Hazara Nation

The poorer got poorer and the rich got richer'Charity organization focuses on 'forgotten' Afghan provinces

One of the first requests a group of Afghans made to Flora MacDonald was for her non-profit organization to bring a new teacher to their district.

MacDonald knew they needed something else first.

A schoolhouse.

"We have to begin with them at a very low level," said MacDonald, a former foreign affairs minister and Kingston and the Islands MP.

Men of the village each made 2,000 mud bricks to help build the school.

Then they got their teacher.

"Bit by bit, things are being improved," MacDonald said, "but it takes a long time."

One problem, MacDonald said, is that most of the money and media attention goes to Kandahar province where Canadian Forces continue to fight the Taliban. The 32 other provinces in the country, she said, are largely forgotten.

MacDonald returned last week from her latest trip to Afghanistan, her 10th in the last seven years. Her most recent visit was part of a mission for her charity, Future Generations Canada.

The organization focuses most of its efforts and resources on educational, training and literacy programs. This past trip, the focus was on infrastructure, including work to build aquaducts to rural villages and solar panels for homes.

Non-governmental organizations that pledge to help end up forgetting the people outside Kandahar in provinces such as Bamyan, where Future Generations Canada works, Mac-Donald said.

The charity's program director in Afghanistan, Abdullah Barat, wrote in April that billions of aide dollars have flowed to Afghanistan.

"Unfortunately, however, no one thought to create a good strategy of how to use the money as a resource to rebuild the foundations of Afghanistan society. Instead, the billions of dollars became the means to pay the expenses of a luxury lifestyle for a few warlords and nongovernmental organization leaders in Kabul," he wrote in the report, available on the charity's website.

"Day by day, the poor got poorer and the rich got richer."

The April report noted that there continue to be challenges dealing with the Afghan bureaucracy as well as getting NGOs to listen to community-based leaders.

MacDonald said her organization is doing a lot of work with those NGOs to install solar panels on huts in villages to give Afghans electricity.

Another project for the group, MacDonald said, is to create the first national park in the country. Currently, the Afghan government is in the midst of declaring the Bande Amir Lakes a national preserve.

Bande Amir is a series of five blue lakes that cascade over natural dams, streaming down the mountainside into each other. If the approval for national park status goes through, MacDonald said the area would have riding and walking trails and would also create employment for people in the region.

MacDonald's interest in Afghanistan predates her time as Canada's first female foreign affairs minister. It began, she said, with an uncle who was posted at the Khyber Pass in the early 1900s. The pass is the gate through which Pakistan and Afghanistan are connected.

MacDonald's uncle was there as a member of the Imperial Black Watch, a Canadian regiment whose colonel-in-chief today is Prince Charles. The man wrote numerous letters home to his family and they eventually flowed to MacDonald, who has them to this day.

While she has taken a keen interest in rebuilding and helping the third-poorest country in the world, MacDonald said Afghanistan is often forgotten.

"It's been a longtime interest [of mine]," she said. "The world occasionally takes an interest in Afghanistan.

"Sooner or later, we realize that a lot has to be done there if we are to have peace in [the region]."