Beyond Kabul: Travels in Afghanistan

Rupert Neudeck, founder of Cap Anamur, has often travelled through Afghanistan and has got to know the country like few other non-Afghans. His new book provides an impressive description of the Afghan people and their country. Interview by Lale Konuk

Beyond Kabul lies the real Afghanistan, a place that most journalists and diplomats never actually see with their own eyes. Rupert Neudeck, founder of the aid organisation Cap Anamur, reproaches international aid organisations for never leaving the heavily guarded capital and the protection of the ISAF troops, which ends at the city boundaries.

Neudeck has often travelled through Afghanistan and has got to know the country like few other non-Afghans. His new book 'Jenseits von Kabul - Unterwegs in Afghanistan' ('Beyond Kabul: Travels in Afghanistan') is a very personal portrait of Afghanistan. It provides an impressive description of the people and their country, explains the region’s tangled history and sheds light on the problems of a peaceful new beginning. Lale Konuk spoke to him

What is the central message in your book?

Rupert Neudeck: My book is an attempt to tell German readers a bit about Afghanistan’s history and allow them to get to know the country through my travels. It is also an appeal to Germany to take the whole thing more seriously and to be a bit more courageous in its involvement. After all, the Afghans are waiting for our help.

What sort of problems are involved in rebuilding the country?

Neudeck: Before the country can be managed and governed, certain simple and basic conditions must be fulfilled. There is no basic transport infrastructure; no arteries that go right through the entire country. Aid must now be used to build roads and bridges - something that hasn’t happened over the past two years.

These people also want to have schools. There is a real hunger to learn among children, young people and adults. The third thing that is needed is a basic health infrastructure because the country is suffering from the fact that everything was destroyed in the course of three or four successive wars.

What are German aid organisations doing to help?

Neudeck: There are many small and tiny initiatives that are working successfully in this country. As far as the major Kabul-based organisations are concerned, I am critical of the fact that they are wasting a lot of money. I am talking here about the UN agencies and, unfortunately, also German aid organisations.

A decision was taken by Germany’s Ministries and Federal Government that no German voluntary overseas worker is allowed to really leave Kabul. This cannot be allowed to continue in the long term. Rural Afghanistan is the real Afghanistan that we all know and love - that is the most important message I want to get across.

Can the Afghans finally breathe a sigh of relief after 23 years of war?

Neudeck: I can safely say that in 85 per cent of the country, people can work freely without armed people watching over them. Basic, traditional structures, extended family structures and religious structures are all completely intact. The mystical or soft Islam that the Afghans actually like is really back in force. We Christians have nothing to fear there either because it is a very tolerant country.

Lale Konuk

Translated from German by Patrick Lanagan