FRANCAISMission d’aide au développement des économies rurales - Comments
2) The way it works
-Whilst many NGOs preferred to withdraw rather than compromise themselves through working with the Taliban regime in Kabul, MADERA wanted to stay as long as possible so as to continue its development strategy in the long term. The importance of the number of Afghan members in its personnel was both a force to negotiate with and a weakness since MADERA, through loyalty towards these employees, didn’t want to risk being expelled. The organisation emphasised the continuity of its programs, leaving to others the role to inform against the fundamentalists’ wrong-doings. As to the condition of women, MADERA hesitated between denouncing and being efficient, between morality and pragmatism, and sought to include women within its projects from 1996 onwards. The fact that MADERA stayed put after the withdrawal of international NGOs in 1998 raised two issues: the risk to support a regime which openly discriminated against women, and the risk to allow the Taliban to fully concentrate on war by leaving to the humanitarians the job of running minimal public services.
