October 18, 2003

European Commission provides a further €11.53 million in humanitarian aid
Reuters 10/17/2003
The European Commission has approved an aid package worth €11.53 million to help victims of the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. The funding will help vulnerable populations to prepare for harsh winter conditions and to cope with the effects of ongoing drought, as well as assisting people who have been displaced from their homes.

The aid is channelled through the Humanitarian Aid Office (ECHO), which comes under the responsibility of Commissioner Poul Nielson. Commenting on the decision, Mr Nielson said: "We have seen some progress in Afghanistan over the last two years, reflected above all in the huge numbers who have returned home, but there are still major challenges to overcome. In providing vital support to those who are most in need in Afghanistan, the Commission will continue to be guided by the principles of neutrality, impartiality and humanity – the jewels in the crown of the humanitarian aid system."

In the north and centre of the country, the emphasis is on enabling vulnerable groups to meet their winter needs through a series for cash for work and income-generating schemes including water and sanitation projects, tree-planting and the production of quilts and children's clothes. In addition, funds are being provided for shelter, primary health care and psycho-social support for street children. €5.57 million has been earmarked for these activities.

In the drought-struck south and west, cash for work schemes are also planned, with a focus on the water/sanitation sector including well-digging, pump installations and water storage. A food security component covers the distribution of seeds and vegetables, and measures to support poultry rearing. €3.7 million is envisaged for these actions.

As regards refugees, internally displaced people and returnees, assistance worth up to €1.76 million will be directed through UNCHR. This covers the provision of shelter, and projects to protect refugee camp residents and vulnerable women. Almost 2.5 million Afghan refugees have returned home since the beginning of 2002 but there are still an estimated 4-6 million living in neighbouring countries, as well as some 300,000 people who continue to be internally displaced inside Afghanistan.

Finally, the decision has a component (€0.5 million) to boost the security of ECHO's NGO partners running projects on the ground. Insecurity poses a significant threat to the implementation of humanitarian projects, particularly in southern Afghanistan, and the focus of this component is on ensuring that partners have access to expert advice and information on security issues. The latest funding is in addition to €36.2 million allocated in April 2003 for a wide range of humanitarian activities in Afghanistan. ECHO-funded projects are implemented by UN humanitarian agencies, NGO partners and Red Cross/Crescent organisations.

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AIDS follows Afghanistan's 'miniglobalization'
Byline:  Scott Baldauf Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Date: 10/17/2003 (KABUL, AFGHANISTAN)For nine long years, Laila has walked the streets of Kabul in a sky-blue burqa veil, making out a living as a prostitute.

It is an occupation with many risks in a traditional Islamic society like Afghanistan, and a profession that was especially dangerous under the Taliban government, which punished prostitutes by stoning them to death.

But today, she faces a different threat. "I have never heard of HIV before, and I don't know what it is," says Laila, who has never before insisted that her customers use condoms. "The women who go into prostitution, they don't worry about their lives. If we die, what does it matter? If I live, what does it all mean?"

The emergence and spread of HIV, the virus linked to AIDS, largely passed over Afghanistan during its 23 years of civil war. Now Afghanistan is witnessing one of the largest influxes of people in its history, and among all the new arrivals is a foreign disease that even rich countries have trouble controlling. And while the numbers of people testing positive for HIV are low - last year eight, this year 15 - the nascent problem has deep social, moral, and political reverberations.

The disease has made inroads not only through prostitution, but through illicit drug use, say health officials. There are some 6,000 intravenous drug users in Kabul alone, most of them heroin addicts who have returned from refugee camps in Pakistan and Iran.

As a senior planning official at the Ministry of Public Health, Dr. Hedayatullah Stanekzai says he regards AIDS in Afghanistan as a serious problem. But in a country with so many health problems already at the crisis stage, it is nearly impossible to give adequate attention to a future problem like AIDS, he says.

"We have the highest maternal mortality rate in the world; for every 100,000 live births, 106 mothers die giving birth," he says. "We have one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world. We have unsafe drinking water and poor hygiene. Sixty percent of the population suffer from chronic malnutrition. AIDS is just in the early stages, and we are doing what we can. But we have to focus on our bigger priorities."

Health ministry officials do consider AIDS a big enough problem to devote a portion of their $170 million budget this year to set up an HIV/AIDS department, and to place stricter screening controls on the Central Blood Bank, where all 15 of the current cases were discovered.

In many ways, the political issue of prostitution and AIDS has become larger than the medical issue of AIDS itself. In August, after a sudden influx of Chinese and Thai prostitutes into the country, dozens of mullahs around Kabul issued a common warning in their mosques, saying that the government of President Hamid Karzai had "brought nothing to Afghanistan except alcohol and prostitutes."

"We are going through a mini-globalization here in Afghanistan, after years of isolation," says Omar Samad, spokesman for the Afghan Foreign Ministry. "It is very difficult to control some of these forces, even those that are unsavory and seedy. But politicizing the issue can send the wrong message. What we need is to preach morality, and to uphold the rule of law."

The best way to prevent further spread of HIV in Afghanistan, some UN and Afghan officials say, is education. A recent survey by the Health ministry found that an astonishing 84 percent of Afghans had never heard of HIV or AIDS. But educating Afghans about a sexually transmitted disease like HIV can be difficult in a traditional culture where sex itself is rarely discussed.

"Islam does not allow you to sleep illegally with another woman, so how can you encourage a man to use a condom?" asks Gul Agha, a senior judge and Islamic scholar from the conservative southern province of Nangrahar. "The best way is to tell people that prostitution is not allowed and to stay away from it."

Mr. Agha says that he would prefer to see mullahs or religious scholars taking the lead in getting the word out. But Laila says that not even a religious scholar could have stopped her from becoming a prostitute. A widow with five young children to feed, Laila says it was impossible to get an ordinary job, after a rocket fell in a Kabul marketplace and killed her husband.

Her relatives were in no position to take her in. And shopkeepers and office clerks would not hire an illiterate woman with no work experience. In a few months, Laila moved from begging to prostitution. Today, she earns about $20 per customer.

"If anyone gave me a job cleaning windows, cleaning tables, cleaning floors, and if I could have enough money to feed my family, I wouldn't do this work," she says.

Like Laila, Mohammad Farid became a prostitute after his family's sole breadwinner - his father - died in the war. Also like Laila, he rarely practices safe sex, and has never heard of HIV or AIDS.

"If I can find another job, I will leave this work," says the 17-year-old, who says he earns just $3 per customer, which he brings home to his widowed mother and two sisters.

Now that he knows about AIDS, Mohammad says he will think about insisting that his customers use condoms. But at his age, a time when most Afghans start thinking of marriage, Mohammad worries that his chances of switching jobs are slim.

"It's difficult to get out of this work," he says. "I have tried so many places to get a job, but they reject me. I worry about diseases, but there's nothing I can do. I have to work."

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Balancing act by Karzai leaves Tajiks feeling restless
Financial Times, 10/17 Victoria Burnett
When the US was gearing up for a blistering offensive against the Taliban in late 2001, it turned for help to an alliance of tenacious resistance militia that was holding out against the hardline regime in the north-east corner of Afghanistan. But two years after the US teamed up with the Northern Alliance and helped secure them top positions in the post-Taliban government, their wartime partner is proving an unruly peacetime ally.

President Hamid Karzai's recent moves to curb the influence of the predominantly Tajik Northern Alliance commanders has been welcomed by Afghans of other ethnic groups. But the moves rankled with the alliance's leaders who, with an eye on the coming debate over the new constitution and elections next year, have started rattling their swords.

Within hours of Mr Karzai's departure to the US and Europe for a visit two weeks ago, Northern Alliance leaders called meetings to discuss withdrawing support from Mr Karzai and fielding their own candidate.

"The Northern Alliance feels marginalised," said Hafiz Mansoor, editor of the Northern Alliance-sponsored weekly newspaper, Payam-i-Mujahid, or Holy Warrior's Message. "We voted for Karzai [at a council to confirm the president in June 2002] so we needed to see where we stood," he added.

At the centre of the meetings, which took place over several days, were Burhanuddin Rabbani, head of the Jamiat-i-Islami faction and of the Northern Alliance, Adbul Raysul Sayyaf, a follower of the conservative Wahabbi sect of Islam, and Ismail Khan, governor of wealthy Herat province.

The meetings also drew other prominent leaders of the former Mujahideen, who fought a bloody war against Soviet occupation in the 1980s, including former president Sebghatullah Mojadeddi and Pir Sayed Gailani, a Sufi leader.

What brought them together, say Northern Alliance members and diplomats in Kabul, was resentment at Mr Karzai's efforts to curb their powers, particularly those of Marshal Mohammad Qasim Fahim, the intractable defence minister, who was at the meeting.

Before leaving for the US and Europe, Mr Karzai announced reforms aimed at giving non-Tajiks more power in the defence ministry, a central proviso to UN-backed plans for disarming factional fighters.

Even though the reshuffle left the top ministry posts in Tajik hands, it irked Mr Fahim and his allies, as did Mr Karzai's decision on the eve of his departure to ban his vice-presidents - of whom Fahim is the most senior - from authorising decisions in his absence. "They're clearly resentful that there have been attempts - partially successful - to clip their wings," a western diplomat in Kabul said.

Relations between Mr Karzai and Mr Fahim have been strained by allegations of corruption on the part of Tajik commanders of the Northern Alliance. Mr Fahim was at the centre of a political scandal in September following revelations that he had given away valuable defence ministry property to his allies.

Many Mujahideen fighters feel redundant, and have been alarmed by the government's warming towards moderate Taliban figures, whom they bitterly fought. "They're reacting to the encroaching 'de-mujahideenisation' of the provincial and central government," said Vikram Parekh, an analyst for the International Crisis Group in Kabul.

But despite their common disgruntlement, disagreements and rivalries between the leaders proved stronger and the meetings collapsed without consensus being reached over who might represent them in the 2004 elections, said Afghan and western sources in Kabul.

After word of the meetings got out, a contrite Mr Fahim appeared before the press to assuage fears of rebellion within the president's ranks. At a press conference yesterday Mr Fahim reaffirmed his commitment to reorganising his ministry.

The Northern Alliance, which controls the lion's share of the country's armed militia, is not so much a political threat to Mr Karzai as a military one, said analysts and western diplomats. The meetings, they said, were an unsettling indication of the challenge the Northern Alliance leaders could pose if they chose to break ranks with Mr Karzai.

But Mohammed Umer Daudzai, Mr Karzai's chief of staff, remaind sanguine about the possibility of losing individual members' support in a coalition government. "[The government] is like a bus that's moving around the city. Passengers get on and off but the bus doesn't stop," he said. "Just so long as nobody holds up the bus with a gun."

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Brewing power struggle in Kabul
In a rare interview, Afghanistan's Defense Minister denies that he's a warlord in waiting.
By Halima Kazem | The Christian Science Monitor from the October 17, 2003 edition
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN - Carving a pathway for travelers and warriors alike, Afghanistan's crystalline Panjshir River has long been the guide through the mountainous northern provinces.

Today, many of the valley's lush fields are lined with rows of new Russian military tanks and rocket launchers. This new stockpile, along with most of the country's artillery reserves and a 50,000-strong militia, are under the thumb of the Afghan minister of defense, Mohammed Qasim Fahim.

As a top leader in the Northern Alliance - the primary military faction that joined with the US to oust the Taliban - Mr. Fahim is making no secret of the fact that he and his fellow ethnic Tajiks are not willing to be sidelined during the run-up to next year's elections. A power struggle between Fahim and President Hamid Karzai, an ethnic Pashtun, has Western diplomats and coalition commanders concerned. Any change in leadership is seen as an unwanted distraction from the process of nationbuilding and the war on terrorism.

Following the assassination of Ahmad Shah Masood in September 2001, Fahim seized the leadership of the Northern Alliance and made a name for himself by assisting US-led forces in toppling the Taliban government in Kabul.

He has since risen to the top of the heap of this fragmented country. Many see Mr. Karzai, whose cabinet is made up mostly of Northern Alliance loyalists, in a weaker position than Fahim with his considerable military resources.

Sitting in an oversized chair detailed in gold in Kabul's heavily fortified Ministry of Defense, Fahim denies that the materiel and manpower tucked away in Panjshir - his home region and the Northern Alliance's former stronghold - is for his own personal use.

"As the minister of defense of Afghanistan, I can assure you that I don't have any private militias," Fahim told the Monitor in a rare interview. "Any weapons that I have belong to the ministry of defense and are just being stored in Panjshir for safekeeping."

But Fahim's forswearing of any private forces comes on the heals of a new Afghan government law banning warlords from taking part in the country's politics. Critics suggest that the force is Fahim's ace in the hole, a backup option easily activated for a march on Kabul if his political ambitions are thwarted.

Fahim says he is not considering running for president at this time nor has he endorsed anyone else. "As soon as rumors arose that a presidential candidate was announced I held a press conference and cleared up the matter that no candidate were discussed. I made it clear that we will wait until the constitution is approved and then we will discuss presidential elections," he says, referring to reports last week claimed that Fahim and other political groups had met in Kabul while Karzai was out of the country to choose another presidential candidate. Vikram Parekh, senior Afghanistan analyst for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group says Fahim will not run for president because his power base has narrowed immensely.

"The Northern Alliance is very fragmented now and there is a lot of resentment towards Fahim because he uses his powers as the minister of defense to maintain his own forces," Mr. Parekh says.

However, Fahim does have his eye on the prime minister's position, a role outlined in the draft of Afghanistan's new constitution. At this point, sources say, the prime minister will be appointed by the president and not by a parliament. The details of the prime minister's powers will be finalized during the constitutional loya jirga, or grand assembly, scheduled for late December.

"I see the president of Afghanistan as a symbolic figure that the people elect to oversee things, but the prime minister will be running the country," says Fahim. "I am very fond of a division of power."

But it's unclear if that's how Karzai and the drafters envision that position. Afghan Presidential spokesperson Jawed Ludin says Karzai will not discuss the contents of the draft of the constitution until it is released to the public in the next couple of weeks.

At no cost though, does Fahim want to give up his post as the minister of defense, which has been dominated by the Northern Alliance. "Fahim is testing Karzai right now, he wants to see how much he can strong arm him," says Parekh.

But Karzai has been rushing to tilt the scales back to his side in an effort to boost his reelection campaign. Just last month he fired Fahim's army chief of staff and appointed four new deputy ministers.

The move was seen as an attempt to weaken Fahim's grip on the ministry of defense and send the message that the Karzai was no longer going to be pressured to include Fahim's people in his cabinet.

Although Mr. Fahim denies that he has a private militia he does admit that he has asked Karzai to include thousands of Tajik soldiers from Panjshir valley in the National Afghan Army and give them the same benefits.

"These soldiers are standing up to terrorism like the coalition forces. I asked Karzai to take my soldiers and pay them and make them part of the Afghan National Army. Why train new ones when we have a lot of soldiers, generals and commanders," says Fahim.

"They also need to be recognized, they need rights and paychecks and retirements. They should have these rights," he says. "Until the international troops are here, the former Afghan soldiers need to be taken care of as well."

But Karzai's people say that adding the 50,000 Tajik soldiers to the 7,000 Afghan National Army will encourage loyalty to Fahim and defeat the purpose of a multi-ethnic force. The dispatch of a heavily Tajik force to battle the resurgent Taliban in the Pashtun regions of the south and east would likely aggravate the local population.

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Afghan lesson unlearned Dr. Fatma Al Sayegh
Gulf News Opinion
If American President George W. Bush has to listen to an advice from a friend there is none better than that of the Russian President, Vladimir Putin. In an interview, Putin warned the US that the policy it is currently pursuing in Iraq might lead to the same fate as that of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan two decades ago.
The American invasion of Iraq has brought back bittersweet memories for Russians of their swift victory in Afghanistan and their failure to keep the promises made to the Afghans.

Russia's promise to Afghans of a better life, prosperity and freedom evaporated as soon as its troops invaded Afghan territories, killed Hafizullah Amin and installed the puppet government of Babrak Kamal along with Najibullah, the ruthless chief of the secret police.

The Russian intervention fanned the mujahideen's holy war against the communist rule in Kabul - a war in which many Arabs participated and came to be known as Afghan Arabs. Many foreign governments and international organisations channelled millions of dollars of military aid and support to guerrillas fighting the communist regime.

However, in February 1989, the humiliated Soviet forces were forced to withdraw after admitting defeat. The Russian invasion of Afghanistan had many far-reaching consequences. The invasion, which lasted 10 years, claimed 1.5 million lives and caused five million refugees to flee to Pakistan and Iran.

Ethnic and sectarian violence erupted, causing the country to break up into warring fiefdoms. The anarchy that prevailed helped the fanatic Taliban in September 1996 to seize power, vowing to purge Afghanistan of its un-Islamic path and to follow the true Islamic rule.

The rapid and dramatic events in Afghanistan had many implications for the country itself, on neighbouring countries, and the rest of the world. It turned Afghanistan into a breeding ground for extremists and terrorists and drove it into open civil war from which it never recovered.

All dreams of security and stability evaporated as the country plunged into a new cycle of violence and terror. As far as the US is concerned, it pursued a "hands off" policy. Rather, it wanted to bog Moscow down in the war - a conflict that eventually helped accelerate the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

The Russian experience in Afghanistan resembles in many ways the American experience in Iraq. To justify its intervention in Iraq and to overthrow the ruthless regime of Saddam Hussain, the US relied on false claims. In the name of freedom, democracy and prosperity, promises that the US up to now has failed to keep, America invaded a sovereign country and inflicted inconsiderable suffering on the people. America's justification for the invasion fell short of convincing its own people let alone the world.

Both the American and Russian invasions produced disastrous outcomes for all countries involved including the superpowers. Rising radicalism and fanaticism are the most dangerous outcomes and the least anticipated.

In both cases a superpower was dragged into a complex situation that divided the world, and in both cases a radical regime was overthrown and replaced by a believed-to-be loyal one. In both cases the superpower used different excuses to justify its actions based upon its own interpretation of international law.

In the name of freedom both the Soviet Union and the US invaded sovereign countries and changed the course of history. In both cases, the superpowers' policies helped unwittingly to establish dangerous breeding grounds for terrorists. Two decades ago, all eyes were on Afghanis-tan in the wake of the Russian invasion.
Today, all eyes are on Iraq in the wake of the American invasion. Russia withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, leaving behind a fierce civil war and destruction which facilitated the fall of Kabul to the hands of the fanatic Taliban.

Al Qaida, holed up in Afghanistan, has a lot to thank both Russia and the US for. In its uncalculated policy, the US is creating a similar state of affairs in Iraq. The anarchy and destruction currently prevailing in Iraq are a dangerous breeding ground for extremists.

The enormity of Mos-cow's mistakes in Afghanistan and Washington's mistakes in Iraq are clear to those who follow developments closely. Both superpowers are adamant that the policies they pursued towards Afghanistan and Iraq were the right ones. It is true that both superpowers have won the wars, but in their foreign policies they lost.

Both Iraq and Afghanistan have complex politics, and both share similar ethnic and sectarian backgrounds. The Russian invasion of Afghanistan and the American invasion of Iraq triggered sectarian and ethnic violence. However, both were carried out in the name of freedom, stability and prosperity.

Today, as Bush prepares to send more troops to Iraq to curb Iraqi resistance, he would do well to ponder the miscalculations and blunders that led Russia and the US to where they are today. There is a lesson here for the American administration. -- Dr. Fatma Al-Sayegh, History Department, UAE University