No, Miss Mae, I’m afraid you didn’t get it right.
Lifted out of its context, the following sentence does look and sound as if it’s missing the linking verb “are” and the article “the,” giving the impression of being run-on, truncated, and nonsensical: “Some staffed foreign NGOs, often in the area of women's health, which organizations the Taliban permitted to continue.” But I was able to trace that sentence back to its source,
an excerpt from Gayle Tzemach Lennon’s book The Dressmaker of Khair Khana, and have determined that it’s a grammatically airtight sentence.
The more I dug around, the more I realized that Kamila was only one of many young women who had worked throughout years of the Taliban regime. Driven by the need to earn money for their families and loved ones when Kabul’s economy collapsed under the weight of war and mismanagement, they turned small openings into large opportunities and invented ways around the rules. As women throughout the world always had, they found a way forward for the sake of their families. They learned how to work the system and even how to thrive within it.
Some staffed foreign NGOs, often in the area of women’s health, which organizations the Taliban permitted to continue. Doctors could still work. And so could women who helped other women to learn basic hygiene and sanitation practices. Some taught in underground schools, leading courses for girls and women in everything from Microsoft Windows to math and Dari, as well as the Holy Q’uran… (italicization mine)
Now, in the excerpt above, note that the indefinite pronoun “some” that starts the second paragraph actually refers to working women in Kabul who are described in the first paragraph; in effect, the author uses “some” as an intrinsic or implicit paragraph transition—a summary word for the major operative idea (“working women in Kabul”) of the preceding paragraph. (Refer to my posting on
“Basic and advanced techniques for doing paragraph transitions.”) The transition word “some” could be rendered in full—and make the sense clearer—as “some working women in Kabul,” but the author didn’t do so as a stylistic decision, trusting that the reader would clearly understand its sense from the preceding paragraph.
Assuming though that the author had used “some working women in Kabul,” the sentence would have read as follows: “
Some working women in Kabul staffed foreign NGOs, often in the area of women’s health, which organizations the Taliban permitted to continue.”
It’s tempting to think that “are” and “the” would be needed to make the main clause of that sentence read correctly as “Some working women in Kabul
are the staff of foreign NGOs,” or, in the elliptical or shortened form, as “Some
are the staff of foreign NGOs.” However, it is evident that the author used “staff” as a transitive verb that means “to serve as a staff member of,” in which case “foreign NGOs” becomes a direct object of the past-tense “staffed.” That main clause therefore wouldn’t need “are” and “the” at all, whether in the full form “Some working women in Kabul
staffed foreign NGOs” or in the shorter form “Some staffed
foreign NGOs.”
There has therefore been no inadvertent omission of “are” and “the” in that clause, which is grammatically and semantically aboveboard in every way.