Turning ordinarily pale in the Kabul attacks

http://youtu.be/qmQpUIYpaZE

This video was filmed as we kept each other company nearby the attacks on the Afghan Parliament building, the Parliament being one of seven separate locations in Kabul where the ‘Taliban’ launched 18 hours of co-ordinated attacks on the 15^th of April 2012.

In the video as it was in our hearts that day, the senseless sounds of the fighting could be ‘felt’.

Most of us could not sleep through that night, especially in the early hours of the next morning, when the U.S./NATO-backed Afghan forces with their helicopters moved in for their kill, human beings killing fellow human beings, or in the ironic but human ‘affection’ of President Karzai, ‘our Taliban brothers’.

This ‘human pallor’ needs to end.

turning pale

Transcript of video

He whipped everyone. Those who were whipped had marks here & there on going home.

That was the first time I saw the Taliban & then not till now. Thanks be to God!

How long before the new government came? ( sound of firing )

About 4 or 5 months…..( sound of rocket blast )

No teacher, this ( firing ) doesn’t affect people very much.

I’m in the room.

Yes, I can hear you. Are you fine?

Is the bullet or the pen better? The pen, teacher!

Were they firing? Yes, there were blasts and firing.

We left ( school ) immediately and ran.

They’re really near! ( sound of blast )

Let’s go! Let’s go!

At such a time, they are playing M&M rap on the radio. Farhad Darya? No, M&M.

At school, everyone was worried.

The female teacher initially said,’ Be calm.’ Later, she turned pale.

You’re also perspiring. Yes, I was nervous.

Dear, do you know why we all came to this room?

Yes, teacher. In the other room, if a rocket strikes, we may all die. Here, at least one of us will survive.

Yes, I understand now.

The Taliban has come, okay?

Yes, I thought that a bullet had passed close by this way.

Yes, I definitely heard the bullet myself…shoosh….I knew that the ( curse ) had passed by.

Hey boy, they’ll be worried. Call them.

No, they know that if anything happens, I’ll go to my uncle’s house nearby.

A woman under a burqa was crying, helpless.

Boys, wear your turbans…

Peace on earth!

Where is the peace? There’s fighting now.

Things are getting worse. From fear, I’m tying my turban now.

If they come, I’ll say, “I’m an Afghan ( in Pashto )”

God be your refuge.

No to all armed groups and militaries.

Democracy Now! interview with Hakim and Anand Gopal on the 19th of April 2012

HEADLINE:
Photos of Soldiers With Afghan Corpses the Latest Outrage for U.S. Occupation of Afghanistan

DEMOCRACY NOW! LINK OF INTERVIEW: 
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/19/photos_of_soldiers_posing_with_afghan

YOUTUBE LINK OF INTERVIEW: 
http://youtu.be/t76HhlPIgJU

From Democracy Now! : We get reaction to two photographs published by the Los Angeles Times that show U.S. soldiers posing with the corpses and body parts of dead Afghans. “I think (the photos) shock us actually more than they shock Afghans,” says journalist Anand Gopal. “From the Afghan perspective, we’ve had troops urinating on corpses, a massacre of 17 civilians, air strikes, night raids, troops cutting off fingers for sport, and so, for Afghans, this is part and parcel of the experience of being in war.” Meanwhile, several NATO allies have promised to underwrite Afghanistan’s armed forces after foreign troops depart. The United States and other nations plan to retreat from Afghanistan by the end of 2014 and hand the security issue over to Afghan security forces. “If we don’t address the agreements that the U.S. and Australian governments and other governments are making for a long-term war strategy in Afghanistan, we are heading for an increase in violence in this part of the world … more serious than the Kabul attacks,” says Hakim, coordinator for Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, based in Kabul, Afghanistan.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/04/20/afghan-screams-arent-heard/

http://truth-out.org/news/item/8640-afghan-screams-arent-heard

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/04/20-9

http://vcnv.org/afghan-screams-aren-t-heard

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31138.htm

http://warisacrime.org/content/afghan-screams-aren%E2%80%99t-heard

‘What kind of world is this that still insists on signing war agreements?’”

Afghan Screams Aren’t Heard

by KATHY KELLY and HAKIM

Last weekend, in Kabul, Afghan Peace Volunteer friends huddled in the back room of their simple home. With a digital camera, glimpses and sounds of their experiences were captured, as warfare erupted three blocks away.

The fighting has subdued, but the video gives us a glimpse into chronic anxieties among civilians throughout Afghanistan. Later, we learned more: Ghulam awakens suddenly, well after midnight, and begins to pace through a room of sleeping people, screaming.  Ali suddenly tears up, after an evening meal, and leaves the room to sit outside. Staring at the sky and the moon, he finds solace.  Yet another puzzles over what brings people to the point of loaning themselves to possibly kill or be killed, over issues so easily manipulated by politicians.

I asked our friend, Hakim, who mentors the Afghan Peace Volunteers, if ordinary Afghans are aware that the U.S. has an estimated 400 or more Forward Operating Bases across Afghanistan and that it is planning to construct what will become the world’s largest U.S. Embassy, in Kabul.  Hakim thinks young people across Kabul are well aware of this. “Do they know,” I asked, “that the U.S. Air Force has hired 60,000 – 70,000 analysts to study information collected through drone surveillance?  The film footage amounts to the equivalent of 58,000 full length feature films. The Rand Corporation says that 100,000 analysts are needed to understand ‘patterns of life’ in Afghanistan.”

Hakim’s response was quick and cutting: “Ghulam would ask the analysts a question they can’t answer with their drone surveillance, a question that has much to do with their business, ‘terror’: “You mean, you don’t understand why I screamed?”

Two days ago, “Democracy Now” interviewed Hakim about on-going U.S. military occupation in Afghanistan. “If we don’t address the agreements that the U.S. and Australian governments and other governments are making for a long-term war strategy in Afghanistan,” Hakim observed, “we are heading for an increase in violence in this part of the world, in South Asia, perhaps perpetual war, more serious than the Kabul attacks.”

Analysts could better understand patterns of life in Afghanistan by mixing with Afghans in their homes and along their streets, unarmed.

The analysts would spend less tax-payer money but possibly obtain a genuine perspective on everyday life in Afghanistan. If they interacted with Afghan people instead of surveying them from the air, they’d be better equipped to study ‘terrorism,’ their supposed intent.

What if U.S. analysts could feel the frustration Afghans feel as convoys of trucks bearing fuel and food for U.S. soldiers drive past squalid refugee camps where children have starved and frozen to death (250 die of starvation every day; 40 froze to death since January, 2012 ).

Hakim again: “They would understand quickly, even through cursory study by one ‘non-analyst,’ that Afghans are just as infuriated by U.S. soldiers urinating on corpses as U.S citizens are by their own police pepper-spraying college students.

They would understand that just as U.S. citizens can’t even imagine living under the barrel of the Mexican army, Afghan citizens, including of course those labelled ‘insurgents’, dislike foreign guns. No number of Special Ops forces staying on perpetually beyond 2014 can make Afghans like foreign guns. This is what the U.S. Afghan Strategic Partnership War Agreement will do with at least 4 billion U.S. tax payer dollars a year spent just on Afghan security forces.”

16 year old Ali understands that the agreement being readied for the NATO summit won’t accomplish foreign troop withdrawal. This creates what for some is deadly distrust. Ali knows that a long-term foreign military means that the firing and killing will continue.  “It’s tit-for-tat,” says Hakim, “U.S. soldier-for-Talib, dollars-for-rupees, and all those insensible human decisions that occasionally make Ali cry.  But, the military and militant apparatus does not have human ears. It has bombs. So, when the recent Kabul attacks were going on, as seen in the very human moments in the video clip, the Afghan youth crouching in the refuge of a room were assured and delighted to hear from Voices activists, from across the miles, calling to ask how they were.

‘Ah! Someone cares. Someone listens.’

The monthly Global Days of Listening conversations which the youth have had with ordinary U.S., European, Middle Eastern and Australian citizens have helped change their lives person-to-person, overcoming the cold impersonal ‘shoosh’ of overhead rockets and under-running bloodshed.

Every day, Ghulam studies, cooks, washes the dishes and lives, very normally. But some nights, in the stupor of nightmares, Ghulam shouts subconsciously, out of ear-range to the million-dollar intelligence spies, ‘What kind of world is this that still insists on signing war agreements?’”

Technorati Tags: 15 April Kabul attacks, Global Days of Listening, NATO Chicago summit, U.S. Afghanistan Strategic Partnership Agreement

Dear friends of ordinary 99 percent Afghans,

We thank you for your love and your hands and feet, in organizing for the upcoming Chicago protests!

In these killing days, we in Afghanistan do not expect the interests of people to triumph over self-interests. But your efforts prove that another world is possible.

However, respectfully, late May demonstrations are probably too late to request that the majority of public opinion against the Afghan war be placed on NATO’s table, so as to end the ineffectual wasting of tax money on a futile war strategy. War doesn’t work!

By the time you take to the streets in Chicago on May 20, the U.S. Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement for a long term U.S. military presence in Afghanistan will have been signed.

As General John Allen remarked last Sunday:

The US is fully committed to an enduring strategic partnership with Afghanistan … and now that we have concluded these two critically important MOUs [memorandums of understanding] — one on detentions and one on special operations — we are ready to look forward to a successful summit in Chicago in the wake of the signing of the Strategic Partnership.

The talk of a 2014 withdrawal is a distracting side show, and the recently clinched “important MOUs” for detentions and night raids/special operations were the token bait. In General Allen’s declaration, we will be protesting “in the wake” of the signing of this so-called partnership. Permits! Protests! The deal will have been done.

Perpetual war in South Asia will have been sealed in Washington and Kabul, in the sacred names of global and national security.

But, our names are not global and national security.

Our name is love.

If at all possible, please take to the streets earlier.

For us here in Afghanistan, where the streets are too deadly, on April 21 we’ll take to the Afghan airwaves again!

With year-round gratitude and spring warmth,

The Afghan Peace Volunteers

Afghans for Peace

Technorati Tags: Chicago G8 NATO summit. Occupy Chicago, US Afghanistan Strategic Partnership Agreement

From the Afghan Peace Volunteers

2^nd April 2012

Re:  An ‘Annan Six Point Peace Plan for Afghanistan’

Mr Kofi Annan

Dear Mr. Kofi Annan,

Salams from Afghanistan!

The six point peace plan which you have proposed for Syria has a collected calm that is missing in Afghanistan.

We are a grassroots group of ordinary, multi-ethnic Afghans and we’re tired of our world being like it is. We wish for a life of non-violence, the unity of all people, equality, and self-reliance, and we seek non-military solutions for Afghanistan.

But the profoundly greedy and antagonistic governments of today do not practice these values. The ground realities of our daily lives do not match up with any ‘ideal’ that leaders double-speak of, so enough!

We no longer expect anything from any leader except self-interest. We respect them as fellow human beings but we will not submit to their status-quo exploitation of the 99%.

We will not be robbed, then blamed.

We will not be killed, then compensated.

Nowadays, the people of the world are protesting this unequal status quo, because we all wish to live freely, free from the economic and geopolitical wars that cling to us like the stubborn soot of serial arson.

We apologize for ventilating to you, but if you have the chance to visit this ‘terrible war relic of a land’, you will immediately feel in the air the greed and the antagonism that the ‘war against terrorism’ has set alight. We’re not only speaking about the sights, sounds and smells of decay and death. We’re describing the rotting of our souls.

We distrust one another. We’re angry and hurting, and losing hope.

Meanwhile, the leaders strategize and fight behind closed doors, and make a show of negotiating. Their negotiations are ultimately tiring schemes to win through force.

Especially for Afghan mothers, force is the faucet of tears that won’t be turned off.

For U.S. and NATO leaders, we wish we could cup and bring these oceans of tears across the miles to their shores, to reason peaceably with them that however ‘just’, ‘necessary’ and ‘accurate’ they imagine their targeted killings to be, wars do not work, especially not for the people.

Mr Annan, just as you had quickly concluded in Syria, we’ve experienced that further militarization in an already militarized Afghanistan has not only been unhelpful, it has been distastefully unkind.

An ‘Annan Six Point Peace Plan for Afghanistan’ would bear immediate relevance for Afghanistan.

In terms of humanitarian needs, Afghanistan ranked 172 out of 187 on the 2011 Human Development Index. 35% live below the poverty line. Unemployment is at 36%. Afghanistan has one of the highest infant and maternal mortality rates in the world.

a beggar in Kabul

unemployment at 36%

Regarding security for ordinary Afghans, Afghan civilian deaths rose for the fifth straight year reaching a record level of 3021 in 2011. The ICRC’s Head of delegation, Reto Stocker, said in March 2011, “It is an untenable situation. People tell us that they are caught in the middle of the conflict and they don’t know which way to turn.”

Afghans live so miserably, that last year, 30 000 Afghans took arduous journeys to seek asylum in Europe, the highest rate of Afghans seeking asylum there in the past 10 years.

In terms of the military ‘peace’ strategy, there is such hellish distrust of and hate for the U.S./Afghan military partnership that ‘guardian angels’ are needed to guard U.S. soldiers from ‘rogue’ Afghan soldiers.

The U.S. led ‘peace’ talks with the Taliban and with Hizb-e-Islami have broken down. The U.S. is practically at drone-war with Pakistan.  By establishing long-term military bases and maneuvers in Afghanistan, the U.S. projects military threats to neighboring countries, including Pakistan, Iran, Russia and China, as if that will make the Pakistanis, Iranians, Russians and Chinese happy and peaceful interlocutors.

U.S. or foreign military bases cause rather than prevent September 11s.

And, in terms of global terrorism, where on earth are the Al Qaeda ‘safe havens’? It’s impossible to physically raid and bomb away ‘the vengeful anger behind terrorism’.

‘Terrorists’?

With respect to aspirations for ultimate outcomes in Syria, there appears to be two main alignments:

1. Assad’s government, Russia, China, Iran…
2. Syrian National Council, U.S. and Friends of Syria, Arab League, Al Qaeda…

On which side are the ‘non-terrorists’, and who are the ‘terrorists’? Neither alignment has excluded violence.

In accepting ‘Annan’s Six Point Peace Plan’, Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad said that the “terrorism” of foreign-supported fighters must stop as well.

Der Spiegel wrote that “Men who once did battle against American soldiers, and were branded as Al-Qaeda terrorists, are now fighting on the side of Syrian insurgents, whose victory over Assad would be entirely welcomed by the West. Still, the involvement of foreign jihadist fighters makes it more difficult to differentiate between good and evil in the Syrian conflict.”

On a human level, we’re certain that you share with us the realization that there are no ‘terrorists’, only multiple opponents trying to win through superior ‘terror’.

Alternatives?

In the interest of applying the ‘six-point peace plan to Afghanistan, we respectfully suggest two revisions, an italicized addition in Point 1 and a crossed out portion in Point 3.

ANNAN’s six-point peace plan for AFGHANISTAN

1. Afghan-led political process to address the aspirations and concerns of the Afghan people, led by Afghan citizens who have not killed anyone

2. UN-supervised cessation of armed violence in all its forms* by all parties to protect civilians

3. All parties to ensure provision of humanitarian assistance to all areas affected by the fighting. and implement a daily two-hour humanitarian pause.

4. Authorities to intensify the pace and scale of release of arbitrarily detained persons

5. Authorities to ensure freedom of movement throughout the country for journalists

6. Authorities to respect freedom of association and the right to demonstrate peacefully

*in principle, we’re certain that you mean both armed and unarmed violence in all its forms

Thank you, Mr Kofi Annan and team! Thanks for upholding the potential for practical diplomacy, which to us is upholding human dignity.

You’re in such a tough place, with the Arab League pledging $100 million to pay the Syrian opposition and the U.S. sending communications equipment including night goggles, but we trust that you will remain seasoned and firm. The position of non-violence is the strongest place to be, however lonely or hard.

We share and experience the same pain as ordinary Syrians. Having lost two million loved ones over the past 4 decades of the Afghan game, we feel that this game is as deserving of attention as the Syrian game.

Unfortunately, though Afghanistan’s peace and security is made out to be so important for the region and the rest of the world, the U.S. / Afghanistan Strategic Partnership Agreement is not even being put to a UN Security Council discussion, far less a vote.

A proposal from you or your colleagues would present an urgent and viable alternative to perpetual war in South Asia.

It may provide Afghans the opportunity to begin trusting again.

Sincerely,

The Afghan Peace Volunteers 

Links to this article can be found at :

http://vcnv.org/an-annan-six-point-peace-plan-for-afghanistan

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/04/03/a-six-point-peace-plan-for-afghanistan/

http://warisacrime.org/content/open-letter-mr-kofi-annan-afghan-peace-volunteers

http://afghansforpeace.org/archives/2473

http://www.countercurrents.org/aypv040412.htm

http://peacenews.org/2012/04/a-six-point-peace-plan-for-afghanistan-an-open-letter-to-kofi-annan-counterpunch/

http://paxchristiusa.org/tag/afghan-youth-peace-volunteers/

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Technorati Tags: Annan Six Point Peace Plan for Afghanistan, Annan Six Point Peace Plan for Syria

debate the U.S. Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement?

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/03/18-5

http://humanitariannews.org/20120318/will-afghan-parliament-us-public-or-un-debate-us-afghan-strategic-partnership-agreement

In Afghanistan, the tragic Kandahar killing spree has prompted renewed talk about the proposed U.S. Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement.

At stake in these discussions is the security of Afghanistan, the U.S. and the region.

“The most important reason for my bitterness was my ever-growing disagreement with Washington’s strategy in Afghanistan,”

Kai Eide writes in his book ‘Power Struggle over Afghanistan’.

Citizens in the U.S. and Afghanistan should be urgently exchanging their views or concerns about this partnership.

Many are not even aware of it.

Currently, citizens of Syria and the world can at least discuss Mr Kofi Annan’s warning that the situation in Syria should be handled ”very, very carefully” to avoid an escalation that would de-stabilize the region, after an earlier warning against further militarization of the Syrian crisis. The crisis in Afghanistan is as severe as the one in Syria, and it is more chronic. 2 million Afghans have been killed in the wars of the past 4 decades. But not a single diplomat is warning against the further militarization of the Afghan crisis.

The previous UN Envoy to Afghanistan, Kai Eide, did try. “The most important reason for my bitterness was my ever-growing disagreement with Washington’s strategy in Afghanistan,” Kai Eide writes in his book Power Struggle over Afghanistan. “It had become increasingly dominated by military strategies, forces, and offensives. Urgent civilian and political requirements were treated as appendices to the military tasks. The UN had never been really involved or consulted by Washington on critical strategy-related questions, nor had even the closest NATO partners. More importantly, Afghan authorities had mostly been spectators to the formation of a strategy aimed at solving the conflict in their own country.”

It has taken the tragic killing-spree of 16 civilians in Kandahar for the world to notice the ANGER that the war has enflamed in the hearts of both U.S. soldiers and Afghan mothers.

Military and foreign policy elites in Washington have encouraged a conventional presumption that the ‘war on terror’ requires a long-term U.S. military presence in Afghanistan. Underlying that presumption is a deeper assumption that ‘terrorism’ can be resolved through war, that is, a supposition that humanity can somehow counter ‘terrorism’ by killing as many ‘terrorists’ as possible, regardless of the deadly ANGER these killings, so similar in themselves to terrorist acts, must necessarily fuel, not to mention the costly ‘collateral damage.’

Tax-payers from the 50 coalition countries involved in the Afghan war should be alarmed at how and where their money is spent. They should be considering how they would feel were they offered $2000 in compensation for the murder of a child, husband, father or mother, the compensation NATO handed out ‘ex-gratia’ (with no admission of its own wrongdoing) to the families of the 16 children, women and men slaughtered in their sleep on March 11, 2012.

Will the Afghan Parliament, the U.S. public or the UN debate the 10 year U.S. war strategy in Afghanistan?

Will the Afghan Parliament, the U.S. public or the UN debate the U.S. Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement?

The Afghan Parliament

A few Afghan Parliament lawmakers have already raised a protest following the Kandahar killings.

Following the U.S. decision to move the soldier who allegedly committed the massacre to Kuwait, a Kandahar lawmaker, Abdul Khaliq Balakarzai, said that President Hamid Karzai should respond to the U.S. by refusing to sign a strategic partnership agreement.

On 14th Nov 2011, the National Security Advisor to President Karzai, Dr. Rangin Spanta, hadannounced that the Strategic Partnership Agreement will be finalized by the Afghan Parliament. Will that be the case, or did Dr. Rangin Spanta lie to pacify public sentiment?

Note that last year, the parallel Iraqi Status of Forces Agreement was put to the Iraqi Parliament for approval and was rejected, denying the U.S. long-term, uniformed military presence in Iraq. Neither the Iraqi Parliament nor the Iraqi public wanted the Iraqi Status of Forces Agreement to be signed. They deemed that it was not in their interests. This could be the case as well in Afghanistan, if the Obama/Karzai administrations allowed democratic parliamentary processes.

The American Public

60% of the U.S. public believes that the war is not worth its cost in life and expense, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News Poll.

However, Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates have already insisted that low public approval of the Afghan war won’t change (U.S.) policy. “I think if you look at polling in almost all of our 49 coalition partners’ countries, public opinion is in doubt,” said Defence Secretary Robert Gates. “Public opinion would be majority, in terms of majority, against their participation. I would just say it’s obviously the responsibility of leaders to pay attention to public opinion, but at the end of the day, their responsibility is to look out for the public interest and look to the long term.”

So, whether led by the previous Republican, George Bush, or wanting-a-second term Democrat Barack Obama, there’s not much likelihood the U.S. government will value a poll showing that 60% of the U.S. people want the war to end.

The UN

An interesting article dated 11th July 2011 had this to say about possible UN silence over Afghan public sentiment on the U.S. Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement: “The Afghan public has outrightly rejected the U.S. plans as the results of a survey conducted by UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) suggest. UNAMA with its 23 offices in Afghanistan conducted the survey across the country some two months back and hasn’t published it. Although the survey’s findings are widely known, if published, the stark survey results will undermine the U.S.’ future strategic plans.”

If this remains true, global citizens should request that the UN disclose the wishes of the Afghan public as reflected in the survey, and demonstrate that it is still committed to diplomatic solutions and the interests of the people of Afghanistan.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a report on Thursday that the UN mission in Afghanistan should place a greater priority on protecting human rights, raising concern about widespread human rights violations by the Afghan Local Police, a U.S. funded paramilitary program that has been also questioned by Human Rights Watch. He made his statement in advance of a UN Security Council vote next week to renew the mandate of the political and development mission. Will the Security Council members hear him? Will the domestic constituencies of the Security Council nations?

Perhaps Kai Eide should be invited to play the same UN role that Mr Kofi Annan is playing in Syria today. Perhaps, through Kai Eide, the views of Afghan and global civilians could finally be heard.

Just as the Global Commission on Drug Policy, (comprising 4 ex-Presidents and prominent diplomats including Mr. Kofi Annan), concluded that the war against drugs had failed and recommended to break the taboo for a global debate, a Global Commission on Terrorism Policy should be established, and taboos on a healthy debate about the messy Afghan war and dire humanitarian situation should be broken.

In May 2011, Oxfam issued an urgent call to promote the accountability of the Afghan National Security Forces, entitling their report ‘No Time to Lose’. There is indeed no time for U.S. and Afghan citizens to lose in questioning the last 10 years of U.S. military strategy. Failure to debate the U.S. Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement could perpetuate killing sprees. There is too much to lose, too many more soldiers to be debased into monsters, too many more innocent lives to be lost.

‘I want an answer, President Karzai.’

http://youtu.be/NsRwJ1zXLfw

This video says that all wars are inhumane, and is a method that should be abandoned by human civilization.

The human convention to wage war against ‘terrorism’, or just as irrational, to wage ‘humanitarian’ wars, should have been abandoned long ago to avoid such repetitive tragedies as the Kandahar killing-spree.

It doesn’t matter which country is waging the war; people kill one another without resolving root problems.

The video has pictures and video footages put together to a sound recording of a conversation between a victim’s brother and President Karzai.

Allegedly, Staff Sergeant Robert Bales killed the 16 at Panjwai, though an Afghan Investigation Team and eyewitness accounts dispute that it is a one-man job.

This conversation was aired publicly by Radio Spozhmai. The English translation was taken from an article by Mujib Mashal on Al Jazeera. A few pictures have been included from the My Lai  ( Vietnam War  ) and Haditha ( Iraq War ) massacres to which the Kandahar killing spree has been compared. Also included are stills and footage from the Stryker ‘finger trophy kill-team’ and the U.S. Marines urinating on corpses.

Humanity wants answers, from all Presidents.

We want a different world!

Technorati Tags: 'Mr president, Haditha massacre, I want an answer', Kandahar killing spree, My Lai massacre, Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, Stryker kill team and finger trophies, U.S. Marines urinating on corpses, US Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement

read Amy Goodman’s interview with us on Democracy Now or watch the interview at  http://youtu.be/FJq1sgxLm1U

Kandahar ‘killing-spree’ militarism :

a call for U.S. and Afghan citizens to question the U.S./Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement

The Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers question the presumption that the U.S. military strategy in Afghanistan is necessary for American or Afghan peace.

Tragedies like the Kandahar killing spree which massacred 16 Afghan civilians in their sleep (including 6 children and 3 women) are tragedies repeated in any war, including the U.S. war in Afghanistan. This failed military strategy that is designed for U.S. power and economic interests is being sold to the U.S. electorate through the mainstream media doublespeak of ‘withdrawal’ and negotiations’, but is quietly being pursued in what President Obama and President Karzai called ’progress’ towards the signing of the U.S Afghanistan Strategic Partnership Agreement. The Agreement will entrench U.S. military presence in Afghanistan till 2024 and beyond and is based on the same militarism that has resulted in the pathological urinating on Afghan corpses by U.S. soldiers, the morbid keeping of severed finger-trophies by the Kill Team, the accidental burning of the Quran and many other ‘unforgiveable’ tragedies.

The U.S./Afghanistan/Pakistan military strategy has failed beyond human repair, and should not be continued under the guise of the U.S./Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement. It wastesU.S.tax payer money only to fuel anti-U.S. sentiments which worsen bothU.S.and Afghan security.

“These killings only serve to reinforce the mindset that the whole war is broken and that there’s little we can do about it beyond trying to cut our losses and leave,” said Joshua Foust, a security expert with the American Security Project.

In Afghanistan, this military strategy has caused the death of more than 3000 civilians in 2011 alone and in Pakistan, it has cost the lives of 40,000 civilians; would U.S. citizens have been able to tolerate the equivalent of having September 11’s every year for 10 years?

This war has understandably caused anger, post-death traumatic stress, grief and vengeful feelings among Afghans, Pakistanis, the Taliban, Al Qaeda and other opponents ofU.S.foreign policy, as well as tit-for-tat, commensurate feelings amongU.S.and international soldiers.

Wars escalate ‘terror’ acts.

These sentiments boiling in the quagmire of Afghan corruption, poverty, unemployment and a dire humanitarian situation ( Afghanistan is the worst place on earth for mothers and children, with children dying from basic challenges like chronic malnutrition and the winter cold ) will unfortunately erupt into more ‘terrorist’ responses in retaliation for losing loved ones.

Najeeb Azizi, a Kabul-based Afghan analyst, told Al Jazeera that the Afghan people are getting a very bad message,“ if the US military remains in Afghanistan beyond 2014,” asks Azizi,” and their attitude and behaviour remains the same – of killing innocent civilians – what will be the consequences, and how will the Afghan people respond to it?”

Reuters reported a Kandahar shop owner Haji Najiq saying , “We have benefited little from the foreign troops here but lost everything – our lives, dignity and our country to them. The explanation or apologies will not bring back the dead. It is better for them to leave us alone and let us live in peace.” “The Americans said they will leave in 2014. They should leave now so we can live in peace,” said Mohammad Fahim,19, a university student.

It is interesting to note that a December 2009 survey conducted by a private U.S. contractor about Kandahar military offensives revealed that 94 percent of Kandaharis surveyed supported negotiating with the Taliban over military confrontation and that 1000 to 2000 Kandahari elders had told President Karzai in a meeting on April 4^th 2010 that they were not happy with General McCrystal’s plans for the Kandahar military offensive. Against all democratic principles, the people’s wishes and requests for peace negotiations instead of a massive military offensive were rejected.

On the ground in Kabul, we sense much anger and sorrow among ordinary Afghans in the street, just as we sensed in travelling to meet youth from Parwan and Kapisa. In Kapisa, 8 Afghan shepherd boys were killed by a NATO airstrike . Three more civilians were killed in a NATO air raid the day before our visit. As opposed to the mainstream media’s portrayal of violent, Afghan ‘terrorists’,  the 30 million Afghan populace is showing remarkable restraint, as has been called for by the Afghan Interior Ministry.

The Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers call forU.S.and Afghan citizens to be calm, non-violent, brave and kind to one another, as the world discusses how to end the Afghan war.

Global citizens ought to focus on the root problems of severe economic inequalities and the 1%-driven corruption that Afghanistan and the world faces, and reason with the Obama/Karzai administration and other Powers not to waste tax-payers’ ‘blood and treasure’ on wars that will never be won, on wars that are certain to see a repetition of Kandahar-type killing sprees.

3 a.m.

Walk a mile with loaded weapons.

Will I be killed?

Enter Afghan homes.

See sleeping Afghan children, women and men.

Shoot!……..!

Set the dead on fire…

Anar Gul gestures to the body of her grandchild

In particular, theKandaharkilling spree is a call to debate the US Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement and its basis of war against terrorism.

It is a call to question the lazy global presumption that military strategies are necessary for conflict resolution and defense, and therefore for peace.

Thankfully, Egyptians have questioned this presumption by rejecting military rule.

In late November 2011, ordinary Egyptians re-amassed in Tahrir Square. “The people want the fall of the marshal,” protesters chanted, referring to General Tantawi. Banners read : “This land belongs to Egyptians. It is not for sale and does not need any guardians.” And, “All Egyptians demand an Egypt run by civilians.” They do not think that the military can bring them the freedom they have wanted for 40 years.

The Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, like Egyptians and people ‘Protester’ movements across the world today, believe that military strategies, like that of the U.S. Afghanistan Strategic Partnership Agreement, cannot address the primary challenges Afghans themselves have identified: corruption and poverty (in the context of the 1% versus 99% socioeconomic inequalities).

Of parallel importance, while Iraqis also share the same problems of corruption etc as Afghans, the Iraqi parliament, with ground pressure from Iraqi public anger over the U.S.occupation, rejected the U.S. government’s conditional proposal to extend the U.S./ Iraq Status of Forces Agreement ( SOFA ) beyond 2011 .  The Iraqis refused to compromise on the conditional demand of U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, thatU.S. military trainers should enjoy immunity in Iraqi courts.

The Karzai government also had 2 crucial conditional demands for the signing of the Strategic Partnership: an end to the night raids and a handover of U.S.-run detention facilities.

But learning from their failure to clinch the Iraqi SOFA, the U.S. government has separated the two Afghan demands from the Strategic Partnership Agreement, maneuvering to achieve their overarching aim of maintaining a long term military presence in Afghanistan.  The Afghan government has played along with the U.S. government despite their apparently adamant demands for sovereignty and a separate U.S. Afghanistan agreement for the transfer of detention facilities has now been signed.

Also, whereas the Iraqi SOFA was put to the Iraqi Parliament, it is not clear if the Strategic Partnership Agreement will be finalized by the Afghan Parliament, as the National Security Advisor to President Karzai had announced.

The Afghan Parliament has condemned the ‘inhumane’ Kandahar killings. Their demand for a public trial has been rejected by the Pentagon. To appease Afghan public anger, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has already pre-condemned the accused soldier to possible execution if convicted, regardless of the soldier’s history of three previous tours of duty in Iraq which could possibly have wrecked him enough to warrant closer supervision from his superiors.

So why would Afghans want to sign the Strategic Partnership Agreement? Why didn’t the Iraqis want to sign theirs?

Is a long-term foreign military presence and strategy in Afghanistan helpful for U.S., Afghan or global security?

Counter-intuitively but quite clearly, as we had described in our previous article on the Strategic Partnership Agreement that the reverse is true. If the agreement is signed, it will be detrimental to Afghan, regional and global security as many players have already announced their opposition, including Mullah Omar of the Taliban who opposes long term bases in Afghanistan , Gulbuddin Hekmatyar of Hizb-e-Islami who said that the establishment of permanent US bases in Afghanistan would mean the war never ends. The rising Pakistan political star Imran Khan said that there will be no peace as long as the U.S. is in Afghanistan , and the Shanghai Co-operation Organization comprising Russia, China, and the Central Asian countries who called for an ‘independent, neutral’ Afghanistan (read: free of foreign occupation). 

Iran’s opposition merits separate mention. Iranian Foreign Minister said that legalizing foreign bases would run counter to Afghanistan’s and the international community’s position which focusses on peaceful solutions and that continued U.S. military presence would cause radicalism and terrorism to continue in the region.

U.S.citizens should be aware that while the mainstream media harp on U.S.troops withdrawing from Afghanistan, there will not be a complete withdrawal. The Obama administration plans to keep up to 20,000 mainly Special Ops troops in Afghanistanwith the signing of the U.S. Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement. U.S. citizens should realize that this agreement will be sealed with at least 4.1 billion U.S. dollars of their tax money annually. Importantly, the agreement is against the interests of U.S. national security for all the opposition it has already elicited and may very well inspire another September 11^th tragedy in the U.S. or elsewhere ; one of the reasons Osama Bin Laden gave for September 11^th was the presence of U.S. military bases in Saudi Arabia.

President Obama should heed the wishes of U.S. citizens, 60% of whom believe that the war is not worth its cost in life and expense, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News Poll.

For Afghans, it will compromise their sovereignty, a sovereignty which the Iraqi parliament preserved in rejecting the parallel US/Iraq Status of Forces Agreement. It will create for Afghans the chronic un-happiness that the Japanese have had with the U.S.military base in Okinawaor others have had over the more than 700 U.S. military bases in the world.

The U.S. Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement is the same military strategy that has led to the Kandahar killing spree and that will lead many more Afghans to detest the U.S. and many more Afghan mothers to grieve for years to come.

“Even if the Taliban return to power our elders can work things out with them. The Americans are disrespectful. The Americans are not here to assist us they are here to kill us,” said Najibullah, 33, ahouse painter in Kabul, ”I hope there is no long-term partnership between our countries.”

“This killing of civilians is a clear sign that the war is against the people of Afghanistan,” said Haji Azim, a Kandahar resident. ”If there are terrorists and Taliban in Afghanistan, then they have been created by the Americans.”

A grieving mother in Kandahar, holding a dead baby in her arms, said, “They killed a child. Was this child the Taliban? Believe me, I haven’t seen a 2-year-old member of the Taliban yet.”

This Afghan mother is questioning the global war against terrorism, asking us who the Talib/terrorist is, her 2 year old sleeping child or the U.S. military whose soldier killed her child along with 15 others.

We the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers join her in grieving and questioning. We call for all to stop killing, to be calm, non-violent, brave and kind to one another, as we discuss how to end the Afghan war ( read Amy Goodman’s interview with us on Democracy Now or watch the interview at  http://youtu.be/FJq1sgxLm1U ). We prefer the decisions of our Egyptian and Iraqi friends, that is, we wish for non-military, diplomatic strategies, not military strategies that have destroyed our land over the past 4 decades. We believe that nonviolent international relations are what all of humanity yearns for, and we look for a world in which violent acts like the Kandahar killing spree are resolved in peaceful ways.

For Afghan mothers at least, we should question the military strategy that will be perpetuated in the U.S./Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement.

“It is better for them to leave us alone and let us live in peace.”

By the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers

13^th March 2012

Technorati Tags: Afghan Massacre Peace Groups Call for U.S. Withdrawal Democracy Now, killing spree in Kandahar, US Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement

We began our Caravan of Non-Violence on Sunday the 4th of March, travelling to Jalalabad ( a city of the Mughal Empire previously known as Adinapour ).

on the road to Jalalabad

As we set off on the road with a niggling worry, we wondered as usual,

“Is non-violence possible in Afghanistan?”

asking about non-violence

But then, that is like asking, “Is love possible in Afghanistan?”        

Or like asking, “Are Afghan mothers really human beings capable of love?”

Or, “Do Afghan mothers in Jalalabad wish the same for their children?”

what do Afghan mothers wish for?

We tasted sugar cane and oranges, and walked under the shade of tropical and evergreen trees. We noticed the normal needs and ironies of life.

We met down-to-earth, weathered people, thirsty for a way of peace.

what do Afghan youth wish for?

20 year old Samiullah, an undergraduate at Nangahar University, remarked at the multiple ethnicities we had in our team, as we were given warm rice and beans in a dormitory room, “We ought not to let the war agendas of the Powers divide us. One of my best friends has become so jaded he can no longer imagine Afghans from different ethnic groups having a meal together. He should have been here!”

unity across all groups

All mothers should have been here.

Like Hillary Clinton, who has again hissed off the usual haughty, government hubris, ”This country (USA) is an unparalleled force for good in the world, and we all want to make sure it stays that way.”

What kind of force?

What kind of good?

What kind of world?

Who is Hillary trying to kid?

Along with the mothers in Jalalabad and Afghanistan, we respect the humanity in Hillary Clinton and the likes of her, but we politely reject her violent pride.

Come to Jalalabad, where young people took to the streets peacefully to protest the US Afghanistan Strategic Partnership dealings and where anger is being fuelled by a militarized U.S. foreign policy.

Come to test what kind of force governments exert in place of nonviolence, what kind of good exists despite their interventions, and what kind of world Afghans manage to eke out despite war’s destruction.

As our host and friend Hameed Tasal would say, “Come to Jalala-good!”

come to Jalala-good!

Technorati Tags: Afghan students protest US Afghanistan Strategic Partnership Agreement, Jalalabad and Quran burnings, nonviolence in Afghanistan

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/02/19-3

The people of the world are questioning the lazy and fearful presumption

that a few human beings are better than the vast majority;

why should the 1% unjustly hoard

unequal Wealth, Power and Privilege?

The people of the world are awakening each morning, deciding,

“We breathe the air, eat our bread,

work and sleep in the same way,

so enough of the nauseating selfishness

that dictates the captivity of millions at the commands of a few.”

It is an awakening of our souls.

We are breaking free!

We have a voice.

The AYPVs think about an Afghan national referendum

If a war was being waged in the U.S. we would expect Americans to demand an end to the war and to have a say as to how it should end.

Likewise, the people of Afghanistan want to have a say in the negotiations to end the Afghan war.

After all, in 2011, a record number of 3021 Afghan civilians lost their lives. Afghans who risk losing their lives should have a say in the negotiations, ironically engineered by the very players who are killing them ( the UN reported that ‘anti-government elements’ – the Taliban and other insurgent groups – were responsible for 77 per cent of conflict-related deaths in 2011, while 14 per cent were caused by ‘pro-government forces’ – Afghan, U.S. and international security forces ).

But, fatally, the 30 million people of Afghanistan have no say in these negotiations. They are not represented at the negotiation table.

The Powers have left them out, as is the routine, like the token civil society presence at the Bonn II Conference.

But in 2011, we witnessed the Protester Time Magazine Person of the Year questioning and changing the inequitable status quo, and wanting to be at the negotiation tables.

This awakening on the streets of Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, Greece, Spain, Chile, Mexico and Wall Street is conscientious, and contagious.

The citizens of the world are now saying together, “We have a voice!” By far, they are non-violent protesters who are risking imprisonment and death for freedom from unsustainable socio-economic inequities, thus demonstrating that they are not the ‘savage’ 99% who must be disciplined and controlled by the ‘virtuous’ 1%.

That’s why ordinary Afghans like the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers are rooting for the ordinary Egyptian’s clear stand against military rule.

“Down with military rule!”

The Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers trust in the small, determined, truthful conversations they have through the Global Days of Listening program, Skype-to-cell phone conferences through which they have spoken to ordinary people from the United States, Canada, Sweden, Australia, Singapore, Cambodia, Vietnam, Germany, Italy, South Sudan, South Africa, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Israel/Palestine, Denmark, Poland, Czech Republic, France, Mexico, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, India, and others.

So, who says ordinary Afghans can’t converse decently or negotiate for genuinely peaceful relations?

We see this work of deliberate listening as our conscience, our resistance, our statement, our solidarity, our shared pain, and our participation in a global awakening to ‘Occupy!’. Through this action of listening to ordinary people, we call the world to ‘Occupy the Afghan Airwaves!”

In one of these conversations 2 months ago, the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers spoke with Miss S., a young Egyptian activist.  Miss S said, “Sorry we ‘forgot’ about Afghans in the busy-ness of our revolution. Like you, even till the day before the Egyptian revolution, I never thought that the day would arrive when ordinary Egyptians can overcome their utter hopelessness to stand together. But, our human hopelessness is also your human hopelessness, so we should stand with you! We face the same, root problems.

the people of the world are awakening

We won’t know what 30 million ordinary Afghans want until we ask them

Afghans are also feisty Protesters like the Egyptians, but are too divided and hemmed in by the combined violence of the U.S./NATO/Afghan government/Taliban/insurgent/regional war, a violence that is experientially deadly when they take to the streets, like when 12 Afghans civilians were killed and 80 wounded by German troops in Takhar province for protesting in the streets against a NATO night raid that killed 2 men and 2 women. Wouldn’t ordinary Americans take to their streets if the Voice of America reported NATO admitting to the killing of 8 children between the ages of 6 and 14 in their state, like the killing of 8 Afghan children in Kapisa Province while shepherding on the hills?

This will be the Afghan tragedy, that Afghans are too divided to reach a critical mass on the streets today, and so won’t be heard.

The Afghan government, or the Taliban, or the U.S./NATO elite have not sought to hear Afghan grievances voiced in the privacy and relative safety of Afghan homes, especially from behind barbed-wired, bullet-and-bomb-proofed worlds.

Does the world know that most ordinary Afghans are so tired of wars, and that they are repulsed by all their killers, as humans are naturally prone to be, regardless of whether the gun-or-bomb-wielding killer is a Talib, an Afghan warlord or criminal, a Pakistani, an Arab, an American or an ISAF soldier from one of the 49-country NATO coalition countries?

Does anyone know the survival pain of having to choose the least bad of all the bad options? Yes, to some Afghans, the U.S./NATO coalition may be the least bad of the bad options, but that may be similar to choosing the Libyan revolutionary militia with their UN/NATO supporters over Gaddafi, or perhaps even choosing between one of the millionaire Republicans and President Obama.

Does the world know the life pressures for 35% of Afghans who live below the poverty line and a similar percentage unemployed, while they face one of the most corrupt governments in the world?

Does the world know that approximately 15 million destitute, unseen Afghan girls and women fear a possible return of the Taliban past?

Have you ever heard Afghan Engineer ZA from the Transitional Justice Group saying that these U.S.-Taliban negotiations are a game?

Have you ever heard Afghan media professional Mr. EA say that the people might as well not exist?

Have you ever heard Afghan university student Mr. SA remind us of the imposter ‘Taliban shop-keeper-negotiator from Quetta Pakistan’?

Have you ever heard Afghan female activist Miss WA protest the culture of impunity fueled by Afghan war leaders, the Taliban AND the U.S./NATO elite?

To the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers and many of their Afghan friends like Engineer Y and Miss WA, these current negotiations over 30 million Afghan lives excludes 30 million ordinary Afghans, and are held by the 1% Afghan and global elite primarily for their own interests.

What do ordinary Afghans want?

In whose interests are the current U.S./Taliban negotiations being held?

The Obama administration wants to win the U.S. elections this year. Though the Afghan War isn’t a key election issue, the Obama administration wants a ‘victorious exit’ while maintaining a long term presence.

The administration is banking on U.S. citizens to believe that the Afghan War is being fought against terrorists for U.S. security. Military and foreign policy elites may also be hoping for the continued lack of awareness and consequent apathy of U.S. citizens towards the pitfalls and dangers of ‘trading’ with the Taliban for a U. S. ‘victory and exit’. The U.S. seems willing to include some of the Taliban in some power-sharing deal in the post 2014 Afghan government.

But do Afghans agree with the intentions of these negotiations?

Long-term interests of the U.S. and Nato, in Afghanistan, including regional control particularly as regards China, Russia, Pakistan and Iran, can be reasonably secured by signing the U.S. Afghanistan Strategic Partnership Agreement to establish joint military bases in Afghanistan beyond 2014. On February 14^th, 2012,  Defence Secretary Leon Panetta Panetta said that the U.S. and Afghan governments are weeks away from clinching this Agreement , which will allow them to focus further on the use of Special elite forces to conduct ‘counter-terrorism’ operations from the these bases.

To paint ‘victory’ in the Afghan war for voter consumption, as they have painted ‘victory’ in Iraq, the U.S. military has insisted on ‘progress’, contrary to reports from the International Red Cross of the worst security situation in 30 years, the United Nations report of a 39% increase in violence, the U.S. January 2011 National Intelligence Estimates of a ‘very bleak picture of a stalemate’ and most recently  Lt Col Daniel L Davis’s whistle-blowing confession of the ‘gulf’ between the U.S. government’s false claims to have progressed, militarily, in Afghanistan, and the ‘bad to abysmal’ ground tactical situation he observed through interviews with 250 soldiers in the Afghan killing fields.

Negotiating with the Taliban is a way to gain an honorable exit by suggesting reconciliatory civility, an effort at diplomacy, albeit a militarized diplomacy.

The U.S./German/Qatar-Taliban negotiators are adopting age-old force in their method, rather than genuine diplomacy. Hillary Clinton states in elementary school-style that the U.S. policy is to ‘Fight… talk, build’. The Taliban of today also lay claim to a new ethos quite similar to ‘Fight… talk, build’.

The Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers are irritated that today’s governments are proud of this silly ‘Rambo’ image, promoting a global culture that dresses might as right.

‘Fight! Talk! Build!’ ‘Fight! Talk! Build!’

‘Build’??

The ex-Governor of Kabul, Dr. Zabiullah Mojaddidy, had quit his job in 2011 due to a lack of support from development ministries and the Presidential Palace with regards to his ideas for the reconstruction of Kabul City.

The Taliban realize that, since 1994, they have lost popular ground support for their violent actions. As a result,  new Taliban codes of conduct to avoid civilian killings have been issued.

A ‘direct’ way for the Taliban to ‘negotiate’ for influence in the post 2014 Afghan power arrangements while bypassing the people is to deal with the U.S. government, whom they know calls all the shots in Afghanistan ( they refuse to deal with the Karzai government whom they consider a puppet government) . Now, thanks to the U.S., the Taliban even have an office, a concept so unpopular in Afghanistan that they have to locate it in Qatar!

They are demanding the release of their fellow Taliban from Guantanamo, and are clear about their ‘jihad’, as when Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, a spokesman for the hard-line Islamist movement, said, “Our struggle and jihad will continue until we have installed a complete Islamic government in Afghanistan, regardless of the year 2014 or 2015 when the foreign troops say they will leave Afghanistan.”

The Taliban will oppose the U.S. Strategic Partnership Agreement. One of their consistent demands, an ultimatum to which America is not about to accede, is that all foreign troops leave Afghanistan.

So, while analysts scrutinize these U.S. and Taliban interests, who raises any debate about the interests of the majority of people living in Afghanistan’s villages and cities?

Negotiators are not acting in the interests of ordinary Afghan and U.S. people

In stark ‘un-democracy’, the current negotiations are working against the interests of ordinary Afghans.

As in Iraq, Libya and now Syria, the U.S. government with their NATO partners appear careless about a potential Afghan civil war breaking out. The ex-UN Envoy to Afghanistan Kai Eide recently warned of a potential civil war if negative trends are not reversed.  Kai Eide noted that Dr. Sima Simar, the Director of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, had written to him in late 2010 to say that ‘the Afghan people are losing hope’.

What is even more insidious is the fuelling of civil conflict and local warlordism with the American military paying and arming the opportunistic Afghan Local Police ( local Afghan armed militia ). This is creating multiple, uncontrollable U.S.-weapon-supported warlords who may fire much more randomly at U.S./NATO  soldiers and Afghan citizens than the formal Afghan security forces who have killed 70 and wounded 110 U.S./NATO soldiers since May 2007.

The current negotiations may well be remembered as responsible for the armed mayhem that may break out among the conflicting players after 2014, as is happening in Iraq today after years of U.S. military design.

Importantly, making deals to possibly persuade some elements of the Taliban to ‘close an eye’ to the establishment of joint military bases in Afghanistan would amount to fanning the fire of indiscriminate anti-Americanism that is sweeping across Pakistan and regional countries, and make the world a much less secure place for ordinary U.S. people.

The Afghan media professional Mr. EA said, “Trading power with the Taliban may break the back of even those Afghans who ‘support’ the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, forcing Afghans to conclude that the U.S. government is a traitor of Afghans, betraying them to the Taliban for their own interests.”

Yes, many Afghans wish to reconcile with the ‘Taliban’, but they desire a way of negotiations very different from the ‘politicized negotiations’ being imposed on them. The Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers wish for negotiations that ‘talk and build without fighting’, negotiations based on restorative justice, not vengeance.

The negotiations that Afghan mothers would pray for are negotiations that would end the war and place the human needs of their families first.  They would not want to have their killers placed in power and certainly not at the expense of bread or justice.

The U.S. negotiators have neglected the basic bread and butter needs of Afghan and U.S. people so much that during a week when the U.S. spent $2 billion dollars on the Afghan war, Afghan children froze to death in an internally displaced persons camp.  A New York Times article asked, “ ‘After 10 years of a large international presence…and at least $3.5 billion of humanitarian aid and $58 billion of development assistance, how could children be dying of something as predictable — and manageable — as the cold?’ ” . Similarly, they’re not spending as much blood and treasure on the more than 40 million Americans who are living below the poverty line.

But the Obama administration may be underestimating the Occupy movement’s awakening influence on the U.S. electorate in the face of Wall-Street-style capitalism, amidst global economic crises and austerity measures. Our hope is that ordinary U.S. citizens both inside and outside of the Occupy movement will protest these inequalities heaped on them while expensive and un-examined ‘Fight, talk, build’ U.S. wars are fought across the world.

cold, with no work

Will the UN, or anyone, find out what the people’s interests are? A call for an Afghan national referendum

The new UN Envoy to Afghanistan, Slovakian Jan Kubis, said, “Any effort to end the conflict in the country can succeed only if it is based on wide participation, on representative participation, not only of political forces but eventually of civil society.”

Our concern is that Jan Kubis speaks of civil society as a voice that should be consulted ‘eventually’, that is at some later time, perhaps even when all deals have already been made.

We fully agree with Mr Jan Kubis that the people should have wide, representative participation, but we think that in a democracy, that should come first, not ‘eventually’.

And where in all these negotiations are the Afghan women?

Oxfam warned about the risk of the Afghan government sacrificing women’s rights in order to secure a political deal with the Taliban and other armed opposition groups. Earlier, in March 2011, a USAID senior official had said that ‘Gender issues are going to have to take a back seat to other priorities’, including a desire at the top levels of the Obama administration to triage the war and focus on the overriding goal of ending the conflict.

To genuinely resolve this global dilemma in Afghanistan in the democratic interests of ordinary Afghans, we suggest an urgent Afghan national referendum on the current negotiations over the future of Afghanistan, conducted by the United Nations Mission to Afghanistan, as according to the stated wish of UN Envoy to Afghanistan Jan Kubis.

The Afghan national referendum would raise important questions like whether ordinary Afghans want negotiations to bring Taliban leaders into positions of power.

This may augment other debates and enquiries.

Worried about the claims of whistleblower Lt Daniel L Davis , Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., is urging Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to create an independent study group to review U.S. strategy in the sandbox.

Likewise, in the international mess of forceful threats and politicking in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Bahrain, Iraq and many other countries, we suggest a Global Commission to examine using war as a political method.  Such a commission could focus on Afghanistan as a case study that tragically demonstrates the futility of the 10 year war in Afghanistan, so costly in human lives and resources, only to end up with negotiations that exclude the interests of ordinary Afghan and U.S. people.

Technorati Tags: Afghanistan Pakistan Taliban negotiations, Taliban Qatar office, U.S. Taliban negotiations

Ali, Faiz and Abdulai at the Gandhi Memorial in New Delhi, India

Indian, Afghan and human poverty Faiz, Abdulai, Ali and I are travelling in India to learn from Gandhian practitioners ( in Ekta Parishad ). We wish to learn how to mobilize people from the villages to protest non-violently. Immediately, we’re encountering our own poverty. Our flexible travel  itinerary : 6th Jan to 9^th Jan : New Delhi 10^th to 15^th Jan : Bhopal 15^th to 21^st Jan : Ahmedabad 23^rd to 26^th Jan : Aliabad? 27^th Jan : Return to Kabul Afghanistan 6^th Jan  : Firsts for Faiz, Abdulai, Ali First time on plane First time above clouds First time having pineapples First time on elevator, travelator First time using standing urinal and automatic sink-tap First time in a big city that’s green ( Delhi ) First feelings penned at Kabul International Airport : Faiz – ‘excited’ Ali – ‘very happy’ Abdulai – ‘eager to learn’ Hakim – ‘opportunity’ Kathy Kelly – ‘relieved, open’ Maya Evans  ( UK peace activist ) – ‘discovery, adventure’ 7^th Jan : Other Firsts First time up close to a Hindu temple First time seeing so many women with uncovered heads First time in underground Metro First time being a foreigner

homeless in India

8^th Jan : More Firsts First time in multimedia memorial museum ( Gandhi Memorial ) First time seeing a lifelike statue ( of Gandhi and his wife ) First time presenting to an audience abroad ( about 100 students at Jawaharlal Nehru University ) – AYPVs spoke  about : ‘Upon awakening, do not live normally.’ 9^th Jan : Lodhi Garden and Gandhi Peace Foundation Lodhi was a Pathan – the garden had green lawns, old ruins, swans, squirrels, parrots and other birds, smooching lovers Gandhi Peace Foundation -meeting held to discuss a high court case of an Indian activist charged with visiting a political prisoner, sedition included as one of the charges -short messages to Indian human rights activists, AYPVs spoke  about : ‘Dissolving the borders of peace’

The youth with peace activists Maya Evans ( UK ),

Kathy Kelly ( USA ) , Paul and Kathrin ( Canada )

at the World Peace Gong in Gandhi Memorial

10^th Jan : Railway train to Bhopal It was a comfortable 8-hour ride on the train from Delhi to Bhopal. Fields, fields, fields, litter, litter, litter, cattle, cattle, cattle… We shared a urgent feeling for human livelihoods to return to the fields. Jim Loney, a Canadian Christian Peacemaker Team activist shared his experience of being kidnapped for 118 days in Iraq, which he describes in his book ‘Captivity’. Kidnappers have those who love them and whom they love, too. The Iraqi kidnappers had told Jim stories of the HURT and ANGER created through US military offensives that killed loved ones. 11^th Jan : From Guns to Gandhi

Front page of The Times of India

The Youth’s interview got onto the front page of the Bhopal edition of the Times of India! See http://vcnv.org/guns-to-gandhi-afghan-boys-on-a-peace-pilgrimage 78 year old Bagvir and his wife had established the Gandhi ashram we stayed in. Bagvir shared with the youth, “All human beings are one. God is one and religions are different paths to God.  Gandhi had said that Truth is God and that God is Truth.” Paul and Kathrin ( husband-and-wife Canadian volunteers with Ekta Parishad who kindly arranged and co-ordinated our Indian trip ) brought us to old Bhopal Market which had a Hindu temple at one end and a mosque at the other. Kathrin gave us a treat of banana, papaya & chiku milk shakes, opposite colourful shops of mannequins modeling lingerie . Another ‘first’! 12^th Jan : India lives in the villages

namaste !

We visited Bhimkothi, a remote village located in the jungle, off the beaten path. Rakash of Ekta Parishad had been working with the villagers to obtain official documents for land ownership, to establish a school and to dig a village well. Importantly, Rakash shared that he spends a few nights a month in the village because ‘it is in the night that the stories and lives of the villagers become more transparent.’ Poverty in a land of plenty. Life transpires in the Indian village nights.

Gardener, over 100 years old, :

‘ We all die…

we should leave something behind.’

13^th Jan : The mosque in the city, the mosque on an island

with Indian youth at ‘Begum’ mosque

The mosque we visited in Bhopal City is the 2^nd largest mosque in India, built by a Begum from Afghanistan. To the youth, Bhopal lake was not a lake. It was a sea.

mosque on Bhopal Lake

14^th Jan : Railway train back to Delhi

train buddy Utkarsh

Dearest Abdulai It was really great meeting you and clicking those pictures. You have a tough task ahead. Stand brave against the odds and your genuine heart and crystal clear thoughts will take you to your dream. I wish you all the luck, happiness and success in all your future endeavours. Looking forward to meet you again and this time at your place. Keep smiling. Your train buddy Utkrash Pandey 15^th Jan : Registering the Afghan ‘States’ presume out of fear that every Afghan is ‘guilty until proved innocent’, though out of the nineteen September 11^th hijackers who provided a ‘justification’ for bombing ‘guilty Afghans’, none were Afghans. When I went with the youth to the Foreign Registration office ( Afghans and Pakistanis need to register their existence in India within 14 days upon arrival ), I asked an official where I could find a toilet, and he said, “ Inside ( the building )!” I tried at the guarded door which led into the building, but the official told me,” Outside!” 16^th Jan : Frisbee and Astronomy

making friends through frisbeeing

solar time and astronomy

17^th Jan : Sleepless on the 20-hour train to Gandhi’s birth city of Ahmedabad

the good, slow train

In the sleeper class cabin of the slow train with unpleasant toilets, Gandhi may have said to us,

“Feel as cold as everyone else.”

the sleeper cabin with Ali under colorful blankets

life inside the train

life outside at railway stations

thoughts while on the rail way tracks

18^th to 22^nd Jan : Ahmedabad – The world is not yet connected enough for Mankind to live equally Ahmedabad is the city where Gandhi began his India independence struggle, establishing 2 ashrams in 1917. It was from Ahmedabad that Gandhi initiated the Salt March in 1930. We spent time with the people of Demar village ( located 40 km from Ahmedabad city ), an agricultural and livestock village growing cotton and rearing cows for milk.

almost blind in Demar village

ladies sorting the cotton

cotton dreams aren’t white enough because of insufficient irrigation water

meeting village elders to understand the dreams and wishes of the people

Together with 15 Oasis program participants ( from India, Bangladesh and Denmark ), as well as 40 high school students from Gandhinagar International School,we listened to the wishes of the villagers and worked with them through self-help to fulfill one of those wishes.

Included in the villagers’ wish list were :

1. Sufficient water – for drinking and irrigation
2. Good education, especially addressing youth issues, including drug addiction…
3. Cleaning up a road  - muddied by accumulated soil and drainage water ( which caused the village women to fall frequently when they carried the milk containers on their heads )

On the last day of the program, we worked with the villagers on wish Number 3, and managed to clean up the muddy stretch of road in the village!

Abdulai getting into his hands and feet into the mud

Ali digging a drainage pit

the people and children working hard together

water is a basic need

food is a basic need – treated to a Gujerati meal!

helping others to help themselves

Governments accumulate wealth while the people contend with basic needs.

The human masses everywhere are not yet connected with one another enough to address the inequalities that challenge us all in the face of an increasingly wealthy global elite.

No short cuts. Connect globally. Relate revolutionarily!

After the Oasis program, we spent a day at Gandhi’s  Sabarmati Ashram on the banks of the Sabarmati.

Gandhi’s spinning wheel of independence

can we create ashram-like, self-reliant communities in Afghanistan?

Gandhi’s room of simple living

Gandhian three of ‘no evil’

Signboard at the ashram which said :

Muslims

Hindus

Buddhists

Sikhs

Parsis

Christians

Jews

Build bridges

Not barriers

building bridges with an ashram gardener

23^rd to 27^th Jan : The Crown, and brevity

The Taj Mahal is the ‘Crown of Palaces’, built by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan for his third wife Mumtaz Mahal, who died during the birth of their 14th child.

Ali asked, “Did he build anything for his first and 2^nd wife?”

next to the Taj Mahal

I commented to the immigration official, Mr Kumar, at the Gandhi International airport who ‘processed’ me at departure ,“ I came with these 3 Afghan youth and we feel that Afghanistan urgently needs Gandhi today. There’s little time…life is short, isn’t it?”

Mr Kumar replied, “ I watched  a video ‘Interview with God’, in which God had made 3 observations :

1. When Man is young, he wants to grow up quickly. When he’s old, he wants to stay young forever.
2. In youth, Man spends his life to earn money, and when he’s old, he spends his money to earn his life.
3. In youth, we live as if we’ll never die, and then we die as if we’ve never lived.

new friends from India, Bangladesh, Denmark

We’ve made many friends in India.

Life’s brevity. We’re back in snowy Kabul, where the global 1% elite are negotiating our lives away!

No short cuts. Connect globally. Relate revolutionarily!

Thanks to all who made this trip to India possible!

1. South Asia Peace Alliance http:// http://southasiapeacealliance.weebly.com/

Thanks to Vijay and Rita of South Asia Peace Alliance for inviting, hosting and teaching us!

Vijay ( extreme right ) with us at the Sabarmati Ashram

with Rita

2. Ekta Parishad http://ektaparishad.com/

The team at Bhopal : Aneesh, Lilly, Vinod, Rakash who organized our field visits in Bhopal

Aneesh

Vinod and Lilly

Rakesh

Muntajan in the centre

Paul

Kathrin teaching art to Abdulai

3. Kathy Kelly ( Voices for Creative Non-violence USA http://vcnv.org/ )

and Maya Evans ( Justice not Vengeance UK http://www.j-n-v.org/ )

Maya ( centre ) and Kathy in a boat on Bhopal Lake

4. The Oasis Program facilitators and participants, including teachers and students of Gandhinagar International School

Oasis facilitators and participants

Gandhinagar students

Gandhinagar International School girls

Technorati Tags: Afghan youth and Gandhi, Afghan Youth learn about non violence, Afghan Youth visit India

The Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers

This is a transcript of a conversation between members of the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers and Noam Chomsky, which took place on September 21, 2011. Each question was asked in Dari and translated by Hakim.

Hakim: Thank you, Professor Chomsky, for speaking to us. We are speaking from the highlands of Bamiyan in central Afghanistan, and we wanted to start off by thanking you sincerely for the guidance and wisdom that you have consistently given through your teaching and speeches in many places. We want to start off with a question from Faiz.

Faiz: In an article by Ahmad Rashid in the New York Times recently, he said that “after 10 years, it should be clear that the war in this region cannot be won purely by military force…. Pakistanis desperately need a new narrative… but where is the leadership to tell this story as it should be told? The military gets away with its antiquated thinking because nobody is offering an alternative, and without an alternative, nothing will improve for a long time.” Do you think there is any leadership in the world today that can propose an alternative non-military solution for Afghanistan, and if not, where or from whom would this leadership for an alternative non-military solution come from?

Noam Chomsky: I think it is well understood among the military leadership and also the political leadership in the United States and its allies, that they cannot achieve a military solution of the kind that they want. This is putting aside the question of whether that goal was ever justified; now, put that aside. Just in their terms, they know perfectly well they cannot achieve a military solution.

Is there an alternative political force that could work towards some sort of political settlement? Well, you know, that actually the major force that would be effective in bringing about that aim is popular opinion. The public is already very strongly opposed to the war and has been for a long time, but that has not translated itself into an active, committed, dedicated popular movement that is seeking to change policy. And that’s what has to be done here.

My own feeling is that the most important consequence of the very significant peace efforts that are underway inside Afghanistan might well be to stimulate popular movements in the West through just people to people contact, which would help impose pressures on the United States, and particularly Britain, to end the military phase of this conflict and move towards what ought to be done: peaceful settlement and honest, realistic economic development.

Abdulai: Dr. Ramazon Bashardost told the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers once that the people of Afghanistan have no choice because all available options in Afghanistan are bad. So, Afghans have no choice but to choose the least bad of the bad options. In this situation, some Afghans, and in particular many in Kabul, feel that the least bad option is to have the U.S. coalition forces remain in Afghanistan. Do you think that the continued presence of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan is the least bad option? If not, what are the possible truly good options for ordinary Afghans?

Noam Chomsky: I agree that there don’t appear to be any good options, and that we therefore regrettably have to try to seek the least bad of the bad options. Now, that judgment has to be made by Afghans. You’re on the scene. You’re the people who live with the consequences. You are the people who have the right and responsibility to make these delicate and unfortunate choices. I have my own opinion, but it doesn’t carry any weight. What matters are your opinions.

My opinion is that as long as the military forces are there, now, they will probably increase the tensions and undermine the possibilities for a longer term settlement. I think that’s been the record of the past 10 years largely, and that’s the record in other places as well—in Iraq, for example. So, my feeling is that a phased withdrawal of the kind that’s actually contemplated may well be the least bad of the bad options, but combined with other efforts. It’s not enough to just withdraw troops. There have to be alternatives put in place. One of them, for example, which has repeatedly been recommended, is regional cooperation among the regional powers. That would of course include Pakistan, Iran, India, the countries to the north, all of which, together with Afghan representatives among them, might be able to hammer out a development program that would be meaningful and cooperate in implementing it, shifting the focus of activities from killing to reconstructing and building. But the core of issues are going to have to be settled internal to Afghanistan.

Mohammad Hussein: It has been announced that the foreign forces would leave Afghanistan by 2014, and transfer responsibility for security to Afghans. However, what we have before us appears to be a very deceitful, corrupt situation of the U.S. government signing a Strategic Partnership agreement with the Afghan government to place permanent joint military bases in Afghanistan beyond 2024. It feels as if, to the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, that the withdrawal by 2014 is therefore inconsequential in light of the larger long term plans to keep forces in Afghanistan. Could you comment on this?

Noam Chomsky: I’m quite sure that those expectations are correct. There is very little doubt that the U.S. government intends to maintain effective military control over Afghanistan by one means or another, either through a client state with military bases, and support for what they’ll call Afghan troops. That’s the pattern elsewhere as well. So, for example, after bombing Serbia in 1999, the United States maintains a huge military base in Kosovo, which was the goal of the bombing. In Iraq, they’re still building military bases even though there is rhetoric about leaving the country. And I presume they will do the same in Afghanistan too, which is regarded by the U.S. as of strategic significance in the long term, within the plans of maintaining control of essentially the energy resources and other resources of the region, including western and Central Asia. So this is a piece of ongoing plans which in fact go back to the Second World War.

Right now, the United States is militarily engaged in one form or another in almost a hundred countries, including bases, special forces operations, support for domestic military and security forces. This is a global program of world militarization, essentially tracing back to headquarters in Washington, and Afghanistan is a part of it. It will be up to Afghans to see if, first of all, if they want this; secondly, if they can act in ways which will exclude it. That’s pretty much what’s happening in Iraq. As late as early 2008, the United States was officially insisting that it maintain military bases and be able to carry out combat operations in Iraq, and that the Iraqi government must privilege U.S. investors for the oil and energy system. Well, Iraqi resistance has compelled the United States to withdraw somewhat from that, substantially, in fact. But the efforts will still continue. These are ongoing conflicts based on long standing principles. Any real success in moving towards demilitarization and reconstruction of relations will have to require primarily the commitment of Afghans, but, as well, the cooperative efforts of popular groups of the Western powers to pressure their own governments.

Faiz: After three decades of war and being at the raw end of regional and global military interference in Afghanistan, the people are feeling lost and without hope. People are even losing hope and not confident that the United Nations, whose charter is to remove the scourge of war from all generations, would be able to offer an alternative solution. We have talked with peace groups about the possibility of a blue ribbon or blue scarf team of individuals, perhaps including Nobel Laureates, who could speak out and make a statement about the dire humanitarian situation in Afghanistan, and perhaps throw open a debate to the world about alternatives for ordinary Afghans who are losing all hope. Do you think that there is any possibility of the United Nations stepping in to offer a different narrative in these dire straits? And is there any possibility of an independent peacemaking blue ribbon team of peace builders who can offer a way out?

Noam Chomsky: One has to bear in mind that the United Nations cannot act independently. It can only act as far as the great powers will permit—that means primarily the United States, also Britain, and France, essentially, the Permanent Members of the Security Council—which limit what the United Nations can do. It can act within the constraints that they impose, and the United States is by far the most influential.

So, just to give one indication of that, take a look at the record of vetoes at the Security Council. In the early days of the United Nations, beginning in the late 1940s, U.S. power was so overwhelming in the world that the United Nations was basically an instrument of the United States. As other industrial powers recovered from the war and decolonization began, the United Nations became somewhat more representative of the people of the world. It became less controlled by the United States and the U.S. began vetoing resolutions. The first U.S. veto was in 1965, and since then, the United States is far in the lead vetoing Security Council resolutions, which blocks action. Now, Britain is second, and no one else is even close. And that continues now. There will probably be another U.S. veto next week. That’s in general the case. If the United States refuses to allow something to happen, the United Nations can’t do anything. Other great powers have also some influence, but less. So, the real question is, will the United States and Britain agree to permit actions of the kind that are outlined in the question. And I think that can come about, but again, we’re back to where we were before.

Abdulai: On behalf of the Afghan youth in Bamiyan, as well as those listening in from Kabul, we thank you for your time with us. We wish you well, and the best of health.

Noam Chomsky: Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to talk to you briefly. It’s a real privilege, and I greatly admire the wonderful work that you’re doing.

Technorati Tags: 2014 Afghan withdrawal, Afghan Traditional Loya Jirga, global militarization in Afghanistan, US Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement, US NATO Afghan strategy after 2014