S5-Episode 1: Sitting Face to Face with the Taliban

 

Mary-Ellen McGroarty 0:00 

 

I met this young woman Fatima, up in Bamiyan, when I was up there recently as well, right. A young teacher. I think she was only about 30. She was the main breadwinner for her family. You know, I mean, and she's like, ‘What are we going to do? What are we going to do? You know, I had my job. I was feeding my family. Now, I have nothing, and I have to come to the World Food Programme for something to eat.’

 

Melissa Fleming 0:23 

 

I'm Melissa Fleming from the United Nations. Welcome to Awake at Night. Since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in August 2021, the country has fallen into economic crisis. And this has resulted in a massive hunger crisis. There are extreme levels of hunger where half the population is suffering. So many children are malnourished. Mary-Ellen McGroarty is the World Food Programme’s Representative and Country Director in Afghanistan. Mary-Ellen, thank you for joining us.

 

Mary-Ellen McGroarty 1:18 

 

Thank you, Melissa. Delighted to be here with you this evening.

 

Melissa Fleming 1:21 

 

Over 50% of Afghans are threatened with hunger. It's hard to even comprehend the extent of such suffering. Can you tell me what you've seen and what you are witnessing there on the ground? And you know, is there a particular story that would just help us to really grasp how desperate the situation is?

 

Mary-Ellen McGroarty 1:43 

 

Well, what I have seen…witnessed over the last couple of months, I don't think I've witnessed in my long career with WFP. I've spoken to men whose dignity is stripped as they scavenge in the bins looking for bread to feed their children. I've spoken to old farmers, you know, who've told me they've lived through 19 governments in Afghanistan and have never seen it as bad. I was in an IDP site in Herat, where they wanted to take me hostage because they wanted food. Because normally they would get work in Herat. You know that plan B for people, the casual labour, you know, people losing their jobs. But I think one thing, Melissa, that really strikes me the most is the trauma for women. Teachers who are stuck at home, in the darkness, who can’t go to work…civil servants, and then also many women, the widows and stuff, who used to do cleaning jobs, laundry jobs, domestic…They were part…as a middle class has become ruptured. That whole economy also. No, no, it's just I've never seen, you know… You know how to respond to a drought, but this economic implosion frightens me.

 

Melissa Fleming 2:45 

 

And from the perspective, from your perspective as leading the World Food Programme’s, efforts. What does this mean for the people you serve?

 

Mary-Ellen McGroarty 2:54 

 

It means I guess, today, it means we need to do everything possible to try and get to the people who are really on the brink. You know, there are 8.7 million people what we say…one step away from famine-like conditions. I have met people, my team meet people every single day, you know, parents who have gone without food for a few days so that they can feed their children. So, we need to get food and nutrition assistance. We need to stem the tide of malnutrition and prevent children getting malnourished because we all know that’s irreversible. The impact on their productive life is irreversible. So, it’s a huge task - 23 million people in 2022. You know, trying to say, you know, can we get it done? Will we get the resources to get it done? Particularly, now as we’re in the height of winter, and snow was right across the country, right? So, you hear this road is closed because of snow, that road is closed because of snow. And the irony of this year is they're suddenly getting more snow than they expected. Right? Last year, there wasn't enough snow. So, we're responding to the drought. And this year as we're trying to scale up and respond…places. The irony is there's too much snow and snow is great for the farms, right? And it's great for the water. Those bittersweet developments, right?

 

Melissa Fleming 4:04

 

Yeah, indeed, the snow, the snow was great. Eventually, there'll be water for the farms when the time comes. But now it's absolutely freezing. I mean, people don't have heat, right?

 

Mary-Ellen McGroarty 4:16 

 

No. Last night, I was, I was coming back to the compound well after dark, and it was, you know, I mean, and there was no lights around. There was no lights on anywhere. And so, I was asking the driver as well. And he says yeah, because people have no heating. They just, they have no electricity. They have no heating. They just get into bed. So, it's very calm and quiet at 9:30 at night. It's like a stillness like you were in the countryside or something, right? People are picking plastic, any paper, anything they can try and burn. And so of course the pollution has got much, much, much higher as well. So, people…people are burning household goods as well to keep warm.

 

Melissa Fleming 4:50

 

You mentioned that you were particularly concerned about the situation for women and girls. Can you talk about that a bit?

 

Mary-Ellen McGroarty 4:59 

 

Yeah, I suppose, you know, as a humanitarian, of course.  Also, you know…the humanitarian imperative, you know, you don't get into the political discussions.  But you know, as a woman leader, and as a woman myself, you cannot but… you cannot but be heartbroken. How do these young women, how are they going to survive? You know, you're 25, you're 30 years of age, and you can't go to your work, you have to stay at home. I've met the women in Bamiyan, I've met women up in Badakhshan and you know, we get into a room, and we meet all together. I can't take a picture because they haven't got permission to get their photograph taken. And I listen to the trauma, Melissa, and I think how are they going to…? You know, the physical trauma of the hunger and everything, but the mental trauma. I mean, if somebody told me today, sorry, Mel sorry, Mary-Ellen, you no longer can work, you're going to stay at home. And that's it. I don't know what I’d do. I think that's… that for me, I just can't… My head finds it very difficult to get around it. And some days, I sometimes wish I hadn't been here before the 15th of August, because then I wouldn't have seen the hope and the promise and the potential. And to see how that's been wrenched away, that really is something I just…my head just finds surreal. And on some days, I have to pinch myself and try to say, am I living here in this time and place? Where again, where the women, you know, of Afghanistan are back to the compounds again.

 

Melissa Fleming 6:37

 

I think it has absolutely shocked the world, because I think the world also witnessed how women were in parliament, in the workplace, going to school, attending university, and there was so much hope there because of that, that Afghanistan could become a free society and where there was equality and… And women were earning and bringing back paychecks, which also helped with the situation, the hunger situation.

 

Mary-Ellen McGroarty 7:10 

 

Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's the thing. And it's not all women. I mean, it's still a very conservative society. And I accept that. But gee, you know, whether you want to be conservative or less conservative in terms of how you approach your livelihood should be… That's a choice, right? That's a choice we all have. Yeah, Afghanistan has the highest number of widows in the world because of decades of conflict. They are young widows, who are young from the conflict in the last seven months, or the first seven months of 2021, as the battle for Afghanistan raged right across this country. They are old widows, like who were widows of the Mujahideen and everything else that you know. There are widows from every single year of the last 40 decades of war in this country. And I met the old ones, the young ones, and they're the breadwinners.

 

Melissa Fleming 7:56 

 

You are one of the women leaders, representing a UN organization in Afghanistan. And I understand that when you go meet the Taliban, you make sure that you are a delegation of women leaders because this is symbolically important.

 

Mary-Ellen McGroarty 8:13 

 

Absolutely. I mean, I think this is something that we've insisted if people are coming to Afghanistan, you know, I mean that they have women in their delegations. Of course, myself, the head of UNHCR, the head of OCHA, part of our workers’ meeting, meeting the Taliban and going and sitting in front of them. When I'm out in the field, I go, and I meet the governors as well. I suppose for me, the saddest thing is that you know, it's about our national female staff as well. You know, we want to get to the day where those…They are able to come and also be able to meet whether it's you know, national staff of the UN, but even women within the society of Afghanistan, right? That we can help that as well.

 

Melissa Fleming 8:54

 

I wonder just what it is like living in Afghanistan right now. I believe, you know, the UN is housed, most everybody together in one compound. What are the living conditions like and how are you kind of coping with this situation outside the compound?

 

Mary-Ellen McGroarty 9:16 

 

I mean, you know, for us it's… is it much different than it was before the 15th of August? It's different and probably it's a bit safer outside. You can get around the city now. You know, I mean, know, you're around this city. Much less checkpoints even across the country as well. I mean, I've been out on the road, I mean, from Badakhshan to Kunduz, up to Maymana. So, in that respect, again, it’s that bitter sweetness of what, you know, there is… The guns are relatively silenced. There's a tenuous calm and a tenuous peace, which I hope can be optimized into something else for want of a better word.

 

Melissa Fleming 9:53 

 

I imagine it is… It's also quite difficult to come home at night and having witnessed what you've witnessed. And do you kind of sit together and talk about it? How do you process the hunger or the despair?

 

Mary-Ellen McGroarty 10:10 

 

Yeah, I think that's, it's… I think it's trying to process that. But I think it's also trying to process what's happened. Yeah. I mean, you saw what was happening over the 12 months beforehand, and the uptick in the conflict and everything else. But you just didn't expect everything to change, and change utterly, you know, within the space of two or three weeks, right? Once the provincial capital started to fall, right? So, I think we're still trying to process that because we have a huge humanitarian job now to do, and it needs to be done in order to save lives. Right? And that against let's say, a very… sort of a dark, disturbing backdrop.

 

Melissa Fleming 10:54 

 

Somewhat dystopian?

 

Mary-Ellen McGroarty 10:57 

 

Yeah. You know, The Handmaid's Tale and stuff like that gonna come to mind at times. Right? And, yeah, I appreciate the political conversations around Afghanistan are extremely difficult and a lot of things to be thought about. And it's not easy, and it's very complicated. But you know, if you talk about women and girls, right? And their ability to be able to chart a way forward in an Afghanistan that we currently have today, then we need to keep girls in school so that they themselves can find a way to chip away at it, right? Women need to be at work and have the opportunities, right? So, the people of Afghanistan themselves can try and figure out a way forward together. And that will not be easy. And I …someday to think gosh if you had maybe…maybe it’s probably just as well we don't have crystal balls to see what's out ahead.

 

Melissa Fleming 11:52 

 

Before I move away from Afghanistan just maybe if you could describe a kind of day where you travel to the field where food is being delivered and what does that scene look like?

 

 

Mary-Ellen McGroarty 12:04

 

Yeah, I suppose what sticks with me now is that I hadn't seen before and in the distributions before the 15th of August, is the scene of blue burqas. Before you'd see a few but now it's just many, many, many, many women. And that, you know, listening to they’re talking to you behind, from behind this blueness and you can feel the pain, through the blue, the blue burqa.

 

Melissa Fleming 12:39 

 

I wonder what your family back in Ireland must be thinking. Are they looking into your future? Or they're probably thinking about you and your present and must be very worried. I believe your husband is there, and children?

 

Mary-Ellen McGroarty 12:52 

 

No, no children. We have a dog Zita and loads of siblings and my mother.

 

Melissa Fleming 12:57 

 

And so, they're all back in Ireland and what do they think about what you're doing and your work?

 

Mary-Ellen McGroarty 13:04

 

Um, I think August, September was difficult for them. I think those images that were beamed into all your sitting rooms in August were quite difficult for them to watch because they were really, very worried. And I think it's a first, you know, even though I've worked in difficult situations before, the images like Afghanistan have never been beamed into sitting rooms. You know, like they were. So, you could always let me say… You could manage the concern, and you know, you didn't have… But it's very hard to manage that concern when it's all over the media. And so, they were extremely concerned, and you know, trying to reassure them. And I do…you do worry, especially, you know, when your mother's over eighty, putting them through that, right? For your way of life, right? And your choices that you have made. My husband is great because he understands it's… to run a little bit of the… manage a little bit of their concerns and assure them, right? Because he does know the UN to a degree of being around with me and that we do have security measures and security systems and everything else. But it's very hard for them still at the end of the day, because of course you have all the neighbours and the people down at Mass telling my mother, ‘God Kathleen, I'm saying a prayer for her, you know. We're praying for her and hope she's okay’. And but, you know, the fact that I was able to get home at Christmas time, and you know, talk to them about it and explain, you know, how we live here and what, you know, it kind of reassured them a bit and so hopefully, hopefully things will stay calm.

 

Melissa Fleming 14:35

 

What is a phone call like to your mother? Like what do you say to her?

 

Mary-Ellen McGroarty 14:39 

 

Yeah, for me it's about trying to get all the news of home, right? You know, what is she… How is she managing in COVID? Is she getting…She still drives, so are you getting out and about and seeing people? And yeah, put it more about…about what's going on around home to get her focused that way rather than focusing on what could be going on here.

 

Melissa Fleming 14:59 

 

Your husband Stuart lives in Ireland. And I'm just very curious about how you met and how you manage this kind of separation, these long separations.

 

Mary-Ellen McGroarty 15:13

 

Yeah. Stuart and I met in Zambia. I was not a young bride. He's from the UK. He'd spent many years doing the overland truck driving through Africa. So, I mean… So used to drive tourists right across Africa, from Gibraltar right down to South Africa. And he settled in Zambia, doing um…he’d set up a factory doing woodwork and carpentry and was doing this lodge. And I had arrived to Zambia, and I was down there to respond to the massive drought…taken up a job as the head of logistics. And I had…We had 50 train wagons stuck in Livingston. So, I had to go down for the weekend, and see if I could negotiate getting them across the border. And then I met one of my colleagues from WFP that I knew.  And then of course, as you're doing, you go out for something to eat and then you meet some people. Then I met Stuart that evening, as they say, the rest is history. So, and he had no connection whatsoever with the UN. Very few UN friends. So we were, we were met in Zambia, we got…we had our wedding in Zambia. Then we went to Burundi, we're in Rome and now he’s back. And then when I went to Chad because it's a nonfamily duty station so it's not safe for him. But it was okay for me as he says. He's back and Donegal in our house in Donegal keeping things afloat there. Keeping things moving. Yeah, but he understands, I guess, because he has travelled. He's met, you know, my colleagues. He understands, you know, the pressures of the work, the demands of the travel. And it's very… Yeah, I'm very lucky to have him because he's very understanding. And of course, he worries too. He tells me he tries not to, but he does.

 

Melissa Fleming 16:50 

 

I'm sure. You must sometimes long for him though and get lonely.

 

Mary-Ellen McGroarty 16:56 

 

Yeah. I mean, you do your bit. It's…yeah, of course, you want somebody to have a chat with in the evening, right, about things. Because... The thing is as well, when you are the Country Director and the Representative, it can be lonely at times. Right? You know, so it's, yeah, your sounding board, right? So, I do miss my sounding board. Whether you know, somebody just maybe to rant at some days and somebody just to talk things through with. But thankfully, thanks for Skype and all these things, right? Because when I started first, we got $50 a month, that would only give you a seven-minute call home. I mean, yes. So, you’d ring home, right, from Goma but only have seven minutes. So, you get to Daddy, and you get to Mommy, you got to what are two of the brothers and sisters, right, and then the time would be up. But now of course, you can chat for hours on Skype, but everything is fantastic.

 

Melissa Fleming 17:46 

 

It is. It's been I think really helpful for the humanitarians like you who so many… who have family separations and separated from spouses and children and at least you can keep that contact. You have chosen to work in some of the world's most challenging places before. Before Afghanistan, you were in South Sudan. You were in Chad, and your first overseas posting with the World Food Programme was in Rwanda in 1997, just after the genocide. So, maybe let's start with Rwanda. I mean, you were then I believe, a young woman straight from Ireland. How did that affect you?

 

Mary-Ellen McGroarty 18:27 

 

Yeah, I mean I went to WFP after I went out with Goal, first, an Irish NGO, as a volunteer for a year. Wanted to do something completely different for a year. Somehow got into it. So, I was in Goma after the genocide. I suppose I never forget it because it's the first time you see the… You know, I do come from beside Northern Ireland, but to see the mass impact of conflict and hatred on people. And I remember it's striking me, you know, rethinking again, my perspectives around the Irish problem, right? And then also, of course, my father was God rest him, used to make tombstones and stuff, right? But like, of course, in Goma because of the cholera epidemic and everything else it was mass graves that that had to be dealt with. So, for me that was really… I struggled with that initially, you know, thinking my goodness, you know, it was just something that was so very different. That you know, the love and the care that we put into those rituals in our part of the world and then to find that so many people, like were just in a mass grave, unmarked, forgotten. I was just wow… It just staggered me in terms of you know, the fragility of human life.

 

Melissa Fleming 19:42 

 

But yet it somehow captured your heart and you decided to go into humanitarian work. And then maybe can you just describe that scene for those who don't know what was happening in Goma at that time.

 

Mary-Ellen McGroarty 20:01 

 

Yeah, it did. Yeah, I mean Goma. I mean, it was a mass exodus from the horrendous genocide in Rwanda. You mean, what, hundreds of 1000s of people living in camp-like conditions beneath the volcano, of course. So, very difficult conditions. And then massive cholera outbreak that claimed 10s of 1000s of lives. Yeah, no, it was horrendous. I mean, it's a long time ago now. Oh, my goodness. And, you know, the death that occurred over 100 days in Rwanda was something staggering, right? But I think, yeah, I think it was some work that somehow, I was, you know, good at it. You know, whatever they threw at me, it just made me move, right? It was work that got into my, into my heart into my soul and into my head. And I went from one job to the next. And then the time went on, right? And then I joined WFP in 97, as a volunteer. They were scaling up for the mass repatriations from both Tanzania and Zaire, as was at the time, became then the DRC. Scaling up to bring those refugees all to come back. Right? So, I went from Rwanda to Uganda, to Tanzania. I think, yeah… To Tanzania back down to Zambia for the drought. And then from Zambia to Burundi, and then Burundi into Rome. Yeah, I mean, it's just, I don't know, the pieces. Yeah, you know, every country was unique in its own way. And then, and then I got, you know… loved learning about the places as well, right? Now I find myself in Afghanistan. It probably is one that was never on the top of my list, because it has such a bad security reputation. You know, I lost one of my sisters to cancer in 99. And I saw what it [had] done to my parents in terms of the heartbreak, and I thought, you know, going to places like Afghanistan and stuff would probably torture them too much. Be too difficult to put them through that. Isn't it funny then how things come around?

 

Melissa Fleming 21:56 

 

I wonder, you know, just going back, though. I mean, most people would kind of run away from this kind of tragedy. You walk right into it, and then you stay and then you go seek out other places where people are in desperate situations. What is it about you? I mean, you studied to be a lawyer.

 

Mary-Ellen McGroarty 22:15

 

There was an old lady that used to live beside as an old neighbour as I was growing up. And she told my parents when I went out. To go before... she said. She always said when she was young, she was going to travel the world to work, right? So maybe it was something in the back of the head. It's not that I think I can change the world that I do it. I think if there is not some of this humanity. You carry some of our humanity across the world and stuff. I think, you know, we need to, right? So, I don't know what really motivates me. I guess it's just you tried to make a little bit of a contribution, right?

 

Melissa Fleming 22:45 

 

But you never questioned this career choice?

 

Mary-Ellen McGroarty 22:48 

 

No, never did. And I… Yeah. If you threw me into it again. I don't… Yeah, I looked back, and I thought no. Would have done it any differently? No, I don't think so. No.

 

Melissa Fleming 22:58 

 

I understand that working in Chad had a big impact on you. If you think back to that time now, you know, what do you remember about your travels through the country?

 

Mary-Ellen McGroarty 23:08 

 

The heat. You mean Chad is harsh. It's a harsh way of life, as humans battle the planet, right? Because it really is there on the frontlines of, you know, the desert and limited water. So, I think the harshness of Chad … But also, the harshness of the poverty. I remember telling somebody. I was staggered at the level of poverty in Chad. You know, I was thinking, my goodness, this is, where we are in 2016... And there's so much wealth in the world and ... And then, Lake Chad. You know, that really struck me, because it was the whole Boko Haram crisis. And you meet ordinary people who just want their life. They want to have their children. They want to bring up their children. They want to send them to school. They want to enjoy the rituals of life, just like we all do. And their whole life is upended, for absolutely no reason and not of their making, because they live in a certain part of the world. And this is…you know, rampage takes over. Like when I'm meeting people in Lake Chad and see how they were completely upended. The refugees from Darfur, living for years in refugee camps, you know, and no hope of going back, right? Because the conditions, right? And still trying to eke out a life. That really kind of shocked me. And thinking, my goodness, when are we going to try and turn some of this around?

 

Melissa Fleming 24:33 

 

I wonder, when you think about the current work that you're doing in Afghanistan, what is keeping you most awake at night these days?

 

Mary-Ellen McGroarty 24:44 

 

I struggle internally because we have to charge a way forward as we tried to do you know. Get the humanitarian response and, you know, deal with different issues that come up. You cannot be blind to what's going on. You know, we have… I’ve worked in conflict situations that are about territory. They're about resources. But this thing around the ideology and this darkness, I think, yeah. That's what I struggle… as we try to navigate because you want to make the right decisions. You want to, you know, for want of a better term, do no harm. But much more than that you want to be able to protect, somehow and make a contribution. And I mean, of course, is working for the UN and a humanitarian, we have certain limitations. But you still want to be able to make a contribution for the women, as a woman, that you can possibly do. Whether, you know, discreetly, overtly. I mean, there are days I say to people, gosh, I wish I could get on the streets with those women. But I cannot.

 

Melissa Fleming 25:44 

 

It's not just about alleviating hunger. No, for you.

 

Mary-Ellen McGroarty 25:46 

 

No, no, it's not. No. It's very hard to think you're in a country where you know, the young women are… little number of the young women are on the street, just marching for the basic thing to be able to go to work. That's very difficult.

 

Melissa Fleming 26:01 

 

WFP won the Nobel Peace Prize recently. How did that make you feel?

 

Mary-Ellen McGroarty 26:08 

 

Yeah…We're all very proud, right? We were all very proud. It'll be…having the work recognized. Because it's certainly, you know, does addressing hunger contribute to peace? It does. And a lot of the conflict we have today is over resources, right? It's over water. It's over, you know, access to food, it's over access to resources. So, you know what I mean yeah. No, it was very proud.

 

Melissa Fleming 26:34 

 

When you meet the human beings who you interact with, and you help. What is it that they most need and want in life?

 

Mary-Ellen McGroarty 26:42   

 

It's the peace. I think that's what most people want, right? You know, to be able to live their life in peace. And then to have the chances and the opportunities to have a decent life, a chance to be able to send their children to school, a chance to be able to access health services. Live a life of hope, prosperity and dignity. Right?

 

Melissa Fleming 27:06 

 

But what is it about hunger that speaks to you and wanting to solve it?

 

Mary-Ellen McGroarty 27:11 

 

Well, I come from a country that lost, you know, millions of people, either through death or through immigration because of a famine. Right? Well, 150 years ago with Ireland, right? The great famine and stuff. So, it's, you know, I mean. Surely, we all have a right to just to be able to eat, to get such a basic human right.

 

Melissa Fleming 27:30 

 

That's, that's interesting. The link to the famine in your country. I imagine as a child you were taught about it.

 

Mary-Ellen McGroarty 27:38 

 

Yeah. Yeah. You learned about it, you know, what it meant for people and the pictures. You know, people are laying on the side of the road, clinging to life and losing life on the side of the road and stuff. But it's not… Yeah, it's just such an inhumane injustice to people that a very basic thing for survival like food. You can't get like water.

 

Melissa Fleming 27:59 

 

Mary-Ellen, thank you so much for joining us on Awake at Night and keep safe and keep doing the amazing work that you're doing for the people of Afghanistan.

 

Thank you for listening to Awake at Night. We'll be back soon with more incredible and inspiring stories from people working to do some good in this world at a time of global crisis.

 

To find out more about the series and the extraordinary people featured, do visit un.org/awake-at-night. On Twitter, we’re @UN and I'm @melissafleming. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and please do take the time to review us. It helps more people find the show.

 

Thanks to my editor Bethany Bell, to Jen Thomas, Adam Paylor and the team at Purpose and to my colleagues at the UN: Roberta Politi, Katerina Kitidi, Geneva Damayanti, Tulin Battikhi, Bissera Kostova and the team at the UN studio. The original music for this podcast was written and performed by Nadine Shah and produced by Ben Hillier.