Their greatest risk remains their greatest hope

DateAugust 15, 2012

Michael Bachelard, West Java

AS AUSTRALIANS were digesting their country's latest policy twist on Monday night, a group of Afghan asylum seekers clustered anxiously around their computer in West Java, devouring the news.

The tough new policy is designed to deter men such as these ethnic Hazaras from trying to reach Australia. But they insisted to The Age yesterday that they were still determined to board a boat and make the hazardous trip.

''When you think that you may die in Afghanistan, there are two ways,'' refugee Mohamad Khani said. ''You stay there and die [or] you can go to find a safe place to have a better future … We are going [to Australia]. We don't have another choice.''


Hazaras in West Java. Photo: Michael Bachelard

Eighty men live cheek by jowl in this compound of eight rooms in the picturesque town of Cisarua. They are part of a constantly shifting population of Hazara refugees waiting for the call from a people smuggler to say their boat is ready.
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They are avid consumers of Australian news because Australia is their greatest risk and their greatest hope. But these men were clear: they had come too far on their journey to Australia to back out now, however harsh the government's policy.

In his 22 years, Mr Khani has felt almost constantly under threat. In Afghanistan, his father was kidnapped by the Taliban for lacking a beard. He escaped and the family fled to Pakistan.

There the family were unable to work or study. Mr Khani's cousin was killed there, and they were hounded by extremist bombers and the police.

Mr Khani moved back to Afghanistan to work as an electrician. But he said the Taliban were resurgent and Hazaras trying to earn a living were a target.

''They are simple people in the daytime, but at night they are Taliban … with guns, searching people and questioning people."

He finally became an asylum seeker two weeks ago because he believes that when the international military forces leave Afghanistan in 2014, ''our problems will become more''.

Although the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has records of about 4000 asylum seekers in Indonesia, some estimate there are as many as 10,000 seeking passage to Australia. However, the Hazaras were less certain about whether the new policy would deter their countrymen from leaving Afghanistan. Mr Khani said some might now consider seeking asylum in North America or Europe.

Sayed Rahmatullah Alemzadeh Haiz, a former journalist, said the prospect of long detention on Nauru or Manus Island would not deter the group.

''If the Australian government takes me to a detention centre, they will not kill me. But if I go to the Taliban, I'm sure they will kill me,'' he said.

Ali Reza, 17, found his way to Cisarua via Thailand and Malaysia, and then spent five months in the Tanjung Pinang detention centre in Indonesia - an experience he said was more like prison.

He said his father was killed by the Taliban, so he was the breadwinner for his mother and two brothers in Afghanistan, making him desperate to get to Australia.

He rejected the prospect of waiting, perhaps for years, in the so-called queue for a legitimate visa. ''If I wait, it will kill me by waiting. You can get anything, but you can't get your time again,'' he said.

All these men have an idealised view of Australia as a large, friendly, open country whose people do not recognise the word ''Hazara'' as an insult. But they are also keen for information about Nauru and Manus Island, and how long they might need to spend there.

Ultimately, they seem resolved. Even the new policy was better than what they had come from, they said.

''When you are waking in the morning, you don't know if you'll go back home at night or not,'' Mr Khani said. ''I cannot describe this … you see people, they look like dead bodies. They have no hope.''

 SMH

Haunted by the homeland

By Mohammed Hanif | From the Newspaper



An ethnic Hazara Shia man is comforted by his relative after he arrived at the local hospital in Quetta to find a family member shot dead, September 20, 2011. — Photo by Reuters

This is the story of two boys who were forced to leave Pakistan long after the partition. The first one was so young that he didn’t know why he was leaving, the second old enough to know exactly why he had to leave, but still couldn’t stop asking: why?

Earlier this year I met a 14-year-old unaccompanied Hazara boy on a Karachi-Bangkok flight. A group of happy Pakistani businessmen were trying their Chinese language skills on him. The boy looked bewildered, he turned to me and said, in Urdu: what language are they speaking? I gingerly told the group to back off, that the kid was a Pakistani. The businessmen seemed well travelled but were quite shocked that a Chinese looking kid could speak fluent Urdu. They left us alone and started to trade the do’s and don’t of haggling in Bangkok brothels.

“Going on vacation?” I asked the boy. “All by yourself?”

“I am in class nine.” He didn’t want to be treated like a kid.

“So why aren’t you in school?”

I asked.

He told me a story, a familiar story, but I had never heard it from a kid’s point of view. “Abbu has been acting very strange lately,” he lowered his voice. He has a big store on Sariab Road in Quetta. He used to go there every day. Now, most days he just stays home. First he stopped me from going to school. Then he stopped me from going to play on the street. Then he told me that I was going to go to Bangkok.

The boy had little comprehension of the scale of the trouble his community faced. His father is one of the many businessmen in Quetta who have to make a daily choice: go out to work and risk getting killed or stay home and hope to survive another day. The kid believed his dad was just acting a bit weird.

“Have you been to Bangkok before? Do you have any family there?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I have never been anywhere before. All my sisters are in Quetta. I am the only brother. I am going to stay with Uncle Mirza.” Then with the boastful optimism of a teenager he asked me.

“Do you know Uncle Mirza? Everyone in Bangkok knows him.” It turned out that Uncle Mirza was a family friend but the boy had actually never met him. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I didn’t know any Uncle Mirza. I also couldn’t imagine what kind of life the kid would have in Bangkok.

Later in the year, a leader of the Hazara community in Quetta, Abdul Qayum Changezi, weary of attending too many funerals, told me: I have an idea. I am going to propose to the government to buy everything we have; our shops, our business, our houses, even our pots and pans.

Everything. At the market prices. And then with that money put us all onto ships and send us to any country that might be willing to take us.

That kid was the lonely boy on a ship. Uncle Mirza was the only country willing to take him.

Another boy approached me in Bombay after a book reading last year. He was curious to know about a Sindhi couplet that I had quoted. He was in his late twenties, a clean cut Bombay professional. “I am from Shikarpur,” he told me quite abruptly. I hoped that he was a visitor, or somehow had ended up there for work. Again the story was familiar. He had migrated with his parents when he was sixteen. “In the early nineties when there were lots of kidnappings in interior Sindh,” he said. Like a true Pakistani, I wanted to remind him that Muslims were also kidnapped. But he wasn’t interested in discussing persecution of minorities in Pakistan. He said he wanted to have a word in private.

We moved away from the crowd. “We came here because my parents were worried about my sisters, what would happen when they grew up.” I asked him about his life in Bombay. It was good. He was the director of a long running soap on Sony TV, had two kids and a wife. “It might seem a bit strange but I thought you might help me. For the last one year I dream of Shikarpur every night,” he told me. “I mean the dreams are different, but whatever happens, happens in the streets of Shikarpur. It’s very vivid. And the strange thing is that I don’t really think much about Shikarpur. I grew up there but that’s all in the past. I want these dreams to stop.”

I didn’t really have an answer. I mumbled something about homesickness being a universal disease. “I am not really homesick,” the boy from Shikarpur insisted. “In fact I never want to go back. I am just wondering if there is anyway I could get rid of these dreams. I can’t talk to anyone about them.”

I suggested that maybe he should write about his experiences. “There is no story,” he insisted. “We still have relatives there, why create problems for them? And why would anyone want to read about my dreams anyways? As it is I feel embarrassed talking about this. I decided to talk to you because you are from Sindh and you quoted that couplet that I liked.”

I tried to change the subject. We talked about the rise and decline of Indian soap operas. He told me that all his brothers and sister were married, well settled and have moved away from home. “Where is home?” I asked. He named a small town in the Indian state of Gujarat.

“My parents are still there,” he said. “All by themselves.” Then he reverted to the subject of his dreams. “When I wake up from these dreams, I often think about my parents. Because you see when we left I was only sixteen. I made a whole life here. They were already in their sixties when they left. And they had never lived outside of Shikarpur. They never talk about it. But I worry about them. I wonder if I can’t get rid of these dreams, what must they be going through?”

I wonder when that Hazara kid grows up in some strange land, will he be haunted by the dreams of Sariab Road?

— The writer is author of Our Lady of Alice Bhatti and A Case of Exploding Mangoes.

DAWN

بامیان بدھ: کیا انہیں دوبارہ بنایا جائے

سنہ دو ہزار ایک میں افغانستان میں بامیان میں بدھا کے مجسموں کی تباہی کے بعد دنیا بھر میں طالبان حکومت کی مذمت کی گئی تھی۔

لیکن اقوام متحدہ کے ادارے یونیسکو کی طرف سے ان مجسموں کو تعمیر نہ کرنے کے فیصلے نے ان کے مستقبل پر سوالیہ نشان قائم کر دیا ہے۔

طالبان کے رہنما ملا عمر نے اپنے دورِ اقتدار میں بتوں کے خلاف جنگ شروع کر رکھی تھی۔جسامت اور علامتی دونوں اعتبار سے ان کا سب سے بڑا نشانہ بامیان کے بدھا مجسمے تھے، جو ایک زمانے میں دنیا کے سب سے بڑے مجسمے تھے۔

ان میں سے ایک کی اونچائی پچپن میٹر تھی۔ انہیں وسطی افغانستان میں چھٹی صدی کے دوران ایک بڑی چٹان کو تراش کر بنایا گیا تھا۔

جب دو ہزار تین میں طالبان کو معزول کر دیا گیا تو یونیسکو نے اس وادی کو عالمی ورثہ قرار دے دیا جس کے بعد دنیا بھر سے ماہرینِ آثارِ قدیمہ نے یہاں کا رخ کرنا شروع کر دیا۔یہاں پہنچ کر انہیں صرف دو دیو ہیکل خالی غار ملے جو شکستہ مجسموں کے ٹکڑوں اور ان بارودی سرنگوں سے بھرے پڑے ہیں جو پھٹ نہیں سکی تھیں۔

اس وقت سے ماہرین ان ٹکڑوں کا جائزہ لے کر یہ تعین کرنے کی کوشش کر رہے ہیں کہ آیا انہیں پھر سے تعمیر کیا جائے یا نہیں۔

بامیان وادی بدھ مت کے مغربی پھیلاؤ کی آخری حد اور یہ گذشتہ پانچ سو برس میں اہم تجارتی مرکز رہ چکی ہے۔ یہ وادی مشرق و مغرب کے سنگم پر واقع تھی اسی لیے یہاں پائے جانے والے منفرد آثار میں یونانی، ترکی، ایرانی، چینی اور ہندوستانی اثرات دیکھے جا سکتے ہیں۔

گذشتہ برس یونیسکو نے اعلان کیا تھا کہ وہ ان مجسموں کو دوبارہ تعمیر کرنے کا ارادہ نہیں رکھتی۔ بڑے مجسمے کو تعمیر کرنے کے لیے کافی ٹکڑے دستیاب نہیں، جب کہ چھوٹے مجسمےکی تعمیر ممکن ہے، لیکن یونیسکو کے مطابق ایسا ہونے کا امکان کم ہے۔

اس کے بجائے وہ جاپان اور اٹلی کی ٹیموں کے ساتھ مل کر چٹانوں کی دراڑوں کو بھرنے کی کوشش کر رہی ہے تاکہ غاروں کی دیواروں پر بنی بقیہ تصاویر کو محفوظ رکھا جا سکے۔

اس علاقے کے لوگ افلاس کی زندگی گزار رہے ہیں

تاہم آثارِقدیمہ کے تحفظ کی ایک جرمن تنظیم، انٹرنیشنل کونسل آن مانیومنٹس اینڈ سائٹس اب بھی کوشش کر رہی ہے کہ ان بدھا مجسموں کو ازسرِنو تعمیر کیا جائے۔

برٹ پریکسین تھالر اس تنظیم کے ساتھ دو ہزار چار سے وابستہ ہیں اور مجسمے کے بچے کھچے حصے محفوظ کرنے کی لیے کوشاں ہیں۔ ان میں سے بعض ٹکڑوں کا وزن چالیس ٹن کے قریب ہے۔

وہ ایک ایسے عمل میں دلچسپی رکھتے ہیں جس کے تحت کم سے کم نیا مواد استعمال کر کے ان ٹکڑوں کو جوڑا جا سکے۔ اس عمل کو ایناسٹائیلوسس کہا جاتا ہے۔

پریکسن تھالر کہتے ہیں ’یہ ایک ایسے معمے کو جوڑنے کے مترادف ہے جس کے کئی ٹکڑے غائب ہوں، تاہم جغرافیائی طریقے استعمال کر کے ہم یہ معلوم کر سکتے ہیں کہ یہ ٹکڑے پہلے کہاں تھے۔‘

یہ طریقہ ایتھنز میں پارتھینون اور ایکروپولس میں کامیابی سے برتا جا چکا ہے۔

ایک اور مسئلہ لاگت کا بھی ہے۔ صرف چھوٹے بدھ کو تعمیر کرنے پر لاکھوں ڈالر صرف ہوں گے، اور وہ بھی ایک ایسے علاقے میں جہاں بنیادی انفراسٹرکچر مثلاً سڑکوں اور بجلی کا فقدان ہے۔ مزید برآں، اس مقصد کے لیے بڑی مقدار میں دھات درآمد کرنا پڑے گی جسے کابل سے پرخطر راستوں کے ذریعے لانا پڑے گا۔

’بامیان کے بدھا‘ نامی کتاب کے مصنف ڈاکٹر لیولن مورگن کہتے ہیں’افغانستان میں روزانہ حیران کن حد تک بڑی رقمیں خرچ کی جاتی ہیں۔ ان کے مقابلے پر یہ رقم سمندر میں قطرے کے مترادف ہو گی۔‘

بامیان بدھ

"بامیان پر آثارِقدیمہ کے تمام وسائل صرف کر دیے جاتے ہیں لیکن افغانستان میں حیرت انگیز آثار بکھرے پڑے ہیں۔"

لیولن مورگن

البتہ ڈاکٹر مورگن یہ بھی کہتے ہیں کہ افغانستان میں اور بھی آثارِقدیمہ ہیں جن کے تحفظ کی ضرورت ہے۔

’بامیان پر آثارِقدیمہ کے تمام وسائل صرف کر دیے جاتے ہیں لیکن افغانستان میں حیرت انگیز آثار بکھرے پڑے ہیں۔‘

اس علاقے میں رہنے والے لوگ اب بھی غربت کی زندگی گزار رہے ہیں۔ملک بھر میں آثارِ قدیمہ کی لوٹ مار بہت بڑا مسئلہ ہے، جنہیں پاکستان کی آرٹ مارکیٹ میں سمگل کر دیا جاتا ہے۔ مورگن کا خیال ہے کہ زیادہ بہتر یہ ہے کہ وسائل کو افغانستان کے قدیم نوادر کو بچانے کے لیے بنیادی ڈھانچے کی تعمیر کے لیے بروئے کار لایا جائے۔

امریکی اخبار ہفنگٹن پوسٹ میں اپنے ایک آرٹیکل میں انہوں نے مغربی بامیان میں واقع قرون وسطیٰ کے زمانے کے ایک قلعے چہل برج کا ذکر کیا تھا جو ٹوٹ پھوٹ کا شکار ہو رہا ہے۔

بامیان پر توجہ مرکوز ہونے سے یہاں کے لوگوں کے بارے میں آگاہی ہوئی ہے

وہ کہتے ہیں، ’کچھ وقت اورگزرنے دیں، پھر دیکھیں کہ غیرقانونی لوٹ مار، زلزلوں، اور موسمیاتی عوامل کے باعث بڑے سے بڑے سرگرم بت شکن کے ہاتھوں پھیلائی گئی تباہی سے کہیں زیادہ تباہی پھیلے گی۔‘

یونیسکو بھی انہی خطوط پر سوچتے ہوئے بامیان میں ایک عجائب گھر برائے امن بنا رہی ہے تاکہ افغانستان کے ثقافتی ورثے کے بارے میں آگاہی میں اضافہ کیا جا سکے۔

وجہ جو بھی ہو، بامیان کے بدھوں نے عالمی توجہ حاصل کر رکھی ہے، اور ان کی تعمیر کے بارے میں دنیا بھر کے ماہرینِ آثارِ قدیمہ، ماہرینِ تعمیرات، فن کاروں اور تاریخ دانوں کی طرف سے طرح طرح کے مشورے موصول ہو رہے ہیں۔

تاہم ماہرین کا کہنا ہے کہ اس سلسلے میں مقامی آبادی اور افغانیوں کے مذہبی جذبات و احساسات کا خیال رکھنا اور انہیں اعتماد 

میں لینا بھی ضروری ہے۔

BBC Urdu

Bamiyan Buddhas: Should they be rebuilt?

BBC World Service


The destruction of Afghanistan's Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001 led to global condemnation of the Taleban regime. But the decision by Unesco not to rebuild them has not put an end to the debate about their future.

When the Taliban were at the height of their power in Afghanistan, leader Mullah Omar waged a war against idolatry.

His biggest victims, in size as well as symbolism, were two standing stone Buddhist statues. Once the largest in the world - one measured 55 metres in height - they were carved into the sandstone cliff face of the Bamiyan valley in central Afghanistan during the 6th Century.

When the Taliban were overthrown in 2003, Unesco declared the valley a world heritage site and archaeologists flocked to it. What they found were two enormous empty caverns and a pile of debris littered with unexploded mines.

One of the Buddhas was 55 metres high

Since then, they have been surveying the rubble of the two stone structures to determine whether the Buddhas should be rebuilt.

The Bamiyan valley marked the most westerly point of Buddhist expansion and was a crucial hub of trade for much of the last millennium. It was a place where East met West and its archaeology reveals a blend of Greek, Turkish, Persian, Chinese and Indian influence that is found nowhere else in the world.

But last year, Unesco announced that it was no longer considering reconstruction. In the case of the bigger Buddha, it was decided there wasn't enough left to rebuild and though rebuilding the smaller one is possible, they said it is unlikely to happen.

Instead they are working with teams from Japan and Italy to secure the cracking cliff face and keep the cliffs and any of the remaining wall paintings that once covered the caves and niches intact.

But a German group of archaeological conservationists, the International Council on Monuments and Sites (Icomos), are still pushing for the Buddha to be rebuilt.......Continue Reading......

Should We Rebuild the Buddhas of Bamiyan?

Llewelyn Morgan
Lecturer in Classics at Brasenose College, Oxford

Posted: 04/06/2012 00:00

When you've spent 18 months writing a book calledThe Buddhas of Bamiyan, and - let's be honest - when you'd quite like to flog a copy or two, all the recent talk about reconstructing one of the colossal statues demolished by the Taliban can seem heaven-sent. Those 18 months were spent discovering that places don't come any more historically significant than Bamiyan.

In AD 629 the Buddhas were visited by Xuanzang, the great Chinese traveller sometimes described as the Marco Polo of the East: he left a precious account of their original, brightly-coloured decoration. Later they were celebrated wonders of the Islamic world, monuments of which it was said that there were "no equals in this world."

At the end of the 18th century an eccentric but influential British author proposed that Bamiyan was the Garden of Eden: a string of dropouts, spies, and Christian missionaries visited Bamiyan from British India in his wake, and though all of them found a place of breathtaking natural beauty, the earthly paradise proved more elusive. Even the destruction of the Buddhas in 2001 was connected in murky ways to the greatest historical turning-point of recent times, in New York later the same year.

So yes, by all means let's investigate the feasibility of reconstructing the smaller (38 m.) Buddha - what remains of the bigger (55 m.) statue is just too fragmentary for it to be an option there. If it can be done well, if the daunting technical obstacles can be overcome, and if the cost (which will be exorbitant) can be justified by the benefits it will bring to a renascent tourist industry, who could possibly object? It's certainly what the local population want, and leaving empty the niche of the larger Buddha would even satisfy the purists who see the space where the Buddhas once were as a powerful memorial in itself. In all sorts of ways, a profoundly apt gesture....Continue Reading........

Archaeologists cover up Afghan heritage

By Joris Fioriti (AFP) 

BAMIYAN, Afghanistan — "It's there," says an archaeologist pointing to the ground, where fragments of a Buddha statue from the ancient Gandhara civilisation have been covered up to stop them being stolen or vandalised.

Just months before the US-led invasion in 2001, the Taliban regime shocked the world by destroying two giant, 1,500-year-old Buddhas in the rocky Bamiyan valley, branding them un-Islamic.

More than 10 years on Western experts say Afghanistan's ancient Buddhist and early Islamic heritage is little safer.

At the foot of the cliff where the two Buddhas used to stand 130 kilometres (80 miles) west of Kabul, an archaeological site has been found and parts of a third Buddha, lying down, were discovered in 2008.

The area of the lying Buddha is around half the size of a football pitch. A dozen statues or more lie under tonnes of stone and earth.

"We covered everything up because the ground is private and to prevent looting," says Zemaryalai Tarzi, the 75-year-old French archaeologist born in Afghanistan who is leading the project.

Tarzi says he dug first in the potato fields to find artefacts, which he buried again afterwards. All around him, under a large area of farmland, he says, lie exceptional treasures....Continue Reading........

'برنامه ترور محمدکریم خلیلی، معاون کرزی خنثی شد'

به روز شده: 06:34 گرينويچ - 12 اوت 2012 - 22 مرداد 1391

این دومین بار است که برنامه حمله به آقای خلیلی در سال جاری خورشیدی خنثی می‌شود

اداره امنیت ملی افغانستان اعلام کرده است که پنج تن را به اتهام تلاش برای ترور محمدکریم خلیلی، معاون رئیس‌جمهور این کشور دستگیر کرده است.

این اداره روز یکشنبه، ۲۲ اسد/مرداد، در اطلاعیه‌ای نوشت که این افراد در پی عملیات ویژه سه‌ساعته در ناحیه (منطقه) اول شهر کابل بازداشت شده‌اند.

اداره امنیت ملی گفته است که این پنج مرد که یکی از آنها پاکستانی است، چندین واسکت(جلیقه) انتحاری، مسلسل، راکت آرپی‌جی ۷، بمب دستی و صدها گلوله با خود داشتند.

منابع امنیت ملی گفته‌اند که این مهاجمان قصد داشتند با استفاده از یونیفورم ارتش ملی افغانستان به محمدکریم خلیلی، معاون دوم رئیس‌جمهور افغانستان در خانه‌اش حمله کنند.

به گفته این منابع، حمله به مقر پارلمان افغانستان از دیگر اهداف این گروه پنج نفره بوده است.

این دومین برنامه حمله انتحاری به محمدکریم خلیلی در سال جاری خورشیدی است که از سوی اداره امنیت ملی افغانستان خنثی می‌شود.

پیش از این روز دوم ماه ثور/اردیبهشت، اداره امنیت ملی افغانستان اعلام کرد که سه مرد که تصور می‌شد اعضای شبکه حقانی باشند، به اتهام تلاش برایکلیکحمله انتحاری به آقای خلیلی در خانه‌اش دستگیر شده‌اند.

اداره امنیت ملی در آن زمان تصاویری ویدئویی را در اختیار رسانه‌ها قرار داد که نشان می‌داد این سه مرد در حال برنامه‌ریزی و نقشه‌کشی برای حمله به خانه آقای خلیلی هستند.

خنثی‌سازی دومین برنامه حمله به آقای خلیلی نشان می‌دهد که شورشیان او را از اهداف عمده‌ای می‌دانند که از آن دست‌بردار نیستند.

محمدکریم خلیلی از رهبران ائتلاف سابق شمال افغانستان است که در سال‌های ۱۳۷۵ تا ۱۳۸۰ علیه حاکمیت گروه طالبان می‌جنگید.

پیش از این لطف‌الله مشعل، سخنگوی اداره امنیت ملی در کلیکمصاحبه‌ای با بی‌بی‌سیگفته بود که طالبان، رهبران ائتلاف شمال را 

.از "بدترین دشمنان" خود می‌دانند.

BBC Farsi