With every remark, every tweet, every post and every argument, I feel as if someone hits a blow to my heart and pain and disappointment engulfs me. It is such painful to see the national unity decompose slowly and secretly. Our enemies have almost achieved their target. They are, once again, going to divide the country on the basis of ethnicity and language and push the fellow citizens into a civil war against each other. It is unfortunate that we are becoming the tools in their hands to make their dreams come true.
There have been such attempts in past as well but this time, we got into the trap. It all started when a number of people came out into the streets, demanding that words ‘Afghan’ and ‘Islam’ should be included in the upcoming computerized National Identity Cards. In politics, two or more groups may have different viewpoints but this does not permit them to cross the limits and talk against the unity and solidarity of the country. On the occasion of intensive suicide and bomb attacks in Kabul in August, large number of videos and posts were shared that were against different ethnic groups. Similarly, the incident of Kunduz gave our enemies another opportunity to make the people talk against each other. On all these occasions, so many baseless and irresponsible remarks were passed on almost all the social networking sites especially Facebook. Members of different groups were tactfully drawn to talk against each other and they filled the pages with blames and accusations. Members of different ethnic groups blamed each other to be ignorant, to be terrorists or direct or indirect supporters of terrorists, to be backward and uncivilized and even some of them went so far to say that, the country should be divided between different groups on the basis of race or language. Of course, tit-for-tat answer was given from both the sides. Then different group members targeted the language, religious beliefs, traditions or elders of each other. A war of words broke out in which all the limits of civility, dialogue and sound reasoning were crossed and respect for fellow citizens and humanity was left on a side.
As I mentioned before, it was painful to many who were understanding the actual hands involved in this and were crying silently and praying to Allah to save the country of another bloodshed on the name of race and language.
As expected, common people on both the sides were not wise enough to understand the conspiracy of our enemies and they went on and on in worsening the situation. Another painful reality was the silence of those who make the public opinion; they were either afraid of telling the truth and disclosing the plots of our strong enemies or were a part of this dirty game. Whatever may be the reason, it is still not so late and we can immediately start the remedial action.
To start with, we need to know the ground realities. For many decades, people of different groups have been living together peacefully and they like and enjoy the diversity in language and culture. In almost all the provinces and cities of the country, Pashtoons, Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks, Turkmens and others have lived together happily. They share the sorrows and pleasures of each other, they have even strengthened the bounds by developing blood relations with each other, they work together and there has never been any problem in this unity. It is because of a fact that the strong bond of Islam unites us and our similarities exceed the limited number of differences.
In the same way, almost all the ethnic groups have equal share in education and working in public and private sector.
As far as terrorism is concerned, I would like to represent few points that once I mentioned in one of my previous articles as well. The biggest factor feeding the terrorism and running big organizations like Taliban is of heavy funding and strategic support. In case of Taliban, this is provided by a number of international powers who are using our country as their battleground. The extremism or provocation of radical thoughts and sentiments is possible only in the absence of education. It is the reason why, the areas backward and less educated become victims of Taliban and other terror groups who use the name of religion for their objectives. In Afghanistan, Pakistan and a number of African countries, this fact has been found that less educated and backward areas provide the workforce for terror organizations working on the name of religion. In Afghanistan, unemployment and poverty is also one of the major reasons of the expansion of Taliban. It is no more a secret now that Taliban pay handsome salaries to their soldiers and majority of them fight for economic gain and not as a religious obligation.
In all these factors, it has been found that no specific group or race can be blamed for terrorism. On the other hand, I can give thousands of examples that all the ethnic groups hate terrorism. There are anti-terrorist writers and activists from almost all the groups of the society. Similarly, our national army is bravely fighting the menace of Taliban and they were on the frontlines when Kunduz was to be cleaned from Taliban and they did their duty without any discrimination.
In the light of these realities, it would be unfortunate if we keep chopping our own legs. If the same condition continued, it may widen the drift between different ethnic groups of the country and may eventually lead the country to another civil war. This condition is also hurting the brave soldiers of our National Army who are fighting terrorists and they comprise of all the groups.
If we truly love our country and want to see it as a developed and strong country in future, we must immediately work to correct the wrong acts. All of us should avoid any post, video or comment that promotes hatred among different groups. We should also boycott all those pages who are busy in spreading this poison. The responsible and educated minds of society who can change public opinion should promote unity and love among the different ethnic groups.