(Note: The five boys I met in Kabul, Afghanistan, from the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers were young " the oldest only 20 " and as charming and well-mannered as teenage boys can humanly be. Their mentor, Hakim, displayed patience and tireless compassion.
I found it easy to settle into a comfortable relationship with them for 10 days, but during the event described below, it became clear that these young men were a courageous lot, going against many cultural norms in Afghanistan and doing so publicly. People in places like today's Afghanistan have been "disappeared" for less.
As I began to realize how dangerous the Peace Volunteers' work could be, the global call-in project dubbed "Dear Afghanistan," became much more than a chance for callers to meet a handful of charming, brave boys. It was the beginning of an international support committee that at some moment may need to quickly mobilize to demand governments intervene to protect these young men's lives. Indeed, after a few years of quiet work in their province and the relatively high-profile Dear Afghanistan calling project, Afghan security forces visited Hakim's village for a third time, leaving the distinct impression he is no longer welcome. Just before he and the AYPV were to make the 11-hour drive through the mountains to Bamyan, he booked a flight to another country.)
------------
KABUL " At four in the morning on New Year's Day, 2011, a group of young Afghan peace makers and their much-older U.S. colleagues huddled around a laptop computer in this city, to begin a 24-hour conversation with people from all over the world. They called their project "Dear Afghanistan" and as phone-a-thons go, it, and a similar one they did December 19, 2010, may well be the first of a kind.
The effort consisted of an entire day of Skyped-in phone calls, emails, Facebook and Twitter posts, with the goals of providing an opportunity for world citizens to learn about Afghanistan first-hand from experts " people trying to live their lives in a war zone; provide moral support for the members of Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers (AYPV); and begin linking conversations among a global, below-the-radar network of veteran peace activists, determined that the war in this country can and must be ended absent military force.
Doug Mackey, technical producer for the project that was promoted entirely via independent media and the international peace movement, explained, "The teleconference team was centered in Olympia, with two crew members in Oakland, CA , one in Saratoga Fl, and a few around the world keeping an eye on production issues like teleconference connection, livestreaming and corrections."
People wanting to participate sent an email to producers and were placed on a call-in schedule that was ultimately impossible to keep because of the highly animated conversations.
A sampling of callers and conversations included:
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
