خداحافظ (xodâhâfez): War, Afghanistan, and the Environment

The woman who watches my children during the day while I am away at work (spreading the word about SoGES and environmental sustainability) is from Afghanistan. I have felt very blessed to find someone who is open to sharing her deep roots to her culture with my children- my 3 year old can speak about 10 words in Persian, and instead of chicken nuggets and french fries for lunch, she regularly has basmati rice with raisins. When I have the chance, I always like to talk to her about her life before America (they came over when Russia invaded Afghanistan in the 1970s) and her culture. Recently she went back to visit her country- to attend the wedding of her son- and as she discussed her trip, you could see sadness behind her eyes. She did not speak much of the war, and the family she has lost, which I’m sure contributed to her heartache, but of how the landscape had so drastically changed from the beautiful green country she remembers from 40 years ago.

This story struck me again this week as the first case study for SoGES’s Educating for Sustainability, Peace and Reconciliation: Managing the Conflicts of Human Needs and Place with Finite Resources Research Working Group came across my desk. In the study, Connecting the Dots of Sustainability, Diversity, and Violence: The “Canaries” in the Afghanistan “Mineshaft,” an article written by Joshua Frank for Truthout, is quoted as describing the clear but neglected connections between the running wars in this region, their devastating impact on the environment, and how seriously the future has been already compromised. Frank writes: “Natural habitat in Afghanistan has endured decades of struggle, and the War on Terror has only escalated the destruction. The lands most afflicted by warfare are home to critters that most Westerners only have a chance to observe behind cages in our city zoos: gazelles, cheetahs, hyenas, Turanian tigers and snow leopards among others. . . As bombs fall, civilians are not the only ones put at risk, and the lasting environmental impacts of the war may not be known for years, perhaps decades, to come.”

For me, it is one thing to read articles that describe the never ending impacts of war on both the human and environmental condition, but it is another to have it described by someone who is truly connected to the devastation.

I feel that the work the Educating for Sustainability, Peace and Reconciliation: Managing the Conflicts of Human Needs and Place with Finite Resources Research Working Group is doing is critical to providing another level of understanding to the devastation war can take on a country, their culture, and their people. Our environment is such a part of who we are and when that is destroyed - as quickly and in such a destructive manner as war - what does that do to the psyche of an entire culture?

The Research Working Group raises other important questions:

Where are the environmental activists on these issues of war and violence? When will the diversity advocates connect their arguments to the larger issues of biodiversity that underlie all life? How can the advocates for peace and reconciliation broaden their base and build bridges to both the environmental and the multicultural movements?

When my daughter waves خداحافظ (xodâhâfez - goodbye) to the cheetah at the Denver Zoo, these thoughts will resonate with me...another way of viewing the destruction of war, and its impacts on future generations – when will something be done?


Read the full case study: Connecting the Dots of Sustainability, Diversity, and Violence: The “Canaries” in the Afghanistan “Mineshaft” in the January edition of the SoGES Scholars Newsletter to be published later this month. Join our mailing list to be notified when it is out.

Blog written by Kerri McDermid, School of Global Environmental Sustainability