"Keep out of the Way of Soldiers"

​​Reinhard Erös had to endure a torrent of vicious insults from an American soldier who mistakenly took him to be an Afghan. He was driving his old pick-up truck and in the back were two Afghan women dressed in burkas – both severely injured and urgently requiring hospital care.

One had lost a hand in the bombing of her village by American forces the night before and was also suffering from severe burns. The second woman had suffered a miscarriage during the bombardment and the bleeding could not be stopped.

Erös, a former Colonel in the Medical Corps of the German Army, kept quiet as the nervous American soldier held a gun to his chest. He wanted to get the women out of the danger zone as quickly as possible.

Out of love for the country

Erös does his utmost not to be recognized as a foreigner in this conflict-ridden region. He speaks Pashto, wears a full beard, wide harem pants under a knee-length shirt, and a turban or other Afghan head covering.

The soldier's superior officer later apologised to Erös. He was assured that a German would never, of course, be so insulted. Erös finds this outrageous. The lack of respect shown to Afghans is something that this Bavarian Christian finds difficult to bear. He politely refused a 10,000 dollar donation by the American officer to make amends.

​​The German aid worker keeps his distance from foreign soldiers. He prefers the company of Afghans. Even back in the mid-1980s during the Soviet occupation, the then commissioned German army doctor spent his vacations in the mountains of Tora Bora.

During an icy winter, he worked in a surgical hospital set up in a cave, where with clammy fingers he administered infusions into the tiny arms of undernourished infants and, under the light of flickering oil lamps, carried out amputations of limbs torn to pieces by landmines. In scorching hot summers, he took care of those ill with malaria, all the while on the run from the Soviet military. The German doctor has been captivated by Afghanistan and its people – he calls it love.

Tea with the Taliban

​​From 1986 to 1990, Erös took a leave from the German Army and moved to the Afghan-Pakistan border area with his wife Annette and four small sons. There he worked as a doctor. Years later, Erös even managed to establish a school for girls after wringing permission from the anti-education and misogynous Taliban through laborious negotiations. He had to sit down with the radical Islamic extremists for hours on end.

Erös explains, "If you work at the gates of hell, you have to be prepared to drink tea with the devil from time to time." His commitment has earned him great respect in Afghanistan to this day.

After the fall of the Taliban in 2001, Afghans appealed to Erös and his wife to return to the country to assist in its reconstruction. The German Army Colonel, born in 1948, took an early retirement from the military the following year.

Education with an emphasis on peace

Today, some 50,000 children in the east of Afghanistan, including many girls, attend the 24 schools run by the organization "Kinderhilfe Afghanistan" (Child Care Afghanistan), which was founded by Erös and his wife Annette. The schools, providing an education with an emphasis on peace, offer an important alternative to Koran schools, where extremists frequently find new recruits.

​​Erös purposely decided against working in the provincial capital Kundus. He based his decision on the fact that there is already an abundance of aid organizations based there, corruption is rampant, and it is not possible to reach those in urgent need from the capital.

Afghanistan's eastern provinces are a troubled region, says Reinhard Erös. The children's aid organization has rented a four-room mud brick house on the outskirts of Jalalabad for local staff to work.

The interior is scarcely furnished and the floors are covered with simple dark red carpets. Modern technology is to be found on the roof – solar panels provide electricity for lighting, a fan, a shortwave radio receiver, and an old black-and-white television.

So-called collateral damage

Here in eastern Afghanistan on the border with Pakistan, American led forces fight with rebels. Innocent villagers are frequently among the fatal casualties in the conflict.

​​For Reinhard Erös, this so-called "collateral damage" has faces – those of four schoolgirls. In the summer of 2008, four girls who attended a school of "Kinderhilfe Afghanistan" died. They were killed during a wedding reception as American bombers "once again missed their target," says Erös.

"Keep out of the way of foreign soldiers," is a lesson also taught to the children at the schools of his aid organization. The reason is not the soldiers themselves, says Erös. "It is just that foreign soldiers attract bullets and suicide bombers. Some 60 to 70 percent of all children who died last year were killed in the immediate proximity of Western soldiers."

The schools and other facilities of "Kinderhilfe Afghanistan" have not been attacked to date. The reason is that every single project has been developed together with the people of Afghanistan.

Afghans decide what Afghans need

Whenever Erös returns to Afghanistan with donations raised from his five to six annual trips to Germany, he first sits down with local maliks and mullahs, mayors, religious leaders, village elders, and farmers.

They deliberate for days about what people truly need, where a school or health care facility is lacking, and on what alternatives could be offered to farmers to stop growing opium poppies. "Kinderhilfe Afghanistan" has financed the planting of 25,000 fruit trees. It has built an orphanage, a clinic for mothers and children, a training workshop for solar technology, and ten computer training centres.

His organization relies solely on local helpers for the planning and construction of schools. Almost 2000 people are on the payroll of "Kinderhilfe Afghanistan" and they are all native Afghans. "Our schools," says Erös, "were built by the fathers and uncles of the school children."

These buildings have not been attacked, because they are protected by the whole community. This is the reason why Erös has not applied for state funds. He doesn't want any bureaucratic hassles and, most of all, he abhors the idea of "being instructed by some bureaucrat sitting in Berlin on what the people in Afghanistan really need."

Campaigning for Afghanistan in Germany

When Erös talks about Afghanistan, then it is impossible to stop him. He simply raves about the beautiful landscapes, the delicious fruit, and, especially, the overwhelming hospitality of the Afghans.

He and his wife have already held around 2000 lectures, mostly in Germany and preferably in schools and universities. Erös uses the occasions to sell the two books that he has written on his work in Afghanistan.

He says that all of the money raised goes directly to Afghanistan. The Erös couple and their now five children work for "Kinderhilfe Afghanistan" without pay or reimbursement for expenses every free minute of their time.

A network of about 100 volunteers supports the Erös family. For their work, Reinhard and Annette Erös have been awarded the German Order of Merit and the European Social Prize. At his lectures in German schools, Erös also aims to stir up the political consciousness of German pupils. "It is not enough to rely on what politicians do. We are all called upon to act."

Andrea Grunau

© Deutsche Welle/Qantara.de 2009

Translated from the German by John Bergeron

Qantara.de

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