October 15, 2009 | Read Time: 3 minutes
Pamela Constable often stopped to rescue stray cats and dogs during her years working as a foreign correspondent in places such as India and Chile. But after arriving in Afghanistan seven years ago, she learned there was no shelter or veterinary clinic where she could take homeless, ill animals.
So Ms. Constable created her own. The Afghan Stray Animal League has found homes for about 400 cats and dogs since she started the group in 2004. It has provided medical care to nearly 1,000.
Most of the animals have been saved from disease or abuse by soldiers, aid workers, and other foreigners. The charity’s nine employees, all of whom are Afghan, care for the cats and dogs and then sometimes arrange for them to be sent to the United States to live with the families of those who rescued them.
Initially, Ms. Constable hoped she could find local homes for many of the animals by teaching people in Afghanistan how to respect and care for pets. She considered hiring someone to do public education in animal welfare, much the way charity workers go to villages and teach people how to wash vegetables or cut umbilical cords.
But that has proved to be nearly impossible in the war-wracked country.
Animals are valued in Afghanistan only if they serve a purpose, such as herding flocks or guarding property, she says. People haven’t been brought up to care for pets, nor do they have the money. Many Afghans also fear that dogs carry disease.
“You add all that together and you get, I would say, a real cultural rejection of dogs,” says Ms. Constable.
Still, she has been successful in persuading some Afghan families to adopt pets from her shelter.
The Afghan Stray Animal League is registered as a charity in Arlington, Va., where Ms. Constable lives when she is not overseas. Roughly 300 people give money each year to the organization, which needs just $5,000 per month to operate.
Each December, Ms. Constable, a reporter at The Washington Post, holds a holiday party at her home in Virginia for the organization’s supporters. A few cats and dogs adopted from Afghanistan attend each year.
The animals’ stories are often remarkable. A soldier from North Carolina saved a cat named Felix, who was unable to walk because of neurological damage. Ms. Constable cared for the cat for months until she was reunited in the United States with the soldier who had found her.
Ms. Constable is quick to note the small size of her organization. But she says it is filling a niche that none of the hundreds of other charities working in Afghanistan do.
“It’s been so exciting and rewarding not to just be driving by and seeing a suffering animal and not knowing where to take it, but to have something you can do and people who can help,” she says. “I know it’s a drop in the bucket, but it’s something.”
Here, Ms. Constable is greeted by four dogs who have been helped by the league. Kilo, the lab-hound mix on the right, was rescued by a British soldier and will be sent to Britain in a few weeks.
See a slide show of the Afghan Stray Animal League’s rescue work.
