Greg Mortenson

For Fozia Naseer, the biggest difference between her home village in Azad Kashmir and this small city in the Northern Rocky Mountains is, well, everything.

“The culture is totally different,” the 26-year-old student said in a recent interview in a coffee shop near the Montana State University campus, where she is studying this year. “For example, if you want to meet someone in the United States, you need an appointment. And you ask, ‘May I come in?’ In Kashmir you just show up, like for big celebrations, and sometimes you stay six, seven, eight days. And you just walk in.

“Also the dress is totally different. Religion is totally different. Food is totally different. Here it is cooked without spices. You just have salt. And it’s half cooked. At first it was really boring,” she said.

“And another thing, in Kashmir, women are not allowed to go out and walk. Here you can sit in a shop. And I think that is nice. Life is easy here. You make appointments and just go. But the language is hard,” Naseer said.

Naseer could speak English before she arrived in Montana in September. Actually, she is one of the most well-spoken and well-educated individuals in her village along the Neelum River in Pakistan-occupied Azad Kashmir.

And she has achieved that despite the fact that she is a woman who was reared in a conservative, traditional, isolated corner of the developing world, a place that former U.S. President Bill Clinton once called “the most dangerous place on Earth,” a place still recovering from a massive 2005 earthquake.

None of that has slowed her down. If anything, that reality has made her more determined to find a way to help her community.

The turning point for Naseer – the event that eventually set her on an airplane for the first time in her life and brought her halfway around the world to continue her studies- was meeting Greg Mortenson.

Mortenson is the founder of Central Asia Institute, a nonprofit organization based in Bozeman that builds schools and promotes education in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. He was in Azad Kashmir in late 2006 – a year after a 7.6-magnitude earthquake had rocked the region, trying to determine how his organization might be able to help people rebuild their lives.

“He asked me, ‘What is it? What do you want?’” Naseer recalled. “I have a degree in education, a master’s degree in political science and at that time I was a student of law.”

Mortenson sensed great promise in this young woman and asked her if she would be interested in a scholarship to take some post-graduate classes at a university in the United States.

She was eager. Her family was more reluctant.

Naseer, the youngest of five children, was raised by her mother and, after her father died when she was two, her paternal uncle. The uncle had been extremely supportive of Fozia’s education, but was leery of sending her overseas alone.

It took two and a half years, many long hours of conversation and a lot of support from CAI’s staff to convince him, but eventually he agreed to let her go.

“I am the first in my village to come to America,” Nasser said. “Especially for girls, this is hard.”

CAI helped Naseer line up a passport, a visa and all the necessary paperwork needed to get her to the United States.

“And now I am here, continuing my education,” she said.

Azad Kashmir is a beautiful place, with deep, green valleys flanked by the tall peaks of the Himalaya Mountains. The narrow region is about 250 miles long, largely agricultural and the people are mostly Muslim.

But it is a region plagued by one of the world’s oldest unresolved conflicts. Since 1947, when Britain divided India and Pakistan, both countries claimed Kashmir. Wars have been fought ever since. The “Line of Control” was drawn roughly north to south, with one-third of Kashmir now controlled by Pakistan and two-thirds by India.

Azad means “free,” but the residents of the region live with a heavy Pakistani military presence. For decades the area was isolated, with little industrial or economic development.

Then suddenly, in October 2005, all eyes of the world were on Kashmir.

At 8:50 on the morning of Oct. 8, a massive earthquake rocked Kashmir. Centered near Muzaffarabad, the capital, the quake shook the mountains and valleys for miles around. Buildings collapsed. Entire villages crumbled. Schools caved in, killing the students within. More than 75,000 people died.

It was a disaster of monumental proportions.

“My village in the Neelum River Valley was filled with rubble and cut off from the world,” Naseer recalled.

International aid workers flowed into the area, but piles of rubble blocked the already-precarious, narrow mountain roads, complicating rescue efforts. Helicopters had to be brought in to transport the injured and deliver blankets, food and tents.

“The girls’ high school in Patika, the next village to my village, was destroyed. More than 100 girls died there,” Naseer said. “UNICEF and other aid groups helped. But not until Greg Mortenson came did we get another school.”

In the months and years after the earthquake, little was being done by the government to help the area rebuild. Mortenson worried that an entire generation of children would wind up missing out on an education if something wasn’t done.

In the years since Mortenson’s first visit to the region, CAI has built more than 17 earthquake-proof schools, mostly for girls, in the region. The buildings are a short-term solution, built to last for five or 10 years. But they have helped to address an immediate need.

He has also set up a scholarship program to help girls who want to continue their education beyond the village school. The first group of students began attending school in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, last fall, about the same time that Naseer left for Bozeman.

Life in Kashmir

Muslims in Azad Kashmir are conservative. The women cover their heads, some wear full hijab. Many men have beards.

The men run the shops, drive the cars and run the local village councils. Generally speaking, women are housewives and teachers and men are laborers and professionals. Women are not generally seen on the street.

“They are all inside,” Naseer explained. “The culture thinks that women must be kept in the home.”

But Naseer emphasized that it is not a primitive place. “We watch television, use cell phones and many people have electricity.”

And her family is progressive when it comes to education. Her uncle, who is a retired teacher, “paid all [the] money for education, for all our schooling, my brothers and sisters and for me.”

Some of the more conservative residents of Azad Kashmir believe that if girls are to be educated at all, it should be limited to teaching in religious schools.

“Our family is good,” Naseer said. “They think education is a must for women.”

And Naseer believes that education is what will make the difference in the long run. Education will help raise Azad Kashmir’s standard of living, break down gender barriers and, ultimately, bring peace.

Tension with India flared again a few months ago, after the terrorist bombings in Mumbai. The Indian government alleged that a militant Pakistani group called Lashkar-e-Taiba was responsible for the Mumbai attacks. The group has members in Azad Kashmir.

“After the bombings in Mumbai, my family told me that Indian and Pakistan armies were flying planes low over Kashmir,” Naseer said.

Naseer worries that events such as the Mumbai bombings only perpetuate the stereotypical impressions Westerners have about her homeland.

“There are many misconceptions about Muslims, about Pakistan and about Azad Kashmir,” she said. “Muslims are not all terrorists” and the fear and fighting caused by the Taliban “is not about religion.”

“Islam does not allow for the killing of innocent people. Islam does not say that girls are not allowed to go to school. This is all hard to understand, but the Pakistan government can’t control all these people and the police can’t protect these people, so maybe they need help with the situation. It is really sad.”

Most Azad Kashmir residents simply want to get on with their lives. They are still trying to rebuild their homes and villages and recover from the losses they suffered in the 2005 earthquake. They want opportunities for their children and a peaceful future, Naseer said.

The bright young woman intends to return in June. She will then begin working with Central Asia Institute, helping to facilitate school projects and assisting other girls with scholarships to continue their education beyond high school. She also intends to open a law office.

“I am really excited to be a lawyer and to do the work with CAI,” she said. “I want to do something for my village, for my country.”

(c) Voices of Tomorrow 2009

http://www.voicesoftomorrow.org/476/international/a-phoenix-is-rising-in-pakistan.php