Afghans protest at Danish cartoons

Over a thousand protesters gathered in Mazar Shariff to protest against the republication of a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad in Danish newspapers, they also demanded the withdrawal of Danish and Dutch troops from Afghanistan. I don’t believe there is going to be any repercussion negatively affecting NATO troops in Afghanistan. If there was any it could have happened in the first round of print. But I do think it will negatively affect the image of the west in Afghanistan, while they are trying so hard to win the hearts and minds of Afghans in unwinnable battle against insurgency. The protesters, mostly religious clerics in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, also condemned plans by a right-wing Dutch politician to broadcast a film on the Koran.

I think the publication of cartoon shows how reconcilable Islam is with western secular values. In the west its seen as gesture to reemphasize western commitment to freedom of expression. In the muslim world its not about freedom of expression. It’s about the way of life. Afghanistan's Religious Affairs Ministry has called the reprinting of the cartoon as an attack against Islam. Several other Islamic countries have demanded that the film by the Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders must not be released.

I believe Afghans and muslims in general didn’t get the issue right. I don’t believe the publisher benefits from the muslim reaction but I do think there are circles which do. thus influencing public opinion in the West in aid of various political projects, for example to support further military intervention in the Middle East. In the west and specially in Europe the dispute is as one between Islam and freedom of expression.

The controversy was used to highlight a supposedly irreconcilable rift between Europeans and Islam. If the muslim world publishes insulting cartoons to Europe would Europe react like this. I don’t think so. as the journalist Andrew Mueller put it "I am concerned that the ridiculous, disproportionate reaction to some unfunny sketches in an obscure Scandanavian newspaper may confirm that ... Islam and the West are fundamentally irreconcilable"

The cartoon was republished in 130 newspapers in 49 other countries, not to humiliate muslims but as an act of support of free speech. Not only muslim nations saw it humiliating but countries with murky record of freedom like Belarus, Russia and south Africa also prohibited the cartoons or punished the publishers. What is bugging me is the reaction of moderate muslims protesting peacefully against conditional freedom of speech, requesting punishments and press control.

Afghan clerics and the government not only got the crisis wrong, as they usually do with crisis but they are also full of hypocrisy. The government budget and effectively Afghanistan is funded by countries that have published the cartoon. Why do you receive their charity while strongly oppose their values. Cartoon is another pretext for mullahs, as its for the right wing in the west, to strengthen their grip on society. Protests like today is solely the initiative of few mullahs and its primarily aimed at suppressing moderate elements of Afghan society, if such a thing exist:-)

Afghans in UK: Citizens, Settlers or Social Parasites?

Hundreds of thousands of Afghans live in Britain, most of them came here as refugees and has been awarded live to remain or British nationality. Most of them benefit from social welfare systems and public funding, with the integration of eastern European into EU, a larger poll of refugees are coming to Britain, better educated and less relying on social welfare. We are now conceptualizing Afghan immigrants at the points where our analysis privileges categories generated by European Union.

Figures of threat thus haunt the way we explain diasporic formations. this haunting, selectively, by investigating two figures of threat for immigrant theory: the parasite and the settler. The use of such figures ultimately insinuates several presumptions into analysis. One of these presumptions is most significant: that a diasporic community is ‘Other’ and, as such, is separate, separable, and isolable from a national people. The nation in Europe is now the continent, a European nation is more relevant today than a national. Instead of afghan labour its preferred to have polish labour. The forms of knowledge production that intersect domains of immigrant studies and the modern nation-state, thus, constitute immigrant as a particular kind of problem that needs to be dealt with. The new immigration schemes in Britain reflects this, its practically impossible for refugees to get to Britain overland today while most of afghans travelled to Britain via land ten years ago. Even for skilled worker its made several times difficult under the new scheme introduced in march 08.

This focus on immigrant-as-problem deflects our attention from more precise analysis of the nation-state’s relations to alterity. In contrast to normative models that focus on the settler and the parasite, the nation state sees the difference of immigrant as a threat and simultaneously desires to interpolate diasporic difference into a multicultural vision of the nation’s people. In other words, the underside of what is often seen as a diasporic threat is a vision of promise in possibility of liberal unity. This goes back to Britain paranoia of world war 2, Britain was scared of Fascism and promoting a mix society was state policy until recently. However, this figure of promise, which also works at the margins of immigrant theory, is highly problematic; it uncritically recuperates, on the one hand, a capitalist fantasy of productive labour and commodity circulation and, on the other, a nationalist fantasy wherein diasporic difference may be abstracted into national equivalence. In the face of new Europe and plenty of poor immigrants form eastern Europe this is proving more difficult. East Europeans are productive labour and its easier to abstract their cultural differences under pan European ambition.

Sexuality plays a critical role in these diverse processes of abstraction. Particularly significant is the presumption found within discourses of the nation-state that both the minority and majority communities proliferate through distinctive sexual norms, interdictions, and transgressions—in other words, what is operative here is a generalized hetero-normativity which is posited to move between and conjoin a national /European and a supposedly separate immigrant community. This is a stupid argument, This analytic is designed not only to reveal the hidden presumptions of ‘promise’ within figures of threat, but also to draw out another, perhaps more powerful, figure of alterity—not of the immigrant conceived of as the nation-state’s ‘other’(Tololyan, 1991), but of an otherness of the national/European people itself.

We can’t answer the question I posed as a title, I argue, in theory. Britian is entering into a new chapter of economic and social relation with Europe and it affects its long standing view of multiculturalism. Afghans in Britian needs to be studies to understand their social contribution.

Afghanistan: still a bleeding wound but this time the infection spreads to the West

An updated version of the United Nations threat map was published in June of 2006, showing rising danger levels for humanitarian workers in many parts of Afghanistan, areas which coloured solidly pink indicates "extreme risk."

this resembles like a bleeding wound, the blood has spread across afghanistan intensely since 2002. the bleeding wounds, those pink splotches on the UN maps have spread until they now dominate the country's south and east. The latest map, updated in December, shows 14 of 17 districts in Kandahar are entirely designated as extreme risk.

Even so, the statistics are bad. The United Nations's count of security incidents in Afghanistan last year climbed to 13 times the number recorded in 2003, and the UN forecasts even worse this year. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization says insurgent attacks increased 64 per cent from 2006 to 2007. In the first two months of this year, some analysts have noticed a
15- to 20-per-cent rise in insurgent activity compared with the same period last year, raising alarm about whether the traditional spring fighting season has started early.

The prospect of another year of rising bloodshed has forced a moment of reckoning among the Westerners. Almost everybody involved with Afghanistan is taking a hard look at the country's future, the mission is
increasingly a source of raucous debate in Canada and among its NATO allies; this is the sort of thing which worries me. i am not worried about westerners losing troops in the war but when they want to withdraw. lets hear it from an experienced old man, if i may reiterate my analogy, an experienced operator of afghan wound, a former Soviet generals have told the German government not to expand its engagement in Afghanistan and instead think about pulling out its troops. "More troops won't solve this problem, that's our experience. They only increase the tragedy," Lev Serebrov, a former Soviet army general and now a parliamentarian in the Russian Duma, said earlier this week in Berlin, according to the Berliner Zeitung newspaper. Germany, he said, shouldn't be thinking about sending more troops to Afghanistan, but "how it can pull out" of the country. A serving Russian military official, Gen. Ruslan Aushev, said the situation in Afghanistan reminded him strongly of the military operation the Soviet Union had in the country in the 1980s. "We were there for nearly a decade, first with a battalion, then with a division, then with 100,000 troops -- and in the end, we were forced to retreat,"

When managers from all the major humanitarian agencies in Kandahar gathered in a high-walled compound to swap war stories last month, it wasn't the tales of kidnappings and suicide bombs that caused the most worry. Nor was it the reports of insurgents enforcing their own brutal laws and executing aid workers. "The scary thing was, no foreigners attended the meeting," a participant said. "Everybody had evacuated."

Most aid organizations quietly withdrew their international staff from Kandahar in recent weeks, the latest sign that the situation here is getting worse. It's now almost impossible to spot a foreigner on the city streets, except for the occasional glimpse of a pale face in a troop carrier or a United Nations armoured vehicle.

At least the foreigners can escape. For many ordinary people the ramshackle city now feels like a prison, with the highways out of town regularly blocked by Taliban or bandits. Residents have even started avoiding their own city streets after dark, as formerly bustling shops switch off their colourful neon lights and pull down the shutters. There is rarely any electricity for the lights anyway, partly because the roads are too dangerous for contractors to risk bringing in a new turbine for a nearby hydroelectric generator.

Corrupt police prowl the intersections, enforcing a curfew for anybody without that night's password, or bribe money. The officers seem especially nervous these days, because the Taliban hit them almost every night with ambushes, rocket-propelled grenades or just a deceptively friendly man who walks up to a police checkpoint with an automatic rifle hidden under a shawl.

Insurgent attacks have climbed sharply in Kandahar and across the country. But some analysts believe the numbers don't capture the full horror of what's happening in Afghanistan's south and east. When a girl in a school uniform is stopped in downtown Kandahar by a man who asks frightening questions about why she's attending classes, that small act of intimidation does not appear in any statistics.

Kabul was roaring with activity as foreign aid poured into the capital, and the international community wanted to spread the prosperity into rural areas. It was widely believed that a few thousand troops could stabilize a province such as Kandahar.

In a blunt assessment this week, Vice-Admiral Michael McConnell, the U.S. intelligence czar, admitted that the Karzai government controls less than one-third of the country. The Taliban hold 10 per cent on a more-or-less permanent basis while the rest is run by local warlords, he said, describing the situation as deteriorating.

Influential US Senator, John Kerry, who was in Afghanistan last week, said Tuesday the Afghan Government has become disconnected and isolated. The government in Kabul has become somewhat disconnected, isolated, however you want to call it, from some of the provinces. And it's critical that that connection become robust, Kerry told reporters in Washington during a press conference on his trip to Afghanistan.

Even if villagers aren't afraid of the Taliban, many join up because they find the new government unpalatable. No regime has ever been overthrown at the ballot box in Afghanistan, so political opposition often becomes part of the insurgency.

Many Afghans view the government as a family business, reaping the spoils from foreign donors at the expense of those who don't belong to the well-connected tribes or family networks.

For rough comparison, NATO sent 40,000 troops into Kosovo - a place roughly one-quarter the size of Kandahar and with no active insurgency in 1999. More than one-third of them are still there eight years later. In fact, NATO has five times as many troops deployed in Kosovo as Canada has in Kandahar.

Comparisons with other insurgencies show a similar shortfall of soldiers in the Afghan war: Conflicts in Somalia, Malaysia, Sierra Leone, East Timor and Iraq all required far more troops per capita than NATO has devoted to Afghanistan.

Afghanistan's economic growth is also expected to continue slowing. Private investment was cut in half in 2007 compared with a year earlier, to about $500-million, and trade within the country will be hampered by Taliban and criminal roadblocks on the main highways.

Nearly everyone agrees, however, that Afghanistan will likely see rising violence in 2008. Two Western security analysts predicted that the year will bring increased sophistication in the Taliban's technology; they're likely to use so-called explosively formed penetrators for the first time, adopting a technique often used in Iraq to puncture even the most heavily armoured vehicle with a specially shaped explosive.

Afghanistan Dialogue: Imagine art after

Imagine art after was a project uniting artists who originate from the same country but who are now geographically and politically separated. The project brought together seven artists who left home and now live in London, and seven who remained in the country of their birth: the artist who left, and the artist who stayed. The aim of the project is to open lines of communication where they would otherwise not exist, enabling artists to exchange ideas and work, and also to discuss their experiences in a online forum.

The artists taking part come from countries whose people, according to the Home Office, make an unusually high number of applications for asylum in the UK, among them Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Serbia and Nigeria. As well as their work being exhibited online, each artist will take part in a dialogue with their partner for six weeks.

By communicating about their experience in two very different societies, it's hoped that the artists' conversations with each other will lend insight into how life and art interrelate, and how identity is shaped by notions of belonging.

There was an exhibition of their work in Tate until first week of January. Unfortunately I missed to see it.

I was listening to a report on BBC where the Afghan project was described as exposition of two men. Some dialogues were great success but the Afghanistan didn’t pick up, the expositions were about two men’s belief, basically they were monologues. I am providing some details of the men below, frankly I could clearly see how these two men could be obsessed with their own views, they see themselves as very important person and don’t downplay their pair’s opinion as unrelated and something out of the context.

Some of the dialogues went very well if you look at the Serbian dialogue, they have done so much. Every night they have written quite a bit to each other. I am really disappointed to see that Rahraw only made one posting to Shapur, in badly broken English. They are clearly missing the point of art. It’s about expression and communication, which is best possible in a language you are fluent in. why aren’t they communicating in Farsi or Pashtu?

From Afghanistan was Rahraw Amarzad livening in Kabul was paired with Shapur Amini living in London.

Shapur was born on October 11, 1962 in Kabul. After graduating from Ghazi high school, he was offered a scholarship to study Photography, Television and Cinema in Tehran, Iran. Only a few months after my arrival in Iran, the communist coup took place in Afghanistan.

With the coming of many Afghans to the United Kingdom and the lack of Afghan organisations to assist them, in October 1991 he formed a community group called Afghan Academy, an educational, cultural and social organisation.

Rahraw Amarzad was born in 1964 in Kabul, where he continued to live and work as an artist, curator and lecturer.

He is the Director of the Centre for Contemporary Art Afghanistan, Lecturer at the Faculty of Fine Arts Kabul University and Editor in Chief of Gahnama-e-Hunar Art Magazine.

I think the reason the Afghans were held back is because the dialogue was public, therefore they have to hide some things and communicate in a language understandable for audience.

I like the dialogue between the Iraqis, it’s very tender and you can see how their point of view has changed. This is again not the case with Afghans. perhaps its between a woman and a man. i don't think its a good idea to put two muslim men together, espicially Afghan. its hard for them to open up.

karzai interview

karzai talks with aljazeera when attending UN general assembly. watch it on youtube here karzai interview

بحث کلمات "د" دار به شورای ملی رسید

بحث کلمات "د" دار به شورای ملی رسید

عبدالکریم خرم از سوی کمیسیون امور دینی و فرهنگی ولسی جرگه استجواب به گردید. خرم را کمیسیون متهم به خدشه دار کردن وحدت ملی نمود. حاجی محمد محقق رییس کمیسیون فرهنگی و دینی ولسی جرگه گفت که در شرایط فعلی بی کاری ، نا امنی، گرسنگی، و سرما که جان صدها نفر را می گیرد، دامن زدن به چنین مسایل به صلاح کشور نبوده واولویت ها باید در نظر گرفته شود.

زمان زیاد نیاز است تا مجلس طرز برخورد خود را با مقامات دولتی سلیس کند. پارلمان امروز یک گروه متحاجم و پرخاشگر میباشد که فکر میکند هر کاری را میتوانند زیرا نماینده ملت اند.

در مورد قضیه خرم پارلمان و شخص محقق باید بداند که هر شخص نقش مشخص خود را دارد، مسوؤلیت وزیر فرهنگ سرما و گرسنگی نیست. همین عدم فهم مقامات دولتی از نقش شان بوده که وظایف همه پیچیده شده است.

تبدیل لوحه وزارت اطلاعات وفرهنگ از زبان دری به پشتو و انگلیسی، تبدیل نام نگارستان ملی به گالری ملی، یکجا نمودن خبرهای دری و پشتو تلویزیون ملی، تبدیل لوحه محلات به یک زبان، چگونگی اقدامات در باره اصلاح برنامه های رسانه های همگانی و مجازات خبرنگاران تلویزیون ملی در بلخ مواردی بود که باعث استجواب وزیر اطلاعات وفرهنگ شده بود.

پارلمان هم باید بداند که این تنها تصمیم وزیر نبوده است بلکه زبان و طرز استفاده از آن یک بحث ملی است. طرز استفاده از زبان بیانگر موقف سیاسی اجتماعی اشخاص میباشد. ثبوت نکته فوق برخورد های لفظی میان نماینده گان در جریان استجواب وزیراطلاعات وفرهنگ میباشد.

مسئله زبان فکر شده است کرزی و باند وی بندی را در قانون اساسی گنجانیده اند. خرم هم بر بند اخیر قانون اساسی تاکید کرده می گویند که در آنجا گفته شده تا مصطلحات ملی باید حفظ شود، و وی منحیث مامور حکومت به کسی اجازه نمی دهد که ولایت را استان و یا سوبه بگوید. که نکته خوب است اما در عین زمان خرم نگارستان را به گالری تبدیل میکند. که این خود حذف مصطلحات ملی است. ماموری که دانسته خلاف قانون اساسی عمل میکند باید مجازات شود.

journalist fine is linked to the culturolanguage debate

Three Afghan journalists working for government-owned media have been fined for using words not approved by cultural policy. A reporter and two of his superiors were fined for using three words from Persian, as used in Iran, instead of their local equivalent derived from Pashtu -- the language of the Afghan majority. Afghanistan's official languages are Dari-Farsi and Pashtu, both members of indo-persian languages, a subclass of indo-european languages. Pashtu has dominated Dari in the last two centuries in Afghanistan. The Pashtun rulers and Kings pursued a cultural policy of Pashtuization, changing names of location, people and objects into Pashto from Dari.

The reporter fined used three words for "university", "students" and "certificate", in a report from Persian spoken in Iran. Many Dari scholars in Afghanistan would argue that reference should be made to language history and indeed the original Persian words are not used in Afghanistan because of Pashtu influence. The governments in the past only introduced a Pashtu word for the above three and promoted its use in Dari too. The influence of Pashtu on Dari is tremendous and vice versa. there are many Dari words in Afghan Pashtu while they have an English or Hindi equivalent in Pakistani Pashtu. The two languages of Afghanistan are very close to each other and the government policy has been to identify both particular to Afghanistan and set some peculiarities to separate them from the same languages spoken in the region. The origin of Dari debate has heated up lately, new media outlets have mushroomed across the country and each pursue different language policy over which the government has no control. Popular stations like Tolo uses the Dari as it is spoken in Iran and it seem to enjoy a lot of popularity. Government officials have not spoken against this because they don’t have a policy guidelines. However, unofficially they have condemned the new approach Dari. In an unofficial gathering Jabar Sabit, Afghan General Attorney, was arguing that the Dari language in Afghanistan is not only similar in words with the one spoken in Iran but there are structural differences. This is clearly a prove of General Attorney’s ignorance but it does show that senior officials in Karzai government pursue the old policy and Karzai seem to appoint more of them and tacitly support the implicit policy.

Pashtu words in Dari have been challenged after the collapse of Taliban. The minorities who speak Dari feel free than ever before and they want to use their own language –purely. The question is whether it’s a good thing or not. I am going to try to answer.

My primary response would be it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter how we speak and what words we use. What matters is whether it adheres with the national creative policy. We don’t know that because there is no national creative policy. The creative and cultural policy in Afghanistan is managed by people like Khuram who are fanatic and racist. Even if the government will come up with a cultural policy it will never be trusted by the public, if khuram-minded people are in the government. After fining the journalist in another move Khuram introduced the English word ‘Gallery’ to replace the Dari word equivalent of it. the Dari equivalent was used for decades. Khurams move has been seen by many Dari scholars as an anti-Dari policy. In many countries around the world governments try to coup with the English influence by introduce local equivalent. The gesture of Khuram is very rare. There was no explanation given in support of the change. In a country without a lid we have to think for ourselves, everybody is on their own. The right policy is promoting knowledge creation and the generation of wealth. If Dari language in Afghanistan is changing in a way that it separates from Pashtu and connects with regional languages further; in a way that it contributes to national knowledge and wealth then it’s a good thing. I am aware of the price we are going to pay; its going to intensify ethnic tension because the groups will become further separated. its very dangerous to look at this issue from one dimension. i was watching a video of Wasif Bakhtari on the internet and raved on about the history of Farsi language and how ignorant the current government is and have been. this is not helping.

BBC, and all international media targeting Afghanistan, have Pashtu services targeting Pashtu speakers in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. The Dari services target audiences/readers in central Asia, Afghanistan and Iran. One could argue that it’s an old colonial approach to countries and regions and there is no merit of knowledge creation in such programming. But it has proved to be an economically better approach for media coverage.

Tolo and many others also use words in Dari which is similar to Iranian Farsi. I don’t believe owners of tolo have any cultural policy and care about afghan culture they are only after the money and they have realised that audiences like Dari with new words in it. does this tell us there is economic gain? If there was no economic gain then why would tolo pursue a controversial language approach?

I know many afghans who make a living from their language knowledge. there are many jobs for Persian speakers in UK as translators, I know a few and they deal with Iranian more than with afghans.

The hard part of the argument is whether it creates knowledge. I could start the argument by connecting it to naïve arguments such as the human rights. It’s the right of every individual to speak in their first language and acquire education and information in their first language. Dari is a very rich language and the literature is very strong, the new language is reusing the old terms from classical language it could be argued that the use of old terms enriches people life and brings more meaning. I have managed several radio and TV stations in the last few years. I have observed that internet is the primary source for general information for journalists. The information gathered from the internet comes from websites such as Wikipedia in Persian. the reason Persian Wikipedia is rich and has tens of thousands of articles is because of the contribution of individuals from Iran and other Persian speaking countries. Another example is SPIP, it is an open-source, free publication system on the Internet used by many media outlets to build websites. SPIP allows contributive writing. The reason it’s used widely is because its available in Persian. if Persian was only spoken in Afghanistan there was not a big enough market to translate SPIP. I could make many arguments why the new Dari could contribute to knowledge generation.

In the letter sent to reporters by ministry of information and culture, which I have obtained a copy, no explanation was given on why their action was considered against cultural policy. However it was written that their action is unislamic. This is again another sign to show us how similar minded the government is to Taliban. Iranian Farsi is also perceived by Taliban unislamic. It’s the language of Shias, who are worst than infidels. For Taliban the only Islamic language is Pashtu and Arabic. They hate dari more than English.

In Afghanistan we can never explain anything. Any explaination ends up with more questions. I have more questions now than when I started to write this. Why is there no cultural policy? Why decisions are taken in regard to cultural policy but they are not explained? Why is the government not, at least in paper, having a knowledge policy? Why is the international community spending billions to make Afghanistan economically viable and educationally rich not understanding this? Why can’t international community produce recommendations for knowledge policy?

The black bull is attacking “university, certificate, student, knowledge, gallery” the words are similarly used in Iran and not approved by ministry of information and culture.

The journalist was fined for using these words. Minister Khuram is often referred to as ‘Bull’ because of his obesity . black symbolises anti enlightenment.

cartoon by a.khodadad

the Kite runner was banned: it tell us a lot about afghan government

Ministry of information and culture has banned the import and exhibition of The Kite Runner on the fear of social consequences. The film is based on the novel by Khalid Husseini about the troubled friendship of two Afghan boys. The kite runner offers an image of Afghanistan before the wars and has a personal touch of the friendship between Amir, the son of a wealthy Pashtun, and Hassan, the Hazara son of Amir’s father’s servant. although, the kite runner is not much different than most other stories about Afghanistan. It’s about hardship and difficulties, it builds on the foundation that any afghan story could only be told by pain and disaster. But kite runner is different than most other popular stories about Afghanistan, it has a personal touch and it tells the story of fun and joy.

Apparently, ministry is concerned about a couple of controversial scenes in the film: first, Hassan is raped in an alley by a bunch of Pashtun bullies. Second, Hassan’s son, Sohrab, is later forced to perform an erotic dance by a Talib. Let’s break this down and try to analyse, I have heard from friends who remember the seventies that a rape case surfaced into the local papers around the same time that the story of the film is taking place. The rape became popular among Kabulis in late 1970s, after the government failed to respond. The raped boy decided to ravage and killed all the three attackers. Apparently the story had no ethnic profile. If the story is proven true then Khalid, the author, has not taken into consideration the events which were taking place around the same time as his story, or he has deliberately distorted the truth to make his story more exciting. I think both are fine. He never claims it’s the truth. It’s a fiction and artistic imagination of a writer. I am wondering, why is it so hard for minister of information and culture to understand that imagination and fiction is the basis of artistic recreation.

The other point I would like to make is about the erotic dance and the rape scene. Erotic dance is not something new for Afghanistan. It’s a part of afghan culture. If the minister of information and culture doesn’t know that then he shouldn’t be the minister of culture. Dear minister, here is a little cultural tutorial for you, walk out of your ministry and go to the DVD shop just across the street and ask for a ‘Raqsi Qataghani’. You’ll get a long range of choice. Which won’t be much different than what is portrait in the film, if not more erotic. The other controversial scene is the rape, the ministry could have provided copies with omitted rape scene; if concerned about family screening. Why is the ministry so scared of sex and sexual issues? You can’t avoid it, its part of human nature. Every Music and film shop in Afghanistan has a collection of pornographic movies. It’s a business and it won’t be stopped by ignoring the issue. The minister should become more cultural and try to address the issue of sex and pornography. If there is a need for something in a society, it’s better to regulate it instead of ignoring it. there is always the Taliban way of dealing with it, public execution or some other brutal punishment to convicts which possess or seek pornography. Minister Khuram and the Karzai government have the same attitude as Taliban but they can’t use the same method because their foreign backers won’t approve that.

Last but not least is the storyline, the ministry didn’t like it because it talks about friendship in the frame of ethnicity. Pashtoon rich and Hazara poor. This has been the truth and everybody know it. this is not the whole truth and all hazaras were not servants for pashtuns but some were. The story makes a generalisation. This is called the freedom to express your view. People see things differently and all should be told. minister Khuram your job is not to make sure everybody see the same thing. Its not going to happen. Taliban tried, I truly think their method was much effective. You won’t achieve it with your inefficient methods.

Kite runner offered many westerners a more settled way to look into Afghanistan. Its different than what they hear from media on daily basis. A lot of people I know in the UK showed more interest to Afghanistan and keen to learn more, keen to learn about personal stories of diasporas. But people like Khuram and Karzai and his Mullah allies are there to make sure that Afghanistan only reflect a fanatic face. If films and books like kite runner are banned, creative thinking is banned.

my latest comment on afghan radio and journalistm

my latest interview with BBC about audience participation in local afghan radio station and journalist security in the light of Perviz case.

BBC podcast_click here

بازداشت یک شهروند بریتانوی به اتهام فریبکاری

یک شهروند بریتانوی،رئیس شرکت تبلیغاتی" گروپ "،امروز به اتهام فریبکاری وعدم  پرداخت پول های مردم، بازداشت گردید .

ظاهرأ، رئیس شرکت تبلیغاتی گروپ که در ساحه وزیراکبرخان دست به فریب  کاری     می زد. کارمندان شرکت گروپ شاکی شده و ادعا کرده اند که انتونی رئیس شرکت صدو یازده هزاردالرامریکایی پول  معاشات آنان نپرداخته است.

انتونی رئیس شرکت گروپ   تعدادی از افغان ها را در بخش های مختلف استخدام نموده بود وطی سه ماه معاشات آنهارا   نیز نپرداخته بود ومی خواست از کشور  فرارنماید که به اثر شکایت کارمندان آن شرکت ،نامبرده     از شاهراه    کابل – جلال آباد  دستگیر    گردید.

  انتونی     شرکت تبلیغاتی   "گروپ "را در یک خانه کرایی واقع وزیر اکبرخان بازنموده بود،که کرایه خانه ، پول   تیل فروشان وپرده دوزان شهر کابل را   نیز نپرداخته   بود.

Afghan Film Festival in Edinburgh

There is going to be an afghan film festival in Edinburgh toward the end of February, the aim is to show a new face of Afghanistan. One which has not been familiar to UK audience, the idea is to bring creativity and fun from Afghanistan. But I don’t see anything creative when I look at the festival program. It’s the same old boring stuff. Taliban, Osama, Kandahar, misery and various stories of a haunted nation. Why should osama or Kandahar always represent Afghanistan. Even if we try to show another face. It’s because the festival organisers didn’t know how to look behind barmak and Rahimi to find new faces of Afghanistan. Let me explain why.

I didn’t dare to call film an industry in Afghanistan, because Afghan film is not an industry, the word industry implicates a distinguished process of production, distribution and screening. It doesn’t exist in Afghanistan, for the obvious reason of economy to support it. but a point to ponder up on is, do we need an established market which has the purchase power and interested in afghan film or a successful industry can create a market. I believe if good business skills are combined with artistic expression then film and video products could be sold. The problem is that we don’t have film makers who could think about the audience, and to be able to think about the ways to make afghans interested in their films. That is a starting point, once audience is interested then you can sell to them.

The film makers are interested in themselves. They are interested about what they think and then they market it internationally. Film in Afghanistan is a notion of arty farty recreation which introduces Afghanistan to clandestine audience, seemingly abroad. Osama won a golden globe award while its merely known to few people in Afghanistan. Whether osama was good enough to win the award than its competitors is a different issue which I will write about in the next post.

I don’t call film an art in Afghanistan because it’s not an art. Art is mass and art is creative. Film industry in Afghanistan is in the hands of few. There is a definite monopoly which I will come back to later.

A few people like seddiq barmak and attiq Rahimi and some others are renowned as film makers. They are happy to be famous and that is the end. There is no notion of bringing up  and supporting a generation of film makers in the hope to invest in creativity. The renown filmmakers think they are the ultimate symbol of creativity. I see this as a bad practice but I wish it was only limited to their lack of vision and misunderstanding of the meaning of Art. They create an entry barrier for the young film makers, by default and merely because they exist. There are dozens of young and energetic film makers around Afghanistan which are struggling with their ideas. Some I know has even produced films. But the reason their films are not getting publicity is because of monopolists like attiq Rahimi and seddiq barmak. I believe that young film makers are equally creative as barmak or Rahimi, if not more. But they will never get the attention. Among them their might be people to change this creative talent into a marketable art which could support them invest in film making and create more films. the situation resembles a bit like the film makers in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Are they talented? Yes of course they are. But do they make any money. NO. Hollywood does, Hollywood producers make the money because they have a good distribution system. But they are not more creative than Edinburgh and Glasgow filmmakers. I give this example because of the festival in Edinburgh.

I think a great fun project would be to network the young film makers and try to market their products. Encourage creativity and enable them to get access to festivals such as Edinburgh.

I don’t think I have been real constructive. I think we should go behind the blame game and look into ways of turning film into a vibrant sector. I know many people who does that but work need to be done at different levels. Creative enough is not good, the film needs to reach out and go to different markets.     

kill the journalist to undermine the media

The key justification of western and their military wing, NATO, presence in Afghanistan is bringing democracy. Neither Afghans nor westerners believe in hunting down 9/11 suspects anyore but rather saving Karzai from definite collapse in the hands of Taliban and their alikes nesting inside the regime.

The story of Parvez Kambaskhsh reminds us where Afghanistan is actually standing. Parviz a 23 years old journalist was detained three months ago. The allegations are downloading an article written by an Iranian scholar that allegedly contains Anti Islamic sentiments. the accused was sentenced to death by hanging by primary court of Balkh. Neither the accused have been given the chance nor has the advocate been appointed to exercise his/her rights to defence.

Mawlawi Shams has reportedly said that ‘he has insulted Islam and it can’t be tolerated’. Mawlawi Shams, a religious figure, has the power to make significant decisions which are unconstitutional and undemocratic. This power is vested in him by the government. This is a power game, Karzai government has been critical of media for awhile, this incident allowed the religious scholar to rampage a journalist. In big picture it shows where power lies and where Karzai can rely. Parviz is a victim of the politics game. Media has a voice in the Afghan society, media feeds values into the power system. This game is about whose voices are heard and whose voices are marginalised. media has made a lot of noise after the Taliban, far more than mullahs and Karzai government don’t want the power to go out of the classical circles into the hands of ordinary people. Mullahs and religion is a good tool to sanction unwanted groups which are perceived banal and dangerous. 

The notion of freedom of expression and freedom of thought is that society can produce an objective and verifiable measure of meaning for media content as well as production. This is impossible to achieve if fanaticism rules. Fundamentalists ignores the issue of perspective and denies the textual meaning of media content. Polysemy and diversity in the meaning of media content and allowing individual thought and interpretation is not only the characteristic of advanced western democracy. Media content of many Islamic countries could be interpreted variously; as long as fundamentalism, in its primitive form, is not the social ruler. Fundamentalists can tolerate media content and messages as long as it creates noise; media content could be tolerated by fundamentalists if it serves their power politics purpose. A good example is Taliban not only tolerating but working with media. Karzai regime is made of fundamentalists which are not much different than Taliban in character and media is no more serving their power politics purposes, unlike the Taliban. A fundamentalist vision of society is served by creating a culture of code-governed meaning which is not susceptible to rational reconstruction, as a matter of fact fundamentalism is an opponent of any reconstruction. We witnessed this vision under Taliban rule. However, historically speaking the fundamentalists and fanatic warlords of Karzai government have failed to create such a society because they were too corrupt to maintain any social order and eventually resulting in the emergence of Taliban. 

پول سیاه

بیش از چهار صدهزار نفربنابردریافت پول ازمدرک  قاچاق مواد مخدر، درج لست سیاه(بلک لست) می باشند .

فهرست سیاه را ایالات متحده تهیه نموده است و در دسترس دولت افغانستان قرار داده است. چون حجم این لست بسیار بزرگ است امریکا نتوانسته است آنرا بصورت مکمل تهیه نماید، در نتیجه جزیات بعضی از قاچاقبران به اسم شان مختص میگردد. تعداد اسم های مروج در اجتماع افغانستان محدود است، در نتیجه چهارصد هزار نام که در لست است، فراگیر تمام اسم های میگردد که در افغانستان استفاده میشود. به این لحاظ این لست قابل استفاده نیست.

دوم اینکه تطبیق این لست به دوش بانک مرکزی میباشد تا در هماهنگی با بانک های خصوصی کار نماید. در حالی که هیچ هماهنگی وجود ندارد، و هیچ بانک قادر به تطبیق لست نیست. 

به گفته آقای ابراهیمی معاون بانک مرکزی تا حال کسی باداشتن این نوع پول برای انتقال به این بانک مراجعه نموده است.

شاید مراجعه کرده باشند اما برای بانک نا ممکن است که تسبیط نماید که ایا مراجع صورت گرفته است یا نی بخاطر که لست تطبیق نمیشود.

پول سیاه جهت تمویل دهشت افگنی، باند سالاری، جنگ سالاری و دیگر جرایم استفاده میگردد.