Students Oppose Re-naming University to Ustad Rabbani University

[ډګروال]

Students Protest Rabbani University Name Change
Sunday, 23 September 2012 20:01
Written by Saleha Soadat


University students in Kabul protested Sunday against the change of their university's name to Martyr of Peace Burhanuddin Rabbani University, saying the name is controversial.

On the first anniversary of Burhanuddin Rabbani's assassination last week, the Council of Ministers announced it was renaming Polytechnic University Road and the Education University after him for the peaceful efforts he had accomplished.

However, students argued that Rabbani's legacy has raised political questions.

"If they really want to appreciate the legacy of all these martyrs they should build a new university and name that after them," one student said.

They warned that if the original name is not restored to the road and the university, they will stage a much larger and less peaceful demonstration.

"We grew up in a generation of war, fire. Instead of a pen in our hand, we grew up with a rocket," a student warned.

"We don't want this action imposed on us and we will fight until out last breath against this," another student told TOLOnews.

Meanwhile, MP Ramazan Bashar Dost asked the students not to act in violence during the demonstrations, respecting the Afghanistan's Constitution.

Rabbani was assassinated on September 19 2011 by a Taliban suicide bomber posing as a peace envoy. He was head of the Afghan High Peace Council at the time, and has served as the country's President.

[ډګروال]

Students Continue Protest Over Rabbani University Name
Tuesday, 25 September 2012 19:41
Last Updated on Tuesday, 25 September 2012 20:38
Written by Milad Sekandary



Students of Kabul's Education University continued their protest Tuesday against changing their university's name to Martyr of Peace Burhanuddin Rabbani.

The students claim that the name change has promoted conflict among students from different regions of Afghanistan and that teachers at the university have also resigned over the change.

Students called for the Afghan parliament to intervene.

"I want the House of Representatives to respect our demands and intervene," one protestor said.

"We want the government to respect the rights of its citizens. I clearly remember that President [Hamid] Karzai once said that universities are places of learning, not the place to do politics," another protestor told TOLOnews.

The students said their protest would continue until their demand is met.

On the one-year anniversary of Burhanuddin Rabbani's assassination last week, the Council of Ministers announced it was renaming Polytechnic University Road and the Education University after him for his peace efforts.

Rabbani was assassinated September 19 2011 by a Taliban suicide bomber posing as a peace envoy. He was head of the Afghan High Peace Council at the time, and has served as Afghanistan's President.

tolonews.com

[ډګروال]

Students Block Parliament to Protest Rabbani University
Saturday, 29 September 2012 19:53
Last Updated on Sunday, 30 September 2012 11:17
Written by Saleha Soadat


University students in Kabul began their sixth day of protest over the renaming of one of the Afghan capital's universities after former Afghan President and Jihadi leader Burhanuddin Rabbani.

Starting from 7:00AM, more than 300 students blocked the entrance to Parliament on Saturday to prevent lawmakers from entering and force them to reconsider changing the names of the Education and Training University and Polytechnic Road to Martyr of Peace Burhanuddin Rabbani.

The first day of protesting took place on the campus of the Education University last Sunday after President Hamid Karzai announced the renaming to honour the first anniversary of the death of Rabbani on September 20, killed by a suicide bomber posing as a Taliban peace emissary.

Rabbani was Afghanistan's highest peace envoy at the time, chairing the High Peace Council.

Protestors have said during the week that they reject the change because Rabbani was a controversial political figure and students do not want to study under his name.

They carried placards reading slogans such as "We are ready to continue under the name of Education and Training University."

One of the students told TOLOnews that little study has been done since Karzai announced the name change.

"In the past two weeks, we haven't studied. Who will give us the answer? The students do not want to be involved in shameless political games of leaders," he said.

Other students said some of the MPs physically threatened the protesters and one vehicle belonging to a lawmaker hit demonstrators, but this could not be verified.

Herat MP Qazi Nazir Ahmad Hanafi told TOLOnews that "the protesters were blocking the way when my car was entering in Parliament and starting punching on the mirrors. But I am not complaining about it."

Kabul MP Shukria Barikzai appeared to agree with the students' demands.

"Why is the government doing this? The government knows that the people of Afghanistan have very bitter memories from the Jihadi and political leaders of the past four decades," she said.

The protesters threatened that if Karzai does not withdraw Rabbani from the university's name, they will demonstrate using violence and the President will be responsible for it.

[Friend]

Who do you think these students are ? I mean which group they are from ?

[ډګروال]

Who do you think these students are ? I mean which group they are from ?

majority of the protesters are pashtuns and hazaras.

[ډګروال]

good read


Students Oppose Re-naming University after Slain Ex-President
posted: 30-09-2012 by: Kate Clark

It is now a week since students at the University of Education began protesting over President Karzai’s decision to change its name to the Ustad (Professor) Burhanuddin Rabbani University. On Saturday, they managed to block MPs – and one of AAN’s researchers - from getting into parliament. The students have been cautiously – and rather politely - making their anger felt, while trying to avoid inflaming supporters of the former president, former head of the High Peace Council and leader of the mujahedin party, Jamiat-e Islami, who was killed a year ago by an assassin posing as a peace envoy from the Taleban. As AAN senior analyst, Kate Clark writes, who gets to name whom as hero – or villain – is a clear assertion of power and the students have therefore stepped into a highly contentious area.


After the Taleban were dislodged from power, Kabul, like other towns and cities, saw a peppering of new names for its streets and roundabouts; the Great Massud Road, Martyr (shahid) Abdul Haq Square and Martyr Mazari Square were all named for the fallen leaders of mujahedin factions who came out on the winning side in 2001.

Latterly, supporters of a leader from the other side, Dr Najibullah, have been petitioning to have Ariana Square in the centre of Kabul re-named in his honour. As reported by a correspondent of Ariana News, a Kabul-based agency, the supporters said Dr Najib had been, ‘the last recognized communist president who defended Independence and Integrity of Afghan land and lost his life because of encroachment and external interference.’ (see here and here). Fondly remembered by many Kaulis as a strong leader who presided over a secure, liberal and relatively non-corrupt capital city, other Afghans recall him as the head of the greatly feared PDPA intelligence agency, the KhAD, and his role in the Soviet-supported regime which laid waste to villages and lands associated with the mujahedin. Dr Najib, as he was called for short, and his brother Shahpur Ahmadzai were killed by the Taleban – or their Pakistani allies – in the UN compound where they had found refuge for the previous four years. Their mutilated bodies were hung in Ariana Square – a place where guard towers now watch over the CIA’s Afghan headquarters in the old Ariana Hotel.

While it is highly unlikely that Dr Najib will make it onto the maps of Kabul anytime soon, one of the more recent ‘martyrs’ of Afghanistan’s long war, Ustad Rabbani, has done so. On the first anniversary of his assassination, President Hamed Karzai announced to the nation that Kandahar airport, the road from the Polytechnic to Qargha Lake in Kabul and the University of Education (pohantun-e ta’alim wa tarbia), also in the capital, would all be re-named in his honour. This tribute to the man now referred to in official discourse as the ‘Martyr of Peace’, for his role heading the High Peace Council and dying while trying to foster negotiations with the Taleban, has sparked daily demonstrations by students and the effective closure of the University of Education. On Saturday, some 300 of them also managed to close the parliament.

The Afghan media was dominated by panegyrics to the former president after the first anniversary of his death(1), but slowly, reports of the student protests made their way into the news, first on day one of the protests (22 September) on Tolo TV, then Ariana and Shamshad channels and finally, some heavily sanitised mentions even in the state-owned media. The students are having to pick their way through a political minefield – how to show their outrage without outraging Rabbani-supporters. They hedge their anger around with compliments to Rabbani and try to present their demand to have his name removed from the signboard of their college in principled, ethnically inclusive terms. One of the organisers, who asked not to be named, told AAN that:

If today, this university is named after Ustad Rabbani, the Martyr of Peace, other universities will take the names of other leaders. This is a divisive policy. Why? Because they were mainly jihadi and ethnic leaders, so they may be heroes for their own ethnic group, but not for other groups – for them, a particular person may not be a hero, but a killer. If this college carries Ustad Rabbani’s name, maybe non-Tajiks will not chose to study here and maybe too many Tajiks will want to come here, so it will become a sort of ethnic university and non-Tajiks will be depressed and carry their grudge elsewhere. Of course Ustad Rabbani was a great person and we respect him, but in Afghanistan, there are many people who don’t think like this.

And he reiterated:

We don’t have a [particular] problem with Ustad Rabbani. If the name of any ethnic or party leader had been put on this university, we would have raised our voices. We are against what might happen in the future, not against any individuals.

Another student came closer to more direct criticism, but again in carefully couched terms:

Under Rabbani’s leadership, Kabulis faced serious problems, the civil war, the loss of many people’s lives. I respect Rabbani as a religious scholar, but I’m not happy to see his name on the University of Education.

The demonstrations have been peaceful, polite and determined. On Saturday, the students linking arms blocked both entrances to parliament, telling MPs and others very respectfully that they could not get in. Police not only allowed the demonstration, but when anyone tried to force their way in, politely asked them to go away.

A majority of the protestors are Hazaras and Pashtuns – ie not from Rabbani’s ethnic group - but they have been trying to stress their all-Afghan credentials:

We are a national (melli) group and we are independent and we think it is the responsibility of the university students to show what is wrong in Afghanistan. The name change was done at night… it was only in the morning, we found out, so we were very emotional and upset. The only thing we could do was organise, getting those who were angry to demonstrate peacefully. If we hadn’t, we would have had a lot of violence among the students. And now, we are trying to meet the relevant authorities.

Representatives of the students have met the Wolesi Jirga speaker, Abdul Rauf Ibrahimi, who promised to raise the issue with the president (who has been in New York for the UN General Assembly). The students said a delegation was to meet Mr Karzai on Monday – although this has not been confirmed by his office. Now the deed is done, it may be politically difficult for Karzai to reverse the name change without upsetting supporters of Rabbani, especially those from his powerful Jamiat party. In hindsight, the original decision looks ill-thought out and badly-implemented, especially not involving students or staff but instead presenting them with a fait accompli.

Most of the protesting students were barely born when Rabbani became president and yet that era still has resonance in Kabul – and elsewhere. It was the civil war (1992-1996), when a third of the city was left in ruins and tens of thousands of people were killed in internecine mujahedin fighting. During those years, academic institutions, like other government buildings, became part of the war landscape. The university and polytechnic were, for most of the time, in no-man’s land.(2) The University of Education, then known as the Social Sciences Institute,(3) was bloodily fought over. Early on in the war, it was taken over as the headquarters of Hezb-e Wahdat, itself a committer of war crimes and atrocities. Then in 1993, government forces – Ittihad-e Islami and Jamiat/Shura-ye Nazar - pushed Wahdat out and killed around 700 civilians in the neighbouring area of Afshar.

This unhappy phase of Kabul’s history, when state, armed forces and city split on ethnic and factional lines, is something which the students have been careful not to refer to too specifically, but it clearly lies behind their concerns and protests. They have shown a scrupulousness about not singling out Rabbani’s role as head of the fragmenting state and leader of one of the main warring factions at that time; indeed singling him out would be unfair.(4) For Rabbani’s followers, of course, it is his role in the resistance to the Soviet occupation and the Taleban which is remembered.

Who gets to name the living and the dead as heroes or villains is part of what winning a war is about, part of the way the new rulers try to assert their hegemony over history and geography. In Afghanistan, it is difficult and dangerous to speak ill of others’ heroes, especially if they consider them to be martyrs. By couching their unhappiness in terms of their fear of history repeating itself, of the danger of dabbling in Afghanistan’s murky ethnic waters, the student protestors have tried to assert – very politely and respectfully – that they wish their institution to remain neutral.


(1) Rabbani was killed ten years and ten days after the assassination of his chief commander, Ahmad Shah Massud, and therefore the commemoration of his death came within the already officially designated Martyrs’ Week. The speeches and articles in praise of Rabbani were many. To give you a flavour, here are a couple of examples, both taken from BBC Monitoring, for 19 September 2012:

From 29 Sonbola [19 September] till 4 Mizan [26 September] is named as the week of peace and national unity on the occasion of the heart-rending martyrdom of martyr to peace, Professor Burhanoddin Rabbani, leader of jihad and resistance of the people, former president and chairman of the High Peace Council... No doubt, that it was the sacrifices of the martyrs that today our country is on the path of peace and freedom and that our people live in peace and prosperity. (Anis)

A year has passed since the heart-rending martyrdom of the leader of jihad resistance and peace in Afghanistan... (Mandegar)

(2) Both were occupied at times by Wahdat forces, but neither was as significant as the Social Sciences Institute/University of Education.

(3) It was established during the PDPA regimes, along a Soviet model, and the name change came after 2001. The university currently has six faculties 1) Linguistics (languages); 2 Social Sciences (history, sociology, Islamic culture and sciences, geography); 3 Natural Sciences, 4. Vocational Training (psychology, education); 5. Specialized Training (three different departments of psychology); 6 Sports (tarbiat-e badani).

(4) Anyone wanting to read an account of this phase of the war and the crimes committed by all sides, see here and here.

[Kushan Prince]

Hope this doesn't happen.

[abassinafghan]

Who do you think these students are ? I mean which group they are from ?

are you serious daal punjabo boy ?

[khushal]

the funny thing is they call him martyr of peace

[randolph85]

rabbani was not the worst of the worst in afg but his repuation was low enough that this institution should not be named after him. it is a place of knowledge, not politics, i would be opposed to naming it after any one man, even abdali.

[ډګروال]

rabbani was not the worst of the worst in afg but his repuation was low enough that this institution should not be named after him. it is a place of knowledge, not politics, i would be opposed to naming it after any one man, even abdali.

wow you are stealth arent you.
so now you are comparing abdali to rabbani.

oh offcourse you fools believe abdali was a rapist.

[randolph85]

wow you are stealth arent you.
so now you are comparing abdali to rabbani.

oh offcourse you fools believe abdali was a rapist.

quit acting like an idiot. i am equating 2 figures who's worth and works are used for political purposes today. i don't want an institution of learning to be named after political figures, its not hard to understand. this has nothing to do with comparisons.

and yes, abdalis men probably raped indian women. abdali was still a great man but this was the world in that time. get over it. afghans rape their own people when they are drunk with power, so you think they wouldn't of done the same to others 250 yrs ago?

[ډګروال]

quit acting like an idiot. i am equating 2 figures who's worth and works are used for political purposes today. i don't want an institution of learning to be named after political figures, its not hard to understand. this has nothing to do with comparisons.

and yes, abdalis men probably raped indian women. abdali was still a great man but this was the world in that time. get over it. afghans rape their own people when they are drunk with power, so you think they wouldn't of done the same to others 250 yrs ago?

thats your opinion.

the reason here is that rabani isnt worth it not "oh lets not name it after a political figure."

Ahmad Shah Abdali is one of our great historical figure along with mirwais neeka ,sher shah suri, etc.
we can name our universities after them,there is nothing wrong with that.
your comparison is wrong,so just because we dont want a university named after a warlord we should name one after an Afghan emperor and father of the nation as well?

you have zero proof that Ahmad Shah Abdali or his soldiers raped or massmurdered civilians as your friend mahmud is claiming.

dont compare criminal warlords and rapists to people back than.

[RevolutionThroughReason]

you have zero proof that Ahmad Shah Abdali or his soldiers raped or massmurdered civilians as your friend mahmud is claiming.

.

Um we have the proof of people he raped? um errrmagerd

[randolph85]

thats your opinion.

the reason here is that rabani isnt worth it not "oh lets not name it after a political figure."

Ahmad Shah Abdali is one of our great historical figure along with mirwais neeka ,sher shah suri, etc.
we can name our universities after them,there is nothing wrong with that.
your comparison is wrong,so just because we dont want a university named after a warlord we should name one after an Afghan emperor and father of the nation as well?

you have zero proof that Ahmad Shah Abdali or his soldiers raped or massmurdered civilians as your friend mahmud is claiming.

dont compare criminal warlords and rapists to people back than.

rabbani was a little more than just a simple warlord, he introduced ikhwani thought into the country in the 70s and was a major player for decades. he stained his reputation after he took the presidency and especially after 2001 but he was better for afghanistan alive rather than dead after he took over his peace ambassador role. don't forget that even the likes of jalaluddin haqqani was a minister in his government until the talibs took over.

obviously any proof that abdalis men did this or that is not enough for you. hell, even abdalis victories are mostly documented by non pashtuns rather than pashtuns themselves. i love how you think that abdalis men doing sick things to their foreign adversaries is unconscionable when we have seen what our own afghans have done to each other in the last few decades.

abdali was a soldier and a king, he was amazing at both of those things in his life but he was not a saint or some kind of humanitarian. get over it, accept it, and go on with your life.