Terrorists wanted

The beard count is up in Khorog.

A French film production company is recruiting extras for a feature film with a terrorism story line. Posters are up all over the town. My translator Maqsad grew his beard especially and, I have to say, it works very well with sunglasses. The man I interviewed yesterday afternoon had also grown a beard for the purpose and had already secured a place in the film when I saw him. The film will be made later in the year in Ishkashim - some three hours drive south of here along the Afghan border.

Money and mad dogs

When I woke up this morning I was beginning to lose faith in Khorog. The town is in a stunning setting; the Aga Khan Foundation is investing a substantial amount of money in building infrastructure, including a stunning landscaped park in the centre and the campus for the University of Central Asia that will confirm the already distinct sense that this is a university town; the people seem essentially prosperous, and for such an isolated community are very open to outsiders. Could it be that Khorog is just too damn happy to furnish the kinds of stories I am looking for?

My main hope for introductions has been a microfinance organisation called Madina, led by Nabot Didikhudoyera. Their first two suggestions – clients who are clearly experiencing hardship – were not sufficiently linked to the financial crisis. Perhaps I had been barking up the wrong tree.

Yet this is a country that gets 55% of its national income in the form of remittances from migrant workers in other countries, and remittances fell 31% in 2009 compared to 2008 thanks to the slump in the Russian economy that the crisis triggered. There simply had to be stories here.

So the good people at Madina put their heads together and came up with a couple of ideas. There was a family they knew of in Khorog living in a house near the botanical garden. This was not a client, but they knew that family to be highly dependent on remittance income. Then Farid Zamirov, a young director at Madina, thought back to his time as a volunteer doing household surveys out in the sticks around Khorog and Murghab and suggested we simply head out to a village and ask around.

So we took a minibus taxi over to the home of Jomahonova Oshurmo, a pensioner of 63 who still works as a hospital cleaner.

Oshurmo’s five sons all work in Moscow. Her four daughters-in-law and nine grandchildren all live with her in their small home. They have a sleeping room and a drawing room, plus a covered space outside used for storage.

Collectively the brothers used to send Oshurmo US$100 per month to augment her 180 somoni (US$45) monthly income from her wages and pension. It was not a handsome sum for a household of 14 people, but it was enough, she says. Back then prices in Tajikistan were lower so it was enough to cover food basics and also meat, essential clothes, and electricity to power their summer stove (a single hotplate) and lighting.

When the crisis hit Russia the sons collectively could not find sufficient work even to send US$100 a month. Oshurmo received no money from her children from the spring of 2009 until the Russian economy began to improve this year. She received US$100 in March, and US$50 in April.

I wanted to know how on earth someone in Oshurmo’s position coped with such a catastrophic loss of income. I asked her what she could not buy now that she used to buy. She replied that she just bought less stuff, that she still had enough for the basics, as before. Cashflow was tricky; they had to buy food on credit from a neighbour’s shop to see them through from wage packet to pension packet. But she seemed to be saying that not much had changed. I couldn’t understand it. US$100 was a lot of money to someone in her position. Before she used to receive that each month, but for a year she did not. Before she was just buying the basics, so surely now life was harder still?

Suddenly while speaking to Oshurmo I realised my frame of reference was wrong. Oshurmo does not have the luxury of whining about the present. She is too focused on feeding her household. She does not sit there thinking back to how life used to be better, but on how to juggle with what she has now.

I changed tack and began to itemize what she has in her larder: some potatoes, a sack of flour, oil, pasta or noodles, dried beans, and some onions – the only fresh food I saw. Then I asked whether they eat meat. Not any more, she said, though they used to eat meat quite often. I made a mental note to interview the World Food Program people here in Khorug about the nutritional value of such a diet. Beans are a good protein substitute for meat, but I wondered whether food quantities had likely reduced.

I changed tack again. How did she spend the US$100 that came from Moscow in March? She bought a sack of flour, and paid something towards her electricity bill. She had only succeeded in part paying her electricity bill each month for a long time, and had built up a debt of 650 somoni (US$160). Twice this year the electricity company had cut off her supply pending further payments. The supply had last been cut for three days in March, preventing the family from using their electric stove to cook.

These physical hardships loomed large, but were not the complete picture. Before, Oshurmo had never needed to ask for credit from anyone, now it was a fact of daily life. And culturally this community places great importance on helping each other in times of need, such as when putting together food for a wedding, for helping after a death. Though clearly in a state of distress herself, Oshurmo clearly finds it shameful to be unable to provide material help to her family and friends as the need arises.

So here it was, a story of real hardship in Khorog. A story of a vulnerable family driven to the brink by the consequences of the global financial crisis. I was feeling satisfied that I had found something important here, and hurriedly set about taking photos.

I took Oshurmo’s portrait and the family group, and backed away to take a broader shot of their home. Suddenly I heard a growl and felt something tearing into my ankle. I whirled around in shock to see the family dog slinking angrily away from the spot where I had trod on it.

Great, I thought. Here comes a rabies shot.

We returned to Madina’s office and Nabot on hearing about the bite phoned her brother, a doctor at the hospital. I was shepherded along the road to see him. The small wound was cleaned with alcohol and he prescribed antibiotics. There’s no rabies in this area, he reassured me.

It was a sudden end to a valuable morning, but no real drama. Now I need to think if there is anything I missed that I should ask Oshurmo before I leave town.

The lair of the dog that bit me

Khorog 101

Mountaineers, avert your eyes.

I’m not especially outdoorsy so I had always imagined mountain passes to be a low point between two mountains.

Instead, the day before yesterday, some 8 hours into an extremely cramped ride with six other passengers in a Toyota Landcruiser, I found myself being negotiated along a muddy single lane road above the snowline at around 3,000 metres. Sometimes we drove through what felt like a corridor of snow as it stood 8 foot high one either side. Other times one or other side would be a vertiginous drop into the valley hundreds of metres below. Every now and then we would pass an empty bulldozer that had long done its work for the day having cleared a segment of the pass.

It was already getting late. We did not descend below the snow line again until nearly 8pm. With visibility falling I was glad we were not attempting this any later in the day.

So why did I end up taking this route by road through the Khaburabot Pass at all? Good question.

The previous morning I turned up at 8am at Dushanbe airport’s domestic terminal with Jovidon, a member of the wonderful family that hosted me in Dushanbe (a heartfelt shout out to Manon, Mavjigul, Ejod, Ehson, Bibijon and Soima). I was expecting a scrum. What I did not expect was the sense that the game was already over.

Bad weather frequently stops the Khorog flight from departing, especially in Spring when weather is so variable. Once it is announced that the flight will take off hopeful passengers race to get their names onto lists being maintained by a couple of entrepreneurial travel agents standing around who appear to have a duopoly of time in front of the small ticketing window. They stand there running through their list, occasionally calling out a name of a lucky winner who then leans over with their 400 somoni (USD 100) fare.

It took me an hour to realise that the first flight to Khorog had already departed, and that the second one was now full and would leave soon. Normally there are just two flights a day in 16-seater turboprops that skim across the tops of the mountains. But the main road route through the Khaburabot Pass had been closed for over a week because of a bridge being knocked out by a flooding river, so the flights were in high demand.

For this reason there was a rumour of a third so I hung around a while longer. Not only did the third flight not go, but the second flight was turned back from Khurog just ten minutes before the end of its 45 minute flight because of a thunderstorm.

It sunk in that I was not going to be able to move on that day. Such a dark feeling hit me. NOTHING PERSONAL takes me away from my family for two and a half months. Even though that time is pretty much set in stone, it helps at least to feel like I am on the move, heading home.

So yesterday I set off for the airport again with new resolve, this time at 6:30am, with a better idea of how the system works, and with the youthful assistance of Ehson, my host’s youngest son. He was primed to cut through any crowd that might ensue, get my name on any and every list going and my passport into the hands of the agents.

We never got our chance. Nothing happened at all until after 8am. Ominously I did not see either of the two travel agents loitering around. They clearly have contacts on the ground with better knowledge of the local weather conditions than the rest of us. The flight was cancelled. I hung around for a while at discussed possibilities with a couple of English-speaking would-be fellow voyagers.

One of them had heard that the land route had been open for a day now, but you normally take that route early in the morning in order to get to Khorog before midnight. But it might still be possible to find a car willing to drive into the night. I made up my mind. A genial fixer-type from the airport throng accompanied me and my posse and an elderly lady to the station where such long distance journeys depart. He helped us find a good car and driver and waved us on our way. Price: about USD 45.

My fellow passengers were a soldier, Rahmon, returning to his post on the Afghan border at Ishkashim just south of Khorog, a couple of elderly Tajik women and two grizzled Tajik men, and Faridah, a young woman working for the Aga Kahn Foundation who helpfully spoke fluent English. Faridah was one of the unfortunate passengers on the second Khorog flight the previous day that had been turned back. She was trying to get to a wedding on time.

The three women took the middle row of seats, and Rahmon had the front seat. This meant that I and the old Tajik men were folded up like so much canned food into the bucket seats in the back. I’m 6’2”. The road was rough. The Pamir Highway I am convinced is so named to reflect its altitude rather than its quality. At times it feels like a procession of dirt, mud, snow and endless potholes in search of a road, rather than a road itself.

Sleep was impossible. By the end my knees were bruised from rubbing against the top edge of the seat in front of me. As I crawled creakily out of the Landcruiser at every opportunistic stop I felt like a man twice my age.

We stopped for lunch and dinner, a couple of flocks of sheep, numerous donkeys, goats and dogs, and for several police checkpoints that were mainly concerned to see the driver’s documentation. The checkpoint marking the entry into the Badakshan region wanted to contrive a problem with my paperwork but Rahmon followed me into their office and began berating the officer, even taking out his mobile phone to video the officer in action and record his name and serial number from his uniform. I left unfleeced. Thanks Rahmon.

As we headed south in the darkness along bank of the Panj river on the last leg of the journey Faridah pointed out the lights in houses across on the other bank perhaps 100 metres away. “That’s where I work! We put in generators there to provide lighting.” That was my first glimpse of Afghanistan.

We had two flat tyres – one just before dinner and the last just on the outskirts of Khorog at around 3.30am. We stood around for an hour in the light rain and cold mountain night air and finally rolled into the centre of town. Our journey from Dushanbe had taken 17 hours. A guest house was roused to take me in and I pulled the bed covers over me at 5am on the dot.

The room number on my key enigmatically reads “Khorog 101”. Quite a lesson.

Video: Tajik entrepreneurs take a hit

Microfinance is put forward by developed country governments and aid recipients alike as a way of fostering economic growth in the developing world without create a culture of dependency. Poor people (though it is not claimed to work for the very poorest) take out small loans without security in order to help them start up economic activity. The loan must be repaid.

So it is particularly ironic, not to mention painful, to hear about the impact on microfinance activity and clients of a global economic crisis derived from a financial system crisis.

While here in Dushanbe I have had tremendous help from Humo, a major microfinance institution in Tajikistan, in finding stories of people impacted by the crisis. I took the opportunity this week to interview Humo’s Director General, Mavsuda Vaisova, about Humo’s work and about how their clients have been affected by global economic events over the last few years. The videos of the interview are here, in three parts:

Part 1

Part 2:

Part 3:

Tajikistan is green

Who knew? In spring, mountainous Tajikistan turns an intense lush green for several months before the summer heat sets in.

This photo was taken a few days ago on the road from Dushanbe to the nearby village of Yawan where I interviewed Khojaeva Bibikhojar.

Goldman Sachs: why the crisis needs a face

I’m in Tajikistan collecting stories about about the impacts of the crisis, so I am not as on top of the news as I would like to be. I am deeply indebted to my friend Eric Pierre for letting me know about the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s action against the major global investment bank Goldman Sachs. In case you too are in Tajikistan, or have been otherwise out of touch, allow me to fill you in.

The SEC is alleging that Goldman Sachs committed fraud. The case revolves around the firm creating and selling collateralized debt obligations tied to subprime mortgages. What are these CDOs? Dicey mortgage debts are bundled together and sold off by the lender to investors, who then receive the interest on the loans and eventually get the repayment of the loan capital too. The benefit to the lender is that the mortgages are removed from their balance sheets, effectively leaving them free to lend that capital again as new subprime loans.

The mortgages for the investments covered by this SEC enforcement action were chosen by hedge fund Paulson & Co. This hedge fund then went to bet against these securities delivering positive returns for their investors. The SEC is alleging that Goldman Sachs should have disclosed this connection as a potential conflict of interest, and that failing to do so amounted to fraud.

If this all seems a bit abstract, arcane even, then I cannot blame you. Welcome to the world of investment banking.

But this abstraction is to me the heart of the problem. It is difficult for people outside the financial district to get worked up about this stuff, so instead we accept in broad terms that “the banks are responsible”, and we begin to jump up and down about bankers excessive profits and bonuses.

A comment made by the Goldman’s banker at the heart of this particular case illustrates the point. I quote from the report in the Daily Telegraph:

Typing in French and in English to a friend who may never be named, the Goldman Sachs banker shared his apparently true feelings on the state of the US housing market: "More and more leverage in the system. The whole building is about to collapse anytime now ... Only potential survivor, the fabulous Fab[rice Tourre] ... standing in the middle of all these complex, highly leveraged, exotic trades he created without necessarily understanding all of the implication of those monstruosities [sic]!!!"

This SEC case is not just abstract to you and me; it is abstract for the players inside the game, too. They didn’t think through the consequences of their actions even in terms of the impact on the financial markets. No surprise then that they did not think through the consequences of their actions for real people.

Through the stories Kelsey and I cover in this NOTHING PERSONAL blog we want to make clear why cases like this Goldman’s case matter – how they relate to real people and events. We want you to feel as we do that something in this way of doing business needs to change, and we want those involved in such business to feel the connection between what they do in that arcane world, and the harm it inflicts on people who have no stake in it. Perhaps it will make them think twice.

So how about I begin by introducing Khojaeva Bibikhojar – one of the people I have had the pleasure of meeting here in Dushanbe, Tajikistan.

Three years ago, before the crisis, Bibikhojar was running a small business selling food to village shops. The business was profitable and through that and the money her husband sent home while working as a guest worker in Moscow they bought a home for them and their four young boys. The children who were old enough for school went to school. Bibikhojar hoped to save enough to buy a less modest house for her family.

When I met Bibikhojar last week she was juggling three jobs: working at a bus stop, preparing bread in a bakery, and cleaning the local music shop. Her youngest child has gone to live with her sister. She cannot afford to send any of her children to school and even once her situation recovers the children will have missed out on at least 2 years of their education, effectively consigning them to the poverty cycle. She has lost her home, and with that her husband abandoned the marriage. She and her two oldest sons live in the bakery, under a counter:

I will cover precisely how the financial crisis lay behind Bibikhojar’s fall from micro business and home owner to this state in a later post. There are many other stories to tell.

The case for "the human factor"

Andrew and I believe that what separates our project from other coverage of the Global Financial Crisis is the "human factor."

I talked with Andrew yesterday. He's in Tajikistan getting some amazing, powerful, and important stories about how families have been effected by and are coping with their new circumstances. I can relate. I spend a lot of time talking with my parents about "a new normal." And while that's easy to talk about, it's a bit tougher to not look back at what was and be angry or sad about it.

I started reading a new book and came across an argument for considering the "human factor."

But isn't the human factor what connects us to so deeply to our past? Will future generations care as much for chronologies and casualty statistics as they would for the personal account of individiuals not so different from themselves? By excluding the human factor aren't we risking the kind of personal detachment from a history that may, heaven forbid, lead us one day to repeat it?

The quote came from a somewhat unlikely source. It continues...

And in the end, isn't the human factor the only true difference between us and the enemy we now refer to as "the living dead"?

That's right. The quote isn't talking about the financial crisis, but a fictional zombie apocalypse (World War Z by Max Brooks).

The sad part is that I think zombies probably had about as much empathy for their victims as did Goldman Sachs. Wait, or maybe, this proves the existence of Zombie Banks....

On the road at last

If you want to bring a human face to the impacts of the global financial crisis on people around the world, how do you decide where to begin?

When Kelsey and I began to search for stories we were confronted with a number of issues: expert views on the impact of the crisis in different countries has evolved over time as the situation has evolved and data improved; while a country might look unaffected at the national level, or might look like it has been able to manage the effects of the crisis, the reality for particular groups and individuals can be very different; on top of this, there may be multiple reasons why people are experiencing hardship at this time, and isolating stories linked strongly to the global financial crisis can be a problem when a country is experiencing unrelated political turmoil or feeling the effects of the food crisis that predated but overlaps the financial crisis.

Despite these challenges we came across some clear cut cases: stories where the global recession has prompted a drop in much needed money being sent from workers who have gone to live far from their families in order to earn enough to provide for them; people working in particular industries that have found their exports fall drastically; vulnerable groups who are feeling the pinch because their governments can no longer afford important kinds of social provision, such as HIV treatments; people whose businesses have collapsed.

Then there are stories with a more subtle connection to the global crisis, such as where the crisis has provided a convenient pretext for action of a more political nature.

And then there is happenstance. We just don’t know what we are going to find on our journeys. Anything could happen in the next few months.

I’ll explain why I am in Moscow in my next post. So, da svidanya!