After 10 Years War in Afghanistan - Pax Christi International statement

On 7 October 2001, despite the pleas of Pax Christi International and many others around the world, US and US-allied forces launched airstrikes on Afghanistan and its Taliban government. The US accused the Taliban of harboring Osama Bin Laden, believed to be the mastermind behind powerful and highly symbolic attacks a few weeks earlier on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania. Ten years later, the war in Afghanistan continues,violence with horrific loss of life grips the region and intensified insecurity prevails.

From before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, when US aid to resistance fighters gave birth to the Taliban, through the past ten years of a US led war, the Afghan people have endured unimaginable suffering. Bombings, increasingly from unmanned drones, and open ground warfare; repeated, heartbreaking instances of civilian deaths and injuries from misguided bombs and terrorist attacks; intense inter-tribal conflict; rampant corruption; an economy dependent on trade in opium; and intensified poverty have marked daily life for far too long.

On 20 September 2011, former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, head of the High Peace Council that was to begin negotiations with the Taliban, was killed in a suicide attack at his home in Kabul, casting into disarray hopes for peace talks in the near future and raising fears of ethnic divisions among Afghans fighting the Taliban.

"Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows," Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.

But Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, a small group of young people in Afghanistan's Bamiyan Province with whom Pax Christi USA has been in regular dialogue, make visible another possibility.

Their mission statement says: "We seek to encourage wide-scale, person-to-person relationships towards peace and reconciliation, with a resolute commitment to non- violence, non-killing and the well-being of ALL people."

Pax Christi International urges the international community to heed the wisdom of these young Afghans:

1. End the war in Afghanistan. Despite the setback of President Rabbani's assassination, emphasize diplomacy and human dignity in the pursuit of peace.

2. Invest in Afghanistan's recovery, helping to rebuild its broken economy. Show the people of Afghanistan that the international community, which has spent billions to wage war on an already impoverished country, is also committed to an improved quality of life for all Afghans.

3. Support local Afghan groups dedicated to a more just and stable future; ensure their participation in any talks regarding the future of the Afghan state.

4. Initiate an urgent, high level legal and ethical assessment of targeted assassinations using drones and other highly sophisticated weapons.

5. Monitor the human rights of civilians, in particular the protection of the human rights of women.

Brussels, 5 October 2011

For more information on Pax Christi International, see: www.paxchristi.net/international/eng/index.php To learn more about Afghan Youth Volunteers go to: http://ourjourneytosmile.com