I was in China this week.  I enjoy reading articles in the English newspaper in Beijing called the China Daily.  This past week, the paper included an article about the Chinese “character of the year.”  The Chinese character, pronounced “kong,” is typically defined as “control.”

Control can be both a positive concept, like controlling inflation, or a very negative notion.  On the negative side, I am reminded of a conversation I had with the Executive Director of the public hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan.  In addition to her hospital leadership role, she was also a trained obstetrician/gynecologist.  She is well revered within the health system of Afghanistan. During a meeting with her, I took an opportunity to ask her about her life under the control of the Taliban in the 1990′s. She told me this story:

During the late 1990’s, she had been given responsibility for a rural hospital in Afghanistan. Every day she was picked up by a driver who would take her from her home to the hospital, about a 30 minute drive. Most of the drive was in a rural area with not much traffic. One day she got a phone call from her typical driver that he was very sick and was unable to take her to work that day. Her husband said he would be happy to take her to work that day. During the Taliban regime, there were guards/soldiers at posts along most roads in order to monitor the day-to-day activity of the community. Every day these same Taliban soldiers would see her riding to the hospital with her driver and never had given her any trouble. This day when her husband was driving, the soldiers noticed that the driver of the car was different. They flagged down the car, told her husband to pull off the side of the road and very aggressively asked, “Who is this man that you are with?” and accused her of having an affair and dishonoring her family. She explained to them that this man was her husband, that typically she had a driver, but today the driver was sick and her husband was taking her to work. The Taliban refused to believe her and began to become very rough and ordered her husband out of the car. At first, she pleaded with them by saying “No, this is not right, this is my husband, he’s taking me to work and I’m going to be late.” They forcibly took her husband out of the car and beat him severely. She became very agitated when telling the story. They took her forcibly out of the car and drug her about 100 yards away so that they could no longer hear her pleas for mercy for how they were treating her husband. They continued to beat her husband until he lost consciousness. After things had calmed down, they told her to get back in the car and when her husband regained consciousness and regained composure, he drove her back home. He was just barely able to drive as he had several broken bones and was very bruised and bloody.  She ended her story by saying, “This is the Taliban, and this is what I remember of the Taliban. At any point in time, without any provocation they could accuse you of something based on their own information and view of what was justice or injustice. You lived under this constant fear that something was going to set them off on that particular day and they literally were the judge, the jury and the hangman. They would feel comfortable right on the spot doling out the punishment.”

Though Afghanistan continues to struggle with its current government, let’s hope this type of control never returns.