(MENAFN- Daily Outlook Afghanistan) National unity refers to a particular condition in which all citizens, regardless of their ethnic, racial and religious belongings are considered equal and equally enjoy from national material and immaterial advantages in a political entity. In other word, national unity is the act of joining together and living together under a nondiscriminatory political system in order to achieve national goals and collectively stand against national threats. Therefore, national unity is extremely required for overcoming hard times. For example, if we had a strong unity, we could enter Taliban from a stronger position. Unity promotes cooperation and opens opportunity to excellence. In fact, no nation has reached to peace and prosperity without deep national oneness and national integrity. It was the power of unity that changed the destiny of many war-torn countries both in eastern, western and also European countries. On the whole, there is a wide consensus amongst political thinkers that without national unity, reaching to peace, security and crossing from national crises are not possible. Nevertheless, the issue of national unity has not gone beyond words and slogans in Afghanistan.
So, the main question of this article is why Afghanistan has repeatedly failed to reach national unity? Instead of becoming united it has divided to different unities? Instead of supporting one and other, the inhabitants of this country competed over helping or spying foreigners in most cases. There are different reasons why the national unity has not improved in the country. According to some experts, one of the most important reasons is ethnic and religious plurality, while no nation is comprised of a solitary religious and ethnic group. Today, more than 200 countries are members of the united nation and living with peace but only few of them is formed of a single ethnic and religion group. Therefore, if there was only one ethnic group, still there would be divisions between various branches of the same ethnic groups. If we look at the history of the country, we can face cases that brothers are killed by brothers and or fathers were killed by son. Even, today many of the innocent Pashtun ethnic people are killed by Taliban who also belong to same ethnic group.
Unlike many analysts, the owner of this pen believes that there is a general factor which has impacted everything including unity and state building in the country. This general factor is poverty which rooted in the landlocked and mountainous feature of Afghanistan. Only 5% of Afghanistan is cultivable while incomparable to any countries in the world. The yearly income of each Afghan is around 200$. The natural economic has been around 1/2 %. There is no industry to pave the way for social interactions. As a result, the people either go outside for seeking an alimony or start up their own farm or personal business with no social interaction and social recognition. In larger level, the limited economic resources propel the people towards tough competition and hostility. On the other hand, the economic dependencies to other countries compelled individuals, officials and even ethnic leaders to accept any legitimate or illegitimate demand of foreign countries. The dependency of Taliban to its fiscal supporter is a good example of today's killing of Afghan brother by Afghan brothers to satisfy others. So, if we want to reach stable democracy, we need to rescue from chronic poverty accelerating economic links with neighboring countries and beyond.
The next factor behind the national division is foreign interferences because of geopolitical sensitivity of the country. Given the experience of enemies from resistance of Afghan people against aggressors, they prefer not to enter a face to face war with Afghan people. The least expensive way for them is to use from theory of divide and rule. Therefore, there is nothing fearful for the enemies other than unity of Afghan people. the religion, race, location, language and mass-ignorance have been frequently used by them as basic tools for divisions in the country. Many times, they applied their wicked strategies through a series of deadly attacks on Shia and Sunni peaceful mosques and educational centers but luckily failed to reach their sinister goals. With attacking on the mosques and educational centers with killing dozens of innocent children and worshipers, they also proved that neither they are committed to Islamic teaching and nor to national or international values. In addition to these tools, they extensively started using social media networks as a way of divide and rule in modern era. Therefore, the security system of the country should take necessary measures to neutralize their sinister goal in the future.
The last but not least factor behind the national disunity is social injustice. Unfortunately, we are the heritor of a political culture which has not built on the basis of meritocracy. Thousands of people have been killed due to their ethnic or religious belongings in the past. Thousands of others were deprived of equal rights because of the same reason while it has not completely abolished yet. Therefore, it is highly important that modern Afghanistan believe that social justice is an underlying principle for peaceful and coexistence among a nation. We uphold the principles of social justice when we promote rights of minority groups, gender equality, children and other vulnerable people. Genuinely, we cannot become one unless we remove all barriers that people face because of gender, age, race, ethnicity, religion, culture or disability.
Moreover, we must note that unity is beyond slogans or paternal advices. Unity had not been achieved and will not achieve unless we truly believe in a common and non-discriminatory law that one should love his neighbor as himself. Promotion of this feeling is crucial to lead the nation or the world towards its progress, prosperity and sincere brotherhood.
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