It's hard to understand war

by Douglas Mackey

Dear god, I am crying.

Help me understand how we as human beings can continue to create so much pain? Nine more children are killed while collecting wood in Kunar Province, Afghanistan.

I confess I am not one that believes that it just has to be this way. “People kill people, just accept it” is not a welcome concept in my mind. My heart cannot bear to hear it.

Eight years ago today, I stood frozen – in shock – beyond awe-struck. I did not know we were capable of strategically misleading the world; nor that we would be missing what it takes morally to implement a war on terror that would kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

This is very sad stuff to most of us. Most Americans believe it was wrong for us to have attacked and occupied Iraq. And now, most believe the same is true about Afghanistan.

Mental health professionals tell us that the grieving process includes that initial shock; and then denial has a role to play before we move on to acceptance. We don’t want to accept our role in it – in these wars.

Out of all of this, though, we have received a gift. A couple of years ago a group of youths in Afghanistan began asking us to listen to their story. They lost their fathers, grandfathers and uncles when Taliban moved through their towns. Yet they are not seeking revenge. They have forgiven those who killed their family members. They have seen how acting out of vengeance became a cycle. And now they just keep asking more people to listen.

The people of Olympia were among the first to join the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers (AYPVs) and widen the circle of listening. Five dozen students at Olympia High School talked with them in November 2009, and several dozen schools around the world have since followed. All of these listeners have talked to others, who now listen regularly. The listening circles grew into full days of listening on the International Day of Peace, last Sept. 21.

Inspired by the AYPVs the Fellowship of Reconciliation (Olympia & USA) and other inter-faith communities spread the word and now hundreds of people participate in Global Days of Listening held each equinox and solstice.

Inspired further by the Egyptians’ use of electronic media, the group now live-streams the conversation for everyone to hear. Conference call-in numbers make it possible for anyone to call in and respond to what they have been hearing.

This spring equinox Global Day of Listening is dedicated to hearing their wish to “live without wars.” 24 people from the U.S. are now in Kabul, Afghanistan to stand in solidarity with the AYPVs.

All people are invited to join the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers and the Global Day of Listening today through Sunday in Heritage Park. A peace walk will be held today at 11 am in Olympia just as they are walking in Kabul for peace this March 19. Come talk and listen via the teleconference setup in the tent to those in Iraq, Egypt, Palestine, Israel, Afghanistan and others around world. The conversation can also be heard online at livestream.com/thepeoplesjourney.

So, I thank you God for helping us listen. The religions of the world, all of them, have their version of the Golden Rule – do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Help us remember this. And this time, please speak up so that all of us can hear.

Thank you god, for ... “listening.”

Douglas Mackey helps coordinate the Global Day of Listening with the Fellowship of Reconciliation. For more information visit globaldayoflistening.org and livewithoutwars.org. He can be reached through globaldayoflistening@gmail.com.

This column originally appeared in The Olympian on Saturday, March 19: http://www.theolympian.com/2011/03/19/1584797/its-hard-to-understand-war.html#storylink=misearch#ixzz1HXMRK5b5

“One Blue Sky Above Us”

by Kathy Kelly

March 18, 2011

Kabul—Before coming to Afghanistan, I spent a week with students and teachers from a Colorado College nonviolence class who invited me to join them for their retreat near Crestone, Colorado, in an area of the Rocky Mountains described as one of the ten most peaceful places on earth.  Coyotes, woodpeckers, and songbirds were easily audible.  We reveled in the quiet beauty of an area that is home to 23 spiritual groups, all of whom prize the valley they share as a sacred space. 

The area is also home to Canon Air Force Base, Fort Carson and several other military installations.  Before leaving Colorado, I visited the U.S. Air Force Academy’s chapel, one of the state’s largest tourist attractions.  Pasted on the back of every hymnal in the pews of the Protestant chapel is a prayer that reads, in part, “Make me a channel of your peace that I may defend the skies which canopy free nations.”  Ironically, some Coloradans are petitioning the state government to stop the Air Force military flights over their peaceful valleys, and ranchers are likewise insisting that their land shouldn’t be used for combat training.  The U.S. military greatly disturbs the fragile ecosystems that are important for ranchers and spiritualists alike.

Peace activists with a long history of opposing war preparations, in Colorado Springs, are protesting a USAF plan to acquire a new Combat Aviation Brigade, consisting of 120 helicopter gunships.  Of all the airborne vehicles in the U.S. military’s arsenals, the attack helicopters create the most harm to the environment, guzzling fuel and spewing out contaminants.  To accommodate training operations, 16 landing pads have already been carved out in the mountains surrounding Colorado Springs and Crestone, CO. Two thousand Joint Special Operation Forces (JSOF))are also in these mountains, training for work in rugged winter conditions.  Their activities include organizing and carrying out night raids, assassinations and death squads.

The 120 attack helicopters are requisitioned for use in Afghanistan.  It seems likely that the JSO force s are also training for deployment to Afghanistan.

The Washington Post recently reported  that 75% of the U.S. public supports a drawdown of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.  On March 12^th, Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai, extending condolences to families of nine children gunned down by a U.S. attack helicopter, expressly asked that the U.S. end operations in Afghanistan.  The Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers have carefully documented NGOs in Afghanistan with a long history of humanitarian work who have rebuked the U.S. and NATO forces for human rights abuses and for killing civilians.

The most recent attack against Afghan children happened on March 15^th, when two children helping their parents clean out irrigations systems were killed by an aerial attack.  On the day following the March 1, 2011 attack that killed nine children who were collecting wood on a mountain side, General Petraeus apologized to the families.  But, the U.S. has yet to acknowledge the deaths and injuries inflicted on civilians in February, 2011, when, according to President Hamid Karzai’s official report, at least 65 civilians were killed by a U.S. assault.  Instead, General Petraeus utterly shocked people in President Hamid Karzai’s presidential palace, on February 19^th, 2011, when he suggested that injured children might have been burned by their own parents as a measure of discipline.  A month earlier, on January 19^th, General Petraeus had remarked that “we have our teeth in the jugular,” referring to Afghanistan, and the U.S. isn’t going to quit now.

Testifying before the U.S. congress, in mid-March, General Petraeus spoke of the fragile and reversible gains the U.S. has made in Afghanistan.  He asks the U.S. people not to undermine the “progress” the U.S. war is achieving.  We’re urged to treat the military with kid gloves, to handle with care their fragile progress, and not to dwell, unpatriotically, on the war crimes that massacre children. 

Twenty seven international peace activists, most of them from the United States, have come to Kabul to hear youngsters whom they’ve begun to regard as brothers and sisters speak about their experiences living in a country ravaged by warfare for the past three decades. 

Last evening, they showed us photos of an unusual walk they’d held in the streets of downtown Kabul that morning.  Dressed in white, with the young women wearing sky blue veils and the young men in the same color neck scarves, the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers carried sky blue and white banners proclaiming that Peace is a Pre-Requisite for Progress. They are seeking an end to wars in their country.  “Why did you choose sky blue?” I asked.  “Because it shows that there is just one sky over all of us,” Chahara replied.  Although they came from different ethnicities and various provinces, they walked shoulder to shoulder, 40 of them, on a bright, warm day.

I’m guessing that many people in Colorado’s Air Force Academy chapel feel calmed and pleasantly righteous when they read the prayer posted on the back of the hymnal.  “Make me a channel of your peace,” the prayer begins. The line comes from the St. Francis Peace Prayer which prays for the ability to sow love rather than hatred.  The Air Force prayer seeks, instead, to be involved in “defending skies that canopy free lands.”  

Rather than invoke the false image of separated skies that distinguish between those who have a right to live and those who live in lands where they can’t escape our terrifying helicopter gunships, drones, night raids, and death squads,  we do well to hear Pete Seeger crooning 

“One blue sky above us, one ocean lapping at our shores, …”

And take a look at youngsters in Kabul, wearing sky blue, who even believe in love of enemy.

On March 19^th, in Kabul, Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers will hold a candlelight commemoration, remembering the children recently killed in Afghanistan.  Following  this ceremony they will plant saplings as a symbol of their dedication to a nonviolent future. Their compassion extends beyond Afghanistan to young people in other lands, some of whom they will connect with through a “Global Day of Listening,”  a 24 hour Skype communication which they’ll host on the first day of spring, Afghanistan’s “Nau Roz” (New Year’s Day) holiday.  Colorado College students, on their spring break, plan to participate (see:  www.livewithoutwars.org and www.ourjourneytosmile.com  or email globaldayoflistening@gmail.com  to arrange participation for yourself and/or your community.

Kathy Kelly  (Kathy@vcnv.org) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence, www.vcnv.org 

Incalculable

Kathy Kelly (third from left) with Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers

by Kathy Kelly

Recent polls suggest that while a majority of U.S. people disapprove of the war in Afghanistan, many on grounds of its horrible economic cost, only 3% took the war into account when voting in the 2010 midterm elections. The issue of the economy weighed heavily on voters, but the war and its cost, though clear to them and clearly related to the economy in their thinking, was a far less pressing concern.

U.S. people, if they do read or hear of it, may be shocked at the apparent unconcern of the crews of two U.S. helicopter gunships, which attacked and killed nine children on a mountainside in Afghanistan’s Kunar province, shooting them “one after another” this past Tuesday March 1st. (“The helicopters hovered over us, scanned us and we saw a green flash from the helicopters. Then they flew back high up, and in a second round they hovered over us and started shooting.” (NYT 3/2/11)).

Four of the boys were seven years old; three were eight, one was nine and the oldest was twelve. “The children were gathering wood under a tree in the mountains near a village in the district,” said Noorullah Noori, a member of the local development council in Manogai district. “I myself was involved in the burial,” Noori said. “Yesterday we buried them.” (AP, March 2, 2011) General Petraeus has acknowledged, and apologized for, the tragedy.

He has had many tragedies to apologize for just counting Kunar province alone. Last August 26th, in the Manogai district, Afghan authorities accused international forces of killing six children during an air assault on Taliban positions. Provincial police chief Khalilullah Ziayee said a group of children were collecting scrap metal on the mountain when NATO aircraft dropped bombs to disperse Taliban fighters attacking a nearby base. “In the bombardment six children, aged six to 12, were killed,” the police commander said. “Another child was injured.”

In the Bamiyan province of Afghanistan, Zekirullah, a young Afghan friend of mine, age 15, rises at 2:00 a.m. several mornings each week and rides his donkey for six hours through the pre-dawn to reach a mountainside where he can collect scrub brush and twigs which he loads on the donkey in baskets. Then he heads home and stacks the wood - on top of his family’s home – to be taken down later and burned for heat. They don’t have electrical appliances to heat the home, and even if they did the villagers only get electricity for two hours a day, generally between 1:00 a.m. – 3:00 a.m. Families rely on their children to collect fuel for heat during the harsh winters and for cooking year round. Young laborers, wanting to help their families survive, mean no harm to the United States. They’re not surging at us, or anywhere: they’re not insurgents. They’re not doing anything to threaten us. They are children, and children anywhere are like children everywhere: they’re children like our own.

Sadly, more and more of us in America are getting used to the idea of child poverty – and even child labor - as our own economy sinks further under the burden of our latest nine years of war, of two billion dollars per week we spend creating poverty abroad that we can then emulate at home. Things are getting bad here, but in Afghanistan, children are bombed. Their bodies are casually dismembered and strewn by machines already lost in the horizon as the limbs settle. They lie in pools of blood until family members realize, one by one, that their children are not late in returning home but in fact never will.

In October and again in December of 2010, our small delegation of Voices for Creative Nonviolence activists met with a large family living in a wretched refugee camp. They had fled their homes in the San Gin district of the Helmand Province after a drone attack killed a mother there and her five children. The woman’s husband showed us photos of his children’s bloodied corpses. His niece, Juma Gul, age 9, had survived the attack. She and I huddled next to each other inside a hut made of mud on a chilly December morning. Juma Gul’s father stooped in front of us and gently unzipped her jacket, showing me that his daughter’s arm had been amputated by shrapnel when the U.S. missile hit their home in San Gin.

Next to Juma Gul was her brother, whose leg had been mangled in the attack. He apparently has no access to adequate medical care and experiences constant pain. The pilot of the attacking drone, perhaps controlling it from as far away as Creech Air Force Base here in the United States, knows nothing of this family or of the pain that he or she helped inflict. Nor do the commanders, the people who set up the base, the people who pay for it with their taxes, and the people who persist in electing candidates intent on indefinitely prolonging the war.

But sometimes the war is like it was this past Tuesday March 1st. Sometimes the issue is right in front of us – as it was to those helicopter crews - it’s up close so there can be no mistake as to what we are doing. According to the election polls we see the cost of war, dimly, but, as with the helicopter crews, it doesn’t affect - or prevent - our decisions. Afterwards we deplore the tragedy; we make a pretense of acknowledging the cost of war, but it is incalculable. We can’t hope to count it. We actually, finally, have to stop making people like the nine children who died on March 1st, pay it.

Kathy Kelly (Kathy@vcnv.org) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence www.vcnv.org and has worked closely with the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers www.livewithoutwars.org

Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers Interview Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky


This is a transcript of an interview that took place in December.

Prof. Chomsky: Hello, good to talk to you.

Hakim: Thank you for taking the time off to talk to us. We know you have a busy schedule, so I’ll just ask one of the boys to ask the first question.

Abdulai: My name is Abdulai.

Hakim: Abdulai is asking on behalf of the youth this question: Obama had announced in his diagnostic December review that the U.S. is making significant progress in Afghanistan. Could you please comment on this review being a ‘diagnostic’ review rather than a real, evaluative review? Of facts on the ground, for example, — facts about health, education, food security, water security, electricity

Prof. Chomsky: Well of course you know vastly more about what’s happening in Afghanistan than I do. I only know from secondary sources but it’s worth noting that a few days ago the ICRC released a report which is extremely unusual for them, -they rarely do it,- in which they said that the situation on the ground has deteriorated radically. They gave particulars and said it’s now far worse than it’s been in the past. They’re actually working there and have experience. Plainly that’s not consistent with the picture of progress.

Hakim: Thank you. We are aware of the ICRC report that the situation is the worst over the past 30 years. Among the ordinary people of Afghanistan, we know on the ground that in all the various sectors of development the systems are near collapse. It is unusual that Obama should be calling this significant progress. For example in health we have one of the worst indexes of maternal mortality in the world. We have the worst food security in the world. More than 50% of the people of Afghanistan do not have clean water. Education, though touted as one of the areas of success, is riddled with corruption and the lack of trained and qualified teachers. And in areas where it’s insecure, women and girls and children in general do not have the opportunity to go to school.

Thank you for reminding us of the ICRC report.

Hakim: Mohammad Jan says thank you and we are really happy to have this opportunity to ask you questions and consult with you. 


Mohammad Jan: The opinion of experts in intelligence agencies, particularly the NIE, humanitarian agencies across the board and world public opinion assessed through various polls clearly opposes the notion that the U.S. is making progress. For example, a recent ABC Washington Post poll shows 60% of Americans are not in favor of the war. Hillary Clinton announced that the government does not make decisions based on polls but in the interests of the country. How do we as the youth and the people of Afghanistan and of the world bridge this disconnect between commentaries that have swung against the war to turn this opposition into practical action?

Prof. Chomsky: We have to do it in different ways. What you can do in Afghanistan and what we can do here is of course different but we ought to do it in parallel and in mutual support and solidarity that depends on finding common goals. I know for me at least and the people I work with in the antiwar movement the goal for Afghanistan would be for Afghans themselves to take over the planning, the determination of what will happen ,so that there won’t be a review conference in Washington where they have their own goals, —the welfare of the people of Afghanistan is not high among them,— but rather the decisions will be made by people like you and others in Afghanistan who have the fate of your country and your lives at heart and people of the US here should support your efforts in whatever way we can.

Hakim: Thank you, Prof Noam. This morning we had a conversation with a 50 year old Afghan man who talked about how all decisions in this country are made by the United States —that is, decisions definitely are not made by the people perhaps decisions are not even made by the people of America. Certainly we are very keen on and interested in self determination.

Prof. Chomsky: It’s certainly true that decisions are made in Washington, not in the villages of Afghanistan, and it’s also correct, as the man said, that decisions are not made by the people of the United States. To a limited extent popular opinion influences decisions that are made in Washington. But there is extensive study that demonstrates that there is a very wide gap between the decisions of the government and the will of the population. That’s true on domestic issues. It’s true on international issues and it reflects the fact that though the U.S. is an unusually free country by comparative standards, it’s only in a very limited way a functioning democracy.

Power does not lie in the hands of the population except in a very limited way and popular opinion does not determine policy. And that’s in fact one of the reasons why there’s such hysteria over the leaks of government documents. Anyone who has studied secret documents for many years as I have knows one of their main purposes is to protect the government from the population, not security, but just keeping the public controlled and obedient. That’s a battle that has to be constantly fought in the more free societies as well to try to overcome this dysfunctional element of formal democracy which keeps it from functioning properly.

Popular movements have in the past and should in this case too integrate themselves with those of other countries and form a common force, often against their own governments. That was true for example in the case of the Viet Nam war and in the case of Washington’s wars in central America in the 1980s the war in Iraq and in this case too. There should be common bonds among the peoples of the countries often in opposition to the decisions of the governments which reflect other concerns and other concentrations of power.

Hakim: Thank you. Ghulamai is our third youth who is going to ask you a question.

Ghulamai: What should Afghan people be asking for? Should they be seeking reparations?

Hakim: Prof.Chomsky, his voice sounds very young and he is very young. He’s in the fifth grade and we have talked about these questions way before speaking to you this evening and he’s asking, in the light of what we’ve just said that government’s policies are not in the hands of the people and that people should come together in common goals in the popular movement, what should the people of Afghanistan be asking for in making requests or demands of governments of the world, should they be asking for reparations for the war?

Prof. Chomsky: Oh that’s quite important. Afghanistan has a very dramatic, important history of independence, but for the last thirty years it has simply been a plaything of the great powers which have virtually destroyed it. All of them. All of the ones who were involved owe Afghanistan not aid but reparations. Apology and reparations. That includes Russia, of course, and certainly the United States and it also includes Pakistan.They have played a miserable role in destroying Afghanistan and should be responsible for doing whatever they can to help the Afghan people overcome the consequences of these interventions and atrocities. Again I stress that doesn’t mean aid , that means reparations.

Aid sounds like something we give out of our good nature or good will. Reparations means what we are responsible for providing because of the extreme damage we have caused. And yes, that’s a very important demand. It should be made here and should be made in Afghanistan. And not just on this case. The United States for example owes massive reparations to Iraq for having virtually destroyed the county in the last few years to Indochina for having killed many millions of people having destroyed the country. The same is true of other great powers. We can go back hundreds of years with the record of crimes and atrocities on the part of the powerful states, primarily Europe and its offshoots but the United States. There’s a tremendous burden to be met if our own countries the rich countries can become civilized enough to face these realities. That’s a hard task.

Hakim : Thank you very much for those words. We have Lala who will ask the next question.Lala is the farmer on our team and he reflects the peasant wisdom of the world by asking this question.

Lala: The U.S. is constructing a narrative of success. Are they doing this so they can eventually leave gracefully or do you think they are constructing a narrative of success so that they can stay permanently?

Prof. Chomsky: Well the United States— we have to bear in mind that the U.S. government like other governments and other states is not dedicated to serving the interests of the people of the countries where it intervenes or attacks or interferes. In fact, it’s not even dedicated to the welfare of its own population. It’s dedicated to the policies of the states, and this has been understood for centuries, states are controlled by concentrations of power within the domestic society and those are the interests that are pursued.

In the case of Afghanistan, the U.S. government and other sectors of concentrated power and capital in the United States- they do have interests, for example they are very interested and have been for decades in their TAPI pipeline plan, a plan to get natural gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India which would go through Afghanistan and which would undercut reliance of the South Asian states on Iran. The United States is trying to isolate and change the regime in Iran. So that’s a longstanding interest. Nevertheless I think that at this point when the U.S. government defines success it means not success for the people of Afghanistan or Vietnam or Nicaragua or whatever but success for the interest that it is pursuing.

At this point, I think it’s not unlikely that even just for domestic, political reasons, the U.S. will try to find a way to withdraw most of its forces and try to portray it as some kind a victory.
That’s for domestic reasons. But, I don’t think that’s what should concern us. We’re not concerned with making officials in Washington look good to their associates. We should be concerned with what matters for the people of Afghanistan. And that’s of course for you and others like you to decide. Success, I would understand as meaning success in achieving your aims, not Washington’s aims.

Hakim: Thank you for those empowering words. We have one last question from Ali.

Ali: What do you think Afghan peace activists should focus on, given your experience with activists in other countries in conflict?

Prof. Chomsky: What Afghans should focus on is finding ways to join together to formulate their own ideas and plans as to the course of policy, internal to Afghanistan, and their demands on other countries that are engaged in Afghanistan. That means primarily the US but also others that are involved.

Afghans should formulate those goals and policies and jointly with people in the rest of the world in particular in the United States that work to support those plans, so the activists in the United States should be and to an extent are waiting to hear from people of Afghanistan.What do you want us to do? We’re not going to tell you what to do. You know that better than we do.Much better than I do. I would like to know what you want us to do to support, to pursue here, your own goals for the future of Afghanistan.

Hakim: Thank you so much for that. We will certainly work on this to deliver clear statements on what the people of Afghanistan would like activists everywhere to do to work together with us to bring peace to the people of Afghanistan.

I would like to open this time up for any last question before we end our time with Prof Noam.

Doug: Prof. Chomsky, on the line is also a leader of Afghans for Peace. She now lives in the United States, Fatima Mojadiddy. Fatima: It’s an honor to speak with you. First of all we don’t have leaders in our group, we have collective consensus inspired by anarchist values.

Prof. Chomsky: Glad to hear that

Fatima: For Afghans it’s very new. We all work together. We vote members in or out, not out, but in so far. Afghans for Peace is the first Afghan led peace movement. I’ve been with the antiwar movement for the last nine to ten years. It’s really hard to find Afghan voices to oppose the war. A lot of Afghans even today support the war, due to the powerful war machinery, the war propaganda machinery. Some of the concerns are very legitimate, the fear of, you know, the Taliban taking over again but the reality is that Taliban have taken over and my fear is that the US will quote, unquote negotiate with the Taliban and once again place another oppressive regime that’s not representative of the people and then say that they’ve left. And I don’t think they’ll basically ever leave. I mean they’re still I Iraq. When they say they leave what does that really mean? They changed the name but it’s still an occupation.It will be interesting to see how it unfolds. Give us advice on what we can do as far as actions. Being Afghans, we have members in Afghanistan too… But the ones that are in the west the ones that have some privileges here, like,what can we do? I really don’t believe in our political systems. I really don’t think that writing letters to Congress can change anything, but will it have an effect? Should we try that route too? What is your advice? Like, what kind of actions can we…I don’t know if we can change US policy. I hope that we can. I dream that we can.

Prof. Chomsky: I wouldn’t feel pessimistic about that. In the United States and western countries popular movement have over time have had a significant effect on compelling governments to act in different ways. Take the war in Iraq. It’s the first time in the history of western imperialism that there was massive popular protest against the war before it was officially launched. And that had an effect. I mean the attack on Iraq was devastating enough, but it didn’t even come close to the U.S.invasion of Viet Nam. At that time there was almost no protest and the attack was far more severe and vicious. I won’t go into the details but it was just a totally different scale. Finally protest developed, and that did put limits on it. Well, in the case of Iraq the protest even in advance limited the extent of the attack to a significant degree, a degree which made it possible for Iraqis to reconstruct something from the carnage and maybe to move on to build a decent society. So, popular movements do matter. I think what you can do as Afghans here is try to bring to people in the United States, whether it’s in somebody’s living room or in a meeting or in a demonstration or in an appeal to Congress or whatever it is - try to get an understanding of what Afghans want so that success will be understood in a very different way. Success shouldn’t be understood here as a means whereby President Obama could be re-elected, but rather success should mean: “Have we achieved the goals that Afghans seek for themselves?” I agree with you that there shouldn’t be U.S. negotiations with the Taliban, but Afghans are going to have to negotiate among themselves and work things out among themselves. And the popular movements here can do nothing more than support them in those efforts.

You as Afghans have a unique possibility of bringing to people in the United States the views of people in Afghanistan themselves which they don’t hear otherwise.

Doug: Perhaps this is a good time Fatima to mention the Global Day of Listening to Afghans.

Fatima: The Global Day of Listening to Afghans is something that was created by Voices for Creative Nonviolence.

Doug: It’s been a team effort. If you could call anytime during the 24 hours that would be great. We’re streaming it live. Many different groups are going to be calling Afghan youth volunteers and some of the other activists that have traveled there like Kathy Kelly. Others have traveled from all over to come there and the youth from Bamiyan have come all the way down to Kabul.

People will be calling and sharing their thoughts in a Global Day of Listening to the Afghan people and what they want.

Prof. Chomsky: That’s a very important initiative and I certainly hope that it gains extensive outreach.

Doug: In Afghanistan, in Kabul, including Kathy Kelly, perhaps Hakim or Kathy you can mention the others that will be there.

Kathy: We look forward to welcoming Mike Ferner, the president of Veterans for Peace and Col. Ann Wright. Mike will just have been released from jail and with the Washington DC protest yesterday and Ann Wright started a US Embassy here in 2001 and resigned in protest of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. We’ll also be joined by several other groups here in Afghanistan. This technology is a bit new to all of us. We’re hoping that people from all around the world will be listening, including friends in Iraq and in Palestine and Gaza. I’ve had the privilege of listening to the boys talk to people in Gaza before and there is a great deal of similar goals that they share.

Prof. Chomsky: These are important steps toward creating a really international movement of solidarity with oppressed and suffering people particularly those under occupation who are suffering the most.

Hakim: Thank you so much Professor Noam for taking so much time off to speak with us. I would like get the boys to send you greetings of peace in saying goodbye. We wish you all the best in all that you do. Thank you for all that you do.

Prof. Chomsky: It was a real privilege. Thank you.

Hakim: That was Mohammad Jan on behalf of the boys. Thank you for your work and for speaking to us.

This Is not a Place for Life

by Mike Ferner

KABUL – The NGO’s offices were sparse and well worn, but they bustled with a palpable sense of purpose. Our host’s hospitality was unerring. For reasons that will become obvious, we will call him Dr. Ahmed Hasan. Everything else about him and his work is precisely as related.

Dr. Hasan is director of operations for an international Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) providing relief for “Internally Displaced Persons,” (IDPs) or refugees as they were once called. He said he coordinates an agriculture and livestock project, midwifery services, immunizations, women’s empowerment, women’s shelters and a “weatherization” program that consists primarily of distributing firewood and small, tin heating stoves to people living in mud huts that have blankets for doors.

Since 2002, shortly after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the good doctor and his staff have pushed this boulder of aid programs uphill. With each influx of refugees from each new military operation it rolls back down.

The doctor describes one of the three camps in his charge, housing about 1,000 families averaging 7 to 8 people each. The weatherization process provides each family a firewood ration of 120 kilos per month, during the coldest months of the year only. This equals about 10 pounds of wood per day per family for all cooking and heating.

Beyond the director’s responsibilities, five more large IDP camps and several smaller ones “house” about 10,000 families, in and around Kabul.

Most people living in Hasan’s camp came originally from Pakistan, disrupted by the violence of U.S./NATO campaigns waged against the complex web of groups lumped into “the opposition.” Residents in other camps came directly from the southern and eastern provinces of Afghanistan.

The site is on land previously owned by the Ministry of Defense and allegedly purchased by an Afghan National Army officer whom Hasan says claims authority to remove the families whenever he wants.

Water for these 7,000 people comes from two hand pumps and what UNICEF can truck in. The assumed owner of the land does not allow any drilling for water.

Most of the people in the camp have nothing left back home and don’t want to return, Hasan explained. What’s needed, he said, is to create a plan to improve their lives, including housing, education, jobs, water and sewer. “It is not sustainable to have them stay in their present conditions, surviving on food drop-offs. They need the other services to be able to work.”

Asked who is responsible for the refugees’ desperate situation Dr. Hasan replied, “The United States, Afghanistan, the Taliban and the militias should all be held responsible.”

“The U.S. tells the people, ‘We are bringing security.’ The Taliban tell the people, ‘We are bringing security.’ The problem is that no one is bringing security. If they keep fighting only, everywhere there will be IDP’s.”

“U.S. is responsible even more than the Taliban,” because of its advanced weaponry, numerous air strikes and the large number of nighttime house raids U.S. troops routinely carry out, he added. “I hoped to see things return to peace with the intervention of the U.S. but unfortunately it’s getting worse.”

In response to the escalating violence, Hasan’s agency joined 28 other NGO’s in signing an Oxfam International report titled, “Nowhere to Turn: The failure to protect civilians in Afghanistan.” While acknowledging that “AOG (Armed Opposition Groups) continue to be responsible for the great majority of casualties,” the report also condemned U.S.-NATO night raids and the U.S. practices of arming militia groups and ignoring regulations established to clearly separate humanitarian aid from the military.

In order to “win hearts and minds,” a core principle of counter-insurgency warfare, ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) troops often take a “carrot and stick” approach of mixing military and aid programs. To highlight the problems caused by this practice, the Oxfam report referred to a document adopted by ISAF and the U.N., Guidelines for the Interaction of Civilian and Military Actors in Afghanistan.

That document repeatedly stressed that the line between aid and military operations is not to be blurred, even elevating that dictum to one of its “Guiding Principles.”

“A clear distinction must be retained between the identities, functions and roles of the different entities in order to preserve the humanitarian actors’ neutrality. The independence and civilian nature of humanitarian assistance should be clear at all times (importance of the perception by the population/uniform – vehicles – etc.)…only in exceptional circumstances and as a last resort, military assets…may be deployed for the purpose of providing humanitarian assistance.” (Emphasis in original)

Even in the case of the Provisional Reconstruction Teams (PRT), the Guidelines state that “…humanitarian assistance has to be provided only ‘in extremis’ and must not be used for the purpose of political gain, relationship-building or winning hearts and minds.” (Emphasis in original)

“Unfortunately,” the Oxfam report stated, “this distinction has been severely blurred to the point of being unrecognizable to many Afghans, including AOG. …(T)he use of soldiers and heavily protected contractors to implement PRT and other reconstruction and development projects, particularly those which serve counterinsurgency objectives, has also blurred the line between aid agencies and the military.”

Dr. Hasan added, “To those, like the U.S., who say that an area has to be ‘secured’ first by the military before an aid project can be set up, I say this is not acceptable. It is not acceptable to the community. If it is done that way it creates a fragile, unsustainable sort of security. It is better if people negotiate directly with the Taliban for security.”

Describing an approach that would leave General Petraeus, President Obama and nearly all of Congress speechless, the aid director told of his experience in Urozgan Province, where Taliban activity prevented him from starting an aid project.

Instead of waiting for the U.S. to send in an air strike, Hasan said his team met with the Taliban leaders and explained what they wanted to do. “Eventually they told us, ‘Please come and work here.’” The doctor paused briefly and then added, “It is not possible, ever, to first bombard and then send aid. It will not work. Our medical services are open to all. Are Taliban not human beings?”

In remarkably frank words for an NGO aid official, he continued, “Stop funding militias. They are not useful. They bring insecurity rather than security. I will tell you that for security, people are happy with the Taliban more than the militias.”

Voicing an opinion heard in other Kabul conversations, Hasan added, “There is even talk now that the U.S. ‘uses’ the insurgency to create a demand from Afghans to stay permanently.”

Several days after talking with Dr. Hasan, a visit to an IDP camp exposed another cost of the war.

My guide and interpreter for the visit was Dr. Rafiullah Ahmadzai, a medical doctor who earned his degree at Kabul University during Afghanistan’s civil war in the mid-90’s.

On the dusty, rocky ride out of central Kabul to the camp, the doctor reminisced about the changes he’s seen in Kabul over the years. In the last decade his city’s population had grown from one to five million. In the mid 20th century it was a small city known for its shops, architecture and charm, a place where people from several countries in the region went to vacation.

What was one thing he thought his country could really use help with? “Much more education for the Afghan National Army and the police,” the 33 year-old pediatrician replied.

For himself, he said he very much wants to go to the U.S. to further his education with an advanced degree in hematology or public health, adding that his country has a high rate of blood cancers and infectious diseases.

Talk of study abroad ended abruptly when we reached the camp, a monochromatic scene of tents and mud huts extending to a horizon brought up short by the dried mud, smoke, car exhaust and reportedly, the highest amount of airborne fecal matter of any city in the world. Directly across the partially-paved, almost two-lane road, the U.S. was constructing a behemoth of a military base, bordered by a handsome 12 foot-high wall of fabricated stone.

Established three years ago, Dr. Ahmadzai explained the camp housed about 700 families, ranging in size from five to between 10 and 15 people each.

The first person he introduced was Ismail, a tall man of 45 years, sitting on a backless canvas stool, holding a stout cane, blind in both eyes. Asked what caused his blindness he answered simply, “the fighting.” One of his daughters was born missing a kidney and congenitally blind. His wife and their three children live in the camp as they have done for the last two years.

When asked what he hoped the next two years would bring, Ismail immediately replied, “Just looking for peace… and the children need education.”

Rahmatullah, a man introduced as the “camp representative,” said his duties included helping people with the Ministry of Immigration red tape and being a liaison to the various aid agencies serving the camp. A year ago he had moved his family from Helmand Province, where most of the camp’s residents originated.

It took him only moments to determine what he would like to tell the world: “For the UN please, to stop the bombing and please help. This is not a place for life. We need more help and support from people in the U.S. and the UN.”

Growing suddenly more irate, the camp rep asked, “Where is your humanity? What is human rights in Afghanistan?” Pointing to a man standing on the edge of a small knot of people, holding a few dusty, cracked photos, Rahmatullah demanded, “Is that picture human rights?”

A slight man of 30 years came forward and introduced himself as Faiz Mohammed, also from Helmand. His face did not bear a smile. In his hand he held a well-worn image of a girl, perhaps eight years old, lying in repose on a piece of carpet, with what appeared to be several wounds in her bloodied chest and upper abdomen.

“That is his daughter,” several of the men said at once. “And the girl in the other picture was her friend,” added another.

When asked what happened to them, Faiz Mohammed looked slightly quizzical and said, “The bombing.”

Dr. Ahmadzai interjected that Mohammed, like many others in the camp, suffered from rheumatism and general body pain due to the living conditions. “There is a lot of sickness here,” the doctor said. “Faiz Mohammed has a daughter suffering with pneumonia and a chest infection; his wife the same. Their wood ration is not enough. Not enough. A large family needs at least 15 kilos per day,” he said, pointing to a nearby “house” consisting of one 12x18 room, covered with tarps. “Sixteen people live in that house.”

Rahmatulla rejoined the conversation to make an announcement, confirmed later that day by news service reports, that the Afghan government and the Taliban had agreed to a temporary ceasefire in Helmand. “When fighting stops, that day I return to my home. We are people of one country,” he added with a mixture of pride and indignity. “Taliban are from Afghanistan. We are from Afghanistan. Government forces are from Afghanistan.”

As the camp visit drew to a close, I asked Rahmatullah what kind of work he did in Helmund. “Gardener,” he replied, hesitating a moment. Then, with a quiet smile he added, “Poppies.”

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Ferner is author of “Inside the Red Zone: A Veteran For Peace Reports from Iraq.” He spent two weeks in Afghanistan covering a delegation from Voices for Creative Nonviolence.