Wednesday 29 February 2012

تش کاغذ - ‌‌‌‌Blank Paper

تش کاغذ
محمد نواز طایر

تش کاغذ
تا ته مې خط لیکلو
لا مې لیکلی نه و
چې په کاغذ دپاسه
دوه ملغلرې
د دوو سترګو نه راپرېوتلې
ما وی بس دهغه بس دی
ستا دهغه تش کاغذ مې تا ته دهغه شان درواستولو
وروستو مې سوچ کولو
چې ته به څنګه د دې تش کاغذ په راز پوهه شې؟

BLANK PAPER
Mohammad Nawaz Tahir
I was writing you a letter
No words were yet written
When, over the paper,
Two pearls
Fell from my two eyes
I thought, this is enough.
I sent you this letter as it was
Later I wondered
What meaning will you make of this blank white paper?
 from the BBC Pashto compilation available in PDF format here

Tor_Khan تور خان

Monday 27 February 2012

Sacrilege

Eventually there is a tipping point. The Afghan protests following the burning of the Quran by Americans in Baghram have escalated and have broken out across the country. Several deaths - first Afghan and now American - and a NATO shut-down have not slowed down the outrage.

Photo: MSNBC

The key to understanding the reaction to these events is simple. Muslims revere the Quran. Afghans are Muslim. Americans, allegedly trying to prevent Afghans in detention passing messages to insurgents deemed as Taliban sympathisers, incinerated copies of the Quran that were supposedly being used to pass on messages. The truth about the Afghans held in detention and to whom the messages were going was handled insensitively and with disrespect. US officials, even up to the US President himself have made attempts to apologise. In reality, however apologies don't always work, especially if they are seen as token and tensions are already high due to an over-long and unpopular occupation. The truth is the Afghan insurgency gains strength from just this sort of action.

Déjà vu

One day the Americans will need to leave Afghanistan and a dignified exit would always be the best way to go. The problem with occupation is that it is closely coupled with arrogance and the message that should be learned is that respect and humility is good. Neither have been shown and this is bound to accelerate calls for the Americans to go. History is testament to the fact that in Afghanistan, eventually, it is the Afghan way that prevails.

Friday 24 February 2012

Ten Years of Meltdown

Another bomb explosion in Peshawar yesterday claimed yet more lives. Like the explosion in the Khyber tribal district not long back, this happened whilst people waited for a bus. Sadly, this comes less than a week after sectarian violence in Parachinar and today gunmen stormed a police station, again in Peshawar, leading to yet more killing. I can't help but think that right now, it doesn't really matter any more what the faith denomination, ethnic background or political slant of an individual is, in Pakistan - something is seriously malfunctioning. Whilst ultimately violence is indiscriminate; Peshawar, Khyber, Swat, Parachinar, Waziristan, Bajaur and much more, is Pashtoon land and when we turn our violence upon each other, I feel hurt and confusion. At times it feels that we are going down like flies. And I continue to ask why.

Ahmed Rashid, writing for the BBC describes the past ten years perfectly when he says that Pakistan is in Meltdown.  He writes that ten years after becoming embroiled in the US "War on Terror", Pakistan, mired in scandal, may have to face some kind of unilateral US action. This has long been conjecture, but let's face it, when the US enters Pakistani airspace with its drones, this results in civilians being killed. The Raymond Davis shoot-out saw Pakistan bowing to US pressure - thus effectively creating an immunity for American intelligence to kill on Pakistani soil, seemingly without impunity and of course, most infamously Osama bin Laden was hunted down and killed in Abbotabad, whilst Pakistan was asleep. All of these represent US action against Pakistan, whether anyone cares to admit it or not.

But of Pakistan itself - why is it headed towards meltdown? I have a theory. Rather simplistically much of Pakistan's past, present and future woes stem from its schizophrenic relationship with India and how this is dealt with. And yes, there is mass poverty, economic ruin, natural disasters, ethnic unrest and wide-scale political corruption at home. Everything in Pakistan is negatively over politicised - the intelligence services, militant groups, the judiciary, redrawing of provincial boundaries, college campuses, religion, the media, municipality services, the ordinary man on the street and of course, the military. 

Notice there that even whilst discussing this, I didn't even get to politicians. They of course, knowingly sit there in Pakistan temporarily or in exile to escape criminal or corruption charges, watching as everything melts before them.

 
 Cartoon by Satish Acharya

Monday 20 February 2012

... musings from a QR distance ...


Another way to read this blog. Get your Smart Phones ready, scan the QR code ... and see you in the mobile phone version!

Saturday 18 February 2012

Deep Freeze

A few pictures from the patch when the temperatures dropped to -15ºC. Taken using my Olympus SP800UZ.








Wednesday 15 February 2012

Bloody Valentine

Bleeding Roses

February 14th. Not all of us are willing to simply 'go with the flow'. Me for one. Public displays of Valentine's Day don't sit comfortably with me, full stop. But more than that we might consider the view that Valentine's Day is sometimes little more than a distraction that masks deeper commercial exploitation. Whilst people are immersed in the idea of romance, balloons and roses, we should also spare a thought for all those poor Ecuadorian and Kenyan children who supply the European and North American fresh flower industry by toiling for low pay under the sun for 12 hour shifts. It is their blistered bleeding fingers that go towards many of the floral bouquets and displays that mark this day.

What do they say? 

Time to wake up and smell the roses.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Friday 10 February 2012

The Story of Swat (1862-1969) Part 4

Part four of the series on the history of Swat. In this part we are introduced to the non-Muslim minorities who have made Swat their home.


Tor_Khan تور خان

Saturday 4 February 2012

Friday 3 February 2012

The Boys Who Walked to Europe

This pains me and impresses me at the same time. Leaves us with a lot of food for thought.  

Out of Afghanistan: the boys who walked to Europe 

Behind the security bars of a spartan, white-tiled room, 25 youths are arranging bedrolls on the floor. The workers on the Salvation Army nightshift, who watch over these lone foreign teenagers in a shelter in a gritty corner of Paris, are distributing sheets and sleeping bags; there are a couple of boys from Mali and a contingent of Bangladeshis; the rest have travelled overland, by every conceivable method, from Afghanistan. The youngest are 13 years old, pint-sized cousins from Kabul who arrived that morning after a journey of five months. They take off their trainers and place them at the end of their bedrolls. One of them, Morteza, gingerly peels off his socks. The undersides of his toes are completely white. I ask what happened to his feet.

"Water," he says. Where was he walking in water? Mohammed, the boy on the next bedroll who knows more English, translates. "In the mountains," he says. Which mountains, I ask, thinking about the range that forms the border between Turkey and Iran. "Croatia, Slovenia, Italy,'' Morteza says. Mohammed intervenes. "Not water,'' he clarifies. "Snow." Suddenly I understand. Morteza's feet are not waterlogged or blistered. He has limped across Europe with frostbite. Morteza's 13-year-old cousin Sohrab, pale and serious beyond his years, recounts, in English learned during two years of school in Afghanistan, what happened. 

"Slovenia big problem,'' he says, explaining how he and Morteza, "my uncle's boy'', were travelling with eight adults when they were intercepted by the Slovenian police. Two members of their group were caught and the rest made a detour into the mountains. They spent five days in the snow, navigating by handheld GPS, emerging from the Alps in Trento, in the Italian north. Morteza acquired frostbite on the penultimate part of a 6,000km journey that detoured through the Balkans: through Macedonia, Serbia and Croatia. Their aim is to join their uncle who lives in Europe, after Morteza's father was killed in an explosion. His mother died earlier "in the war''; Sohrab lost his own father when he was 11.

Morteza and Sohrab are among the world's most vulnerable migrants. Like scores of Afghan teenagers in transit across Europe, they are in flight from violence or the aftershocks of violence that affect children in particularly harsh ways. Those who turn up in Paris have spent up to a year on the road, on the same clandestine routes as adults, but at far greater risk. No one knows how many unaccompanied Afghan children have made it to Europe. Paris took in just over 300 in 2011 – the biggest nationality among the 1,700 lone foreign minors in its care. Sarah Di Giglio, a child-protection expert with Save the Children in Italy, says that at 4,883 in 2010, Afghans were the biggest group of separated foreign children requesting asylum in Europe. 

Adapted from this story from the Guardian, Jan 2012. 
Photograph: Ed Alcock/MYOP 

Wednesday 1 February 2012

Colossus: The Forbin Project

Colossus: The Forbin Project is a 1970 released movie based on the 1966 novel Colossus by Dennis Feltham Jones. I first saw the film several years after it was released at a time when home computers had begun to become household items. The film, partly being connected with my interest in technology and the ethics around it and partly being one that captivated my imagination of a computer gone 'mad', has taken me several years to track down.

There is a political undertone set against the backdrop of the cold war, and ultimately one of necessary human cooperation against artificial intelligence. The film tells the story of a US defence supercomputer, Colossus, that develops a consciousness and eventually partners with a parallel system named Guardian from the USSR. Together they merge and in keeping with their purpose - to guard the Earth, they begin to remove the obstacles in the form of humans who attempt to block their attempts to grow stronger. Dr Forbin, the scientist behind Colossus is made a prisoner, put under camera surveillance and eventually is made a servant to the system despite his final protests. The film makes a worthwhile comment on surveillance, control and artificial intelligence revolting against its human creators and ultimately entrapping them. Enjoy the clip here.

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