For five weeks following Halloween, the last day for donations, I feared receiving an email informing me that our shipment had been canceled. I thought the tweet to immediately withdraw half our troops combined with the increased Taliban attacks in Kabul could easily result in shipments being canceled.

Last week I was informed that they would no longer accept shipments but ours could go. We made it under the wire. Had ours been canceled that would have meant finding a place for contributions that filled two forty-foot trailers (825 boxes 18" X 18" x 24", a new record).

 Our shipment will be on a flight to Germany December 18th and hopefully be distributed to hundreds of families living in refugee camps in January. As Afghans are fond of saying following a prediction, Inshallah (God Willing).

Mokhtar is the young boy Basir and Qudsia found selling onions on the streets of Kabul. While visiting his parents to discuss sponsorship, Qudsia asked his sisters whether they were going to school. They responded by asking "what's a school". They now have a tutor teaching the girls two hours a day, six days a week for $80 a month. A TIE supporter sent me a $1,000 check to cover the cost of the tutor for a year. The tutor will allocate her time among the girls so that each will receive private tutoring.

Qudsia wrote that the girls and parents are "very happy". I've been trying to find words to describe the joy they must be experiencing for this life altering event. I've failed. Consider also what their mother must be feeling knowing that her daughters will now have life choices she didn't have.

Following the newsletter about Mokhtar's sisters the backlog of people offering to sponsor a child or take on another grew by 12. Basir and Qudsia are continuing their search. It will take time. Fewer children work on the streets during the freezing winter months. In addition, terrorism and COVID 19 have greatly reduced the number of people willing to go outside their homes.

Mokhtar and four of his six sisters -- Books donated by Hoopoe books

There are very few programs that enable the compassionate to provide direct support to one individual, communicate with that person and track results. The sponsorship program has been doing that for years. Suzanne Rogge, the program's director, just updated the stats. They speak for themselves.

Enabling a child to get off the streets and become educated is what sponsorship achieves. What greater gift could someone possibly provide? If interested in sponsoring a child (click here)

They closed when public schools were closed due to COVID 19 and opened when the government allowed. All are open and have asked for firewood to keep them warm. Basir is having firewood delivered. I don't know what the cost of firewood is now but there have been years when the cost of firewood exceeded the cost of a teacher. Teachers are currently paid between $150 - $200 per month.

The libraries' utilization rate for September averaged 550 children per day, 70% of whom were girls. They are open twelve months a year, closed Fridays and on national and religious holidays. The problem will always be capacity. Afghan children love to learn and to get out of the house. They are particularly important to girls, as reflected in the statistics.

I told Nabi the other day that I have been waiting seventeen years for good news from Afghanistan and it has never come. TIE's news on the other hand gets better year after year. We began in 2003 raising funds to build one school, intending to do no more. Support has grown making it possible to provide more aid every year.

A partial list of accomplishments since financing the construction of the school in Lalander includes;

Over the years I’ve often been asked, “Why Afghanistan”? A few are forward enough to also say “We have problems here”. The shortest answer is, we can do both. One does not preclude the other.

A somewhat longer response is, “here” is not a place. "Here" is where each of us define it to be. For some, “here” means family and close friends. Others include and support their local community. My here once included only family, friends and local community. It now includes the world, having seen what I saw during twenty visits to Afghanistan. I understood early on that the difference between “them” and me is where I was born. If you were to visit Afghanistan, your “here” would also include Afghan children who were born and now living in the war torn sixteenth poorest country in the world. Of this, I’m certain.

Finally, there is a historical moral imperative for helping Afghan families. In 1979 the United States began financing the mujahedeen (“freedom fighters”) in Pakistan to wage war inside Afghanistan. Very few know that the support began before the Russians invaded. The purpose in providing support to the mujahedeen was, according to Zbigniew Brezezinski, national security advisor to President Carter, to "draw the Russians in so Russia could get its Viet Nam”.

In 1989, the Russians were driven out of Afghanistan and the Berlin wall came down shortly thereafter. The Soviet Union “disintegrated and dissolved into fifteen separate countries”. Three years later in 1992 we discontinued all humanitarian aid to Afghanistan. “Mission accomplished”.

During the decade of war following the Soviet invasion, 1.8 million Afghans were killed, 1.5 million were disabled (among whom were more than 300,000 children), and 7.5 million fled the country. More than 14,000 villages also were destroyed.

The warlords we had armed to bring down the Soviet Union fought for control of the country. In 1996 the Taliban gained control. Following 9-11 in 2001 we invaded Afghanistan to “get Bin Laden”.

Forty-one years after Russia’s invasion fighting continues and we are reducing our military commitment to 2500 soldiers. Will we again declare mission accomplished and discontinue humanitarian aid?

A Taliban captive reportedly said “Americans have the watches but we have the time”.Next year will, as it has for the past 17, be more challenging and demanding than the year before.

Notwithstanding the Taliban captive’s assessment of American resolve, Trust in Education and its supporters will continue to make the time.

Join us is seeing that we do not abandon them again. The humanitarian mission is far from being accomplished.

Happy Holidays and Cheers to the New Year.

Budd