Reporters (France 24) - Bamiyan, the future for Afghanistan?

Australians don't fully understand what is being done in their name

Julian Burnside
August 26, 2011
OPINION


The Norwegian freighter Tampa. Photo: Reuters

Misinformation and dishonesty abounds over asylum seekers.
ON AUGUST 26, 2001, a small fishing boat called Palapa I began to sink in the Indian Ocean. Ordinarily, it would have been fit to carry 20 or 30 people.
On board were 433 asylum seekers, mostly Hazaras escaping the Taliban and trying to reach Australia.
The Norwegian cargo ship Tampa rescued them. When Tampa tried to put them ashore on Christmas Island, the SAS took control of the ship at gunpoint.

A Federal Court judge ruled that the government was obliged to bring the asylum seekers ashore and assess their claims for asylum. That decision was handed down at 2.15pm, Melbourne time, on September 11, 2001: a date which significantly altered the political calculus.
A week later, the full Federal Court reversed that decision.
The people rescued by Tampa were taken to Nauru. By early 2002, Australia was forcing Afghans to return to Afghanistan, saying the Taliban were defeated and Afghanistan was safe for Hazaras. On August 26, 2002, the Tampa refugees were preparing to commemorate the first anniversary of their rescue. One of them, 20 year-old Mohammad Sarwar, awoke that morning, cried out and fell back dead. His friends told me that he died of a broken heart: he had just been refused protection. Australia continued to force Afghans held on Nauru to return to Afghanistan.
The Tampa episode was the start of Australia's conspicuously harsh approach to boat people. The idea was to "send a message", and the message was: we do not want you asking for our help.
It is a melancholy fact that John Howard's government made political capital by its treatment of boat people. The 2001 election turned on the issue. But it depended on misinformation and dishonesty.
Ten years on, we are behaving just as badly as we did at the time of Tampa. Instead of hijacking people at sea and sending them to Nauru, we plan to divert them to Malaysia. Labor doesn't care that Malaysia has not signed the Refugees' Convention. It doesn't care that Malaysia has a bad track record with human rights generally and asylum seekers in particular. Although Malaysia has agreed not to mistreat the people we plan to send there, that agreement is incapable of being supervised or enforced. A fall-back plan is to send them to Manus Island: a malaria-ridden, northern outpost of Papua New Guinea.
To understand what has happened since the time of Tampa, we need to start with a few simple facts. Boat people are not "illegal" in any sense. There are no queues in the places they flee from. They come in very small numbers. Asylum seekers who come by plane outnumber boat arrivals about three to one. Asylum seekers who arrive by boat are, historically, very likely to be assessed as genuine refugees; those who come by plane are, historically, unlikely to be assessed as genuine refugees. However, asylum seekers who come by boat are held in detention, whereas those who come by plane are not: we treat most harshly those who are most likely to be traumatised already and most likely to be lawfully entitled to our protection.
Why do we do this? What is it about our national character that explains such cruel, illogical behaviour? Simple: the politicians do it for political gain, and most Australians do not fully understand what is being done in their name. When Tampa sailed into Australian domestic politics a decade ago, the coalition was deeply worried about the drift of hard-right, anti-immigration voters to One Nation. Jackie Kelly confronted Howard with exactly this concern as he was entering the Parliament to deliver a speech about dealing with the Tampa. He waved his speech at her and said, in effect: "This will fix it."
Tampa was all about politics; it had nothing to do with "protecting" our borders, which are, in any event, virtually watertight.
Since Tampa, Australia's treatment of boat people has been all about politics. The net result has been to tarnish Australia's reputation as a nation that once valued and respected human rights.The big question is: is this really what Australia is about?
Like Malcolm Fraser on this page on Monday, I believe most Australians are better than this. We are badly served by major political parties willing to play politics with defenceless, terrified people. Let Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard tell us plainly: do they honestly think their treatment of boat people reflects Australia's national character?
I have spent the decade since Tampa wondering about these things. I cling to the belief that, if most Australians knew the truth of what is being done in their name, they would be shocked.
I believe most Australians do not support the idea of locking up innocent people for years, or mistreating them just because they tried to save their lives and the lives of their families.
I know that most Australians, if they visited a detention centre, would be appalled to see the misery that we are inflicting on ordinary people who want nothing more than the chance to live safe from the fear of persecution.
I believe that, placed in the same circumstances, most Australians would do exactly what boat people do: run for your life, do whatever you can to get to safety, whatever the risk.
All these things I believe about this country and its people. Am I wrong?
Julian Burnside, AO, QC, is a prominent barrister and human rights advocate.


Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/australians-dont-fully-understand-what-is-being-done-in-their-name-20110825-1jcbn.html#ixzz1W9bDP2Z9

How the Buddha got his wounds

On Monday Afghanistan's Taliban rulers were promising to safeguard the country's historic treasures. On Thursday they started shelling them. Luke Harding explains what changed their minds


Luke Harding
The Guardian, Saturday 3 March 2001


It had seemed like a good meeting. Sitting in one corner was Afghanistan's bearded foreign minister, Wakil Ahmed Mutawakel. On the sofa opposite, a delegation of western cultural experts who had flown to Kabul to discuss the preservation of Afghanistan's few remaining antiquities.

Over cups of green tea, Mutawakel smilingly assured the delegation that all was well. The Taliban, Afghanistan's fundamentalist rulers, had no intention of destroying what was left of the country's heritage, he said. This was at 5.30pm on Monday. Two hours later, however, Radio Sharia - the Taliban's official station - broadcast an announcement that would plunge Afghanistan into further isolation and provoke a major international outcry. Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban's reclusive, one-eyed spiritual leader, had issued a new decree: that all Afghanistan's ancient statues should be destroyed.

The decision was in line with Islamic law and had been taken following a gathering of the country's most senior religious leaders, he explained. "We were just blown away," said Brigitte Neubacher of the Society for the Preservation of Afghanistan's Cultural Heritage (SPACH). "This came immediately after our one-and-a-half hour meeting. Whether the timing was deliberate or not we don't know. I am totally horrified."

By Thursday, Taliban fighters deep in the Hindu Kush mountains started putting Mullah Omar's edict into effect. They set about what was once Afghanistan's most famous tourist attraction - two enormous statues of Buddha, 38 and 55 metres high, carved into a cliff-face. Using tanks and rocket launchers they began to destroy the two works, which had survived since the second century AD.

The magnificent colossi were built in the remote and beautiful Bamiyan Valley - seven hours' drive from Kabul - 1,000 years before the arrival of Islam in Afghanistan. They were built by the flourishing Buddhist Kushan dynasty, which had grown rich from its strategic position on the Silk Road between China and Rome.

The statues were unique. They were visited by pilgrims from across Central Asia; tended by yellow-robed priests who lived in caves carved into the sandstone hillside; and decorated with exquisite frescoes. "The buddhas are absolutely spectacular. I have never seen anything like them in my life," one awed visitor to Bamiyan told me. The statues even outlasted an attack by Genghis Khan in the 13th century. But they have finally met their match in the Taliban.

In retrospect, the international community could have spotted the danger signals. Three weeks ago, Taliban officials allegedly broke into Kabul's bombed-out museum and destroyed around 50 objects of cultural significance, according to reports.

There was not, it has to be said, much left to destroy. Rival Afghan mujaheddin factions looted most of the museum's best pieces when they fought for control of the city in 1992. But a few things were still on display when I visited last October: a couple of friezes, a limestone Islamic bowl and a rather fetching statue of King Kanishka, who ruled Afghanistan 1,800 years ago.

One observer who recently managed to peer through the locked museum's windows spotted some white marks on King Kanishka's enormous royal feet, suggesting the already headless statue had been hit by a hammer. "We don't know how great the damage is. We weren't allowed into the museum to verify the reports," one member of the SPACH delegation said.

The Taliban's decision to destroy the few relics that managed to survive 20 years of war and Soviet occupation can only be explained by recent political events. In February, the UN imposed fresh sanctions on Afghanistan. The Taliban's office in New York was closed down by the United States, a country obsessed with capturing the Afghanistan-based Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden. Within the Taliban, a dialogue of sorts had been going on. Moderates, such as the Taliban's culture minister Abdul Rahman Hotaki, advocated a degree of co-operation with the west. But after the most recent wave of sanctions Mullah Omar appears to have concluded that a policy of engagement was entirely pointless. Instead, he has thumbed his nose at the international community. "All we are breaking are stones," he shrugged. "I don't care about anything but Islam."

Since the Taliban swept into Kabul four years ago, imposing the world's most extreme brand of Islam, portrayal of the human image has been forbidden. Painters, for example, are now confined to depicting landscapes; Kabul's art gallery is hung with innocuous Victorian pastorals. In September 1998, a renegade Taliban commander blew off the head of the smaller Bamiyan buddha using dynamite. He also fired rockets at the large buddha's groin, damaging the luxurious folds of the statue's dress.

But the Taliban then decided to take a more pragmatic view of Afghanistan's pre-Islamic past. In July 1999 Mullah Omar issued a decree that said the Bamiyan buddhas should be preserved. There were, he pointed out, no Buddhists left in Afghanistan to worship them. But he added: "The government considers the Bamiyan statues as an example of a potential major source of income for Afghanistan from international visitors. The Taliban states that Bamiyan shall not be destroyed but protected."

Then, over another cup of green tea four months ago, Hotaki assured me that the Taliban had no intention of damaging the statues. To suggest as much was "foreign propaganda", he said. Sadly, though, the rumours have proved all too true.

The Bamiyan valley, with its serene mountain views and pastel colours, is also an unwelcome reminder to the Taliban of their own vulnerability. Opposition fighters from Afghanistan's Northern Alliance seized the valley last month and were dislodged only after a massive battle. The Taliban have now sealed the valley and have rejected all requests by foreign observers to visit.

It is not just the buddhas that face annihilation: 20 tin trunks that may contain the Kabul museum's celebrated Bactrian treasures are currently stored in the vaults of the presidential palace and the Taliban's culture ministry. They have not been opened, so no one is sure what they contain. The only certainty is that after Monday's edict, they are likely to be lost to the world for ever.

"I consider myself a friend of Afghanistan. I have spent 15 years trying to help the country," one western cultural expert said this week. "But it is becoming an island of madness."

Article Source,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/mar/03/books.guardianreview2

The Teenage Years in the Tumult of Afghanistan

Mir in the documentary "The Boy Mir: 10 Years in Afghanistan."

By MIKE HALE
Published: August 11, 2011

In 2002 Phil Grabsky went to Afghanistan and made “The Boy Who Plays on the Buddhas of Bamiyan,” a documentary about a year in the life of Mir, an 8-year-old with boundless energy and a blinding smile. His family, dislocated by war, lived in grinding poverty in a cave near where the Taliban had destroyed centuries-old stone Buddhas; the family granted Mr. Grabsky an alarming degree of access, and the resulting film had a sharp focus, a fluid rhythm and a touch of strange beauty, abetted by the towering cliffs with their empty alcoves for statues.
More About This Movie

Mr. Grabsky returned and documented Mir’s life through his teenage years, a noble endeavor that has resulted in an interesting but much more ordinary sequel, “The Boy Mir: Ten Years in Afghanistan.” The first 22 minutes of the new film is footage from the earlier one, so drastically edited that it feels slightly surreal if you’ve seen the original. The story then picks up in 2005, with Mir back in his peaceful home village in the north.

Over the next five years he dips in and out of school, acquires and neglects a bicycle and a motorcycle, weathers his parents’ increasingly exasperated complaints and hopes he won’t have to join the army. Despite the abject conditions and the not-so-distant war, his story starts to feel like a typical rebellious-teenager narrative. And the compressed time frame means there is less of the acute observation that distinguished “The Boy Who Plays” and more scenes of the family members, now practiced performers, talking to the camera. Still, if you’ve seen the first film, you’ll want to come back to see Mir’s progress through life. And no matter what happens, it seems, the smile remains.

THE BOY MIR

Ten Years in Afghanistan

Opens on Friday in Manhattan.

Written and directed by Phil Grabsky; directors of photography, Mr. Grabsky and Shoaib Sharifi; edited by Phil Reynolds; music by Richard Durrant; produced by Mr. Grabsky and Amanda Wilkie; released by Seventh Art Productions. At the IFC Center, 323 Avenue of the Americas, at Third Street, Greenwich Village. In Dari, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. This film is not rated.

Source,

http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/08/12/movies/the-boy-mir-by-phil-grabsky-review.html

UNHCR Praises Iran's Generosity toward Refugees

TEHRAN (FNA)- Deputy Head of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Veronica Irima praised the efforts made by the Iranian government and nation to host foreign refugees over the past years.

"I appreciate you, as an official of the Islamic Republic of Iran, for hosting such a large number of the world refugees," Irima said in a meeting with the Deputy Governor of Isfahan province in Political and Security Affairs Mohammad-Mahdi Esmaeili.

Pointing out that the Iranian nation's hospitality is internationally renowned, he reiterated, "Iran's viewpoint about the refugees differs with that of the other countries, and is very particular and unique."

Since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, hundreds of thousands of Afghans have sought refuge in Iran, either directly across the Afghan border or by a long detour through Pakistan. Some are Shiites from Hazarajat, the central, largely Shiite district of Afghanistan which has been virtually autonomous since 1979. Others are Tajik and Turkmen from the Northern provinces of Afghanistan. Many come from the neighboring province of Herat.

No one knows the exact number of the refugees. But the Iranian authorities and the UNHCR estimate there are between 1.5 and 2 million.

The refugees are dispersed throughout Iran. According to UNHCR estimates, there are 600,000 in North Khorassan, South Khorassan and Khorassan Razavi provinces - 250,000 in the capital, Mashhad, alone - 150,000 each in the provinces of Isfahan, Kerman, Tehran, Fars and Yazd, and 120,000 in Sistan and Balouchestan province.

Many work in construction, agriculture, or in factories or small shops.

In 1979 the Iranians created the Council for Afghan Refugees (CAR), which is part of the ministry of interior. The CAR has grown increasingly alarmed at the growing number of Afghan refugees, and at the health and security problems they pose.

Report Source,

http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=9005110350

Split over Dandenong's Afghan Bazaar plans

PLANS to redevelop the Afghan Bazaar to reflect its cultural identity have divided the community.

Greater Dandenong Council and the Office of Multicultural Affairs and Citizenship have been consulting with Afghan traders to design a streetscape reflecting the culture of the Thomas St precinct.

But Shamama Association secretary John Gulzari said he felt some groups were ignored when the council dubbed Thomas St the “Afghan Bazaar”, complete with camels as mascots, in 2009.

Dandenong’s Afghan community is primarily made up of three ethnic groups, the Hazara, Pashtun and Tajik.

Mr Gulzari said camels had negative connotations for some traders, and did not represent all the ethnicities.

“This is Australia and every law-abiding citizen has the freedom of speech to express their opinion,” he said.

Hazara refugee and Dandenong resident Zakir Hussain suggested Hazara patterns and images of Bamiyan Buddhas - sandstone statues from the Hazarajat province destroyed by the Taliban in 2001 - be worked into the Thomas St art.

Mr Hussain said he didn’t call himself Afghan, and would prefer something less divisive, such as Bamiyan Bazaar.

But Afghan Pamir Restaurant owner Rahimi Baryalai said calling the area the Afghan Bazaar encompassed all ethnicities, and the camel was an important symbol.

“Hazara is a small minority group in Australia,” he said.

“We are Afghan, we should be united under the same Afghan name. We shouldn’t have any division.”

Afghan Australian Philanthropic Association chairman Dor Aschna supported a unified front for the bazaar.

“We want to keep the Afghan flag and logo representing the whole Afghani, not just one ethnic group.”

News Source,

http://dandenong-leader.whereilive.com.au/news/story/split-over-dandenongs-afghan-bazaar-plans/

Bit By Bit, Afghanistan Rebuilds Buddhist Statues

by JOANNA KAKISSIS

July 27, 2011
When the Taliban controlled Afghanistan a decade ago, they were fanatical about eliminating everything they considered un-Islamic.

Their biggest targets — literally and figuratively — were the two monumental Buddha statues carved out of the sandstone cliffs in central Afghanistan. One stood nearly 180 feet tall and the other about 120 feet high, and together they had watched over the dusty Bamiyan Valley since the sixth century, several centuries before Islam reached the region.

Despite international opposition, the Taliban destroyed the statues with massive explosions in 2001. At the time they were blown up, the statues were the largest Buddha carvings in the world, and it seemed they were gone for good.

But today, teams from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, along with the International Council on Monuments and Sites, are engaged in the painstaking process of putting the broken Buddhas back together.

Up to half of the Buddha pieces can be recovered, according to Bert Praxenthaler, a German art historian and sculptor, who has been working at the site for the past eight years. He and his crew have sifted through 400 tons of rubble and have recovered many parts of the statues along with shrapnel, land mines and explosives that were used in their demolition.

But how do you rebuild the Buddhas from the rubble?

"The archaeological term is 'anastylosis,' but most people think it's some kind of strange disease," said Praxenthaler.

For those in the archaeology world, "anastylosis" is actually a familiar term. It was the process used to restore the Parthenon of Athens. It involves combining the monument's original pieces with modern material.

On a recent day, Praxenthaler was leading a group through a tunnel behind the niche where the smaller of the two statues once stood.

"We are now on top of the Buddha," he explained. "There was just a wall and a small opening to sit on the top, or the head, of the Buddha. But now there is no head."

The workers were busy removing scaffolding after months spent reinforcing the wall where the Buddha's head once was.

Mixed Feelings About Project

Bamiyan is an extremely poor and remote land in one of the world's most underdeveloped countries. The Buddha statues were once a major tourist attraction, but Afghanistan has been at war virtually nonstop for more than three decades. The fighting drove away the tourists years before the Taliban blew up the statues.

The restoration project is designed to rebuild the historic site, as well as bring back the tourists. The project has the support of Habiba Sarabi, the popular provincial governor. And there are reasons to be hopeful. Bamiyan is now considered one of the less dangerous places in Afghanistan.

Yet others, like human rights activist Abdullah Hamadi, say the empty niches where the Buddhas stood are a reminder of the Taliban's fanaticism, and should be left as they are.

"The Buddha was destroyed," said Hamadi. "If you made it, rebuilt it, that is not the history. The history is the broken Buddha."

Hamadi is from the nearby district of Yakawlang, where the Taliban massacred more than 300 members of a minority group, called the Hazaras, in 2001. Those killings took place just two months before the Taliban blew up the Buddha statues.

While Bamiyan is much safer today, the Taliban can still strike. Recently, Taliban insurgents kidnapped and beheaded Jawad Zahak, the head of the Bamiyan provincial council, while he was driving his family toward Kabul, about 150 miles to the southeast.

Some in Bamiyan say they would rather see the money for the restoration project go toward services like electricity and housing, which are in desperately short supply.

Homeless Take Shelter In Caves

In fact, the caves at the site of the Buddha statues are the only shelter some Bamiyan residents can find. Homeless villagers like Marzia and her six children are living in one of the caves, while the family's goats bleat nearby. Marzia, who like many Afghans uses only one name, said she has no use for the statues.

"We don't have a house, so where else can we live?" she said.

A few enterprising villagers have found ways to make money off the story surrounding the Buddhas. One is Said Merza Husain, known around town as the man who was forced to help the Taliban blow up the statues.

He said he had no choice but to obey the Taliban a decade ago. If he had resisted, they would have killed him. One of his friends refused to take part, and the Taliban shot him.

But that is the only information Husain will share for free. To hear more of the story, he charges anywhere between $20 and $100.

Meanwhile, Bert Praxenthaler's team was about to halt their work temporarily during the scorching Afghan summer. One longtime worker, Ali Reza, was picking up his pay. He signed his name and received a wad of Afghanis.

Praxenthaler also handed him a certificate and thanked him first in Dari, then in English. Piecing together Bamiyan's Buddhas will take many more years. After a summer break, Praxenthaler's team plans to resume their work in the fall.

This story was partly funded by a Knight Luce Fellowship for Reporting on Global
Religion.

Article source,

http://www.npr.org/2011/07/27/137304363/bit-by-bit-afghanistan-rebuilds-buddhist-statues