Afghanistan

Mapping Afghanistan

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Jun 2020 14:03:00 +0000

Mapping Afghanistan Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 06/01/2020 - 08:03

Steven Boyd Saum

Put rural communities on the map and you might literally be building roads to prosperity. For Walker Kosmidou-Bradley, that’s the plan.

Here’s a story Walker Kosmidou-Bradley (IntlAf’09) tells about his early life with maps: On a Boy Scout backpacking expedition up a slot canyon in southern Utah, when he was about 17, he and the hikers he was leading plotted their course along a river using U.S. Geographical Survey quads — navigating terrain and choosing where they would make camp. When they set off, they discovered a problem: The geography no longer matched the maps.

“The river was no longer on the far side of the canyon,” Kosmidou-Bradley said. “So our proposed campsites were underwater.”

It was an important reminder from nature: The courses of rivers can change. One intense flood can rewrite geography. So you readjust to the realities on the ground. And perhaps one day help correct the maps.

A Country's Future

As a geographer working with the World Bank as part of the South Asia and Middle East/North Africa poverty team, Kosmidou-Bradley has found himself not just correcting maps but frequently filling in the blank spots that still exist.

Much of his work the past three years has been focused on Afghanistan. He leads teams to build maps with accurate and complex layers of data that can have a profound effect on the livelihood of people: helping set priorities for humanitarian aid and infrastructure development, ensuring that communities have access to health care, clean water, schools and a market for their crops — and perhaps tipping the scales to take them from extreme poverty into a more prosperous and hopeful future.

For a country that has faced conflict for decades, that matters profoundly: Where are the roads — and are they paved or gravel or bare earth? Where are the hospitals and schools — and how long does it really take to get there from each village? Where are the electrical lines? And where do they need to be, in terms of where people really live?

“There were villages that were not on the map,” Kosmidou-Bradley said. “Now they’re on the map.”

That matters because in rural areas where the overall population density might be thin, people actually are clustered in a few areas. If there’s funding to build 20 wells in a district, for instance, that helps inform where the wells should be.

This type of mapping makes use of geospatial data, which is tremendously useful if it’s accurate and current — and publicly available. In the developing world, often none of those conditions are true. So Kosmidou-Bradley and others set out to change that in Afghanistan, with data contributions made by scores of contributors in Afghanistan and Washington, D.C., alike. They apply data gleaned from satellite imagery as well as crowdsourced data input on low-cost smartphones out in the field. Teams of contributors trained in the mapping protocols and software tag features. They apply data from — and for — infrastructure projects and agriculture, education and healthcare.

“It’s not just a single data source, but it’s many different data types coming together,” he said. “That is where the real power comes in.”

Focusing on Afghanistan, Kosmidou-Bradley has hosted “mapathons” in both Kabul and at the World Bank Building back home, enlisting work by government ministry officials, students and professors. Following a multi-day workshop introducing participants to a graphic information system (GIS), 25 people took part in the biggest mapathon in Kabul. Back in D.C., some 40 took part.

During winter, when roads aren’t under construction in Afghanistan, they have also tapped field surveyors and construction engineers to enter data on what they built.

Stateside, Johanna Belanger was one of the collaborators on a project map - ping road data in the province of Ghor, in northwestern Afghanistan. She was a student in Washington, D.C., at the time; the project offered a powerful lesson in how poverty and development are inextricably tied to geography. She’s now a consultant to the World Bank.

“...perhaps I can in fact make a difference in the world, one edit at a time.”

With all those efforts, the work is not just about the resulting map; it nurtures a community of people who have the skills and commitment to continue the work and, in turn, to train others.

The true value of the maps is that the data isn’t locked on a computer belonging to the World Bank or a government ministry. Instead, the open-source platform they use for mapping the data, OpenStreetMap, allows for the created data to be available to the world in minutes. And, as consultant Belanger said, working on this platform “gives me a sense of global citizenship and the feeling that perhaps I can in fact make a difference in the world, one edit at a time.”

Lessons from the Map Library

It was in �� Boulder’s map library that Kosmidou-Bradley learned to read geography and history as charted on paper. Other lessons he learned: Everything happens somewhere. That and, he said, “Humans are inherently visual creatures. We process information visually at a shockingly fast rate. Humans are also inherently spatial. When people think of maps, they often think of just normal geography, but it can include everything.”

He took that knowledge to work for the Department of Defense in 2010 and learned to navigate digital mapping environs. (And in moving from Colorado to Washington, D.C., he learned the lesson that you don’t map work-to-home in terms of geographical distance but time — especially during rush hour.)

At the World Bank, which he joined in 2016, he learned the value of a holistic approach: Where the agriculture team in Afghanistan has identified a project could have great impact, partner that with the transport team to ensure better roads to market and that amplifies the value of both projects. Or by logging where certain diseases are showing up, you might see that by pairing that with information on water and sanitation, the answer to better health for the community might not be simply more doctors — but more wells.

Kosmidou-Bradley has hosted “mapathons” in Kabul and at the World Bank Building in Washington, D.C., enlisting work by government ministry officials, students and professors.

The community working with the data needs to be broad-based, too.

“When people say geospatial data, geospatial analysis or just geography, that is a huge field,” Kosmidou-Bradley said. “No single person knows all of it.”

But by training a range of team members, he hopes to build a sustainable skills pipeline.

“Some people will go into government, some people go into the private sector,” he said, which in turn could foster entrepreneurship.

And if all goes well, he works his way out of a job.

Though, of course, OpenStreetMap isn’t only for the workday. It takes the Wikipedia ethos but identifies a username with each data point that gets added — which ensures accountability. Kosmidou-Bradley has used the platform around the world — from Greece, where his wife is from, to roads north of Winter Park, Colorado, where they held their wedding. In the mountains, he said, “I realized that some of the roads in OpenStreetMap up there were not entirely correct. So I went through and corrected those.”

Suit and Pack

On a Tuesday afternoon in March when we met at the World Bank Building in Washington, D.C., Kosmidou-Bradley wore a gray suit and a red-and-silver tie. He is trim and fit with brown hair and blue-gray eyes. It just so happened that a few days before, the United States had signed a peace agreement with the Taliban, a remarkable milestone in the history of Afghanistan. As for what that will mean for his work, Kosmidou-Bradley won’t speculate — so much can change week-to-week — though he’s seen firsthand the cost of conflict in the country.

Through the mapping of Afghanistan, he has also come to know the settlements and castles along the ancient Silk Road in the north. He was stunned to discover city fortifications that ran for 10 or 15 kilometers at a stretch. Having professors and students map these parts of the country’s heritage also matters to organizations like UNESCO: what is there and what should be protected.

“Now that I’ve seen some of these castles, I’m going to go visit them,” Kosmidou-Bradley said brightly.

Years ago, before going to work for the World Bank, he backpacked through Pakistan. And through his work in Afghanistan he’s seen landscapes that spark his desire to explore terrain that’s entirely new — yet hit close to home.

“When I was a Boy Scout leader we spent a lot of time in southern Utah doing slot canyons,” he said. And in Afghanistan, he said, “I see a lot of slot canyons.”

Photos courtesy Walker Kosmidou-Bradley

Put rural communities on the map and you might literally be building roads to prosperity. For Walker Kosmidou-Bradley, that’s the plan.

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Girl Power

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Jun 2017 20:27:00 +0000

Girl Power Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 06/01/2017 - 14:27

Christie Sounart

For years, the Taliban banned music in Afghanistan. Now the country has its first all-female orchestra — and Allegra Boggess to thank.

Afghan music sounded from the orchestra in Davos, Switzerland. From the concert hall’s front row, Allegra Boggess (Mus’07) listened with pride, and cried. The 30 young women on stage were making history.

Zohra, Afghanistan’s first all-female orchestra, kicked off its debut European tour at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland in January. Boggess, their mentor, flew from Colorado to help supervise the student musicians, the youngest of whom was 12. For her, the performance culminated five years’ work at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM), the country’s only music school.

“I don't think I've ever felt so proud or so grateful in my entire life,” said Boggess, a pianist who moved from Denver to Afghanistan in 2011. “I was proud of each one of those girls, especially remembering how hard they worked over the many rehearsals we had and how many battles they fought at home, in their community and in society in general to get where they are now.”

Named after a Persian music goddess, Zohra was formed at ANIM in 2014. Boggess, 33, was a teacher in the school and helped encourage the young women to form the ensemble after they requested special Afghan arrangements to play on their own.

Their enthusiasm reflected dedication and bravery. Making music in Afghanistan was risky until recently: The Taliban outlawed it as un-Islamic.

ANIM students play Western and traditional Afghan instruments, such as the qashkarcha, pictured.

“When the Taliban banned music in the 1990s, all the musicians either had to leave or had to hide their instruments and take up menial jobs,” said Boggess. “You could be beaten for even listening to music.”

Despite the Taliban’s overthrow in 2001, musicians are still sometimes targeted by religious conservatives. It remains rare to see instruments in the streets, Boggess said. But in Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, ANIM provides safety for aspiring musicians.

Ahmad Sarmast, an Afghan musicologist who fled the country’s civil wars for asylum in Australia in the 1990s, returned to his home country in 2006 to develop Afghanistan’s first dedicated music school, established in 2010.

With support from donors, including the World Bank, the U.S. Embassy and the German government, ANIM enrolled dozens of children, focusing primarily on providing opportunities for the country’s most vulnerable populations: street vendors, orphans and girls.

“I believe that all kids, regardless of their gender, should have access to music education,” Sarmast said in a 2013 documentary from Al Jazeera’s Witness series. “I will do my utmost to provide more opportunity to the girls, given the challenges they are facing in this country.”

You could be beaten for listening to music."

Today, there are more than 65 girls among the school’s 250 students, who range in age from 10 to 21.

“I wish her to study and become somebody,” one student’s mother, clothed in a burka, said in Witness. “I want her to be free and bare-faced.”

ANIM was Boggess’ reason for living in a war zone.

After graduating from ��, she felt called to teach music to children outside the U.S. While teaching in India at a school for impoverished children, she visited Afghanistan and ANIM. Her brief experience in Kabul left her wanting more. She joined the faculty full time in August 2011, despite the AK-47s in the streets and suicide bombings.

“I was pretty scared,” she said. “But not enough not to go.”

Boggess, the youngest of three sisters, arrived in August 2011 and saw there was plenty to do.

“When you ban music, a country’s cultural heritage is at stake,” she said. “The school is working to bring that back.”

Most of the school’s incoming students could not name traditional Afghan instruments such as the rubab, related to the lute, or the sitar, a plucked stringed instrument.

Boggess, an experienced pianist and oboist, learned traditional Afghan music from her colleagues and began arranging folk songs for her students to play on the piano. In time, she provided music and instruction to the Zohra Orchestra.

With Afghan and other international colleagues, she worked six days a week, often spending free time practicing with students who wouldn’t bring their instruments home for fear of public rebuke. At times, other �� alumni served as guest teachers alongside Boggess, including cellist Kimberly Patterson (DMus’12), her husband, guitarist Patrick Sutton (DMus’14), and conductor Joel Schut (MMus’12).

“I was pretty scared...But not enough not to go.”

“Even with the unstable political environment, ANIM has become a beacon of hope in war-torn Afghanistan,” said Patterson, now a professor at the University of Memphis.

Boggess also invited David Korevaar, her former �� professor. He went to Kabul for two weeks in May 2016 to work with pianists and flutists behind the school’s thick walls and manned steel gate.

“We’re just validating the mission by being there,” he said. “The fact that I can do this and share music with students who are really hungry for it — there’s nothing better in the world.”

But Korevaar, who still teaches at ��, fears for the school’s future amid continuing turmoil in Afghanistan. He follows the news daily, with a frightening event involving Boggess in mind.

On Dec. 11, 2014, Boggess helped organize eight students for an evening performance at a Kabul high school. She went home with a headache, leaving the students with Sarmast. As the children performed on stage, a teenage suicide bomber blew himself up in the auditorium. One man was killed and 16 wounded, including Sarmast, who had shrapnel in his head and damaged eardrums.

The experience changed Boggess, who did her best to fill in for Sarmast as he healed.

“To think I could have died — that was the first time I realized, as passionate as I was about teaching music, I wasn’t ready to die for it,” she said. “It was the first time I was really afraid. I would leave the house and wonder, ‘What is going to happen to me?’”

Boggess battled with her decision about whether to stay.

“I was still excited and happy to be there, because I felt like part of a family,” she said. “But it was a really tough time. It was hard to come to the realization that I needed to leave.”

Last August, after more than four years, she returned to Denver, where she took a job at Starbucks — “the opposite of my job in Afghanistan” — and taught piano.

But she kept in touch with members of Zohra as they prepared for their concerts in Europe. And when they made their debut on the world stage, she was with them — with the 18- and 19-year-old female conductors and with freshman Aziza, who, though tiny in stature, learned to play double bass.

“I remember when and how each of those girls joined the ensemble,” said Boggess. “To think back to that time and then to fast-forward to watching them perform in Europe — it was incredibly emotional for all of us.”

In August, Boggess begins a new job as director of orchestra at Rabun Gap, a Georgia boarding school.

“I’m already talking about how I can get girls from Afghanistan to that school to study,” she said.

Photos courtesy Allegra Boggess

<p>For years, the Taliban banned music in Afghanistan. Now the country has its first all-female orchestra — and Allegra Boggess to thank.</p>

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