Men are born with inherent and inalienable rights, especially the rights to life, liberty and estate. The discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, belief, etc. is deprecated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and also in the Constitution of Afghanistan. Article 1 of UDHR asserts, “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.”
Moreover, the Constitution of Afghanistan states in article 22 as, “Any kind of discrimination and distinction between citizens of Afghanistan shall be forbidden.
The citizens of Afghanistan, man and woman, have equal rights and duties before the law.”
The soul of International Instruments of Human Rights and the Constitution of Afghanistan emphasize on men’s equal rights and dignity without any sorts of discrimination. To put it succinctly, men are equal in the eye of law and states are obliged to treat the citizens equally and protect their basic rights. Human rights are described as a sociological pattern of rule setting. These approaches include the notion that individuals in a society accept rules from legitimate authority in exchange for security and economic advantage – a social contract.
However, the appalling reports about racial discrimination and sectarian violence depict the flagrant violation of human rights. Ethnocentrism, which roots in men’s egotistic ideology and megalomania, rules the country despite the Afghanistan’s democratic system of government. As a result, national and international media reported that unknown armed men abducted 31 Hazaras from Shah Joy district of Zabul when the passengers were traveling on the Kabul-Kandahar highway and later the hostages were transferred to Khak Afghan district of Zabul. The negotiations between the elders of Zabul and the alleged abductors were proved abortive. Likewise, a recent report says that six more passengers from Hazara ethnic minority have been abducted by armed masked men on the Herat-Farah highway, west Afghanistan on last Monday.
The appalling incidents have stoked a sense of great worry and raised public concerns. The Ulema Council has denounced the incident of abducting 31 passengers in harsh tone and called it an anti-Islamic move. Moreover, thousands of people, in Kabul and Ghazni demonstrations, urged the government to take serious steps in releasing the hostages. The officials’ lax approach towards this issue has roused the citizens’ anger. Thus, fingers are pointed at the officials for being indifferent to the case.
It appears that religious cults intend to sow the seeds of discord among Afghan nation through involving in sectarian acts. In another item, either the Taliban militants or outsiders such as Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (ISIL), who are feared to have infiltrated the country, try a new strategy in Afghanistan to see the results and reactions.
Sectarian acts add insult to the injury, caused by historical conflagrations and civil wars. Afghans were burning amidst war and violence more than three decades and suffered heavy losses and great havoc. Within the blazing flames of sectarianism, a stream of blood of the hapless nation, tinged with ignorance and baseless animosity, flowed relentlessly. The pages of our history are colored with the blood of innocent individuals who easily fell prey to sectarian violence. Will the history repeats itself in the country?
Our country is not doomed to be the hotbed of religious ideologies or political strife. There are fears that the militants, involved in political turbulence and sectarian violence, are mercenaries rather than ideologues. In short, it is believed that the insurgents are vehicles for the objectives of political masterminds who are planning behind the scene.
Giving a lip service to democracy and human rights’ issue or peace negotiation will not be a panacea for the wounded hearts of Afghan nation. It is strongly believed that peace platitude will bear no fruit as ever and it is just a political chicanery. Under the aegis of negotiation, the militants seek to gain their sinister goals – as they did within the last decade. As a result, the Afghan ex-president Hamid Karzai released the militants’ dangerous prisoners to pave the way for peace negotiation but the attempts remained abortive.
After a decade of futile attempts to bring the Taliban to the table of negotiation, the prospect of a negotiated deal, not surprisingly, has many critics, particularly among those whose family members have been killed or maimed in the conflict. Some worry that the ragtag militants who have committed atrocities could escape punishment under the guise of negotiation. Others warn that even if the militants were to nominally disband, its factions would continue to carry on kidnapping and trafficking narcotic drugs and so on.
Let us hope that the officials will learn from the past so as not to re-fall for the bogus claims of the militants. After all, the government has to react strongly against the militancy and sectarian violence so as to prevent from insecurity.