Are we culturally confused?

Article written on 16/04/2007

Have you ever returned from a long holiday and find out that you have so much to catch-up? You were used to a routine and now everything has changed, meaning you have to start all over again and it is going to be even more difficult this time because of the bad hobbits you picked up all those years and the relaxed environment that you got used to during you holiday.

Well with Afghans it is exactly that, except that they didn't go on a holiday to a nice sunny beach but were the victims of war for over three decades. It was a series of war storms that destroyed everything, left millions dead
and disrupted the lives of everyone else.

Afghanistan was a playground for the powerful to play their dirty war game. The game played by the home and away teams. Oh wait a minute there was no home team, it was always the away teams that used Afghanistan as a play ground for the war and the Afghans as footballs to kick them around in order to decide which team wins.

The Russian war destroyed almost everything in the rural areas of the country, then the civil war between the Mujahideen played its part in the honorary work of destruction by destroying the cities, Taliban and Al-Qaeda came and chipped in the destruction and called themselves Muslims.

I always wonder which Islamic book they read. I don't think I will ever get an answer but an educated guess is that they may have been following the book of greed for power and money. I don't know who the writer of that book is but I am guessing the name starts with the letter A and is followed by S and S and that can't be an Islamic book.

So the question still is: What do they mean when they say they are fighting for Islam? Maybe to them the word "Islam" stands for something else and we got the wrong impression of calling the followers of the religion Islam. To my understanding, Islam prevents us from violence and actually stresses a lot on peace and on the understanding of co-existence. I guess it will always be a mystery.

The little that was left was flattened for us by the great Americans.

I hear these things of human rights violation for the prisoners in jail. Forget about the prisoners, at least they are safe in there. If you are free and you are not in America or Europe, you will die of freedom not detention! The prisoners are lucky. Not only are they safe but people actually care about their human rights or so they say.

Why is it that Saddam Hussein got hanged for doing the in-human thing of killing thousands of Kurds while Bush Hussein is still walking around very much alive after killing at least a 100 times more? Who is to answer for that? No one, because if you do, you will be called an Al-Qaeda ally, and you will be punished according to the rules of the War on Terror.

NO, it is actually war on the tearful orphans, widows and the reason again. GREED.
That word seems to haunt me wherever I go.

Anyway back to the sunny beach holiday for Afghans. When the Americans "freed" Afghans from their own started war and their creation "Taliban and Al-Qaeda" the Afghans looked back at the world and saw what has changed. EVERYTHING! The way they used to live is not possible anymore and the way the rest of the world lives… well they don't know how to. The advancement in technology is not so much of a problem; it is the difference in cultural values.

The Afghan culture was fine before and was adapting to the changing world as needed with time, before the war started. There was no time to think about those advancements in the fire of war so people carried on what they did and slowly forgot the real thing. They got used to the culture that is needed in the war. Those who left and went to other countries integrated their hosting county's culture into their own.

The war stopped and, all those Afghans that used to live as if a family together suddenly do not know each other anymore because of their different life styles and cultural values. Everyone wants to believe it is the culture, they adopted is the right one and everyone else is on the wrong.

It is the fight for everyone to try to be normal but there is nothing normal about it. Instead of competing in a normal way, one brother would try to put the other down, just so he could feel higher up at where he is standing
now.

Every family tries to be "the respected family", who has kept its cultural values and are still exactly the same as they were in Afghanistan, decades ago. That is not just it! There is also the competition between families
and individuals for "the best".

To be the best you have to keep up with the world and to do that you may not be able to win the other competition to be the respected family because you wont be able to keep your ancestors' culture because that culture was build much simpler things and not around the fast growing technology..

So to keep up with the current world, you may have to let your wife go to work or your daughter to go to school. Now that wasn't very well defined in the original culture. Some people have adopted it to be ok while others still think it is not and that women should stay at home. It is this difference that has widened the gap between the previously close friends.

This struggle between keeping our originality and keeping up with the world has disturbed the minds of almost every Afghan. Good for the psychology business but very damaging to the development of a new Afghanistan.

That is where the real problem lies, re-building the roads, buildings, technology, army, etc is all minor problems compared to this issue of this cultural depression. It is a problem everyone has to fix within themselves. No one else can do anything about it.

How do we do this? We just need to open your minds up and accept the changes. Let everyone choose for themselves. If someone chooses to live in a certain way then we should let them and our friendship should not be affected by that change.

I am not saying we should give up our stubbornness because there are always two sides to the coin. Afghans are proving to be one the toughest nation and you know why? Because despite all of the damage to our mental health and our mental wellbeing and the cultural confusions we now suffer, we have not lost hope.

The external involvement is still not letting go of Afghanistan and still working very hard to keep us in this mud of ignorance. Afghans are still working towards bringing social and financial stability to the country, which put together means "peace".

Although we are lacking the latest education and do not have the base to build on, but we are still making the best effort possible to get back on our feet and to compete with the rest of the world - a world that has become more advanced in innovative technology than we do, while we were busy getting ourselves out of the so-called war.

It is this stubbornness of, not giving-up attitude that keeps us going; otherwise, three decades of war on any country would be more than enough to completely paralyse the minds of its inhabitants.

What is holding us back is that we apply the same stubbornness when it comes to cultural advancement. If we could be a little bit more flexible in this matter, we will be able to overcome our problems far quicker. Every individual's efforts count. What we need to do is to start with ourselves and work our way up.

It is also important for those who are working alongside Afghans to help with re-construction and bringing back the stability to understand these issues… keeping in mind not to forget these issues in the rush of bringing a quick stability to the country.