ABSTRACT
The main problem that we are facing right now are those actions taken above our heads, without asking the people: for example, when well-wishing foreigners create their own NGOs for the ‘protection’ of our people and our valleys…. These outsiders just involve a few people [in their projects], so the rest of the people stay away. They just say: ‘There is an NGO at work, so why should we do anything for nothing?’ Or when political groups [i.e. factions] are involved in a project, they say: ‘We don’t belong to that party, so why should we do it?’ So the unity is gone…in this way, the people stop working together. (Saifullah Jan n.d)
Saifullah Jan is an indigenous activist and spokesman for over three thousand non-Muslim Kalasha (‘Kalash Kafirs’) inhabiting three mountain valleys in the Chitral District of northern Pakistan.1 His words cited above opened a polemical speech to regional specialists attending a session on Developmental and Environmental Issues at the Third International Hindu Kush Cultural Conference, held at Chitral in August 1995. After criticizing several projects for needlessly interfering with Kalasha religious culture, Saifullah Jan targeted a range of related ‘wellwishing’ programmes aimed at local education in the Kalasha language on topical issues of hygiene, local medicine, indigenous tradition, and environmental understanding. His wry rejoinder was again: ‘We don’t need to be told what we already know ourselves! We don’t need to be shown pictures of what we can see every day! We need no more NGOs!’
