Afghan lady & girl’s loving greetings of peace to U.S. Ambassador Eikenberry; a heart storm is slowly seeding
November 24, 2009 by
Filed under Journey Updates
Please watch an Afghan lady & girl stand with peace youth volunteers in greetings to the U.S. Ambassador Eikenberry, who urged for no troop surge.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGRp995K2Xg
Nazuko
Zekerullah, “Eikenberry Sir & your wife, do you have time to be with us at the Bamiyan Peace Park?”
Nazuko : “We wish for peace. Love is how we’ll ask for peace.”
This seems a time when we keep asking each other what is enough, what numbers, what measures…
Against the grain, even the decay within ourselves, we stand with friends in the quiet resolution that love is enough, yes, love is enough.
Others may take everything away from us, but they cannot take away love.
Love is how we’ll ask for peace
2nd Cup of Tea Peace Vigil, our second mile of love
Come stand with us for love!
Parwin
The heart-storm of love is slowly seeding. We thank the individuals from the groups below who inspire us to plod on in Afghanistan!
- Olympia Washington Vigil
Dennis Mills with friends
Other photos :
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tricyrtis_hirta/sets/72157622733609809/
- Evergreen State College Vigil, Olympia Washington
Vigil group at Evergreen
Other photos :
http://s896.photobucket.com/albums/ac161/jjacobro/2ND%20CUP%20OF%20TEA/?start=0
- Mideast Solidarity Project, Evergreen State College, Olympia Washington
Mideast Solidarity Project
- Sheridan Peacemakers, Wyoming USA
Joan Borst with Sheridan Peacemakers
- Stand Up for Peace, Laramie USA
Lesley Wischmann and Stand Up for Peace
- Contagious Love Experiment
Josh Steiber and friends
- Corvallis Alternatives Against the War
Carol and Jane Alexander
Read this article on the faithful 9 year peace vigil of this group
http://www.chicagotribune.com/topic/sns-ap-us-ripples-of-war,0,3127649,full.story
We also thank Douglas Mackey, Dennis Mills and staff of Olympia High School for making possible a long-distance tele-conference with the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers on the 24th of November 2009.
Afghan lady & girl stand with vigil youth to greet Eikenberry in peace
November 21, 2009 by
Filed under Journey Updates
Please watch an Afghan lady & girl stand with peace youth in greetings of peace to the U.S. Ambassador Eikenberry, who urged for no troop surge
We’re sorry that we’re having technical problems with this video upload. We’ll try to correct this soon! Thanks.
Nazuko
13 year old Zekerullah, “Eikenberry Sir & your wife, do you have time to be with us at the Bamiyan Peace Park?”
Nazuko : “We wish for peace. Love is how we’ll ask for peace.”
This seems a time when we keep asking each other what is enough,
what numbers, what measures…
Against the grain, even the decay within ourselves, we stand with friends in the quiet resolution that love is enough, yes, love is enough.
Others may take everything away from us, but they cannot take away love.
2nd Cup of Tea Peace Vigil, our second mile of love
Come stand with us for love!
Parwin
The love in Zekerullah’s journey to peace ; restoring the truth
November 18, 2009 by
Filed under Journey Updates
Please watch 13 year old Zekerullah explain why ‘there’s no justice or truth in Afg today’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgCXy60yy2U
Zekerullah, a 13 year Afghan youth peace volunteer who is taking part in the peace vigils at Bamiyan Peace Park, is learning to walk that 2nd mile for love.
Love speaks the truth with gentleness, calling corruption corruption, not a budding democracy.
Love will not nurture greed in Afghan robes or international suits.
Love walks 2 hours in the mud to earn a decent penny though it is aware that, by economic design, money and power are not with those who walk.
Love deliberately asks ‘Does Zekerullah deserve a decent livelihood as much as I do?’
Love waits eagerly for peace and justice, even if, by ‘fateful neglect’, it is un-noticed and un-rewarded.
Love knows that killing in whatever name, even in the name of ‘Overseas Contingency Operations’, is killing. Killing removes life and love; we are not able to justify to Zekerullah that killing is a civil response for our ‘contingencies’.
Love recognizes that war is not peace, whatever its prize.
Love empathizes with soldiers and victims who suffer post-traumatic stress, knowing that it is an ORDER of human conscience that can guide Mankind to wholeness, pleading ‘Enough. Please stop!’
Zekerullah making biscuits and cakes
Please speak the truth in love together with Zekerullah, not later but now.
Say it as it is.
This may be a chance for Afghan youth to raise the possibility of love,
for Man to do a little something for other Men,
by standing and waiting firmly for peace before the giants that be.
Killing goes against everything we’re taught from childhood about love and compassion. It goes against every religious doctrine and moral code. It’s small wonder that so many come back from war “sick at heart.”
Irish Nobel peace laureate Mairead Maguire
2nd Cup of Tea Peace Vigil begins our 2nd mile for love
November 16, 2009 by
Filed under Journey Updates
Please watch the growing smiles of friendship over tea!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-4ZMh8Z9ts
2nd Cup of Tea Peace Vigil begins our 2nd mile for love
‘Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.’
Mother Teresa
Come and have the 2nd cup of tea and deepen our friendships of peace.
Friends, join us wherever you are!
With love,
from the Afghan & International Youth Peace Volunteers
Dandelion Salad and Peace Works
We thank our peacemaker friends in PeaceWorks, Columbia Missouri USA, for giving us their support. We were encouraged by all your smiles!
Thanks to Dandelion Salad, below is the link to the photos of the smiling faces from Columbia, MO when the Peaceworks organization gathered for their annual dinner
‘Love is How We’ll Ask for Peace’ (Set)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lorri37/sets/72157622681524727/
Mary
Alex, Emma and Lily
Amy
Gail and Peter
Oregon Fellowship of Reconciliation
We also thank Oregon Fellowship of Reconciliation for writing to us on You Tube, saying :
The Oregon Fellowship of Reconciliation endorses your efforts! Let love bring peace! A photo will follow!
Our growing peace vigil friendships
Thank you all for encouraging us. Please send us your vigil information and pictures, wherever you are standing for peace, to youthpeacevolunteers@gmail.com
2nd Cup of Tea Peace Vigil, our 2nd mile of love
November 15, 2009 by
Filed under Journey Updates
Though we may be discouraged by the loud words, the self-interest, the disunity and the sinking sense of futility, we can share a cup of tea as we keep a vigil for peace.
Though we may be surrounded by neglect, anger, pride and the meaningless mire of violence, we can find mutual comfort in transforming our struggle for love.
Mohd Hussein starts 2nd Cup of Tea Peace Vigil
with 8 other Afghan youth peace volunteers
Mohd Hussein and 8 other Afghan peace youth volunteers will begin their 2nd Cup of Tea Peace Vigil on Sunday, the 15th of November 2009, daily from 12 noon to 1 pm Bamiyan time, at the Bamiyan Peace Park.
Please watch Mohd Hussein invite us for Afghan tea!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rF0msK8dlh4
We’ll have our 2nd cups of tea, in deepening our friendships and strengthening our love.
We wish for you to join us in our 2nd Cup of Tea Peace Vigil,
person by hopeful person, friends with new friends
in homes, in parks, along the streets
and in the warm places of your hearts!
The first time, we’re friends. The second time, brothers.
Afghan proverb
Mohd Hussein’s labor of love and peace
The love in Abdulai’s journey to peace
November 13, 2009 by
Filed under Journey Updates
Abdulai, who is leading the Afghan peace vigilers, speaks of human dignity in this video
The love in Abdulai’s journey to peace
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sttdyu38CWw
Abdulai in his small shop
I’ve discovered the quiet dignity of young Afghan children working to help make ends meet.
Whereas abusive child labor should be addressed, I’ve not personally found specific instances of such abuse here.
Rather, in Abdulai’s and the Afghan person’s common poverty, I’ve witnessed their patience with the ‘fairness’ of un-chosen fates while reflecting on the privilege of ‘first world’ comforts that sometimes spoil ‘first world’ children.
Yes, daily life and work for kids in Afghanistan is generally tough but we know that dignity isn’t just economic. The rich child becomes ‘ugly’ when he is violent in his anger. The poor child carries dignity when he stays meek even when angry.
I can see that quality in Abdulai and therefore am privileged to walk with him in the love with which he asks for peace.
Abdulai with his load of winter fuel
Text of video
13 year old Abdulai in his small shop,
a student, farmer & shopkeeper whose
father & grandfather were killed in war
The love in his journey to peace…
Need we suggest at all, that instead of spending millions on war, you can build factories to give us work & a future?
What do you wish for in your life?
?I wish for…truth and love.
Do you think you can find love and truth in your life??
I don’t know.?
Elisa, Abdulai’s pen pal : I am 14 years old from the United States & on our news channels they never show any of Afghanistan’s children speaking.
This is the first time I’ve heard voices of Afghan people & seen the beauty of Afghanistan.
Please keep smiling & never give up your hope, because all youth are the future of the world Elisa
Have you been encouraged as a pen pal of Elisa? Yes!
Why? I’ve found a friend.
Now that you’re a friend of Elisa & international peace volunteers, would you hurt them? No.
If unfortunately, war begins &? you meet these friends in war, would you incidentally……kill them?
No. We should surely understand human dignity.
What’s that in your hand?
This is Obama with his family.
What do you wish from President Barack Obama, the Nobel Peace Laureate?
My friends & I are waiting for his answer to our peace message.
Abdulai carrying his load of collected wood home for winter fuel, in his journey to dignity & peace
Abdulai among the trees
The Love in humanity’s journey to peace ; our shared gratitude
November 12, 2009 by
Filed under Journey Updates
Please watch Western Washington Fellowship of Reconciliation’s Love in saying thanks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg7TBpPUoFA
Text of video
Salam! ( Peace! )
Tashakur! ( Thank you! )
These friends from Western Washington Fellowship of Reconciliation have encouraged us
with their love is saying ‘thank you’, in the Dari language of Afghan hearts.
We thank all our friends who have registered their support with a Yes! to us.
We thank them with a gratitude that is adding meaning to our ordinary lives.
1. We thank the following who have written to us at youthpeacevolunteers@gmail.com with their Yes!
Priscilla Singapore
June USA
Kyle Kristensen USA
Susan Asheville NC, USA
Lynette Shek Singapore
Carol and Jane Alexander Oregon USA ( see Corvallis Alternatives to War’s 8 year vigil below ! )
Randel Mowen USA
We also thank the Fans who have indicated their support through the Youth Peace Volunteers Facebook at
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Youth-Peace-Volunteers/206186386153?v=wall
2. We have these 45 fans below as of 12/11/2009 2.15 pm Afghanistan Time. Thanks to each and every one of you!
Catherine Dawdy
Donna Schumann
Bernard Bernie Meyer
Linda Mackaman Young
Susan Bruce
Bert Jones
Jennifer Newell
Nayantra Nanda Kumar
Lisa Aceste DiMartino
Karen Griswold
Keith David Halloran
Raamesh Gowri Raghavan
Mridula Koshy
Michael Creighton
Peggy Love
John VanDyke Wilmerdong Jr.
Leanne Whittle
Chris Collier
Janice Matthews
Somer Loen
Ray A.Estrada Jr.
Sueli F. Lima
Anita Stewart
Dan Ryan
Lynette Shek
Dennis DeAsis
Asher Platts
Vin Gopal
Maya Kocian
Kayla Matthies Saville
Susan Marie Oehler
Jody Tiller Mackey
Kyle Kristensen
Cheryl Anne Crist
Larry Kerschner
Dennis W. Mills
Lo Daniels
Douglas Mackey
ForPeace With Love
3. We also thank others who have contacted us personally.
Willie Wee and wife Singapore
Corvallis Alternatives to War’s 8 year vigil ( Carol and Jane Alexander are from this group)
Carol Alexander wrote to us saying :
Dear friends in peace,
We have forwarded on your moving message to many others. We are with you in spirit and in peace. Please see the Al Jazeera story about our daily vigil: http://english.aljazeera.net:80/news/americas/2009/11/20091110191657129146.html ( below )
Peace and love to you.
Carol Alexander, Corvallis, Oregon, USA
Al Jazeera Article
The future of American troops in Afghanistan is again in the headlines in the US amid reports that Barack Obama, the president, has made up his mind about future troop levels there.
Despite speculation in US media, the White House is strongly denying that Obama has decided to send as many as 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan.
As Washington considers its next move in Afghanistan, protesters in a small US town are continuing an anti-war vigil they began eight years ago.
Sebastian Walker reports on the demonstration against the war in Afghanistan from the western US state of Oregon.
Watch the Corvallis Alternatives to War’s 8 year vigil
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48xOVPa2RME
Love is how we’ll ask for peace ; seeding a global heart-storm for peace
November 8, 2009 by
Filed under Journey Updates
Our immediate goal
With love, we request the 2009 Nobel Peace Laureate, President Obama, to answer the Afghan youth peace message ‘Reconciliation of Civil Hearts’, as part of his wider message of peace to the peaceful future of our shared world, on or about the 10th of December, the day he will receive the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway.
Please watch our Afghan peace youth vigilers appeal to the world in the video above or at :
Love is how we’ll ask for peace
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLKR6iEdZGs
Our larger goal is to encourage Afghanistan and the world towards concrete love and peace, through wide scale reconciliatory and humane relations.
How we’ll work towards our immediate goal in the next one month ,
before the 10th of December 2009
The road had opened before us when the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, kindly visited our Afghan peace vigil group at the Bamiyan Peace Park in Afghanistan on the 28th of October 2009. During the visit, he promised the Afghan peace youth vigilers that he would get a response from President Obama, to their message of peace “Reconciliation of Civil Hearts”
Internationally, in the next one month before President Obama receives his Nobel Peace Prize in Norway, we will garner the heart-to-heart support of Afghan and international youth peace volunteer supporters by collecting the signatures of supporters with pictures of their individual smiling faces.
We will put them all into growing landscape-style pictures / motages. To rally a heart-storm of love in this effort, we’ll encourage all supporters to blog at the blog-site http://youthpeacevolunteers.blogspot.com/, entitled “Afghan & international youth peace volunteers say together, ‘Love is How We’ll Ask for Peace.’
In Afghanistan, we hope to hold a Afghan national youth peace convention in Bamiyan in the month of November.
All updates can also be found at http://ourjourneytosmile.com/blog
Our current partners
Our Journey to Smile ( the 10 Afghan peace vigil youth are part of this peace-building group in Afghanistan, with international volunteers from Singapore )
http://ourjourneytosmile.com/blog
Contact person : Hakim at journeytosmile@gmail.com
ContagiousLoveExperiment (2 Iraq veterans’ Josh Steiber and Conor Curran who are actively promoting peace)
http://contagiousloveexperiment.wordpress.com/
Contact person : Josh at desertcamel87@yahoo.com
Olympia WA Fellowship of Reconciliation USA and Iraq Memorial to Life ( who had up to 100 persons who kept the vigil with the Afghan youth peace volunteers concurrently in Olympia, USA )
http://www.iraqmemorialtolife.org
Contact person : Douglas Mackey at douglas.mackey@youthpeacevolunteers.org
Sheridan Peacemakers in Wyoming, USA
Contact person : Joan Borst at xenadean2000@yahoo.com
Dandelion Salad ( progressive web-site)
http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com
Contact person : Lorri
This is the group we have now and with this small number of supporters we ask for your support – because it will take more of us to deliver the message to enough people so that it makes a difference.
We know our support will grow as we reach our list of individual personal contacts with international peacemakers and peace groups.
How to support each other immediately
1. Sign in as a Fan of Youth Peace Volunteers on Facebook ( click below )
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Youth-Peace-Volunteers/206186386153?v=wall
By becoming a Fan, you are indicating your support for the Afghan youth peace volunteers’ appeal to President Obama
2. Send a quick email to youthpeacevolunteers@gmail.com
Simply indicate: Yes to Youth Peace Volunteers!
Provide your name and nationality and if you are willing to have your smiling face put together in a collage picture, send us your picture too!
3. You can also blog with us about peace, at http://youthpeacevolunteers.blogspot.com/
4. Spread the word through email etc, to friends and like minded peace groups
5. Post supportive comments on Youth Peace Volunteers Facebook and blog
6. Give us ideas and suggestions, that is, heart-storm with us
Given the global picture of war and peace today, we believe that this is a unique, historical chance for all of us to raise the possibility of love in Afghanistan and beyond.
How to support each other on a wider scale and for the long run
Tell others about our shared effort of love and encouragement towards true peace and reconciliation, that is, let’s seed a heart-storm! We live, love and perish in the same world!
Our Afghan youth peace volunteers at their recent peace vigil
Two framed copies of this photograph was given to the U.S. Ambassador,
one for the Ambassador and the other for President Obama
The Afghan youth peace volunteer vigilers with the U.S. Ambassador, his wife
and the Governor of Bamiyan Province, Dr Sarobi
13 year old Abdulai gives the framed photos to U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry
Our call to stand and act together in
‘Love is how we’ll ask for peace’
Most of us in our disparate world today would hardly believe or be affected by our ordinary, almost mundane burden.
But we’ve always imagined that when people come together to stand for love, life changes.
Most often, changes happen in only a tiny part of the world, a little community, a small fraternity; and though all of which will, like human civilizations do, eventually pass away, the changes are worthwhile for holistic, consistent growth.
In standing for love, there’ll be the un-welcome laughter of cynical disbelief and hopelessness which we’ve seen much of but will not cower to.
We’ll be hurt by self-righteous censure that has forgotten human empathy but we’re ready for that too.
The cold ‘alone-ness’ of such difficulties is common to humankind, but because love is also common to all people, these challenges cannot touch those restful places of love within humanity. We believe it is love that will triumph.
It is this love that would keep us journeying in the snow and the rain, even if we fall.
It is this love that lends meaning to any family or friendship.
It is this love we’re counting on not to fail.
This love is how we’ll ask for peace.
I remember a 12 year old girl dying from leukemia. In her final hours, she urgently asked the nurses to phone her estranged and separated parents to come to her hospital bedside. They did come and she did die but before she passed on, she asked that they would lay aside their conflicting differences and to reconcile, not just for her sake as she was soon leaving them, but primarily for their own sake. That was not an urgency of desperation. It was the clear, sincere urgency of a love that would not let go. There was nothing for her young heart to lose. I’d like to believe that she recognized what many of us may spend all our proud lives denying, that when bodies and tongues cease, love remains.
It is with this urgency of love that we ask fellow human beings all over the world to restore wide-scale humane relations everywhere through love and reconciliation and thus build a kinder future.
We believe that the world is historically waiting (see “Is this our Afghan moment of peace?”), especially those of us waiting meekly in the shadows for light and warmth to arrive.
Yes, we’re asking the Nobel Peace Laureate President Obama to respond to our ordinary message of peace from Afghanistan, the place of wars.
Yes, we’re asking for true peace and reconciliation.
But above all, we’re asking un-ashamedly to raise the possibility of love, with hope that we may smile at one another in affirmative, dignified greetings once again.
Is this our Afghan moment of peace? 13 year old Afghan boy will keep peace vigil with other youth
October 18, 2009 by
Filed under Journey Updates
13 year old Abdulai will keep the Afghan peace vigil from 22/10/2009
This may be a chance for Afghan youth to raise the possibility of love, for Man to do a little something for other Men, by standing and waiting firmly for peace before the giants that be.
10 Afghan youth, including 13 year old Abdulai, have committed to give voice to peace amidst the noise of war.
We will speak our conscience to all who are willing to listen because we have wishes that are common to all Men.
We are ordinary, insignificant Afghan youth who believe that human civilization and history is waiting for further concrete encouragement to turn the tide on violence. We wish to encourage a turnaround for peace, confident that love and truth are strong enough to stand before giants.
We will have a cultural event “Voice of Peace in Afghanistan”. About 100 Afghan youth are expected to participate in the singing of songs, the reading of poems and the delivery of the message of peace. This will be held at the Bamiyan Peace Park on Thursday the 22nd of October 2009.
After the cultural program, 10 of us, including 13 year old Abdulai, will keep a day-and-night vigil till our ordinary message of peace reaches the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Winner, President Obama.
Here, the autumn nights are already freezing cold, but our friendships and your actions of moral support elsewhere will keep us sufficiently warm.
Here, at this small corner of calm in a world of widespread conflict, we will wait with fellow human beings everywhere who cannot wait any longer for true peace to be given its due time and space.
Place of vigil : Bamiyan Peace Park, Bamiyan Province, Afghanistan
Date : 22nd of October 2009, Thursday
Cultural event : Voice of Peace in Afghanistan
Our Message of Peace : Reconciliation of Civil Hearts
Cultural event program :
1400 Opening address
1410 Peace Quotation
1420 Peace Flute
1425 Peace Poem
1430 Peace Song
1440 Peace Sketch
1450 Message of peace “ Reconciliation of Civil Hearts”
1505 Peace Song
1515 End of Cultural Program
1515 Beginning of vigil till the delivery of our message of peace “Reconciliation of Civil Hearts” to Obama
Abdulai before the giants
Our challenges which require your hand of friendship
- Publicity
We wish to encourage the world with our small action for peace in the midst of super-power violence. We hope to give peace an Afghan human face while our fates are decided by others.
We will post our message of peace “Reconciliation of Civil Hearts” and updates of our vigil on our web-site http://ourjourneytosmile.com/blog
We will invite the few media we have here, though we know that the current world media is predominantly interested in war.
Please publicize our effort in the ways you can. If not, just mention us to your friends and contacts in your conversations and discussions about Obama’s Afghan ‘war of necessity’.
2. Encouragement by being in touch with us at journeytosmile@gmail.com
As we seek to encourage the world to turn the tide on violence, we are not ashamed to say that we need encouragement too.
In a country silenced by war for 30 years, those who still hope for peace are few and those who would do a little something are even fewer.
Like everywhere else, there’s fear.
- Keep vigil with us
If time and space allows you, either individually or together, we ask that you’d keep vigil with us till Obama has acknowledged receiving our message of peace.
Introductory message to our Afghan vigil for peace
Is this our Afghan moment of peace?
A chance for Man to do a little something for other Men
Every now and then, a chance comes for Man to do a little something for other Men.
We stand before giants at a time when Afghanistan’s heart is withering, along with the hopes of human civilization.
For us who live in war, we have a heightened awareness that the end comes to all of us eventually but we wonder if, in the short meantime, we can find compassion and truth.
We’re convinced that neither compassion nor truth can be found in war, so we’ve decided to sound our voice, for we have to cope somehow with the disappointment we carry, an anger at ourselves and at life.
Our voice of peace is frail and shaking but it is not fearful. And today, we wish to deliberately take it back from the noise of war.
Our only worry is that we would not be heard by those too rich, powerful and hardened to empathize.
The elite of Afghanistan, America and the world, through their determined actions, are teaching us to crave for power through violence, to pursue money through selfishness, to rule through lies and to dominate through pride. And while suffocating in this moral decline, to be seen as saints.
With all due respect, we shall not learn these grievous vices, which make us so detestable we begin to hate even ourselves.
And we ask that these elite leaders do not make it impossible for us to aspire after the finer human qualities which all of Mankind dreams of : kindness, hard work, dignity and peace.
We have had 30 years of war and grieve that our families and friends have been killed so that our elite and your elite may thrive. We are tired. It’s a fatigue of our souls. We do not wish to live like this anymore, like inconsistent beasts.
We have agonized through many nights wondering what happened to us and to Man, why we’ve come to fear darkness as if there was no light, why a corrupted in-humanity is the best we can wish of any power.
Each time we think of anyone as ?? ????? ‘without conscience’, we get cynical that Man is capable of such heartless-ness and we lose our grip on the hope we’re clinging to, that Man can change.
Sometimes we cry, but is there any purpose left to silent tears that don’t bring reform?
We try to keep busy, studying without intention, surviving without joys, living without life. But we cannot ignore the insult that daily, those who are abusive, wealthy and deceitful triumph and those who aren’t Afghans or who don’t live here make costly decisions for us and our country, largely for the sake of themselves.
We ordinary Afghans didn’t ‘terrorize’ New York, in fact, even the worst of us didn’t, so please don’t demonize us with the fears that plague the world. We can ultimately only ‘terrorize’ ourselves.
We are not demons. We are humans, as terrible and virtuous as anyone can be.
Some of us have become so distrustful and so sad with hate, over those games that neither we nor the religious people of the world have any answers for, that we would rather perish struggling against our own cruel people than at the hands of strange foreigners, however kind. Internationals need not have to be hurt for what is our conflict and our journey to take.
We want freedom so instinctively that we want freedom from other sovereign nations too, from their distant, cold analyses dictated by their need to sleep safely at the end of each day, their profit, and their powerful, sacred lives.
It pains us to know that their charity is shaped by war. Their charity may help us out of our 2nd lowest Human Development Index ranking in the world but the war which they choose to hallucinate over only gives them false security and leaves us true madness.
Come live here if your imaginations ever lead you to think that violence makes everyone safer. It does not make any of us, our families, our children, our women or our future any safer. As war has been throughout time, it diminishes us, destroys us and finally, it ‘disappears’ us.
We grieve for the rest of the world too, for unfortunately, those who admire, emulate and advise the ways of militarism are the ones who will come against every brute force with at least an equal and opposite reaction, a Newtonian principle confirmed in the world of human relations; hate increasing hate, revenge fuelling revenge and a silly sense of retaliatory justice going in vicious circles, all of which we, the ordinary people of Afghanistan and the ordinary people of the world, no longer want any part of.
And you know what? They don’t even know us.
We’ve grown up thinking that our world cannot be humane. Now, we’re witnessing that it can only be violent.
But our hearts believe that even if the elite ignore us, belittling us doesn’t take away our worth.
We have hope that suffering has a value which overcomes defeat and that even if we are mistakenly hurt in perpetual wars that recognize no brothers or sisters, love has a value which overcomes even death.
As we stay this night in Bamiyan Peace Park, on a cold Afghan autumn night, we attempt to do something beyond us, to do a little something for the warmth of other Men.
As we await acknowledgement of our appeal for a Reconciliation of Civil Hearts, from the Nobel Peace Prize Winner far away, we know that we’re not alone. We’re waiting historically with the rest of the world.
Dear friends of peace,
Just to give a quick update that our cultural event at Bamiyan Peace Park ( picture above ) was graced by the US Representative in Bamiyan, Mr Eric Mehler.
Now, 9 youth led by 13 year old Abdulai ( picture below ) have begun their day-and-night vigil at the Park, in waiting for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Winner President Obama to acknowledge our message of peace ( printed below )
We will keep vigil with hope for our voice of peace to be raised in Afghanistan and the world, above the noise of war.
Please walk with us.
Love and peace,
Hakim in Afghanistan
On behalf of Our Journey to Smile
http://ourjourneytosmile.com/blog for updates
The ordinary voice of peace from Afghanistan
Reconciliation of Civil Hearts
???? ?????! Salam ‘aleikum!
With all due honour to Bamiyan Governor Dr Sarobi, Head of UNAMA Bamiyan Heren Song and our international friends from the UN family and NGOs , Eric the US Representative in Bamiyan and other distinguished friends, we welcome you and the possibility of peace to this forgotten but gorgeous place.
We thank you for your hearts of peace in joining us today.
We, the ordinary youth of Afghanistan, have a message of peace for you, for all the respected leaders of our disconnected world and in particular, for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Winner President Obama.
We are struggling because it seems that nowadays, the voice of war has its space and its rights; we wonder if the voice of peace has equal space and rights. We wish to raise our voice of peace to give it a chance, without fear or shame.
We are the youth of the mountains who do not represent any political or religious views except for those views which make us truly human, capable of acting in love and truth, in good times as well as in tragedy.
We are tired of war and we desire peace as peace truly means in the souls of men.
We have great problems indeed but we also have courage because we have with us the great Afghan outdoors like this and we have within us an even greater desire for creative, non-violent solutions.
We desire reconciliation. It’s time to struggle for a reconciliation of civil hearts instead of fueling a clash or confrontation of civilizations. We wish to converse as equal, fellow human beings, without the need for guns and bombs.
We desire to patiently build our nation. So, while we appreciate your friendship and partnership, we desire just as much to trek on our own paths, build our own parks and choose which of our own mountains to climb.
We desire the dignity of working with our own hands and walking with our own legs. We ask for assistance that builds factories, industries, roads and an economy that would help us to stand on our own.
We desire justice and truth. So, we ask for your support in denying space to corruption, fraud, lies and deceptions and in quenching the abusive greed for power and money that are destroying our society and humanity as much as violence and war are.
Many of us are suffering at the expense of a few, so though the few rich and powerful are loud and dominant, their monopoly is neither moral nor democratic. We may be suffering, but suffering eyes can still see, not with the sight that sees only appearances, but with the insight that sees beyond words to raw but real meanings.
Perhaps, we have deeper anger, hatred and fears but we believe that Man cannot overcome such giants with bloodshed. We learn to overcome them when we understand each other, so we ask for the nurturing of wide-scale, local and international humane relationships that would empathize with our shared human condition, restore trust, and tear down barriers.
We need to explore human relationships and non-violent options like we pursue science, so that we can fulfill the enormous generational responsibility spelled out in the original charter of the United Nations :
“We, the peoples of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,.. And for these ends to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors…have resolved to combine our efforts to accomplish these aims.”
Preamble, Charter of the United Nations
We’re not willing for one more international soldier, one more Afghan soldier or one more of our countrymen to die a violent death.
The world should not move along the unilateral, one-track path of violence and militarism anymore. We cannot cope ; no human can. We should work together to walk along the multiple treks that lead us to beauty, to dreams and to those values, virtues and thoughtful conversations which every heart longs for.
So please, we ask that the world shifts her engagement with our sovereign country to a predominantly civilian approach. We should have as many civil forums, as many civil negotiations, as many civil discussions and as many civil occasions for relationship-building as are imaginatively possible. We believe that these civil efforts cannot be done through either our local military or any foreign military because Mankind cannot build relations with weapons.
We desire the security that other peaceful nations have. We desire for the peace and security which we’ve had in Bamiyan for the past 8 years to spread throughout Afghanistan. We believe that neither foreign nor local military escalation would bring victory for anyone, as that would be going towards failure, if not a military failure, then a civilizational failure of our very souls.
We do not accept the violent actions or solutions that the world seems to be counting on. We have become a terror to one another, in our inconsiderate actions and in our cowardly silence, and this must stop.
We wish to refuse the ‘insurgent’ any further excuse to hurt us; brothers killing brothers, friends killing friends, humans killing one another.
Thus, we trust that the heart of peace in President Obama and in all men would help Afghanistan and the world towards true peace and reconciliation. Thank you very much or as we say in Afghanistan, ?? ???? ???? ‘a world of thanks!
From the bottom of our hearts,
???? ?????! Be courageous!
??? ?????! Be happy!
????? ?????! And be at peace!
The youth peace volunteers of Afghanistan
Our Journey to Smile
http://ourjourneytosmile.com/blog
An Afghan message of peace to Obama the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, about our savage ‘Afghan’ instincts; and timeless advice from the wall behind him
October 7, 2009 by
Filed under Journey Updates
Please watch a young, Afghan friend talk about our savage ‘Afghan’ instincts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI9pGYP1Eiw
“They are like ‘animals’ because they are unethical & get furious.”
From my peaceful mud-house in the Afghan Hindu Kush hills, I imagine a White House morning when Malia and Shasha are sincerely worried and fearful about some dangerous rumours, that inhuman extremists in Hamburg, Yemen, Somalia, Afg/Pak and closer to home, in New York, may be plotting to hurt them and their friends.
I can’t imagine their kind, loving father Obama storming into their room and shouting, “Don’t worry, I will send 40,000 more troops to every one of those places, I’ll escalate the number of Nevada-based computer-drone pilots who would remotely extinguish your distant fears, and if you have any strong suspicions about any fishy characters near you, I will activate our modified renditions, trace down and destroy all their safe havens or simply, I’ll kill them all.”
I can’t imagine it because behind Obama’s desk in his Senate office, there are 2 iconic pictures on the wall, of heroes close to Obama’s heart : Ghandi and Martin Luther King. They would speak to Obama in their deaths if they could. What they would have said today they had said years ago; and I’ve reproduced their clear strategy below for Obama’s convenience.
I can’t imagine this of a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. We congratulate him for being conferred this title.
If hate is the root of the ‘terror’ around and within us, we clearly need a civil response of courageous love.
We need to bravely re-define what is of ‘necessity’; our conscience and even our fears recognize that what is of ‘necessity’ now is not war.
We cannot make ourselves more secure with more violence. We cannot gain trust with more mutual killing. We never win by imposing death on others or on our own soldiers.
Even if we, somehow, ‘win’, we ourselves, eventually, die. We all do, not just Afghans.
President Obama, ordinary Afghans and international soldiers who are dying in what is now your Afghan war, ask that you do not inadvertently re-define peace as war, for in so doing, you would have taken away all of our hope.
Though I can’t think this mad-ness of America’s First Family, the world is staring at the angry, arrogant illogic of our 21st century’s insecure, First World elite policy makers.
With them, there are no longer any creative, non-violent, civilian alternatives. Very few thinkers think. Hardly any empathize and philosophy is derisively dead.
So, when Gore Vidal said that there’ll be a ‘dictatorship’ in the US soon, or when Jimmy Carter suggested a deep racist undercurrent to health care reform or when the Pope had called the kettle black in blaming greed for the financial crisis, they are partly referring to the complete dominance of the haughty, savage instinct of SELF-preservation over all else. And this isn’t a uniquely savage ‘Afghan’ instinct. It’s in all of us.
No questions.
No alternatives.
Questions and alternatives are deemed treason.
The only ‘winnable’ military strategy becomes sacred and ‘holier-than-thou’, because we believe that we must have ‘victory’ at all cost. We fear ‘losing’, even if we lose everything ‘essential about ourselves’.
Afghans know this strategy very well. They have been dying from the dictatorship of their ancient, violent greed for power and money. Now, we are sealing their greed and our deaths with Man’s hollow appearances and foggy wars. We are declaring:
Fraud is free.
Lies are truths.
Military might is right.
And money is everything.
Afghanistan’s tribal warlordism used to be confined to villages and valleys but now, with international assistance, it has been sanctioned and propagated country-wide. So, Afghans who have lived all their lives surviving and mastering this primitive warlordism are waiting, hungrily waiting.
“Train us! Send us those dollars! We’ll help you through our endlessly vengeful, constantly traitorous shifting allegiances. Don’t worry about us; on the average, we live for only 43 years anyway,” the Afghan elite shout.
Living here in a tribal village in Afghanistan, I’ve come to understand our common human condition. I’m not talking about the breakout of the ‘Lord of the Flies’ style savagery on William Golding’s island or at Kabul’s US fortress or in the desperate, fraudulent Afghan elections.
I’m talking about something much, much cruder.
This madness needs to stop. We need to find love and truth again.
Afghans have not seen compassion or justice in the inhumanity of constant war. They need hope that the abusive money and power of the corporate 1% do not always triumph. Every human needs such hope.
Maybe, they and the world can discover these human values if Obama remains engaged in Afghanistan, but through a 90% civilian effort. We can all be more imaginative in our commitment.
Those who reason that the military strategy must precede the civilian surge should consider the view of Amrullah Saleh, the head of the Afghan intelligence agency, when he said that the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, could play a vital role in ending the Afghan war. “To arrest the Taliban leadership in Quetta, you don’t need a military operation … just soft-knock their house and arrest them,” Saleh told Al Jazeera. Or I ask myself how some international humanitarian civilians and I could live in Quetta post-September 11, without hired security.
We wish for a 90% civilian approach because we envision that robust international relations are fostered through sincere diplomacy, not armed threats and we expect that Obama’s government is ultimately a civilian government, not a military one.
The authority of the Commander-in-Chief was not intended to approve militarism as a way of good governance but as a check, lest we forget that we are firstly humans, and that our naked humanity needs to be our primary resort, way before partisan politics and uniformed plans.
And since weighing the financial cost-benefit of waging war would remorselessly favor fighting for an illusory national security and recycling the tangible military-industrial profit, we’re unlikely to find sanity that way. It’s time, instead, to humanely deliberate over the priceless human cost behind every soldier, veteran and civilian dying, for what?
Obama is heading towards real Change in re-considering the Afghan strategy anew, for the sake of ourselves and our fellow human beings, because re-considering is a key to humanity’s innovation, if not a way to recover our kindness. We are trusting in the kindred spirit overcoming man-made institutions and temporal decorum when we keep hope that the debate would truly be diverse and not merely cosmetic.
No human likes abandonment, as is natural in normal friendships, so while some rightly fear that creating all the civilian options we can muster to assist Afghanistan may be misconstrued as leaving Afghanistan, those fears are unfounded and unfriendly.
Einstein’s pacifist intellect is sorely needed but his common sense intellect is sufficiently important at this moment: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.”
Obama’s penchant for history knows that war certainly isn’t new. War is the same old, tragic story. It will never be the ‘substantially new manner of thinking’ required for our survival, for our freedom from fear and our search for meaning.
President Obama, please reason with the civil hearts among the masses, whose majority want peace, through a referendum if necessary. You will then witness the very virtue you want your iconic heroes to remind you of, that ‘real results will not just come from Washington, they will come from the people’, that a truer ‘governance of the people by the people’ built upon the moral compass of ordinary people is possible in the States, and with great patience, in Afghanistan too. After all, whether we live life with a conferred title, rank or uniform, or as name-less souls, we all perish as ordinary people.
And please heed the civil voices, even if they come from the dead, silent wall behind you.
For then, the escalating anger and madness, our shared savage instincts, would begin to abate. And our world would find genuine safety in decency and in the conciliatory civilizations of this age, the momentous change we’ve all been longing for.
the bright, civil Afghan
Ghandi and Martin Luther King to Obama today
Below are the 2 icons speaking to Obama. I have not bothered to change the names of the countries mentioned because the love and truth spoken in their views don’t change, not for the well-known Presidents that pass through the White House, or for the unknown Afghans that live in the hills.
And enough similarities have been drawn about the Afghan and Vietnam war scenarios, though such analyses can never bring back those who have been killed in the past, nor clarify the doubts of those who choose to kill today, nor alleviate the terror of those who may be killed.
Ghandi to Obama today
Ghandi
I may not carry my argument any further. Language at best is but a poor vehicle for expressing one’s thoughts in full. For me nonviolence is not a mere philosophical principle. It is the rule and the breath of my life. I know I fail often, sometimes consciously, more often unconsciously. It is a matter not of the intellect but of the heart. True guidance comes by constant waiting upon God, by utmost humility, Self-abnegation, by being ever ready to sacrifice one’s self. Its practice requires fearlessness and courage of the highest order. I am painfully aware of my failings.
But the Light within me is steady and clear. There is no escape for any of us save through truth and non-violence. I know that war is wrong, is an unmitigated evil. I know too that it has got to go. I firmly believe that freedom won through bloodshed or fraud is no freedom.
The end and aim of the movement for British withdrawal is to prepare India, by making her free for resisting all militarist and imperialist ambition, whether it is called British Imperialism, German Nazism, or your pattern. If we do not, we shall have been ignoble spectators of the militarization of the world in spite of our belief that in non-violence we have the only solvent of the militarist spirit and ambition. Personally I fear that without declaring the Independence of India the Allied powers would still not be able to beat the Axis combination which has raised violence to the dignity of a religion. The allies cannot beat you and your partners unless they beat you in your ruthless and skilled warfare. If they copy it, their declaration that they will save the world for democracy and individual freedom must come to naught. I feel that they can only gain strength to avoid copying your ruthlessness by declaring and recognizing now the freedom of India, and turning sullen India’s forced co-operation into freed India’s voluntary co-operation.
To Britain and the Allies we have appealed in the name of justice, in proof of their professions, and in their own self-interest. To you I appeal in the name of humanity. It is a marvel to me that you do not see that ruthless warfare is nobody’s monopoly. If not the Allies, some other Power will certainly improve upon your method and beat you with your own weapon. Even if you win you will leave no legacy to your people of which they would feel proud. They cannot take pride in a recital of cruel deeds however skillfully achieved.
Even if you win, it will not prove that you were in the right; it will only prove that your power of destruction was greater. This applies obviously to the Allies too, unless they perform now the just and righteous act of freeing India as an earnest and promise of similarly freeing all other subject peoples in Asia and Africa.
I address this appeal to you in the hope that our movement may even influence you and your partners in the right direction and deflect you and them from the course which is bound to end in your moral ruin and the reduction of human beings to robots.
The hope of your response to my appeal is much fainter than that of response from Britain. I know that the British are not devoid of a sense of justice and they know me. I do not know you enough to be able to judge. All I have read tells me that you listen to no appeal but to the sword. How I wish that you are cruelly misrepresented and that I shall touch the right chord in your heart! Anyway I have an undying faith in the responsiveness of human nature.
Martin Luther King to Obama today
Martin Luther King
Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty. But we must move on.
Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation’s history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements, and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.
We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation, for those it calls “enemy,” for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.
Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not ready for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long.
We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops.
Surely we must understand their feelings, even if we do not condone their actions. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.
Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy’s point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.
At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless in Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called “enemy,” I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor.
Somehow this madness must cease.
Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the hearts of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom, and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.
If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately, the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horrible, clumsy, and deadly game we have decided to play. The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war.
A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say: “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.
A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.
A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.
This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I’m not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: “Let us love one another, for love is God. And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love.” “If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us.” Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.
We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says: “Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word.”
We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood. It ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, “Too late.” There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyam is right: “The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on.”
We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.