting process, women also appear on the drugs landscape as addicts or prisoners. In both roles they are largely victims of poverty, fear and a male dominated society. Now operating as police officers and prison guards they are beginning to become part of the solution as well as the problem. But there’s a long way to go.

It is a cultural paradox that while male officers are unable to search women for arms and drugs, Afghan men discourage the recruitment of females who could fulfill this role. Wright introduces me to one of Lashkar Gah’s best female officers who has had singular successes and is keen to tell her story. “It was at a checkpoint, a year and a half ago. One woman had an AK-47 under her clothing (burqa) and 250 rounds of ammunition. Another had a grenade and explosive material. This lady tried to attack me, and then she bit me!”

A wrist is offered, showing scars of what are unmistakably teeth marks.
I was asked not to name the officer and no photographs of she or her colleagues were allowed. We met at a literacy class. Joining the ANP provides access to education as well as income, something the women particularly value.

Wright comes from a household of women: his wife, Christine, is also a retired police officer; the couple’s daughters Amy, 18, and Sophie, 16, are used to his absences. “He’s always worked away,” says Christine. “I suppose we’ve become very independent – but we knew that if there was a problem he could always come home.
He is supposed to work a rota of six weeks on and two weeks off, but it doesn’t always work out that way and there are inevitable trade-offs. “He came home on (GCSE) results day, but that meant he wasn’t able to be here when Amy went up to university,” says Christine .

“When I was with SOCA I worked in London during the week, traveling from Durham to Kings Cross on a Monday morning and returning for the weekend,” explains Wright. But ‘coming home’ from Helmand is a bit different. “I fly by RAF helicopter from Lashkar Gah to Camp Bastion, then by C130 Hercules to Kabul, then a flight to Dubai, then an Emirates flight home. It can take 5 or 6 days to get in and out – they are epic journeys!”

Another downside for his family back home is the fear. “We worry every time something comes on the television news” admits Christine. “Just recently there was something about a suicide bomber infiltrating a police unit and until we found out where it was, it was difficult.”
Wright’s admiration for the brave Afghan women taking on the difficult role of policing in Helmand is obvious.

“They travel to work in burqas” he explains. “When I first arrived I asked about uniforms. They said they would be proud to wear uniforms, like female police officers in Kabul, but they had never been offered any.”

The police command posts are like small forts and although the women are not armed, the men they work alongside are. Wright arranges for us to visit one and, with the obligatory armed guards, we leave the military base to meet two female officers on duty.
It ends in frustration; despite painstaking arrangements to catch them on shift, neither is there. Wright although clearly annoyed, is unfailingly diplomatic.

These check points, east and west of Lashkar Gah, are unprepossessing. Men with glazed eyes and ill fitting uniforms share a room with sacks of potatoes, RPG launchers, AK-47s - and a single wooden crutch resting against a wall .Yet in the last 12 months more than 1,000 members of the ANP have lost their lives fighting for their community and to gain some respect for their tarnished profession.

The rewards are poor and the risks considerable. The country’s 82,000 police are a popular target for militants; less well armed and trained than the Army, they travel in small groups in hostile territory.

In 2008 the numbers killed nationally represented half the size of Helmand’s entire establishment. Earlier Wright has admitted how much he would love to see a ‘bobby on the beat’ system in Helmand, but with police officers responsible for many crimes, and public signs urging people to report mistreatment at checkpoints, it will take time to build trust. Or what Douglas Alexander describes as both short-term stabilisation and long-term state-building.
Minister for Education Hanif Atmar described Afghanistan’s four great problems as narcotics, poverty, insurgency and weak governance. The UK, currently the lead nation of the Helmand Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) of which Wright as a EUPOL officer works alongside, is actively involved in addressing all these issues.

DFID is the lead UK Department on development; it has provided £7.2 million since April 2006 to support the implementation of projects to provide immediate and visible benefits to the people of Helmand. And increasingly it is being recognised that specialists like Wright have a unique contribution to make. Engagement with the local community is a key element of counter-insurgency which cannot not be won by force and ‘quick impact’ ventures alone. Douglas Alexander said: “They have brought much-valued civilian skills to the job . . . of identifying immediate priorities with the local population. Their military colleagues are not only providing reassurance for local communities by patrolling areas that have been subjected to attacks and criminality, but also working with civilians to train hundreds of Afghan soldiers and police to take charge of security themselves.

These Afghan-led operations, acting on Afghan intelligence, are making real headway in improving security for local citizens.” It’s this element of the job that give Wright most satisfaction. He describes its rewards as ”Seeing the Afghan Police achieve spectacular results through their own efforts, witnessing their will to learn and understanding that the average CNP-A police officer wants to do a good job, wants to have the respect of the public and despite all the obstacles in his way still attempts to achieve this.”

Wright walks a tightrope Helmand, as do so many of the British civilian and military staff involved in long-term reconstruction. Offend cultural sensitivities and you are back to square one. Several times I see Wright reign-in impatience, but he is an experienced copper supported by an MBA and ears of experience on regional and national special squads.
He’s been at the top of his profession in the UK – here he argues patiently for women officers to be allowed to fill in data-capture forms and get their wages on time. Does he miss anything I wonder?

“Obviously my wife and family. And when you have had a bad day at work a pint of beer always helps!” he observes wryly. Helmand is dust-bowl dry in the summer and despite having air-conditioned accommodation, the heat is energy sapping.

Sickness is a constant headache for UK troops and civilians and before each meal at Lashkar Gah diners, without exception queue to wash and then sanitise their hands. Food is good and plentiful, but the hygiene regime is strict.


One senior civil servant who has been in Helmand for a year tells me that while the issues are “massively complicated” she is “continually optimistic”. “The national drug control strategy is a good thing and an integral part of establishing the rule of law.”
British military units have also been involved in drug raids, but that is not their primary role. Earlier this year Royal Marines from 40 Commando destroyed a drugs factory in the Upper Sangin Valley along with 1.5 tonnes of morphine base. The operation’s purpose was to deny Taliban groups a possible safe haven and to prevent them regaining the ability to mount attacks against the town of Sangin.

But in terms of enduring reconstruction, Wright echoes Douglas Alexander; it is about enabling Afghans to do things for themselves.
The HQ of Lashkar Gah’s counter narcotics unit is sweltering; most of the time there is no electricity. This is not unusual. There is not enough oil or diesel for the vehicles and no cash to repair the broken window in the detention cell. Computers with English keyboards gather dust until Dari/Pashtu replacements can be found.

Helmand Province’s drugs busters have no body armour and travel in soft-skinned vehicles. An IED recently destroyed the front of one but left the occupants unscathed – they were lucky. If it had been travelling faster they would all be dead.
Wright takes me to the office of Colonel Abdul Qadir, a genial, bearded family man who offers melon and thanks me for my interest in his problems. Somewhere in this compound 142 kilos of heroin are secured - the fruits of a recent raid in the Marjah area of Helmand
Outside he has shown us sacks of chemicals used in the process of heroin production, drums and tanks confiscated from a home laboratory.

This is heartening in a region where many people believe that the police are corrupt. The basic wage for an officer is $100 per month, rising to $130 for a sergeant. There is no pension scheme and no medical insurance for those injured on duty. Later Wright points out an officer who was shot through the neck and side only a week earlier. He is not in uniform but is attending police literacy classes that attract a further $20 a month “as an incentive”. The entrance and exit wounds below his hairline are healing well, but plain to see.

Wright explains how rigour is being injected into the training system through introduction of an eight week Focused District Development course. It teaches standardised police skills, law, ethics, survival training and use of equipment. (It also guarantees that those with a drug problem go cold turkey for two months!) All ranks go through the process.

The opium-centric economy has made Helmand unstable and unsafe. The vicious circle of poverty and fear is perpetuated by narco-traffickers who advance money to farmers to buy seeds, then guarantee farm-gate purchase of their crop. Wheat, chillies or other legal crops would be just as easy to grow, but the dangers of getting them to market, paying bribes on the way and securing a buyer make them hazardous and unattractive alternatives. Building a strong police force won’t solve anything overnight – but it’s a significant step in the right direction.
Wright’s tour was fixed term, but Afghanistan gets under the skin. Will he stay I ask? “That depends very much on my family. I have a one year contract and I am now more than two thirds of the way through it. However I feel I have now reached a position where I have gained the trust of the local Afghan Police and the results I am achieving now are by far and away greater than in my first 6 months. Continuity and trust is vital in this policing environment.”

Doing time in Kabul

Zaraf Shan is a career policewoman, mother of six and the senior female officer at Kabul’s new Prison/Detention Centre. At 42 she is slim, attractive and well groomed; no hijab covers her glossy chestnut hair and in terms of both running a tight ship and presenting a modern image, she literally ‘wears the trousers’.

Any lingering fears that this relatively new jail will conjure up images of ‘Midnight Express’, or even Kabul’s own notorious Pul e Charkhi Prison (described as “a slaughterhouse” during the period of Russian occupation) are soon dispelled as Zaraf introduces us to what can only be described as a model detention centre.

The new facility was handed over by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), to the Afghan Ministry of Justice, in January 2008. As Zaraf show us around it seems that there are no ‘no-go’ areas; cell doors are open or ajar but still she knocks briefly before entering. The rooms are large, lined with bunk beds and bright soft furnishings; they are en suite, have televisions and as we speak to the women, young children play at their feet.

Zaraf’s own children provide a bond with the women many of whom hardly qualify as criminals by UK standards. Most are Afghan but 32-year-old Numthip is from Thailand. “You must speak to this sister,” urges Zaraf, putting a friendly arm around Numthip’s shoulders,” she speaks some English.” How are things here, I ask? “Much better than Bangkok I think!” grins Numthip.

Other women have been incarcerated for leaving their abusive husbands - one very elderly lady admits to murder. The 'victim' was her husband.

“Sister” is not a word usually used in Afghanistan about women who have fallen from grace, but we hear it again and again in the prison. After declining offers of tea from the inmates I return to Zaraf’s office where she starts to look at her watch; it is weekend and she wants to get home to her family.

Female prison guards in Kabul are drawn from the ranks of the ANP (Afghan National Police) in which Zaraf has served for 18 years. Her husband is also a police officer and she never wanted to be anything else. “From childhood” she repeats to make the point, “it was my dream. It is a very hard job for a woman, but my family support me and so I don’t feel the problems so much. I love police work and if you want to do something very much you never get tired of it.”

Trading her police uniform for a burqa during the Taliban era was the hardest thing she has ever done. “ I wasn’t sure if I would ever be a policewoman again; we were almost without hope. I will always remember after they left seeing thousands of people on the streets again. I thought, ‘What’s going on here?’ and I cried with happiness under my burqa.”

Today Zaraf is responsible for 15 staff managing security in the women’s prison, patrolling, looking after administrative issues and looking for ways to make things better. Four doctors are attached to the prison and the women have access to advice on birth control, female health, STDs and hygiene training.

She has lived through turbulent times; I wonder what her hopes are for her own daughters? She is emphatic: “I want her to be anything that she wants to be. I know how upset I would have been if I could not have been a policewoman. Freedom is the important thing.”

ENDS