Radio Azadi: an Office Enmeshed in a Heist (Part II)

In my previous post, I wrote about theft at Radio Azadi. Here’s an example:

The RFE/RL Afghanistan bureau in Kabul had just moved from the Mustafa Hotel in the buffer zone, located between downtown and Shahr-e Naw, to Wazir Akbar Khan, a more opulent and safe neighborhood. It was sometime in early 2003. The city's electricity was rarely available, let alone reliable, so the office has received permission from the main office in Prague, Check Republic, to purchase a generator to provide electricity to our newly built two studios plus nearly 45 desktop computers. I was a technician and therefore was responsible for any technological problems. 

I went to Shahr-e-Naw and found a computer shop owned by a Herati merchant that sold German generators. It was nearly two years after the people of the Taliban regime, and finding a powerful generator was like a dream come true. The only generator that the store had was 5000W, which was considered pretty good given the scarcity. Plus, if a generator is made in Germany or any European country other than China, you would treat the purchase with trust. 

They quoted me a price of $8000. I returned to the office with a price quotation and gave it to the admin. The manager told me to go to the computer store and tell the guy to write the price as $12,000. I asked why $12,000. He said, "Two thousand is for you, and two thousand is for me." I replied that I had a salary and couldn’t take part in such a deal. He said, “Let me buy it myself.” The next day, the generator was purchased. From that single transaction, $4000 went into the manager’s pocket.

To be continued...

A Farsi version of this blog post is published here

Radio Azadi: An Organization Mired in Moral and Financial Corruption (Part I)

When Kari Lake was nominated as a special advisor to the United States Agency for Global Media, some media outlets reported that Trump had asked Lake to gut the government agency that oversees Voice of America (VOA). Instead of gutting, Kari Lake dismantled the agency, which oversees six organizations, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Voice of America. I don’t know much about the other organizations that were closed, but I know a lot about Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Afghan Service, known as Radio Azadi. (to call it Azadi, which means freedom, is a misnomer; I will write on this more in an upcoming blog post). I worked in its Kabul bureau as a technical manager in 2003. I was responsible for all communication tools, technology, radio broadcasting, and relay systems. I know how corrupt this organization was. I mean corrupt in every sense, ethically and financially.

During the time I worked, male journalists would openly demand sex from their female colleagues in broad daylight, and sometimes in crude ways. They uploaded pornographic videos onto female journalists' computers. They set pornographic images as desktop wallpapers on women’s computers. The vile and crude sexual harassment men inflicted on women was widespread. Female journalists were intimated and coerced in a variety of ways. No one addressed the women’s complaints. If a complaint was made, the victim would be accused of misconduct and moral corruption and eventually fired. So, no one said anything and really had the courage to complain.

One day, I was in the administrative manager's office. "Look outside," he said, pointing to a young girl in black clothes standing on the fourth floor of the Mustafa Hotel, leaning against the fence while her hands clasping onto the handrail. “She wants a job. She’s from your ethnic group, Hazara,” he said, with a contemptuous smile that conveyed disdain, humiliation, and condescension. I turned around and looked outside; the young girl was standing at the office's front door, belonging to the radio director. I asked if she had brought her resume and if she had been shortlisted or called up for an interview. He hinted that she wanted to be hired through “another way.” He meant she had to bow to the director’s demands first, and we could do nothing. The manager told me the demands were sexual. 

Some of the women who were sexually harassed now live in Europe and North America. I think if they have the courage, they should file complaints against those men. Some of those men now live in Europe and Australia.

In the year that I worked at Radio Azadi, the Afghanistan branch in Kabul, embezzlement and theft were practiced at maximum. The administrative manager handled all purchases himself, including buying groceries. The manager, whose primary responsibility was to ensure the smooth and efficient operation of the organization through daily management, staff supervision, record-keeping, facilitating communication, and ensuring compliance with policies, spent half his day driving his car to the market to buy food supplies. From potatoes and eggplants to oil and gas, transportation, travel costs, and technology purchases, all were doubly charged. His subordinates were his close relatives. The guards at the gate were his relatives. The rented cars belonged to senior managers of the radio, who had leased them to the radio at exorbitant rates. Some of them had bought two or three cars just to rent them to the radio at high costs. They were profiting from every angle—from the daily wages of laborers digging trenches for pipes and electricity to food supplies, transportation, and everything else.

At Radio Azadi, nepotism was of utmost importance. Hiring was based on favoritism, and preferential treatment was given to family members or close friends. The director of Radio Azadi in Afghanistan was a Pashtun from Wardak province. He had hired all his family members at the radio station—his brother, nephews, relatives, and even their young children as young as 10 for the children’s and youth programs. The only people he hadn’t brought in were their wives, sisters, and daughters, as this goes against the customs of some Pashtuns.

There was an unhealthy atmosphere filled with mistrust, hatred, rivalry, and hostility, especially between the administrative manager and the director of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Kabul. These two men did not trust each other. Both men were vying over who should control the embezzlement and theft. They were contending over who should benefit from the money that was supposed to be spent on running a radio station that was supposed to do journalism. The director, a Pashtun from Wardak province, wanted to fire the administrative manager, a Turkmen retired general from the communist era, but he couldn’t because someone in the main office in Prague, Czech Republic, supported the manager.

To be continued...

A Farsi version of this blog post is published here

On the origin of the Hazara people

Photo source: x/twitter

One of the questions that has preoccupied the minds of contemporary Hazaras is: Who are we, and where do we come from?

This question has no historical basis, but nevertheless, a question is a question. So, why is this question raised in the first place? Who is asking it?

What has fueled this question more than anyone else is not the Hazaras themselves but the non-Hazaras, the Pashtuns and Tajiks in Afghanistan. The origin of this question lies among those who do not consider the Hazaras native to Afghanistan. It stems from those who claim that the Hazaras are outsiders and that they arrived in Afghanistan with such-and-such army in such-and-such century, but they never bother to question or think about their originality, how they did come to Afghanistan. This question also originates in the inhumane attitudes and behaviors of members of the dominant ethnic groups towards the Hazaras, which persist to this day. The roots of this discriminatory outlook lie with those who have fostered—and continue to foster—the dehumanization, othering, and alienation of the Hazara people. This is one of the pillars of tribal power and ethnic hegemony that has persisted for at least the past 150 years now.

Today, this question has been internalized among the Hazaras themselves. This means that the Hazaras now ask the very same question that the dominant groups used to ask: "Well, you people, your faces don't look like ours, you pray differently, you dress differently, you speak differently—where did you come from?" This "Where did you come from?" is the very core of the othering that normalizes violence against the Hazaras. When you ask, "Where did you come from?" or "What is your origin?" you are essentially questioning the Hazara’s indigeneity. You are doubting that they are from the same country because none of their cultural, social, behavioral, or linguistic characteristics align with yours. The dominant group, in its quest for hegemony, seeks to cast doubt on the very existence of the Hazara within their ancestral homeland by raising this question.

Now, the Hazaras have internalized this question and this doubt. So, what should we, the Hazaras, do? Nothing, except ignore this issue and raise awareness, explaining that this perspective originates from the discriminatory narratives of the dominant groups fixated on Hazara differences, which are used to undermine your existence and the land of your ancestors.

We know, and non-Hazaras know the answer: the Hazaras are the original inhabitants of Afghanistan for millennia. The tangible artefacts like the Buddha statues that were destroyed by the Pashtun Taliban in March 2001 were the pieces of evidence. Remember that the Taliban did not destroy the Buddha statues on the basis of religion per se, but they destroyed them on the basis of ethnic hatred and animosity against the Hazara people. They wanted to obliterate any cultural and historical evidence showing the Hazara have been living in Afghanistan for millennia. It was part of a genocidal campaign against the Hazara people. In 1999, when the Taliban took control of Mazar-e Sharif in the north, the Taliban commander/governor of Balkh announced that the Hazaras had three options: convert to Islam, leave Afghanistan, or die.*

The Hazaras need to stand against the narratives of othering and alienation by the dominant ethnic groups of Afghanistan. We should not waste even a single thought on where our origin lies or where we came from. Let us leave this matter to those who raise such questions, for such narratives often arise from the weakness and insecurity of the dominant ethnic groups and their hegemonic ambitions. Therefore, this issue should not be a subject of debate. Instead, we should challenge the dominant ethnic groups by asking: Where do you come from? What is your origin?

*
Rashid, Ahmed. Taliban: militant Islam, oil and fundamentalism in Central Asia. Yale University Press, 2010.
Also, visit the Human Rights Watch report from early 2001, "Massacres of Hazaras in Afghanistan" 

What is a refugee? (poem)

I found this following refugee poem by chance. It is by an Afghanistani poet, Raziq Faani, and I thought I would regret it later if I did not translate it.
-----

One morning, from the children’s playground,
My little one returned with tearful eyes,
And with the lump in his throat, he asked:
"Tell me, dad!
What is a refugee?
Is it an insult or just a name?"

At his question, a sorrow filled my heart,
And a tear slipped uncontrollably down my cheek
Quietly, I wiped it away with the back of my hand,
As my mind searched for the right words.

I told him:
"Look, my dear child,
Do you know what homeland means?"
He nodded, "Yes,
You once told me,
That homeland is where our ancestors lived."
I kissed his face,
And with a heavy heart, I added:
"If in one dark night,
A band of thieves and marauders burn your dad's home,
And set fire to everything,
and you, in fear, run away,
Spending nights on the streets of strangers,
You will become a refugee, my child,
You will become a wanderer, my dear."

A fresh tear welled up in my child's eyes, 
And sorrow clouded his spirit,
Then he said, "I understand now,
A refugee is someone with no home!"
And I turned his simple words into a verse:
Murmuring under my breath:
"You spoke wisely, my dear,
“A refugee is one with no home,
A refugee is a pigeon without a nest."

Here is the original poem in Farsi:

‎شعر از رازق فانی :

‎مهاجر چیست؟

‎سحرگاهی، ز بازیگاه طفلان،

‎کودکم با چشم تر برگشت،

‎و با بغضی که بودش در گلو پرسید:

‎«بگو بابا!

‎مهاجر چیست؟

‎دشنام است، یا نام است؟»

‎

‎از آن پرسش، دلم لبریز یک فریاد خونین شد،

‎و مروارید اشکی،

‎از کنار چشم من، بی پرده پایین شد،

‎ولی آهسته چشمم را به پشت دست مالیدم،

‎و در ذهنم برای آنچنان پرسش جواب نغز پالیدم.

‎

‎بدو گفتم:

‎«ببین فرزند دلبندم،

‎تو میدانی که میهن چیست؟»

‎بگفت: «آری،

‎تو خود روزی به من گفتی،

‎که میهن خانهی اجداد را گویند»

‎زدم بوسی به رخسارش،

‎و غمگینانه افزودم:

‎«اگر در یک شب تاریک،

‎مشتی دزد و رهزن، خانهی بابات را سوزند،

‎و هر سو آتش افروزند،

‎و تو از وحشت دزدان، برون آیی،

‎و شبها را به روی سنگفرش مردم دیگر بیاسایی،

‎مهاجر میشوی فرزند،

‎مسافر میشوی دلبند»

‎

‎سرشک تازهای چشمان فرزند مرا تر کرد،

‎و اندوهی روانش را مکدر کرد،

‎و آنگه گفت: «دانستم

‎مهاجر آدم بیخانه را گویند!»

‎و من مصراع شعر ساده اش را ساختم تک بیت:

‎و در زیر لب افزودم: نکو گفتی عزیز من،

‎«مهاجر آدم بیخانه را گویند

‎مهاجر قمری بیلانه را گویند»

Hazara Women Subjectivity and Digital Narratives

If you are in the Washington D.C. area, you should definitely consider attending this remarkable event: "Hazara Women of Afghanistan Share Digital Stories." What makes this event unique is that, for the first time, the Hazara women, members of the lower caste in Afghanistan, are able to share their stories. Hazara women are the untapped reservoir of talent, valor, resistance to oppression, resilience, and perseverance in the face of constant oppression. This is a good chance to discover who the Hazaras are, in particular, who the Hazara women are, and what role they played in the past 20 years of relatively democratic and peaceful situation that was created by the presence of the U.S. and its allies and how this fragile peace disbanded overnight. The aftereffect of this betrayal was catastrophic for women, particularly the Hazara women because they have been treated in worst oppressive manner than women of other ethnicities. There is a stark difference between being Hazara women and Pashtun/Afghan or Tajik women even when it comes to be living as a woman and girl under the Taliban brutal regime in Afghanistan. You have to differentiate between ethic groups because their social and political positions mark the social hierarchy in Afghanistan and ignoring this fact is a violence itself.

In Afghanistan, if you belong to the Hazaras ethnic group, you face the worst state of affairs, and you are entirely excluded from all spheres of social, economic, and political life. This is the current situation of the Hazara people under the Taliban de facto regime. 

This event is a chance to learn about the Hazara women's subjectivity and their social, political, and personal identities, something that has been overlooked and undervalued by the dominant ethnic groups in Afghanistan and even abroad. Events such as this provide platforms for the Hazara women to tell their stories, which are unique and different from the women of other ethnic groups, like Afghan/Pashtun and Tajiks, and others. For further details about the event click here and to go directly to the sign up event page, click here. 

Read this text in Farsi on my Farsi blog