Dr. Hakim
Iqbal Khyber and Badshah Khan bring a radical message of peace to a country long accustomed to war.
Jamila Omary, a twelfth-grade Afghan student, asked the two men, “Do you have to arm yourselves because of the threats and dangers you face?”
“No,” Iqbal Khyber answered. “Though it is easy to buy weapons today, arming ourselves will worsen the war. Weapons will make us less secure.”
What a breath of fresh air in the stench of war-as-usual!
Khyber and his fellow People’s Peace Movement representative, Badshah Khan, were speaking with young Afghan participants of the Youth on the Road to Peace Conference hosted in Kabul this past September by the Afghan Peace Volunteers.
“Many governments and corporations have a thriving weapons business,” Khyber added later. “This is dangerous because as they seek greater profits, they are threatening not just Afghanistan, but the whole world. We human beings may soon destroy ourselves.”
Those of us living in relative safety become accustomed to seemingly endless wars festering in other places. But the smoke of war is catching up to all of us, as the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists have warned.
Iqbal and Badshah want fellow Afghans and the people of the world to consider nonviolence as a pragmatic solution, and they are walking their talk.
The pair, along with five other ordinary Afghan folk initiated the Helmand Peace Convoy, walking more than 700 kilometers from their home province of Helmand to Kabul in May and June.
They walked barefoot in the fasting month of Ramadan, under the blazing sun. The convoy sojourned to several Northern Afghan provinces before traveling to Kabul for the conference.
“Near the province of Samangan, we were told that the Taliban had laid an ambush, intending to hurt us,” Khyber said of the journey. “I discussed this with Badshah Khan and another core member of the People’s Peace Movement. We didn’t tell the other members as we didn’t want them to be afraid. The three of us decided to press on. In fact, we decided to go right to the headquarters of the Taliban in that area.”
Khyber and his friends set up camp in Taliban territory, and though their recording equipment was taken away, no one harmed them physically.
The faces of the youth in the discussion room were drawn with tension and excitement. But they also had doubts.
Dr. Hakim
Using conversation as a way to nurture new mindsets.
Mohammad Jamil, a university student, was suspicious of fellow Afghans, asking, “Do the people of Helmand really want peace? What is the war in Helmand about?”
“The people are all tired of war,” Khyber replied. “They want it to end. This is an economic war. In Helmand, minerals are extracted, and opium is traded.”
Ending the war in Afghanistan without armies and weapons may seem impossible.
I get dizzy thinking about these young and hopeful Afghans standing before Afghan militants and the strongest militaries of the world to say, “We don’t want your weapons and your armies. We want peace.”
Members of the People’s Peace Movement want to show how every individual in a society can choose ways to build peace. They argue that peace has been elusive so far because we presume that war is necessary, and only choose military strategies.
Another student, Mah Gul, asked, “What are your future plans and actions?”
Dr. Hakim
“We wish to go to mosques, and have conversations with the people at the mosques,” Khyber replied.
What can the rest of us do to support the People’s Peace Movement and Afghan Peace Volunteers? We can work through our doubts by having honest conversations with them by writing to the People’s Peace Movement on Facebook or email. We can sign The People’s Agreement to Abolish War or the World Beyond War’s Peace Declaration. We can divest from war-making jobs, businesses, and policies.
War is not inevitable. It is an obsolete, repetitive choice. Everywhere, each of us can emulate these new-generation Afghans by ushering in breaths of fresh air.