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.

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.

An existential threat to Indian farmers

Farmers protest at the Delhi Singhu border in Delhi, India. Getty images

These ongoing protests of Indian Punjab farmers are just implications of what a far-right Hindu nationalist government would offer to its people. In hoping to reboot the economy, the government has passed laws that is, in someway, a form of dispossession and control over agricultural lands to which farmers have special relationship. These bills, that were introduced and passed by the parliament last year and then signed into laws are tailored to only benefit giant corporations while lacking any sustainable, ecological, social and economic integrity. 

What these laws would basically do is to replace the market that is ran and protected by committees of traders and land owners with a free market where farmers will have neither control over the circulation of their products, nor the market values. In the long run, this would result to self-indenturement of farmers to billionaires sitting in Delhi and buying stocks in the US. 

And there is always IMF as a hegemonic force from outside that offers its prescriptions. It is always there to advocate and support any offense a government commits against its citizen. It does not only co-opt neoliberal elites for enforcing their ideals but also crafts and promotes hegemonic norms, especially in developing countries where they are left with no choice but unconditional surrender.

The worse part of these laws is that it does not offer any future to farmers who may eventually lose control over their lands. Right now, millions of people work on farms, what will happen to them when their farms are taken by corporations? It is obvious that they will be replaced by a reduced number of workforce that’s also cheap, and that is what big corporations always do otherwise they can’t make surplus profit. At the time when the India's unemployment is at its highest rate, what opportunities will be available to these farmers who have no other skills than farming? There is not much prospect that these laws would do anything positive but to harm and exploit the lands whose farmers’ livelihood depends upon.

a time unlike now

I reminisce
that rotting wooden bench
on Louther street
next to the library and
across from the Lutheran Church
we used to sit
you always insisted
"let's tarry awhile"

a time
unlike now,
like ephemeral past
sends new nostalgic
errands

Happy Dawin Day

It's Darwin's Day. February 12, the day we, anthropologists, commemorate the birth of Charles Darwin in 1809, one of the greatest naturalists in our history. In 1831, he made a voyage to the Beagle in which he observed and collected specimens of plants, animals, rocks, and fossils, some were mostly on land, far apart from the sea. At the time, he was just 22 years old. (this makes me feel bad about myself, what a useless life I have lived so far). On his return, he published his findings in a book called The Voyage of the Beagle. His discoveries and ideas shaped our understanding about the natural world and ourselves. He showed that we humans are just another type of animal living on earth, a small branch on a big tree of life.

My field, anthropology, is deeply influenced by Darwin's evolutionary theories about human evolution. His ideas on the evolution of human traits and natural selections may have been disputed by recent studies on fossil records, but his fundamental arguments that we humans share similar traits with African great apes and that our ancestors first originated in Africa, remain valid.

To appreciate Darwin, let's take a moment and look back at nearly two million years ago to see how our opposable thumbs evolved to its current level of dexterity. Check out this fascinating article.

Bidel's Wikipedia page

Today, I got a chance to tweak Abdul Qadir Bidel's Wikipedia page. I corrected some of the references and added several others. I also entered that he was the greatest poet of Indian-Persian, next to Amir Khusrau, who lived most of his life during the reign of Aurangzeb, the sixth Mughal emperor. This is very close to historical reality than branding him based on cultural biases. I noticed some entries labeled him as a Persian poet from Khorasan or from the Indian subcontinent (though the later has a modicum of truth). The fact of the matter is, he was Indian, born and raised and eventually died there. He belonged to that geographical area, to that culture and people and he should be studied within that context. Removing him from this context is unjust and discriminatory. 

I also added some other sections in his Wiki page, such as bibliography, notes, and works. I entered several bibliography entries, fixed some while redacted and retracted others. I hope others contribute to Bidel's page as well, so that those who are interested in learning about him can have access to an array of resources. 

On a final note, I added mostly references that are available in English language. That means, I disregarded books published in Farsi, Tajiki, Uzbek, and other languages.

With pots and pans against coup

The pots and pans ring across Myanmar against the military coup. It's a familiar ring for all of us but a special one for people in Myanmar, they use them to exorcise the evil spirit. For the past few days, it has been used against the military coup that seized power last week from a democratically elected - now detained- leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. Now the evil spirit is the military. It's pots and pans' clatter and clang that has become a utility of anger and the sound of dissent. Pots and pans have always been a utility of dissonance and so, sometimes became political tool in different manner. When every other means of communication is controlled and the internet is shut down, pots and pans can be the strongest tool for expressing anger and to protest against the military dictatorship. Let pots and pants' clink and clunk rattle the dictators' conscience if they have any, I don't think they do.

A lesson to be learned from the miners in Pakistan

This AFP news published on Dawn says that after the 10 Hazara miners were killed a few weeks ago, "Pakistan coal miners reluctant to work after Hazara killings." Around 15,000 Hazara miners stopped going to work and as a result, around 200 mines are about to close or slash their production.

The reason for Hazara's reluctance to return to work is obvious. They are not secure and their return to work means their might be potentially more attacks because there is no guarantee for their safety. The Hazaras in Pakistan have been systematically persecuted by various extremist Islamist groups and the Pakistani government has done very little to stop it.

Now that the businesses are getting closed and people are out of work, the government eventually understands what such precarity means and what it would do in the long run in the province of Balochistan. The Hazaras in Pakistan should turn their reluctance into a movement and use it to pressure the federal government to beef up security in their areas.

But guess what happens if Hazaras in Afghanistan takes this lesson and use it for their own struggle against the Afghan government's aggression. If Hazara leaders and elders call on the Hazara men and women, who are now in the battlefield fighting against the Taliban, to come home, the government would stop its onslaught on the Hazaras in Behsud and else where.

This is a trump card that can be used against this government for any type of negotiations. Hazaras would lose nothing and won't go hungry if their sons and daughters leave the army, in fact, they save their lives, not getting killed in vain by the Taliban.

On US withdrawal from Afghanistan

These are important suggestions that the Biden administration should take into account while ruminating on the nature of a possible withdrawal from Afghanistan. A complete withdrawal is a disaster that should be avoided and in fact, it should be off the table when negotiation over peace with the Taliban. 

The peace negotiation that was ensued by the previous administration based on narcissistic whims should be rethought. The whole negotiation scheme needs to be reassessed because it was a unilaterally designed between the US and the Taliban insurgents. The Afghan government and the people were not involved in this negotiation from the beginning and even now, they don't have much control over it.

The Biden administration should make a revision to the peace scheme and add mandates to commit the Taliban to reduction of violence; otherwise, any dodgy deals not only perpetuates war and violence, but also emboldens the Taliban and other insurgents for further violence. 

Afghan security forces open fire on civilians

In my previous post, I mentioned that the Afghan security forces have been deployed to Behsud, a Hazara district in Wardak province, to disarm locals who stood up against the Taliban atrocity. These Hazara civilians were peacefully gathered in front of the district's office to inquire why these forces were there because there was no reason for them to be there, unless they are there to weaken the local's resistance, which would provide some leeway to the Taliban's assaults. 

Here is a video as evidence showing Afghan security forces positioned in armored military Humvees opening fire on civilians and then run over them that is partially captured. So far, more than 10 people have been killed and nearly 30 people are injured. 

This video shows the murder of Hazara protesters in Behsud by the Afghan security forces. It shows some civilians running away and the Afghan forces firing on them with M249 & PK machine gun. Some Humvees can be seen driving towards people to run over them #BehsudMassacre pic.twitter.com/WRkJLUlgNU

— Basir Ahang (@basirahang) February 1, 2021

hegemony and the Hazara state of survival

The relationship of the Hazara people and the Afghanistan's state has always been a historical hegemonic relationship. Historically it has been the Pashtuns (and to some degree the Tajiks) as superior tribe ruling the country. Not the class, not the political party, but a tribe. The Hazaras have been scapegoats  for various problems that the state faced. As a result, they have become the primary targets of systematic persecutions, which has historically created a lingering hegemonic force that can be exerted against the Hazaras at any given time.

Let me contextual this historical hegemony. Recently, the Afghan central government deployed security forces to Behsud district, in Wardak province, to ostensibly quell the unlawfulness there, which is controlled by locals. The locals have armed themselves against the onslaught of the Taliban and to prevent their advance towards Bamiyan and the Hazarajat.

Yesterday, the government forces opened fire on civilians who were gathered in a local Bazaar to inquire why these forces were there. According to BBC, the government forces killed 9 civilians and injured dozens of others. Different sources indicate that at least 10 people are killed and 28 others are wounded. The government, simultaneously has shut down the telecommunication system, so that the locals can't report what is happening there.

We know that the Taliban has kneeled on the neck of Ashraf Ghani's government and it is gasping its last breath. And we know that sooner than later this government is gone and there will be an interim government installed. This is what the international communities that support the Afghan government has already decided. So, the end of this government is imminent.

What can the Hazaras do at this critical moment in order to end the government's onslaught? The Hazara leaders and elders should call on the Hazara men and women, who serve in the army and are now in the battlefield against the Taliban, to come home.

farewell my mtb

ah I'm missing my rad mountain bike. Rad is a term commonly used by mountain bikers, I like it a lot, especially if you constantly use it, like a rad ride, a rad bike, a rad drop, it does not only vigorously boast your self-assurance but also indexes something else, that you are a professional rider and close to others of that ilk. Another telling indicator is that you have successfully fetishized your bike so much so that you talk about it in a manner that no other can relate. Yeah, that's a bit of me, when I'm on the trail or descending down the hills. Anyway, I sold this rad icon but now I'm having a compulsive urge to buy another one. I'm thinking of Santa Cruz or Yeti. 

Iranian flag at pro-Trump rally

I just read a great piece by Sonja Thomas explaining about the presence of the Indian flag at the capitol riots. It's confusingly fascinating to see that among the sea of flags at pro-Trump rally on January 6th, there were flags of many other nations. I noticed an Iranian flag of the pre-Islamic Revolution monarchy with a lion holding a sword waving among the crowd, and signs that repeatedly read "we love you," "#Iranians for Trump," and "stop the steal." There is an article about it here. 

Trump supporters hold a sign that says: "Iranians for Trump" (MEE/Ali Harb)

Iranians of pre-1979 Iranian revolution have strong feelings about their particular history that can be traced in their support of Trump and his policies against Iran. As far as I have been following the US politics, this particular group has always supported conservatives and their policies. They ideally think Trump aggressive policies may cause the current Islamic regime to collapse and the monarchy get restored, so that they can go back, but it seems that is unlikely to happen, at least now and perhaps, in the near future. But as a minority, their presence at this dangerous rally and their support of far-right groups, may hunt them in the future.

The semantics of racial slurs in Afghanistan

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post on my Farsi blog about my experience with racial discrimination and racial prejudice in Afghanistan and today, I thought I should start writing a few posts about the semantics of ethnic slurs that Pashtuns, Tajiks, and even Sayyids, who are Shias and look like Hazaras, commonly use against the Hazara people. Here is one of the most popular racial slurs used toward the Hazaras:

"God forbid my dog to be a Hazara" (خدا سگ مره هزاره نکنه  khuda sagi mara hazara nakuna). 

Here are four common features of this racial slur:

1. Dogs are known to be loyal, friendly, and protective. Hazaras are so disloyal, unfaithful, and unfriendly that they do not deserve to be even like dogs, and as such, God has created them a different species other than humans.

2. Dogs in Islam are considered najis (Arabic word), meaning untouchable and unclean. Hazaras are so vicious, wicked, and dirty that dogs are way kosher and clean that deserve to be kept as friends but not Hazaras. They must be outcasts.

3. Dogs are animals, and Hazaras are even worse than animals. They have no culture, no religion, and no ethics, and they deserve to be annihilated. 

4. Dogs are also considered infidels. This trope is twofold. One is that Hazaras are infidels. Therefore, they are not Muslim. It has religious and historical bearings, so it is commensurate with the mainstream Sunni doctrine that the Shias are heretics. As a direct result, Hazaras have been subjected to genocide twice in history and almost 100 years apart. One was by King Abdul Rahman during the 1890s, which resulted in 60% extermination, and most recently by the Taliban between 1998 and 2001. Another meaning of this trope is that infidels (any non-Muslim) in the West keep dogs as friends. In a way, it lacks strength, but it also brings back the idea of infidelity and the dehumanizing view that the Hazaras are not part of Islam and should be dealt with like non-Muslims because, ultimately, the purpose is to deprive them of humanity and anything,, that aids this purpose is functional.

These are the four significant and important semantic features of the ethnic slur, "God forbid my dog to be a Hazara," that powerfully pervades the ordinary sense of Afghan racial discriminatory language and thinking against the Hazara people. It has a broader range of invisible but dangerous connotations beyond this blog post. I may come back to this later. 

The primary purpose of this kind of slur is to dehumanize the Hazaras, to dispossess them of their humanness, and to project or see them as less than themselves. Subsequently, what might follow would be cruelty and suffering through different means, resulting in killing Hazaras mercilessly. Based on dehumanization ideology, when you deprive someone of all human qualities, then it's easy to kill them.

and those for us who stammer

Many of us at some point stammer, either for a short or longer time, or often try to remember but we can't help ourselves. The repercussion is of course a multiplicity of psychological anxiety, but here's a video on the BBC website showing kids can't utter their names, a BBC journalist who experienced years of stuttering but worked her way out; a UK MP who is being ridiculed in the House; and Joe Biden who acknowledges that he has worked hard to deal with his stuttering. Also check out this video where an Irish fireman tells his story of fighting stammer stigma.