Fieldnotes on Humanity

Today, Islamic militants have targeted school children belonging to ethnic Hazara in Dasht-e Barchi, a predominantly Hazara community in west of Kabul. A car bomb blasted right outside of the main gate of Sayed al-Shuhada, a secondary school as students, mostly girls, were exiting. Eyewitnesses have told that the explosion was followed by mortars and some residents have even heard gunshots as well. According to CNN , 85 people are killed and 150 others are wounded. It is still early, the number of casualty may grow. My heart is bleeding with sorrow for children who died today. Sunni Islamist militants are committed to their beliefs and principles inspired by their holy book and god to kill us and our children. The enormity of such a crime is so horrendous that cannot be fathomed and cannot be put into words or described other than being indignant at your inability to do anything but to begin wringing your hands in silent rage amidst incessant weeping. For the past few years, Hazaras ...

I waited long enough to make sure that I'm not among the privileged ones to receive the covid vaccine before those in need. Given my field of occupation, I fall under the category 1b, meaning that I am eligible for covid vaccine as those essential workers at stores, transportation, etc. I thought it is a privilege that other don't have and it made me uncomfortable because I've never considered myself to be in that position.  Anyway, a few weeks ago, I went online on the university's health portal, I saw several openings. I was hesitant. I went back a week after and saw more openings. Then, I was convinced that perhaps a lot of people have vaccinated in my community, then I registered. The following day, I received my first shot of Pfizer vaccine which wasn't too bad except that I felt soreness in my arm that I was told is a common effect. I couldn't do workout for the next 24 hours but it went away quickly. There wasn't any serious side affect involved but t...

No wonder why misinformation has become such a serious problem. Here's an example of how conspiracy theories are so alluring that even grown-ups can fall prey to it. It has become so dangerous that it can render its victims devoid of faculty for practical judgement, which ultimately lead to the deprivation of individual's agency because it erodes the very foundation of knowledge that is imperative to social agency. In a video clip shared on twitter (see below) Donald Wagner, a GOP lawmaker of the Orange County asks doctor if vaccines had tracking devices. At first, it sounds like a joke but it is not, it's real. I quote what he says in the video clip:  Is there any--in the vaccine--we heard about the injection of a tracking device. Is that being done anywhere in Orange County? It took a few seconds for the top health official Clayton Chau to figure out what he just heard. The doctor's answer is NOPE.  It is very unfortunate that Wagner is elected in that capacity, it is...

Fearing of alienating Turkey, for decades US presidents have tried to avoid recognizing the events of 1915-1923 that led to 1.5 million death of Armenians at the hands Turks as "genocide." Finally, today, Biden is going to acknowledge the Ottoman Turks atrocities as genocide . It is considered to be the most monstrous crime against humanity to have occurred in the outset of the twentieth century. But it is not the only one, in fact, almost 25 years before another genocide occurred against indigenous population of the Hazaras in Afghanistan. Abdul Rahman khan, a Pashtun leader organized a mass genocidal campaign between 1888 and 1893 in order to subjugate the Hazaras in Hazarajat, a geographical area in central Afghanistan. The Pashtun Sunni mullahs declared fatwas that the Hazaras are infidel and they must be killed. Suddenly, every Pashtun rose up to become ghazi, someone who kills non-Muslim for pleasing the Muslim God and wishes to enter to heaven.  In addition to governm...

I am very saddened to hear that Vartan Gregorian just passed away. There is an obituary of him published in the New York Times that chronicles his academic and philanthropic achievements as well as his service to American people. He was born the city of Tabriz to a Christian family who moved to the US at age 22. I have been knowing him from his book,  The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan: Politics of Reform and Modernization, 1880-1946 (1969). Initially it was written as a dissertation but later he turned it to a book.  Among many books written on the modern history of Afghanistan, I found Gregorian's book remarkably comprehensive. He highlights every turn of events between 1880 and 1946 to carefully analyze and provide a clear picture of how modern Afghanistan has tumultuously been emerging. After I graduated from college, I wrote him an e-mail to inquire whether he was looking for a research assistant because I heard from Jeffrey  that he was planning to rewrite his bo...

I am reposting this piece that I wrote for CNN in December 2009 when Obama planned to send more troops to Afghanistan to "finish the job" and bring back the troops. I argued that sending more troops doesn't help, instead, the US should allocate all those resources to train Afghan security forces. This year, Biden has decided to withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan leaving behind nothing but a shaky, discriminatory and corrupt administration with weak and worn out security forces.  After a long debate over increasing troops in Afghanistan, finally, President Obama said that he has decided to send around 30,000 extra troops to Afghanistan. Now, deploying 30,000 troops to Afghanistan is a good idea but I’m doubtful that this will work as a long-term strategy to “finish the job.” A long-term strategy to mitigate the violence and end the war in Afghanistan is to train and equip the Afghan National Army. No so long ago in July 2009,  around 4,000 U.S. Marines alongside 650 ...

Here's an example of relentless gullibility from a representative, Luaren Boebert . I looked her up and found that she dropped out of high school in her senior year, and didn’t attend college, nothing to blame her there, but she still can educate herself by looking things up on google or in a book or ask someone to define what Marxism is. A Ponzi scheme is a product of Capitalism, not Marxism which theoretically sees a classless society where everyone is equally contributing to a common good. I suspect one reason that she tweeted about Ponzi scheme is because  Bernie Madoff just passed away . I feel sorry for her and for the people who sent her to congress. Apparently, she is also a QAnon enthusiast .

They came, made a mess, and now they are going back. Then there are the unfortunate and defenseless people like the Hazaras who have no way to escape and no ability to confront the most evils on earth. These evils (the Taliban) are celebrating the US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, they call it a "defeat" because they claim to have brought the Americans to their knees. No, you didn't brought them to their knees, their mission is over. It has always been like this, in times of war, they come and destroy, and then return to where they came from. 

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...

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 sta...

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 an effort to reboot the economy, the government has passed laws that constitute dispossession and control over agricultural lands to which farmers have a special relationship.  These bills , introduced and passed by parliament last year and then signed into law, are tailored to benefit only giant corporations while lacking any sustainable, ecological, social, or economic integrity.   What these laws would basically do is  replace the market, run and protected by  committees of traders and landowners,  with a free market where farmers will have neither control over the circulation of their products nor over market prices . In the long run, this would result in farmers being self-indentured to billionaires sitting in Delhi who buy stocks i...

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

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...

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 contribu...

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.