Alla inlägg under mars 2014

Av loren adams - 31 mars 2014 20:53

  My heart just bleeds, because an entire family have disappeared. A family of hope, a family of success, a family that was very committed. Sardar began everything; his achievements were tremendous. And Afghanistan lost a very brave journalist who had been able to give the people of Afghanistan a voice.

Each week, Weekend Edition Sunday brings listeners an unexpected side of the news by talking with someone personally affected by the stories making headlines.

Bilal Sarwary is a local correspondent for the BBC in Kabul, and over a week ago, he was called to report on yet another insurgent attack that left civilians dead.

This particular attack, however, was different for him. Among those killed were Sarwary's friend and fellow journalist Sardar Ahmad, his wife and two of his three children. A third child is recovering in a Kabul hospital. They were eating in the restaurant at the luxury Serena Hotel when gunmen opened fire. Five other people were killed in the shooting.

It's one of several attacks launched by the Taliban in Kabul ahead of this week's presidential election. On Saturday, theheavily fortified election commission headquarters came undere fire. . But the attack on the Serena Hotel resonated with the close-knit community of Afghan journalists in a different way.

Sarwary tells NPR's Rachel Martin that he was covering the news that night without knowing his friend was killed. He didn't find out until the next morning that Ahmad and his family were at the hotel.

"Once we found out we had lost one of our closest friends along with his family ... I felt like the weight of the entire world was sitting on my shoulders," Sarwary says.

Sarwary went to the morgue and identified his friend, but in hindsight says he shouldn't have gone, because now he has to live with those images. But that is the sad reality of Afghanistan, he says.

"The people of Afghanistan have been born into war [and] the people of Afghanistan continue to bear the brunt of this conflict," he says.

Sarwary says living and working as a reporter in Afghanistan is very difficult when you have to wake up to explosions and deal with corruption. He says he's lost relatives in the violence as well, but there is hope.

"I always believe that there is a very powerful human story," he says. "There's always the story of a family. ... There's always the story of a young Afghan who was nowhere in 2001, when Afghanistan was a destroyed society, [and] today she's a high school graduate and speaking English.

"That's what makes me not lose sight of Afghanistan, the fact that they have not lost hope," he says.

Regarding the upcoming election in Afghanistan, Sarwary says he gets the sense that the Afghan people expected more clarity and vision from the men running to replace President Hamid Karzai. But he says it's important to remember what elections mean to the people of Afghanistan.

"When you compare it with the '90s, Afghanistan today is a very different country, but it's a country with wounds of war," he says. "And I think it will take some time for Afghanistan to be the Afghanistan that the people of Afghanistan will want: a normal, stable and prosperous country for its people."

Av loren adams - 27 mars 2014 11:52

Associated Press/ Kabul | March 24, 2014 America will provide two-thirds of their troops and additional forces to Afghanistan to conduct counter-terrorism operations.

 

A U.S senator leading a bipartisan delegation to Afghanistan called on President Barack Obama on Saturday (March 22) to announce a decision on his plans for future troop levels in the country on the assumption, a much-delayed security pact eventually will be signed with Kabul.

During a visit to Afghanistan, Sen. Kelly Ayotte stressed no American forces would remain in the country without a bilateral security agreement, but she also said Obama shouldn’t wait for that to give an idea of what the U.S presence would look like after the NATO-led combat mission ends at the end of this year.

“I believe that it is time for our president to do this so that the people of Afghanistan understand that we remain committed in Afghanistan,” the New Hampshire Republican said, stressing any post-2014 force would be contingent on the pact being signed. “He can no longer delay this decision.”

Ayotte, who is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said she also urged President Hamid Karzai, who has refused to sign the deal, to change his mind. She also criticized the government’s decision to release detainees formerly held by U.S.-led forces and considered dangerous.

The top commander of U.S and international forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Joseph Dunford, testified at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last week that he would feel comfortable with a residual international force of between 8,000 and 12,000 troops if the deal is signed. He said America would provide two-thirds of those troops and would keep an additional few thousand forces in Afghanistan to conduct counter-terrorism operations.

But Obama has yet to make a decision on the size of a post-2014 U.S force in Afghanistan after a 13-year war that has become highly unpopular among the American public.

“I hope our president will announce as soon as possible that — contingent on signing the BSA and contingent on a responsible way of dealing with the detainees that protects both Afghans and Americans and our allies — that we will leave a follow-on force consistent with Gen. Dunford’s recommendations,” she said at a news conference at the U.S Embassy in Kabul. “That is a number that we cannot go below.”

Karzai surprised the international community and many Afghans in December when he ignored the recommendation of an assembly of tribal leaders and other dignitaries to sign it, saying he would leave the final decision to his successor after April 5 elections. Karzai is constitutionally barred from seeking a third term. The three front-runners in a field of nine presidential candidates all have said they would sign the agreement if elected.

“I call on President Karzai to sign the security agreement, but even if he does not we know that every major candidate in your election has committed to signing the bilateral security agreement,” she said.

Ayotte was making her third trip

Av loren adams - 23 mars 2014 17:49

 


We all went battling the wars of others
in a World that proclaims
Globalisation
as a solution
for their emptiness
It´s like striking a match in the darkness
to see where you are
only to find yourself in the wrong tunnel
And it´s nothing for you there
´cause all my words go through rooms of strong light
and I remember every word:
I´m a Well Trained Man in the Military, My Sweetheart
Nothing can stop me now
But you never wished for a Gardener
in an earthly Paradise
You only want to be a Flower
in your faraway place

Because you are my consuming fire

deep down inside my bod

penetrate me and bring me higher

Delight me with your Love and honest

Is that goodnight Messages?

 
Av loren adams - 22 mars 2014 11:23

 

Murdered Afghan journalist Sarda Ahmad's last story - Kabul's rescued lion

Kabul zoo on Tuesday unveiled its new star attraction – Marjan the lion, who lived on a rooftop in the city until being rescued by animal welfare officials last year when close to death.

A businessman in the Afghan capital had bought the male lion cub as a status symbol for $20,000, and kept his pet on a roof terrace.

But the fast-growing cat was seriously ill when Kabul municipal officials tracked him down last October.

"We found him in a very dire condition. He was almost dead. He couldn't move. He couldn't even raise his head," vet Abdul Qadir Bahawi told AFP.

"We were not sure that he would survive. But our efforts paid off, and he is much better. Now he loves to play with us. I think he loves us a lot."

Marjan is named after a famous half-blind lion who lived at Kabul zoo and became a symbol of Afghanistan's national survival after living through coups, invasions, civil war and the hardline Tasliban era, before dying in 2002.

The first Marjan, born in 1976, was blinded by a grenade thrown by a soldier whose brother had been killed after entering his cage.

The new Marjan made headlines around the world when AFP found him last year, living on the roof of a compound in the upmarket Taimani district of the capital.

His owner denied it was cruel and said he was looking after the lion well and feeding him fresh meat daily. But the lion's health declined fast in his unsuitable living quarters.

Government inspectors took him from the owner and started an intense five-month rehabilitation programme at the zoo to bring him back to health, including regular massage and physiotherapy sessions.

"Marjan eats about eight kilos of meat every day at 4pm," said Qurban Ali, the lion keeper at the spartan zoo.

"He has been doing very well. He eats a whole cow leg, including the bone."

Marjan, who is aged about one, will soon be on show to the public for the first time after moving to a larger enclosure that he will share with a female lion donated by China.

Bahawi plans to see if there is any chance of the two lions mating, but he warned that it looked unlikely.

"Marjan is ready, but the lioness is more than 15 years old and has had two serious operations. I think she is too old," he said.

Av loren adams - 21 mars 2014 08:44

  - Afghanistan..

Population estimated a 32.7 million

- Home to a number of ethnic groups

- Very mountainous and dry

- Only 6% of Afghanistan is cropable

- Temperatures range from 32-degrees in winter to 115-120-degrees in summer

- Precipitation: 10 to 12 inches per year in the form of snow

- Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries on earth, with more than 53% of the population living under the poverty line

- Opium is the country's most valuable export

-Afghanistan imports much of its food and energy

-Agriculture is 90% of the labor gorce, with an unemployment rate of 40%

 

Education was the key to our Team's work with the Afghan farmers. For them to rebuild, a lot of local farmers, and a lot of local businesses were uneducated when it came to agriculture. "They were still trying to do farming practices that their grandparents did. They were not moving forward.

Education made a difference.

 


Av loren adams - 20 mars 2014 10:50

 
My Beloved..you are so perfect in my eye.
I love you as you love me so much..
 

I keep my promises to make you happy forever..

 
The heart of dreams inside us, begins to mold,
Brought on by flights of fancy within our waiting souls.

It doesn’t cost us to dare to dream, it makes life so much better;
It is built slowly between us, word by word, letter by letter.

Strike a word, add a word, and let our budding dreams take flight.
Let us stack the build blocks to form our coming life.

Would it be that we can be, all we’ve talked between two?
To take the very first step, a home for me and you.
 

Av loren adams - 16 mars 2014 10:02

   
 
Afghanistan, a country in the middle of the world where history has been rescued against all odds, thanks to heroic archeologists. 
Afghanistan's ancient culture, it's immense fragility, at the heart of the Silk Road, Afghanistan linked the great trading routes of ancient Iran, Central Asia, India and China, and the more distant cultures of Greece and Rome.

Unbelievable treasures, secret key holders, princess tombs and cultural treasures of Afghanistan were early lost during the years of civil war and later Taliban rule, precious objects that reveal this diverse past were bravely hidden in 1989 by officials from the National Museum of Afghanistan to save them from destruction.

The surviving treasures date from 2000 BC to the 1st century AD and include opulent gold ornaments found at a tribal burial site and limestone sculptures of a Greek city.

Av loren adams - 14 mars 2014 10:28

have you always been with me

it seems as if in a dream

to look upon you and wonder

how happy i could seem


have you been inside

deep down inside my heart

where i could hide yet

you got the better part


have you always been with me

it seems as if it is true

from the earth i am bound

my heart lives within you

 

 

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