OpOpportunity for Afghan Women

Bpeace is seeking female and male business people in Mazar-i-Sharif and the Balkh Province who are committed to creating jobs for other Afghans, and who need technical assistance to grow their businesses.

Female and male businesspeople who have a vision to move Afghanistan to greater prosperity will find a proven ally in Bpeace. We will work side by side with the best entrepreneurs in Afghanistan, understanding their businesses, solving problems, and collaborating with them on ideas to increase employment and peace. The most successful Afghans are those who understand that growing a business is a full-time job, and that making a profit sustains the business and the community.

You can apply for this program if you:

• Are a female or male businessperson between the ages of 21 and 35 years of age.
• Are an Afghan citizen and live in the Balkh Province.
• Already operate a business or desire to start a business.
• Are willing to devote at least 10 hours a month for six months to work with the Bpeace program and 5 hours a month for 18 months thereafter.

To download the Microsoft Word version of the application form, please click here.

You must submit your application by January 15, 2010.

Bpeace is a non-profit organization of U.S. volunteer business professionals.

• Bpeace will assist 30 female and male business owners create 1,000 jobs in Balkh over the next two-three years.
• Bpeace delivers business skills to motivated Afghan business people.
• Bpeace does not provide grants or cash.

Young entrepreneurs accepted into the Bpeace program will receive:

• Business skills training in Mazar and technical assistance at their places of business in finance, marketing, customer service, and staff recruitment and management.
• Most importantly, Bpeace will connect each entrepreneur with U.S. business professionals who will provide technical guidance in industries important to the economic development of Balkh.

Since 2004, Bpeace has helped Afghan businesswomen create more than 1,400 jobs supporting more than 12,000 Afghan family members. For the first time, Bpeace is inviting a limited number of male Afghan entrepreneurs into its program in addition to women. Partial funding for this program comes from the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Citizen Exchanges in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

How to Apply

To download the Microsoft Word version of the application form, please click here.

• Complete this application form, in English.
• Email completed applications to mazar@bpeace.org by January 15, 2010. Applications submitted after January 15th will not be considered.

Independent Television Service Announces International Call for Producers Outside United States

The Independent Television Service's International Call enables independent producers from outside of the United States to create documentaries for U.S. television.

The program is designed to help storytellers from other countries introduce U.S. audiences to their global neighbors. In addition to production funding and support, ITVS International will premiere funded programs on U.S. public and commercial television.

ITVS International Call seeks programs that bring international perspectives, ideas, events, and people to U.S. television; content that represents diverse communities and advances underrepresented points of view; content that explores globally significant themes and inspires public dialogue; single story-driven documentaries with broadcast hour versions; programs that have already begun production and can be realistically completed within one year of contract; and co-production projects with either international broadcast partner(s) or co-productions with producers from different countries.

Applicants must be at least 18 years old. The primary applicant must be a citizen of another country and must not reside in the U.S. Dual foreign/U.S. citizens are eligible if they do not reside in the U.S. American citizens may only participate as co-applicants in a true co-production relationship with a non-U.S. primary applicant. Applicants must have previous film or television production experience in a principal role (producer, co-producer, director, or co-director) as demonstrated by credits on a sample tape of a previously completed work submitted with the application.

All written materials must be in English. Video materials must also be in English, subtitled if necessary.

Visit the ITVS Web site for complete program guidelines.

Contact:
Link to Complete RFP

Primary Subject: Arts and Culture
Geographic Funding Area: National

Go to the main source

Hazaras Hustle to Head of Class in Afghanistan

By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and ABDUL WAHEED WAFA

Published: January 3, 2010

KABUL, Afghanistan — For much of this country’s history, the Hazara were typically servants, cleaners, porters and little else, a largely Shiite minority sidelined for generations, and in some instances massacred, by Pashtun rulers.

But increasingly they are people like Mustafa, a teenager who has traveled a rough road but whose future now looks as bright as any in this war-ravaged country. His course reflects the collective effort of the Hazara, who make up 10 to 15 percent of the population, to remake their circumstances so swiftly that by some measures they are beginning to overtake other groups.

Like many Hazaras of his generation, Mustafa, now 16, fled Afghanistan with his family in the mid-1990s. They settled in Quetta, Pakistan, living with other Hazara refugees outside the Taliban’s reach and getting a taste of opportunities long out of their grasp.

After the 2001 American invasion, his family returned, not to their home in impoverished Daykondi Province, but to Kabul, where his uneducated parents thought Mustafa and his siblings would get better schooling. “There was no opportunity for studying in Daykondi,” he said.

Mustafa is now a top student at Marefat High School in Dasht-i-Barchi, a vast, poor Shiite enclave in western Kabul of potholed dirt streets, unheated homes and tiny shops. Nearly every one of his graduating classmates will go on to college. Mustafa, an 11th grader who favors physics and mathematics, wants to study nuclear physics at a Western university.

“The Pashtun had the opportunities in the past, but now the Hazaras have these opportunities,” said Mustafa, whose school director asked that his last name not be published. “We can take our rights just by education.”

The Marefat school is a refuge for 2,500 Hazaras, many from families like Mustafa’s who fled their homeland in central Afghanistan for Pakistan and Iran in the 1990s and returned after the fall of the Taliban, which had massacred thousands of Hazaras, to make their lives in Kabul.

Since the 2001 invasion, an influx of Hazaras has changed the composition of the capital. More than a million Hazaras now live here, making up more than a quarter of the city’s population.

With a new generation of Hazaras attending school in relative security and motivated by their parents’ dispossession, their success could alter the country’s balance of ethnic power.

“The Hazara always wanted an open atmosphere to breathe, and now we have that,” said Mohammed Sarwar Jawadi, a Hazara member of Parliament from Bamian Province.

If there is a recent parallel it is the Kurds of northern Iraq. Once dispossessed and abused, they created a thriving new society after the imposition of no-fly zones in the 1990s and the ouster of Saddam Hussein almost seven years ago.

The Hazara resurgence is not so geographically concentrated. The principal Hazara provinces, while relatively safe, remain impoverished and, their leaders complain, are bypassed by the foreign aid sent to Pashtun areas as a carrot to lure people from the insurgency.

Instead, it is a revival built largely on education, an asset Hazaras could carry with them during their years as refugees.

“With education you can take everything you want,” says Qasim, one of Mustafa’s classmates, a 15-year-old Hazara who moved to Kabul, the Afghan capital, from the northern city of Kunduz five years ago because his parents wanted better-educated children.

The old Afghan rulers “wanted to exploit Hazara people, and they didn’t want us to become leaders in this country or to improve,” he said. But that will change. “By studying we can dictate our future.”

The Hazara gains have already been rapid. Two Hazara-dominated provinces, Bamian and Daykondi, have the highest passing rates on admissions exams for the country’s top rung of universities, according to officials from the Ministry of Higher Education. In the high school graduating class of 2008, three-fourths of students in Daykondi who took the test passed, and two-thirds in Bamian, compared with the national rate of 22 percent.

In a country that has one of the world’s lowest female literacy rates — just one in seven women over age 15 can read and write — the progress of Hazara women is even more stark, especially compared with Pashtun provinces.

Pashtuns, who are mostly Sunni, are the country’s largest ethnic group. While the Taliban insurgency rages in Pashtun regions, and many schools are attacked or forced to close, the enrollment of girls in Bamian schools rose by nearly one-third the past two years, to 46,500, as total school enrollment there grew 22 percent. Continue reading on NYT

Applications Being Accepted for 2010 Peace through Business Program

2010 PEACE THROUGH BUSINESS
Program Overview & Application Instructions

The Institute for Economic Empowerment of Women’s PEACE THROUGH BUSINESS program provides long-term business education to women entrepreneurs in Afghanistan and Rwanda. The program is based on the theory that a country that is more economically sound has a greater capacity for peace.

PEACE THROUGH BUSINESS is implemented in three phases:

• In-Country Education (Afghanistan & Rwanda)
• Leadership Development (U.S.)
• Pay It Forward (Afghanistan & Rwanda)

Currently, our classroom sites are in Kabul, Afghanistan and Kigali, Rwanda. However, if you are not in these specific areas – still apply! We are looking into developing additional classroom sites in outlying villages in both countries, based on demand and ability. (Keep checking here for updates.) And, remember, it never hurts to apply!

By applying to the 2010 PEACE THROUGH BUSINESS program, you are applying for the In-Country portion of the program. There are 30 seats available per country. 15 students from each country will be selected for travel to the United States in June 2010 for participation in Leadership Development, which includes mentorship and an International Women’s Economic Summit. Students selected for U.S. travel are also expected to Pay Forward their education by mentoring their fellow countrymen and women. See more below on the selection process and requirements for Leadership Development.

Application Instructions
To complete the application process, you must submit a copy of your passport, visa (if applicable), as well as at least three photos of your business. Formatting requirements are specified on the application. (You can also submit these files separately from the application by the application deadline.) You can not return to a partially completed application. You must complete and submit the application at the same time.

PART I

In-Country Education

In-Country Education is an intensive 8 weeks of basic business education. Each class lasts about four hours, once a week for eight weeks from Feb. 1 – March 26. The class is facilitated and conducted by a former PEACE THROUGH BUSINESS student, and the curriculum focuses on entrepreneurship development, improving technical skills and creating leaders with an emphasis on:

• Basic Accounting and Finance
• Marketing, Promotion and Selling
• Operations Management
• Human Resources
• Basic Banking
• Business Plan Development

The class culminates with the development of an in-depth business plan designed specifically for your business. That plan is submitted electronically to the Institute staff in the United States. Every chapter lesson will include a test and homework assignments. Books are provided, but in order to complete homework assignments, you must have access to a computer. Since the books are written in English, you must be able to read and comprehend English in order to complete homework assignments.

Five former In-Country students will be considered for selection into the 2010 PEACE THROUGH BUSINESS In-Country Education. Like new students, they will be considered for selection into Leadership Development (see more below.)

It is not required to be proficient in Microsoft Excel, however the majority of homework for the In-Country program is in Excel, so students will need to have working knowledge of the program. Excel is widely used in the business community, and it will be beneficial for students selected for Leadership Development to already be familiar with the program.

To learn more about Microsoft Excel, there are several free tutorials online. Click here for a free tutorial and free trial version of the software.

New student criteria for selection into the In-Country classes

• Completed application
• English Exam – 80% or higher
• Solid Business (owner and daily involvement)

Former student criteria for selection into the In-Country program

• Willingness to teach at least two sessions during In-Country classes
• 2009 class scores
• Demonstration of implementation of PEACE THROUGH BUSINESS training
• Specific Pay It Forward examples

PART II

Leadership Development

Applying for In-Country Education is not a guarantee for travel to the United States for participation in Leadership Development. An unbiased committee will select 15 students from each country to travel to the United States for three weeks in June 2010. The announcement of who has been selected will be made on Friday, April 2.

New student criteria for selection to travel to United States for Leadership Development

For those students who wish to be considered for Leadership Development, a separate set of scores will be awarded based on the following system:

• Attendance: 25 points
• Completed Homework Assignments: 25 points
• Completed Business Plan: 25 points
• Test Scores: 25 points
• Business Viability: 25 points
• Potential to Pay Forward: 25 points

Former student criteria for selection to travel to United States for Leadership Development

• Complete new or update existing business plan
• English Exam – 80% or higher
• Score 80% or higher on Entrepreneurship test (based on textbook)
• Solid Business (owner and daily involvement)
• Demonstrate how they have utilized and implemented their previous training with PEACE THROUGH BUSINESS

Additionally, both new and former students must meet the following requirements:

• Own a legitimate business (Facilitator will visit and help evaluate each business)
• Score a 75% or higher on written and oral English test
• Pass a physical examination by a designated doctor (Because of the trip’s intensity and travel, women who are pregnant will not be considered for U.S. travel due to the concern of potential health risks to both mother and baby.)
• Ability to pay for Visa (about $130 USD)
• Ability to pay program fee ($250 USD)
• Ability to travel to the United States for three weeks in June 2010 (June 4 – June 24)

Please go to the main source

Taliban killed 4,000 in ethnic cleansing drive

By Ahmed Rashid in Islamabad
Electronic Telegraph, September 10,1998, Issue 1203

BETWEEN 4,000 and 6,000 Afghan Hazaras - three times more than recent Amnesty International estimates - were massacred by the Taliban when they captured areas of northern Afghanistan last month, according to diplomats.

The envoys described the killings as a deliberate campaign of ethnic cleansing by the Islamic fundamentalist militia. Diplomats, United Nations officials and aid workers say thousands of Hazaras, mostly males, were killed in front of their families in Mazar-i-Sharif, capital of the anti-Taliban alliance in northern Afghanistan, when the Taliban captured the city last month.

A senior diplomat who has interviewed dozens of Hazara families said: "Young men over 16 were brought out of their houses into the streets and had their throats slit in a ritualistic killing. Younger boys had both hands chopped off at the wrist."

An aid worker said Hazara bodies were left in the streets for days, and people trying to escape from the city were shot. The aid worker said: "They were mutilating children and telling them, 'You will never fight us again'."

The Hazaras, a Mongol people who form some 15 per cent of the country's 18 million population, have resisted Taliban offensives for the past four years from their strongholds in the Hindu Kush mountains.

The Hazaras are Shia Muslims, whom the Sunni Taliban loathe. Iran, which is predominantly Shia, has used the massacre issue as a reasons to mobilise 70,000 troops on the Iran-Afghanistan border.

Last week, Amnesty International released a report saying that thousands of Hazaras were killed in Mazar. But aid workers and diplomats who left the city after the Taliban takeover and have met Hazaras who escaped, say the number of dead could be much higher.

The Taliban have rejected the allegations, but refuse to allow aid workers, the UN or foreign journalists to return to Afghanistan. Mazar has been closed to foreigners.

Also:

UN confirms Taliban massacre of ethnic minority

ISLAMABAD, Sept 11,1998 (AFP) - The United Nations here Friday said Afghanistan's Taliban militia massacred thousands of ethnic-Hazara people when they seized the opposition stronghold of Mazar-i-Sharif last month.

Amnesty International had alleged the Taliban massacred thousands of the minority Hazara comunity in the days following their capture of the northern Afghan city on August 8.

The Taliban rejected the Amnesty report.

Source of this article

How to Whip the Afghan Army Into Shape

Much of President Barack Obama's strategy rests on the creation of a new, more competent Afghan military. Here's what he'll need to know to get the job done.

In his Nov. 28 speech at West Point laying out his military strategy for Afghanistan, U.S. President Barack Obama explained that success hinges on developing Afghan security forces that can control the country on their own. Tasked with the responsibility of figuring out how to develop them is Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, newly arrived in Kabul. According to the New York Times, Caldwell intends to devote unprecedented time and effort to improving the quality of Afghanistan's security force leadership, rather than merely concentrating on increasing the quantity of troops. This is an overdue change that promises real improvements.

In Afghanistan, poorly led soldiers and policemen have often proved useless or worse. For the past eight years, the lack of leadership in Afghan police and militia units has resulted in egregious abuses of power that have helped convince thousands of Pashtun tribal elders to support the Taliban and other insurgent groups. Those abuses have too seldom offset forceful action against insurgents. Increasing the number of Afghan troops, which some analysts believe must be the top priority, will not solve any of these problems without sound leadership. As U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry has aptly pointed out, "Ten good police are better than 100 corrupt police, and 10 corrupt police can do more damage to our success than one Taliban extremist."

In developing the Afghan National Security Forces, the U.S. and Afghan governments must combine short-term fixes with long-term development. It is a project that will take longer than American policymakers would like, no matter how many resources they allocate to it. It will also require smart use of U.S. resources.

Of the potential remedies for inferior Afghan leadership, the replacement of bad Afghan commanders with better ones is an obvious choice, but not an easy one. Numerous commanders in the Afghan National Army (ANA) and Afghan National Police (ANP) hold their positions because they have friends or relatives in the upper echelons of President Hamid Karzai's government and those patrons have been known to demonstrate resolve and guile in protecting their protégés.

A case in point is Brig. Gen. Shams, former commander of the 2nd Brigade, 201st Corps. Shams had far too little experience for a brigade commander and owed his position to political connections. Devoting more of his time to socializing in Jalalabad than to leading his brigade, he failed to organize any brigade-level operations, and corruption ran rampant within his unit. American advisors eventually appealed to higher levels of the Afghan government for help, but high-level Afghan leaders blocked action against Shams for many months. In the end, thankfully, U.S. persistence induced Karzai's office to authorize the brigade commander's relief. Read more

Drew University soccer star Shamila Kohestani leaves Taliban behind

BY Wayne Coffey

DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER

Five times a day, on the third floor of a boxy brick dormitory, a reserve forward on the Drew University women’s soccer team spreads out a special rug, sits down and tries to figure out which direction Mecca is.

For 10 or 15 minutes, Shamila Kohestani, of Kabul, Afghanistan, quiets her mind and says her prayers. Then she hustles back to her new western life, complete with fingernails painted pink, her name taped to the dorm-room door and a laptop that is rarely far from her side.

Shamila Kohestani never used a laptop until last year. She never did a lot of things. Life under the Taliban included periodic beatings and regular degradation, but not much in the way of amenities, and nothing at all in the way of education.

Sitting on her bed, alongside the patch of floor where she lays her prayer rug, Kohestani takes a short break from another five-hour night of studying. She looks toward a display of photos of her parents, six sisters and one brother, all of whom remain in Kabul - in a country where the life expectancy is 44 years, according to a study by the World Health Organization.

“When I first came here, people would ask, ‘What did you do for fun in Afghanistan?’” Kohestani says. She pauses and smiles. It is a smile worthy of a toothpaste commercial. ‘I’d say, ‘What do you mean fun? What is fun? I spent all my life in war.’

“I tell American kids, ‘You need to appreciate everything you have, because everywhere there are people who are starving, people who have nothing. Here there is so much.”

Shamila Kohestani isn’t so much a 20-year-old freshman as she is a social groundbreaker in shinguards, a cross-cultural wunderkind, a woman who captained Afghanistan’s first national women’s soccer team and who scarcely spoke English a year ago, and who, as recently as last month, had massive doubts if she could make it as a college student.

“The first days, I was sure I was going back home,” Kohestani says. “I told myself, I can’t do this.’” And then she did it, relying on the same indefatigable will that helped her through Ramadan last month, Kohestani fasting from sunup to sundown, going through grueling soccer practices without a sip of water.

“I’d get thirsty sometimes, and I’d just tell my mind, ‘Shut up,’” she says.

Christa Racine has been the soccer coach at Drew for 14 years, and a fixture in Jersey soccer since her record-setting days at Rutgers, a school she led to three straight ECAC titles, from 1990-92. That Kohestani has only gotten into one game this season takes nothing from what she has accomplished, in her coach’s opinion.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/college/2008/10/18/2008-10-18_drew_university_soccer_star_shamila_kohe.html#ixzz0ZS4m1oGa

Exercise of Democracy in afghanistan.

The street is not silent but for his pounding heart, slapping feet, and spinning tire.

There are other noises: distant car engines rumble; horns scream point and counterpoint; air force planes roar overhead; and somewhere close by a couple is arguing.

But he hears only three things: his heart, his feet, and his tire. They consume his reality, shoving all else to the side, discarding it as unimportant.

The only thing that matters is getting his prize home before they find him.

He does not turn his head at the sudden shout behind him. He does not feel the struggle of his heart and legs to keep him moving.

Only home matters. He will be safe there. His prize will be secure there.

But then he reaches his street and as he turns to cover the final fifty feet to his front door he sees them waiting for him. He skids to a halt but the tire continues on its way, wobbling on unsteady rubber before collapsing midway between him and them.

He pauses in the midst of silent, swirling dust. They stare at him with no expression. Then smiles creep onto each scarred, dirty face, one by one.

And then they raise their guns and the silence is no more.

by Marc

..................................................................................................................................................

For all the harshness of a world drenched in fear and bombing,

And all the wretched things this young boy has undoubtedly seenor perhaps even been a party to,

And all the horror his young mind has absorbed,

I wonder if his psyche can overcome, can forget.

For now, his mind is occupied by something that gives him hope--just an old wheel caroming through the streets, with an audience of poster people who do not laugh.

I wonder if he finds time to laugh; this photo brings out my tears for humankind.

by Wildspirit

.......................................................................................................

Carve out playin

a bombed reality.

Dodging through streetsa boy focuses his joy.

by Septembermom

....................................................................................................................

Posters hide the pock marks left my cartridges.

Ochre peels from the vertical plane.

Black cloth flaps round slim form as it runs beside.

Simple pleasure in the revolutions of a hoop.

Soon the boy will arrive home, he will be feted.

He will be dressed in a waistcoat of plastic and wires.

A clean robe will cover hiis frame, as his mother covers his face with kisses.

He will walk out with pride until he reaches his destination.

As he atomises, his thoughts will speed from him, racing to meet his glorious destiny, a smile on his thin, chaste lips.

by Christine

To see the Photos by Me see Basir Seerat