AFGHAN WOMEN: UNDER THE SHADOW OF TERROR AND POLITICS

BY: ALIA RAWI AKBAR

for chapter 1  Chapter Two 2 Chapter 3  Chapter 4

                                     Political view and war

The dispute over Osama and the oil business brought up some political issues between the Taliban and the US, but the war that the Afghans waged against the Taliban was ethnic—for power as I said before, not for democracy against the Taliban’s fundamentalism. Pashtuns and non-Pashtuns banding together would have gotten rid of the Taliban’s mentality and put them out of power in time by organizing decent and honest people to country without other countries political interfere by warfares. It was not necessary for a group to kill all Pashtuns in it.

George Bush, with his ignorance and his dishonoring of other countries’ value, pride and patriotism, He wanted to stretch the power for his own business and his own riches. Sounds like Hitler to me, and he with his party always bragged and bluffed about their patriotism and loving their country but what he did the result is obvioce and ugly in US, economically, politically and socially, and politice reached to the point of corruption and economy reached to the point of recession. For decades in Afghanistan, the Soviets in power chose unreliable people for the government, people who couldn’t understand the war-ravaged country and what really its people needed. They also let the Pashtuns suffer more than others, and people like H.Amin a Communist president first and most killed his own tribe’s people because the culture was strong among those victims of his. In the last, it was all about the Afghans in the region who had been played with politically by their neighbors, by the Western world and by the warlords. Pashtuns also sacrificed their dignity greatly because of the policies of the Western world all the time.

 The Pashtuns became victims of the Northern Alliance’s political games and the US’ dispute with the Taliban over Oil transport through Afghanistan. The US told the world that it was about Osama, but the facts show it differently. In any war, with outsiders or with ethnic people, Pashtuns died more than any other group.

I became sick with depression and at that time, I was informed by the US news that Osama had an army of 3,000 people, and the Taliban only numbered a few hundred. The news also told me that there could be a few thousand followers. But, after the bombings and war, the death toll is about up to more then tens of thousands, what it means that most ethnic fighters died in bombing and war innocently.

In those days, my emotional vulnerability was obvious. Many years ago, my emotional behavior was the result of family life under influence of wrong tradition, and then because of social life and marriage, the environment was not fit with my emotion. Then, the bad political situation began. Witnessing Afghans and Americans in politics, this time I saw that mostly innocent people became victims of politicians and their own companies’ interests. The politicians put pressure on people’s minds and played with their intelligence, their dignity and their lives, they pushed their power on people.

I also saw how some one-sided western media was, particularly in the US had many opportunities to oppose the Pashtuns deferent ways by the characteristic of Taliban, and I received information straight from Taliban’s agents and from politicians on both sides, about the Pashtuns’ death count at those years which was sad because I new why Pashtuns are involved in war of Taliban.

Only Talibans were taught lessons in political religious schools as Wahabists, which Pakistan provided them. The US knew this and did not prevent with influence that had over Pakistan, and they trusted Pakistan. Slowly, my mind became independent, but in the beginning, I was emotionally torn between both sides of the wars in Afghanistan. The Afghan people for a long time fought against each other for the benefit of other countries, like the US, Pakistan, Iran, Russia, China, India and other nations, even some that were far away like Israel.

I understood the word “politics” from watching the actions and talk of all sides, and from hearing their lies and deceptions and their games for gaining deferent kind of attention and power. between two cultures, between extreme visions, values, moralities, thoughts and emotions that had different definitions to different people. I got involved with every political side and with individuals from Afghanistan. I expected humanity, fairness accuracy and wisdom from everybody when it came to the reality of political issues, especially at that stage in history. I thought then and think now that nothing could be undercover anymore, but there are many ignorant people in the world that don’t see that today  the economy and domination is behind bloody politic, they are lying to themselves in case of deceiving all others , but influencing the  closed-eyed people every day.

I saw how Bush’s government manipulated the sentiments of its people, how it put them down, underestimated their knowledge, and lied to them again and again, making them believe in things that never really existed, or, in things that did exist, but not in the way that they were made to appear. The government wanted slowly to create circumstances that would allow them to take advantage of the situation, that would give them grounds for invading countries and controlling the world’s affairs through warfare, Bush never told his people precisely how we gave authorization for those wars, I considered all painful and extreme sides of the ideas, but even with my many experiences and all my learning from others, I couldn’t understand it all at that time.  

 Some countries’ “puppet” governments are not chosen by the public but by US-appointed politicians. This is against the Afghan way, and against the right way, which is letting chosen governmental nominees or people come to power through their own renown, without foreign interfere.

 From this situation, I struggled to chase the thoughts of emptiness and hopelessness from my mind. Because these thoughts and emotions had been in my mind for many years, in this situation, I was easily getting emotionally down. Every new disappointment and instance of human cruelty and negligence made me weaker emotionally but not in personality. I could understand the torture of innocent minds as an outcome of war, and the criticism of everything about them and their culture because of their ethnicity or religion. As a Pashtun, a Muslim, an Eastern person and a minority in other countries, I have seen and heard it all. I’ve suffered in the wake of life and death for many years. I’ve seen through sources daily political wars and traumatic events everywhere, especially in Afghanistan and Iraq and it’s been hard for me to explain the depth of my sorrow and the pain of my struggle to live with everything that has happened .I am painfully haunted by the miserable daily life of Afghan politics and by the strange, half-adopted culture in the Western world. I am also bothered by 9/11, which killed 3,000 innocent people, and by the US’ follow-up policy, which could more accurately was called “revenge.” As Bush indicated …War rushes through my mind, as does the pain of everyday life.

I was badly affected by 9/11; it opened an old wound because on top of the innocent lives that was taken on that day, I thought that many would also die in Afghanistan, and all because of the Northern Alliance,  Taliban and US. At the time, I imagined panicking, worrying people running everywhere to save themselves from the US’ bombs. I thought that the US would rashly kill everyone they could, because I new many innocents and far away from objectionable Ideology are involved in Taliban war obviously for ethnic reason and national sentiment.

The memory of my past life came alive with 9/11, and I wished that the Afghans had not been involved with Osama.