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ISLAMABAD,
Pakistan--Stephanie Bunker stands in the
hot sun on the roof of the Marriott hotel
with two high intensity lights aimed right
at her face, waiting on a cue from CNN
in Atlanta, Georgia.
And
she waits, and waits, and waits. Live TV is
really slow.
She looks very good--for a person whose husband
that morning put her on her feet, literally.
Bunker is the UN's spokesman here, and since
the bombing began she has been a very busy
lady indeed.
"My husband puts me on my feet every
morning, -- literally" she told Earth
Times, "He pulls me up by my armpits,
lifts me out of bed, gets me on my feet, and
makes sure I am standing."
"Then he pushes me towards breakfast," she
said.
And that's at 6 AM.
The rest of the day is filled with her main
job--getting the word out on he plight of the
Afghan people.
"My
mission here is to put the focus on the people
of
Afghanistan, people who have
nothing to do with what is going on, and who
are victims because they were born there. It
was no more their choice than it was mine to
be born in Peru, Indiana.
With several hundred journalists in town the
suffering of the Afghan people, real and potential
in face of the coming winter, is now in the
world's spotlight. Bunker's cell phone never
stops until she shuts it down, she said, and
sometimes she does live radio interviews while
she is driving to, and from work, ignoring
advice of road safety experts who say driving
and doing cell phone interviews can be dangerous.
It hasn't always been that way. Bunker, who
has been spokesman for a little more than two-year
said she had been fighting an uphill battle
to bring the world's attention to the problems
of the Afghan people.
Bunker arrived here in 1993 with her two daughters
and her husband who works for the Sustainable
Development Institute. She was a freelance
writer until landing the spokesman's job almost
three years ago.
"In
the fall of 1999 there was the civil war
in which
the Taliban applied a scorched
earth policy. It was a time of crisis. We were
having difficulties trying to meet the people
needs. And there were a lot of displaced persons."
Bunker
said some interest in the problems of the
Afghans
did grow in the world's press,
but " they wanted numbers and it was very
difficulty getting the detail of the numbers
of people in a country that are affected."
"It's difficult," she said. "You
have something to say, but it is very difficult
to quantify it. And that's what they want.
"People
were fleeing east and others were fleeing
west, it was difficult to keep
rack.
"Then
in early 2000 a routine situation report
said that the rivers were low. That
was the first indication that they were in
the middle of a drought. And again here was
a scramble to collect information.
"And again, we tried to get the story
out. 'This is the story' we said, and they
(journalists) said 'yeah but what is there
to see. What can we look at?' "There wasn't
any interest.
"We
learned that displaced persons were moving
in the
harvest season. People do not
move in the harvest season, They must have
been devastated. But there wasn't any interest.
"Finally when people started arriving
(at refugee areas), there was something to
see, but the Mozambique flood was on, and couple
that with the Taliban's ban on photographs
of human beings was another factor. "Then
in 200-2001 people starting fleeing the war
and people started fleeing the drought, yet
the situation remained undercovered.
"That
winter there was a freak cold wave in a displaced
persons camp and 150 died. That
was something that got interest. And people
we crossing the border. Finally there was something
to cover, and our work (with he press) began
to pick up. And September 11 put Afghanistan
back on the map.
"Now
we have total media overkill. And the work
is
insane, literally insane.
"But, finally we are able to speak about
Afghanistan and the Afghan people. "Before
the story was all Taliban and Osama bin Laden.
Bu now with the press here it has allowed me
to get more stories out about the Afghan people
and the suffering they go through."
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