Mar 21, 2021

It's a new year in Afghanistan

I wrote this piece for CNN long time ago, I'm reposting here:

This year, the Nowruz festival holds even more significance and importance in the lives of Afghans since the United Nation’s General Assembly recognized March 21 as International Day of Nowruz.

Nowruz, banned under Taliban rule, begins on the day of the vernal equinox (the first day of spring) and marks the beginning of the new year. Every year, three days before Nowruz, tens of thousands of people travel to the northern Afghanistan city of Mazar-e Sharif to watch the elaborate ceremony.

Nowruz is celebrated for two weeks throughout Afghanistan. People wear new clothes, refurbish their house, paint the buildings and henna their hands. Young girls go with their mothers to holy shrines and pray to have a good future, a good life and a good husband and be fortunate while the boys have an eye on their parents to decide who is fair and suitable for him.

One of most famous of Nowruz traditions among Afghans is to forget and forgive mistakes of one another and start the New Year with new hopes and new goals. During the first three days of the year, families and relatives meet and visit each other’s houses. These are parts of Afghan traditions that date back centuries.

Jashni Dehqan, which literally means the festival of farmers, is also celebrated in the first day of year, in which the farmers walk in the cities as a sign of encouragement for the agricultural productions. For the last few years, President Hamid Karzai always participated in the festival of farmers and encouraged the farmers in agricultural productions and environmental green movement. This activity is being performed in Kabul and other major cities, in which the mayor and other high governmental personalities participate.

One of the most significant symbolic traditions of Nowruz in Afghanistan is haft mewa, or “seven fruits.” (haft sin, or seven “s,” is a similar tradition common in Iran.) The “seven fruits” table starts with seven dried fruits: raisins, senjed (the dried fruit of the oleaster tree), pistachios, hazelnuts, prunes (dry fruit of apricot), walnuts and either almond or another species of plum fruit. Haft mewa is like a fruit salad, served in the fruits’ syrup.

Haft mewa and haft sin’s philosophy is almost the same. The seven items symbolically correspond to seven creations and holy immortals called Amesha Sepanta (meaning “bounteous immortal” in the Avestan language) protecting them. The seven elements of life - namely fire, earth, water, air, plants, animals and human - are represented.

 Some Afghans have never forgotten the bitter period of their life during the Taliban regime when they were banned or excluded from the traditions. Celebrating Nowruz always involves music and various entertainments that from the Taliban point of view, were forbidden. Another reason that the Taliban banned Nowruz was that women have a significant role in the Nowruz ceremony. In the time of Taliban, women were not allowed to participate in any ceremonies that music played and dancing was involved.

Traditionally, Afghan women celebrate Nowruz with samanak: it is made of wheat germ and is a special Afghan female tradition. They cook it from late in the evening until daylight. During this cooking time, the women gather around and sing Nowruzi songs, accompanied with special drums and dancing. No men are allowed to take part in this ceremony.

According to BBC report, the director of the Nowruz festival in Mazar-e Sharif said that this year an estimated 120,000 people throughout the country are traveling to Mazar-e Sharif. The ceremony always taken place in the Shrine of Hazrat Ali, also known as the Blue Mosque.

One part of the Afghan New Year is a speech by President Karzai, outlining the events of the past year and his programs for the new year. After the official speech, the president calls upon the special security guard to start the New Year celebration with three shots of a cannon. Following the three shots, a huge flag is raised from the ground. People watch the movement carefully - if it rises hard and slowly, a bad year is predicted but if the flag is risen gently, the new year is predicted a fortunate and happiness year.

When the day’s ceremony ended, the night’s ceremonies arrive, full of music and concerts. Every year, top singers are invited by the government to travel from Europe and America to northern Afghanistan and sing for the new year celebration. Not only Afghan singers are invited but groups of musicians and singers from Pakistan, India, Iran, Turkey, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are included to participate and demonstrate their culture alongside Afghan artists. After the official ceremony, people head to a huge field for a game of buzkashi, an ancient traditional sport where riders on horses compete over a goat or calf carcass.

This year, all Afghans are hoping to start a good year with changes and improvement in security issues. Some refer to the Marjah operation as a successful example of fighting against the Taliban insurgency and wish that the Taliban will be wiped out in the southern region. Afghans are excited that from now on, Nowruz will be recognized by the United Nations as it becomes part of the world’s many heritages.

Mar 7, 2021

20th anniversary of the destruction of Buddha statues of Bamiyan

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the destruction of the two monumental Buddha statues of Bamiyan which were built in the 6th century AD. Twenty years ago, on March 02, 2001, the Taliban on the orders of their leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, began destroying the statues. The destruction process took several weeks. They first began with heavy artilleries but soon realized they couldn't destroyed. So, they forced the local men to descend the cliff and drill holes into the statues. Then they placed dynamites and blew them up. This was a tragic event but it is not the whole story.

When the Taliban took control of the city of Bamiyan, they first massacred the Hazaras who were residents of the city. The victims were mostly old men and women and children, too weak to fight, and too old to run. They were left behind and everyone else who could run, fled to the mountains and hid in the caves.

The people later died of starvation. A few months after the fall of the Taliban, the locals started searching for their loved ones in the mountains. They found their remains in the caves, torn by predators, and some that were leftovers of vultures still showed undigested grass in their stomachs. Trapped in the mountains, they consumed grass to survive but eventually succumbed to death.

When we talk about destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, it is important to first foreground the human cost of this tragedy. We need to highlight the Taliban's crime and atrocities against the Hazaras, the local population in the city of Bamiyan. For centuries, these people were neighbors with Buddha statues. We should ask ourselves, what it meant for these people to have lived there? What price did they pay because of being Hazaras and Shias? And what was their relationship with the statues of Buddhas historically and culturally?

The Western perspective and their understanding of the destruction of the statues are aesthetic, meaning they look at Buddhas and their demolition as objects that belonged to history but disregard the subjects of history. This is a colonial perspective, an epistemic violence that is integral to their practice of domination and subjugation. They have rendered this horrific human tragedy as a singular and abstract event.

This is cruel and violent because such narrative removes the Buddhas from its context, and that context is the Hazara people whose culture and history are intertwined with the statues.  I am not saying that we should not highlight the importance of historical tragedy of the destruction of Buddhas, my point here is that the objectification of the Buddhas solely as a tragic event not only trivializes and downplays the human costs but also leads to omission. 

We need to change the narrative in order to avoid any violence against the Hazara people. Every year, in this time, we should all come together and commemorate the death of people of Bamiyan alongside the destruction of their Buddhas. Finally, we need to talk and pay attention to the Taliban's atrocities that happened on a large scale and simultaneously think it as a warning sign as their return is looming.