Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Mullah Omar or a carrot?!





By M. Amin Wahidi

Afghanistan is the land of wonders and contradictions; it has people of different ethnicity and there are still notable undiscovered wonders and places each of which could be a wonderful landmark to this country.

Unfortunately it is a harsh truth that nowadays it is hard to find Afghanistan’s name without a negative adjective wherever you hear people talking about it; in corruption we got the worst position in the world, in barbaric killings of innocent civilians by Taliban, vastly violation of human rights especially the women’s rights, drug cultivation, growth of fundamentalism and poverty and so many more problems, there is Afghanistan’s name always on top.

Sometimes I wonder if there is anything in our country that we would feel proud of.
When you talk to the foreign people, and if they are ignorant, as soon as they know you are from Afghanistan, the first thing they say to you is; “yes, I know you are from the land of Osama Bin Laden” without knowing that Osama Bin Laden was from Saudi Arabia not from Afghanistan, or some say, “Oh, you are from the land of Taliban and women in Burqa”.

Some people who know our country for the one-eyed hidden Satan, Mullah Omar they try to keep distance from us, when we say; “we are from Afghanistan.”

The interesting thing for me was that a few months ago, a friend of mine called me,        “A man from the land of carrots”, when he got to know that I was from Afghanistan. He said this in a positive manner, emphasizing on the richness of Afghanistan, for its history, natural resources, wonderful places and landmarks.    

I didn’t know what he meant by “the land of carrots”, but at night, I went to search for it in the internet and I found that carrots of today originated thousands of years ago from the land today called Afghanistan and from there it was brought to Europe and other places of the world, and then I thought wow! I didn’t know about it that far.  

Then a question jingled in my mind, “Isn’t it better if we would be known worldwide as the land of carrots instead of the land of Mullah Omar or the Taliban?!”       
    
 

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