Afghanistan and Cultural Gaffes

Greetings!

The Vos family is safely back, for those of you who kept up with our sister blog (If you're curious about their adventures in China, go to vosimportshiskids.blogspot.com to read all about it. It'll be up for a little while longer).

Today's post derives from a recent article in the Washington Post. If you keep up with international news at all, you may have heard that the number of deaths of American soldiers in Afghanistan has been spiking recently. What you may not be aware of is the fact that the majority of these deaths have not been at the hands of the Taliban or other extremist groups. Rather, the majority of these incidents have been caused by Afghan police and security forces, the people that the US Army is training to handle the situation once the US combat forces largely withdraw (hopefully sometime in the next decade).

While this may seem distressing and confusing to many of you, it is important that you understand why this has been happening (which apparently the US Army doesn't). Put simply: it's because the NATO troops and their Afghani counterparts don't understand each other or their habits. The article I referenced from the Washington Post, which you can find here, states that most of these killings have happened because the Afghani soldiers felt deeply insulted by the Americans. Consequently, the Afghan government has recently published a booklet to educate its soldiers about the habits of the NATO troops that they might find insulting, which they do out of ignorance rather than a desire to deliberately insult a soldier or his family.

If you read the article, some of these things may seem a bit ridiculous to you. Things like burping in public or propping your feet up on the table are seen as insulting in Middle Eastern, Central Asian culture. Even something as commonplace in the West as asking about the health of female relatives can be seen as creepy or suggestive in this culture. 

While these killings may be an extreme reaction, it is important to remember that it is not ridiculous that the Afghan soldiers feel this way. It is simply a product of their culture. To put this into perspective, many Americans may find it creepy if a male you didn't know were to walk up and kiss you, then your sister, on the cheek after you just met. But in Latin America and other parts of the world, this is commonplace, and it borders on rude to not do so if you know someone at all.

Many of you may find it distressing (as I did) that this kind of cultural training is only just now happening, nearly 11 years after the war began.

The moral of the story is this: if you are going to be visiting a foreign culture, you should spend some time preparing for the journey. And by preparing, I mean less figuring out which shorts to take (not a good idea in some places) and more figuring out how not to radically offend most everyone you meet. Googling it, like I did here, is simple enough. While I doubt anything will actually happen to you, as most people can be rather forgiving about ignorance, it will still make your transition a bit smoother.

Also, if you're planning on fighting a war against an insurgent group in the mountains of Afghanistan for over a decade, you may want to brush up on your Dari or Arabic or something.

Also also, sorry I didn't put any pictures on this one.

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