Afghan youth to the world’s elite, “Please behave like adult human beings!”
August 26, 2010 by
Filed under Journey Updates
Dear friends,
We, the nobodies of Afghanistan, ask this with love.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TB9er3w_oto
This is the love which our mothers have taught us. So please, don’t belittle this love with the haughty confusion of ‘Muslim’ or ‘Christian’ anger and hate.
We plead with trembling because people are dying, dying in ways which rob us of all human meaning and which cause us to cry.
To our own Afghan elite, the American elite and the coalition elite of our failing world :
Please behave like adult human beings!
You are trapped as unfortunate models of an unsustainable, a-rational, a-moral, global militant system that is grossly self-seeking ( forgive us for sounding like we’re about to vomit or throw shoes at your Presidents…J )
Please stop your childish, frantic and violent nonsense in Afghanistan.
You imagine that you must ‘win’ more wars, more power and more wealth to ‘win’ votes and remain as cruel kings, but if and when you’ve proclaimed ‘victory’ over the dead, remember that neither the dead nor the living will honour you.
You no longer represent the wishes of your ordinary citizens.
What you have been representing are the cowardly vices that we detest about ourselves, vices we’re all prone to but which we must shun : utter greed, pride and self-interest.
So please, for now or forever, go as far away from us as your fancy planes will take you.
Start listening to the People, thinking about the People and loving the People. At least, behave like decent adults.
You need to do this, because you know you are not beasts.
To the ordinary People of our disconnected world :
Please behave like adult human beings!
You, like us, have been de-sensitized in allowing the inhumane fantasy that more killing, more money-grabbing, and more blood-resources can justify our leaders and make everyone happier.
You know that’s a lie.
So, please get out onto your streets.
Get out in the critical millions.
Join us on International Day of Peace 21st of September in Bamiyan Afghanistan, to make friends without borders, asking loudly and softly, gently and angrily, joyfully and painfully, any unique way, but only with love, asking
“Why not love?”
“ Chera mohabat na-kuneem?”
“??? ???? ?????? “
“Enough of the war narratives! Here we are, friends who refuse to be ‘enemies’!”
And this time, don’t stop till we get some answers, because People are dying.
We need to do this, because we know we are not beasts.
Wanting love, the way we dream of love to be,
Hakim and the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers
“We thank those who pray that we’ll have peace, But prayers won’t suffice if one by one, war takes us away from life.” 15 year old Ali
“We may not make it, but as Gandhi encouraged, we must be the change we want to see in the world.”
15 year old Abdulai
“Which one of us does not yearn quietly for genuine peace? If that is the critical desire underlying the undeveloped science of human relations, then why the hesitance? Why not relate massively so as to free Mankind from the self-constructed cages of endless experimentation with war, to turn to nurturing the earth, to struggling for overdue equalities and to loving the People? What’ s stopping us? What’s the harm?” Young Hakim
At the State Department, spokesman P.J. Crowley said efforts to explain to Afghanistan and other allies that the U.S. government played no role in leaking the documents seemed to have paid off. “We’re very gratified that the response thus far internationally has been moderate, sober,” Crowley said.
When the Afghan children cry
The work in progress to establish Friends Without Borders
Moderate? Sober? What has happened to humanity that we remain moderate and sober in watching thousands being killed?
Thus, we hope to launch Friends Without Borders, a non-political, non-religious, voluntary, wide-scale network of person-to-person relationships for a peace that the elite cannot dismiss.
Together with Mark Johnson and Douglas Mackey ( Fellowship of Reconciliation and Iraq Memorial to Life ), Josh Stieber ( Contagious Love Experiment and The People’s Journey ), Pam Bailey with Salma and Leila ( Gaza Youth Tour and The People’s Journey ) and Shane Clairborne with his many associates ( The Simple Way ), we have a quickly growing group of volunteers that would work urgently over the next few weeks to put in place the beginnings of the struggle of Friends Without Borders :
To end wars and violence by tapping the tide of world public opinion with…
…a HEART-STORM of GLOBAL FRIENDSHIPS saying,
“Enough of the war narratives! Here we are, friends who refuse to be ‘enemies’!”
We are working towards a Music4Peace concert at the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan on the 21st of September, International Peace Day. Whether or not this concert pulls through, we hope to launch Friends Without Borders that day.
What we request you to do : Arrange to call us that morning, from your various communities, to resound with us our tune, “Chera mohabat na-kuneem? Why not love?”.
Then, if love could change everything, everything could change.
“How blind are the people of the world in allowing their governments to spend so much money on the Afghan war.” 13 year old Ghulamai
“And what’s the result? Many people will be killed… and the security of America, Afg & the world will get worse..” 15 year old Ali
“However without thought & compassion our leaders are, we the youth just want friendship & love! “15 year old Zekerullah
“We should at least ask, Why not love?”15 year old Abdulai
Love and peace,
Hakim and the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers
http://ourjourneytosmile.com/blog
http://www.thepeoplesjourney.org/
Other musings about human behaviour and our current global system
How did we become numb looking at these ‘numbers’, fellow people who have left us forever :
140,000 Hiroshima Little Boy
80.000 Nagasaki Fat Man
3 million Vietnam Agent Orange
? 1 million Iraq White Phosphorus and ?depleted uranium
??? Afghanistan drones, targeted killings, ?depleted uranium, ?cluster mines
The world, all of us, have tried the military system and this is the result. It does not work!
It’s a scary, unsustainable and de-humanizing, a system of addressing ‘terrorism’ that brings out all our tendencies to survive, and only survive ourselves.
This non-living system didn’t create and assemble itself, We humans set it up, so only we humans can dismantle it. We have hope that wide-scale human to human friendships can change us. We’re banking on the hope that love can change everything.
It can’t be a naïve love ( as if such naivety stands a chance in Afghanistan ) and it can’t be apathetic ( coming from the Greek word apatheia meaning ‘a creature’s inability to suffer’).
It is a resolute love acting on all that it believes in, convicted that even a little of such love is stronger than the war of the worlds.
Our Palestinian friends Salma and Leila
Text of video
From the hills I play my flute…
I wish for peace & reconciliation
When will the world ever understand?
We thank those who pray that we’ll have peace
But prayers won’t suffice if one by one, war takes us away from life
From the hills I play my flute…
I wish for peace & reconciliation
When will the world ever understand?
The Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers with friends in Dai Kundi province
We can only raise the voice of peace through love & brotherhood, not only for peace in Afg but also the world
Serving tea & bread to friends from Kabul…
We should make connections with the world thru’ tele-conferencing & websites.
We should work together towards peace in every other country & in the capital & the provinces of Afg,.
Only with love, brotherhood & the law through peace & friendship…, we can improve this 30-year war-ravaged country & make good progress, until the world becomes one…
I believe 100%, as an Afghan living among Afghans & I say it clearly, the people don’t want even one more minute of war.
In this global system of wars…
…many people will be killed
…where Abdulai’s father is buried
…where children live amidst death
And play soccer by the graveyard
…the earth will be destroyed,
floods etc…
…the poor will become poorer
We should at least ask,
Why not love?
We want to establish a group called Friends Without Borders formed by peace volunteers from Afghanistan & the world
How blind are the people of the world in allowing their governments to spend so much money on the Afghan war.
And what’s the result? Many people will be killed… and the security of America, Afg & the world will get worse
However without thought & compassion our leaders are, we the youth just want friendship & love!
Love is how we’ll ask for peace!
Why not love?
Our American friends Josh Stieber and Douglas Mackey
