Ethnic discrimination infests Afghan army, soldiers say

By Claire Truscott (AFP)

MUSA QALA, Afghanistan — Disgruntled Afghan soldiers dish out five-dollar dinner plates of fried rice and potatoes to US Marines at a camp on the frontline against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan.

This culinary sideline, which supplements the US forces' spartan rations, helps the Afghans save enough cash to bribe their commander to give them time off to see their families, the men say. Some never return.

Speaking in secret afterwards, the Afghan troops told AFP that because they are ethnic minorities in the country's Pashtun-heavy army, bribery is the only way they can make sure their Pashtun commander gives them a break.

"The commander tells us, 'search your pockets'. If somebody gives him money, he can take vacation. I don't have any money so I can't go," said one soldier, a 20-year-old ethnic Hazara man.

"As a non-Pashtun, I'm cheap. I'm not as valuable to them (the army) as a Pashtun soldier," added a Tajik, who like others requested anonymity for fear of retribution.

The situation is sapping morale among young recruits at a small base in the Musa Qala district of volatile Helmand province, a highly dangerous area and one of Afghanistan's main Taliban flashpoints.

This is just one of the issues dogging Afghanistan's 150,000-member national army, whose strength is key to the plan for international troops gradually to withdraw and hand responsibility for security to Afghan forces by 2014.

A report from respected NGO International Crisis Group in May said today's Afghan army was "incapable of fighting the insurgency on its own", highlighting ethnic factionalism, illiteracy, drug addiction and desertion.

Its research found that Pashtuns and Tajiks -- thought to make up 42 and 27 percent of all Afghans respectively -- dominate the officer ranks, while Hazaras, Uzbeks and other groups remain under-represented at that level.

General Mohammad Zaher Azimi of the Ministry of Defence said that the Afghan National Army (ANA) was ethnically balanced and that it would not stand for any discrimination in the ranks.

"We are not aware of any mistreatment of soldiers from one ethnic group by officers from another ethnic group, or officers taking bribes to give soldiers leave," he told AFP.

"But we will investigate these reports and if we find out they are true, we will take proper measures to solve them. We will not tolerate any kind of discrimination in the national army."

Feelings of alienation do not help fire up the young recruits for their job, which many admit they find frightening and only stick with for the relatively decent wage of 280 US dollars per month.

Dangers lurk both on and off the battlefield -- Taliban attacks on army targets in Afghanistan's towns and cities are frequent, with nine troops killed in one day last month in Kabul and Kunduz.

"I'm scared, who cannot be scared of a Taliban attack? If the foreigners leave, we don't have anything," said the young Tajik soldier, who has another three years to serve before he can leave the army.

"Most of us are scared because we just come to get money. We're scared to get in front of the bullet," added the Hazara soldier.

"A lot of soldiers take vacation and never come back. Without the Marines' help we cannot look after Musa Qala. And because of the national ethnic problems, I think the army will remain weak."

US Marine commanders say they are pleased with the progress of the soldiers they are training through daily lessons and joint patrols.

When the troops leave their base, the Marines lead the way while Afghan soldiers conduct searches of people and compounds.

But when the international forces do battle with the Taliban, Afghan soldiers take a back seat.

On one patrol, an Uzbek soldier summed up the despair felt by many of his brothers in arms.

"Non-Pashtun people have no value here. What can I do?" he said. "How can our country be built if things go on like this?"

Link to Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ix6_E0ebrinN05bxP-CFnPz1ADsg?docId=CNG.9b3734321ed62d26cc8b8df2670a9dc0.141

The story of Rupananda from Bamiyan

Double click to open the following link to read the story in Pdf formate:

http://himalaya.socanth.cam.ac.uk/collections/journals/bot/pdf/bot_12_01_02.pdf

Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of Valley of Bamiyan (UNESCO)

The Story Of Bamiyan Buddhas - how marvels were created and massacred

It’s almost a decade the World’s tallest standing Buddha’s statues of Bamiyan were obliterated…An incident which can't be justified on any account . It's inherent human nature to create and destory...

Ancient archaeological remains have been thrust into the cruel world of today's seemingly endless conflicts — the ever-changing aims and alliances of international politics, religions dueling on the world stage, and the ironic trade-off of providing aid to conserve the material heritage of the past but not to preserve the lives of modern inheritors of that past. Arrayed against the tolerant and measured messages of Buddhism, the quagmire of the "Bamiyan Massacre" was perplexing at best.

In the center of Afghanistan, the town of Bamiyan, situated ca. 200 km NW of Kabul at an altitude of approximately 2500 meters, is considered an oasis in the center of a long valley that separates the big chains of Hindu Kush Mountains. Bamiyan functioned as one of the greatest Buddhist centers for nearly five centuries. It's a place of open fields and sky, with a long, rich history - evidences of which were destroyed even before scholars could start understanding it fully.

The valley, at an altitude of 2,500 m, follows the Bamiyan River. Some 1,500 years ago, the valley was a busy node on the trade route between China and India, in a part of Asia where languages and religions -- Buddhism, Hinduism and, later, Islam – coexisted. It was inhabited and partly urbanized from the 3rd century BC.

It was also home to a great Buddhist monastic center, one that nurtured epoch-changing religious concepts and produced a fantastic new art, including the world's largest rock-carved figures of the standing Buddha. Among the tallest standing Buddhas in the world, the Bamiyan, Afghanistan Buddhas stood 53 meters (175 feet) and 34.5 meters tall. These two big standing Buddha statues and a small of a seated Buddha were carved out of the sedimentary rock of the region. They were begun in the second century A.D. under the patronage of Emperor Kanishka and probably finished around the fourth and fifth centuries A.D.

The Statue Stood the Barabrism of Genghis Khan but couldn't Stand the Modern Barbarism of taliban ...
The larger statue (upper image) was 55 metres (175 feets) high and it was carved at the western end of the cliff-face. It was painted in red and it is thought to represent Vairocana in whom the entire universe is encompassed, and in their stupendous scale, this immensity is made literal.

The smaller statue (lower image) was ca. 38 metres (115 feet) high and it was situated at the eastern end of the cliff. It was painted in blue and probably represents Buddha Sakyamuni. The two colossi must once have been a truly awesome sight, visible for miles, with copper masks for faces and copper-covered hands

The two large Buddhas were cut in deep relief directly from the rock. The surrounding cliffs were honeycombed with dozens of small caves, dug out either as monastic residences or for rituals. Many caves, along with the niches around the Buddhas, were covered with murals, now largely damaged or missing.

In 16th century CE, the site is reported to have contained some 12,000 caves, forming a large ensemble of Buddhist monasteries, chapels and sanctuaries, along the foothills of the valley. A preliminary geophysical exploration in 2002 has indicated the presence of ancient roads and wall structures. In several of the caves and niches, often linked with communicating galleries, there are remains of wall paintings. There are also remains of seated Buddha figures.

The art is a compendium of ancient styles, from India, Persia and Gandhara, where Greco-Roman-inspired traditions survived. Along with its stylistic dynamism, Bamiyan statues reflect major shifts in Buddhism itself. For centuries, the Buddha was revered as a human figure, but with time he came to be seen as a transcendent being and icon. These towering, transcendental images were key symbols in the rise of Mahayana Buddhist teachings, which emphasized the ability of everyone, not just monks, to achieve enlightenment.

For centuries they gazed benevolently from their mountain homes as wars raged across the Afghan plains in central Bamiyan province. Hewn into the cliffs in the sixth century by Buddhist pilgrims on the famed Silk Route, the statues had survived attacks by several Muslim emperors down the ages, while even Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan had spared them. Based on present practices using only hand labor and simple tools, the statues could have been craved in a few decades. But the two massive Buddha statues have become casualties, destroyed by command of the Afghan Taliban in early March 2001 in a week time.

In 1998, a Taliban commander fired grenades at the smaller statue, knocking off its upper half. The Taliban bombed the mountain above the statues frequently, cracking the niches that held the statues and damaging the colossi further. By winter 2001, pleas were raining down on the Taliban from around the world to spare the statues. Pleaders included the Buddhist Thai monarchy and Sri Lanka, itself home to a set of giant Buddha statues. “Unesco, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and a leading Islamic scholar in Cairo were also among those begging the Taliban not to carry out their threat to the Bamiyan statues and other Buddha images in museums across the country,” wrote Barbara Crossette in The New York Times.

But, to no avail.

On Feb. 26, 2001, the Taliban’s supreme leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar with the backing of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda movement, declared that “these idols have been gods of the infidels” and ordered them destroyed. Defying international appeals, the Taliban spent a month using first anti-aircraft guns and then dynamite to obliterate them. By early March, the statues were rubble.

That sight is now retrievable only when pieced together from material evidence. And evidence, at Bamiyan and elsewhere in Afghanistan, may be going fast. The fate of thousands of precious objects in the Kabul Museum, one of the most important collections in Asia, is unknown. Among its treasures are the priceless Begram ivories, pocket-size carvings that in art-history terms have a weight as ponderous as the Bamiyan colossi.

Today those open, cold caves are used primarily by refugees from Afghanistan's brutal, internal war.

The world community — from Russia to Malaysia, Germany to Sri Lanka, and, of course, UNESCO — has expressed horror at the Buddhas' destruction. Many Mullahs in Islamic countries condemned Mullah Omar's interpretation as wrong-headed and damaging to the image of Islam.

It is fitting that in his previous lives, as recorded in Jakata Tales, the Buddha often sacrificed himself, becoming food for a tiger and her cubs, for instance, and for a hungry hawk chasing a pigeon. But while the Buddha had learned to accept impermanence, we mortals couldn’t ……

The New Findings

Graphic Showing On Going Excavation at Bamiyan
After the destruction of the Buddhas, 50 caves were revealed. In 12 of the caves wall paintings were discovered. In December 2004, Japanese researchers stated the wall paintings at Bamiyan were painted between the 5th and the 9th centuries, rather than the 6th to 8th centuries, citing their analysis of radioactive isotopes contained in straw fibers found beneath the paintings. It is believed that the paintings were done by artists travelling on the Silk Road, the trade route between China and the West.

It is believed that they are the oldest known surviving examples of oil painting, possibly predating oil painting in Europe by as much as six centuries.

On 8 September 2008 archeologists searching for a legendary 300-metre statue at the site of the already dynamited Buddhas announced the discovery of an unknown 19-metre (62-foot) reclining Buddha, a pose representing Buddha's passage into nirvana.


Link to Source: http://dilipkumar.in/articles/travel/the-story-of-bamiyan-buddhas-how-marvels-were-created-and-massacred.html

Plan "B" for Afghanistan

Double Click to open following link and read Foriegn Affair article in Pdf formate:

http://www.trilateral.org/download/file/Blackwill%20FA%20-%20Plan%20B%20in%20Afghanistan.pdf


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Finding the 'real' Afghanistan

The Bamiyan Valley from the top of the Small Buddha niche. It was late in the day when we were welcomed by a sign "Welcome to Bamiyan City".
Looking down the one-street village, I reasoned it had probably been a thousand years since Bamiyan had actually been able to call itself a city.

The town made famous by its giant Buddhas lies in the heart of the mountainous Hazarajat and is the homeland of the ethnic Hazara minority.

Being followers of Shi'ite Islam in a mostly Sunni country and the fact that they are descended from the Mongol hordes has always marked the long-suffering Hazara for persecution.

Past injustices include enslavement and the confiscation of their land, which was then given to ruling Pashtuns.

Although they became one of the most effective mujahideen armies in the Soviet war, they were mercilessly singled out by rival factions, particularly the Tajiks, in the civil war that followed.

But even the massacres executed on them then were outdone by atrocities bordering on genocide inflicted by the Taliban as the Hazara bore the brunt of their purist Islamic rage.

In the eyes of the Talibs, they were Shi'ites and so followers of a false faith, non-Afghans who lived in the shadows of idols.

Nothing could be worse.

The Bamiyan Valley was blockaded by Taliban forces, who refused to allow international food aid in to the reliant population.

In 1998, when the valley was taken, much of the Hazara population had already fled into the mountains, abandoning their lands to, again, be taken over by Pashtun settlers.

Bamiyan now holds the distinction of being one of the most secure and peaceful regions in Afghanistan, although still one of the poorest.

It is home to the country's only female governor, Habiba Sarabi, appointed in 2005, who had previously held the posts of Minister of Women's Affairs and Minister of Culture and Education in Karzai's government.

And in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Afghanistan's first Olympic medal, a bronze, was won in taekwondo by a 21-year-old Hazara, Rohullah Nikpai.

The medal was a cause for a massive boost in the nation's pride, particularly for the young man's own people.

It was also a cause for a massive boost to his bank account as when the hero returned to Afghanistan he was showered with patriotic affection, along with a car, a house and huge amounts of cash.

After arranging a pick-up time for the following morning, I sent the driver on his way for the evening and checked in to the Zohak Hotel, a fly-infested hole with filthy toilets and beds so dirty I slept on the floor.

Across the Bamiyan River, in the last of the day's light, I wandered between fields of swaying wheat.

Above me rose the dull brown cliffs, their niches which once sheltered the largest Buddhist statues now empty like robbed coffins.

The figures traced their lineage back to the first incarnation of the information superhighway - the Silk Route.

Bamiyan once held a key position on the caravan trail between China and the Roman Empire, India and Persia.

The valley provided fodder and water for carrier beasts, shelter from the desert winds, and rest and recuperation for the drivers.

Faces from all corners of the known world would have mingled in the markets and serais and with them goods, philosophies, new thoughts and ideas to be shared and adopted.

Buddhism's popularity received a major celebrity-endorsed boost when the Indian king Asoka converted to the faith in 260BC.

The teachings were soon spread throughout the entire Central Asian region by missionaries and travellers, and Bamiyan grew to be one of the great centres of monastic learning, culminating 500 years later in the carving of the Buddhas.

Early historians wrote of the dozens of universities and thousands of monks in residence in the valley, figures supported by the number of caves dug into the cliffs all over the district, once the quarters of meditating aesthetics.

In AD630, the Chinese traveller Hsuen-Tsang described the pious residents of the valley "as people remarkable for their love of religion and, in the highest forms of worship to the Three Jewels of Buddhism, there is not the least absence of earnestness and the utmost devotion of heart".

The Buddhist fortunes of Bamiyan gradually waned over the centuries as Islam spread from Arabia and Persia to become the dominant faith.

The pacifist Buddhists had little chance of keeping their parishioners in the face of militant Muslim missionaries who converted with the aid of the sword.

The final blow to the valley, which forever consigned the population to poverty, was the invasion of the Mongol hordes in 1222.

The driver mooched beside the car the next morning.

When I asked him where he'd spent the night, he waved down the street and mumbled something about a chaikhana.

Travellers who buy dinner in the tea houses can also spend the night on the carpeted benches at no extra charge; his dinner and accommodation would have cost no more than a couple of dollars.

Minutes later, I stood in front of the "Small Buddha" niche in the spot where the Compassionate One's feet would have once been.

The vacant hollow in the cliff face was anything but small.

Filled with scaffolding erected to prevent any further collapse of the surrounding rock, it towered above me so much that it was difficult to fit the whole space into my camera lens.

In a shed nearby were chunks of rock Buddha from the size of boulders to small stones, the remains of the statue that had been catalogued and kept - for what?A guide led me to a doorway in the base of the niche and unlocked the chain.

Inside, the entire cliff was hollowed by spiral stairways cut into the solid rock.

Breath-snatching climbs led us to cells and chapels, cool, still, quiet and perfect for meditation.

Smaller alcoves, which must have once contained Buddhist figures, had been created in the walls below ornately domed ceilings.

The remnants of murals and frescoes painted on to the mud plaster of the walls could still be seen, the faces of the Buddha outlines scratched off and scrawled with Islamic graffiti.

The bored and uncommunicative guide hurried me on through the empty rooms, some blackened by the fires of more recent occupation, to an open balcony that would have once been at the top of the figure's head.

The leafy greens stretched across the valley all around, the car tiny below.

On the ground again, we drove up to the "Big Buddha", which was just that and more - colossal might have been a better way to describe its 55-metre height.

Nothing of the statue remained; in one corner was a pile of twisted metal shrapnel.

A family of Afghan-American tourists followed me through the gate, hitching a ride on my officially purchased ticket.

"Fantastic, isn't it?" the father breathed as we stared up at the deserted hole.

"Not really," I replied.

"The Taliban used the Buddhas as target practice for a week! Apparently, Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar were actually here themselves when they blew them up!" he told me excitedly.

"How nice for them."

Despite the pleading from the world at large, the Taliban had done a terribly good job in March 2001.

"All we did was destroy some rocks," Omar is quoted as saying.

The amount of work and effort that had gone into the construction of the Buddhas and the entire cave complex was unimaginable and impressive.

Sadly, all they really did was destroy what had been, and could have been again, one of the greatest tourist attractions in the world.

The monuments once rivalled the Great Wall and the pyramids of Egypt, and could have lifted Bamiyan's people above the breadline by enticing thousands of visitors a year.

They were monuments created by a cultured and peaceful people only to be dynamited by a bunch of moronic religious nuts who impressed no-one.

As we drove away, there was a feeling of emptiness like that left by someone departed, a sense of the loss, of opportunities missed.

Naturally, when images of the exploding statues were flashed across the world in 2001, Buddhists saw the demolition as a teaching of impermanence: nothing, not even thousand-year-old Buddhas carved in solid stone, lasts forever.

Link to Source: http://www.odt.co.nz/lifestyle/travel/129748/finding-real-afghanistan

Blood and Smoke in Hazarajat

Blood and Smoke in Hazarajat
Danger for the Taliban’s Favorite Victims

"Steve Mccurry's Blog"

As the Taliban fights to make a comeback in Afghanistan, no group is in more danger than the Hazaras. The Taliban’s favorite victims, hundreds of Hazara families froze to death while fleeing their villages during winter attacks by the Taliban.

Hazaras work in a candy factory in Kabul, 2006

Farmers work in front of empty Buddha niches where the Taliban destroyed the Buddhas that had stood for over a thousand years in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, 2002

During its reign, the Taliban wreaked destruction and on as many Hazara communities as they could. Scores of Hazara villages were totally destroyed and their people killed or left to search for shelter from the harsh environment of the Hindu Kush Mountains.

Bamiyan, Afghanistan, 2006

Persecuted for centuries, the Hazaras, Shiite Muslims, and protectors of the Buddhist treasures in Bamiyan for a thousand years, have been persecuted, tortured, and slaughtered, but the ravages of the Taliban are only one chapter in the long history of discrimination and abuse.

Hazara Girl, Kabul, 2002

A local official commented that their history has been characterized by “blood and smoke.” He said that the pain is still in his heart because of the thousands that were slaughtered or died trying to escape.

Hazara School Boys, Bamiyan, 2002

Although most Hazaras live in central Afghanistan, the land they refer to as Hazarajat, the Hazaras who migrated to Kabul looking for work make up a large underclass, which takes jobs that other groups refuse – as bearers, street sweepers and other common laborers, the jobs that are referred to as “Hazara occupations.” They are seen and insulted as “donkeys.”

Hazara man pulling cart past a burning house, Kabul, Afghanistan, 1985

Bamiyan, Afghanistan. 2007

His family is poor, his clothes used. But 15-year-old Ali Aqa isn’t deterred: He plans to be a lawyer. Childhood memories include Taliban occupation of his village in Bamiyan. “They burned everything, even my school,” he says. “I pray to God no regime comes like that again.

This fascinating and resilient people hopes to have a place at the table of Afghanistan’s government, but whatever happens in the central government in Kabul, these brave and independent people will continue to struggle for survival and dignity.

Link to Source: http://stevemccurry.wordpress.com/2010/01/25/blood-and-smoke-in-hazarajat/