On the first day of a recent nonviolence training for a mix of scholars, students, journalists, and religious and tribal leaders in Afghanistan’s Kunar province, I asked what they knew about nonviolent civic mobilization. A number of them responded “women’s rights,” while some said “democracy,” and others “pacifying people.” They were all familiar with the term “nonviolence” and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan — also known as “Badshah Khan” and the “Frontier Gandhi” — whose nonviolent Khudai Khidmatgar (“Servants of God”) movement against the British Raj is well known in Afghanistan. But participants had no real knowledge of the details of this movement, nor of the underlying ideas or practical implementation of nonviolent action.
Most participants had never felt the need to study Badshah Khan’s works and philosophy before because they only knew of violent means to address and react to problems faced by their communities: either fight and join the insurgency, or sit silently as passive spectators. In fact, the majority of Afghans believe that as ordinary civilians, it is not in their power to create change. Many only wish to focus on the present and not on the future. This mindset is the result of three decades of violent conflict, which has affected every single family in Afghanistan.
But as the events in the Middle East unfolded during the Arab Spring, Afghan intellectuals and youth groups came to recognize the potential force of nonviolent civic mobilization. They have since begun to adopt these strategies and tactics to organize and tackle widespread government corruption, which particularly affects the justice system and fosters rampant unemployment and insecurity.
With this process still being in its infancy, proponents of nonviolent action are facing many challenges. Due to insufficient knowledge, demonstrations start out peacefully, but most quickly turn violent as they are easily hijacked by violent insurgents. During demonstrations in Mazar Sharif on April 1, 2011, five international U.N. personnel were killed as demonstrators stormed the regional office of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Afghanistan (UNAMA). In the summer of 2011, gatherings in the cities of Mazar and Kandahar turned violent and claimed several lives as well.
Additionally, participants in nonviolent protests often receive threats, both from violent insurgents (who believe that nonviolent civic mobilization prevents the population from waging jihad against the government) and from corrupt government officials (who fear that such campaigns will threaten their authority in the future). Furthermore, Afghan security forces rarely respect the right to peaceful protest and freedom of expression. Many believe that demonstrations, even nonviolent ones, are against Afghanistan and the interests of Afghans — so they deal with protests and gatherings with an iron fist. In the future, it will therefore be important to include members of the security forces in trainings on civic nonviolent mobilization, so that they too have a better understanding of the demands made and the methods used by civic organizers. In some cases security forces may constitute important allies.
As for the women of Afghanistan, they strongly believe that they can play the same central role the women in Tunisia, Egypt and other countries of the Arab world played, and are still playing, at the heart of the Arab Spring movements. Women represent over half of Afghanistan’s population and are an important pillar in the family, yet their role in the country’s political, cultural and economic life was ignored and suppressed for almost two decades. Torpikai Rasoli, a member of the Kunar Provincial Council and participant in the nonviolent civic mobilization in the Kunar training said: “We, women, have the potential to bring changes in our society.”
Since the collapse of the Taliban regime in 2001, women are increasingly taking on important roles, such as voting and running for the parliament, presidency and other important offices. Although they are now represented in most sectors, including business and media, they still face a number of important issues and challenges, which vary between provinces. For example, security conditions and fear of repercussions deterred female participants from joining the workshop in Kunduz, while nine women were able to attend the one in Kunar.
Although these were not the first workshops on nonviolent civic mobilization that were held in Afghanistan, the local and national media gave greater attention to the trainings this time. In their interviews, participants spoke of the Arab Spring, Gandhi’s salt march, Otpor in Serbia and the use of nonviolence by Badshah Khan as they outlined their own vision for Afghanistan’s future and how it could be achieved.
While some participants, fearing for their safety — especially the tribal chiefs and religious scholars — did not want to be photographed during the trainings, the younger participants were eager to speak with the media. This was significant, as it sent an important message to the community that there are citizens who are ready to speak up and take bold steps.
Participants also made two Facebook groups and began sharing their take on nonviolent civic mobilization with their friends and contacts. They hope to use the social media site to reach and connect with Afghan youths in other parts of the country and to organize future nonviolent civic mobilization activities.
In spite of this initial success, participants and trainers alike still face important challenges.
In addition to fearing for their safety, those teaching about nonviolent civic mobilization must combat the persistent perception that this way of struggle is weak. Most Afghans associate strategic nonviolent action with foreign cultures — even though Afghanistan has a rich history of nonviolent movements. Trainers must be sensitive to the cultural and social environment and contextualize their curricula accordingly, reassuring participants that the philosophy of nonviolence is consistent with Islam and Afghan culture.
As the trainings came to a close, the experience strengthened my belief that Afghans throughout the country are seeking alternatives to address their problems and express their grievances. The workshops were conducted in two parts of the country under very different conditions. However, participants responded with equal interest and enthusiasm to this unique opportunity to learn about a new way — consistent with their beliefs and culture — for mobilizing and demanding their political, social and economic rights.
This article was co-authored by Nicola Barrach.
All humans irrespective of which nationality have temptation toward peace, and the best way is to educate them, and that’s how Civic Mobilization should work. I cannot agree more than what you wrote, but this civic mobilization needs to become a national agenda, and based on your few training impacts / results, it can be expanded.
good work, and great initiative.
“In the future, it will therefore be important to include members of the security forces in trainings on civic nonviolent mobilization, so that they too have a better understanding of the demands made and the methods used by civic organizers. In some cases security forces may constitute important allies.”
Probably a daft question, but I’ve always thought that doing nonviolent training with security forces here in the UK and US should be a massive part of the peace and equality movements. Police tend to be working class, and they tend – as I understand it – to be sent to police protests having been told that protesters are very likely to be violent, and that they’re in the dangerous position of being the only thing standing between probably violent thugs and the public.
The police I’ve spoken with are trained to think of “the left”, peace activists (!), and especially anarchists as people who are ideologically motivated to want chaos, and who are likely to hate them and want to harm the public. No explanation of why we’d want that, it’s just repeated so often that it gets believed – and the black bloc tendency to property damage doesn’t get interpreted as anything but confirmation of this: if they’re going to smash windows, they think, then they’re going to escalate it to harming people.
This is not something that’ll go away overnight. It’s going to take time and patience to debunk the distortions in thinking about protests and to shift police back from protecting the status quo to protecting the right of people to peacefully protest, and I wonder to what extent various groups consider the long-term strategy of co-opting the police as integral to their movements.
I’ve heard that British Quakers are so concerned about how police deal with protests that they’re doing a huge project gathering information so they can make their campaigning more effective, including working with police unions to haul back on the militarism and reject the fearmongering from the top brass.
Karen,
I’ve held the same belief — that if there is to be non-violent change on the scale that we see coming about in the world, there must be an effort to reach out to the police and military members of our communities. As you point out, they are most often working class members of society and have a vested interest in working for the well-being of their family, friends, and neighbors rather than the status quo. However, one thing to keep in mind is that their paychecks, their livelihoods, their survival come from the system and it is that stick that the status quo can use to keep police and military personnel in line. We must find a way to address that issue.
Judi
Here in the UK, the government is obliging by putting 20% budget cuts in place for the police (among swingeing public sector cuts in general), looking at electing the chief officers of forces (because the Conservatives are obsessed with how the US does things), looking at privatising some police and police-related services (they’ve already axed the public sector forensics service), and having set up the Leveson enquiry into the phone hacking scandal (they thought Leveson would be a stooge; they were wrong) which has been exposing the ties between political, media and police top brass.
There was a police protest, consisting of off-duty officers from across the country, recently. Police feel beleaguered and besieged, and now they realise that the government really isn’t on their side. It’s a window of opportunity to work with the Police Federation.
I don’t know about the US. I suspect that such an enormous country with so many differences between states must have areas where the cracks are showing, where activists can make a clear case that we’re all in the same boat and should be working on the things that really create safe communities, including nonviolent dialogue between police and activists and educating police on what organisations really do.
It’s entirely natural that our culturally-created difficulty with communicating our feelings and needs nonviolently should spill out into our protest movements. When the whole culture sees the world in terms of us vs them, zero-sum games, and either/or, it’s hard to remember that othering is really ineffective in creating positive change. Even harder when you’re being kettled or charged.
So I suppose that there’s another issue here, too: Teaching people to stay with nonviolence under intense pressure. That means teaching it and teaching it over and over and over, so that it becomes totally embodied, so that we don’t fall back on what we’ve grown up with (panic, insults, rage). And a commitment to nonviolence in our conversations with others on a daily basis, which is also pretty tough and really important.
“Eyes on the prize” means long-term campaigning, relentless commitment. It means personal transformation, not just to become politically more aware, but also in reframing our reactions to the world on a deeply personal level. It’s a hell of a thing to ask, isn’t it?
Two of the most difficult things about nonviolent actions are people infiltrating specific gatherings and committing acts of violence AND those who are truly committed to nonviolence being attacked and killed because of the real threat that they represent against the powers that be. Overcoming those obstacles is difficult and dangerous but as shown by successful campaigns, it can happen. It turns the whole “those who live by the sword” thing a little upside down because often those who live by nonviolence can and do still die by the sword.
Yet there’s a story I read about Aung Sang Suu Kyi who was marching towards the capital of Burma with a group of protesters when they were confronted by a group of soldiers. The troops all raised their weapons and were pointing them towards the marchers. A young boy pushed his way to the front of the group and walked towards the soldiers. He ripped open his shirt, baring his chest in front of the guns. For a few moments, time stood still. Then, an officer in charge of the soldiers pushed several of the rifles down and said “Are we going to shoot children now? Let them go.” The soldiers turned away and the protesters continued on.
A request for anyone reading this… The story I refer to is one I read in a book a few years ago. I had the book for a few hours when I was on a train. I had just picked it up from friends who had piles of books they had been asked to review and were done with. I lost the book right after that and don’t even know the title. It was all about people who had done risked their lives nonviolently, standing up to others for justice. If you know the book, please let me know the title! I’ve never been able to find the story about this brave child anywhere else.
Karen,
It is a nice suggestion to include police in such trainings.A deeper understanding of nonviolence civic mobilization reveals that there is always gap among the protesters and the security forces, especially in the less developed world.Police believe that they are the guardians of the government officials and those who oppose them are the enemies.They need to know and should be trained in a way to think and act in a way to respect citizens’ political right to peaceful protest and that the security forces are as accountable to ordinary citizens as they are to the government officials.On the other side, people also think that security forces are their enemies.Once this gap if is overcome only then the peaceful movements can success.
Best