9/11 commemorations offer hope for peace — in Afghanistan & across religious lines

Kathleen Foster, a documentary filmmaker who produced Afghan Women: A History of Struggle, and two women interviewed in the film, Fahima Vorgetts and Fawzia Afzal Khan, were visibly frustrated last Friday night, September 11, 2009. The three women, along with much of the audience, expressed their emotions at the reminder of how much worse conditions are in Afghanistan today than prior to the invasion of United States and NATO forces — and the earlier, long proxy war between the Soviet Union and the United States, fought with “Afghan blood” — as the film says. The film was shown at Nyack, NY headquarters of the Fellowship of Reconciliation as the launch of the second season of the Phil Greenspan Film Series, hosted monthly by the Hudson Valley FOR chapter (HVFOR). The film and discussion following was moderated by Alan Levin, a local member/coordinator of HVFOR. The film opens a window into a 20th-century Afghanistan that was making significant progress in education, health, and economy — including integration of women in the professions and politics — before the country was “bombed back in to the stone age,” in the words of Montclair State University Professor Afzal Khan. The evening was a reminder that America is more than simply complicit in the difficulties, but rather has orchestrated the outcome that we now argue we must restore. Fahima Vorgetts traced through many years of progressive work on women’s issues in her home country of Afghanistan. She now works to build schools and hospitals by selling rugs and other artwork by Afghan women, from her home in West Virginia. She argues that the $2 billion-a-month bill for the current war in Afghanistan would be much better spent on projects like hers which expand literacy, deliver health care, provide micro-lending support to women entrepreneurs, and empower women to engage in community and nation-building on their own behalf. Vorgetts has been recognized both with Anne Arundel Peace Action Organization Award in 2002 and the Human Rights Community Award by the U.N. Association of the National Capitol Area in 2003. The evening opened with a minute of silence following a candle lit in memory of those who have lost their lives around the world as a result of the events of September 11, 2001. The candle lighting was also in conjunction with the vigil conducted in Washington, D.C. in Lafayette Park, organized by Samina Faheem Sundas of American Muslim Voice (see coverage in Fox News and in the Washington Post, including the last four photographs of its photo gallery), and in reflection on the work of Rev. Rita Nakashima Brock of Faith Voices for the Common Good, which called for September 12th to be a day celebrating an Axis of Friendship in the world which reframes our thoughts around Iran and other nations demonized by Western political leaders in recent years.