From the Editor and Publisher of ANIMAL PEOPLE

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"Like the pariah dogs creeping into Kabul, we bring hope to the bleakest places..."

Dear Animal Person,

"I perceive you have been in Afghanistan," Sherlock Holmes said, noticing the red dust still clinging to the clothes of his future housemate and partner in fighting crime, Dr. Watson, when they first met at the British Museum. From the dust, Holmes inferred that Watson might be the physician who was sole British survivor of a recent Afghan massacre of an entire garrison, and, as he had not yet had the chance to have his clothes cleaned, might be in need of lodging.

ANIMAL PEOPLE has not yet been in Afghanistan, to our knowledge, as there have been no means of sending copies there -- even to the ruined Kabul Zoo, where a lone old man has for 19 years fed and cared for the last lion, last pair of wolves, and small troupe of rhesus macacques left from what was once reputedly the best zoo in central Asia.

Yet we perceive we will one day in the not so distant future be in Afghanistan, because we infer from the few facts available to us that some animal people survive there, sharing food scraps with that old man to help feed the zoo animals, and doing whatever else they can in perhaps the harshest and most desolate place on earth to reduce suffering and encourage kindness. We hope to find them, and tell their story, introducing them to the global humane community, helping them to gain resources and know-how.

In the days after September 11th, we received e-mails and faxes conveying horror and sympathy from animal people readers all over the world -- including the one at left, from Voice Against Violence, the Islamic publishers of The Tension weekly and The Lord monthly newspapers, in Multan, Pakistan. Almost as close to Afghanistan as New York is to Washington D.C., they routinely print excerpts from ANIMAL PEOPLE alongside exposes of how the Taliban profanes the Koran in mistreating women, and photos of martyred colleagues, who dared to help them try to empower and defend women and cultural minorities. The Tension and The Lord publish our logo and masthead in each edition, right beneath their own. They have never said why, but we suspect it is to let anyone who might try to silence them know that they have friends in the outside world, who are watching and will amplify their cries, should the need come.

The young people who produce The Tension and The Lord encourage vegetarianism and kindness toward animals as moral obligations of good citizenship and obedience to the principles of Islam. They make clear, in print, that to them the causes of animal rights and human rights are the same -- much as they were to the 19th century British and American anti-slavery crusaders "Humanity Dick" Martin, Henry Bergh, and Carolyn Earle White, who also founded some of the first humane societies in the western world, first antivivisection societies, and first children's aid societies, and sought voting and property rights for women.

Pakistan is south and east of Afghanistan. To the north is Azerbaijan, where Azerbaijan SPCA founder Azar Garayev campaigns by Internet for reform of the Soviet-built Baku Zoo -- and reads ANIMAL PEOPLE. To the west is Iran. ANIMAL PEOPLE is no longer getting through to the one humane society we know about there, but we know that in May 2001 it won the dismissal of a school principal for burning a hamster alive to intimidate her pupils. We also know that while the mullahs of Tehran poison dogs, a growing network of dog-lovers persists behind chador and veil.

The cruelty of the Afghan warriors descended from the Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan is legendary -- but so was the cruelty of the British, whose national sports when "Humanity Dick" was born were still bear-baiting and stoning or burning alleged witches. And the American brand of slavery was among the cruelest. Times change and people change when the few who persist in practicing kindness and decency, no matter what, are empowered to exercise leadership.

The complimentary subscriptions we send to humane groups all over the world, with your help, are an empowering instrument. Apart from the utility ANIMAL PEOPLE has as an information link for isolated animal defenders, it conveys further meaning in villages throughout the under-developed world where the arrival of outside mail is an event: it tells everyone on the street that the recipient is someone of importance.

The arrival of ANIMAL PEOPLE can mean the end of ridicule and the beginning of listening.

We do not yet know anyone in Afghanistan. People who love animals may not dare show their faces under the constant scrutiny of the Taliban, who recently blew up two 1,300-to-1,500-year-old stone Buddhas to demonstrate their intolerance of any values but their own. Yet when the Taliban retreats, we believe, animal lovers will furtively emerge like the packs of pariah dogs who pop out of hiding places in the barren hills around Kabul each night and creep into the city through bombarded streets that look like a moonscape.

The dogs search for food scraps, and hunt rats, but after 22 years of warfare and three years of drought, there is little food waste to find -- just dung, and not much of that, after every person who dared to leave took every available horse and donkey over the mountains as a pack animal on the multi-day journey to refugee camps in Pakistan.

If the pariah dogs only want food, they take a high risk in returning to Kabul, where Taliban troops shoot them on sight for target practice, or burn them alive in public places as examples, as was done on September 20 in the town of Talogan.

We suspect some of the dogs may return for a different reason -- buta reason consistent with the role dogs have often taken as human guardians, whether appreciated or not. We believe some of them cross minefields and evade snipers, skulking into a place without food, under siege, because in better times they sometimes met kindness there, and perhaps can still sniff out the people who gave it, constricted though they may be in mandatory burkhas and decrees against venturing outside alone.

Pariah dogs know what it is to be hungry, afraid, and at constant risk of stoning -- and no creature has more natural empathy than a dog. If there remain people in Afghanistan who love animals, we believe the dogs will find them, delivering a few moments of comfort and hope before slinking back to the hills at first light.

We believe these people exist, and will help animals when they can. Some Afghans, made harsh by their hard lives, may deride them, but empathy may be awakened in others, now that they too have endured the existence of pariahs, forced to flee into cold and starvation, or totry to be invisible to survive another day.

When Afghans organize to help animals and teach the humane ethnic, ANIMAL PEOPLE means to help them -- just as we help and encourage other people who love animals around the world, while exposing the heads of national and global groups who pose for photos on the front lines of animal protection but rarely lend a useful hand, living like oil-rich sheiks on funds that were given to do the work of helping animals.

Ten years ago, before ANIMAL PEOPLE started, there was not a "No-Kill Movement." Animal defenders in Asia, Latin America, Africa, and eastern Europe all worked with little awareness of each other.

Today, ANIMAL PEOPLE has mobilized and inspired legions of cat-and-dog rescuers, sanctuarians, wildlife rehabilitators, humane educators, people who feed birds, and young men and women who have no shoes, yet have the courage to free cattle and goats from knife-wielding butchers they catch illegally driving the animals to market.

Ten times each year, ANIMAL PEOPLE introduces some of the people who put their lives on the line for animals directly to donors, without interpolating anyone as middlemen and powerbrokers. While the false mullahs of animal protection shriek from their ivory towers, figuratively commanding donors to bend over five times a day, without throwing the pariah dogs so much as a crust, we remind the world that kindness begins with genuine deeds of tangible kindness, which teach by example.

ANIMAL PEOPLE, and the animal people we serve, actually have much more in common with the teachings of Mohammed, who loved animals, than the precepts of Islam have in common with the murderous practices of the Taliban, Al Qaida, Hamas, and the "Islamic jihad."

Islamic ANIMAL PEOPLE readers from Ajerbaijan to Zambia, along with our thousands of Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jain, Jewish, atheist and agnostic readers, have in common that whether or not we pray five times a day, or at all, we do animals a kindness five times a day and more -- and recognize among ourselves an affinity transcending national and geographic bounds.

In this shrinking world, when even office space 100 floors above New York City can abruptly become no-man's-land, we feel our overseas outreach to animal people in developing nations is especially important.

By sending more than 8,000 copies of each edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE at no cost to animal charities and agencies worldwide, we help to empower and stimulate the growth of the global animal protection community. This in turn helps the cause of kindness toward all species.

Your gifts help us to sustain our effort.

Unfortunately, the stock market drops of this year had already hurt donations to charities of every kind, even before the tragedies of September 11th sent the world economy spiraling down. Then the New York City relief effort drew away some contributions that might have otherwise gone to help animals. In consequence, only the big over-endowed national and multi-national animal charities are not in a precarious economic position. We had to cut back our mailing of complimentary overseas subscriptions this month, we hope only temporarily, and need your help now to continue encouraging the community of kindness worldwide.

Here's hoping we all survive these difficult times, and also hoping that you will choose to help support ANIMAL PEOPLE's work with a tax-deductible donation of $1,000, $500, $100, $50, or $25 -- as much as you can afford -- now.

Thank you for helping,

Kim Bartlett, Publisher

Merritt Clifton, Editor

P.S.: Your generous donation of $1,000, $500, $100, $50, or $25 helps ANIMAL PEOPLE go to people who kneel in the street sharing what they can with homeless dogs around the world -- telling those people that they are not alone, and not crazy, and are appreciated by others who care.