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!”

Share and Enjoy:

Technorati Tags: Afghan War Veterans, conscientious objectors, suicide epidemic among war veterans, veterans and PTSD, Veterans for Peace

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

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

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

Afghan youth hope for One World of Friends

http://youtu.be/E20VNTw-uXw

https://www.facebook.com/oneworld4abetterworld

Dear friends and peace-makers of the world,

I used to think that tiny actions were an unproductive waste of time.

I’ve changed.

Every tiny, ‘negligible’ action for change is beautiful and valuable.

Here’s a tiny action I’d ask you to consider taking to encourage the 99% of 30 million ordinary Afghans whose voices are not heard by anyone.

Please help Abdulhai and the Afghan Peace Volunteers find peace-loving friends from each and every one of the 195/196 countries of the world, friends who are impatient for a better world!

One world in one week

http://youtu.be/oiGiozgQXN4

The Afghan Peace Volunteers are tired of rich and powerful politicians making unjust deals over their future, as President Karzai and President Obama did in Washington D.C.

They emulate Gandhi in his Salt March through this symbolic but person-to-person dream, hoping that when 195/196 friends have extended their hands in solidarity, they can say, “With our hands of friendship, we will shake the foundations of the world.”

“We want to break all borders!”

Abdulhai and the Afghan Peace Volunteers

Please encourage your international friends to send an email to 1week4abetterworld@gmail.com

Love and thanks,

Hakim and the Afghan Peace Volunteers

https://www.facebook.com/oneworld4abetterworld

PS : The Afghan Peace Volunteers had initially hoped to find friends from all over the world within one week. The week went by we hadn’t found friends from every country yet. So, we step on, patiently seeking friends, patiently working towards a better world.

Latest update ( up till 1.20 p.m. Kabul, Afghanistan time on the 4th of May, 2013 )

Number and list of Countries with people who’ve joined us : 51 + 1

Sweden, USA, Singapore, Afghanistan, Australia, UK, Poland, Ireland, Canada, Pakistan, India, Brazil, Egypt, Chile, Germany, Japan, Jordan, Philippines, Syria, Switzerland, Iraq, Haiti, New Zealand, Austria, Myanmar, Ghana, Belgium, Israel, Kuwait, Greece, Kosovo, Georgia, Lebanon, France, Mexico, Thailand, Kazakhstan, South Korea, Finland, Uruguay, Denmark, Columbia, Ecuador, Italy, Czech Republic, Taiwan, Iran, Costa Rica, Belgium, Togo, Jamaica, Argentina

Thank you!!

Faiz with the first list of countries which we have pinned on the wall

Raz holds up the second list

Abdulhai hopes to find friends from all 195 countries

Dear friends,

Each of the Afghan Peace Volunteers in these videos is dreaming of finding friends from all 195 countries of the world. 

They all want to play their tiny part in building a world without borders.

This is our resistance in the age of repression, believing that ‘every hand of friendship is an act for freedom!’

Enjoy the video messages below, and Help us find friends who will join hands for better and fairer ways of organizing our global economy and community. Join us by writing to 1week4abetterworld@gmail.com

Love from Afghanistan,

Hakim and the Afghan Peace Volunteers

https://www.facebook.com/oneworld4abetterworld

http://ourjourneytosmile.com

http://globaldaysoflistening.org

http://2millionfriends.org

One world in one week

http://youtu.be/oiGiozgQXN4

I think war is ‘madder’!

An Afghan boy searches for Bob Marley’s place

Ali wishes Sri Lankans & the world a long life

Khamad with Guatemalan & Afghan drums

 s

Raz on Bhutan and Afghan happiness

Afghanistan’s Sharif wishes to behold Finland’s Aurora

Faiz asks where Afghan tulips have gone

Technorati Tags: 2 Million Friends for peace in Afghanistan, Friends Without Borders, World Without Borders