When democracy dies

Photo credit: Getty images

Today, I was watching the live session on Biden's certification of electoral college on NYT when suddenly a chaos ensued in the congress. The camera was running but the sound disappeared immediately. Lawmakers rushed to the exit doors and then suddenly the video stopped. It was sad to see what was happening at the capitol after. I used to believe that Americans are more civilized than what I saw today, but today's events changed my mind. Today's events showed that even in a civilized nation violence is inevitable and that what happens sometimes in the developing world can happen in the most democratic country like the US as well. I just looked at the international news headlines, the world laughs at the US. It's sad and full of sorrow. I feel there are some Americans who grieve and mourn their dying democracy.

Candle Lighting: A Symbol of Nonviolence Against Darkness and Injustice

In my earlier blog post, I alluded to candle lighting, but I did not elaborate on it. The candle lighting is important specially at the night of 40th anniversary of those 80 (or more) people who lost their lives and more than 250 wounded on July 23, 2016. In this post, I'm going to call your attention to some of its important aspects of lighting candles. I will explain why it is symbolically significant for Hazaras - and maybe others who sympathize with the cause - to simultaneously light candles in order to commemorate the lost ones' memories, while reemphasizing on their nonviolent movement against unjust and discriminatory policy of the central government.

Symbolically, candle lighting is intrinsic to the quality of life, the very matter that the movement has based upon. It directly relates with the nature of our demands, and with our struggle against an autocratic management, which does not only listen to its citizens, but tacitly allows terrorists to kill our nonviolent protestors.

At the night of 40th anniversary of those who perished in fight for their basic rights, and those who wished to bring changes in their country, let's light candles and remember them and their memories. With lighting candles, let the perpetrators and criminals, and those who blamed the victims understand that they perished our brothers and sisters, but their wishes and wills will not vanish from our hearts and minds and we will stand firm and steadfast in their/our ways and struggles together.

Candle lighting is a powerful tool to fight the evil, the inner heart of the devil that is doomed to darkness. With candle lighting, we all go to war against evil, which Afghan government is a perfect archetype of all malevolences and hostilities against its citizens. It is evil because its policy is against general good, against peace and prosperity; and its evil because it benefits at the cost of its citizens. Let's all stand up against evildoers and devils until they fear us and flea from us. At this point, we can light candles and burn their darken heart in order conquer them.

Let's all rise against injustice, and raise our voice against systematic discriminations, and with such a simply symbolic, yet powerful gesture, we send a powerful message to the evildoers that a sapling that is planted in the garden of our struggle for justice has watered with our blood shall never die.

Learning From Other Nonviolent Movements

Now, it is clear that we are battling with a government that is facing a crisis of legitimacy, that its leadership has lost its ethical credibility due to persistent lies and deceptions. What the Enlightenment Movement, at this point, can do is to defiantly answer to government's demands and rules by using tools of civil disobedience. It does not have to be feigning illness to go to work, or resigning from a post; although these tactics are important, currently, it is unexpected and unacceptable for any Hazaras to resign from any government job in protest at its discriminatory policy. The Hazaras must stay in their posts in order to remain as a conduit of communication and information between people and government.

Afghanistan has not experienced nonviolent movements before, therefore we have to look at other nonviolent movements in other countries. One of the most recent nonviolent movement took place in Iran in which the pro Green Movement turned their demands and angers against injustice and usurpation of power into a historic grass roots battle against autocratic and repressive regime. One of the tactics that was used by the Green Movement was to scream out 'Allahu Akbar' (God is great) on their rooftops.

Since everyone is equipped with mobile devices and most people in Kabul have access to the internet, this kind of nonviolent protest can be easily organized and implemented. Nonviolent protestors can also light candles on their rooftops for 10 minutes, and simultaneously scream out 'Allahu Akbar' and then followed with some regular slogans such as 'no to discrimination' and 'no to injustice.'

There might be some other effective ways to raise our voice, but to scream out during the night, sometimes before people go to bed, would definitely make headlines, and it would definitely reach the deaf ears of our unresponsive president and CEO. Your voice will reach the palace and will disrupt their sleep, and eventually will create fear in their hearts (if they have any) that epitomize cowardice. 

What Could you do When Your Government doesn't Listen to You?

At this point, we all know what happened with the nonviolent Enlightenment Movement on July 23rd, 2016. The government is obstinately resistant to hear the movement's demands, not only that, but its security apparatus did not cooperate with peaceful protestors, and in some way, it showed a tacit green light to terrorist to kill the peaceful protesters.

The numbers of casualties have increased, there are now over 90 dead and over 200 individuals fatally injured. Some are in critical condition and need to be flown to another country for better medical operation. 

The movement's leadership has recently announced and warned the Afghan government that if there legitimate demands won't meet in near future, they are going to come back to the streets again. This time their tactics could be different than before, where government's tactic to block the streets with containers will not be enough. 

While coming back to the streets is one of the options to raise our voice against the corrupted and autocratic management of the current Afghan government, there are ways and tactics to initiate in order to mount more pressure on government to listen our demands. What are they, and what can we do to protract our struggle against injustice? Well, there are numerous ways that the Hazara people can do in order increase pressure, to the point that the government can feel the devastation and finally come to the negotiation table. 

It's in fact the longevity of the Enlightenment Movement struggle that can wear down the irresponsive government, not the expedient or shortsighted solutions to the problem. The corrupted and disreputable warlord Mohammad Mohaqiq who shamelessly siding with the government blames Hazaras for fomenting and creating rift among Afghan people and despicably accuses Hazaras for demanding too much, has already tried to find solution but failed. Actually, he did not want to find solution, he rather dealt on Hazaras' rights and demands by securing some top level posts for his cronies. This is not new though, Hazaras are familiar with such deplorable games he has been playing over the years. It is recently that people decided to transition from a traditional corrupted and misusing pubic trust on his own advantages. One of the reasons that the Enlightenment Movement has taken root is as a result of years of mistreatment and misrepresentation of people by their own leaders like Mohaqiq and Khalili, who not only did no good to the Hazaras, but exploited them in various ways.

We all know what we can do and how we can do. We need to prolongate our struggle through various ways, which I will be writing some tactics in the next blog posts. We have to oppress our doubts in order crush the discriminatory attitudes of the government against the Hazaras with sheer bulk of civil disobedience, including writing our stories, criticizing, publishing pamphlets, organizing public events where poems could be read and songs could be played. In different stages, we have to change our strategies and even we should question our service to the current government, including serving in the Afghan National Army. We should ask this question from ourselves: Why do we have to serve a government that doesn't listen to us? Why do we have to fight for a government that unleash its terrorist to kill us?

We have to call all our services for this government into question and we should calculatedly decide which one is feasible and what would be the impact on ourselves and what would be an immediate blow to the government. We also have to be aware that the current government is about to fall apart, the Hazaras should not be blamed for any disastrous events that would lead to the collapse of the government in the near future.

Karzai Gives Away his Bloody Swords

Afghan President Hamid Karzai donated dozens of his bloody swords to the National Museum of Afghanistan. The ceremony which was held under a tight security measure at the Afghan presidential palace hosted chieftains, clan elders with dyed and hoary beards from all over Afghanistan. According to the news, the ceremony started three hours late due to Karzai’s health condition, which was caused by his emotional attachment to his swords that were prepared to be given away.

Among the participants, a long-bearded man in black turban who lost his temper stood up and frantically said: “I’ve never waited for three minutes for my wife let alone three hours for a puppet.” Elders who were personally invited by Karzai gradually began to lose their patience. Another elder who claimed to have three of his failed suicide-mission sons pardoned by Hamid Karzai cried: “This pig-headed doesn’t realize that in three hours I can water my three acre poppy field.”

The hall which was in a complete mayhem, suddenly, sank into full silence as soon as President Karzai entered.  Pausing, and looking around, Karzai, who was overwhelmed by a feeling of pensive sadness, approached the podium.

With a sullen gesture and after repeating “brethrens, you’re welcome” Karzai addressed the participants: “I’m giving away these swords, the honors of our nation and history, the swords that were confiscated from the first infidels who intruded into our fatherland and were contemptuously defeated by us lions, by proud Afghans.” By mentioning “the intrusion of first infidels” Karzai was reminding the elders of the first Anglo-Afghan War in 1839-1842 that left a heavy death toll on the British.

After rubbing his eyes that became red, tears instantly started trickling down his face; Karzai lost his control, first mumbling, but then, hysterically saying: “These are the swords that chopped off the infidels’ heads from their bodies, not far away from here,” Karzai continued while pointing his finger to the southern corner of the hall “Their bones can still be found at Bala Hissar.”

While struggling to overcome his emotion, Karzai, with his right hand pulled out a scimitar with dried blood. He then addressed the elders: “This is the sword that our four fathers used to kill the invaders, the dried blood you see on it is the blood of British soldiers.” Elders immediately cried out: “God is great, down with the infidels, we will kill the infidels.” One of the elders whose blood was boiling as a result of Karzai’s oration against foreigners, immediately started bleeding. Blood gushed out of his ears, nose, and mouth.

Finally, President Karzai erratically took out a sabre - dripping blood - from his sheath, and addressed the elders: “I will not surrender myself to these American infidels; I will not sign the Bilateral Security Agreement with the United States.” He then left the hall without further delay.

The participants all began bleeding, and finally, all sunk into a pool of their own blood, except a short man from Bamiyan with a rounded face, and flat nose who survived. A journalist asked him why he didn’t bleed. In his response, the flat-nosed man while pale and confounded said: “I don’t have blood. I have been bleeding throughout the history.”

Note: The scimitar and sabre were used by the Afghans against the British soldiers in the first Anglo-Afghan War. Some of those swords can still be found in some Afghans' households. Some other parts are allusions to Afghanistan's history, and particularly a reflection on the current political situation.