The burden of the recent propaganda put out by the US-led coalition is that all Afghans, regardless of tribe, are brutal, undisciplined and careless of human life. The reports coming in from that country giving details of massacres and revenge killings give credence to those claims.
A toughand brutal environment such as that of Afghanistan breeds tough people. However despite their ferocious reputation as fighters and tough mountain men, it is wrong to think of all Afghans as harsh and brutal. Afghanistan has bred men of peace, sages, poets and visionaries. At the start of the last century, the Pathan people of the Northwest Frontier between British-ruled India and Afghanistan produced one of the most peaceful and remarkable individuals of modern history.
While Mahatma Gandhi is known across the world for his pacifist resistance against British rule, these days few remember his ally, Badshah Khan, the "Khan of Khans". Born Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, he was the leader of a mass Islamic movement known as Khudai Khitmatgars — the Servants of God. His followers were dedicated to peaceful protest against the British and their plans for India, in particular in 1946, their agreement that India should be partitioned.Ghaffar Khan’s profound belief in the truth and effectiveness of nonviolence came from the depths of personal experience of his faith. His life testifies to the reality that nonviolence and Islam are perfectly compatible. In those days too there were many who believed that Afghans (and Muslims) had to be "brutal, undisciplined and careless of human life." Khan explained to them, "There is nothing surprising in a Muslim or a Pathan like me subscribing to the creed of nonviolence. It is not a new creed. It was followed fourteen hundred years ago by the Prophet all the time he was in Makkah." On another occasion he wrote, "The Holy Prophet Muhammad came into this world and taught us, ‘That man is a Muslim who never hurts anyone by word or deed, but who works for the benefit and happiness of God’s creatures.’ Belief in God is to love one’s fellow men."
Badshah Khan came from a noble Pathan family who for generations had been successful warlords. At first sight, no one could have been less likely than Badshah Khan to throw away the sword of his ancestors and take up pacifism. But the deeply religious Badshah Khan saw that though the British could be defeated time and again, they had the men and resources to wear down the Pathans. Therefore, while other Pathan and Pashtun tribal groups on both sides of the Afghan-Indian border were sniping at the government forces of British India, Badshah Khan chose to confront the authorities with dignified, nonviolent protest.
In 1985, just three years before his death, he told an interviewer: "Today’s world is traveling in some strange direction. You see that the world is going toward destruction and violence. And the specialty of violence is to create hatred among people and to create fear. I am a believer in nonviolence and I say that no peace or tranquility will descend upon the people of the world until nonviolence is practiced, because nonviolence is love and it stirs courage in people."
Words to remember for the Afghans and the world.
