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Wednesday, November 19, 2014

The DearNeighbour
Peace Challenge

Crazy
maybe
but so sweet

three-minute film urging people to

When it's really quiet inside me I
converse with each other to
can hear you as well as I can hear
break animosity has gone viral.
myself.
And so has the hashtag
We need to pause to see who
#DearNeighbour and 'velfies'
we truly are - a reflection of each
video selfies shared by Indiother. And if you do pause to think
ans and Pakistanis with goodand write back, every word of yours
will messages for each other,
will help in breaking a very old brick
expressing love, friendship
in a very old wall, he says, signing
and the desire to visit each
off Your friend, DearNeighbour.
other's countries.
His words struck a chord across
It started with a video
the border. Seventeen-year old
titled 'Pause' created
Khadija Akhtar in Karachi was so
by Ram Subramanian
moved by the video that she spontaof the Handloom Picneously recorded a short message,
ture Company, shared on November
barely 30 seconds long, and shared
5 by The Logical Indian, an online
it.
community that aims to highlight soAddressing DearNeighbour and
cial issues that are sidelined by the
starting with a salam, she asserts
traditional media.
that this thick wall of hatred is not
In the video, a young man sits
going to last longer than the time we
writing a letter to Iqbal Bhai. As he
realize we are
starts to read
not each other's
it out, the risenemy just being din of
cause someone
o u t s i d e
said so.
noises and
There lits l o g a n s
tle bit of you
nearly drowns
left in me and
out his voice
the little bit of
and he falters
me left in
and drops his
you. And this
pen. As he
little bit is
bends down to
forever going
pick it up, his
to light the
movement behope
for
comes extreme
peace, she
slow motion,
adds, signwhile his inner
ing off with
self
remains
regards, A
se
on
sp
re
s
spontaneou
A
seated.
Logical
Pak:
ar
ht
Ak
ija
Khad
In the hush that
istani.
follows as the man continues his
The exchange encouraged others
slow movement to pick up the pen,
to join in and create their own
the seated figure continues talking.
'velfies' that The Logical Indian fea-

By Beena Sarwar

A velfie movement
is sweeping social
media as Indians
and Pakistanis
share video
messages for
peace. Are the
politicians listening?

Some light in these dark times

Meesha Shafi's peace message

hen asked her views on

Aman ki Asha, popular
singer and actor Meesha Shafi said, I love all what
Aman ki Asha stands for. Some
light in these dark times.
Our heritage, our climate,
the smell of the earth when it's
about to rain, the taste of our
fruits, the foliage around us, the
music we share, the stories we
hear from our grandparents are
all the same.
We can never separate our
cultures, they are born of the
same mother. As an artist especially, I feel an extra responsibility towards spreading peace and
harmony because music is a Meesha Shafi: I love what
universal language. It simply Aman ki Asha stands for
does not recognize boundaries.
Her second child, a son born this year, is named Kazimir
which means Bringer of peace

iyush Badhani, a
young IT professional working
with Apple in
California, recently hit
upon an unusual way of
reaching out to his online friends in Karachi.
For some time now,
during discussions over
Rakhi, Diwali, even
New Year and his own
birthday, he had been
promising to send
mithai (sweetmeats)
to them. On Sunday,
November 9, he finally
fulfilled his promise.
He got a friend in
Karachi to talk to a
popular mithai shop,
Dacca Sweets. Nothing
online or through phone here.
Those shop guys don't even
pick up the phone!
He left an open invitation in
a closed Facebook forum, and
gave a tentative count to the
sweets shop, sending money

Pause, hush: listen to your inner voice

tured on its popular Facebook Page.
Then Khadija Akhtar and Vikash
Rathi from Pakistan contacted Ram
Subramanian and suggested starting
a page for DearNeighbour, and getting people who share their videos to
nominate two friends to do the same
a DearNeighbour Peace Challenge along the lines of the ALS icebucket challenge.
The new page on Facebook is
DearNeighbour Movement: We believe that if we speak with each
other (through videos) in an honest
way then maybe one day we will
stop looking at each other as enemies. It's a big dream but we believe
this is a possibility.
We are not an organization
just few people who connected trying to show the world that peace is
possible if we connect with each

Education: a common cause

ecause every
child has the
right to an
education was one
of the placard slogans that guests
could
be
photographed with at
the Pratham annual
fundraising gala in
Boston this year.
Hollywood-Bollywood star
Omi
Vaidya emceed the
event. A Pratham
ambassador, he is Omi Vaidya: good causes
also a staunch supporter of peace between India and Pakistan.
Pratham, a literacy NGO that started out in a Mumbai
slum in 1994, runs the Annual Status of Education Report
(ACER) that measures learning levels.
It speaks for the common problem that exists in both
countries that educationists in Pakistan are also using
ACER. Several Pakistanis were also present at the Pratham
fundraiser.

other at a human level.

Their mission: To make every Indian and Pakistani feel only love, respect and friendship for each other.
The Peace Challenge is generating an enthusiastic response on both
sides of the border, with participants
ranging from children to young people to the elderly.
Meanwhile, Zee Zindagi channel's
broadcast of Pakistani television serials is also having a huge impact,
with the characters in the serials
doing much to humanise Pakistan
for the Indian audiences, as one
journalist put it.
In the end, that is what it boils
down to: seeing each other as
human beings first, regardless of religion, nationality or any other consideration.
Are the governments listening?

Aman Chaupal via video

n Aaghaz-e-Dosti's
Twelfth Aman Chaupal, video conferencing was used to connect Indians and
Pakistanis. Youth activists and the Pakistan
team of Aaghaz-e-Dosti
(Start of Friendship)
with convenor Aliya
Harir and Syed Zeeshan Ali Shah, inter- Aaghaz-e-Dosti's Aliya and Zeeshan:
acted with about a hun- dialogue is key
dred students and
faculty members from Headstart School, Bangalore during the
students' educational trip in Delhi arranged by renowned heritage artist Vikram Kalra.
The Aman Chaupals are a series of interactive cross-border
meetings initiated by Aaghaz-e-Dosti, an Indo-Pak peace movement started by The Catalyst, Pakistan and Mission Bhartiyam,
India, aimed at shattering stereotypes and promoting understanding both both sides. At the end of a lively question-answer
session, the Bangalore students sang a song for the youth activists of Pakistan Lab pe aati hai dua by Allama Iqbal, the
national poet of Pakistan.

Piyush Badhani:
Sharing the joy
through Western Union to the
friend in Karachi, who paid the
mithai shop.
Two
Dacca
Sweets
branches - in Bahadurabad,
and Gulshan-e-Iqbal participated in the initiative, distributing Sandes mithai for
free to anyone who walked in
and asked for Diwali mithai
from Piyush.
If Piyush had been in India,
they would have had to find
another way to transfer the
money to Pakistan. Until
banks from each country open
their branches on the other
side as is being planned, there
are no easy options.
His friend made the payment, having got the money
from Piyush via Western
Union. His friend made the

Diwali mithai:
A chowkidar in Karachi
payment, having got the
money from Piyush via Western Union.There was an initial
hiccup. Due to some miscommunication the mithai shop
just gave away the
sweets to the first hundred people who walked
in, which was a good
thing, but I didn't know. It
happened before I could
announce it to my
friends, says Piyush.
I chose to do it this
way since it doesn't involve
anyone having to share
their address. Dukaan
mein jao, mithai kha ke
aao (go to the shop, eat your
mithai) if you or your
friends are in Karachi.
All kinds of people, including a local cricket team,
got mithai from Piyush.
Considering the very few
people I know there, it went
well and was quite good, he
said happily.
Piyush grew up in a city
near Mumbai, India. He had
never met any Pakistanis until
going to the USA in 2010, although he had several interactions with Pakistanis on online
forums even before that.
His Diwali sweets gesture
evoked a warm acknowledgement from a friend's parents in
Karachi:
This is crazy, they said in
an audio file she sent to
Piyush.
Thank you so much for arranging this, this is a little unbelievable and again, crazy. We
all had those sweets and loved
them. Aapko bhi khushiyaan
mubaarak hon.
Beena Sarwar

Your enemy is my enemy

By Dr. Hanif-ur-Rahman
and Jamshed Khan
he British Colonial government safely retreated after
partitioning the Indian subcontinent in August 1947
but the legacy of disputes in
the region they left behind
still linger. Kashmir and the Durand Line,
in particular, continue to create hurdles
between India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
All the three countries have a history of
hostility due to these unresolved problems jeopardising regional security and
economic integration.
The issue of Kashmir has led to fullfledged wars between Indian and Pakistan. The Afghan government also has
more often than not blamed Pakistan for
infiltrating Afghanistan to have clout
against India and to keep the issue of the
Durand Line at bay.
Since the Afghan War, Pakistan has
tried to have a Pakhtun government in
Afghanistan. However, even the Taliban,
considered to be Pakistan's boys, refused
to recognise the Durand Line as an international boundary. If history is anything
to go by these proxies instead of serving
the interests of their masters have proved
to be a Frankenstein's monster, creating
problems for all three states and the entire region in the forms of militancy and
terrorism.
In this context, Pakistan's Chief of
Army staff (COAS) General Raheel

The way forward for Afghanistan, Pakistan and India is a comprehensive approach and serious
regional commitment, possible only if all three countries shed their rivalries and work together

A classroom in Afghanistan: student exchanges can go a long way towards reducing

misconceptions
Sharif's recent visit to Afghanistan is a
welcome gesture. Certainly if there is any
sincerity, the visit might assuage the
decades long acrimony between the two
countries arising from the fallout of the
war on terror.
A report published by US Pentagon
has alleged that Pakistan plays a negative
role by supporting proxies in Afghanistan
and India. In its report running into over
100 pages, the Pentagon states: Such
groups continue to act as the primary irritant in Afghan-Pakistan bilateral relations.

THE FIRST STEP

LET US KNOW WHAT YOU THINK

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Email: amankiasha@janggroup.com.pk
Fax: +92-21-3241-8343
Post: aman ki asha c/o The News,
I.I. Chundrigar Road, Karachi

The report added fuel to the fire given

Pakistan's fragile ties with both
Afghanistan and Indian historically, as
well as in recent times. Afghanistan and
Pakistan both allege that the other harbours militants on their respective soil.
Similarly Pakistan's relations with its
eastern neighbor India are also tense due
to ongoing cross-border firing along the
Line of Control and Working Boundary.
Despite a commonality of interests between Pakistan and Afghanistan, their bilateral relations have often been sour,
right from the onset of Pakistan's emer-

gence in 1947. The casus belli that hurt

their relations was the utopian concept of
Pakhtunistan that Afghanistan supported.
Afghanistan also declared the Durand
Line, drawn in 1893, null and void and
claiming the Pakhtunistan areas as its
own. This and other factors resulted in
Afghanistan's tilt toward the then Soviet
Union, and Pakistan leaning towards
USA. The issue contributed to the arrival
of Soviet forces in Afghanistan in December 1979.
The fallout of that interference and
subsequent events are now part of
Afghan and world history. However, the
saga still continues. The emergence of
Taliban in 1994 and al-Qaeda and
Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in 2007
are the outcome of that mistaken notion
called Pakhtunistan. The war on terror
by default is an extension of the acrimonious relationship between the two
states. Both countries have suffered
greatly due to their misguided policies in
the past.
Pakistan drafted the faulty theory of
strategic depth to counter Afghanistan
and Indian influence in the region. Hardly
a day goes by without some suicide
bombing or other untoward incident in
both Pakistan and Afghanistan and potential threat to India's security.
To reach a win-win situation all three
countries need to shun the Kautylian policy that the enemy of one is the friend of
other. Rather, they need to embrace the
concept that the enemy of one is the
enemy of the other. For this they need to

design a joint mechanism to defeat the

common enemy.
Afghanistan must assure Pakistan that
its soil will not be used by any states or
organisations inimical to Pakistan's interests. Similarly Pakistan needs to devise a
strategy that assuages Afghanistan's fears
and concerns vis-a-vis Pakistan.
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto once remarked

Trucks at Wagah border: The volume of

trade must increase (PTI photo)
that no two countries in the world share
so much in common as Pakistan and
Afghanistan. His daughter Benazir famously said that there is an Indian in
every Pakistani, and a Pakistani in every
Indian.
The way forward will be a comprehen-

sive approach and serious regional commitment that can only be achieved if all
three countries shed their rivalries and
work collectively. The best strategy for
both Pakistan and Afghanistan is to declare each other as sister countries.
The volume of trade must increase. In
the field of education Pakistan needs to
accommodate more Afghan students in
Pakistani colleges and universities. In the
post drawdown of international forces
Pakistan, India and Afghanistan must
strive for a shining and bright future. All
stakeholders must take the war on terror to a logical conclusion.
All three countries must cooperate to
tackle the problem of militancy and terrorism through a cohesive strategy for
the future of a peaceful South Asia, Central Asia and the entire region. Economic
cooperation should increase among these
three countries and other countries in the
region especially China. This region has a
special importance and the potential to
serve as a trade nucleus for the South
Asian countries and also for the energy
rich Central Asia.
Dr.Hanif-ur-Rehman recently completed his PhD in History from Quaidi-Azam University, Islamabad and
works as a Lecturer in H/9 College Islamabad. Jamshed Khan is a PhD
Scholar at the Department of History,
Quaid-i-Azam University Islamabad,
currently a Visiting Research Student
at the School of Oriental and African
Studies, University of London

A peace initiative whose time has come...

Destination Peace: A commitment by the Jang Group, Geo and The Times of India Group to
create an enabling environment that brings the people of Pakistan and India closer together,
contributing to genuine and durable peace with honour between our countries.