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Interview with Kabir Wahedi
Wednesday, December 16, 2009, 7:07:28 PM | admin
Kabir Wahedi has a plan for Afghanistan. He wants to be able to go to Afghanistan and start a business that will employ some Afghani people and it will grow to employ some more people and it will spread its wings all over and lift the people up on their own accord.
He plans to start slowly with this plan. He would start a small business that would then expand into other small businesses. This plan would start here in America with a board of directors who find and collect the money and he will take this back to Afghanistan. He envisions a business in construction where the requirements of education and skills are not very high. Only about 10% of the Afghan people are literate and you will have to start with this. He envisions a cement company as Afghanistan uses a great deal of cement. He could lease second-hand equipment and transport to get these supplies to Afghanistan. At the time of this interview, Wahedi had not decided on what kind of business to establish.
He already has four member of his group. Afghan Relief Project, and he welcomes people, especiall with the appropriate skills. There have already been several meetings with his members. They meet Monday evenings at 7 P.M. at the Kabobi Afghan Cuisine restaurant.
According to Kabir, the best way to reach the Afghani people is to make their lives easier. Most of them are farmers and all of their children have to do the hard work on the farms. If there was a way to make the farmers’ lives easier, then they wouldn’t need their younger children to do such hard work and would then send them to school. So you start with the people first and then you build the school.
Cold is a persistent problem in Afghanistan. If a child is born in the winter, it has a difficult time surviving. A considerable number of people freeze to death in that country during the winters. The older pattern of building houses had tunnels travelling from the kitchen hearth throughout the rest of the house to carry the heat. Now the houses, although they look grand on the outside, rarely have reliable sources of heat.
Kabir Wahedi was born in Kabul and is one of 10 children. He still has many relatives in Afghanistan and others spread all over the world. He came to this country in 1985.
After his plan has been somewhat accomplished, he envisions a tour for his supporters through Afghanistan, via a safe tour route, so that people can see the results of their comtributions.
After seeing the movie “Rethink Afghanistan” at his restaurant, members of Stand for Peace were saddened by the plight of the Afghan people but our hopes are heightened by Kabir’s plan to do something positive in a way that could spread to a wider arena.
To be placed on the email list of supporters:
Coralayane@comcast.net
Kabir.Wahedi@gmail.com
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Rethink Afghanistan
Wednesday, October 21, 2009, 5:56:36 PM | admin
Members of our group had the privilege of attending one of the first showings of “Rethink Afghanistan” on Monday the 19th at an Afghani restaurant here in Portland. This movie was produced by Glen Greenwald and showed an Afghanistan that we have never seen on our TV screens. I hope you will all have the opportunity to see this movie.
To me it was interesting that all of the people at this showing, people from many groups in the peace movement, had gray hair, except those using Ms. Clairol. The entire audience was white. This has been my experience when partipating with other groups. What does this say about the peace movement? Where is everybody else? Peace is for everybody and where are they?
Why do you think we have this problem and what do you think we should do about it? Where are the young people, where are the others of every race and combination who live in this country? We do have a wide variety of people living in this country.
We hope you will respond and share your ideas and maybe we could find some solutions.
Stand for Peace
