Kite Runner is a bestseller book and film written by Khaled Hosseini. It tells a poignant story of the friendship between Amir, a Pushtoon boy, and Hassan, a Hazara boy through the tumultuous periods of the Soviet occupation and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

http://www.khaledhosseini.com/

http://www.kiterunnermovie.com/

Dear Our Journey to Smile:

Thank you for sharing your Letter of Humanity’s Love from Afghan youth to the UN Hague Conference.  It was very moving and I am grateful you have included me in your distribution of it. I wish your organization the best of luck with its goals.

Best,
Khaled Hosseini

Dear Khaled,

Thanks to you too!

Thanks so much for your personal reply; it encouraged us deeply, particularly Abdulai and Raziq who have watched The Kite Runner 5 times!

Do stay in touch and join us on the 21^st of September 2009 at the Bamiyan Buddhas if your schedule allows you.

Every human heart wonders about the 1000-times-over sort of friendship. Thanks for increasing our hope and our imagination!

( Be at peace! )

Our Journey to Smile

Afghan youth ask questions about Obama’s wish for US$83 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Afghans ask ”Where is humanity in Obama’s 83 billion+ American war??”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyHjugYBoDU&feature=channel_page

The youth were filmed as they volunteered to plant trees at Bamiyan Peace Park, Bamiyan, Afghanistan.

Below is a text of their questions.

My name is Najib. People in Bamiyan call me Najib Ekhloqi.

I am a citizen of Afghanistan.

You see that we have come here to start work at this place named Bamiyan Peace Park.

This park is located at a place near the historical City of Gholghola ( ‘Dying Screams’ conquered by Genghis Khan )….

and at its north-east lie the Bamiyan Buddha statues ( destroyed by the Taliban )

We have come to build this Peace Park, peace for humanity.

Today, having come to the Peace Park, we’d like to ask, as the youth of Afghanistan,

Why peace? Peace for who?

When they are deciding in the American congress on 83 billion dollars for the war in Afghanistan

We have some questions..

Can anyone answer us?

Where is humanity in this 83 billion+ American war??

Where is compassion and kindness in this 83 billion+ American war?

Where is peace in this 83 billion+ American war?

Where are Iraqi, Afghan and American mothers in this 83 billion+ American war?

Where is human dignity in this 83 billion+ American war?

Where is progress in civilization in this 83 billion+ American war?

Where are those who struggle against violence, like Martin Luther King, in this 83 billion + ?American war??

Where are all the world’s religious leaders and intellectuals in this 83 billion+ American war?

My father was killed by war…Where is peace in this 83 billion+ American war?

?

Laith filmed this family attempting to flee Fallujah – ten minutes later they were dead

Will we forget, constantly, constantly?

Or will we forever brush the discomfort aside because that corpse was not our mother’s or our child’s?

Or will we join Laith Mushtaq in saying, “Fallujah ( in-humane, senseless death ) never leaves my mind.”

Don’t we realize what ANY ‘army does on the ground’ and if we do, what do we choose to do or say about such a realization?

Dear Laith,

Thanks for your work and your article, because media, like everything else, should help us understand ourselves.

We, Afghan youth, understand those images that never leave your mind. We have to learn to cope somehow and we need to be strong.

And to hope that human civilization can change. If it doesn’t ?? ?????” What can we do? “

Sincerely,

Our Journey to Smile

Al Jazeera ‘Fallujah never leaves my mind’

By Laith Mushtaq, cameraman

http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2009/04/200948132212418175.html

Laith Mushtaq was one of only two non-embedded cameramen working throughout the April 2004 ‘battle for Fallujah’ in which 600 civilians died.

When I think of Fallujah, I think of the smell. The smell was driving me crazy. In a dead body, there is a kind of liquid. Yellow liquid. The smell is disgusting, really. It sticks in your nose. You cannot eat anymore.

And you can’t get the pictures off your mind, because every day you see the same: Explosion, death, explosion, death, death.

After work, you sit down and notice there are pieces of flesh on your shoes and blood on your trousers. But you don’t have time to ask why.

I had to show the truth to people outside of Iraq.

I still remember the nurses couldn’t carry the woman because she was in too many pieces, people were jumping back when they saw it. Then, one nurse shouted: “Hey, she looks like your mother.”

In the Iraqi language that means: “She could be your mother, so treat her like you’d treat your mom.”

At some point, I couldn’t move anymore. I sat down on the street and kept smoking. I couldn’t move. I see what’s happening around me, but I can’t move. Khallas [enough]. I didn’t have any energy left.

The Americans said our pictures stirred up hatred against them. But what I did was only showing what their army did on the ground.

I don’t hate them, I don’t want vengeance, I just wish they had understood what they were doing.

US military admits killing mother, children

Afghan News Network 9/4/09

The US military in Afghanistan admitted Thursday that four people its troops killed in a raid were not “combatants”, after Afghans said they included a mother and her children, with a baby dying afterwards.

Afghan ’smuggling bid’ youths die

Al Jazeera 05/04/2009

More than 60 Afghans, mainly children and youths, have been found dead after suffocating inside a shipping container in southwestern Pakistan in an apparent human smuggling attempt.

The physical suffocation of these Afghan youth seeking a better life is just as sad and devastating as the suffocation of the Voices of Afghan youth living in Afghanistan who are also seeking a more humane life.

Will ANYONE listen?

Will ANYONE listen to ordinary Afghan youth before they get suffocated?

Have you heard a SINGLE ordinary Afghan’s wish yet, while all of the world leaders and all of media talk about what non-Afghans want for Afghanistan?

The Voice of peace and humanity has a historical, present and future need to be heard.

This is why, unfortunately or otherwise, there will be protesters everywhere.

Un-healthy anger is accumulating because Systems have not addressed the majority’s genuine concerns sufficiently.

The state of international relations, as well as individual and community lives, needs to CHANGE.

We, unfortunately, cannot bring that CHANGE about through the status quo, far less through a fellow human being like Obama.

And we can’t get there through anger.

We need every individual to START by STOPPING, STOPPING to LISTEN, not to a few individuals, but to ordinary HUMANITY.

We humbly and quietly suggest that, as an example, while A FEW WORLD LEADERS are deciding the near future of Afghanistan, we can start by HEARING, and this is not even listening yet, to the ordinary wishes of ordinary Afghan youth.

Aren’t Afghans human beings?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqWi26t5mB4

Do Afghan children need to respond at all to Obama’s and NATO’s new Afghan policy?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GTcxC1mZNc

Perhaps, then, ordinary humanity can begin growing.