Afghans / Pashtuns in Canada

[Aryob]

Its been a few years that i moved to Canada from Kabul and i have noticed that most Afghans (not Pakhtunkhwa Pashtoons) have kept themselves in their small sub-tribal/provincial groups. In weddings/parties or in any social gathering you'll see Afghans mainly from one province at one time. I've been to kandari gatherings and majarity of the people are kandari and then wardaks and Nangararis. There is so much rivalry among them, so much ignorance and hate that i have NOT seen in any part of Afghanistan i have been. Wardaks only invite wardak people to their gatherings, ningarhari people would only get closer to you if you were ningarhari, if you belong to any other province, you are treated as the "Other Pashtoon" and it goes the same for all people from all provinces. So i guess it has nothing to do with the Afghans/Pashtuns but it has got to do something with the culture here that has been developed.

I remember back in Kabul, i had friends and family friends from every part of Afghanistan and Pakistan and we never addressed people based on their tribe (i would say we'd hardly do that). Generally speaking de afghanistan aw pakhtunkhwa agha sada aw be-taleema dokandar ham da de zi university graduate Afghanano na der aqal aw danish lari. Kedai shi che zama pa khabaro tsok khapa shawi ham wi kho tse wakam, da zama fikr joR shawai dase.

[Ghorzang]

I don't think this issue is only limited to Canada. And, there are several reasons to that - all of them are connected to the fact that among a larger PASHTUN CULTURE, we have tens of smaller local cultures.

1) We might have the same culture but customs and traditions vary among tribes, regions and provinces. We have difference in dialect, food, celebration of weddings and many more such minor differences which at the end of the day would bring a small gap between us.

2) The reason behind that is that we are still a rural community - most of our people are still farmers and their lives are limited to their small rural communities. Anything outside our village is alien to most of us. As we move on and urbanize (obviously educated), these gaps will eventually reduce.

3) Even though these gaps either don't exist or to a large extent have disappeared among the males (boys and men) of our community, it still exists among our females (mothers only). And our women play the biggest role in family relationships. If they don't feel comfortable with your friend's wife, we can't have a family friendship with our friends. And majority of our mothers are still uneducated (or un-urbanized).

I can come over and I can assure you that me and you might have no problem in getting a long with each other and even our fathers might get a long well. But we cannot be so sure about our mothers. And it is our mothers who decide with whom we will have family relations and with whom we won't.

4) As long as we have these sub-cultures (customs & traditions) among us, we will have these gaps between us. We do not really hate each other, we just don't get a long very well with each other. We tend to get along with those whose customs and traditions are the closest to ours. We are from Logar. We can easily make relations with other Logaris because it is easier for us to deal with them. They can easily understand us and we can easily understand them. We have the same wedding customs as other Logaris. At the same time, we are more comfortable with Maidanis from Wardak than we are with Qandaharis. If we were to pick between them, we would go for Maidanis. These are just examples and that is how we Afghans operate.


5) Still, we don't have that big of a problem here in our city compare to Toronto. In Toronto we have larger communities of people from different provinces. Here in our city, we have a mixture of everybody. Our family friends are from all over Afghanistan - Sulaimankhels from shamali area, 3 Laghmani families, 2 Mazari families, 1 Kabuli family, 1 Maidani family, 5/6 Nangarhari families, 1 Tagabi family from Parwan and so on. Don't have anybody from the south and Paktia region as there aren't many in here.

We have a good mixture in here. And the main reason behind that is we don't have access to larger regional communities in here. As the number of families from certain regions/provinces increase, they would alienate themselves from the rest. It is very typical. People cannot maintain relation with everybody. They tend to go for those who are closest to them.

Hope I make sense. Don't blame me if I don't, it is 3 am.

[Aryob]

Ghorzanga you are right about all the points that you mentioned. thats how it should be atleast. Now i'm not too sure about men getting along quiet well than women, i havent given a thought yet. I understand that we have traditions and customs that can be found in certain kalai or region or sub-tribes and that should not create barriers among us. I believe all Pashtuns are the same no matter where they come from, Afghanistan or Pakistan, Kabul or wardak or logar or paktia, pekhawar or quetta or zhob or teerah. I have recently changed my ideology from ONE GRAND UNITED AFGHANISTAN for everyone to accept the existence of Afghanistan and Pakistan and believe in a "Virtual Pakhtunistan". To me it doesn't matter if Paktia wins the Afghan national cricket series or Kabul. A friend of mine text me couple days ago and said "Mubarak sha stase Paktia wagatala". Now that bothers me a lot. Why do you see me as Paktiawal and why do you say "Sta se", paktia sta ham ne da?

Anyways, what i was trying to criticize about Afghans in Toronto is that they have isolated themselves in their small sub-groups where they are weak and vulnerable and outside of Canada people don't even know about their agenda and goals. "Afghan Association" is run by one group (ie Kandahar even though the head is Hazara) and rest of us are trying isolate them, criticize them for the fact that they are kandarian not because they are doing something wrong. So then we've small sub-groups by the name of Nangarhar shura and wardak something.

I'm sorry that i'm keep mentioning these three provinces over and over but that's what i've seen so far. We have a big community primarily belonging to these three provinces and we don't have a big population from other provinces to be able to have one tiny association having hujray majlis all the time instead of actually working on the development of the Afghan community or Pashto language or new immigrants or to create businesses for them just like the Hazaras and Ismaelis are good at that.

Like i said i come from Pekhawar and Kabul where we used to make association with people with whom our ideology met not because where they come from.