Afghan/Born and raised in KPK. Moved to UK at the age of 11 and have since been living with the constant desire to run back to the mountains. Just a space to share some musings. Interests: Politics/History/Culture/Religion
When you abandon your mediocre blog for over a year and come back to find you still have majority of your followers. :O
Thank you...even if you forgot i existed.
Guys please keep us in your duaas as we are trying to create at least 200 new scholarships for talented students who have been denied the right to study!
If you would like to help us or just want more information, about our project here in the UK, please send me a personal message or email me at [email protected]
Pashtun poetry has long been a form of rebellion for Afghan women, belying the notion that they are submissive or defeated. Landai means “short, poisonous snake” in Pashto, a language spoken on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The word also refers to two-line folk poems that can be just as lethal. Funny, sexy, raging, tragic, landai are safe because they are collective. No single person writes a landai; a woman repeats one, shares one. It is hers and not hers. Although men do recite them, almost all are cast in the voices of women. “Landai belong to women,” Safia Siddiqi, a renowned Pashtun poet and former Afghan parliamentarian, said. “In Afghanistan, poetry is the women’s movement from the inside.”
December 1 > NATO will keep 12,000 troops in Afghanistan through 2016.
December 7 > A truck bomb blast in Nangarhar, Afghanistan killed at least 15 civilians and wounded 7 policemen.
December 8 > Six Afghan refugee children died after a boat bound for Greece capsized off Turkey’s western coast.
December 8 > A Taliban attack on an airport in Kandahar, Afghanistan killed 54 people. Among the dead were 39 were civilians, including four children.
December 9 > Local officials in Helmand said that Khanshin district in Helmand, Afghanistan has fallen to the Taliban following heavy clashes between security forces and militants.
December 11 > At least four people were killed after a foreign woman blew herself up at a checkpoint in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. Among the dead were three children and an operative for the National Directorate of Security (NDS).
December 11 > A Taliban attack on a guesthouse near the Spanish embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan killed at least eight people and wounded nine others. Among the dead were two foreign nationals, five policemen and one civilian.
December 11 > Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said on Saturday that the number of dead in the U.S airstrike on its trauma center in Kunduz, Afghanistan in October has risen to at least 42. After an internal investigation the figure was revised. Among the dead are 14 MSF staff members, 24 patients and four caretakers (relatives of patients).
December 12 > In its Human Rights and Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict in Kunduz province report, UNAMA stated that from September 28 to October 13, 289 civilians had been killed and and 559 injured (mostly in ground fighting).
When ‘Goddess Kali’ emerged over New York’s Empire State building
Goddess Kali took over New York’s Empire State Building as part of an artwork exhibition called Projecting Change by filmmaker Louie Psihoyo.
At least five Saudi women have won seats on local municipal councils a day after women voted and ran in elections for the first time in the country’s history, according to initial results released Sunday. The five women hail from vastly different parts of the country, ranging from Saudi Arabia’s second largest and most cosmopolitan city to a small village near Islam’s holiest sites. Though not many women are expected to win seats, even limited gains are seen as a step forward for women who had previously been completely shut out of elections. The mayor of Mecca, Osama al-Bar, told The Associated Press on Sunday that candidate Salma al-Oteibi won in a village called Madrakah, about 150 kilometers north of the city which houses the cube-shaped Kaaba to which Muslims around the world pray. Al-Bar also confirmed through election officials in Saudi Arabia’s second largest city of Jeddah that another female candidate, Lama al-Suleiman, had won a seat there. The official Saudi Press Agency, meanwhile, quoted the head of the election committee in the northern region of al-Jawf as saying that female candidate Hinuwf al-Hazmi won along with 13 men in that district. The news agency also reported that Mona el-Emery and Fadhila al-Attawy had won in the northwestern region of Tabuk. Overall results from the capital Riyadh and other major regions were expected to be announced Sunday by the General Election Commission. Many women candidates ran on platforms that promised more nurseries to offer longer daycare hours for working mothers, the creation of youth centers with sports and cultural activities, improved roads, better garbage collection and overall greener cities. In October, the Saudi Gazette reported that harsh road conditions and long distances to the nearest hospital had forced some women in the village of Madrakah, where one female candidate was elected, to give birth in cars. The local newspaper reported that the closest hospital and the nearest university were in Mecca, prompting some students to forgo attending classes. The article said residents were also frustrated with the lack of parks in the village. It is precisely these kinds of community issues that female candidates hope to address once elected to the municipal councils. The councils do not have legislative powers, but advise authorities and help oversee local budgets. Around 7,000 candidates, among them 979 women, were competing for 2,100 seats across the country. The councils are the only government body elected by Saudi citizens. The two previous rounds of voting for the councils, in 2005 and 2011, were open to men only. More than 1.35 million men had registered to vote this time around versus a little more than 130,000 female registered voters. In Jeddah, three generations of women from the same family cast ballots for the first time. The oldest woman in the family was 94 year-old Naela Mohammad Nasief. Her daughter, Sahar Hassan Nasief, said the experience marked “the beginning” of greater rights for women in Saudi Arabia. “I walked in and said ‘I’ve have never seen this before. Only in the movies’,” the daughter said, referring to the ballot box. “It was a thrilling experience.”
We spend a day in Astoria with the rapper of Bengali heritage, and premiere the video for his new song "Shadows."
My heart is so full and happy to see South Asian diasporic artists providing representation to our experiences. Find Anik Khan on SoundCloud and give him all of your love!! Shout out to my sister for exposing me to his greatness.
Hey, I’d like to get serious for a moment. Most of my followers are goyim, and I know most of you don’t get a whole lot of exposure to Jewish news. I think it’s really important that people know about what’s going on in Yemen right now.
Basically, the Yemeni government has declared that all Yemeni Jews must either convert or leave the country. I’m not sure right now what happens to the Jews who refuse, but I imagine that, at the very least, the government will do nothing to protect them from any antisemitism they face at the hands of their neighbors. At least one article I have read corroborates this.
Here’s one article discussing the situation currently faced by Yemeni Jews. Here’s another, from a while ago, predicting this situation. Here’s a third.
This is obviously a very serious matter. I hope that people around the world will soon be aware of the dangers faced by Yemeni Jews and other Mizrahi Jewish populations, and that we can work together to fight against this virulent oppression.
Blood money: UK’s £12.3bn arms sales to repressive states
The Government has issued more than 3,000 export licences for military and intelligence equipment worth a total of £12.3bn to countries which are on its own official list for human rights abuses.
French journalist Nicolas Hénin, who was held by Mohammed Emwazi, begs international community not to bomb Islamic State
A French journalist held hostage by Islamic State for 10 months, has made an impassioned plea against bombing Syria, saying it was a trap that would only benefit Isis.
Nicolas Hénin, previously held hostage by Mohammed Emwazi, implored the international community to seek a political solution. Engaging with Syrians, not bombing them, was the surest way to bring about the collapse of Isis, he said.
In a five-minute video said to have been recorded in the past few days in Paris and posted on YouTube by the Syria Campaign, Hénin said: “Strikes on Isis are a trap. The winner of this war will not be the parties that have the newest, most expensive, most sophisticated weaponry, but the party that manages to have the people on its side.”
In his message, apparently timed to coincide with Wednesday’s UK parliament debate on joining Syria airstrikes, he said: “At the moment, with the bombings, we are more likely pushing the people into the hands of Isis. What we have to do, and this is really key, we have to engage the local people.
“As soon as the people have hope in the political solution, then Islamic State will just collapse. It will have no ground any more. It will collapse.”
Hénin was released along with other French hostages in April 2014. He had been held captive alongside James Foley, Steven Sotloff, David Haines and Alan Henning, who were all murdered by Emwazi.
“Mohammed Emwazi was one of my captors. He is the one who murdered my friends,” said Hénin. “I can’t prevent myself from thinking for the six murders that he committed, face to camera, murders of westerners, how many Syrians did he kill, and who cares for them?”
Mohammed Emwazi killed my friend, but his own death won't affect the war
Sulome Anderson Read more
He said the jihadis lived in a parallel world and a “different matrix”. They believed in a “mad prophecy” that there would be a global confrontation between a coalition of “80 armies against an army of Muslims coming from all over the world” and were “a bit out of their mind”.
Hénin said: “Why are we making so many mistakes? Why are people so much misunderstanding the region? We are just fuelling our enemies, and fuelling the misery, the disaster for the local people.”
He said the radicalisation was the result of passivity by the international community, who failed to assist Syrian democrats “as they were yelling for their freedom, and the Syrians were living in total despair”.
He said: “For every single Syrian killed since the beginning of this conflict by Islamic State, between seven and 10 have been killed by the Syrian regime. We have to understand that these two parallel disasters for the Syrian people, they depend one on the other, and one cannot fight one without fighting the other.”
Hénin said the summer refugee crisis had been a propaganda blow to Isis. Images of refugees fleeing the Muslim “dreamland” and being welcomed in the lands of “unbelievers” had given a lie to their message of western hatred towards Muslims, he said. “And that is why they probably tried to manipulate the public during the Paris attack, to make us close our borders, and maybe, even more importantly, to close our minds.”
There was an easy way to make Islamic State “lose ground at high speed” he said. “It would be for the international community to take the decision that all the Syrian regions that are held by the opposition are no-fly zones; no-fly zones for everybody. Not the coalition, not the Russians, not the regime. Nobody. So, actually to provide security to the people would be devastating for Isis and this is what the international community should focus on,” he said.
Measurements: overall length (in scabbard) 95 cm; blade length 75 cm
The wooden scabbard is covered with a greenish ray skin and four butterfly shaped gilded silver mounts. The mounts are studded with 53 turquoise stones and 11 engraved heliotrope (bloodstone) plaques. On the blade, 15 cm from the handle, there is a maker’s mark in form of a sequence of round punches. The gilded silver cross guard, pommel and ray skin covered grip are decorated en suite with the scabbard.
There is an engraving of Madonna with Baby Jesus on the bloodstone cartouche in the center of the cross guard. Another, more simplistic cartouche is on the reverse. The quillons are also decorated with four engraved pentagonal cartouches. The pommel is studded with six engraved rectangular carnelian and one round stone on top of the pommel.
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