Rula Ghani, the First Christian First Lady of Afghanistan

For the first time in the history of Afghanistan, Rula Ghani, a person with a Christian faith becomes the First Lady of the country. It might not be a big deal elsewhere, but in Afghanistan, home to many Muslim extremists, it is nearly something unimaginable. It is hard to predict how well she will fit into the society, but what is clear is that it marks the starting step of a long walk towards the freedom of religions in Afghanistan.  

Mrs. Ghani’s journey seems to be a very long and an uneasy one because Christians are never welcomed in the country. Afghanistan is a country where Christian converts live in hiding, are being imprisoned and sentenced to death. Stories like those of Said Musa, Josef, Abdul Rahman and more are common in the region.

As the wife of the newly elected president, Rula Ghani also stands to be the first publicly visible wife of an Afghan leader in nearly a century. The last time the president came on stage with the Frist Lady was King Amanullah (1919 - 1929). Although Mrs. Ghani has no intention of drastically upending Afghan social norms, many moderate Afghans are hopeful that she would use her role to strengthen the position of women in Afghan families. 

3 Suggestions for the Next President of Afghanistan

As the 2014 Presidential Election draws closer in Afghanistan, unlike people in other countries, everyone starts talking and giving “political” ideas, like myself. There are good and bad ideas among theml. But you know what? No one listens to any of them. 

So, adding to the millions of other voices unheard and stories unread, here yours truly has three major, but simple and straightforward suggestions for whoever will be the next president of the country:

1-      Any politician aged over 50 should be eliminated from the government. (excluding the president himself for the moment; we got no other choice there for now)

Why?

Well, because their minds are politically dirty. Very dirty! They simply cannot be honest; they cannot forget the years of war. Sitting there without preferring one ethnicity to another or men to women is unimaginable for them. In short, democracy cannot be applied on them; even if you brainwash them. I swear!

2-      The young should be let in.

Why?

Because the old have been examined; they’re expired products. Their brains simply do not function with today’s standards. Testing the same material over and over again for the price of another four-year-disaster is not smart. It is stupid. آزموده را آزمودن خطاست

The young have better education, better mindset, and less discriminative perspective on rebuilding the country. They are more afraid of gunfire; they do not want to hear it. But the old have been used to hearing it all their lives; I bet some of them even miss it and want to hear it again so bad.   

3-      Let women come in.

Why? (If there is any)

To admit that women are as smart as those turban-headed men that destroyed the country; and that they are NOT second class citizens.

I believe Afghan women are more tired of this long-lasting misfortune than men; and they will peacefully do whatsoever it may take to pave this path for better.

I am not a warlord with a turban to send powerful messages, but I think these suggestions unheard, we will have to go through more years of struggle we’ve been experiencing for years, and expect even worse.

                                                                     Just saying!

 

The Reverse Gear - New Law against Women's Rights

Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan has just endorsed an outrageous law that was recommended by the Cleric Council, ‘a group of turbaned-headed men known as Shura-e-Ulama’. The law statement basically goes like ‘men and women shouldn’t mix at school, work, or other everyday situations’.

Who the hell in the world would do that?! It technically means Afghanistan needs to be divided up in two; one half for men and the other half for women. No social interactions? Is it a jungle where only hairy animals ‘bearded men’ can have rights?

In reaction to passing this law, people have reacted in humor and anger. For example one wrote on his Facebook page, ‘we don’t need the televisions anymore, because if the female news caster’s face is to be hidden, we can hear her voice from the radios’ "Girls are only allowed to access Facebook if they are wearing their Burkas!" tweeted another Afghan man. And another humorous comment goes as "We have asked the Facebook administrators to create separate profiles for women. You are not allowed to 'like' or 'poke' someone on Facebook or you will be cursed by the Ulama."

If the law is enacted, this is what will happen 

Some others like me have reacted with anger and violence. For instance, an Afghan girl has told BBC Persian ‘"It is completely disrespectful to women's rights and it undermines our privacy. We won't let them pass this law.".”It means the government is paving the way for the Taliban to control Afghanistan" says another women’s right activist in Kabul. "How dare the religious council decide about our faith?” exclaims another woman.

This is not the only issue with the government these days; there are many other similar ones. I assume one who is familiar with the recent issues, can easily see Afghanistan as a car, no, or a 'track' would be better word, and its turbaned-headed religious drivers speeding the country backward with the speed of 'no cops around anyway'. 

I wish Karzai or any of those turbaned-headed law makers would happen to read this post and answer these questions: first, who the hell is Shura e Ulama to decide about half of the population of the country? And second, why you bearded men are not limiting rights on yourselves? And all of you have wives, how would you live with them happily while you keep on chanting against them? 

Gender and Ethnic Discrimination Confined Female Pilots at Home

While chatting with a Korean friend and talking about their new female president, another friend from India posted this on Facebook "Two Hazara female pilots are being ignored by the government"I clicked the link which led me to the Los Angeles Times and said this:"The two women in their 20s were trained in the U.S. how to fly military helicopters, but in Afghanistan, they have been ignored and put off by the air force."

Reading the story, I found out that these two women had longed to become pilots; so they joined the air forces to actually reach their goals and serve their country as pilots. They go to the U.S, get trained for 18 months, and now are combat qualified, having passed courses in basic war skills and basic combat skills.

But after returning home, no assignment is given to them and so despite having dreams of contributing to their country, they have no choice but to spend their days at home watching TV, cooking, shopping, etc just like housewives.

The main reasons why these two women haven’t been given any assignment are: first; they are women, and second, they are from the ethnic group Hazara, which counts even a bigger reason than the first one.

After I stopped chatting with my Korean friend, I found myself thinking about this quote of Jostein Gaarder I really like "“A state that does not educate and train women is like a man who only trains his right arm.” But to me, it seems that the current Afghan government officials are too dumb to understand it. And in the future, no one knows...

Read the details here on LA Times Click Here

Karzai Renames a University after a Warlord

Students at the Kabul Education University-where I used to attend-are on a protest at governmental announcement renaming the university after a slain former warlord Burhanuddin Rabbani.

B. Rabbani was the former warlord who was assassinated last year. On his first assassination anniversary on Sept 20 2012, President Hamid Karzai has issued a decree renaming the Kabul Education University as University of Burhanuddin Rabbani.

It hasn’t been a week yet since the university is renamed, but the issue has already divided up the students into two groups having aggressive discriminatory arguments every day. Not only the students, but also some professors have started to have conflicts and arguments over the issue and a few have even agreed to submit their resignations.

The students of this university have eventually protested demanding the president to take the decree back and let the university have its original name instead a scary warrior’s portrait and name on the gate of an educational environment. 

The banner reads "We'll continue our classes under the name Education University 

The students said they respected Rabbani as whoever he was, but their university should not be turned into a political discrimination platform. One of the students said “We have suffered long enough when the country was at the hands of the warlords. We want education in peace and no Jihadi discussions in our educational environment”.                                                                                                                                    Holding banners the students warned the government that they will continue to protest until the decree is taken back.

On social networking sites like Facebook, some Afghans have amusingly shown the story in cartoons showing what will eventually happen if Kabul Education University permanently names B. Rabbani’s University.

If the university permanently renames, ...

I wish Karzai would happen to come across this post and answer my question.

Mr. President, what does a warlord’s scary name have to do in an educational environment? There might be sons whose fathers were killed by the person whose picture you have put on their university gate ...

Government Is To Remove 4 Decades from the History Books

     Has your government ever decided to get rid of four eventful decades from your history textbooks? Well, mine has. The Afghan government has decided to eliminate any post-1973 events from the school texts. That is, the country’s new school books simply leave out the last four decades of events: no Soviet involvement, no brutal years of civil war, no rise of the Taliban, no culture heritage destruction, no massacres, no U.S. involvement and no millions of people rescued from the sinking ship of the country in Taliban era and before that. The intention – the hope – is that this know-nothing “de-politicized” approach will lessen tensions by avoiding controversy and division in schools, which since the 1970s have been ideological battlefields. Farooq Wardak, Education Minister simply says ‘it is to encourage brotherhood and unity.’ But people disagree. The absence of modern history in the school books is more likely an indication of irreconcilable divisions in society rather than a portent of national reconciliation.

 Before naming the major events during the past four decades, if we look deeper into the history of Afghanistan that has been transferred from man-to-man-not by the books-a big part of this country’s history has been removed. For instance, unlike what I read few years ago in my school books, I found out that the King Abdul Rahman who is known for some Pashtuns to be the modernizer of Afghanistan,  is actually the killer of 60% of Hazara and Nuristan minorities and a slave dealer. This is removed from the book and forgotten, but just the saying goes ‘history sometimes repeats’, it actually did. One and half decades ago, the Taliban wanted to ‘modernize’ the country more, they massacred the minorities in Afshar, Mazar and …’unaware that history has witnessed that once’

Now, these are some of the major highlighted parts of our history that lie in the past four decades. Russian invasions and how it happened, ‘English invasion is also enlightened here’, the years of civil war that left millions dead and thrown out of the country, homeless, uneducated, disabled, drug addicts, jobless and family less. Warlords that the destroyed cultural heritages that Afghans were proud of, massacred minorities, and the reason why it all has happened and by whom.

Just by looking at every single event that left disasters, wouldn’t it be better to literally let the next generation know the real face of all this misfortunean that let the country up to this point, and learn lessons from it? Or it is just okay if they blindly ignore the facts and remove the history? ..so that the next generation will interpret the history differently as they hear from individuals, and repeat the history just like Taliban did many years after Abdul Rahman.

I like the idea of brining brotherhood. But I never agree that it can be brought the way the government has blindly chosen now. In fact, in this government, there is a scarcity of knowledge and education which is why disasters happen over and over again; criminals like King Adbul Rahman, Taliban and… are not held accountable for their crimes and yet their history removed. Now knowing the disasters left from the last four decades, especially from the Second King Abdul Rahman ‘Taliban’, if we let the history get removed again, there will be Third Abdul Rahmans ‘modernizing’ Afghanistan again just like the Second and First ones did. In other words, removing the history doesn’t change anything. Just like a donkey is still a donkey, no matter what color his saddle is, a criminal is a criminal through any sort of intention of purposely harming others. Instead, the government should literally use the history as a mirror of the past and a light for the future. Officially punishing the criminals and publicly apologizing the victims can lessen tension of hatred but not removal of the history.

Afghanistan in 210th Decade

[For the past two years or so that I’ve been meeting foreigners, especially Americans, the question they usually asked me was about the U.S troops in Afghanistan and basically what Afghans think of Americans being in the country. This is a short not that answers both the above and the question that what will happen when the foreign troops eventually leave Afghanistan.]

9/11 is a highlighted date throughout the world. Following it, the immediate action the U.S took ‘invasion of Afghanistan’ is also clear for many, but it’s interpreted differently across the countries. Unlike foreigners, Afghans have more positive interpretation of the presence of U.S and International Security Assistance Forces ‘ISAF’ in the country. People throughout the country-except some in the south and east- are happy with the current situation ‘invaded Afghanistan’ in contrast with Afghanistan before 2001. In central parts, in particular, having the international community on the ground, people are more optimistically working towards a better Afghanistan. And the voices that randomly rise up from here and there are only from the remaining of Taliban at certain areas and their in-the-government extremists who want the U.S troops to leave the country so that the Taliban can come back. They don’t happen as frequently, YET not to be underestimated while making decisions for the Afghanistan after 2014. 

     Despite their failures, Americans and ISAF have had their significant success in Afghanistan so far. For instance; the booming trend of education, security, agriculture, stability, women’s rights in particular, etc throughout the country in post-Taliban era by far are specifically worth to speak of, especially when it comes to central provinces. It doesn’t mean that the government pays more attention the central parts, but rather cooperativeness of the residents with the government and foreign donors matters. All has happened since 2001 invasion which to most foreigners seemed like the ones Russians and English did to Afghanistan decades ago.

     After the invasion, people have cooperated with the ISAF and government in bringing the long-lost peace and stability back in the country. For instance, for a female, being the governor of a province for the first time in the history of a men-oriented country is not an easy task, but with the cooperation of people, Dr. Habiba Sarabi has been able to govern Bamyan relatively better than her counterparts in other parts of the country. The head of Human Right Commission in Afghanistan-where human rights had never been observed before- is run successfully by a female. This might be shocking to some, but in pre-9/11, Afghan females were forbidden from going to school and they were forced to be head-to-toe covered up with Chadars that made them look like penguins, all in blue popping up in the streets trying to walk. But now, surprisingly, about 30% of the parliament seats are owned by female MPs. Under the possibilities provided, women are unquenchably encouraged to get good education and have part in the government. Thus, the number of female school and college goers has increased significantly since 2001. However, Schools are still functioning with the least facility they have due to lack of attention from the government. In spite of all those shortcomings, one can easily witness the very enthusiasm amongst the attendees of those least-facilitated schools that give out an ongoing sense of hope for the future of the country. It all has been happening since 2001 Invasion.

     Now the question to be answered is that why some of those in the south and south-west are not content with the presence of the U.S and other foreign donors in the country. Well, the fact that Afghanistan is a multi-ethnical country makes this question easier. The central part is home for the Hazaras, who as minorities have always been marginalized and massacred in silence ‘examples are; Afshar Operation or Afshar Massacre, Taliban Massacre in Mazar e Sharif’ are happy with the current situation, though they are still deprived of governmental development projects.  

     North is home for Tajiks, who unlike before, after the invasion haven’t really raised voice of violence and trouble, yet lost some of the men in the government; and Uzbeks, who are also ignored as minorities.

Remains the south, the longest border with Pakistan- where majority Pashtuns live, the largest ethnic group in the country. The Taliban were/are from this group and the reason why the government is stuck in these areas is because the remaining Taliban to be dealt with reside there. In other words, threats, explosions, suicide-attacks, extremism, strong ties with Pakistani militants, and so forth…All come from this area. And this is also where the voices rise wanting the U.S and ISAF troops to leave the country.

     Keeping in mind that the U.S. and ISAF have had their mentioned success, Afghan government in agreement with the U.S. have decided to let the foreign troops leave the country by 2014 and responsibilities to be handed over to the Afghan police. To prepare for that, a negotiation process is going on with the Taliban these days. But that is just woefully INADEQUATE! If they are to actually leave in 2014, their a-decade effort and success will add up to zero and the remaining Taliban with the support of Pakistan and their Arab fellows; sooner or later will drag the country back towards the Afghanistan before 2001.

     If the United States, ISAF and NATO have any hope of a successful outcome in Afghanistan, these shaky steps that are recently being taken to launch peace negotiations or whatsoever, must be reinforced by these few policy thrusts. First, they should reconsider; basically postpone the withdrawal date of their troops. Second, by the time they leave, there should be no more ties with the Pakistani militants and that the Terrorist sanctuaries in Pakistan that interfere in Afghanistan must be dismantled. Third, they should make sure that the Afghan police are ready enough to undertake the security of their country.