Edward Zellem is a retired U.S. Navy captain and the 12-time award-winning author of 5 books. He is known for his work inside Afghanistan's
Presidential Palace
A presidential palace is the official residence of the president in some countries. Some presidential palaces were once the official residences to monarchs in former monarchies that were preserved during those states' transition into republics. ...
and for authoring three bilingual
collections of Afghan Proverbs: ''Zarbul Masalha: 151 Afghan Dari Proverbs'', a book for children entitled ''Afghan Proverbs Illustrated'', and a companion book of Pashto proverbs entitled ''Mataluna: 151 Afghan Pashto Proverbs''. Zellem wrote the books to "show how
Afghan proverbs demonstrate our common humanity and the humanity of Afghans, and to share the proverbs' lyricism, richness and deep meanings with the rest of the world".
He is a member of the International Association of
Paremiology
Paremiology () is the collection and study of paroemias (proverbs). It is a subfield of philology, folkloristics, and linguistics.
History
Paremiology can be dated back as far as Aristotle. Paremiography, on the other hand, is the collection of ...
(AIP-IAP), which is based in Tavira, Portugal. It is a nonprofit cultural institution dedicated to the international scientific study of proverbs, and is the only association of its type in the world.
He also is an active professional scuba diving instructor with the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI), and holds the PADI rating of Master Instructor.
Biography
Captain Edward Zellem served as a
United States Navy
The United States Navy (USN) is the naval warfare, maritime military branch, service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest Displacement (ship), displacement, at 4.5 millio ...
officer for 30 years, has lived in six countries and has visited at least 50 others.
He can speak
Dari
Dari (; endonym: ), Dari Persian (, , or , ), or Eastern Persian is the variety of the Persian language spoken in Afghanistan. Dari is the Afghan government's official term for the Persian language;Lazard, G.Darī – The New Persian ...
and worked in
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran borde ...
, where for a year and a half he collected and used Dari proverbs every day as a hobby and learning tool.
He was a
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States. It was founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson and contains his The Lawn, Academical Village, a World H ...
football player, spent time in
New Zealand
New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...
and
Thailand
Thailand, officially the Kingdom of Thailand and historically known as Siam (the official name until 1939), is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. With a population of almost 66 million, it spa ...
, and then joined the Navy to continue to see the world.
Career
Before he joined the Navy, he worked in New Zealand and taught English in a small village in southern Thailand.
In 2009, he was selected by the
United States Department of Defense
The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD, or DOD) is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government charged with coordinating and superv ...
for a program called Afghan Hands, which was created in September 2009 to develop military and senior civilian experts specializing in Afghanistan and Pakistan's languages, cultures, processes and challenges.
He worked with Afghans in
Kandahar
Kandahar is a city in Afghanistan, located in the south of the country on Arghandab River, at an elevation of . It is Afghanistan's second largest city, after Kabul, with a population of about 614,118 in 2015. It is the capital of Kandahar Pro ...
and
Kabul
Kabul is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. Located in the eastern half of the country, it is also a municipality, forming part of the Kabul Province. The city is divided for administration into #Districts, 22 municipal districts. A ...
for a year and a half with the
Afghan National Army
The Islamic National Army (, ), also referred to as the Islamic Emirate Army and the Afghan Army, is the army, land force branch of the Afghan Armed Forces. The roots of an army in Afghanistan can be traced back to the early 18th century when th ...
and the
Afghan National Police
The Afghan National Police (ANP; ; ), also known as the Afghan Police, is the national police force of the Afghanistan, Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, serving as a single law enforcement agency all across the country. The first police officer i ...
, respectively, including a year inside Afghanistan's
Presidential Palace
A presidential palace is the official residence of the president in some countries. Some presidential palaces were once the official residences to monarchs in former monarchies that were preserved during those states' transition into republics. ...
to help build its "
White House Situation Room".
The room is known as the Presidential Information Coordination Center (PICC), which Zellem co-founded and co-directed with Afghan Army
Brigadier General Sakhi Ahmadzai. It was a key component of the Afghan government's
National Security Council
A national security council (NSC) is usually an executive branch governmental body responsible for coordinating policy on national security issues and advising chief executives on matters related to national security. An NSC is often headed by a n ...
Staff under National Security Adviser Dr.
Rangin Dadfar Spanta. The PICC was a 24/7 center that directly served the national-level critical information needs of both the
President of Afghanistan
The president of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan was constitutionally the head of state and head of government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and Commander-in-Chief of the Afghan Armed Forces.
Eligibility and selection process
A ...
Hamid Karzai
Hamid Karzai (born 24 December 1957) is an Afghan politician who served as the fourth president of Afghanistan from 2002 to 2014, including as the first president of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan from 2004 to 2014. He previously served a ...
and then-Gen.
David Petraeus
David Howell Petraeus (; born 7 November 1952) is a retired United States Army General (United States), general who served as the fourth director of the Central Intelligence Agency from September 2011 until his resignation in November 2012. Pri ...
, the commander of U.S. and
NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO ; , OTAN), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental Transnationalism, transnational military alliance of 32 Member states of NATO, member s ...
forces in Afghanistan.
The Afghanistan-Pakistan Hands Program was conceived in 2009 by then-
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) is the presiding officer of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). The chairman is the highest-ranking and most senior military officer in the United States Armed Forces Chairman: appointment; gra ...
, Navy Admiral
Michael Mullen
Michael Glenn Mullen (born 4 October 1946) is a retired United States Navy Admiral (United States), admiral who served as the 17th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from October 2007 to September 2011.
Mullen was the 32nd vice chief of Nav ...
, as a top-priority program he argued would "change the paradigm" of how the
United States
The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
employed its forces in Afghanistan. He envisioned an organization of "experts who speak the local language, are culturally attuned, and are focused on the problem for an extended period of time".
The AFPAK Hands program was designed to build trust with the military and local populations. The program creates many experts about particular countries and is based on similar U.S. Navy programs in the 1920s and 1930s that focused on
Japan
Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...
,
Germany
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
and
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
. These experts specialize in intelligence, force protection and governance, as well as language and culture.
They work to fight corruption, as a liaison between Afghan organizations and coalition and international groups that can assist them, and may include military advising to organizing sporting events. The first group of "Hands" is composed of more than 500 civilians, officers and enlisted service members from all four services, and Afghan Hands personnel fill 229 in-country billets. Each "Hand" moves through phases of training, deployment and redeployment during a 36- to 45-month tour with the program.
Zellem and a small group of others in the U.S. military have been deployed to serve on the ground as part of the AFPAK Hands program. They underwent extensive training to achieve language proficiency in either
Pashto
Pashto ( , ; , ) is an eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family, natively spoken in northwestern Pakistan and southern and eastern Afghanistan. It has official status in Afghanistan and the Pakistani province of Khyb ...
or
Dari
Dari (; endonym: ), Dari Persian (, , or , ), or Eastern Persian is the variety of the Persian language spoken in Afghanistan. Dari is the Afghan government's official term for the Persian language;Lazard, G.Darī – The New Persian ...
, the two most common languages spoken in Afghanistan. They sign on for repeated tours of duty and are assigned to Afghan-related positions between deployments.
Works
The purpose of collecting Afghan proverbs was to bridge a cultural and linguistic divide using
Social Entrepreneurship
Social entrepreneurship is an approach by individuals, groups, Startup company, start-up companies or entrepreneurs, in which they develop, fund and implement solutions to social, cultural, or environmental issues. This concept may be applied to ...
as a model. During the time that Zellem spent with young Afghan soldiers who called themselves the "
Burnt Generation"—because all they knew in their lifetime was war—he learned that Afghanistan had a rich history of colorful verbal communication, which included communicating through proverbs, though 70 percent of the population can't read.
Zellem collected and used proverbs while there
and when word of his proverbs list spread, he created about 100 copies
of a small bilingual book to give to friends and colleagues.
One of those colleagues was then-Gen.
David Petraeus
David Howell Petraeus (; born 7 November 1952) is a retired United States Army General (United States), general who served as the fourth director of the Central Intelligence Agency from September 2011 until his resignation in November 2012. Pri ...
, who liked the book so much that he wrote a foreword, but that planned addition was scrapped after he became
Director of the Central Intelligence Agency
The director of the Central Intelligence Agency (D/CIA) is a statutory office () that functions as the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, which in turn is a part of the United States Intelligence Community.
The director reports to the D ...
because the
United States Department of State
The United States Department of State (DOS), or simply the State Department, is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy of the United State ...
was leery about associating the book with America's spy agency. After his retirement from the military, Petraeus offered his foreword as a cover blurb for the second edition. Zellem also inscribed a copy to give to Gen.
John R. Allen, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and the
International Security Assistance Force
The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was a multinational military mission in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014. It was established by United Nations Security Council United Nations Security Council Resolution 1386, Resolution 1386 ac ...
, who then gave it to President Karzai.
Eventually, the faculty of Marefat High School in Kabul—where both boys and girls attend in separate classrooms—heard about the book and wanted to contribute by illustrating, transcribing, typesetting, editing, and distributing the collection.
They wanted to use original art by their eighth- and ninth-graders
and Aziz Royesh, the high school's cultural officer, edited the content.
Eventually, the State Department gave a $66,000 grant to Marefat High School
and the book was published by a local Kabul printing house,
Afghan-owned and operated Karwan Press.
In 2011, 40,000 copies were published and Marefat High School distributed them to other schools and organizations in Afghanistan.
The book became part of the reading curriculum in over 200 schools, was accepted in the
Kabul University
Kabul University (KU; ) is one of the major and oldest institutions of higher education in Afghanistan. It is in the 3rd District of the capital Kabul near the Ministry of Higher Education. It was founded in 1931 by King Mohammed Nadir Shah, wh ...
library, and is included in a nationwide village bookmobile program sponsored by Kabul University. He published a second edition of the collection in the United States in order to support literacy programs.
In 2015, he published a 3rd edition that contains an additional 50 proverbs obtained by crowdsourcing. Zellem gave a copyright license to Marefat High School to republish and sell the book for profit in Afghanistan.
Like all books in Dari, the Kabul edition of "Zarbul Masalha" opens from right-to-left.
The book has a proverb on each page, first written in Dari with the literal translation from Dari, and then the English translation from Zellem.
The second edition of "Zarbul Masalha" was published internationally in May 2012 by CreateSpace.
The book was given an award by the
Military Writers Society of America in 2013.
[2013 book award by Military Writers Society of America](_blank)
Edward Zellem's second book, "Afghan Proverbs Illustrated", was published in October 2012 and is designed for children and new readers
[.] After readers in many countries asked for bilingual translations in their own languages, the original English-Dari edition of "Afghan Proverbs Illustrated" was published in German-Dari, French-Dari and Russian-Dari editions. Additional translations have also been done, with more in development.
Zellem has said that a number of
Afghan American
Afghan Americans ( ''Amrikāyi-hāye Afghān tabar'', ''Da Amrīka Afghanan'') are Americans with ancestry from Afghanistan. They form the largest Afghan community in North America with the second being Afghan Canadians. Afghan Americans may ...
readers told him that his books helped them and their families to practice their Dari and reconnect with their homeland's culture.
Others have used the book for Dari/
Farsi
Persian ( ), also known by its endonym Farsi (, Fārsī ), is a Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European languages. Persian is a pluricentric language predominantly spoke ...
language studies, to understand Afghans better and general inspiration.
One reviewer said that "Zarbul Masalha" is "both a window and a mirror. As a window, it helps readers gain deep insights into Afghan culture and language. And as a mirror, readers can see themselves and their own cultures reflected in the universal messages expressed by Afghan proverbs".
[.]
Zellem pioneered the method of collecting proverbs by crowdsourcing, via the Web. This method of collecting proverbs has been shown to be not only efficient at collecting a large number of proverbs, but also at gathering data to assess which proverbs are the most common. In addition, this has been important for involving the community in valuing, discussing, and gathering their proverbs.
Recognitions
In recognition of his books of Afghan proverbs, Zellem was honored by the Afghan diaspora community at the Rumi Awards in October 2013.
''Zarbul Masalha'' earned Zellem an award by the
Military Writers Society of America in 2013.
''Afghan Proverbs Illustrated'', proverbs drawn from ''Zarbul Masalha'' then printed with color illustrations by Afghan artists, won a bronze medal at the 2014
Independent Publisher Book Awards
The Independent Publisher Book Awards, also styled as the IPPY Awards, are a set of annual literary awards for independently published books. They are the longest-running unaffiliated contest open exclusively to independent presses. The IPPY Aw ...
. As of mid-2017, ''Zarbul Masalha'', ''Afghan Proverbs Illustrated'', and ''Mataluna'' have won a total of 12 international book awards.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Zellem, Edward
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
People from Indiana, Pennsylvania
United States Navy officers
Writers from Pennsylvania
American non-fiction writers
Proverb scholars
Military personnel from Pennsylvania