Afghanistan

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

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.

The governor of Kunar province said that during a night raid on January 16, NATO forces killed 5 civilians during a “kill-and-capture” raid as coalition helicopters fired into a compound. Among the 5 were 1 woman and 2 children.

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.

Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers Featured in the Times of India

“Have you ever heard of an Afghan promoting peace,” Ali asks casually and everyone in the room falls silent, the only smile was on Mahatma Gandhi, looking down from a framed photograph.

“The world must be tired of the word ‘love’ but it is something we crave for. Our biggest wish in life is to see lasting peace in our country,” he added.

January 11, 2012
by the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers
on tour in India

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.

Maya Evans
Chelsitun, Wasalabad

We were lucky enough to receive an invitation to visit a self run community on the edge of Kabul, Chelsitun in Wasalabad; it’s a mixed Tajik and Pashtun community split into 8 sections, consisting of 2,000 households each having its own representative which implements Government initiatives and also manages security in the area.

We were told that the community practices religious and ethnic tolerance and has one of the only Mosques which welcomes joint worship by both Sunni’s and Shia’s with the two Muslim groups sharing funerals and ceremonies. When we arrived in Chelsitun the pathway were unusually set with concrete; an independent initiative by the community (paid for by the people within the area) as a move towards installing proper infrastructure.

Kathy Kelly and the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers
January 3, 2012
Kabul, Afghanistan

Bibi and Granddaughter

Bibi Sadia and her husband Baba share a humble home with their son, his wife and their two little children. An Afghan human rights advocate suggested that we listen to Bibi’s stories and learn more about how a Pashto family has tried to survive successive tragedies in Kabul.

Holding her three year old granddaughter in her arms, Bibi adjusted her hijab and launched into a narrative that began during the Soviet occupation. The mujahideen had asked Baba to bring them medicines two or three times a week for those injured in the war. For each batch of medicines that Baba delivered, the mujahideen paid him a small sum of money. When the Russian occupiers discovered what he was doing, they beat him severely. After that, the mujahideen accused him of spying for the Russians and they also beat him badly.

December 27, 2011

Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers and Voices for Creative Nonviolence celebrate Maya Evans’s birthday in Kabul photo credit: AYPV

Kabul—Arab Spring, European Summer, American Autumn, and now the challenge of winter. Here in Kabul, Afghanistan, the travelers of our small Voices for Creative Nonviolence delegation share an apartment with several of the creative and determined “Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers” who’ve risked so much for peace here and befriended us so warmly over the past two years.

Kelly urged the audience to get involved to end the war and get the United States to rebuild that nation, which for 30 years has suffered from warfare. “People have the capacity to end wars by raising their voices,” she said.

December 23, 2012

Beneath our flat, here in Kabul, wedding guests crowded into a restaurant and celebrated throughout the night. Guests sounded joyful and the music, mostly disco, thumped loudly. When the regular call to prayer sounded out at 5:20 a.m., the sounds seemed to collide in an odd cacophony, making all music indistinguishable. I smiled, remembering the prayer call’s durable exhortation to live in peace, heard worldwide for centuries, and went back to sleep.

Through most of my life, I’ve found it easy to resonate with the ringing and beautiful Christmas narrative found in the Gospel of Luke, but less so with that jangling discord with which westerners are so familiar—the annual collision between (on the one hand) the orgy of gift-purchasing and gift-consumption surrounding the holiday and the the sweeter, simpler proclamations of peace on earth heralded by the newborn’s arrival. I’ve found myself quite surprisingly happy to spend many Christmases either in U.S. jails or among Muslims living in places like Bosnia, Iraq, Jordan and now Afghanistan. My hosts and friends in these places have been people who are enduring wars or fleeing wars, including, as in the case of U.S. jails, a war against the poor in the United States.