Stocked with cots, equipment and medicines, the gleaming new hospital here is the finest thing the people of Sharana have seen in years. They have Lajnat Al-Dawa Al-Islamia, a Kuwait-based charity, to thank.
But the U.S. government says Lajnat Al-Dawa Al-Islamia, known as LDI, is a threat. Authorities froze the group’s funds in January and added it to the list of Islamic charities and other organizations with suspected terrorist links.
Other governments have followed suit.
Without access to money, officials from LDI, or the Islamic Call Committee, say they will be forced to stop paying staffers at the hospital in Sharana–along with two other hospitals and nine schools elsewhere in Afghanistan–by early this week.
The sanctions have created a welter of challenges for the U.S. and Afghan governments, as well as ordinary Afghans who depend on LDI’s aid programs.
Some Afghan officials suspect that LDI is using the hospital in Sharana to funnel money to terrorists, while others say the group has done admirable work in places too remote and dangerous for Western aid organizations.
A Western diplomat in Kabul was cautious about LDI’s operations. But LDI workers and some Afghan officials say the closings of schools and hospitals will do much to turn impoverished Afghans against the West.
Telling friend from foe
“America should differentiate between enemies and friends. They should not name everyone Al Qaeda,” said Mohammad Ali Paktiawal, governor of Paktika province, the home of Sharana.
“LDI has been functioning in this area for 13 years, and they’ve treated our patients and helped our people a lot,” he added. “Show me what the United Nations agencies have done in this area–nothing.”
LDI began working with Afghan refugees in Pakistan in 1985, at the height of the U.S.-backed resistance against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
The group set up a large regional office in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, along with dozens of other charities and aid organizations. At the time, Pakistan’s border areas were flooded with mujahedeen fighters from Afghanistan as well as from the Persian Gulf, northern Africa and Middle East regions. Money flowed in from Saudi Arabia and the United States.
LDI’s regional manager then was Zahed Sheik, brother of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, an alleged Sept. 11 mastermind who was arrested in Pakistan in March. Their family lived in Kuwait but came from Baluchistan, a Pakistani province that borders Iran and Afghanistan.
In an e-mail, officials at LDI’s Kuwait headquarters said that Zahed Sheik left the group in 1992. They said donors in Kuwait fund the organization.
According to its most recent annual report, LDI has spent $17.5 million over the last five years building and operating hospitals, schools, mosques and orphanages in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the part of Kashmir that Pakistan controls.
Construction of the hospital in Sharana began in 1999 and cost $250,000, according to the annual report. Last month, Afghan President Hamid Karzai descended on the parched, desolate sandlots of Sharana in a helicopter to cut the ribbon during a ceremony at the hospital.
Alleged front for Al Qaeda
U.S. officials in Kabul declined to comment on why LDI’s funds were frozen, but a senior Afghan intelligence official said the hospital is a suspected front for Al Qaeda.
Paktika province, in southeastern Afghanistan, is a Taliban stronghold where U.S. and Afghan forces regularly battle insurgents crossing over from Pakistan.
“We don’t have strong enough proof to accuse them directly, but they are under our focus now,” the intelligence official said. “The money that comes from the Pakistan branch of LDI, some of it is spent on the hospital, but some of it is being distributed to others.”
There are more than 700 LDI employees in Afghanistan, and wages and operating costs for the schools and hospitals add up to about $20,000 a month.
“This is the right of the Americans to look for and find out who is cooperating with terrorists, but I don’t think among our Afghan staff there are people cooperating with terrorists,” said Mohammad Siddique, head of the group’s Kabul office.
“If we find out that LDI is cooperating with terrorists, of course we will leave before they fire us, because everyone in this country is against terrorism,” he added.
The Americans should “find proof and evidence for what they do,” Siddique said, “instead of freezing accounts and giving no reason for it.”
In Shneez, a village in Wardak province southwest of Kabul, about 140 people seek care at the LDI hospital every day. They come by foot, taxis or donkey. Inside the quiet, walled compound along the main road between Kabul and Kandahar, there are surgical and tuberculosis wards, as well as an X-ray machine and a lab with a microscope and equipment for rudimentary blood testing.
Children are vaccinated against polio and other diseases, and women, whose access to health care is severely limited, can have their babies in a semi-modern birthing room instead of at home. Some patients are treated for free, while others pay about 10 cents per visit.
`Hospital is very important’
Najibah, who is about 30, gave birth to four of her seven children in this hospital; two of her sons attend an LDI school nearby. On a recent afternoon, she sat on a bed with her 1-year-old son, Ahmad Wali, in a ward filled with women and children. The boy had been diagnosed with bronchitis and gastroenteritis, an ailment that can be deadly if it is not treated.
“This hospital is very important for the people of this area,” Najibah said. “If I have some problem, I can’t go to Kabul, because no one is here to take care of my children. It’s very bad news for us when we hear about this hospital being closed.”
At the LDI school up the road, 1,200 boys study in two shifts, learning math, science, geography, history, English as well as Dari and Pashto, the two main languages spoken in Afghanistan. They also study the Koran. Many go on to college and become engineers and doctors, according to school administrators.
“At the end of the month, we will have to retire from this,” said Hafizullah Hashimi, the school’s English teacher. “It’s not just my salary I’m concerned about. We want these people to be educated. This country was destroyed by uneducated people.
“If the government of George W. Bush wants to freeze the funds of Kuwaitis, then they should support us to continue this, so that we won’t have to take a gun again and fight,” Hashimi said.
Trying to stop closings
Earlier this month, a group of tribal elders from Wardak province went to Kabul to prevent the closings of the hospital and school. Afghan officials say they are looking for ways to keep the programs going, but the government has little money. Allowing LDI to continue its operations is not an option, officials say.
“As a person responsible for security, I don’t want to take any risks,” said Ali Ahmad Jalali, Afghanistan’s interior minister.
Some LDI workers have begun looking for new jobs. Others have vowed to keep teaching and practicing medicine, even if they are not paid. In a country with so few schools and hospitals, they say, to lose even one or two could set Afghanistan back.
“I’ve worked here for 10 years and I haven’t seen such terrorist acts or ideology or teaching the children to fight,” said Hashimi. “Maybe they have some intelligence information, but I cannot support it.”
He glanced out through a window at the road that connects the Afghan capital to the restive south. The Karzai government has made rebuilding the road a priority, and the U.S. government is paying for most of it. Nearly every day, U.S. soldiers drive in their armored trucks and Humvees, passing through hundreds of villages like Shneez.
“Now the Americans have support from the people here,” Hashimi said. “But if they close such projects and programs, who knows?”
