Published: Air & Space Power Journal - Fall 2007
300 días en Afganistan by Natalia Aguirre Zimerman. Editorial Anagrama, S.A. (http://www.anagrama -ed.es), Pedró de la Creu, 58, 08034 Barcelona, Spain, 2006, 192 pages, $15.00.
Why would military professionals read a Colombian gynecologist’s account of her service in Afghanistan as a member of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) (Doctors without Borders)? One reason is that MSF and other nongovernmental organizations (NGO) are an important part of the operational environment. The author, Dr. Natalia Aguirre, is not the stereotypical Birkenstock-sandaled NGO member that some military members might envision. Instead she is an articulate medical professional who genuinely wants to help people. A native of Medellin, Colombia, she is no stranger to violent insurgencies, so she adapted well to post-Taliban Afghanistan, where she operated childbirth clinics. Dr. Aguirre did not set out to write a book, but her messages to friends back home during her nearly yearlong stay in Kabul from 2002 to 2003 grew into such a gripping anthology of daily vignettes that a publisher decided to turn them into a book.
An e-mail epistolary written in Spanish, 300 dias en Afganistan bristles with harrowing tales of childbirth but consists mostly of brief commentaries about clothing, shopping, food, weather, weddings, and other aspects of daily life. These skillfully written diary entries tease out fascinating deeper meanings in mundane events. A perceptive observer, Dr. Aguirre clearly has a sense of adventure. Her accounts of a vacation in Iran and trips into the Afghan countryside are fascinating. She scatters antimilitary quips throughout the text, but the most egregious one comes from the editor’s prologue, which indulges in political sermonizing and gratuitous slams against President Bush. The author clearly disapproves of the Iraq war, which began during her stay in Afghanistan, referring to “the clumsy Bush” (p. 74) and dismissively noting that “the military is now quite taken with the idea of posing as humanitarians and handing out two or three blankets so they can take photos and make the world think they are helping a lot” (p. 74). On the other hand, Dr. Aguirre makes humorous references to the hygiene habits of her French MSF coworkers, concluding that “the French are quite pretentious and arrogant” (p. 29). However, the author displays less judgment by characterizing the Taliban as “a phenomenon born of political chaos, but that grew only because it was fed by American and European economic interests” (p. 52).
The book presents conflicting assessments, both of women’s role in Afghan society and of the author’s attitude towards the military. Dr. Aguirre understandably dwells on the plight of Afghan women, who suffer the world’s highest death rate during childbirth. She praises their strength and contends they are less oppressed than Western news media say (pp. 51–53), yet she also relates the systematic domestic abuse they suffer. One chapter describes how a mother of several daughters was threatened with divorce if she did not produce a son (pp. 140–44). Some readers may become frustrated by Dr. Aguirre’s ambivalent attitude towards the military. Despite her opposition to Operation Iraqi Freedom, she realized that Saddam Hussein’s defeat might permit greater MSF access to Iraq, enabling that organization to expand its humanitarian mission. Her views of the war in Afghanistan are equally contradictory. Dr. Aguirre strongly criticizes the Taliban and tells how some of its members nearly killed one of her female nurses for attending school (pp. 99–101), yet she shows little regard for the military forces that overthrew the Taliban. Her comments suggest that NGOs value some services the military can provide yet are careful not to associate too closely with it. Some of the book’s contradictions may derive from its origin as a series of e‑mails chronicling the vicissitudes of the author’s life, but they also reflect the sometimes uneasy military-NGO partnership.
Readers seeking military lessons learned will find none in 300 dias en Afganistan, but the book opens a window into the mind-set of NGO members. The author’s Colombian background gives US and European readers a noticeably different perspective on events they hear about every day. Dr. Aguirre’s witty and sometimes irreverent prose makes her book refreshingly readable.
Lt Col Paul D. Berg, USAF
Maxwell AFB, Alabama
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