Give us a piece of peace, hope!

topic:	Human Rights
located:	Afghanistan
editor:	Shadi Khan Saif

As the world warmly welcomes innovation of the vaccine against the devastating coronavirus, there is nothing to cheer for the hopeless Afghans battling a pandemic of the worst kind: a complex armed conflict that has been stretching over years.

The development and administration of the Covid-19 vaccine at the end of 2020 sets the stage for an end to a tough period people all over the world have grappled with for almost a year.

During this period, we saw truly genuine and heroic displays of humbleness, selfless dedication from individuals and collective societies towards each other in desperate times of need. It was such a collective effort that shored up all of us for a fresh start to life with the new year.

The complex armed conflict in Afghanistan, however, which has been tagged by global and regional powers multiple times to suit their geostrategic priorities throughout the past 40 years, continues to claim innocent lives with no cure in sight.

December 27, 1979, was the day when the former Soviet Union’s ‘Red Army’ set its foot on the Afghan soil – with which began this episode of miseries for the people in this part of the world. That conflict between the then two global superpowers was labelled as 'Brezhnev Doctrine’ and ‘Jihad’.

A decade after that, when the Soviets withdrew and Afghan groups supported by regional powers began deadly proxy conflict for turf, it became labelled as a ‘civil war’. It was followed by the era of Talibanization, and now, nearly two decades after the US invasion, top American peace broker Zalmay Khalilzad has coined a new term, ‘intra-Afghan war’, for the ongoing bloodshed here in the presence of over 20 NATO countries.

Over a million people have since been killed, displaced and disabled in this one country alone. Doesn’t this ‘forgotten pandemic’ that Afghanistan faces require equally serious and determined effort for eventual peace, healing and hope?

The last couple of months alone saw 23 Afghan civil society activists, six journalists and at least 400 civilians falling prey to the evils of this senseless war; a global disgrace.

Image by Amber Clay

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