Afghan peace needs a human face III : Aziz the Afghan human person speaks
June 30, 2009 by
Filed under Journey Updates
Aziz the Afghan human person speaks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEzk4knM_WY
Salam ( peace ), Hakim.
Aziz, where do you live?
In Bamiyan, Blacksmith Village.
What’s the river behind you?
It’s the Blacksmith River.
Do you fish here?
Yes.
Do most people in Afghanistan like war?
No, all are keen to have peace.
In my opinion, we want peace. We do not want war.
Why? Because war brings misfortune to people and society.
When asked what his wish in life was,
Aziz had said “ I wish to love people.”
Abdulai the mountain boy
Raziq works
Aziz loves people and sheep
Do Abdulai, Raziq, Aziz and other humans matter at all in war?
The purchasing power of peace BBC News 4/6/09
Defence companies, whose main task is to aid governments’ efforts to defend or acquire territory, routinely highlight their capacity to contribute to economic growth and to provide employment.
Defence spending 2008
US $374bn
Asia $173bn
European Nato members $144bn
Source : International Institute for Strategic Studies
António Guterres, a former Portuguese prime minister, has been UN High Commissioner for Refugees since 2005. Al Jazeera News 20/6/09
The number of people forcibly uprooted by conflict and persecution worldwide stands at more than 42 million.
Major countries of origin for refugees included Afghanistan (2.8 million) and Iraq (1.9 million), which together account for 45 per cent of all UNHCR refugees.
Just as the international community felt an obligation to spend hundreds of billions rescuing the international financial system, it should feel the same urgency to rescue some of the most vulnerable people on earth – refugees and the internally displaced.
And the amount needed is only a fraction of that spent on financial bailouts.
US admits Afghan airstrike orders BBC News 20/6/09
Failure by US forces to follow their own rules was the “likely” cause of civilian deaths in Afghan airstrikes last month, a US military report says.
Ex-detainees allege Bagram abuse BBC News 24/6/09
Allegations of abuse and neglect at a US detention facility in Afghanistan have been uncovered by the BBC.
Former detainees have alleged they were beaten, deprived of sleep and threatened with dogs at the Bagram military base.
Interview with Marjorie Cohn, National Lawyers Guild president and Thomas Jefferson School of Law professor Marjorie Cohn, Truth Out 22/6/09
I have testified as an expert witness in military hearings on the illegality of today’s wars.
There is a duty to obey a lawful order, but also a duty to disobey an unlawful order.
An order to deploy to an illegal war is an unlawful order, so it is lawful to resist the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
You can write to Abdulai, Raziq or Aziz at journeytosmile@gmail.com
Afghanistan, A dying opportunity to free the waterfall
May 26, 2009 by
Filed under Journey Updates
Afghanistan
A dying opportunity to free the waterfall
In this dream of a kinder world, ordinary people from all races and nations take a dying opportunity to gather at the World Heritage Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan on International Peace Day 21st September 2009,
to hope for peace and reject violence.
And against all odds and dams, to free the waterfall.
I myself can no longer trust words, so you need not trust these thoughts. What I can trust, having lived and worked among Afghans as a Singaporean medical doctor, is that I’ve become more human and therefore in the words of my Afghan friends, more Afghan, and perhaps more ‘of any other nationality’.
I and my Afghan friends have a waterfall of humane dreams and wishes in which we are grieving, crying and hurting badly.
If we describe this waterfall to the ‘elected’ leaders of our self-designated ‘civilized’ societies, we’ll be told their version of the ‘truth’.
‘Justice’ when they mean revenge.
‘Help’ when they mean money.
‘Democracy’ when they mean power.
If we describe it to the self-designated ‘best’ religious people, we face a similarly rigid monopoly of ‘truth’.
‘Justice’ when they mean ‘no matter if you die or kill because justice is in the other world’.
‘Help’ when they mean ‘come over to our better side’.
‘Theocracy’ when they mean power.
So, we have had to let our dreams, grief and tears become an invisible, un-felt waterfall. A silence. A dying.
This country and our humanity are in need of a pause in the dying.
The dying of love, truth, hope and dear ones killed in violent war. Love, truth, hope and violence for WHAT?
If we look towards our self-designated ‘learned’ ones for possible solutions, they say ‘dam up the waterfall to give yourselves light’. Light for what, when what we badly need is the waterfall.
In present day Afghanistan, from where I’m writing, there may be a ridiculous and potentially painful opportunity to free this waterfall. At least, humour me as I pacify myself and my Afghan friends by imagining the opportunity presented by:
- The Global Great Game that is being played here ‘live’, a horrid ‘reality show’.
All major world players are involved.
- The contradiction of war and peace watched by the world
The ordinary world community is watching Afghanistan distantly but closely, wondering if war will reign or if ‘peace’ is possible, especially when Afg-Pak has become the military, political and economic focus of superpowers.
Hopefully, we’re not watching primarily for entertainment; I just read that violence is dominating at the Cannes Film Festival 2009.
3. The question of humanity in inhumanity
Does Mankind have enough of a majority populace keen to restore some semblance of humanity in the midst of inhumanity?
“Don’t be silly,” I’ve thought.
We’ll be misunderstood and laughed at as illogical and unrealistic or as anti-this or anti-that.
People will continue to ‘label’ us because the prideful intellectual development of Mankind can only understand human beings in categories so as to dispel fears and channel criticism.
In the current universal climate of distrust and soul-less herd behavior, hardly anyone would hear us.
What can ordinary human beings do anyway, ordinary humans who make up most of the world ( I bet many outside Afghanistan have forgotten that the majority here are also ordinary humans with wishes for a normal life ).
Or like many fellow international aid workers, I may become un-productively frustrated, harbouring the explosive un-resolved anger that’s in the hidden and open protests of conscience globally, even among ‘peace’ building groups.
Or worse, I could succumb to the ancient, distorted hunger for a Name, doing this selfishly merely for myself, defeating any sense of service I can muster.
Not to mention the almost complete self-deception, corruption, greed and the culture of war worldwide, perceived by some as perfected in Afghanistan.
But then one day, as I was riding my Chinese-made Tonda motorbike over the Afghan Hindu Kush mountain dirt pot-holes, I remembered that Man has gone to the moon, tapped atoms and bytes and modified genes and that countries are sending thousands of elaborately armed troops and billions of military dollars to this God-forsaken place for poorly understood personal and national reasons.
So I thought, “What the heck!”
I can try this for love of Khamad, Nasrullah and some others….
I can hope.
I can pursue those virtues every human soul dreams about and even if it fails, I hope that this experiment will not harm anyone.
I can test to see if uncomplicated love and undefended truth can free our ordinary, mundane wishes.
I can accept the ‘shame’ of rejection in asking peacemakers from all over the world to please join us at the Bamiyan Buddhas on 21st Sept 09.
I know. This may mean nothing to you. Or understandably, you do not believe that any sense or goodness can arise from what is condemned to be a very dark place.
But I wish to record this, so that, as my Afghan friends and I perish, first in our hearts, then physically, I can at least say that we voiced the opportunity and the opportunity died too.
And that if, one day, against all odds and dams, the waterfalls are freed, all Afghans and some of humanity may be encouraged to weep for life and death once again.
To record, that even in the ‘darkest and driest of places’, there exists waterfalls.
Hakim/Young
Our Journey to Smile
http://ourjourneytosmile.com/blog
On fighting while on the road in Afghanistan
May 19, 2009 by
Filed under Journey Updates
Please watch this video at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OeA_4_uT7Y
Habib Jan, good morning!
Good morning!
Habib, in your opinion, is fighting good?
Fighting? No ‘wallah’(in God’s name)
We are not happy with fighting anywhere in the world. There shouldn’t be fighting.
EVERY individual, under the effects of war, would react in a way that brings greater misfortune to that society.
What good is fighting. No, peace is good.
You..what do you think about fighting?
What good is fighting.
Fighting is good?
No, it’s bad.. fighting is not good.
Good morning, Jagbar.
Good morning. Jagbar, what do you think…
About fighting? Yes, about fighting.
Fighting is bad. It has no benefit. What’s the benefit in fighting?
Khamad, good morning.
Good morning.
Khamad Jan, what do you think about war? Is it good or not?
No, it’s not good.
Why?
It’s not good, it’s bad.
What happened because of war?
My father ‘left the world’ ( was killed in war )…….
No to fighting.