Special Report : Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire’s Citizen Peace Diplomacy to Syria

Report and Appeal to the International community to support a process of dialogue and reconciliation in Syria

between its people and Syrian government and reject outside intervention and war.

After a 10 days  visit to Lebanon and Syria, leading a 16 person delegation from 8 countries, invited by Mussalaha Reconciliation Movement,  I have returned hopeful that peace is possible in Syria, if all outside interference is stopped and the Syrians are allowed to solve their own problems upholding  their right to  self-determination.

An appeal to end all violence and for Syrians to be left alone from outside interference was made by all those we met during our visit to Syria.  We have tried to forward it to the International community in our Concluding Declaration(l).

During our visit we went to refugee camps, affected communities, met religious leaders, combatants, government representatives, opposition delegations and many others, perpetrators and victims, in Lebanon and Syria.

1. Visits to refugee camps:   In Lebanon we visited several refugee camps, hosted by Lebanese or Palestinian communities.  One Woman said: “before this conflict started we were happy and had a good life (there is free education, free healthcare, subsidies for fuel,  in Syria ,) and now we live in poverty”. Her daughter and son-in-law (a pharmacist and engineer) standing on a cement floor in a Palestinian refugee camp, with not even a mattress,  told us that this violence had erupted to everyone surprise’s and spread so quickly they were all still in shock, but when well armed, foreign fighters came to Homs, they took over their homes, raped their women, and killed young males who refused to join their ranks, so the people fled in terror.  They said that these foreign fighters were from many countries like Libyans, Saudis, Tunisians, Chechens, Afghanis, Pakistanis, Emiratis, Lebanese, Jordanians, Turkish, Europeans, Australian, and these gangs are financed and trained by foreign governments.  They attach suicide vests around peoples’ bodies and threaten to explode them if they don’t do what they are told.  One refugee woman asked me ‘when can we go home’?   (To my great delighted a few days later in Damascus I met a woman working on a government programme which is helping refugees to return to Syria and over 200 have returned to date).

Religious and government leaders have called upon people not to flee Syria and it is to be hoped many will heed this call, as after seeing so many Syrian refugees living in tents and being exploited in so many ways, including sexually, I believe the best solution is the stability of Syria so its people feel safe enough to stay in Syria.   If refugees continue to flee Syria then surrounding countries could be destabilized, causing the domino effect and destabilizing the entire Middle East.

Many people have fled into camps in surrounding countries like Turkey, Jordan or Lebanon, all of whom are trying to manage the huge influx of Syrian refugees. Although the host countries are doing their best to cope they are overwhelmed by refugee numbers. (UNHCR’s official figure of refugees is one million).   Through our meetings we have been informed that Turkey invites Syrian refugees into the country and forbid them to go back home. It is documented that Syrian refugees in Turkey and Jordan are mistreated. Some young Syrian refugee girls are sold for forced marriage in Jordan.   From OHCHR reports we know that more than 4 million Syrians are displaced inside their own country, living in great need.

A representative from Red Cross, told us that there is freedom to do their work throughout Syria for all NGO and the Syrian Red crescent in co-ordination with the Ministry of Social affairs  and under such dire circumstances, they are doing their best, providing services to as many people as possible.  However there is a great shortage of funds for them to cope with this humanitarian tragedy of refugees and   internally displaced population.   The economic sanctions, as in Iraq,are causing great hardship to many people and  all those whom we met called for them to be lifted.  Our delegation called for the lifting of these illegal US-led sanctions that target the Syrian Population for purely political reasons in order to achieve regime change.

2- Hospitals: We visited the hospitals and saw many people injured by shootings, bombings, and armed attacks.  A moderate Sunni Imam told me how he was abducted by jihadists, who tortured him, cut off his ear, tried to cut his throat, slicing his legs, and left him for dead.  He said when he goes back to his mosque they will slaughter him.  He told us “these men are foreign fighters, jihadists from foreign countries, well armed, well trained, with money, they are in our country to destroy it.  They are not true Muslims but are religious extremist/fundamentalists terrorizing, abducting, killing our people”.  The government spokesman also confirmed that they have in detention captured foreign fighters from 29 countries, including Chechens, Iraqis, and many others. The Ministry of Health showed us a documentary on the terrible killings by Jihadists and the terror caused by these foreigners with the killing of medics and destruction of medical infrastructure of the Syrian State which has made it difficult to answer the needs of the population.

3- Meeting with Opposition:  Our delegation participated in an open forum with many representatives  of internal opposition’s parties.    One political opponent who was in prison 24 years under the Assad regime, and has been out for 11 years, wants political change with more than 20 other internal opposition components, but without outside interference and the use of violence.  We met with ‘armed’ opposition people in a local community who said they had accepted the governments offer of amnesty and were working for a peaceful way forward.  One man told me he had accepted money from Jihadists to fight but had been shocked by their cruelty and the way they treated fellow Syrian muslims considering them as not real Muslims.   He said foreign Jihadists wanted to take over Syria, not save it.

The 10^th May a part of our delegation headed to Homs, invited by the opposition community of Al Waar city where displaced families from Baba Amro, Khalidiyeh and other rebel’s strongholds seek refuge. The Delegation saw all the conditions of this city and is studying a Pilot Project for Reconciliation and peaceful reintegration between this community and the surrounded non rebel communities (Shia and Alaouites) with whom 15 days ago an agreement of non belligerence has been signed through the auspices of Mussalaha.

4 –  Meeting with Officials: Our Delegation met, and spoke, at the Parliament, and also with the Governor, Prime Minister and 7 other Ministries.  We were given details of the new Constitution and political reforms being put in place, and plans for elections in 2014.  Government Ministers admitted that they had made mistakes in being slow to respond to legitimate demands for change from civil community but these were now being implemented.  They told us when the conflict started it was peaceful for change but quickly turned into bloodshed when armed men killed many soldiers.

In the first days soldiers were unarmed but when people started asking for protection the government and military responded to defend the people and in self defence.

When we enquired from the Prime Minister regarding the allegation that the Syrian Government had used Sarin gas, he told us that as soon as  news came from Aleppo that allegedly gas had been used, his government  invited immediately the UN to come into investigate, but heard nothing from them.  Most recently however, a UN investigator, High Commissioner Carla Del Ponte, has confirmed that it was rebels, not Syrian government, who used Sarin gas.   During meeting with Justice Minister, we requested that a list of 72 non-violent political dissidents currently detained be released.  The justice Minister said after checking those listed were indeed non-violent political dissidents,  he would,  in principal, agree to the release of these nonviolent detainees.  He also informed us they they do not implement the death penalty and it is hoped that when things settle in Syria they will move to have the death penalty abolished.  We also asked the Justice Minister (an international lawyer) about Syrian Government’s Human rights abuses, namely the artillery shelling into no-go areas being held by jihadists and armed opposition.  The Minister accepted those facts but alleged that the Government had a duty to clear these areas.  We suggested there was a better way to deal with the problem than artillery shelling but he insisted that the government had responsibility to clear the areas of rebel forces and this was the way in which they were doing it

The Ministers and Governor said that President Assad was their President and has their support.  There were many people we spoke to who expressed such sentiments.   However, some young people said they support the opposition but in order to protect the Unity of Syria from outside destruction, they will support the government and President Assad, until the election next year and then they will vote for the opposition. They said the Doha Coalition in Qatar does not represent them and that no one outside Syria has a right to remove President Assad but the Syrian people through the elections next year.  The journalists in Syria are in great danger from the religious extremist/fundamentals,and during my visit to a television station a young journalist told me how his mother was killed by jihadists and he showed me his arm where he had been shot and almost killed.

5- Meeting with religious leaders: We attended in the Omayyad Mosque in Damascus a prayer gathering led by the Grand Mufti of the Syrian Arab Republic, Dr. Ahmad Badr Al-Din Hassoun and the Greek Catholic Patriarch Gregory III Laham with the delegate of Greek Orthodox Patriarch John X Yazigi, and clerics of all traditions. The Assembly prayed for the peace and unity of Syria and the non-interference of outsiders in their country.  They stressed the conflict in Syria is not a religious conflict, as Muslims and Christians have always lived together in Syria, and they are,(in spite of living with  suffering and violence much of which is not of their own making), unified in their wish to be a light of peace and reconciliation to the world.  The Patriarch said that from the Mosque and Christian churches goes out a great movement of peace and reconciliation and asked both those inside and outside Syria, to reject all violence and support the people of Syria in this work of dialogue, reconciliation and peacemaking.

The Muslim and Christian Spiritual Leaders are very conscious if the religious extremist/fundamentalists gain momentum and control Syria, the future of those who are not supportive of fundamentalists like moderate Muslims, Christians, minorities, and other Syrians is in great danger. Indeed the Middle East  could loose its precious pluralistic social fabric with the  Christians, like in Iraq, being the first to flee the country. This would be a tragedy for all concerned in this multi-religious, multi-cultural secular Syria, once a light of peaceful conviviality in the Arab world.

AN OVERVIEW:

Following many authorized reports in the mainstream Medias and our own evidences I can stress that the Syrian State and its population are under a proxy war led by foreign countries and directly financed and backed mainly by Qatar who has imposed its views on the Arab League. Turkey, a part of the Lebanese opposition and some of the Jordan authorities offer a safe haven to a diversity of jihadist groups, each with its own agenda, recruited from many countries. Bands of jihadists armed and financed from foreign countries invade Syria through Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon porous frontiers in an effort to destabilize Syria. There are an estimated 50,000 foreign jihadist fighters terrorizing Syria.  Those death squads are destroying systematically the Syrian State infrastructures (Electricity, Oil, Gas and water plants, High Tension Pylons, hospitals, schools, public buildings, cultural heritage sites and even religious sanctuaries).  Moreover the country is submerged by snipers, bombers, agitators, bandits.  They use aggression and Sharia rules and hijack the freedom and dignity of the Syrian population.  They torture and kill those who refuse to join them. They have strange religious beliefs which make them feel comfortable even perpetrating the cruelest acts like killing and torture of their opponents. It is well documented that  many of those terrorists are permanently under stimulant like Captagon. The general lack of security unlashes the terrible phenomenon of abduction for ransoms or for political pressure.  Thousands of innocents are missing, among them the two Bishops, Youhanna Ibrahim and Paul Yazigi, many priests and Imams.

UN and EU economic sanctions as well as a severe embargo are pushing Syria to the edge of social collapse. Unfortunately the international media network is ignoring those realities and is bent on demonizing, lying, destabilizing the country and fuelling more violence and contradiction.

In summary: the war in Syria is not as depicted a civil war but a proxy war with serious breaches of International laws and the Humanitarian International laws.. The protection of the foreign fighters  by some foreign countries among the most powerful gives them a kind of an unaccountability that pushes them with impunity to all kind of cruel deeds against innocent civilians. Even war conventions are not respected incurring in many war crimes and, even, crimes against Humanity.

CONCLUSION:

During our visit to Syria, our delegation was met with great kindness by everyone and I offer to each one who facilitated or hosted our Delegation my most sincere feelings of gratitude.  We witnessed that the Syrian people have suffered very deeply and continue to do so.  The entire population of 23 million people are under tremendous threat of continued infiltration by foreign terrorists.  Many are still stunned by the horrors and suddenness of all this violence and worried their country will be attacked and divided by outside forces, and are all too aware that geopolitical forces are at work to destabilize Syria for political control, oil and resources. One Druze leader said ‘if westerns want our Oil – both Lebanon and Syria have oil reserves – let us negotiate for it, but do not destroy our country to take it’.     In Syria memories of next door Iraq’s destruction by US/UK/NATO forces are fresh in people’s minds, including in the minds of the one and a half million Iraqis who fled Iraqi’s conflict, including many Christians, and were given refuge in Syria by the Syrian Government.

The greatest hope we took was from Mussalaha, a non political movement from all sections of Syrian society, who have working teams throughout Syria and is proceeding through dialogue to building peace and reconciliation.  Mussalaha mediates between armed gunmen and security forces, help get release of many people who have been abducted, and bring together all parties to the conflict for dialogue and practical solutions.  It was this movement who hosted us, under the leadership of Mother Agnes-Mariam, Superior of Saint James’ Monastery, supported by the Patriarch Gregory III Laham, head of the Catholic Hierarchy of Syria.

This great civil community movement building a peace process and National Reconciliation from the ground up, will, if given space, time, and non-interference from outside, help bring Peace to Syria.  They recognize that there must be an unconditional, all inclusive political solution, with compromises and they are confident this is happening at many levels of society and is the only way forward for Syrian peace.

I support this National Reconciliation process which, many Syrian believe, is the only way to bring Peace to SYRIA and the entire Middle East. I am myself committed to this peaceful process and hope that the International Community, the Religious and Political Leaders as well as any person of good will will help Syria to bypass violence and prejudice and anchor in a new era of Social peace and prosperity.  This cradle of civilizations where Syria occupies the heart is an enormous spiritual heritage for humanity, let us strive to establish a non war zone and proclaim it an OASIS of Peace for the Human Family.

MAIREAD MAGUIRE

Nobel peace laureate.    www.peacepeople.com

Peace people, 224 Lisburn Road, Belfast. Bt9.

23.5.2013

N.B.  See the Afghan Peace Volunteers’ Open Letter to Kofi Annan here and here

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9th May , 2013 ( Gregorian calendar )

20^th Saur , 1392 ( Afghan calendar )

From Abdulhai

I can’t quite bear to see the forever-sorrow in my mother.

She walks in a sad way.

Once, I had called from Kabul to speak to her in Bamiyan, and I can’t recall what I had laughed over. She thought I was ridiculing her, despite my explanations of how I would never ridicule her, my widowed mother.

Since then, I’ve been calling her less often because I don’t quite know how to respond to her sadness.

I mean, I myself have a heaviness which sits inside. I used to cry easily as a kid, until I was older.

Last year, when I got angry with Hakim, and I said I wanted to leave the community, it hurt me very much to hear Hakim say, “If you really want to go, you are free to leave.”

Watch ‘Can Abdulhai and Samia be happy in Afghanistan?’

http://youtu.be/WcQ8prnX-zs

Can you imagine why, like most other Afghans, I sometimes get tired of my feelings?

My mother and I and all, we are all war children.

From Samia

Hakim asked me to describe what makes me happy.

‘Friends and family’ was my answer.

On a wall in the Afghan Peace Volunteers’ house, one of the volunteers, Sadaf, had painted two doves flying away from a cage, into the blue ‘lake’.

I told Hakim this drawing was a happy one. “Why?” Hakim asked.

“The doves are beautiful.”

From Hakim

Part of the loss of human dignity experienced by Afghans is the feeling that no one notices.

Bare mountains, rivers drying up, children with malnourished cheeks, beings under ‘burqas’, chair-less tent schools, fatherlessness, family-less-ness…..and yet, still un-regarded.

I re-print some thoughts I had sometime in 2004 ( italicized below ) , as I crossed over the harsh, no-man’s land from Quetta to Kandahar, learning from Abdulhai whom I met years later that we often walk like we’re in a prison, and that we can be happy when, like the imaginative art offered by doves, we labor daily to be free.

As I was going on foot from the Pakistan Immigration office into Afghanistan, I quietly felt fatigued, wishing for the comforts of home and the company of friends. But we have all taken this road before, venturing past unfamiliar limits and handling uneasy tasks, knowing that while it is ideal to travel together, sometimes, we need to walk a little way on our own.

Near the Pakistan Afghanistan border

Crossing the border

I wanted to shout out loud

As I crossed the border alone

Just so I could hear my voice

Above the bareness of my bones

The lines that divide our hearts

Are a hazy black and white

I can’t tell a right from a lie

Or when a struggle becomes a fight

I remembered the orphan boy Najib

His hard work and his strife

How he took that foreign journey

His mistake or his hope or his life

These zones, these places of nowhere

Can strengthen or cripple our course

Such that when we cross those borders

For a second, our history breathes a pause…

For a moment, I lost my resolve

Love,

Abdulhai, Samia and Hakim

Technorati Tags: 2 Million Friends for peace in Afghanistan, a fairer life for all in Afghanistan, Love letters from Kabul, One World in One Week, World Without Borders

A fairer life for all

http://www.2millionfriends.org/apps/blog

Dear friends and fellow human beings,

26^th April , 2013 ( Gregorian calendar )

6^th Saur ,1392 ( Afghan calendar )

From Abdulhai

I think life is unfair.

But I also know that it is people who make life unfair.

Like the older student at my school who regularly surrenders his personal pistol to the school security guard for ‘safe’-keeping.

One day, the security guard was coming out of the school bathroom as I entered it. Ten minutes after I had returned to my class, the security guard was threatening me, “Tell me where the pistol is! You must have taken it when I had gone to the bathroom!”

The security guard brought me to the school administration office where, without asking any questions, the teachers joined the guard in pressuring me to ‘surrender’ the pistol they were accusing me of stealing.

My heart was sinking with doom.

I thought, “This is TROUBLE. They’ll take me to the police station next, pay bribes and make up a story. I’ll be the scapegoat.”

Then, a teacher turned up to say that the pistol had been found.

God knows the number of innocent souls who are today sitting in prisons or worse, who have been killed.

God ought to know.

Afghans say that people get killed just like flies do.

Abdulhai hopes

From Samia

I did okay enough in the grade placement test to enroll in the 3^rd grade. I’m one of the older girls in class, but I don’t really mind, as I want to put on my uniform and have my name called in class.

Some teachers like some students better than the others, and they show it. What I find most insulting is when they treat me in a different way because I am poor.

How happy I was the day I registered at the school! Walina and I visited Hakim that same day, having walked in a slight drizzle. We told him, ‘’We’re going to school!”

Yes, I’m finally getting somewhere.

Watch video ‘Samia finally goes to school’

From Hakim

The inequalities today are cliff-edge catalysts that have caused Time Magazine’s ‘Protesters’ to crystallize on the streets everywhere.

It no longer feels alright for us to remain helpless and pacified before huge systems of money and power to which we have been saying a subservient ‘yes’.

These systems have made a handful of elite corporatists and rulers very rich, while all of us, including the elite, become less and less like free human beings.

These systems make us avid consumers of the next empty thing. We busily stop feeling sorrow for others. We erroneously think that war is necessary.

We are trapped by norms more than we are freed by ideals.

Meanwhile, the hungry are dying every five seconds of our modern, technologically advanced life, and the glaciers are melting. We tolerate such disparities, but see that everything is dying, including ourselves, and that tolerance is no longer enough.

Everything is dying

So the Afghan Peace Volunteers are experimenting with what we can do through tiny acts.

We feel we need to wake up differently each day.

We feel a need to walk through the injustices and inequalities soaking the streets.

We discover the value of being broken people.

We realize that we cannot survive without love.

We find ourselves torn ‘between doom and finally getting somewhere’.

I hear Abdulhai observing that the rich, pistol-armed students are those who are respected, and Samia speaking blandly about being beaten by her teacher in class, and I walk out onto the verandah to feel the Kabul drizzle stain the dust on my face.

I’m gripped by the unfairness of unfairness, and I tell Abdulhai gently, dizzily, that surely, there is no mortal time left to hesitate.

Love,

Abdulhai, Samia and Hakim

Technorati Tags: 2 Million Friends for peace in Afghanistan, a fairer life for all in Afghanistan, Love letters from Kabul, One World in One Week, World Without Borders

Nao Rozi : “Veterans commit suicide from a good conscience”

http://youtu.be/UVPLxl3QXxE

Below are excerpts of an interview of Nao Rozi, an Afghan National Army veteran, and now a member of the Afghan Peace Volunteers.

Excerpts of Video Transcript

Nao Rozi : I was an Afghan soldier for 2 years and had combat roles.

Hakim : What did you learn from your experience?

Nao Rozi : If I think about the root issues, philosophy since the time of Plato has tried to bring the minds of the public under government control. Sometimes, I thought that soldiers and wars were necessary but when I joined the military as a soldier, I saw the injuring and killing of soldiers and opponents like the Taliban. I thought, “Is my presence necessary? Is it correct to have a weapon?” I held a weapon before people I didn’t know and who didn’t know me… We weren’t enemies because we didn’t even know one another. Even before greetings, we were supposed to kill one another.

I concluded that I should leave the army and after that, I had a crisis.

I had almost changed 180 degrees. I was affected by the war.

I tried committing suicide a few times. I felt alone.

Hakim : Some people who hear your story may think your mind was weak ; you wanted to commit suicide…

Nao Rozi : Veterans who commit suicide are not cowardly…they are victims of the war.

Life becomes meaningless. It becomes difficult. You think you’ve done something such that you feel you no longer have the right to live.

Those US veterans who committed suicide had a conscience.

Hakim : What message do you have for friends and for the world?

Nao Rozi : Teacher, how I wish that every human in the world would…just for once, sit down alone and ask, “What are we here for?”

How have we been deceived? How true to self have we been?

I was brought up under the ‘government system’ and things I heard from society and the media. I was captive to these. Now, I am free!

Nao Rozi seeks a better world

Afternote by Dr Hakim

I believe the medical community has made a mistake in considering war-related post-traumatic stress a disorder.

War related post-traumatic stress is a natural order, not a disorder.

I speak as a general medical practitioner, not as a psychiatrist. But more importantly, I speak as a human being whose thinking about war trauma transformed in the few minutes that I was interviewing Faiz Ahmad a few years ago, and then recently in interviewing Nao Rozi, an Afghan National Army veteran.

Anyone who witnesses gruesome violence and death would feel nauseous and repulsed, and these reactions are a natural order of human preservation, not a disorder.

War-related post-traumatic stress prompts us to avoid the blood and gore of mutual killing. Collecting and hearing all the stories of war veterans should prompt us to seriously abolish wars. Albert Einstein had said, “War cannot be humanized, only abolished. War is a terrible thing, and must be abolished at all costs. “

Nao Rozi had painted for me a morbid scene that poets and writers have consistently described in different ways over the centuries, “There were so many dead young bodies, and all of them were strangers to me. I thought, ‘Why did we do this to one another? Who benefited from these deaths? Weren’t their mothers waiting for them at home?’ ”

These questions changed the course of his life.

While making sense out of what he had experienced, he had tried to kill himself a few times.

Today, there is an on-going suicide epidemic among U.S. soldiers and veterans.

A portion of the Guardian article which touched on this suicide epidemic among U.S. soldiers is worth reproducing here.

Libby Busbee is pretty sure that her son William never sat through or read Shakespeare’s Macbeth, even though he behaved as though he had. Soon after he got back from his final tour of Afghanistan, he began rubbing his hands over and over and constantly rinsing them under the tap. “Mom, it won’t wash off,” he said.

“What are you talking about?” she replied.

“The blood. It won’t come off.”

On 20 March 2012, the soldier’s striving for self-cleanliness came to a sudden end. That night he locked himself in his car and, with his mother and two sisters screaming just a few feet away and with Swat officers encircling the vehicle, he shot himself in the head.

At the age of 23, William Busbee had joined a gruesome statistic. In 2012, for the first time in at least a generation, the number of active-duty soldiers who killed themselves, 177, exceeded the 176 who were killed while in the war zone.

Tomas Young, an Iraq veteran who has decided to end his life, wrote a letter to Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney stating “My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.”

In the words of Erica Modugno, author of a pledge some veterans are making to dying Tomas Young:

“We see you. We hear you. We will not remain passive. We will not be silent.

Farewell, Tomas, and thank you.”

I’m sad that some of us may still conclude that Nao Rozi, William Busbee and Tomas Young were ‘wimpy soldiers’, not brave enough to unflinchingly continue doing their jobs.

Rather, their post-traumatic stress was a natural order seeking to preserve their good conscience, a kind order that can help us find a better world.

Nao Rozi lives and struggles with the Afghan Peace Volunteers

“Now I am free!”

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A fairer life for all

http://www.2millionfriends.org/apps/blog

Dear friends and fellow human beings,

15^th March , 2013 ( Gregorian calendar )

25th Hut ,1391 ( Afghan calendar )

From Abdulhai

I feel safe with my mother and family, and with the few friends who care for me.

Everything needs to be safe, even the trees and the flowers. They need space to grow and bear fruit.

Here in Afghanistan, we don’t have that space.

Maybe someday, I will feel safe, when war and its silliness ends, and people can live together. But maybe not. Though we feel uncomfortable with armed persons, we ignore the discomfort. We still believe the fantasy that somehow, weapons make us safer.

Abdulhai and safe spaces

I sometimes wonder, “How did we human beings come to be like this?”

What happened?

We had a tree planting day in Kabul before I went back to Bamiyan for the Afghan New Year. As I was digging the ground with a pickaxe, I remembered working in the open mountain fields of Bamiyan and turned to Hakim to say, “Hakim, I can’t believe I’m going home tomorrow.”

From Samia

We seem to hear voices everywhere telling us, “You are stupid. You are weak students. You are poor. You were brought up badly.”

We can’t escape these voices. We are never safe.

Samia and being safe from the ‘voices’

Walina and Wajia and I felt this way again this week. We ‘ran’ to Hakim to complain, to sulk and to find some room to be ourselves.

Surely, there’ll be a limit to our patience.

I’m not sure if this world was meant for little girls.

From Hakim

Afghanistan is the worst country on earth for a child to be in, so how could we fantasize that the 50 NATO coalition countries have brought security for one of the poorest people on earth?

Who are we kidding?

The Geneva based UN Committee on the Rights of the Child released a report and recommendations to the U.S. government which said it “was ‘alarmed’ at reports of the deaths of hundreds of children from US attacks and air strikes in Afghanistan.”

The U.S. military strongly rejected this report as ‘categorically unfounded.’

To the U.S. military, I say this: it is shameful to argue with the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child over the possible ‘deaths of hundreds of children’. You are disappointing little children. I suggest we try to find the children’s graves.

I suggest that this is not the ‘better world’ children long for.

When we heard that six-year old Toor Jan and seven-year old Odood had been killed while tending to their cattle and collecting firewood, we took our hearts of sorrow and rage to the streets of Kabul. We went with two cows, remembering that the two children were tending to their cattle on their last day.

We are those two children. ( Watch our protest at http://youtu.be/VW43_Y2qkWw ). We wanted to be human again.

Yes, I’m enraged by armed groups like the Taliban who knowingly or unknowingly kill children too.  But no, I don’t want to lose my rage. I want to preserve it.

Weapons and bombs do not embody any ‘virtue’ which we would wish Abdulhai or Samia to find solace in.

You may disagree or get angry with peace activists on the necessity of some wars, but please hear the children.

Hear their soft and clear voices. See the age-old messages they have on their faces – watch them imagine the future : “We are waging war against Afghan children.”

“We are waging war against Afghan children.”

Everything needs a safe space where people aren’t killing one another and then accusing one another of ‘categorically unfounded lies’.

Even the trees and the flowers are imagining that space.

Love,

Abdulhai, Samia and Hakim

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Afghan youth plant locally but imagine for the world

http://youtu.be/AtR7gQ6hWn4

Topikai, , a young Pashtun girl, joined 90 other Afghan Peace Volunteers, both boys and girls, to plant trees in an empty plot of dried-up land. The Afghan Peace Volunteers had helped develop Bamiyan Peace Park four years ago and wished to do so in Kabul too. This is the video of their tree planting event in Kabul with its transcript message to the world below.

The day before, on the 8^th of March 2013, Topikai was with 80 girls and women who gathered at the Afghan Peace Volunteers Community Home to observe International Women’s Day. They spoke about their wish to meet regularly. They told one another not to be afraid. They were given blue scarves, affirming their belief that all human beings live under the same blue sky.

After the meeting, Topikai said, “Afghans are uncertain of what will happen in 2013. So, we should go knock on the doors of every home in Kabul, and ask their mothers to teach their family members not to fight any longer.”

International Women’s Day at the Afghan Peace Volunteers Community Home

Video transcript of ‘Afghan youth plant locally but imagine for the world’

Our message for the world…

We should gather.

We should take action!

Pool resources for our future,

our crafts,

our saplings,

our energies,

our unity.

Today, we’ve come to plant trees, & to struggle against corruption.

Be alive! Be at peace! Clean air!

We each play our small part.

We want peace!

Be well, youth!

Thank you!

The youth have really worked hard.

My message is that Afghan women from different ethnic groups extend our hands to one another to make Afghanistan a place that’s green & a place without wars.

Breaking ground,

persevering.

“Yes to tree planting.

No to corruption!”

Laboring.

“Clean air, clean government!”

Learning beyond the classroom,

recognizing that we can’t effect change alone.

We can’t bring change without the women.

So, we’ll take our joy…

and resist together.

“Clean air, clean government!”

Our message for the world…

We should gather. We should take action : plant locally but imagine for the world!

“Yes to tree planting. No to corruption!”

Afghan youth plant locally but imagine for the world

Technorati Tags: 2014 NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan, International Women’s Day in Afghanistan, New Year Tree Planting in Afghanistan, peace in Afghanistan, war in Afghanistan

‘We are those two Afghan children’

http://youtu.be/VW43_Y2qkWw

Two young Afghan boys herding cattle in Uruzgan Province of Afghanistan were mistakenly killed by NATO forces yesterday.

They were seven and eight years old.

Our globe, approving of ‘necessary or just war’, thinks, “We expect this to happen occasionally.”

Some say, “We’re sorry.”

Therefore today, with sorrow and rage, we the Afghan Peace Volunteers took our hearts to the streets.

We went with two cows, remembering that the two children were tending to their cattle on their last day.

We are those two children.

We want to be human again.

Don’t we see it? Don’t we hear it?

All of nature, the cows, the grass, the hills and the songs, crave for us to be human again.

We want to get out of our seats of pride and presumption, and give a cry of resistance.

We want the world to hear us, the voice of the thundering masses.

“We’re so tired of war.”

“Children shouldn’t have to live or die this way.”

“This hurts like mad, like the mad hurt of seeing a child being caned while he’s crying from hunger.”

“We have woken up, and we detest the method of mutual killing in war that the leaders of the world have adopted.”

We say, with due respect to the leaders, but with no respect for their or any act of violence, “We are very wrong. You are very wrong.”

 “We cannot go on resolving conflicts this warring way.”

Unless we see the cattle’s submission upon being blown up to pieces, and understand the momentary surprise of the seven year old listening to music on his radio, and empathize with the eight year old who had taken responsibility for the seven year old, and weep torrentially with the mother of the children, we are at risk of losing everything we value within ourselves.

Hearing the NATO commander General Joseph Dunford say that they’re sorry makes us angry; we don’t want to hear it.

We don’t want ‘sorry-s’. We want an end to all killing. We want to live without war.

We want all warriors to run back anxiously to their own homes, and fling their arms around their sons and daughters, their grandsons and grand-daughters, and say, “We love you and will never participate in the killing of any child or human being again.”

In the days to come, we’ll remember the distraught mother and family of the two children.

We know they won’t eat, or feel like breathing or living. They will remember, yet not want to remember.

Their mother will feel like giving away tens of thousands of cows just so she can touch her two children’s faces again. No, she’ll not only touch their faces, she will shower them with the hugs and kisses only mothers can give.

Do not insult her grief or her poverty by giving her monetary compensation for her children.

If they were alive, they would say along with their mother, “We are not goods.”

We went out there with our hearts and two cows this morning. We stood in front of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, next to a trash-lined river no one wants to clean up, and we began to feel human again.

We had begun to cry for our world.

‘We are those two Afghan children’

Technorati Tags: Australian diggers kill two Afghan boys in Uruzgan, civilian casualties in Afghanistan, two Afghan boys killed in Uruzgan by NATO forces, UN Committee on the Rights of a Child

A fairer life for all

http://www.2millionfriends.org/apps/blog

Dear friends and fellow human beings,

15^th February, 2013 ( Gregorian calendar )

27^th Dalw, 1391 ( Afghan calendar )

From Abdulhai

My grandmother was one of my best friends in the world. When she was alive, she told me, “Please plant trees.” I asked her, “Why?” She asked ,”Why did your father plant trees?”

When I go to my village, I see many trees and I remember my grandmother’s world.

One morning, I saw my grandmother with a smile on her face. That smile had dreams, the dreams for a better world and the dream for a green place where doves fly over the green trees.

On another morning, she had a spade in her hand and she went to water the trees. Later, she came home. Her granddaughter brought tea for her.

She said that helping others is praying. Life for her was suffering, the suffering that made her heart cry. But we could see hope in her eyes, hope for the new generation.

Nao Roz ( the Afghan New Year ) came. She went to sit beside the river.

The river asked her,”What do you want for the New Year?” She told the river about her hope for the New Year. “I want to die.”

The river could see love and truth on her face. The river did not accept her answer and asked, “What else do you want for the New Year?”

My grandmother smiled, ”I want oranges for the New Year.”

The river called the blue sky, “Please go to the city to bring oranges for grandmother.”

Grandmother was very happy. The blue sky was my oldest brother, Khamad, and the river was my friend Hakim.

A few months later, she died with a smile and a dream for a better world.

Abdulhai, Hakim and Khamad

with oranges

From Samia

The other morning, my funny brother, Rohullah, told us that he can help us learn the Dari alphabet, but that he would like us to organize a classroom in our home and to get a whiteboard. He then said with all seriousness, “I will charge all of you 10 Afghanis ( 20 U.S. cents ) per month for the lessons.”

Walina said, “That’s not fair!”

I laughed so hard.

Poor people have a different sense of what a fair world is.

Walina claimed that she would learn better if she was threatened with punishment, like being hit by a ruler. I knew she didn’t mean it, because even children like us know that we’re far happier learning through patient and kind teachers.

Watch ‘Samia on not learning through punishment’

From Hakim

Things can get fairer, though only after exercising ‘unbearable’ patience.

A few evenings ago, Abdulhai was visibly discouraged over personal and community problems, but couldn’t quite pin down the roots of his un-happiness. He curled up beneath his cozy duvet, and shielded himself from the harsh Afghan night outside.

Various irritations had piled up for Abdulhai.

I felt useless yet again in the presence of another human being.

Where is the music of the better world we seek?

I did the little bit I knew to do. Bending over Abdulhai’s retreating self, I patted him on his shoulders and offered a dream, “It’ll be better tomorrow.”

 ‘Sacred norms’, like the laws that kept black African Americans living as slaves or laws that left women out from voting, do change, but not overnight.

I slept, burdened by impatience.

I wished for Abdulhai’s night to turn into day. “The change we both long for will come. It will come with the light-hearted resilience of children, men and women who wake up each day to work for a better world.”

Abdulhai awakening to resilience,

from under a duvet

Love,

Abdulhai, Samia and Hakim

Technorati Tags: 2 Million Friends for peace in Afghanistan, a fairer life for all in Afghanistan, Love letters from Kabul, One World in One Week, World Without Borders

-          The hurt of militarized authoritarianism in Singapore, Afghanistan and the world

By Dr Hakim

February, 2013

It’s hard for me, an ordinary citizen of Singapore, a medical doctor engaged in social enterprise work in Afghanistan and a human being wishing for a better world, to write this from Kabul.

But people are dying.

And children and women are feeling hopeless.

 “What’s the point in telling you our stories?” asked Freba, one of the seamstresses working with the Afghan Peace Volunteers to set up a tailoring co-operative for Afghan women. “Does anyone hear? Does anyone believe us?”

Silently within, I answered Freba with shame,” You’re right. No one is listening.”

So, I write this in protest against my government’s presence in the humanitarian and war tragedy of Afghanistan, as a way to lend my voice to Freba and all my Afghan friends.

I do so in dissent, against the global security of imprisoned minds.

I thought, “If no one listens as humans should, we should at least speak like free men and women.”

Singapore’s complicity in the humanitarian and war tragedy of Afghanistan

It is clear that the Taliban, the many Afghan and regional warlords, militia groups and the Afghan government are responsible for the current humanitarian and war tragedy of Afghanistan.

But Singapore is also responsible because it is one of the fifty U.S. /NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) coalition countries working with the corrupt Afghan government ( rated the most corrupt country in 2012 ).

While the Singapore government would never support any corrupt Singaporean leader even for a day, they have sent troops to support the most corrupt leaders on earth! If accountability is at all important, we cannot say, ‘Oh…never mind!”

Moreover, Singapore has inadvertently become a minor accomplice of the self-interests of the U.S. government in Afghanistan ; The U.S. Vice President , Joe Biden, spoke at the Munich Security Conference recently, “The United States is a Pacific power. And the world’s greatest military alliance ( NATO ) helps make us an Atlantic power as well. As our new defense strategy makes clear, we will remain both a Pacific power and an Atlantic power.”

American power and economic interests naturally do not include the best interests of ordinary Singaporeans or Afghans.

The Afghan humanitarian tragedy

In the normal, logical world, it should inspire the doubt and curiosity of Singaporeans that while the U.S. /NATO coalition was spending billions of dollars every week on the Afghan war ( the U.S. alone was spending two billion dollars every week ), Afghans have been perishing under one of the highest infant and maternal mortality rates in the world. At least 36% live below the poverty line and 35% of Afghan men do not have work . The UN calls the acute malnutrition of nearly one million children in the Afghan south ‘shocking’ . Almost three quarters of all Afghans do not have access to safe drinking water .

On several occasions in the past few years, Afghanistan was declared the worst country for children and women, and yet, many of us still hold this warped presumption, “Afghanistan is the worst country for children and women but whatever we are doing over there MUST somehow be right!”

The Afghan war tragedy

In the normal, logical world, it should at least matter to ‘result-orientated’ Singaporeans that the very expensive Afghan/U.S. coalition’s ‘war against terrorism’ has increased rather than decreased ‘terrorism’, with the Global Terrorism Index reporting that terrorist strikes in the region have increased four times since the start of the Iraq war in 2003.

Even President Karzai said in the UK recently that the security situation in southern Helmand province of Afghanistan was better before British troops were deployed.

Adding to this cynical mess of increased ‘terrorism’ at the hands of global superpowers, the U.S. has established an epicenter of drone warfare in Afghanistan, with Afghans and Pakistanis and other ‘insurgents’ as their ‘targets’, and Singapore as one of their many allies. Singapore has had teams helping in drone reconnaissance operations, reconnaissance that may have eventually ended up with a U.S. /NATO decision to kill someone without trial.

I had raised this personal concern once in a meeting room at Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs ; I was appreciative of the attentiveness given to this issue, but sensed that there was no great interest in ‘investigating’ how Singapore’s co-operation in the drone operations in Afghanistan may be violating international law, as was suggested by the ex-UN Special Rapporteur on Extra Judicial, Summary or Arbitrary Killings, Mr Philip Alston.

A recent New York Times article highlights these ‘fears  for U.S. allies’, reporting on a lawsuit in the British courts that ‘accuses British officials of becoming “secondary parties to murder” by passing intelligence to American officials that was later used in drone strikes.’ My life has been changed by listening to Afghan friends like Raz Mohammad tell how ‘drones bury beautiful lives’.

Raz, Abdulhai and Hakim in Kabul

The U.N. is finally living up to its charter to ‘remove the scourge of war’ by duly investigating  drone warfare. Major U.S. newspapers are also asking for more transparency over Obama’s weekly, premeditated ‘kill lists’. There has been concern over unchecked Powers getting even more out of all jurisdictions with the appointment of ‘drone justifier’ John Brennan as Obama’s CIA Director nominee.

Even the UN Committee on the Rights of a Child has been “alarmed” at reports of the deaths of hundreds of children from US attacks and air strikes in Afghanistan since the committee last reviewed U.S. practices in 2008.

Singapore should be alarmed too.

Singapore’s own identity as a militarized, authoritarian country

Deep within, like most human beings, Freba yearns for a decent livelihood without war. Abdulhai and the Afghan Peace Volunteers wish for friends from all 195 countries of the world, a better world without borders!

What kind of identity do Singaporeans wish for their country, a peaceful and friendly country or otherwise?

Again, I’m concerned. We like pictures of be-medaled soldiers more than unsung ‘Mother Teresa’ heroines. Our government has a significant number of ex-military commanders.

According to the Global Militarisation Index released by the Bonn International Centre for Conversion (BICC), Singapore has been the second most militarized nation in the world for years. The latest ranking puts Singapore just second to Israel and one brutal position more militarized than Syria.

What also worries me is that this militarized mindset may be behind Singapore’s enthusiasm in the drone show-business, and in ‘unintentionally’ being part of the U.S.’ ‘Asia pivot’ by hosting four U.S. littoral combat ships.

Even on the economic front, while Singapore has one of the higher Gini coefficients of income inequality in the world, not many people in Singapore are aware of or debating Singapore’s participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership , again a partnership that corporate America is pushing for.

What Singapore has aligned herself with in Afghanistan is militarized authoritarianism that concentrates profit and power in the hands of a few. While this follows global norms, such a system works mainly for the wealth and power of the 1% in the short term, but not for the daily needs of the 99% in either the short or long term.

I personally think that both the democratic and socialist practices of today are ‘non-progressive’ vehicles for the rule of the few ‘Kings, Emperors, Presidents, and Prime Ministers’ over the many presumably ‘ignorant, helpless and sometimes lazy’ subjects. These elitist systems tend to maintain control by ‘pacifying the masses’ through formal education, mainstream media and force.

I hope Singapore can steer itself away from this ‘norm’, an ugly ‘norm’ in which war becomes fun, like when Prince Harry described his combat pilot job in Afghanistan as “a joy … because I’m one of those people who loves playing PlayStation and Xbox, so with my thumbs I like to think I’m probably quite useful.”

I believe that for effective defense and genuine security, we ought to be friends with neighbours and all peoples of other lands rather than militarists with superior weapons.

Perhaps these are differences in opinions which can be included in Our Singapore Conversation.

It’s hard for me to write this, but I am sincerely ashamed to be a citizen of the 2^nd most militarized nation on earth, a country that has participated in the legally-questionable drone warfare in Afghanistan.

Thankfully, I have hope in Singaporeans like I have hope in humanity. There are alternatives. The world is awakening, the human race is revolutionizing, and so is Singapore’s electorate. Most ordinary folk in the world don’t want to send missiles or guns to kill strangers in other places! Human beings have always preferred otherwise.

My voice is not political. My voice is human.

Afghans are hurting very badly.

And I am hurting too.

Technorati Tags: drones in Afghanistan, militarization of Singapore Afghanistan and the world, Obama's war in Afghanistan, we are the 99%

A fairer life for all

Dear friends and fellow human beings,

25^th  January, 2013 ( Gregorian calendar )

6^th Dalw 1391 ( Afghan calendar )

From Abdulhai

It’s hard to live in community, yet without community, I’d be alone.

Lately, my heart has been spinning and turning and wondering about a borderless world.

Abdulhai working towards making friends from every country in the world

I feel that the vision of the whole world being one big family is beautiful. But is it possible?

I mean, I already have problems living with just a few people, especially with those who don’t keep their rooms clean.

I am old enough to know that it’s not nice to be cynical about people. I told Hakim, “I don’t like the way I’ve become more negative about life in general.”

Even relatives are nasty to one another. So, how can a whole world of strangers get along?

I also seem to have problems with the people I love, including my mother. I sometimes think that perhaps I shouldn’t love anyone too much, because then, I expect more of them and get hurt more often.

I’m not sure.

Love seems to ‘draw’ me out to a better world, but yet, I’ve often wanted to give up on the Afghan Peace Volunteer community.

Sometimes, sadly, it gets too hard.

From Samia

I miss my community in Laghman.

The people in Laghman had problems, but they would still help one another.

Here in Kabul, the rich people don’t seem to care at all. Some of them behave as if we don’t exist.

That’s partly why I like coming to the Afghan Peace Volunteers’ classes. The teachers not only teach; the peace volunteers recognize our presence. So, I’m trying to learn to read, write and count, and so is Walina.

Walina was asked by the teacher to leave the class as she had trouble with some students in class. Hakim met with the teacher, Walina and myself, and we made an agreement. Now, Walina seems happier, so maybe she can learn better.

She is also grateful to the teachers and the peace volunteer community.

Do you think I’m being too sentimental about my friends in Laghman?

Samia misses her community

From Hakim

”Do you think we’re mad? “Abdulhai asked  as we and the other Afghan Peace Volunteers launched the One World in One Week Campaign, hoping to find friends from all 195 countries of the world.

I believe love can break those human borders.

Borderless love.

Borderless love is not an unreachable ideal to imagine about.

It is cumulative, faithful and almost mundane community-based actions for me to take daily, in order to demonstrate that:

The international community does not have a ‘successful’ global economy when many human beings are still dying from lack of basic human needs.

Conventional education doesn’t make us ‘smarter’, and definitely not kinder.

We should wake up with the people movements of the world in de-glorifying and questioning money and power. Today’s self-interested leaders are NOT cool.

The use of force, including armed force, is undignified, and useless against hunger and hate.

The ‘terrorist’ could be me.

I’m sobered by Khalil Gibran’s warning that ‘no one shall open the floodgates of his ancestors without drowning.’

So yes, it’s going to get really hard, Abdulhai, but isn’t hatred harder?

And yes, sometimes, I feel like I’m drowning.

For Afghan children to look forward to a world of borderless love,

we need to build it.

 Love,

Abdulhai, Samia and Hakim

Technorati Tags: 2 Million Friends for peace in Afghanistan, a fairer life for all in Afghanistan, Love letters from Kabul, One World in One Week, World Without Borders