Fariba Nawa – AUTHOR AND JOURNALIST

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  • Mr. President, please think before you speak

    President Hamid Karzai has spoken up on Pakistan TV this week and I wish he hadn’t. It seems every time our torn Afghan president speaks, he contradicts a previous speech.

    “If fighting starts between Pakistan and the U.S., we are beside Pakistan,” Karzai responded to the question “what if … “ It was just a few weeks ago that he was threatening Pakistan’s government for masterminding the Rabbani assassination. He either has very bad media advisers or doesn’t think when he answers.

    Mr. President, you really should think about being friendlier to the guys in Washington who are keeping you in power. Islamabad would like you in a grave no matter how much you suck up.  Yes, you think Pakistan will be your master once the US leaves, but then you’ll have to answer to the millions of Afghans who feel Pakistan has made their life hell inside their own country. Yes, I realize you were put on the spot, so why not answer like this: “I doubt something like that would happen since the US has given Pakistan billions of dollars in aid money. And they would not dare attack you because you have nukes.” (Okay, maybe that could be refined into more diplomatic language, but you get my twist.) You give the Pakistani viewers confidence, put their mind at ease that war is not going to break out and you don’t antagonize Uncle Sam.

    No, I don’t want to be your media adviser, but you should really invest in them. They’ll make you sound a little more together, even though they didn’t do much for Bush Jr. But it’s worth a try.

    Cheers,

    An Afghan who once believed in you (my naivete)

  • Bilingual and struggling

    A bilingual parent tries to keep a native tongue alive at home, a problem faced by many immigrants.

    By Fariba Nawa
    October 18, 2011
    The Christian Science Monitor

    Newark, Calif.
    My daughter Bonoo Zahra, age 3, began preschool in August, and my worst fear about her education in the United States is coming true – English is invading her speech.

    Before she began school, she exclusively spoke Farsi, our native Afghan language, but now she shuts the door to her room and prattles in English with her imaginary friends. She prefers to watch cartoons in English and wants me to read her books in English.

    My husband, Naeem, and I decided our language at home would be Farsi so that our two daughters could learn to speak it. They would learn English in school and outside the home. After watching dozens of relatives’ and friends’ children in the US forget their native language, we are determined to teach Bonoo and Andisha, 5 months, the importance of bilingualism. But it’s a battle many second-generation immigrant parents have lost to the pervasiveness of English.

    Besides preserving cultural heritage, a second language can boost careers, sharpen analytical skills, and encourage communication with a world outside one’s own.

    The loss of language is a deep-seated fear among many immigrants. The US has been dubbed the graveyard of languages by some academics for pushing English and excluding other tongues. Currently about 55 million Americans speak a language besides English at home, but by the third generation, the home language tends to atrophy, according to various studies. American society supports a rhetoric of multiculturalism but not multilingualism, experts say.

    While many of our parents wanted us to assimilate faster and speak English better, our generation – the 30-somethings – is focused on preservation. In the past few decades, the emergence of identity politics has encouraged ethnic Americans to hold on to more than English.

    More ‘heritage language’ learners
    Olga Kagan, director of the Center for World Languages and National Heritage Language Resource Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, says more and more students of ethnic backgrounds want to learn their native language when they enter university. These students are identified as heritage language learners, and UCLA opened the resource center she runs in 2006 to meet that need.

    “Now we are more aware of it. In the past, people didn’t pay much attention to [learning their native tongue],” Ms. Kagan says.

    Unlike Europe, where the younger generation in immigrant communities seems to be more successful at retaining its native tongue, children raised in America tend to only speak fluently in English. The Hispanic community, which represents the majority of bilingual Americans, may speak only English by the third generation. But the influx of new immigrants helps keep Spanish alive in the community.

    The authors of the 2006 article “Linguistic Life Expectancies: Immigrant Language Retention in Southern California,” in the Popu­lation and Development Review journal, contend that Hispanics in the Los Angeles area shift to English between the first and second generations and lose Spanish by the third.

    Yet if children in other countries are capable of speaking at least two languages fluently, why can’t American children do the same?

    The US movement for monolingualism began after World War I when xenophobia developed against Germans in the US and caused many German-language schools to close, according to Lisa García Bedolla, head of the Center for Latino Policy Research at the University of California, Berkeley. Ever since, the presumption is that a patriot should know only English.

    “I think the issue is that we may have a rhetoric of multiculturalism in the US since the civil rights movement, but that does not seem to have been accompanied by an acceptance of multilingualism,” Ms. García Bedolla says. “It’s made very clear to children that [English is] the politically dominant language for belonging and inclusion. There’s a hierarchy of language, a power issue.”

    This dominance has been institutionalized in the education system, she says. García Bedolla is the coauthor of the recent report “Classifying California’s English Learners,” which shows that bilingual kindergartners or bilingual children who go to public school for the first time are categorized as “English deficient.” Many students who are proficient in English are wrongly placed in language-development classes. California has 1.6 million English learners, a quarter of the students in its public schools.

    The presumption is, “If you speak Spanish [for example], you cannot speak English,” García Bedolla says.

    Vanessa Velazquez, my daughter Bonoo’s preschool teacher, agrees with García Bedolla’s assessment of the language hierarchy. Her preschool classes are 75 percent bilingual, she says. The majority speak Spanish but pick up English within a month. School policy says she can talk to Spanish-speaking children in Spanish but must encourage them to speak English in the classroom. She talks to her own children in Spanish inside and outside the home but says she has faced discrimination. A Caucasian customer at a mall told her she should only speak English in the US. “I said, ‘It’s a free country. I can speak what I want,’ ” she recalls.

    Multilingualism common in Europe
    In Europe, discrimination and the impulse to belong are equally present, so why does it seem as if ethnic communities speak more than one tongue? Magnus Marsden, a professor of social anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London has been involved with the Afghan British community and says knowing more than one language is typical in London.

    “It is a norm rather than exception to speak multiple languages…. But one important thing is that Afghans in the United Kingdom often claim to be able to learn other languages from their own region that they did not know before they came here. There are also organizations that are involved in strengthening other forms of language capacity.”

    Being multilingual is part of Euro­pean culture, but unlike in the US, it’s more difficult to assimilate into the mainstream culture, so immigrants tend to keep to themselves.

    Mariam Noorzai is second-generation Afghan British – she was 5 when her family fled Kabul – and she never spoke English at home. Her three children were born in London and are fluent in both English and Farsi. Ms. Noorzai says in a phone interview that her large family has been consistent over the generations with the “Farsi only” rule at home. But another reason for language retention in Britain, she says, is ethnic isolation. “We only interact with our own family. My kids socialize with others only in school.”

    Mr. Marsden disagrees and says immigrant communities do mingle with mainstream Britain but are still able to retain their native language.

    Nushin Arbabzadah, a research scholar at UCLA, studied linguistics in Germany. In Germany, she says, language learning has many dimensions. “For example, third-generation immigrants born in Germany to parents who were themselves born in Germany can grow up not speaking German correctly while being semifluent in their own native tongue. By contrast … committed and aspirational new arrivals can become fluent in German in a year, sometimes refusing to speak their own language in public out of a sense of shame.”

    Parents like me still think there’s a way to retain language in the US despite the odds.

    Anthony Henriquez, 8, and his brother Jason, 5, sit at the dinner table in their Fremont, Calif., home doing homework. The conversation is a mixture of Spanish and English. Doli Henriquez, the boys’ mother, says she’s proud that her kids speak Spanish well and do so without pressure. Anthony plops on the couch next to his mother and says he thinks in English but dreams in Spanish. “I feel comfortable in both languages and no one ever makes fun when I speak it at school. But it’s the best when we go back to El Salvador,” he says of the trips the family makes.

    For the immigrants whose countries are not at war and who can afford it, frequent trips to their native land can be the answer. But it doesn’t seem wise to return with my daughters to a war zone like Afghanistan.

    I call a friend in Chicago, Shahir Ahang, another Afghan-American and the only one of my generation I know in the US whose children, Emad, 9, and Zaki, 6, retain Farsi.

    “From the day they were born, I have always told them when you’re at home, you have to speak Farsi,” Mr. Ahang says. “When they say something in English, we don’t answer them back. They hear five to 10 times a day, ‘Say it in Farsi.’ When they don’t know a word, they ask.”

    Ahang says their friends call the couple “the language police,” but he and his wife are making their children’s lives difficult now so that they can communicate better in the future. He says language retention was a matter of preserving cultural identity at first, but now it’s the usefulness of knowing more than one language that drives the couple.

    Language-immersion schools grow
    In the San Francisco Bay Area, the rise of the Asian population has been accompanied by an increase in language-immersion schools. Zhenxi Dai and Yunfang Qian began their Chinese school from their home in 1998 with 10 to 20 students. They now have up to 100 students of Chinese descent enrolled.

    Hieu Ta and Cindy Huang-Ta’s children, Chloe, 8, and Alex, 6, were learning Mandarin in Ms. Qian’s school before the family moved to Los Gatos, Calif. Ms. Huang-Ta has spoken to her children in Mandarin since they were born. Their first words were in Chinese, but as they get older, English is becoming more prominent. The couple researched more than a dozen Chinese schools before choosing Qian’s, but their move to Los Gatos three months ago, where there are no daily Chinese schools, has distanced the kids further from Mandarin.

    “It’s a total struggle. We got a lot of advice from a lot of different people, and the vast majority said [teaching a second language] does not work,” says Ta, a software engineer.

    Their friends told them the best way for the children to retain Chinese is to live in China, and the couple may do that someday. But for now, Chloe and Alex go to a weekly Chinese school 10 minutes away.

    As for my own family, we’re going to follow Ahang’s advice and continue to be the Farsi police.

    One recent day in the car, Bonoo picked up a book and began to count the images she saw in Farsi, “Yak, do, se [one, two, three].” I grabbed my camera and pressed the video button. Ten years from now, if she refuses to speak Farsi to me, I can replay it and remember the moment when she could rattle off numbers in her mother tongue.

  • Afghanistan the New Mexico?: Assassinations and the Drug Trade

    Fariba Nawa and Matthew DuPée
    Aug 02, 2011
    New America Media

    In the last few months, the Afghan drug trade has entered a new phase of power struggles that could lead to the sort of violence that plagues Mexicans on a daily basis. The trigger has been four key assassinations of government officials who were alleged drug barons. Their deaths have already opened the door to significant consequences for Afghanistan’s narco-economy.

    More than anything, the assassinations have resulted in a power grab among the stakeholders in the multi-billion dollar Afghan drug trade – Afghanistan produces 95 percent of the world’s opium and heroin. There is now a real threat of death squads, more violence and a breakdown of the community and tribal links that have thus far prevented Afghanistan from becoming another Mexico.

    Four Assassinations

    The four men who were killed are the former governor of Uruzgan Province (and close friend of Afghan President Hamid Karzai) Jan Mohammad Khan, who was killed on July 18 in Kabul; the President’s half brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, who was killed on July 12 at the hands of a close ally in Kandahar; the head of police for the northern region, General Mohammad Daud Daud, who was killed on May 28 in Takhar; and the Provincial Police Chief of Kandahar, Khan Muhammad Mujahid, who died in a Taliban-facilitated suicide bombing on April 15.

    All of these men maintained potent patron-client relationships that went back for decades. Their loss has produced a dangerous power vacuum in the hierarchy of drug trafficking.

    Karzai’s brother was the most powerful of the four men. He was accused of drug trafficking at the same time that he was reported to be on the CIA payroll for aiding foreign troops with their fight against the insurgency. The allegations included providing protection for narcotics convoys to pass through Kandahar, killing those who crossed him, and direct trafficking of opium and heroin.

    But Karzai was never arrested — if the United States had removed the influential southern leader, the risk that smaller bandits of drug traffickers would seize power was high. For the United States and NATO, Karzai’s ability to keep Kandahar somewhat secure was more important than his forays in trafficking.

    Jan Mohammad Khan, one of the most powerful tribal leaders of central Afghanistan, was also accused of links to the drug trade. Unlike Karzai, in 2006, Khan was fired from his position as governor following strong protests from NATO and U.S. officials who accused him of corruption, links to the drug trade, and human rights violations.
    Under his tenure, nearly 80 percent of the province’s villages engaged in the drug trade.

    And then there is Daud, a drug-dealer who served as Afghanistan’s anti-drug czar from 2004 until President Karzai transferred him from his post in 2010. Daud, who was once a bodyguard of slain Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, was a key figure in supporting the drug trade, receiving thousands of dollars in exchange for protecting other smugglers who transported narcotics.

    Afghanistan, the New Mexico?

    Afghanistan is the world’s number one producer of opium and heroin but it does not have the ominous cartels and paramilitary militias who terrorize Latin America. Mexico lost 34,000 people in its drug war between December 2006 until the end of 2010, according to official estimates by the Mexican government. Although violence soared since President Felipe Calderon declared war against the cartels in December 2006, the carnage worsened after the United States helped assassinate Beltran Leyva, the godfather of the Sinalao cartel, in late 2009.

    In Afghanistan, the United States has arrested and extradited four other Afghan kingpins in the last five years: Haji Bashir Noorzai, Haji Juma Khan, Haji Bachgo, and Haji Baaz Mohammad. They are in American prisons, either convicted of drug smuggling or awaiting trial. But none of them had the charisma and ability to crush opposition like the men who were recently assassinated.

    Deaths related to drugs in Afghanistan haven’t reached the tens of thousands as they have in Mexico. One reason could be the tribal links that powerbrokers like Karzai’s brother invoked to preserve a level of stability. With all four gone, that stability is threatened and it’s likely that insurgents, more malicious militia commanders and neighboring drug mafias from Pakistan and Uzbekistan will gain ground.

    America’s Role in Afghanistan’s Drug Trade

    Fighting drug dealers is a relatively new priority for the United States. Though the U.S. has appropriated more than $4.5 billion for counternarcotics programs in Afghanistan since 2002, measurable success in the war on drugs is elusive as security has been a top priority since the beginning of the war.

    In 2009, the Obama administration began a new plan of attacking the narcotics-corruption-insurgency nexus. The policy shift came after the United States could no longer ignore exuberant profits that Taliban and al Qaeda-linked militants reaped from the Afghan opium trade – moderate estimates put this in the tens of millions of U.S. dollars.

    So the United States began selectively busting drug dealers both directly, by targeting high profile traffickers and traders, and indirectly with the help of foreign troops who fight drug dealing insurgents and also provide alternatives to poppy farming.

    The Future of the Narco-Economy

    Now that these four men are gone, the Taliban and rival criminal syndicates have a chance to consolidate the drug rings that operate in their turfs. But there’s also the problem of the government itself.

    Hampered by corruption, Karzai’s government is a significant obstacle to long-term counter-narcotics policies. His protection of drug dealers in the government — he pardoned five of them in April 2009 because one of the men was related to his campaign manager – has prolonged his tenure, but with the new power vacuum, he is losing ground in the drug war.

    It remains unlikely that the Afghan government’s counter-narcotics efforts will be robust enough to create the conditions needed to wane rural farming communities off of the narco-economy. And inconsistencies in United States and Afghan resolve to seriously address the ongoing narcotics conundrum has also led to regional tensions with both the Russian Federation and Iran, both of whom suffer tremendously from Afghan-origin narcotics.

    As a result, international and domestic efforts to stabilize the country will continue to be plagued, and strains in relations with bordering states could set the stage for what can become another Mexico.

    Fariba Nawa is an Afghan-American freelance journalist and author of the upcoming book Opium Nation: Child Brides, Drug Lords and One Woman’s Journey Home to Afghanistan.

    Matthew DuPée is a counter-narcotics and security specialist at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.

  • The rising demand for overseas television: America’s United Nations of cable TV

    Satellite TV lets immigrants cocoon in their own culture. Does it also alienate?

    By Fariba Nawa
    June 27, 2011
    The Christian Science Monitor

    Fremont, Calif.

    Afghan immigrants Fatima Majeed and Naseer Ahmadi watch an average of eight hours of television a day in their suburban three-bedroom apartment while their four sons and daughter go to school, work, and carry on with their busy American schedules.

    The husband and wife sit next to each other on their couch glued to the tube, barely aware that their children are coming and going. Outside their home is America, but inside their TV set is Afghanistan, the country they long to live in but can’t.

    The programs on their television are broadcast via satellite and received through a box connected to the Internet. The channels they watch are based in Kabul but also in other areas where the Afghan diaspora have settled, like California. The shows range from Hindi soap operas dubbed in Farsi, one of the Afghan languages, to news programs and cooking contests. They provide a virtual reality for Afghan immigrants who want to escape the isolation of American life.

    “I got sick and depressed from boredom and seclusion before we got these programs,” says Ms. Majeed, taking a break from watching the Afghan movie “Promise to Love.” The movie, about a modern-day Afghan Romeo and Juliet, was filmed in the United States.

    Afghans are not the only ones in the US turning to foreign language TV to feel at home.

    At the 152-unit complex where the couple lives, most of the families are immigrants, the majority from Asia and Latin America. Most of the adults do not watch American television. They own more than one television, one hooked up to their native nations’ broadcasts and at least one set to regular cable or local networks with English language programs for the kids to watch.

    Fremont, a 45-minute drive southeast of San Francisco, is a microcosm of a changing suburban California, one that is increasingly Asian and Hispanic – communities that want to hold on tight to their native cultures. Of Fremont’s 214,000 residents, 47 percent are Asian and 13 percent are Hispanic. The hundreds of new channels offered daily through the Internet and satellite allow them to bypass mainstream American culture and stay connected to their native identities.

    The hours of television they watch every day is time in which they can go home thousands of miles away – while sitting on the couch.

    These families have little interest or connection to American programming or news. And relatives and friends in their native countries who have satellite can also watch the programs produced by the diaspora in the same language aired from American cities. Afghans in Kabul and their compatriots in Los Angeles can see each other now as never before. It’s another symptom of globalization.

    The companies that offer international programming are making money. Dish Network, the largest provider of foreign-language channels in the US, has nearly doubled its business in two years from 8 million to 14 million customers. Dish offers 200 channels in 29 languages, not including Spanish, which is the most popular foreign language. As the largest ethnic population in the US, Hispanics have a variety of choices among the 255 Spanish channels available on satellite.

     

    Demand rises for 24-hour cricket

    Francie Bauer, a spokeswoman for Dish, says English remains the most popular language for its customers, but the company makes a special effort to meet the demands of its foreign-language market.

    Comcast, a communication giant that offers digital cable, is also providing programming to address the ethnic demand. It offers up to 40 Spanish channels. The other popular channels in the San Francisco Bay Area are South Asian, Filipino, and Chinese. Bryan Byrd, a spokesman for Comcast, says trends in the business show that Portuguese-language channels are becoming more in demand, and one of the hottest networks in the Bay Area is now NEO Cricket, the world’s first 24-hour cricket channel aired from India.

    Whether through satellite, cable, or the Internet, immigrants will pay for their native-language TV. But does this connection to their homeland alienate them from American life? One of the paths to assimilation and learning English for immigrants in the US has been American television. Shows like “Sex and the City” and “American Idol” explain mainstream American culture (for good or ill) to first-generation immigrants in a way that daily reality doesn’t.

    GL Wiz, the Canadian company that sells the receiver box for Iranian and Afghan channels, has grown rapidly in the past four years and is gaining more business from people who live in apartment complexes. Taraneh Dousti, a company supervisor, says that GL Wiz has legal agreements with Iran and Afghanistan providers to broadcast their programs. Customers get 40 channels from the two countries, along with 80 to 90 channels produced by diaspora communities living in the US.

    “Many, many times, the customers come to us and say they are addicted to [a particular foreign-language] TV series and the children will watch it with their parents. The whole family can understand it. They can all sit together and watch a show. That’s the biggest benefit…. It brings the family together,” Ms. Dousti says.

    Immigrants say going to work and interacting outside their homes is how they integrate and learn about the US – not through television. Besides, many of the foreign programs on TV copy American shows like “American Idol.” However, television available in their native tongue has slowed their English-speaking skills at the same time it has helped their children preserve the home language. Even if the kids watch English-language TV, they are still exposed to their native language when they join their parents on the couch.

     

    Parent-child TV-language divide

    Mexican immigrant César Her­nan­dez and his family of five rent a unit in the same complex as Majeed and Mr. Ahmadi. He has lived in the US for 15 years, but his English skills are still limited. His job is to pitch tents for festivals, and that’s where he mingles with English-speaking Americans.

    When he comes home, the father of three puts on his shorts and T-shirt, grabs the remote, and all he hears is Spanish. The Hernandez family has four television sets, one in each bedroom and one in the living room. The kids, ages 7, 9, and 13, watch American sports and programs in English on their own sets. Mr. Hernandez and his wife, Lily Betancourt, flip among the eight Spanish-language channels available to them through Comcast’s $35-a-month program package.

    Slumped comfortably on his blue velvet couch, Hernandez talks about the variety of channels. “This one’s from Miami. This one from Cuba. I like this one from Mexico,” he says, channel surfing. One channel shows a fit young man with big muscles advertising an American brand of deodorant. Hernandez says his favorite show is “El Chavo del Ocho,” a classic Mexican comedy from the 1970s about an 8-year-old orphan, played by an adult. While many Asian families avoid American TV shows because they can be vulgar and sexual, Spanish-language TV is racier, Hernandez says. “The soap operas have a lot of sex scenes.”

    Hernandez and Ms. Betancourt tune in to these programs because they miss life in Mexico. “It reminds me of home. I remember the horses on our ranch, the farms, the big spaces of land,” Hernandez says in a sentimental tone.

     

    Living in an ‘ethnoscape’

    Majeed and Ahmadi, who have lived in the US for seven years and are both disabled, cannot return to Afghanistan because it’s a war zone. Hernandez and his wife stay in the US for the economic opportunities here. But both families spend more time than they should in front of the TV for the same reason: to soothe their homesickness.

    Fred Turner, an associate professor of communication at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., who has researched media and the American culture, says these TV programs offer ethnic communities “ethnoscape,” a phenomenon that explains how ethnic groups can psychologically live in a place without physically being there. He says cable TV was the beginning of this in the 1980s, but satellite and the Internet have amplified the process.

    “We’ve entered a time when it is plausible for large ethnic groups to migrate without leaving their homes. I think it’s ultimately a bridge-builder. The process of assimilation is a lot slower,” Mr. Turner says. “Integration will continue to occur generationally.”

    Turner says ethnic TV is a positive force because it offers a variety of information to stimulate public debate. Ethnic news channels, for example, give an alternative perspective to CNN and the American news networks. He argues that American television has been influenced by international programs, especially those produced in Bollywood. Sitcoms like “Outsourced” and the inclusion of South Asian actors, such as Aziz Ansari on “Parks and Recreation,” show the cultural exchange.

    But the negative impact of ethnic TV programs is ethnic isolation. The hours in front of the TV turn ethnic communities so inward that a divide is created between generations. Some families may watch ethnic programming together, but the Majeed and Hernandez families do not. Immigrant adults and their children who are growing up in the US already face cultural challenges, but watching separate TV programs can create an even wider gap.

    Majeed’s son Mostafa, 15, sees his parents’ preoccupation with Afghan TV as a good thing. He was getting too much attention from them before these programs. “They used to walk around, get bored, bother me, try to talk to me while I play games. Now they are entertained.”

    They are so entertained, in fact, that they didn’t notice when he locked the bathroom door and pierced his ear with a needle. The Americanized teenager sports a pair of diamond studs. (He had a friend pierce the other ear outside the house.) His mom is not pleased. “I tell him to take those off and curse at him, but he doesn’t understand what I’m saying in Farsi,” Majeed says, gently scolding her son. (Mostafa’s parents do not speak much English.)

    Mostafa says he has no interest in the Afghan shows his parents watch. He uses the living room TV to play games once his parents are in bed.

     

    Ethnic DVD market drying up

    Several miles from Mostafa’s home is Monument Plaza, a haven of ethnic shopping. The plaza has an Afghan supermarket, a Safeway-size Indian grocery store, Indian restaurants, Mexican and Vietnamese hair salons, and Music Hut, Ram Lal’s fading business. Mr. Lal sells and rents Bollywood DVDs and CDs and his is the only store on the block that doesn’t have a satellite dish propped up on its roof. Raunchy songs from Hindi films play on a flat-screen TV in his small shop, but it’s a DVD. “I hate satellite,” he says. “The dishes and Internet are killing my business.”

    Lal plans to close his three-year-old business in a month. Ironically, he can’t avoid the dish at home. “I had to buy it for my wife. All the Indian ladies watch the soap operas, and they have stopped paying attention to their household duties,” Lal says. “Now they don’t care if their husbands come home hungry. They don’t serve water and they cook less. The women are too busy watching these shows.”

    In Pictures: America’s United Nations of cable TV

  • I can make a difference – if I can stay alive

    Mozhdah Jamalzadah, late twenties, Kabul’s answer to Oprah, on dodging bombs, fending off death threats and inspiring young Afghans

    Interview by Fariba Nawa
    June 19, 2011
    Sunday Times Magazine (UK)

    ***
    I wake to the dewy scent of winter and the aroma of meat stew and cumin rice wafting from my kitchen. I’m not an early riser. My eyes open about 10 am some days and it takes me a while to roll out of bed. I have bad eyesight, so everything’s blurry at first. I feel the soft fur of my three cats, Alex, Rambo and Noballs, who sleep with me. I search for my glasses then stumble out of bed. I take a shower, put my hair in rollers, do my make-up and dress. By then it’s noon. I live in a five-bedroom, two-storey house with my best friend, Toba, an Afghan-Canadian aid worker. If my cook has food ready, I eat the spiced rice and stew, with luscious fruit for dessert. My house has a majestic yard with apple and pomegranate trees and vines. But barbed wire surrounds the house and both ends of the block are manned by armed guards.

    My family escaped from Kabul during the Soviet invasion, when I was five, and settled in Vancouver. They were liberal and open-minded. I could wear what I wanted, and I studied philosophy, politics, opera and broadcast journalism, then I struggled to become a singer. But in 2009 I got an offer to work in Kabul and now I’m co-hosting Afghan Star, which is like American Idol, and making the second series of The Mozhdah Show, a variety talk show like Oprah. We discuss topics such as domestic violence, women’s health and child abuse, and feature singers and artists too.

    I have to choose conservative clothes — long shirts that cover my behind, a headscarf, not-so-fitted pants. For one episode of Mozhdah I didn’t have a headscarf and my collarbone was showing. The government cancelled the show. I have a driver and an armed guard and I bought a low-profile Toyota Corolla, rather than the loud SUVs the expats ride in here. In the car I cover up so only my eyes are showing and keep my head down. I carry a 9mm pistol, just in case.

    Some days are scary in this city. Not long ago a suicide bomber blew up the Finest supermarket, right near my house. I’d just returned from a fundraiser in Los Angeles, opened my fridge and realised there was nothing left. I was feeling terribly lazy and jet-lagged, so I decided to have a coffee before going out to buy groceries. Then Toba called me, asking where I was. “I’m home,” I said. “Thank God!” she said. “They just attacked the supermarket!” I turned on the TV and — oh my God! — I was in shock. The supermarket was completely on fire. There was fire even coming out of the doors. There were a few dead, a few injured. A little boy looked around frantically, crying. And I was just about to go shopping for groceries there! I guess it wasn’t my time to go yet. I was so freaking sad. I believe hell can be found right here on Earth. If you want to see it for yourself, just come to Afghanistan.

    We film two Mozhdah shows in a day. At the studio I’ll meet with the director and producer, review the questions we’re covering, and begin taping. The subjects are controversial — issues like divorce that are usually left to the private domain here. But Afghans are into it. They travel across the country to join the audience. One woman on the show told us her husband stopped hitting their kids after he saw our programme on child abuse. Between shows we all have lunch prepared by the TV station cook. I’ll change my clothes and make-up for the second show and by 5 I have a headache — I’m pooped.

     Some Afghans, here and abroad, don’t approve of my clothes and that I sing and dance in my videos. I receive threats — some religious, others just violent, from men and women — on YouTube and Facebook. One said: “Someone should put a bullet in her head. She’s a disgrace to Afghans. We should rape her.” My enemies even spread a rumour that I was kidnapped and killed, which was on the local Afghan news. That scared me enough to leave for Vancouver for a few weeks, but I returned, determined to continue my show. The Kabul police do nothing to protect women like me.

    Ironically, Afghans here like me more than those abroad do. Young Afghans are sick of the conservatism and want to change, but in the West they’re trying so hard to hold onto their culture that they live in a bubble. When kids here see me they take photos and follow me around. I can see I’m making a difference.

    After work I may go out to a foreign restaurant with my friends or relatives. That’s my only outing. As I’m locked in the house most of the time, I made it North American, so I can feel like I’m in Vancouver when I get homesick. My shelves are lined with English books — The Da Vinci Code, Committed… I use my satellite dish a lot — Friends, Two and a Half Men, American Idol.

    It’s impossible to heat such a big house in the winter when there’s no reliable power or central heating. I wear several layers to keep warm and crawl into bed earlier than I’d like. I doze off around 2am.

  • Osama bin Laden’s death can hurt Afghanistan

    By Fariba Nawa
    May 04, 2011
    The San Francisco Chronicle

    As an Afghan American who grew up in both Herat, Afghanistan, and Fremont, I have a dual perspective on the death of Osama bin Laden. Most of my Afghan colleagues and friends are delighted that bin Laden is dead. But many, including me, think his death could harm Afghanistan more than help it.

    Afghans, as much as Americans, have a right to hate this man, who instigated the U.S.-led war in their country. But while for Americans his death may be a victory, for Afghans it’s a wake-up call. The United States will no longer play their savior: With bin Laden dead, the United States can leave the mess it has created in Afghanistan .

    Bin Laden’s timely killing paves the way for American troops to begin pulling out in July. Meanwhile, Afghan President Hamid Karzai appears to be aligning himself with Pakistan and its Taliban allies. The achievements of the aid community in the last 10 years, from the unprecedented number of girls attending school to falling infant mortality rates and the arrival of basic health-care services in distant villages, will end with the return of the Taliban.

    Killing the top al Qaeda leader does little to weaken the Afghan insurgency because the insurgency, heavily supported by Pakistan, has become the enemy of both the American and Afghan peoples. The martyrdom of bin Laden may actually gain the insurgency more recruits among Islamist foreign fighters.

    Afghan intelligence officials have been telling their U.S. counterparts for the last 10 years that bin Laden was being protected by Pakistan’s secret service, the Inter-Services Intelligence. The Pakistani spy agency has provided the U.S. intelligence for capturing other al Qaeda operatives, such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, when the United States became annoyed with Pakistan’s lack of support for its war on terrorism.

    Perhaps bin Laden was the last bargaining chip.

    The ISI knows full well that bin Laden’s capture will expedite U.S. withdrawal and Afghanistan will fall easily to the Taliban. Then Pakistan can control Afghanistan, just as it did in the 1990s.

    A strong and stable Afghanistan would threaten Pakistan’s fragile hold on its Pashtun population, which wants to reunite with Afghanistan. Pakistan is also threatened by the Afghan government’s close relationship with India. That’s why the Indian Embassy in Kabul has been the target of two deadly explosions in the last few years.

    But few Americans care what is happening in Afghanistan, and they will become more apathetic now that their No. 1 enemy has been killed.

    For my friends and family in Afghanistan, the return of the Taliban would begin another dark age they hoped had ended in 2001. My female cousins have become doctors, teachers, aid workers. But, with the return of the Taliban, they’ll again be imprisoned in their homes.

    The Taliban may bring security but at the cost of taking the country back to the Stone Age. Before 2001, the Taliban lobbied for recognition by the United States. Now, as imminent victors of the war, the Taliban will welcome extremists again, just like they did before 2001, and become a vocal enemy of the United States.

    Fariba Nawa is a freelance journalist based in the Bay Area. She worked in Pakistan and Afghanistan from 2000 to 2007. She is the author of “Opium Nation: Child Brides, Drug Lords and One Woman’s Journey through Afghanistan” forthcoming from HarperCollins in November.

    This article appeared on page A – 12 of the San Francisco Chronicle

  • Why I prefer daughters to sons

    In three weeks, I’m expecting my second daughter and I couldn’t be happier that it’s a girl again – a healthy baby I hope. When I did the ultrasound for my firstborn, I was in Kabul and the doctor who informed me that my child was a girl said it under his breath because most Afghans prefer sons to daughters. He wanted to lighten the blow. Instead, I jumped up and nearly did a dance. Am I prejudiced against boys? Judge for yourselves.

    I’m sure if I had two sons, I would love them the same. But I would have to be up for the challenge. Having daughters is much easier in the Afghan community I am a part of right now in the San Francisco Bay Area.

    When I take my parents’ to the doctor’s office, I see older immigrants just like them and it’s the daughters who have taken time out of work to bring them, the daughters who take care of them in old age, the daughters who take them on outings. When I ask relatives and friends about the younger generation, it’s the daughters going to college, becoming professionals and learning the importance of culture and language. The girls here are self-sufficient, confident and driven while our boys, well, some are. Others lag behind. That could simply be the international trend. From the US to Iran, girls and women are gaining ground rapidly in education and jobs. But I can only comfortably talk about my own community. Some in the community ask why I want daughters in this male dominated world. I say it’s precisely that struggle against male domination that will turn them into more efficient human beings. Boys have it too easy.

    I don’t blame the kids–it’s the way we raise them that’s the problem. It’s often the mothers who spoil the sons, give them excessive freedoms, do all the housework for them and when they grow up, the parents ask: why are our daughters so much kinder and there for us? Because you trained them to be.

    I do believe girls can be kinder but it’s not necessarily our nature. It’s much more about nurture. Since I grew up in this community, I cannot guarantee that I would be any different in raising a son and even if I tried, the environment around them would discriminate.

    One of my friends had brothers who could bring their girlfriends to the house while she had to go home after school, cook for the family and had no right to even speak to men outside the family. Now she has her own sons and she’s teaching them to do housework. But her mother scolds my friend for ordering her sons to do “women’s chores.” My friend has bluntly told her mother she refuses to raise her sons the way her brothers were brought up. Bravo. But it’s a battle for her that has to be explained to the family and I’m glad I don’t have to fight that battle.

    My daughters will learn how to do housework but they’ll also learn how to fix their own cars. And since they are both the same sex, I won’t have issues with gender differences — or so I hope.

    While the majority of Afghanistan similar to the rest of patriarchal, patrilineal developing countries prefer sons for economic reasons, Diaspora Afghans may want sons because of the moral prejudice they harbor against girls. They believe that it’s much more dishonorable for their daughters to become morally corrupt (that means having a boyfriend or going out late at night) than their sons. Luckily, I don’t adhere to these sexist, misogynist beliefs and will try my best to let my daughters know that they can have the equal choices and freedoms that any boy or man can have.

    Now I realize that this preference of mine is based on generalizations and there are many high achieving, empathetic and caring sons, including my own husband. By the same account, we have plenty of girls and women in our community who are apathetic, selfish leeches. Not every Afghan wants a boy of course. Ideally, most middle class Afghan families want one or two of each. If they could special order gender, they would say “two fair skinned, green-eyed, tall girls and two sons please.”

    But I’m the wimp who looks at the people around me and thinks raising a child is hard enough so please God, just give me daughters so it’ll be that much easier. Check in with me when they’re both teenagers and I might be writing a different opinion.

     

     

  • The UN attack in Mazar: who’s responsible?

    The attack that has so far claimed the lives of 12 UN aid workers and guards, Afghan and foreign, in the northern city of Mazar begs the question of who can be held accountable for the killings beside the criminals who committed the act?

    The Florida pastor who swore to burn the Koran finally did on March 21, the day that marked the Afghan and Iranian new year. But this time, the media kept it fairly quiet. Ten days later, another cleric in a mosque incited a different kind of violence. The coveted shrine is a site of worship and celebration in Mazar, a place people from all over the world would come to watch the Nowroz (new year) celebrations before the wars. On the day the pastor supervised the burning of the Muslim holy book in Florida sacred to billions, thousands of Afghans gathered around the Mazar shrine to celebrate and hope for a new beginning, maybe for peace and prosperity in a country steeped in violence. But the glee of the celebrations turned to bloodshed when a mullah informed the Friday worshipers at the mosque about the burning. Reports say 4,000 protestors filled the streets peacefully but an angry mob, a minority, charged toward the UNAMA office and trapped UN workers, killed guards and the foreigners they could find. The details remain murky as Afghan police fight to secure the city. The city that Afghans considered the most secure turned deadly in a matter of minutes.

    Jones has the right as an American under the law to burn holy books, to badmouth any group and to even incite the violence he very knowingly did after last year’s reaction to his threat. The US government was successful in convincing him to give up his crusade last year, but I wonder what occurred to change his mind. He claims no responsibility for the murders but I do think he should be held accountable on some level to answer for the expected violence. A simple shout of “fire!” in a theater is illegal if it’s an attempt to spread fear but why is Jones’ deliberate attempt to incite Muslims only an issue of freedom of speech?

    My argument does not support the killers in Mazar. I think the cleric who ranted about Jones’ burnings in the mosque and inspired the protests may be equally responsible and should be reprimanded by the Afghan government for doing the same thing Jones did: incite bloodshed. Those who peacefully protested have a right to react to an act they consider hateful. If a pastor draws a swastika on a synagogue and Jews fill the streets of New York City in protest, we would support them. Peaceful demonstrations to hate crimes are a just cause, but as soon as violence erupts, we lose our sympathy and understanding toward that cause.

    As a journalist, I covet the right to free speech but I also understand the negative power it can invoke and the need to limit that power.

    Weis Sherdel, an Afghan-American and good friend, articulated his frustrations about the Mazar attack on Facebook: “As an American, I am saddened by idiots who exploit their first amendment and spread hate and ignorance by burning the holy Koran. As an Afghan, I am ashamed by my people who direct their anger towards innocent people. I pray for understanding and patience.”

    I could not have said it better myself.

  • Can we actually prepare for a tsunami?

    The American media has moved on from the news in Japan but across the ocean in California, we’re still listening and watching. As the rain pours with flood warnings, on most minds is “What if this happened here? Are we prepared?” The paranoid Californians are taking pills to alleviate radiation exposure. Most people I know are not paranoid but frightened. I’m not one to scare away from trouble, whether it’s wars or natural disasters but with a 3-year-old daughter and another on the way in six weeks, my fear radar has activated. I dreamt that I was floating away as my daughter Bonoo was trying to grab my hand and cried my name. I actually searched Google for the “safest cities against natural disasters” and found out that they were mostly in the Midwest, the last place I want to live. As my husband and I watched a sitcom on our laptop, he jolted when a door creaked outside. “Was it an earthquake?” he asked. I chuckled but stayed alert for the next hour in case it was.

    When I’m awake, I rationalize the fact that Mother Nature will strike and life goes on. We can prepare for an earthquake but how do we prepare for a tsunami? The winds and waves will just decide our luck for survival.  I do not doubt the debates about nuclear power, global warming and climate change being the root cause of the rising number of natural disasters, but they float around in my head weightless as Japan’s images of death and destruction bring me down. I’m also guilty of thinking that when natural disasters hit developing countries, the loss of life and destruction are no surprise but when Japan was struck, it showed that none of us are invincible. We can take precautions and do more to protect the environment. I immediately paid more attention to recycling, preserving more water and began explaining the importance of such things to my daughter. But I came back to the same conclusion: we can’t prepare for a tsunami. We could move to the Midwest, but I’d rather push aside my fear and enjoy the ocean waves right here in California.

  • Mubarak steps down on a momentous day after 18 days of protest

    I’m watching the jubilation on Al Jazeera Television on the laptop as they celebrate Hosni Mubarak’s resignation from the presidency, the end of three decades of a dictatorship that has left the majority of Egyptians disenfranchised. All I can think as I see the crowds in Tahrir Square lighting firecrackers and cheering in unison is I wish I was there to celebrate this new beginning. The will of the people won. And the day in which it happened, Februray 12, may not be completely a coincidence. On the same day 32 years ago in 1979, the people of Iran marched in the tens of thousands celebrating the overthrow of their monarchy and welcoming what they thought was a democratic government. They were in for a cruel surprise. That Islamic government of Iran now arrests, tortures and silences its people, who again are demanding freedom and justice. While Iran hails Egypt’s success in overthrowing Mubarak, the Iranian establishment has killed thousands who protested the rigged elections in 2009 that reinstalled President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. Will this be Egypt’s fate?

    But I push away my skepticism for Egypt. Afterall, it’s a new generation, a new era of globalization when young people are more aware and in touch, and perhaps this people’s revolution will result in a government for the people.

    In 1979, I was 6 years old living in Kandahar with my family and the communists had overtaken Afghanistan. My father listened to BBC Farsi as my family gathered around the radio to hear the excitement of the Iranian people when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned to Iran and became the new leader of the country. The Iranian Army joined the people as the Shah stepped down. Now I can see the excitement on the Egyptians’ faces on the screen, victory etched in their smiles and gleaming eyes, a shared sense of freedom. Egyptians’ words echo the Iranians of 32 years ago: freedom, justice, democracy. The happiness is contagious. The Al Jazeera correspondent is trying hard to contain her enthusiasm as she reports from the scene in the midst of an elated crowd. “People are crying, fainting … distributing candy,” the reporter says. “Egyptians broke the fear factor.”

    It’s time to stop fearing the future and put faith in a new era, if just for today.

    “Tonight, let’s celebrate and then tomorrow, we can think of what’s next.” Rania, a protestor on the streets of Cairo, tells Al Jazeera.

    I’m with you Rania.