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closeGH native works for peace in Afghanistan
Peninsula High School graduate named Deputy Country Representative
Susan Schell
of the Gateway
Michael Haines looked like an ordinary guy dressed in casual clothes and a baseball cap, relaxing at the Tides Tavern. Quite a switch from the photographs that showed him dressed in a business suit and engaged in serious conversations with dignitaries in Kabul, Afghanistan.
The Gig Harbor native was recently in the area for a very short time to visit his mother before jetting off to the middle east.
In January he was named Deputy Country Representative for the Asia Foundation in Afghanistan.
“I joined the Asia Foundation earlier this year after nearly two years in Azerbaijan with Eurasia Foundation,” he said. “Afghanistan is one of the most important and pivotal countries on the geo-political and economic scene for centuries if not millennia. This complex society, a true melting pot of ethnicity, religions, civilizations, and languages, is not only a lynchpin for global energy policy, it is the key to security challenges in the Middle East, South Asia, and indeed the world, as 9/11 demonstrated.”
Haines said the Asia Foundation is a premier international organization and its Country Representative in Afghanistan, Dr. George Varughese, is an iconic figure in the industry.
“I live in an ordinary house, but it’s in the compound where I work,” he said. “Basically I live at work.”
Haines has not lived in the United States since 2003. He served in the Peace Corps in the Ukraine, worked for public affairs at the Pentagon and worked in Iraq helping the Iraqi military communicate with the public.
“Nobody does the Peace Corps unless you have a standard of idealism,” he said. “I joined the corps fully intending to return home and never did.”
One “small world” story he shares is when he got together with a fellow Peninsula High School graduate in Iraq.
“I got an e-mail from Gerald Ostlund, a guy I hadn’t seen in 12 years,” he said. “He learned I was working in Iraq and said ‘When you’re in Baghdad lets get together.”
The two met up in a coffee shop located in one of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces, The Green Bean.
The Asia Foundation is supported by the U.S. Congress. Their main thrust, Haines said, is to provide access to education and access to justice.
“Women are very protected by their families over there,” he said. “We provide grants to girls’ schools and training for young women. We provide services so they don’t have to rely on the government.”
Haines comes from a long line of educators, so teaching is a natural for him. His brother is a teacher and his mother, Barbara Julian, is a private tutor.
“He’s teaching young women and that’s very good,” she said. “I teach people how to read, but he teaches them how to live. He’s trying to make people literate so they can make their own decisions.”
Like every mother, Julian worries about her son living in a dangerous country, but she and his brother plan to visit him in Afghanistan in a few weeks.
“He feels comfortable and is most productive when he’s under extreme pressure,” she said. “Everything he does is always looking at the big picture. He really likes to help people.”
Haines said building good governance in a country leads to the elimination of corruption. That involves providing for their welfare with hospitals, schools and all the elements that make a society.
“It’s a very challenging environment,” he said. “People view Afghanistan. as a lawless nation, but they just need help. Now there seems to be a breath of fresh air with the Obama administration. Obama seems committed to providing resources and political support. Bush was supportive, but seemed unable to provide the political support.”
Haines said natives that fled the country during Taliban rule are beginning to return with skills they picked up elsewhere, and that’s what the country needs.
He works down the hall from Tariq Osman, Senior Religious Advisor and Technical Consultant, and former member of the Taliban.
“Living here requires you to look below the surface,” he said. “People want things mostly packaged in black and white. During the time of war many people joined the Taliban because they were provided jobs, but they didn’t necessarily buy into the ideology.”
Haines said the Taliban gave Islam a bad name.
“They used Islam as their cover,” he said. “People pervert religious beliefs for their own gain. Most Talibs are illiterate and haven’t ever read the Holy Koran, so they don’t even know what it says.”
Haines said the Asia Foundation has tried to make life for the Americans as normal as possible. There are two deputy country representatives — the other one is from Croatia.
“The U.S. is just one player,” he said. “It’s supported by nine countries. The foundation has dozens of projects around the world.”
The reason why developed countries would spend so much time and money on underdeveloped countries is simple, Haines said.
“Democracies don’t war with each other. But we can’t build it in our own image. They have to find it in their own youth.”
Haines pointed out that a country becomes very dangerous when it becomes lawless and can’t police its own borders.
“When there’s a fractured state it leads to instability. If it fails it breaks the whole system. And we know what the price is of failure.”
Haines meets with the ministry of labour regularly and helps develop labour laws in Kabul. But he said it takes more than just training the police and college professors. The key is to train those that can turn around and give their knowledge to others.
“It’s harder for a country to support terrorism when you have working cities,” Haines said. “We know what happens when there’s a failed state. When police uphold the laws you have a working society. If those elements are there then terrorism goes away.”