Sunday, March 13, 2022

Are all refugees equal? a question for my MP.

 

Caroline Lucas, MP for Brighton Pavilion

 

​Dear Caroline,

 

I am very pleased that the UK is offering refuge to Ukrainians fleeing war. I have gathered from the government information that Ukrainians with a family member living in the UK can apply online to come to the UK. I am British Citizens of Afghan origin and my parents have escaped the Taliban takeover but the government has refused family unification for me. The decision to allow Ukrainian foreign nationals to bring their families to the UK is contrary to the government policy about refugees so far. 

 

I am a British citizen and my immediate family and friends are British born and raised including my children and girlfriend. Furthermore, my businesses are invested in the UK. My Afghan parents have escaped the wretched Taliban and are living in Pakistan facing tremendous difficulties in a country with a different language, climate, culture - removed from their relatives and home and income at an elderly age. They have no immigration status and are hiding from a corrupt police force. displaced and displaced from all they had and all they were. I have a moral and historical duty to look after them but the government refuses for them to be unified with me in absolute violation of its international obligation in regard to refugee protection and a moral duty toward its citizens. It begs the question why is it that the government offers refuge to families of foreign nationals living in the UK but not to families of British citizens under the same circumstances.

 

Under international law asylum is granted to a displaced person who has crossed national boundaries and who cannot or are unwilling to return home due to a well founded fear of persecution. my parents have well-grounded fear; Taliban are classified as terrorist organisation by the UK governerment which makes it well founded grounds for fear of persecution. When you compare the decision with the one the government made about Afghans you can clearly see its politics and a racial preference at the core of decision making.  

 

I hate to believe that the only reason Ukrainains with families in the UK are offered refuge is because it serves the government's racial and political agenda. A true tragedy for Ukrainians which only should be treated with compassion and decency. Furthermore, using the asylum system for political purposes diminishes public support for refugees and fuels populism. I have lost many nights of sleep and can not reconcile how this country still at its core operate a racial agenda with disregard for the rule of law. I am writing to you because I still believe you can do the right thing. Please lobby the government to offer the same family unification visa for my parents to come and join us in the UK.  

 

Thank you​

 

Friday, January 25, 2019

Dating Apps: Auctioning romance and the effect of rating on unsold bodies


A programme on BBC Stories follow three individuals as one turns out to be a serial Tinder swiper, the second is clinically addicted to grinder and Meggy is totally disillusioned with short focused and superficial connections facilitated by online dating apps.

The programme prompted me to research further and look at clinical research around online dating. To my astonishment I found out that it's widely accepted among mental health practitioners that dating apps have negative impact on our mental health. There is a correlation between negative mental health impact of particular behaviour and its negative social perception by creating stigmas and taboos around change and continuity. Clinical trials by its nature focus on social impact of malignant behaviour and removes the role of human agency. There is no doubt that dating apps objectify humans and is damaging for authentic romantic relations, that is not to say it's not useful. We need to learn how to better use them as it benefit varies from person to person.

I think there are a lot of Pricks around - what I call Prick (or sometimes The Prick) is an individual who lacks curiosity, compassion, love and a sense of connection or longing for the other. These people are self-absorbed and are only interested in exploring their desires. Dating apps have empowered The Pricks to set the tone for the rest of the society. Traditionally and at various point across all cultures people emulated decency and good behaviour. thats how mainstream culture function, but how did we get here? Well, humans have weaknesses, can act against our self interest and lose focus in life. These fallibilities are recognised and elaborated in the work of renaissance pioneers such as David Hume, Karl Popper and Francis Bacon. It was crucial to recognise that human is sinful in order to end the tyranny of religion. Contrary to principles of enlightenment western culture exploits these exact shortcomings and imperfections in order to encourage instant gratification and consumption; it's done with the aid of flashy images, apps, cheap gadgets and other forms of excesses. 

This is where The Pricks come to play the role of the cultural leaders. They promote debauchery and we are primed to imitate it because the pursuit of material excesses and consumerism has conditioned us to consider instant gratification as intrinsic. Pricks are terrible at managing complex and meaningful human relations and instead seek fleeting and dopamine triggered interactions. They rationalise this as "Casual"; in case it escaped you "Casual" is euphemism for no string attached sex. We now have a terrible mix of dating apps which encourages addictive and compulsive behaviour; a cultural narrative that normalises excessive and destructive behaviour and human nature which instinctively is averse to sadness and disappointment while all meaningful and intimate human relationships come with disappointment because its part of human nature.

To strengthen my point about the impact of consumerist culture on encouraging excessive and negative attitudes and behaviour also consider the Television industry filled with shows like Coronation Street, East Enders, The Jeremy Kyle Show and etc that glorifies bad behaviour. The fashion industry which breeds negative body image and objectifies women. The media that is driven by rating and perpetuates stereotypes, racism and division. The common theme across these industries is an attempt at normalising excesses.

Dating apps are very useful tool for two types of people and have improved their lives massively which wouldn't have been possible otherwise. The first is people who know what they want; daters with a vision and they grab it when they see it. The second is the casual sexer, the people who really appreciate maintaining superficial relationship with multiple partners which are purely sexual. It is very healthy to love sex and have sex as long as you make that decision deliberately. If casual sex is not compatible with your temperament and demeanour or if you are not a massive fan of sex in general then the problem with casual approach to intimacy is its a smoke screen for the worst of human qualities. Most people normalise "Casual" to conceal insecurities, conform and hide emotions; it will not end well and most likely in psychotherapy.

Now that we have accounted for The Pricks, The Sex Lovers and The Romantic Visionary Dater we are still missing a large number of people who are just serial swipers and dopamine junkies. They are not narcissistic nor is this problem pathological, we all need to act a little bit more responsibly and think about our actions.


Thursday, January 24, 2019

War taught me several lessons on tolerance



I find “Christ and the Soldier” by Siegfried Sassoon a gripping tale of war and carnage. The poem was written after the Battle of the Somme and is a conversation between a soldier and Christ which ends:

"Lord Jesus, ain't you got no more to say?"

Bowed hung that head below the crown of thorns. The soldier shifted, and picked up his pack, and slung his gun, and stumbled on his way.

"O God," he groaned, “why ever was I born?”


I was born in Afghanistan in 1981 and lived my early childhood in Kabul under Soviet occupation; I survived the brutal guerrilla war against the Soviets, I lost friends and family to Mujaheedin War of Kabul, I kept my spirit through the Taliban reign of tyranny and I braved journeys to escape to Europe. I know what it is like to be on the other side of the European border, the large governments united to keep the little man at bay. I believe there are lessons to be learned from wars to strengthen tolerance and foster shared values.

I am now a British Citizen and live in Brighton. I watch in astonishment racist, xenophobic, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiments taking root in most of Europe. In some countries they are translated in to legislation and far right parties are part of governing coalitions. Even if they aren’t in power, the far right influences political and social policies in the EU; recent examples are Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands. For years the EU manipulated social policies under the guise of “European Values” to remodel nationalism. In this climate, identitarian and ethnic agendas were strengthened to bolster “self-pride”. We live in a society of intolerance and darkness and fail to understand the complexities of past wars and contemporary challenges, doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past and blunder our way in to modern conflicts.

I have learned a few things about conflict and intolerance from personal encounters and its history in Europe, which I will attempt to summarise here. First is the fallibility and weakness of humans: people despair when faced with tough choices and under threat, and when we despair we commit depraved acts. In order to engage with people, we ought to see behind their shortcomings so we understand their point of view. The second is the false belief in the superiority of European culture or nations: other people are not malign or evil and what we recognise as a nation or group is often an artificial construct. Third is the power of lies.  Anyone with some political awareness must have seen how misinformation has shaped our societies recently. Finally, and most importantly, is the fragility of our peaceful existence. My world has crumbled on several occasions and no one saw it coming. We lost our home and lives the third time in a flash, and as unexpectedly as the first time; we were astounded by the power and speed of the storm that swept comforts from under our feet and blew our dreams away. We are all responsible for sustaining peace and tolerance by creating positive stories about our collective identity and confronting false myths.

Fear of Evil and the myth of monsters

I was seeing a woman early 2018 and on one of the first few dates she invited me to the cinema to watch “The Shape of Water”. The movie is about Elisa, a mute living with a closeted artist who is transfixed by classic Hollywood TV shows and a boss who turns out to be a Russian spy with a heart of gold. Elisa takes on the task of saving a captured alien water monster from painful death at the hands of Richard Strickland. He is a man with the looks of a classic, square jawed protagonist; only he's the actual monster, murderous and literally rotting alive. The film removes all pretences of the outsiders being dangerous and instead, paints them as unconventional heroes and the monsters are the conventional heroes. I thought it was an interesting choice she made for a movie date particularly with anxieties and fears around dating an Afghan man and my history of resorting to unconventional solutions in order to survive in evil situations. Perhaps partly thanks to the movie we did bond and are happily together.

The movie Director Guillermo del Toro at Bafta thanked Mary Shelley, Frankenstein author, for “picking up the plight of Caliban and she gave weight to the burden of Prometheus, and she gave voice to the voiceless and presence to the invisible, and she showed me that sometimes to talk about monsters, we need to fabricate monsters of our own”.  I believe Frankenstein, Caliban and Prometheus and other tales and myths of monsters are also tales of ordinary people. Many of us won’t recognise this until we are facing the same kind of fear, tragedy and rejection.[1] The classic monsters are very much like us; they have worries, fears, aspirations and dreams that are very similar to us. We want them to be like us but not just quite us, so we are comfortable to rationalise their suffering. 

I am not arguing that Evil do not exist, it does; the real question to investigate is where is the true evil and its often not the people we are led to believe to be monsters but very much hidden within the structure and system we choose to place our trust in. We should be looking within rather than seeking monsters. We all recognise Hitler or Stalin as evil but in their time they enjoyed massive support and were seen as heroes. Our take on them is a lesson from history, a leaf from memories that were carefully constructed to help us shape our opinion. In other words, it’s a distortion of true events and reality. It is impossible for us to grasp the reality unless we understand the bureaucracy of governments, nationalism and the banality of evil.    The machinery of the state projects as omnipotent and we believe it will never fall foul to deviants. In their time Hitler or Stalin at most would be thought as deviants; very much like Victor Orban. Its deviants like Victor Orban that we should be mindful in their use of state machinery and perfecting that palatable racism, which is a public language that doesn’t sound racist on the surface but its pronouncement are intolerant and xenophobic.  

The three groups we identified are: Monsters, tragic but not vicious; Evil, malicious but conceal by power as protagonist; and average person, mostly indifferent and majority of humanity. The last and unspoken group is the great people who do great deeds and are good natured.

The superiority complex

The political right claims to be concerned with fostering self-pride and recognising white identity but that is the language they use to conceal their agenda which is to mobilise resentment against the left, political elite and migrants. The far right has used immigrants as a political device and as a symbol of government failure and part of a process of eliminating white heritage and identity. This message resonates with the public and has led them to success and power in several European countries.

The centre-left has been shunned for its failure to offer a sufficiently radical alternative and has been reduced to a small radical alternative section that is more of a geographic phenomenon. We have radical groups on the right and on the left who don’t talk to each other or like each other. This schism in European politics is unprecedented and a new height of political intolerance.

Apart from the radical left the success of populism has compelled all major parties to adopt an anti-immigration policy, but they all got it wrong, except for the populist right wing. The problem is not migration, it is needed by the labour market and a prerequisite of the international trade system. The problem is fear of migrants. It’s essentially a failure of optimism, a failure of imagination; the future is seen as bleak, full of problems, no jobs and dominated by people with dysfunctional cultures. This will come up in every social survey and the populist solution is to scapegoat the immigrants for what otherwise is a lack of political vision.

Populists have used this fear to perfect a rhetoric that balances finely its racist views while toning down pronouncements to plausible deniability level of racism. Outright recourse to hateful speech will damage social cohesion and is still unacceptable. It argues to promote a sense of racial purity. It has successfully promoted racism while denouncing it. Its lines and ranks are filled by racists and bigots but they will deny any such agenda.

The centre-right and centre-left took immigration literally but gradually have come to realise mass disillusion with their policies and now use the same simplified, sensational, repetitive and slogan based language as the populists.   

I saw this in Kabul in 1992 where shallow, banal and sinister people took charge and everyone else jumped on the bandwagon to enjoy in their success by lending gravity to their bigotry; to extract meaning and purpose in what otherwise is cliché, rotting and malicious. This led to the rise of Taliban and turning a bad situation into worst.  

The power of lies

When politics and society is balkanised and groups hold irreconcilable views people find it easier to believe in misinformation and lies rather than seek and verify facts; its because we take comfort from the tightness of our group and questioning group beliefs are seen as disloyal. The political elites use repetitive and stereotypical messages which are generally lies to create zealots and fanatics rather than promote understanding.

When the war broke out in Kabul city my family fled to the countryside. The country side was controlled for the past 15 years by Mujahedeen with conservative Islamic customs and traditions. Kabul was under the government controlled until 1992 when collapsed. Kabul was liberal by comparison with universities, cinemas, theatres and education and jobs for women, yet it remained deeply Afghan with traditions, religion and customs running deep. When I arrived in the village my great uncles and relatives questioned me on fundamental principles of Islam. They were shocked to find out that I was well educated on Islamic traditions and history. They believed that all people living in Kabul were infidels and enemies of God. It was considered an honour for true Muslims to kill Kabuli heathens. Several weeks after our arrival one of my cousins who was my age would still regularly seek assurances from me to confirm that all Kabulis were not apostates and reprobates.

I wondered why the false belief was so strongly rooted but only had to wait until the evening. On the first night the family gathered in an orchard under a fig tree and after tea and meal were listening to the radio. The radio station was not the one I used to listen to in Kabul but was run by Hizbi Islami, a fundamentalist faction. The content and language of the programmes were very new to me and the description of ongoing brutal war in Kabul was absolutely false – nowadays they would be called “fake news” – yet everybody believed in it. The mass killing of civilians trapped in the besieged city was portrayed as a necessity to cleanse the soul of the country. Tens of thousands of people died in a war that should be classed as genocide but to their compatriots who believed in different politics or loyal to a specific faction it wasn’t a cause for concern. 

As the number of people fleeing war from Kabul grew in the countryside, they started to question the “news” and provided another side of the story. One day during the Friday prayer in the mosque the Imam who had ties with Hizbi Islami warned the public about new rumours and called them fake. He said they were spread by malicious people who have come from other places and warned there will be consequences for those spreading those rumours or what we will call “fake news” – and that anyone spreading them would be punished.

Tens of thousands of people, including my family members, were killed in a war shaped by lies in Kabul. Lies about Jews, Soviets, Germans and other groups killed tens of millions of people in Europe. Those lies are back and it seems like we haven’t learned much from it. We won’t be able to argue in good conscious that we were never warned about it or did not understand the consequences of where lies will take us. Questioning “Fake News” means questioning our assumptions and way of life and its uncomfortable, its easy to condemn others. But courage by definition is confront our darkest beliefs and looking inward for solutions.

The unexpected storm

Government and its institutions by its nature produce a narrative of stability, deceiving us that the collapse of current order is unimaginable. This is very counterintuitive to the lessons of history. Every book or movie of any conflict will tell us that the protagonist lived a peaceful and serene life which was ruptured by war. For instance, Ivan’s Childhood is an Andrei Tarkovsky’s film about experiences of a 12-year-old protagonist living in two sharply contrasting worlds. The dark, dank shadows of reality and another familiar life of idyllic scenery and bathed in a soft, nurturing sunlight. The film won a prestigious Golden Lion and a flattering review from none other but Jean-Paul Sartre.

The perfect antidote to the nature of government is populist rhetoric; it produces the dynamics of crisis where escalation and dominance is the solution to problems of social dialogue. This create unreasonable fears and prompt otherwise unnecessary schism.

There is no reverting back from this situation until a disaster strike. It will destroy the political equilibrium and alter some social moralities and myths. A new leadership will rise which will oversee the creation of new myths about us and translate harshest lessons into political doctrine to guide the future.


[1] What we think as Evil is described as unattractive, vile and foul.  their tragedy deepens. This is further deepened by rejection. They are alienated further as society recoils from them. As an allegory of our responsibility to children, outsiders, or those who don’t conform to conventional ideals of beauty, there isn’t a stronger one

Tuesday, January 15, 2019

The Breadwinner is a daughter, a sister and a girl’s struggle with the Taliban



The story of Breadwinner takes place in the final days of Taliban regime around the family life of a girl called Parvana. Nurualla is Parvana's dad and a former teacher. The family struggles for food and water as Nurualla has one leg and female members of the family aren't allowed to work.

Idris who was a student of Nurulla has lost the way of righteousness. He is a bully and now has joined the Taliban. In a plot mastered by Idris Nurulla is sent to prison. The family’s situation becomes more dire. In Talibans' Perverted version of Islam women are not allowed to go out in public without an adult male escort so it’s up to Parvana, dressed as a boy, to become the family’s unlikely breadwinner.

Parvana’s mission is even more dangerous and arduous than that, because she’s determined to find out what has happened to her father and, if possible, to rescue him.

The film is an interesting strain of its genre, a downbeat drama with elements of inspirational fantasy. The drama aspect would have been stronger and more compelling if the story was filmed instead of animation. however the animation lends itself to integrating a parallel subplot steeped in myth and folklore in which a brave hero must undertake a perilous journey to confront and defeat fearful creatures. 

The Breadwinner is an alternative narrative to what people generally know of Afghan women. It's an inspiring story in a very plausible context that challenges Afghan women stereotype. The story rails against the dominant narrative created by the news media where the female is weak, victimised and subjugated. its a story of female empowerment, embodied in heroic Parvana. 

The film doesn't exaggerate the beneficial results of Parvana’s courage nor it ends in the best possible outcome for the family. It's not a glorified tale of splendour, victories and happy endings. It's about real struggles of ordinary women in a totalitarian society.

The film is delightful for adults and older children.