“My father was killed by the Russians during their previous invasion of my country. My brother was killed by the Taliban. I watched and witnessed how my family and other families suffered from war, terriorism, and violence. This is why I am committed to nonviolence as a way of life and this is why I am here to speak with you today.” This is how Ahmadullah Archiwal, a guest of the URI Center for Nonviolence & Peace Studies, began his presentation to the graduate students of NVP500 Global Peace seminar. URI students were amazed as they listened to the message of peace delivered by Afghanistan’s leading nonviolence activist and educator, a courageous pioneer for peace in a country plagued by violence.
Archiwal is the founder and head of OSCAR (Organization for Social Cultural Awareness and Rehabilitation), a Kabul based organization. Mr. Archiwal has an MA degree in Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of Peshawar and another MA in International Affairs from the New School University in New York, where he studied as a Fulbright scholar. His main areas of interest are security and conflict, CVE, Media Election and governance. In addition, Archiwal has worked extensively on nonviolence and has written a book on the topic in Pashto and has translated three other books from English into Pashto.
He began by offering his personal story and gave four reasons why he studies nonviolence:
- Over 40 years of violent conflict
- Blaming others for the situation/not taking responsibility
- Violence is the only available currency in the market
- Growing extremist ideology and their increasing influence
Archiwal explained that he worked on three fronts: 1) Mainstreaming Nonviolence by developing nonviolence materials, translating books and authoring books and articles. 2) His nonviolence workshops and seminars on nonviolence have been pivital, especially for women. Theses included debates, discussions and forums, and celebrations of internationals day. 3) Networking youth was accomplished by having trainers in four provinces, and utilizing social media and Facebook groups.
The achievements so far are many. He has trained over 1400 youth, civil society activists, women, religious scholars and tribal chief. Many materials are available on nonviolence in local languages. Taboo has been broken by training Afghan women. Students have been doing research on nonviolence. He has done Pioneering work on nonviolence in Afghanistan.
Although he could proudly list many accomplishments, he honestly shared the challenges of doing the important work of nonviolence in such a violent country. First, there is a lack of understanding of nonviolence by ordinary people. Also, there is a lack of volunteerism, which seems to be only limited to small villages such as helping a neighbor harvest a crop or build a house, not a culture of service. There is still a lack of academic work on the topic of nonviolence. But the biggest problem is the “invisible enemy.” There continue to be daily bomb explosions and suicide bombings. It’s impossible to know who is doing the bombings. They can’t see the Taliban, who believe if they die they go straight to heaven, encouraging suicides.
He ended by saying, “If you want to make a change, begin with yourself. If we want more peace practitioners and nonviolence activists, we must educate and train more people.”
In addition to his talk with International Relations Graduate Students, Archiwal delivered another presentation to 45 undergraduate students and staff members during NVP425 Peace Psychology on Thursday, November 21.