2003-2004
Afghanistan: A
Country Between Hope and Abyss
Dr. Reinhard Eroes
Dr. Reinhard Eroes presented the talk, “Afghanistan: A Country
Between Hope and Abyss” in Robertson Hall at the Woodrow
Wilson School on Monday, February 23, 2004. The talk was
part of LISD’s project on state-building in Afghanistan,
supported by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Eroes has been delivering humanitarian aid to Afghanistan for
more than twenty years. He was awarded the “Bundesverdienstkreuz” for
his work in Afghanistan under Soviet occupation, when he worked
in hiding as a member of Doctors without Borders to treat
civilians in Tora Bora cave clinics. In 1998 he founded the
first school outside Kabul with his own organization Children’s
Aid Afghanistan. In the last five years his organization
has founded and has been supporting more than ten schools, mostly
for girls, in the eastern provinces of Afghanistan. It is
in these provinces where the Taliban are recruiting and are at
home. Education on peace is the most important subject in these
schools. He spends about eight months per year in Afghanistan
and has an intimate knowledge of the current political and humanitarian
situation in Afghanistan. His book Tea with the Devil was
at the time of its release Germany's most successful non-fiction
book about Afghanistan.
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