Afghanistan News January 9, 2003

January 8, 2004

27 now dead in rising Afghan violence
(AP) - KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — A time bomb hidden in an apple cart and a roadway shooting have left 27 dead as the toll rose from the latest violence in southern Afghanistan, police and officials said.

The death toll climbed to 15 today as two more died overnight from the bomb that tore through a group of curious children in the city of Kandahar on Tuesday, police said. In neighbouring Helmand province, unidentified gunmen stopped two cars on a roadway and fatally shot 12 men in them, provincial officials said.

The violence — two years after the fall of the brutal Taliban regime — underlines the failure of the national government and its foreign backers to bring security to Afghans weary from nearly a quarter-century of conflict.

The Kandahar bomb was in an apple cart, not strapped to a bicycle as initially believed, said the city's deputy police chief, Salim Khan. The explosion was preceded by a smaller blast — which had lured a crowd of onlookers, mostly children. A battered sneaker lay amid pools of blood, mangled bicycles and glass late Tuesday.
"It was a time bomb, hidden under the apples," Khan said, adding that two more children died from their injuries overnight, bringing the death toll to 13 children and two adults. Thirty-six were wounded.

Officials and the U.S. military said they suspected the Taliban in the bombing in Kandahar, once a stronghold of the Islamic fundamentalist militia. The blast went off on a street used regularly by U.S. military patrols. A man arrested as he tried to flee the bombing scene on Tuesday had not told interrogators a single word, including his name, Khan said.

It remains unclear whether civilians, U.S. soldiers, guards from a nearby Afghan military barracks or others were the intended target of the bombing. Kandahar Gov. Yusuf Pashtun had been expected to pass the area near the time of the blast, officials said.

The bomb spoiled celebration of a new constitution ratified Sunday. It wasn't clear who carried out the roadway shooting in Helmand. Provincial governor Mohammed Wali Alizai told The Associated Press that the victims were all ethnic Hazaras in an area that is predominantly ethnic Pashtuns, and suggested that the assailants wanted to stir ethnic tensions.

Shootings, kidnappings and bomb attacks on soldiers and civilians have riddled southern and eastern Afghanistan in past months. The Taliban has taken responsibility for many of them. The violence threatens the timetable for the national elections slated for June and has all but halted reconstruction in a large area along the Pakistani border.

There have been several attacks in Kandahar, the focus of a U.S. plan to deploy hundreds of troops and reconstruction workers across the south and east in the run-up to the vote. Meanwhile, an Afghan employee of a U.S.-based aid group, who was kidnapped in the south by suspected Taliban, had been released.

He'd been stopped and abducted on Monday while driving a pickup in Zabul province on the newly refurbished Kabul-Kandahar highway. He was released Tuesday after pleading that he was just a poor driver, then walked for four hours back to a road and hitched a ride to safety, said Vilal Ahmad of the emergency relief group Shelter for Life.

A Turkish engineer working on the road was abducted in October, and two Indians were kidnapped Dec. 6. All were subsequently released unharmed. Taliban claimed responsibility in both cases.

Taliban Sorry for 'Mistake' That Killed 16 Afghans
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Afghanistan's ousted Taliban apologized Wednesday for a bomb attack in the southern city of Kandahar that killed 16 people, including many children, and called it a botched attempt to target U.S. troops.

The ousted Islamic militia initially denied involvement in Tuesday's explosion near a military compound as children were passing on their way home from school. The blast came just two days after a new constitution was adopted in Kabul, which Afghans hope will usher in a period of peace and stability after a quarter of a century of bloodshed.

"It was a mistake by our mujahideen (holy warriors)," senior Taliban commander Mullah Sabir Momin said by satellite telephone. "We wanted to target the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) office in the city, but because of a small mistake, this plan failed," he told Reuters.

PRTs are civilian-military groups, mostly under the umbrella of U.S.-led forces in the country, deployed across Afghanistan to improve security and support reconstruction efforts. The PRT in Kandahar is under U.S. command.

Vital assistance missions have been suspended across as much as a third of the country due to deteriorating security, with much of the violence blamed on the Taliban and its allies. Momin said U.S. and allied forces regularly passed along the route where the explosion occurred.

One person was arrested by Afghan authorities shortly after the blast, but Momin said he did not know the individual and that Taliban guerrillas had got away on motorcycles.

He urged residents of the dusty, bleak former Taliban stronghold to stay away from buildings belonging to U.S. or Afghan forces, adding that they would soon be attacked.

A statement from the U.S. military released late Tuesday pinned the blame for the atrocity firmly on the Taliban. "This criminal attack reminds us that there are still elements of the former brutal and repressive regime committed to reversing the successes of the Afghan people," it said.

The Taliban and its allies, including members of al Qaeda, have declared a "jihad" (holy war) on foreign forces, the U.S.-backed government in Kabul, Afghan troops and aid workers. Officials in Kandahar said Wednesday that the death toll had risen to 16, and at least eight children were among those killed. Another 50 people were wounded.

In a separate development, U.S. and Afghan forces launched an operation in the border town of Spin Boldak to arrest "important Taliban commanders," an Afghan commander said. Helicopters flew over the town but there were no reports of fighting, and it was not immediately clear whether the operation was linked to the Kandahar bombing.

There are 12,000 U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan hunting Islamic militants from the Taliban and al Qaeda. They have failed to prevent a wave of attacks and fighting that has claimed over 400 lives since early August, mainly in the south and east.

US, Afghan troops launch joint operation against Taliban remnants
(Xinhua) - US forces and Afghan government troops launched a joint mop-up operation on Wednesday against Taliban remnants in a mountainous area near the southern city of Kandahar, local sources said.

The operation in Spin Boldak district, about 60 kilometers south of Kandahar, was aimed at killing or capturing fugitive Taliban commander Mullah Akhter Mohammad, believed to be behind a series of recent attacks in the city, according to an Afghan official in Kandahar.

The move was carried out just one day after 17 civilians, mostly school children, were killed in a bomb attack on Tuesday by suspected Taliban fighters in Kandahar, a former stronghold of theousted regime. Meanwhile, a Taliban spokesman on Wednesday claimed the responsibility for the midday bomb explosion on a Kandahar street,saying the attack was originally targeted at US soldiers deployed

Spin Boldak, a volatile border town between Afghanistan and Pakistan, is believed to be a safe haven for many holdout Taliban fighters, who have been hiding in nearby mountain caves since the regime's collapse two years ago.

However, Bryan Hilferty, US military spokesman in Afghanistan, refused to comment on the reported operation near the southern Afghan border. "I can not comment on the issue," he told Xinhua through an interpreter, but adding that the US-led coalition forces were ready to conduct necessary operations against terrorists and rebels in any part of Afghanistan.

Pakistan starts new operation to capture al-Qaeda suspects
ISLAMABAD (AFP) - Pakistani troops backed by helicopter gunships launched a new operation to capture al-Qaeda suspects in a remote tribal district near the Afghan border, officials said. The operation to capture "foreign terrorists" started early in the morning west of Wana in South Waziristan tribal area, military spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan told AFP on Thursday. The number of troops involved in the operation and other details were not immediately available.
In October last year Pakistani troops conducted a major operation in South Waziristan territory, killing eight al-Qaeda suspects and arresting 18. Two Pakistani soldiers were also killed in a gunbattle with the suspects.

Officials in the area said the operation was taking place at Kalu Shah, around 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the border with Afghanistan. "Helicopters are hovering over the area and firing at targets," a local official said.

South Waziristan is located opposite to the eastern Afghan province of Paktika and has long been a suspected sanctuary for al-Qaeda and resurgent Taliban fighters fleeing US-led forces in Afghanistan.

Wana is around 330 kilometers (around 206 miles) southwest of the capital Islamabad. US troops have frequently chased suspected Taliban attackers to the border, only to see them slip through the unmarked frontier into Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal areas.

JI flays operation against Al Qaeda
Daily Times - Pakistan
PESHAWAR: North West Frontier Province Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) Secretary General Zar Noor Khan Afridi on Thursday condemned the ongoing operation against Al Qaeda at Kalosha in South Waziristan Agency, terming it a cruel act on the part of the federal government. Mr Afridi said the federal government had launched an operation against the tribal people and surrounded the area. He said the security agencies were harassing the whole tribal nation.

The JI leader said the federal government operation was unconstitutional and a violation of human rights. He said President General Pervez Musharraf’s government had sold the freedom of tribal people to United States Federal Bureau of Investigation. Mr Afridi said the government was forcing tribesmen to rebel and was misrepresenting Islam and Muslims by its deeds, which were not in the country’s interest. —Staff Report

Pakistan approves 100 millon dollars to reform religious schools
ISLAMABAD (AFP) - Pakistan has approved a 100-million-dollar programme to reform some 8,000 religious schools, or madrassas, by introducing subjects taught at normal schools across the country, a minister said.

"The Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) has approved ... 100 million dollars for the Madrassa Reforms Programme," finance minister Shuakat Aziz told a news conference on Wednesday.

"It would bridge the gap between formal and Madrassa education." Aziz said formal education would be introduced in 8,000 private seminaries and that the government would provide them with grants, salaries for teachers, the cost of text books, teacher training and equipment.

Under the madrassas programme, formal subjects including English, mathematics, social studies and general science would be introduced from primary to secondary levels, while English, economics, Pakistani studies and computer science would be introduced at high school level, Aziz said.

Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf, the army chief who came to power in a bloodless 1999 coup and has made himself president until 2007, has been campaigning since early last year for the reform of Pakistan's religious schools.

But the campaign largely failed after madrassa leaders and Islamist organisations rejected government legislation requiring the schools to register and broaden their curricula beyond rote Koranic learning.

Musharraf has stepped up his campaign for moderate Islam in recent months, taking it to the world stage in his many addresses to international forums including the United Nations General Assembly and US-based think-tanks.

Addressing a gathering of children in Islamabad on Universal Children's Day (November 20) last year, Musharraf said: "700,000 poor children in these madrassas are getting free board and lodge, but only concentrating on religious education, which means they can only become khateebs (prayer leaders) in a mosque when they grow up."

Many madrassas with orthodox systems of education are seen as hotbeds of religious militancy. Taliban forces allegedly regrouping in Pakistan's conservative western border areas to stage attacks in Afghanistan are believed to recruit fighters from the more radical schools.

Afghan leaders including President Hamid Karzai and Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah have demanded tougher action against the schools, accusing them of supplying the Taliban with fighters.

Karzai welcomes Indo-Pak thaw
KABUL: Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Wednesday applauded nuclear rivals India and Pakistan’s recent breakthrough in fixing dialogue to resolve bilateral issues as very positive and courageous.

"The recent talks held between Pakistan and India at the fringes of the SAARC summit in Islamabad represent a courageous step by leaders of the two countries on the path of peace and good neighbourly relations in the region," Karzai said in a statement. —AFP

Pakistan Condemns Terrorist Attack In Kandahar
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: Jan 08 (PNS) - Pakistan Wednesday strongly condemned the terrorist attack in Kandahar in which civilians, including children, were killed, foreign office said. "The Government and the people of Pakistan have been deeply shocked by this dastardly criminal act that has targeted innocent civilians," a statement by the foreign office said.

Conveying profound sympathies with the bereaved families it said "Pakistan condoles with the government and people of Afghanistan over the tragic loss of life." "Determined efforts must continue to stamp out terrorism which causes havoc and threatens order and stability," the statement added.

Al-Qaeda Uses Drug Trade to Fight Afghan Government, Envoy Says
(Bloomberg) -- The al-Qaeda terrorist group and Taliban remnants are using the narcotics trade to help fuel their war against the establishment of a U.S.-backed central government in Afghanistan, the top American diplomat in the country said.

``There is a connection and this is a way they finance what they're doing,'' Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, said in a conference call with reporters. ``We need to learn more about that, but certainly this is a major problem we need to pay attention to.''

Afghanistan is the world's leading producer of opium, the raw ingredient of heroin. The most recent United Nations survey, released at the end of October, said the land area under cultivation increased 8 percent to 80,000 hectares (197,688 acres) in the past year. The drug now makes up at least a quarter of Afghanistan's gross domestic product, or about $1 billion, the report said.

While Afghanistan's recovery from war has made progress, including the agreement reached Sunday in a tribal assembly on a new constitution calling for a strong central government, violence continues against peacekeeping soldiers and civilians. The attacks challenge efforts to create a stable political authority in a country that was an al-Qaeda base.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he was ``shocked and deeply disturbed'' over Tuesday's bombing in the southeastern city of Kandahar, which killed 14 people, several of them children. ``Afghanistan has experienced a deterioration in security at precisely the point where the peace process demands the opposite,'' Annan said in a report to the UN Security Council Tuesday that cited an ``increase in terrorist activity, factional fighting, activities associated with illegal narcotics and unchecked criminality.''

The UN has withdrawn workers from some of Afghanistan's most volatile regions, mostly those in the south and southeast along the Pakistani border. U.S., Afghan and Pakistani officials acknowledge al-Qaeda and Taliban operatives are moving back and forth across the border in carrying out attacks.

Pakistan today began an operation to hunt down terrorists in south Waziristan, a remote and mountainous tribal area that borders Afghanistan's Paktika province. Eight suspected al-Qaeda operatives were killed in the area in October in an operation that also killed two Pakistani security officials.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said today at a briefing in Washington that he welcomed the Pakistani military operation as evidence of the country's commitment to combat suspected terrorists.

U.S. Rejects UN Warning About Election Delay
RFE/RL 01/08/2004
Washington - The United States today rejected a UN warning that Afghanistan's first democratic elections may not occur in June, as scheduled, because of delays in voter registration.

Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, today said in a conference call with reporters that there had been "slower than expected registration" but pledged to assess whether it will be possible to compensate by speeding up voter registration.

His comments come after UN spokesman Manuel de Almeida e Silva warned that the current rate of registration was too slow for the election to be possible this year. De Almeida e Silva said so far 274,000 Afghans -- of 10 million eligible voters -- have been enrolled on electoral lists.

Electoral imperatives
The Telegraph, UK 01/08/2004
The 'hyperpower' is in an election year and the two countries that it has invaded under George W Bush are feeling the weight of its domestic political agenda. In Afghanistan, where the Taliban was ousted in 2001, presidential and parliamentary elections are scheduled for June. In Iraq, where Saddam Hussein was overthrown in 2003, the American-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) is due to hand executive power to an Iraqi transitional government by July 1. If both processes go smoothly, President Bush will be able to claim two signal foreign policy achievements as he campaigns for re-election on November 2. Whether such a rushed timetable suits Afghanistan and Iraq is another matter.

The date of the Afghan elections was determined by an international conference in Bonn in 2002. Since then, however, Washington and its allies have failed to provide the security necessary for a full registration of voters and a peaceful conduct of the ballot.

Raids by Taliban members based in Pakistan have put a third of the country out of bounds to UN officials who are assisting the government with registration. A team that went into Kandahar, the main southern city, last month soon had to pull out. In the snowbound north of the country, it will be difficult to do much until March or April. By the end of the year, only 150,000 voters, out of an expected total of 10.5 million, had been registered. In short, it will apparently be impossible to keep to the Bonn timetable without disfranchising a major part of the electorate.

In Iraq, power will shift from the CPA to an indirectly elected Transitional National Assembly and Transitional Administration. Given that the status of occupied country is widely loathed by Iraqis, it is understandable that the allies should want to remove it as soon as possible. But the new authority will face a daunting task in drawing up a constitution and holding elections. Ethnic differences, with Kurds pushing for independence, Shias for an Islamic state and Sunnis to maintain as much of their old dominance as possible, suggest that allied tutelage should be extended beyond the middle of the year to prevent Iraq from disintegrating.

In Afghanistan, Washington is sticking to a timetable that has become unrealistic because of the Taliban's resurgence. In Iraq, it is transferring control prematurely. All this fits in with the American electoral cycle. But it does not necessarily make for good nation-building.

Good News, Bad News on New Afghan Charter
Jim Lobe, OneWorld US
WASHINGTON, D.C., Jan 8 (OneWorld) -- While praising the inclusion of women's rights in the Afghanistan's new constitution, a major U.S. human rights group warned Thursday that the three-week process that led to the constitution's ratification raised serious question about whether the country can hold free and fair elections later this year.

New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said political intimidation, vote-buying and the lack of transparency characterized key parts of the Loya Jirga, or grand assembly, that put the finishing touches and approved the country's charter. In addition, a number of provisions included in the document were sufficiently vague to raise concerns about how they would be enforced in practice.

"Human rights protections were put on paper," said John Sifton, HRW's researcher on Afghanistan. "But there were a lot of missed opportunities, and complaints and corruption during the convention."

Some of the same critiques were leveled by Anatol Lieven, a Central Asian specialist with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In an article published by the London Financial Times earlier this week, Lieven stressed that the final document was "not so much a constitution as an aspiration."

While the assembly was "fairly representative" of Afghanistan's diverse peoples and interests, he noted, it was "by no means fully democratic, in either its selection or its procedures." He described the meeting as a "'top-down' process" and stressed that the constitution would not have been ratified in the end "without arm-twisting by the U.S., the United Nations and the international community."

All of this is worrisome both for the implementation of the constitution and for national elections planned for June, but which international analysts are already suggesting may have to be put off until September, if not longer.

HRW noted that the just-concluded meeting made "significant achievements," the most important of which was a constitutional guarantee that women will hold a substantial number of seats in the country's bicameral National Assembly. Approximately 25 percent of the seats in the lower house are reserved for women, and the charter requires the president to appoint additional women to the upper body, called the House of Elders.

In addition, one provision provides that men and women should be treated equally under the law, including the specifically enumerated political, civil, economic and social rights that are recognized by the constitution.

But, according to HRW, the constitution lacks strong language ensuring that institutions created to uphold those rights are empowered to do so, while its failure to address the role of Islamic law and its relationship to human rights protections could be used by a conservative judiciary to implement interpretations of Islam that may run contrary to international human rights standards. The constitution provided that no laws should contravene basic Islamic principles.

HRW is also concerned about the constitution's failure to address accountability for serious human rights abuses, including atrocities, that have taken place in the past. The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC)--created by the December 2001 Bonn Agreement after the U.S. led military campaign ousted the Taliban regime--may be able to delve into the question, but the new constitution gives it no mandate to do so.

HRW said it was especially concerned about the machinations by various factions before and during the meeting to influence the outcome. It said the use of intimidation and bribery underlined fears that warlords and local factions continue to dominate Afghanistan's political evolution.

"A constitution cannot itself reduce the power of the warlords," said Sifton. "But an open political process in drafting it could have weakened their influence. Instead, the warlords flexed their muscles and proved they still hold a lot of power." London-based Amnesty International, which also observed the process, released a statement two days before the January 4 ratification that echoed HRW's concerns.

"Dominance by strong political and armed factional leaders and the absence of the rule of law in many parts of the country contributes to an atmosphere of insecurity for delegates who wish to act independently of powerful political groups," it said. "Some delegates fear for the safety of their families and for their own lives, especially after they return home at the end of the (Loya Jirga)."

Both HRW and Amnesty had documented numerous cases of death threats and corruption during the process that selected the delegates to the meeting, and UN officials told HRW that many of the delegates were proxies of local factional leaders. Much of the substantive discussion took place between allies and ministers of President Hamid Karzai and various factional representatives behind closed doors. As a result, key provisions in the constitution were never the subject of serious debate.

Karzai emerged from the meeting having achieved his major goal--securing a strong presidential system. But what promises the government was forced to make to prevail is not yet clear. The central government has relied virtually entirely on security and military support from the United States, its allies in Afghanistan, and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Except in a few locations around the country where U.S. forces have deployed to provide security and some reconstruction assistance, Karzai's authority has not extended far beyond Kabul's municipal boundaries.

As a result, much of the country is in the hands of warlords and factional leaders, most of whom identify with specific clans or ethnic minorities. The new constitution that provides for a strong presidency is therefore "almost surreal in its distance from the real distribution of power in Afghanistan," according to Carnegie's Lieven.
HRW called on the international community to provide better security for the country. It said expanding and extending ISAF into the countryside, as long called for by both the UN and relief groups, would signify the international community's commitment to the new constitution.

"The United States and its allies in Afghanistan, especially NATO, need to keep expanding international security forces outside of Kabul, and have them focus on improving security," said Sifton.

This will be critical in the upcoming months if elections are to be held successfully. Taliban and allied forces have renewed their presence in the Pashtun-dominated eastern and southern parts of the country in a direct challenge to the central government's control.

Last week, the UN's former top Afghanistan expert and currently the European Union's representative in Kabul, Francesc Vendrell, warned that a free and fair election could not be carried out if the current security situation persists. "The danger is this," he told the Christian Science Monitor: "Elections that are not credible among the Afghan people would be a setback for the process."

Bush to Propose New Aid for Afghanistan
Sources By Adam Entous
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a bid to improve security and expedite reconstruction in Afghanistan, President Bush plans to propose a nearly $1 billion aid package in his next budget and seek billions more from Congress and U.S. allies in future years, people familiar with the plan said on Thursday.

The administration is also considering including another $1 billion in the fiscal 2005 budget for Iraq. One source involved in the deliberations said the new money could "top off" the $18.6 billion in Iraq reconstruction funding approved by the U.S. Congress in November.

With Afghanistan's new national constitution and presidential and possibly parliamentary elections slated for June, Bush is eager to quickly stabilize the war-ravaged country, which has been hit by a new wave of violence by Taliban elements and possibly al Qaeda despite the U.S.-led invasion.

U.S. officials said they hoped to jump-start the election process. Bush also is eager to suppress new Taliban guerrilla activity -- a major threat to his declared "war on terrorism" -- before the U.S. presidential election in November.

The U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, told reporters in Washington he still believed elections could take place in June or later in the summer despite a slow start in registering voters.

"We have to see whether we can accelerate registration. ... We will discuss with the U.N. and others their plans for registration when we get back and see what we can do and what others can do to compensate," Khalilzad said.

U.S. first lady Laura Bush is considering a trip to Afghanistan later this year and Khalilzad played down any security concerns. "I welcome a visit by the first lady. No doubt ... there are security problems there (in Afghanistan), but I think people can protect her," he said. A wave of bloodshed in the country has claimed more than 400 lives since August.

The latest attacks prompted a call by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan for a new political and donor conference in the first months of 2004 to seek contributions to rebuild the country.

Khalilzad would not comment on the administration's spending plans in Afghanistan. But sources familiar with the new initiative said Bush would pledge about $1 billion -- and possibly more -- in his fiscal 2005 budget, which will be sent to Congress on Feb. 2.

That money would come on top of the $1.2 billion approved in November as part of Bush's emergency spending plan for Iraq. The administration may also submit a new emergency budget request to pay for military operations in Afghanistan, sources said.

Khalilzad promised a "sustained and substantial" commitment to rebuilding the country, where on Sunday rival factions agreed on a new national constitution, clearing the way for the country's first free elections after nearly a quarter of a century of war.

"It will take several years and billions of dollars to get this country to stand on its feet," Khalilzad added. Congressional sources said the administration was likely to seek similar amounts in future budgets and would press U.S. allies to follow suit.

Afghanistan's last constitution was drawn up in 1964. Since then the country has lived through Soviet occupation, ruinous civil war, five years of fundamentalist Taliban rule and a U.S.-led invasion. The State Department says the United States so far has committed nearly $4 billion to the reconstruction of Afghanistan, while other international donors have pledged an additional $5 billion.

Afghan Ambassador Confident on Elections
By SCOTT LINDLAW, Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Afghanistan's new constitution balances the rights of the country's fragmented ethnic groups and should serve as a model for other developing, ethnically diverse countries, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan said Thursday.

The new charter puts Afghanistan on a path toward presidential and parliamentary elections that should proceed as scheduled this summer, despite U.N. concerns that security there is inadequate and that voter registration is lagging behind schedule, said Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad.

Khalilzad returned Wednesday night from Afghanistan's grand council, or loya jirga, where regional leaders ironed out the new constitution. The White House, pleased by the result, arranged an unusual conference call Thursday morning in which the ambassador spoke with reporters.

The ambassador rejected suggestions that Pashtuns, the country's largest ethnic group, were overrepresented in the new constitution. "A balanced agreement was arrived at," he said. He pointed to the Pashtuns' willingness to recognize minority languages, calling it an "unprecedented" step that embodied the new constitution's evenhandedness.

"We have talked often about negative things in Afghanistan affecting other countries," Khalilzad said. "I think this is a positive step in terms of recognition of rights of minorities which could have also positive effects with regard to other countries where they have minorities and their rights have not been adequately dealt with."

The United Nations has appealed urgently for more foreign troops to provide security for national elections scheduled for June, warning that the balloting probably will be delayed and can only take place at all if safety improves. U.N. officials have also noted delays in voter registration.

seeking ways to accelerate the process to make up for it. "I'm not of the view at this point that elections cannot take place this spring or this summer," he said. Khalilzad also said he welcomed a major offensive by Pakistan's army against suspected terrorists in a mountainous region near the border with Afghanistan, believed used by al-Qaida fugitives.

"For success in Afghanistan and for success in the war against terrorism, it's important that Pakistan not be used as a sanctuary by extremists and terrorists," he said. "I welcomed the announcement that there is a major operation under way in Waziristan against al-Qaida and terrorists and I hope it will succeed in apprehending senior members of al-Qaida and the Taliban. We will have to see what results the operation achieves."

New political party emerges in the wake of Afghan constitution
KABUL (AFP) – 1/8/04 - A new political party has emerged as Afghanistan takes its first steps towards democracy, but analysts fear it may collapse because of the same ethnic divisions which threatened to ruin the loya jirga.

A group of delegates to the loya jirga or grand assembly, which last weekend approved a historic new constitution, have united to form a coalition party to push for a stronger parliamentary system ahead of elections.

"We would definitely have our candidate ready for the presidential post in the upcoming elections," Abdul Hafiz Mansoor told a press conference near the loya jirga site on Tuesday. "If we win the elections the very first thing we would do would be to pave the way for having a strong parliament ... which is role of the people -- not a strong president which is a dictatorship."

The party, which is yet to be named, comprises delegates from ethnic minorities and Tajiks who would have preferred stronger powers for the parliament. The constitution enshrines a strong presidential system as favoured by ethnic Pashtun President Hamid Karzai.

Pashtuns and Tajiks are Afghanistan's two biggest ethnic groups which also include Turkmen, Hazaras and Uzbeks among others. Presidential elections are scheduled for June this year but are expected to be delayed for logistical reasons. Whether parliamentary polls are to be held at the same time has yet to be decided.

Ahead of the loya jirga there had been concerns that the document put too much power in the hands of the president. However, most delegates agreed with the system in the end, agreeing with Karzai that Afghanistan, after 30 years of war, lacks the strong political processes to maintain a robust parliament.

The biggest divisions in the loya jirga were along ethnic lines with the minority groups worried that they would be sidelined by the majority Pashtuns, who account for some 40 percent of the population, and at one point threatening the boycott proceedings.

"We need a strong presidential system specially now because we lack strong political parties," said delegate Abdull Rahman from southeastern Paktika province. "Those who call themselves political parties now are armed factions which make alliances but when they reach power then they will start fighting."

Afghanistan has more than a dozen so-called political parties with military branches formed mainly on ethnic lines. One political analyst said Wednesday it would be unusual for the new coalition, which claims to be the "people's wing" of the loya jirga, to endure.

"They have not made the coalition based on any previous political ideology but they were all dissatisfied in loya jirga and made any alliance (they could)," said Nassrullah Stanikzai, a member of the political science faculty at Kabul University. "So it is a very shaky alliance and won't last long."

Stanikzai said because under the new constitution it was illegal to form political parties based on ethnicity, language, Islamic school of thought or region, any new party would have difficulty maintaining consensus.

"We should not forget that... even if this new political movement wins the election they cannot change the government system to a strong parliamentary system unless they ask the loya jirga to decide on it," Associate Professor of politics Mirzagull Saighani at Kabul University said.

Ethnic, religious and geographical divisions are considered the main cause of the decade-long civil war and the destruction of most parts of Afghanistan. After the collapse of Taliban in 2001, ethnic discrimination diminished but two years after the fall of the Islamic militia ethnic issues again came to the fore during the loya jirga.

Afghan Envoy Defends New Constitution on Rights
By Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor
PARIS (Reuters) - The central role of Islam in the new Afghan constitution does not mean it is undemocratic or lacking in guarantees of human rights and religious freedom, Kabul's ambassador to France said Thursday.

Zalmai Haquani, who taught law in France before taking up his diplomatic post, said the text agreed Sunday contained multiple guarantees of democracy and equality after decades of excesses by communists and the radical Islamic Taliban.

He rejected suggestions from a senior U.S. official that a key reference in the text to sharia law meant the country might drift toward a "Taliban-lite" regime that violated rights Western countries want Kabul to protect.

"There are always ways to abuse Islam," he told journalists, arguing Afghanistan's turbulent history showed no laws or rules could completely exclude violence or excesses. "If, by some great misfortune, Afghanistan were again under the Taliban, they wouldn't look at the constitution," he said.

The new constitution confirms Islam as the state religion, says no laws can violate Islamic principles and stipulates that one of the main versions of sharia law will prevail in cases where there are no provisions in the constitution or civil laws.

John Hanford, U.S. ambassador at large for international religious freedom, expressed concern at a State Department briefing last month about how these laws would be interpreted.

"We want to be sure that we don't wind up with Taliban-lite or something that could ever resort back to what we were dealing with in Afghanistan before," he said on Dec. 18. The United States led Western forces that overthrew the Taliban in 2001.

Haquani said the constitution, whose text was not yet available in Western languages, clearly stated that men and women were equal under Afghan law and that Kabul would respect all the international rights conventions it has signed.

He said non-Muslims were free to practice their religion within the law, without saying which legal provisions would apply. Islamic law usually bans conversion, a point that U.S. evangelical churches have regularly criticized.

Haquani rejected Hanford's questioning of the use of Hanafi sharia law whenever no civil law existed. The text does not use the word "sharia" but its reference to the Hanafi school of sharia legal scholarship makes clear it will be used. "Hanafi is the most liberal jurisprudence in Islam," he said. "It allows a very wide range of interpretation according to where the law is applied."

Haquani suggested critics placed too much emphasis on legal guarantees, which could be flouted by a strongman in a country as underdeveloped as Afghanistan, and placed too much blame on Islam for shortcomings in Afghan society.

"In Afghan history, many of the setbacks for human rights did not come from the application of Islam," he said. "They came from traditions, from cultural problems, from tribal problems. That's where we have to evolve."

Time to talk to the Taliban
Supporters of the old regime can help end violence in Afghanistan Jonathan Steele
Wednesday January 7, 2004 The Guardian
The latest atrocity in Afghanistan - a dozen children killed by a "bicycle bomb" in Kandahar yesterday - is a reminder that Iraq is not the only place where US-sponsored regime change has not produced peace. Along with the news that the UN may appoint a politically savvy British general to run its Afghan operations, it reinforces the view that postwar stabilisation requires a more sensitive linking of civilian and military initiatives than has yet been achieved in either country. Defeating insurgencies cannot be done by the iron fist alone.

In Afghanistan the problem has taken longer to surface than in Iraq. After the fall of the Taliban, the new government of Hamid Karzai initially faced minimal armed opposition. The warlords of the Northern Alliance, who had captured Kabul as the ground troops of the US air force, posed a political challenge to Karzai's efforts to restore strong central rule over the north and west. But they largely kept their guns holstered. In the Pashtun south and east, where the Taliban had been strongest, the post-war situation was broadly, even surprisingly, calm.

Only in the past six months has insecurity in the Pashtun areas begun to worsen. Just how far is a matter of debate. The outward signs are certainly not good. The UN has pulled its international officials out of the region, as have most foreign aid agencies, because of murders and abductions. Voter registration for the presidential elections, which are due in June, has ground to a halt in Kandahar after the mullahs of two mosques where it was being held were threatened. The World Food Programme is supplying less than half its promised amount of grain to the needy because lorry drivers and others fear for their lives. The UN refugee agency has stopped helping Afghans return from Pakistan.

Some Afghan officials believe the international agencies are over-reacting to a relatively small number of incidents over a vast geographical area. They claim the trouble is caused by only a hundred or so people, infiltrating in tiny groups across the border from Pakistan, but determined to create chaos and terror. Southern Afghanistan's problem, they say, is not widespread Pashtun alienation but a result of geography. Pakistan's border provinces are under the control of hardline Islamists who work with elements of Pakistan's secret agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, to keep Afghanistan weak.

Two facts seem incontrovertible. One is that the violence has increased in almost direct proportion to the efforts of the 11,000 American troops who are in southern and eastern Afghanistan, trying to "eliminate al-Qaida". Careless bombing and heavy-handed US tactics by ground troops when they search villages are making more enemies than friends.

The other is that, fairly or not, a large number of Pashtun still feel they lost out when the Taliban regime collapsed. This does not mean they all supported the Taliban's extreme religious ideology but rather that they see the balance tipping against the Pashtun throughout Afghanistan since Mullah Omar and his cronies were driven from power. The tens of thousands of Pashtun who have been ethnically cleansed from the north are the most obvious human sign of that.

It is true that Karzai is a Pashtun, as are his finance and interior ministers (though the latter are overseas Afghans with US passports). But there is a sense that, both locally and centrally, the Pashtun are not benefiting properly. Neither development money for local projects nor officer positions in the new national army are going to them in fair doses.

Reversing this sense of discrimination can be done, especially after the recent constitutional convention endorsed Karzai's powers as president. But he should also consider a more radical move. The time has come to bite the political bullet and open talks with the Taliban.

It is not a matter of sitting down with Mullah Omar or anyone else who claims to represent the Taliban as though it still exists as a single movement (if it ever did). But it does mean responding to overtures from individual former Taliban officials who fear arrest if they return openly from hiding or from abroad, or who are in US custody but have no proven records as torturers, such as the former foreign minister, Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil.

Paradoxically, this ought to be easier for Karzai and the Americans than it is for the warlords of the north. Before the Taliban came to power and when they first conquered Kabul, Washington had links with them. Karzai himself helped them and was trusted enough to be invited in 1996 to be their UN representative (he refused). The northern warlords will try to veto this, but unless the message is put across, in deed as much as word, that not all who joined the Taliban are unwelcome, violence in the south will go on and on.

With Future Charted, U.N. Envoy Departs
NY Times By CARLOTTA GALL
KABUL, Afghanistan, Jan. 5 — As Afghanistan's constitutional loya jirga, or grand council, concluded over the weekend, one of its main architects, the United Nations special representative to Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, was preparing to bow out after two years in the job.

Mr. Brahimi, 70, an Algerian diplomat and former foreign minister, has been a loyal ally to the Afghans since brokering the Bonn accords in December 2001 for a new Afghan order after the Taliban. A personal friend of President Hamid Karzai — who granted him Afghan citizenship — Mr. Brahimi has served here twice. He was the United Nations special envoy from 1997 to 1999, during the Taliban years, and in his current role is in charge of the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan, to help steer the transition to a peaceful and democratic state.

With a new Constitution in place — one of the major steps laid out in Bonn — he took his leave in a speech to the loya jirga on Sunday. "If I don't, then I will be called a warlord for refusing the instructions of the central government," he joked, referring to United Nations headquarters. "I leave, but my heart will stay here."
It was time to go, he said in a recent interview. "This is not a job for a 70-year-old man."Yet he proved his usefulness to the last. He had delayed his departure several times as the loya jirga faltered, and then almost fell apart. Nearly half the delegates boycotted a vote on amendments on Thursday, and tensions were rising as the assembly split along ethnic lines.

That put the rest of the transition in jeopardy, from the United Nations-run disarmament and demobilization program to elections that, under the Bonn accords, would take place in six months.

Mr. Brahimi spoke to the delegates boycotting a vote, entering the tent from the side door, slightly hunched in his overcoat. They had shouted down every other official, including their own faction leaders, but had asked for him to mediate. After a day of meetings Friday, delegates were saying that Mr. Brahimi had succeeded in breaking the logjam.

He seems almost more Afghan than the Afghans, receiving guests for breakfast recently at his Kabul residence wearing a long-sleeved, green silk Afghan coat of the type President Karzai favors. He was mulling over a selection of carpets in the hall. "Can I sell you a carpet?" he asked.

Mr. Brahimi's signature has been a "light footprint" — allowing the proud Afghans maximum sovereignty. He said in the interview that his main goal had been to build the institutions of democracy that would help Afghanistan move forward, rather than forcing rapid change.

But as his departure approaches, he has been more outspoken, calling for more aid and greater efforts from both the government and outside groups to prevent the country from slipping back into turmoil. He sternly warned Afghan leaders to stop corrupt commanders and police officers who prey on ordinary people.

In a memorandum to the government and foreign diplomats, he called for a second Bonn conference to consider outstanding issues — a program of national reconciliation, a more inclusive government and a revision of financing and political priorities.

He addressed security issues, saying that parliamentary elections, scheduled for next year, would be "well nigh impossible" as the threat from Taliban insurgents made large parts of the Pashtun areas inaccessible. But he remains unhurried about the general pace of progress. With a chuckle he recalled a meeting with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell at the United Nations Security Council. "Colin Powell said to me, `The message is speed, speed, speed,' and I said, `It has to be slow, slow, slow.'

"There is now a very well-meaning and welcome Western interest in supporting democracy everywhere, but they want to do it like instant coffee," he said. "It doesn't happen that way."

Mr. Brahimi said his short-term objectives were to "give the country a state that is fairly well organized, and give the people a sense that they can have justice, and you have done a lot for all the other things you talk about, in particular democracy." Elections, he said, should come at the end of the process, not the beginning.
"Two years is a very, very short time," Mr. Brahimi said when asked why so many of the warlords and armed factions remained in power. Afghanistan is still absorbed by the culture of the war of liberation against the Soviet occupation, he said. That so many former resistance fighters became delegates at the constitutional loya jirga was to be expected, he said.

"These people carry real power for a variety of reasons," he said, and the loya jirga would have looked unrepresentative if at least some of them had not taken part.
Many aspects of Afghanistan's situation are beyond Mr Brahimi's control. President Karzai has adopted a policy of working with the warlords rather than forcing a confrontation. The American military, the strongest influence in Afghanistan, is still working with many of them against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Mr. Brahimi has had to carve out his own space. "I think we have found a reasonable modus operandi," he said of relations with the American military. "There is a reasonably large space where the role of the U.N. — perhaps even the leading role — is recognized."

Another obstacle is that the Taliban were not at Bonn, and never accepted defeat, he likes to point out. On many issues, though, Mr. Brahimi argued, time is the healer. Women would gain a better position here only through education, he said. "Instead of demonstrating against the burka," he said of advocates of women's rights, "why not give tables and chairs to schools for girls."

"The burka will disappear in its own time," he added. "No matter how long and how many demonstrations you have, it will not take one burka off of the face of women."

Not yet
The Baltimore Sun 01/07/2004
LONG, LONG ago, there was a newsroom putdown for editorials about hopelessly obscure topics: Afghanistanism. But the Soviet Union spiked that particular usage with its invasion of 1979 -- after all, what was more important in those days than the steely question of America's response to Soviet imperialism, even in the wildest tracts of Asia? The decades went by, the Soviets left and then watched their own country hit the delete key, but Afghanistan managed to stay significant and interesting enough all the while to avoid that dismissive suffix.

Now the country has entered a new period, with its first real constitution in decades, one that features checks and balances and only came about through significant compromises on all sides. It is, of course, a document and not yet a solution to Afghanistan's immediate and profound problems. The Afghans will require the serious engagement of the United States and the rest of the world to bring this constitution to life. It is as important now as it was two years ago, when the Taliban fell, to provide support and encouragement to the Afghan people and their new government -- to pay attention, and to keep that "ism" at bay.

Two roadside bombs in Kandahar killed more than 15 people yesterday. That was a direct challenge to the spirit of negotiation and compromise that finally prevailed as the constitution was being hammered out. It should also serve as a reminder to Washington that the task undertaken in Afghanistan following 9/11 remains very much unfinished. The Taliban, regrouped, are at war with the forces loyal to President Hamid Karzai, and with U.S. troops. Behind the Taliban lurks al-Qaida. In league with Mr. Karzai are various regional warlords whose long-term loyalty is not exactly a part of the bedrock.

The new constitution has protections for women and ethnic minorities, respect for Islam, and political trade-offs designed to keep contending factions at the table. American and U.N. diplomats helped to push the delegates at the loya jirga toward a deal, but all sides recognize that this constitution is, in the end, an Afghan creation. That is crucial to its chances for success.

Failure, on the other hand, invites catastrophe. An Afghanistan spinning out of control -- or into the hands of the Taliban -- would be a signal defeat in the war on terror. It would wipe out all that the United States has accomplished there since 2001, and if anything leave the country even more hostile toward the West than it was then.

So the burden on all Mr. Karzai's friends -- in the White House and throughout the world -- is to find ways to help extend and deepen the reach of the new constitution. All that's needed are creativity, goodwill and perseverance. Maybe, then, in a generation, a nation will have developed that will be so tranquil and unexciting that newspapers that dare to write about it will again stand justifiably accused of Afghanistanism.

Quota for Women in Afghanistan Cheers Indian Counterparts
Rahul Verma, OneWorld South Asia
NEW DELHI, Jan 7 (OneWorld) - Women's groups in India are applauding the special quota for women in neighboring Afghanistan's just-announced Constitution, hoping that it strengthens their own campaign for 33 percent reservation in elected bodies.

After three weeks of intense and often acrimonious debates, Afghanistan's Loya Jirga, or national council, announced that at least two women would be elected from each of the country's 32 provinces to the Wolesi Jirga, or the Lower House.

This would mean that women would occupy at least 64 of the 250 seats in the Lower House. Under the new Constitution, men and women would also have equal rights as citizens. "Afghanistan is like a garden that has many kinds of trees, flowers and thorns," Constitutional Commission chairman Nematullah Shahrani said, adding, "the flowers are women."

Indian women activists stress that the reservation of more than 25 percent seats in the Wolesi Jirga will give a boost to the movement in India, where a Bill reserving 33 percent of all seats in elected bodies for women has been hanging fire for several years.

"It is an extremely good move for a new nation which is having to begin from scratch," says Jyotsna Chatterji, the head of the rights group, Joint Women's Program, based in India's capital, New Delhi.

"By giving equal rights to women, it is acknowledging the fact that they have a right to political decision-making," she says. Activists point out that while Afghanistan is opening up its elected bodies to women, in India, women continue to get sidelined in politics.

"It should be an eye-opener for an old state like India where, even after several years of development, women are yet to get the recognition they deserve," says Chatterji. The Loya Jirga's decision to elect women has also been lauded by Indian women's groups which have been resisting efforts at nominating women to elected bodies back home.

"A nomination only increases the politics of patronage and does not help in the democratic process," says Brinda Karat, the general secretary of the All India Democratic Women's Association (AIDWA), a leading national women's body.

Karat holds that it will be a "great signal" if women in Afghanistan are elected to the lower house. "But let's not forget that Afghanistan has a history -- rudely broken by the Taliban and other fundamentalist forces -- of women holding progressive positions," she says.

Till the 80s, large sections of women in Afghanistan had access to higher education and worked as teachers, doctors and other professionals. But since the 90s, Afghanistan has witnessed years of violence as opposing warlords fought one another, leading to the advent of the Taliban and the subsequent US-led war on the nation.

Women and children in Afghanistan were the worst victims of the protracted war, which has crippled the health system. Afghanistan's maternal mortality rate is the second highest in the world after Sierra Leone. The Asian nation records 1,700 deaths per 100,000 live births, whereas the maternal mortality rate in a country like the US is 12 per 100,000 live births. Life expectancy is 44 years for Afghan women. As against 75 percent men, about 90 percent of women are illiterate.

Karat points out that there can be no advancement for women unless they play a meaningful role in policy matters. "Cultural and social progress has to be backed by policy decisions and for that, women must be a part of the decision-making process, which, in most cases, is Parliament," says Karat.

AIDWA plans to take up the issue of reserving seats for women in Parliament and state assemblies during the coming general elections in India, which are expected to take place in April. "Elections are not the only, or single path for women's advancement. But without that assertion of democratic right, they will continue to be marginalized," says Karat.