Meeting with the Afghan Community in Scotland, 01/April/2011

To:      Chris Beales

From:  Yama Wida
            Afghan Action London

Meeting with the Afghan Community in Scotland 

The most well-known Afghan community centre in Scotland is the Scottish Afghan Society, based in Glasgow. Mr. Sidiqi was officially selected by their board to meet me as Afghan Action’s representative.

The meeting started with a very detailed introduction of Afghan Action, including all our activities both over here and over there! I showed him our website on the internet while in the meeting, and asked him if he “liked” our facebook page - and got him involved. He became very interested in our work. He voluntarily offered to hold an event for Afghan Action in Glasgow. He even promised that he would inform me if there was any event or issue that Afghan Action could be interested in, with regard to local Afghans.

There are approximately 8000 Afghans residing in Glasgow (and around 12000 in Scotland as a whole). According to Sidiqi, there is a pervasive social problem among Afghans there. This mainly has roots in linguistic, sectarian (Shia and Sunni), racial/ethnic issues, such as Tajik, Pashtun, Hazara or Uzbek ethnicities. Nevertheless, Sidiqi emphasized that he was working along with his colleagues in addressing these problems. He said that Afghans needed to unite under a national identity and be one Afghan people. I agreed that the problem really needed to be tackled and appreciated their activities and the great cause of uniting people. The meeting ended with an agreement that Afghan Action and the Scottish Afghan Society would cooperate closely.