Rewriting Afghanistan’s narrative, ‘Why not love?’
June 24, 2010 by
Filed under Journey Updates
Vandals ‘dripped’ blood-red paint over our work…we mustn’t be paralyzed to keep asking : ‘Why not love?’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8l26PMcdz0
Text of video
We were advised : “Afghans don’t use the word love.”
We still wrote “Why not love?” at Bamiyan Peace Park
Later, vandals ‘dripped’ blood-red paint over our work…
We mustn’t be paralyzed by the desperate war narratives…
We came to Kabul to buy a dove for Bamiyan Peace Park
Faiz, what is the seed of peace?
The seed of peace is love, is friendship
Even a little of our love is stronger than the wars of the world!
Why not love?
Why not love?
The coalition asks ‘ Why not COIN?’
We the people must ask ‘Why not love?’
When we fall, we will get up again.
Get up to listen & love again !
Why not love?
building peace
Why not love?
We hoard an unsustainable power.
McCrystal, Obama, Al Qaeda and the Taliban humanly crave for affirmation but are trapped in unsustainable power. In this self-constructed cage, we prosper our own privileges.
The elite keep choosing violent conflict though it gets us nowhere nearer each other nor nearer safety. Ordinary folk like us help with our tax-payer money and complicit silence.
We are in a cage that is cracking, so we desperately call it a ‘democracy’ or an ‘amoral morality’ or a war against ‘terror’.
I am part of this decay ; you see, I’m living in Afghanistan and Afghans and internationals are dying.
People are dying, NOT objects.
Our world mistakes war as ‘justified solutions’, when it’s really a lust. We deceive our greed with ‘necessities’ and selectively hear “I must be correct, wronged AND good.”
Our self-absorption ‘spectates’angrily as oil is spilled, wealth is monopolized and worst, as blood is shed. We don’t want these inequalities but stand paralyzed against both ‘democratic and undemocratic powers.’
Replacing General Stanley McCrystal won’t change ‘war, terrorism or their industries’.
Violent money and power can’t be replaced by more militarism but by more diplomacy, and not by a civilian-military diplomacy but by a civilian-civilian diplomacy. You can’t have a mother nurturing her child, even a ‘deviant’ child, with the lure of mammon and the threat of guns.
Any general would serve best now under a civilian presidential mandate to reverse escalation and execute a restorative withdrawal.
We the people need to keep building massive global conversations that lead to concrete kindness.
Why not love?
What would we lose?
Why not say, “We relate badly. We don’t know one other anymore. Our politicians’ self-interest mirrors ourselves and this narrow abyss is suffocating everyone.”
Instead of risking the death of reform, why not take a day or more off work, get to our communities and go on-line, make phone calls etc, to organize the conversations and encounters that would reconcile us with each other globally? Not mainly with agreeable ‘allies’ but more so with perceived ‘enemies’.
Sustain a wave.
19 year old Faiz says, “The seed of peace is love, is friendship.” When asked by international peacemakers how Afghans can be helped, 14 year old Abdulai said, “Just enCOURAGE us.”
Through these small, cumulative instances of shared compassion, if love could change everything, everything could change.
rewriting Afghanistan’s narrative
A love letter asking for forgiveness from our Afghan friends
June 13, 2010 by
Filed under Journey Updates
Please see the love letter asking for forgiveness from our Afghan friends
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTwH3YfQ9NQ
We cannot manage
A open love letter to ask forgiveness from our Afghan friends
When I see the pain of my Afghan friends, I need to tell someone, anyone, that we are floundering.
Not from want of purpose or meaning.
But because unselfish power may not exist & isn’t yet in the hands of ordinary people
Though many are trying, we’re still shackled by a self-revolving madness
Does it make sense to you that when Abdulai asks ‘why is life like that ?’, I take his hand and keep quiet?
“Please. Stop behaving like you’re gods. Please stop throwing money at Afghans. Please stop killing. Please, stop.”
And then we have to keep back those tears while struggling with them, because nothing of the unsustainable, ‘developed’-world-stuff ever stops.
When everything is taken away from the important values & people of our lives, we run on empty.
Do we get it? We’re running on empty.
People have remained distant from other people, so the powers-that-be will play and laugh haughtily in a vacuum of expert derision.
Abdulai, we love you & the Afghans whom we’ve come to know. But you know that already. I’m sorry that doesn’t help much.
I’m sorry not because you are to be pitied. I’m sorry because life is not giving you an equal space to appreciate love.
I’m sorry our systems mean that your wishes will not matter to Presidents & the wealthy few, so while you wish from the bottom of your heart, please don’t wish with your all, lest you’re completely robbed of that which we want you to keep, hope.
My reasons are bland before you, because people like you, who possess nothing, understand not with your eyes or ears but with your soul.
I remember sighing with you when we talked about how we are losing both ways, when we try our very best and also when we manage very badly.
My mind thinks it may be hard for you to forgive, but that’s when I shake. I shake because my heart knows that you WOULD forgive.
You manage much better than us.
Yes, love is how we’ll ask for peace.
With love from Hakim, Douglas, Josh, Conor
& all your friends from The People’s Journey,
Salam, Pam, Mark, Dennis, Bob, Andrea…….
Afghan youth ask for love in the 30-shot anger of the Gaza flotilla ; humanity is breaking down
June 6, 2010 by
Filed under Journey Updates
‘Even a little of our love is stronger than the wars of the world.’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7OWATVkYO4
What is humanity’s ‘coalition’ about? What is Mankind about?
Giving some or grabbing all?
Kindness or killing?
Dignity or deceit?
In this unsustainable madness, we ask for love.
A love that’s quiet, sensible and strong.
When the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, who are privileged to have the friendship of Rachel Corrie’s parents Cindy and Craig Corrie, decided to fly kites for Gaza Freedom March on the eve of 2010, we were doing so with a living understanding of death.
We know that the self-destructive, violent ways of our world today do not offer hope of healing from the ‘30-shots-flying-into-9 peace activists’ sort of anger and fear, nor from any ‘collateral damage’.
Britain’s Guardian newspaper quoted Yalcin Buyuk, the vice-chairman of the Turkish council of forensic medicine, as saying that the 9 men were shot a total of 30 times.
So, we offer our grief and call for LOVE.
Few belief in such LOVE,whether foreigners or fellow Afghans.
An international in Afghanistan had told us that “Afghans do not use the word love nor understand it.”
So, we recently painted our words of love at the Bamiyan Peace Park in Afghanistan ( in the video above ) and found out a week later that vandals had sprayed red paint over our struggle.
Trying to snuff out love.
But we can’t stop.
Because even a little of such love, however meager, is stronger than the wars of the world.
Even a little of our love is stronger than the wars of the world
Text of video
These Afghan youth painted Love at Bamiyan Peace Park
We are deeply saddened that people were killed on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla
We share all of humanity’s pain
We mustn’t wage war in response. We wish for a global response that’s full with love because as these words say ‘Even a little of our love is stronger than the wars of the world.’
The world should sit down to converse & through love, to bring reconciliation
Even a little of our love is stronger than the wars of the world. These words at Bamiyan Peace Park have just been erased by vandals
….but with Abdulai, we will inscribe our love again!
we will inscribe our words of love again…
The People’s Journey begins, little by little, but beyond dismissal ; set to sail our hearts’ freedom flotillas!
June 3, 2010 by
Filed under Journey Updates
Josh, Conor and Salam Hassan have begun The People’s Journey in San Francisco http://www.thepeoplesjourney.org/
The People’s Journey made the first long-distance tele-connection ( Sacramento San Francisco Bay Peace Better Alternatives for Youth http://www.baypeace.org to Bamiyan Afghanistan ) this US evening and Afghan morning!
making the life-important person to person connections
Freedom often costs humanity,
sometimes the intolerable cost of priceless lives ;
the Freedom Flotilla struggle encourages us!
The People’s Journey begins,
little by little,
but beyond dismissal ;
set to sail our hearts’ freedom flotillas!
love is how the kites will fly in Gaza, Afghanistan and the world!
But we wish to keep on going in the spirit of the Gandhian Salt March, resounding with you in saying that “Love is how we’ll ask for peace!”
Please join us…join us!!
When the group gathered at Sacramento asked Abdulai and Zerghuna in Afghanistan how American friends could support Afghans, Abdulai answered, “ Simply by ENCOURAGING us!” to the human-to-human applause of some more People from Sacramento SA who have become friends! Thank you!
“Simply by ENCOURAGING us!”
Abdulai in Afghanistan to American peacemaking friends
The Bay Peace friends
“Hey Hakim, So great to connect with you. It felt like a miracle! 
We were all so happy to be able to talk with you…….The BAY-Peace youth were really quite moved.” Susan Quinlan, BAY-Peace: Better Alternatives for Youth
2 months ago, our peacemaking friends from Little Friends for Peace www.lffp.org gave us their personal, touching words of encouragement in the video above http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOIpi6snUmw
From us in Afghanistan, thank you Mary Park, and all our new ‘little’ friends!
One of our Little Friends said : ‘We’re here to encourage you to think positive and always look to a better way to solve your problems even though it might be hard sometimes.”
Please help The People of our world by encouraging one another, little by little, person by person, till we all embrace a Peace Beyond Dismissal!