Positive News is pleased to continue it’s alliance with Peace X Peace – a global network where women connect through the internet to promote sustainable peace. In this issue we present Suraya Pakzad, a recent recipient of the Peace X Peace Voice of Peace Award.
AFGANISTAN - In 1996 when the Taliban took over in Afghanistan, we waited for the international community to rescue us. Surely they would not let this tyranny stand. I waited, but soon I decided that no help was coming. Believing that half the population could not be ignored, I set to work and founded my organization, the Voice of Women.
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Suraya Pakzad |
We started by educating girls. Soon I realized that the mothers needed help too. Today we have a wide range of programs. Our work with women in jail and children in conflict with the law aims to establish the rights of the abused. If we do not educate women today, and work to advance their rights, we cannot expect a peaceful future.
In addition to our other programs, Voice of Women runs a shelter for girls and women who have no place to go: girls who have run away from forced marriages, women who have been trafficked or escaped from traffickers, widows, wives who have been abused. We provide them with literacy and income-generating activities. We also have a shelter for addicted women and their children. Across Afghanistan, 100,000 women are addicted to opium or other drugs. My hope is to have one women’s shelter and one addiction clinic in each of our 34 provinces.
When I was in Washington, DC with Peace X Peace in 2006, I visited some Congressional offices. When the Members of Congress asked me about the drug problem I told them they could do several things to give farmers alternatives to growing poppies. We have abundant crops of apples and grapes and other fruits in some regions of Afghanistan, but the US government was importing fruit from Chile and New Zealand for its personnel instead of buying them from Afghan farmers, because they did not trust the farmers. I told them they had to start trusting us.
The international community was also giving out wheat for free and putting the local wheat growers out of business. When small farmers have no alternative, they rent their land to bigger landholders who grow opium poppies.
Fortunately, poppy production was down last year. The international community is listening to us, and in some places, alternatives are taking hold. Saffron is one excellent example. It grows in poor soil, just as the poppies do. In five years, I hope to see zero poppy cultivation – maybe just a small amount for medicine. I hope to see Afghanistan become a helping hand in the world community, not just a receiving hand.
Suraya comments on the recent Presidential decision to increase US military presence in Afghanistan: "Increasing troops and military is not the solution. But we can’t leave Afghanistan in this condition. Because of the strategy we had implemented, now Taliban became bigger. I like the idea of a dialogue, talking with the people who are fighting. Talk with them - we don’t have [as] much strong Taliban in Afghanistan as we have anti-government elements. If we could provide some kind of program to have a kind of forgiveness process that brings them and the government position, but not the same peace negotiation, which is going on today behind the curtains".
I Told the US Government to Start Trusting Us
by Sura Pakzad
Check out "Peace Is Fun" - an intervew with Positive News US Editior, Ilonka Wloch. Just click on the image below.
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