Arts & Living

ASPEN, Colo.—With mounting passion, conviction and at times humor, famed Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini closed out the Aspen Summer Words literary festival with his thoughts on recent developments in his native country and its future direction.

Hosseini, author of “The Kite Runner” and “A Thousand Splendid Suns,” was being interviewed by Firoozeh Dumas (the Iranian-American author of “Funny in Farsi”) at the Thursday afternoon Aspen Writers’ Foundation event. Their conversation, appropriately titled “Backstory,” touched on the creative process of writing books, their influences, perceptions and misperceptions of their countries and cultures, the Greg Mortenson scandal and current affairs.

Hosseini, whose eponymous foundation provides humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan, has mixed feelings about President Obama’s recent announcement about drawing down American troops from Afghanistan.

“I am a hopeful person, but I have to admit it’s a period of anxiety for Afghans,” he said. “The primary job of a state is to protect its citizens, but is the nation at that point?”

Noting that 70 percent of Afghans support the presence of foreign troops in their country and 60 percent of those polled supported the Obama surge, Hosseini explained that while Afghans are independent people, they are also pragmatists. And their collective memory doesn’t have to stretch that far back to remember what happened when the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in the late 1980s.

The Soviets had invaded Afghanistan a decade before to keep a local Communist party in power. Their reign had seen the rise of various rebel factions, many of them backed and armed by outside interests. When the Soviets abruptly withdrew, anarchy erupted as those factions fought for power, and a “horrible” civil war ensued that resulted in 50,000 to 70,000 dead in Kabul alone, according to Hosseini. Eventually the Taliban emerged victorious.

“Afghans remember those days and what they fear the most, more than the return of the Taliban, is the anarchy of that time,” said Hosseini. “There’s the fear that the Afghan state cannot protect them and people are going to pick up their guns.”

Asked if he has faith in Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Hosseini replied indirectly, but diplomatically.

“If you look at the results, you have to have questions about the leadership,” he said, again emphasizing that a government’s foremost responsibility is to provide basic services and security to its people. “And a lot of people don’t think the government has done the job quite right.”

But people also have to put the situation into context, he noted. After 30 years of conflict, Afghanistan ranked at the bottom of the scale in terms of human development, with an average life expectancy of 45 years, eight million people living as refugees, 70 percent illiteracy, and one in five children dying before the age of five. “Is it surprising given this reality that the Afghan state is lagging?” he said. “This is not a 40-yard dash; this is a marathon.”

The plight of the Afghans was the impetus for the Khaled Hosseini Foundation, the author explained in answer to another question. His family moved from Kabul to the United States in 1976, before the Soviet invasion and while Afghanistan was still in somewhat of a golden period. When he returned 27 years later, in 2003, he was saddened to see the warzone that his native city had become.

“It’s like having an amazing childhood friend and you run into them 27 years later and they’re destitute and homeless,” he said. “It took me several days to adjust to the reality.”

Hosseini began to make more frequent trips to his country, and in 2007, he visited refugee settlements with the United Nations. People were living in the open in makeshift shelters, he said, and one elder casually mentioned that every winter three to five children die because they simply freeze. He was also shown to a tiny, underground mud shelter that housed 22 people each winter. Moved, he began the foundation with an eye toward providing appropriate shelter for refugee Afghans. Its other main focus is health care and opportunities, both economic and educational, for women and children.

In the wake of the Greg Mortenson scandal, in which the embattled director of the Central Asia Institute is alleged to have misused millions of dollars in donations for building schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Hosseini addressed the trepidation people might now have for donating to such organizations. The Hosseini Foundation publishes its finances regularly and goes through an exhaustive vetting process with grant requests, he explained. And “every last cent” of Hosseini’s honorariums go to the foundation.

“I’m saddened by the whole Greg thing,” Hosseini said. “I think in his heart he truly feels a passion for those children and wanted to help them. He’s a humanitarian but a horrible director.”

While Mortenson allegedly capitalized on the lack of his donors’ knowledge about what was really happening on the ground in Central Asia, Afghans continue to suffer from the myths and stereotypes that are perpetuated from lack of knowledge of their country and culture. And Hosseini wants to bust the myth that Afghans are warlike people stuck in the Stone Age who are dependent on the West to rebuild their country.

Hosseini told the story of visiting a remote mountaintop village, where a mullah and teacher, mistaking Hosseini for a man of great political influence, gave him a message to pass to Karzai in which he requested a school with computers for the village so that the children can become educated about the world.

Afghans may be a tribal people but they also have a strong sense of national identity, Hosseini explained—they think of themselves as Afghans first and want to rebuild their own country, but are cognizant of the need for help from other nations.

“It’s not a nation of beggars,” he said. “Give an Afghan a stick of gum and he’ll make a business out of it.”

Hosseini also pointed out that while the West was embroiled in two world wars, population displacements and other horrors, Afghanistan was at peace for most of the 20th century – until the 1979 Soviet invasion.

Lost in the constant media stream of suicide bombings, war and misery are the positive changes that have been wrought in Afghanistan, Hosseini pointed out. Within the last decade, about 2,000 kilometers of roads have been built. Seven million children are in school, including a significant number of girls, compared to one million (mostly boys) just a few years ago. Health care has been extended from eight percent of the population to 80 percent. And one-quarter of the seats in the country’s parliament are occupied by women.

“There is a lot to be depressed about … but there have been significant improvements,” said Hosseini.

Spurred by a question from Dumas about whether, someday, people will go to Afghanistan to visit, Hosseini said enthusiastically, “They should; it’s a beautiful country. The only pictures you see is of caves and guys squatting like this” – he paused to mimic a dour-faced warrior type – “but the truth is it’s stunningly beautiful. The North is very lush. Tourism could do very well.”

Hosseini pointed out that in the 1970s Afghanistan was a magnet for European backpackers.

“I love Afghanistan, they’re my people,” he said, adding that he feels close to tears whenever the plane he’s on enters Afghan airspace. “When I go there my heart breaks for what I see. I am so fortunate – I might be the luckiest Afghan of all time – but I love going back and I want to give something of myself. I feel passionate about it, and that it’s a duty.”