Blue Scarves for Peace Again

While the usual American ritual is to send more and more troops to kill more and more of troublemakers and civilians, there are other peace movements. From FOREVER UNDER CONSTRUCTION: http://homeyra.wordpress.com/2009/05/16/blue-scarves/#comment-12821

Excerpt from “Sending More Troops Will Not Solve the Problem”–Grassroots Afghan Activist Rangina Hamidi – Democracy Now Rangina Hamidi: “[...] In Kandahar, we got together about—well, we got together last year and decided that as the government agencies have been celebrating International Day for Women, which falls on March 8th every year, we did not want to be necessarily celebrating the day when so many women were in mourning because they were losing a lot of their male relatives or male members of their families almost on a daily basis. So, in 2008, on March 8th, the women in our network gathered together, more than 1,500 of them, to commemorate the day by praying for peace, because they’ve been in war for literally more than thirty years. And women are sick and tired of it, and they don’t know—you know, on a local level, they don’t know any political figure, locally or nationally and/or even internationally, that they can go to to have their voices and have their plea be heard. So, because this is a religious and a conservative society, the women said, “Who better to pray to about peace than God?” These are all believing women. And so, they gathered for the first time publicly to pray for peace.

--
reprint from 2009
It is still pertinent. Homeyra's last post was in 2010.