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The essentials of humanitarian work can be very much the same wherever it is done in the world, but there is an obvious added difficulty in Afghanistan: an ongoing, 30-year state of armed conflict. In this instalment of Czechs in Afghanistan, Christian Falvey looks at the security conditions that Czech aid workers live in, as they carry out the work of redevelopment in a complicated and dangerous situation.

Traditional handicraft is alive and well in Afghanistan, particularly the celebrated trade of carpet weaving. But the established methods in place since time immemorial are also holding people back in the struggle for sustainable livelihoods. In the next edition of Radio Prague’s series on Czechs in Afghanistan, Christian Falvey sees how Czech aid workers are supporting a unique and renowned local industry with a simple innovation.

Emergency aid is the first step in humanitarian work in Afghanistan, but much of the north of the country is beyond that now – what the people there currently need is sustainable livelihood. In the seventh part of Radio Prague’s series on Czechs in Afghanistan, Czech humanitarian workers bring their business sense to the fields to help bring tangible, maintainable profits, sometimes in the midst of insurmountable disasters.

Today Radio Prague returns to Afghanistan, and the Czechs at work rebuilding a country where an estimated 72% of the population is illiterate. In this edition of Czechs in Afghanistan, Christian Falvey reports from the north of the war-stricken country on the educational programmes of the Czech charity foundation People in Need.

This week marked the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Plzeň and West Bohemia by General Patton's Third Army. In a special programme to mark the anniversary, Rob Cameron travelled to the spa town of Konstantinovy Lázně, former headquarters of the US Army's 16th Armoured Division, where he spoke to George Thompson - a veteran of the fighting in West Bohemia, Charles Noble - son of the commander of the 16th Armoured Division’s Combat Command B, and George Patton Waters, grandson of the legendary General George S. Patton.

About 28% of Afghanistan’s population have access to clean drinking water – that means 20 million people in the country do not. While we usually think of war and poverty as the main issues facing Afghanistan, water is often at the root of those problems, bringing disease and conflicts over sources. In the next of our series on Czechs in Afghanistan, Christian Falvey visits the Northern Afghan village of Shoran Pain with the People in Need Foundation to see how water projects are drastically improving lives.

Today we continue our series on Czechs in Afghanistan. That series focuses primarily on the Czech humanitarian aid organisation People in Need, and for good reason: there are few organisations of its kind that work as closely with beneficiaries in far-removed parts of the world and live like they do. This week, Christian Falvey looks at the day-to-day lives of Czech aid workers in both the urban centres and remote mountain communities of Afghanistan.

Say Afghanistan, and a whole range of difficult issues comes to mind, at the forefront of which is the position of women. In the next edition of Radio Prague’s special edition on Afghanistan, we wanted to know how Czechs in the most far-off parts of that country work with and among the women of Afghanistan. Christian Falvey joined the Czech aid organisation People in Need in the field to find out.

The idea of long-term humanitarian work in a developing country is not for it to be run ad infinitum by a team of expert foreigners. The work must eventually be put in the hands of the people themselves to continue it on their own, and the same goes for People in Need in Afghanistan. In the years to come, the work of the Czech charity foundation will continue, but without the Czechs. In the next of Radio Prague’s series on Afghanistan, Christian Falvey meets the Afghans who will gradually take over the ground laid by Czechs.

Outside of political and military circles, there is only a handful of Czechs living and working in Afghanistan. They are for the most part the workers of People in Need, the Prague-based charity foundation that has been organising Afghan relief for nearly a decade. In this part of our special series on Afghanistan, Christian Falvey introduces the Czech humanitarian workers who are on the ground helping to rebuild a faraway country in tatters.