“Love is how we ask for peace”: Finding Jesus in Afghanistan
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“Love is how we ask for peace”: Finding Jesus in Afghanistan
6/09/2011 2:57:40 PM
By the Rev. Simon Moyle
This blog post originally appeared in TEAR Australia's Target magazine, issue 3, 2011.
Brothers Mahmoud* and Hakim were ten and five respectively when the Taliban came to their village in Bamiyan province. Fear gripped the people, and the boys were soon running for their lives, deep into the mountains. When the younger Hakim tired, his brother Mahmoud scooped him up and carried him. Days later they returned to their village to find their father and grandfather had been killed.
Ten years later I met them in Kabul as part of an international delegation of peacemakers. Broken and battered by the war, like all Afghans, they are now convinced that war cannot bring peace. “All I want in life,” says Hakim, “is to find some love and truth.”
Crisp Competition
Despite his poverty, Amir has taken on the risky venture of starting his own business making and selling potato chips. Bamiyan is famous for its potatoes, and Amir hopes this quality will make his chips a standout in the market.
However, competition from products imported from the US (which subsidises its farmers) makes small businesses like Amir's difficult to sustain, if not outright impossible. On top of that, electricity in the village is only available for two hours a day.
“Tell us about yourself Mahmoud,” I asked when we had a chance to sit down and talk.
Mahmoud tells us how he was a good student when he was young. “Now, I have lost my mind. It is because of the war…” he began. Mahmoud still lives in the same small village in Bamiyan province with what is left of his family.
Mahmoud and Hakim's family work their small plot of land, growing only enough to feed themselves for seven months of the year. They are not alone; Afghanistan is the most food-insecure country in the world, with two-thirds of the population lacking the resources to feed themselves. Even then, their high-carbohydrate diet leaves them malnourished. The average wage is low, unemployment is high; life expectancy is low and maternal death is high. The link between war and poverty is vivid here.
Meanwhile, the United States and the International Security Assistance Force (which includes Australia) spend almost a trillion dollars each year on an occupation which has brought some stability, but has also fuelled further unrest. Armed attacks have significantly increased in the last five years and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) concedes that trend is set to continue. The reality is more civilian casualties. This enormous expense of life and dollar brings extra complexity to a complex arena. The situation for women in many places has improved markedly, but externally-imposed rights can create resentment rather than acceptance of change. People blame ongoing war for their continuing poverty. While some Afghans have appreciated international intervention, there is now recognition amongst most that Afghans need to take over the responsibility for Afghan problems.
Afghanistan has suffered under more than 30 years of war, mostly initiated and fuelled by foreign powers, from the Soviet Union to Al Qaeda and the United States. Before the Soviet invasion in 1978, Afghanistan grew more than enough to feed itself and have a modest export industry of items such as dried fruit. Today, much of the agricultural knowledge has died, along with the men who took up arms to defend their country in various wars. Afghanistan has become reliant on foreign aid and drug money to survive.
On a day trip to the mountains we drove through a valley which used to be the “food bowl” of Afghanistan. Now dry and dusty, it was heavily mined through the Soviet era. Any chance of Afghanistan becoming independent of surrounding countries for food production is actively undermined by those countries. Food for the occupying forces is trucked in from Pakistan and, in a devastating twist, even the US acknowledges that it pays the Taliban for protection of these supply convoys.
Corruption in the government can mean that the billions of dollars in aid do not always filter down to the local level. When it does, it is sometimes so tainted by partisan interest, whether military or political, that people are afraid to take it. Taking aid sometimes means taking sides, and in a political and social context where outcomes are hard to predict, what if you choose the losing side?
I visited a number of organisations working for a peaceful and just Afghanistan. In this complex and contested country, three stood out as doing exceptional work paving the way for the long hard road ahead.
The first was a TEAR partner which has forged ahead in their work of education, health care and community development in a complex and dangerous environment. In a country where trust is hard to come by, this partner's long-term presence has developed confidence in their work among Afghans.
Another was a grassroots community organisation supporting a series of projects including orphanages and schools. In a country where three out of five children are orphans, such organisations are badly needed. This one was started by a woman who fled Afghanistan as a refugee during the Soviet occupation and is now an Australian citizen. You don't need a lot of money to do amazing work in Afghanistan, but you do need willing hands and great passion. In fact, the more that development work is locally owned and driven like this, the more effective it is.
The third group were the ones who invited us to be there, the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, of which Mahmoud and Hakim are members. These young people, mainly from the central north of the country, have committed themselves to nonviolence in the spirit of Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Abdul Ghaffar Khan (a Pashtun Islamic leader who commanded a nonviolent peace force in Pakistan). Far from being naïve idealists, all of them have lost friends or family to violence and war, and have concluded that another way is needed for their country. They now work actively for an end to the war which has devastated their country, and for nonviolent solutions to Afghanistan's problems. “Love is how we ask for peace,” they say.
These group members are just some of the ordinary people building peace and security in Afghanistan. They, and not the militaries and government officials fighting over power, are the sources of hope for its future.
During my visit we held a candlelight vigil to remember the victims of the thirty years of war under which Afghanistan has suffered. After the candlelight vigil I asked Hakim if he found such occasions difficult. Was it cathartic to remember, I asked, or did it just dredge up memories he'd rather forget? “There were so many people there. I didn't want to cry in front of them,” he said. “I will cry tonight.”
He paused, and looked down at his feet. “I cry every night.”
For the sake of Hakim and for millions like him, this war must stop. It is destroying minds, bodies and livelihoods for generations to come. War is the cause of much of the poverty, corruption and violence here. Ending the war will begin the long process of ending the poverty, corruption, and violence.
The Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers make a simple plea: “We want to live without war.” Dare we deny them?
Why peacemaking?
As Christians we recognise and give thanks for the love, mercy and grace God has shown towards us. Christian peacemaking emerges out of a response to this graciousness of God. Despite our having made God an enemy, God refuses to treat us as such, chasing after our sinful selves to win us back. Our response is to treat others accordingly.
The reason Jesus gives for the call to love our enemies (Matt. 5:44-45) is not that it's the most effective course of action (even though it often is) or because it makes you morally superior, but because God loves God's enemies, and if we are to be children of this God, we must do the same. There is no distinction made between personal, national, or ideological enemies—in fact, the passage ends with the command to imitate God's “perfect” (meaning complete or whole) love for the whole world, not just those who love us.
Does that mean we're to be “doormats for Jesus”? Does love imply permissiveness?
Not at all—love means acting in the best interests of the other, and evil or oppressive behaviour is not in anyone's interests, not even the perpetrator. The question for us is not whether to confront and transform evil, but how to do so. And Jesus repeatedly demonstrated that active nonviolence—the way of the cross—is the Kingdom means for transformation.
Far from being passive, nonviolence seeks to name, engage and transform the reality of evil in our world. It does so using creative means which seek to win the enemy over instead of defeating or harming them. Nonviolence is willing to take suffering on oneself, but never to cause suffering.
Violent or oppressive behaviour is more often than not a symptom of an underlying disease—usually of poverty, greed, fear or disenfranchisement. Nonviolence attempts to get at the roots of the problem rather than merely mask the symptoms.
After all, you can't solve a problem using the same logic that created it in the first place; or as Gandhi put it: “The means are the ends in seed form.” Violence cannot end oppression because violence is itself oppressive. It perpetuates bitterness, hatred, and division, and sows the seeds for further violence.
Only love can break the cycle of hatred, and nonviolence the cycle of violence. This is why the Young Afghanis for Peace say: “Love is how we ask for peace.”
Acting out of the grace we've been shown in Jesus prevents self-righteousness and gives us a never-ending well of love from which to draw energy and inspiration.
This is why, as followers of Jesus, we must be at the forefront of movements to end violence of all kinds, from militarism, to poverty, to climate change.
*The names of Afghan people in this story have been changed.
The Rev. Simon Moyle is a Baptist minister, based in Melbourne. He visited Afghanistan at the invite of the Young Afghanis for Peace, at his own expense.
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