December 26, 2005

Afghans try former communist intelligence chief
By Sayed Salahuddin / December 26, 2005
KABUL (Reuters) - An Afghan former intelligence chief went on trial on Monday accused of war crimes and torture during communist rule in the 1980s, the first such trial to be held in Afghanistan after decades of warfare.

Assadullah Sarwari has been detained since 1992, when Mujahideen (holy warrior) factions overthrew a Soviet-backed communist regime.

Prosecutors said Sarwari was arrested for conspiring against Afghanistan's Islamic government and was guilty of illegal mass arrests and executions.

Now 64 and sporting a short grey and black beard, he served as head of intelligence when thousands of people were killed for opposing the government.

Appearing before the national security court, Sarwari said his detention was illegal and he had no connection with war crimes.

"I ... strongly reject the charges ... (and) consider them a political conspiracy," he told the court.

Sarwari was given 20 days to prepare an affidavit.

Officials said he would be sentenced to death if found guilty.

After heading the intelligence network, he served as deputy prime minister and Afghanistan's ambassador to Yemen.

His trial was the first for alleged war crimes in Afghanistan where successive regimes have been accused of abuses in 25 years of war that began with a Soviet invasion in 1979.

WAR CRIMES
The trial is taking place a week after President Hamid Karzai's government adopted a plan to address war crimes and other human rights abuses committed during the conflict.

It commits the government and the international community to the setting up a five-member task force by the end of the year to draw up a plan to deal with the abuses.

The task force, to comprise nominees from Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission and the United Nations and three from Karzai, will have until the end of the 2007 to present its proposal.

Rights groups have welcomed the fact that the action plan ruled out amnesties for serious abuses -- a response to concerns that perpetrators in Karzai's government and a new parliament inaugurated this month might try to block prosecutions.

In October, a Dutch court jailed two former police officers of Afghanistan's former communist regime for 12 and nine years after convicting them of war crimes and torture while serving with intelligence services.

The two were Hesamuddin Hesam, the former head of the Khad secret police between 1983 and 1991, and its head of interrogation, Habibullah Jalalzoy.

Dutch prosecutors estimated 200,000 political opponents were tortured by various branches of the Afghan security apparatus under communist rule and about 50,000 died.

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AFGHANISTAN: Journalists still under threat
KABUL, 26 December (IRIN) - Regional warlords, coupled with low government presence, continue to threaten freedom of expression in Afghanistan, the country's leading media association warned on Monday in the capital, Kabul.

"Journalists are still not considered entirely free. They face pressure and intimidation and violence from warlords in regions still not under the full control of the central government," said Rahimullah Samander, president of the Afghanistan Independent Journalists Association (AIJA), adding that incidents of violence against journalists had actually increased over 2004.

"Violence against journalists has doubled compared to last year. During 2004, there were only around 15 cases of violence against journalists, but in 2005 those cases reached 30 across the country," Samander said, adding journalists faced killings, kidnappings, threats and imprisonment.

"Shaima Rezai, a worker at Tolu, a private TV channel in the capital, and Mohammad Mawaind, a local journalist in Khost province were killed this year," the AIJA official explained, calling on the government to take stricter measures in ensuring the safety of journalists in the war-ravaged country.

Experts believe that a healthy media is vital for Afghanistan's political and economic development. But due to high illiteracy rates, radio continues to provide the main source of news for most Afghans. In major cities such as Kabul, television is also finding its place in daily life.

Media had been under considerable pressure in the western city of Herat, where a prominent female poet, Nadia Anjuman, 25, was killed after a serious assault in her home in November. Herat has the worse record of violence against journalists this year, Samander noted.

According to Khalida Khursand, a local journalist in Herat, violence against free speech had been increasing in the province.

"There is self-censorship because of threats of regional warlords," Khursand noted.

But there are also reports that suggest government pressure on journalists.

In December 2004, Abdul Hamid Mobarez, former deputy minister of information and culture, resigned in protest over what he described as the ministry's "censorship of the media."

Under the hard-line Taliban regime there were only a few newspapers in Afghanistan and they were controlled by the state. The only radio station was Radio Shariat which broadcasted mostly religious programs. Television was banned.

But four years after the Taliban's fall, all that has changed. Around 300 publications are now registered with the Afghan Ministry of Information and Culture. There are also 42 radio stations and five private television stations across the country.

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Afghanistan, Iran Sign Consular Agreement
via Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
26 December 2006 -- Iran and Afghanistan signed a memorandum of understanding on consular cooperation during a one-day visit by Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki to Kabul.

Officials said Mottaki met with President Hamid Karzai and other top Afghan officials including Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah to discuss bilateral relations and the hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees living in Iran.

According to Mottaki, Karzai is to visit Iran next month.

Speaking after the signing of the memorandum on cooperation in consular affairs today, Mottaki said about 2,000 Afghans were getting visas to travel to Iran each day.

Afghanistan and Iran share a more than 900-kilometer long border.

An estimated 2.5 million Afghans fled to Iran during the quarter century of war and civil strife that afflicted Afghanistan following the Soviet invasion and occupation in the 1980s. -- (AP)

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Two NATO peacekeepers hurt in Afghan blast
KABUL, Dec 26 (Reuters) - Two soldiers from the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Afghanistan and two Afghan civilians were wounded on Monday in an explosion in the north of the country, officials said.

The soldiers were hurt when the blast hit their vehicle as they were driving in convoy on a main road in Baghlan province, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said.

Major Andrew Elmes said the soldiers were in a stable condition, but refused to give their nationality.

Dutch soldiers are stationed in Baghlan.

The Interior Ministry said two Afghan civilians were also wounded in the incident.

A spokesman for Taliban guerrillas, Mohammad Hanif, told the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press news agency that Taliban fighters used a mine to carry out the attack and claimed that six Dutch soldiers had been killed.

The attack came after the Dutch government said last Thursday that it planned to send up to 1,400 additional troops to Afghanistan for expanded NATO peacekeeping, a deployment that could face resistance in parliament.

NATO has agreed to boost ISAF to about 15,000 troops next year from about 9,000 now, with Britain due to take command and deploy troops in the south alongside Canadian and Dutch forces.

But Dutch concerns have mounted about the plans to send extra troops to the more dangerous south in addition to some 600 Dutch troops already serving in the country.

The Taliban insurgents, whose government was overthrown by U.S.-led forces in 2001, have carried out a series of attacks on NATO peacekeepers in recent weeks.

On Dec. 20 three Italian soldiers from the ISAF force were wounded in a suicide car bomb attack in the western province of Herat.

Four days earlier, a suicide attacker died and two civilians were wounded in a similar attack on Norwegian peacekeepers in the capital Kabul in which the soldiers escaped injury.

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US to cut troops in Afghanistan soon: spokesman
The News International (Pakistan)
KABUL: The US military on Monday gave details of its planned troop reduction in Afghanistan, saying the total number would shrink by some 2,500 from the current 19,000 under a routine troop rotation due very soon.

US military spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Laurent Fox, said however that the 2,500-strong force from the 10th Mountain Division will remain on standby and can be deployed anytime if needed.

"The replacement group that will be coming in will be 2,500 less than what is being replaced," the spokesman told a regular press briefing in Kabul.

"We've approximately 19,000 troops currently and this will bring it down to approximately 16,500," he added.

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Karzai blames foreigners for unrest
via The Hindu (India) / December 26, 2005
Two officials sacked for spying for other countries, says Afghan President
AP - Associated Press
Afghanistan: Afghan President Hamid Karzai said on Sunday two high-ranking government officials had been fired after they were caught spying, as he blamed unnamed foreign powers for decades of fighting in his country.

Mr. Karzai told members of Afghanistan's new Parliament that some Afghans had become tools in the hands of foreigners to perpetuate unrest to make money.

He did not name any country. But he told lawmakers that two senior government officials had been fired because they allegedly spied for other countries.

He did not name them, and it wasn't clear when they were dismissed or if any action was taken against them.

``In the last decades, there was no ethnic fighting in Afghanistan and there was no religious fighting in Afghanistan, but it was the interference of other countries and interference of foreigners in our country,'' Mr. Karzai told the gathering of more than 400 lawmakers — men and women — from the Lower and upper Houses of Parliament.

``Of course, we understand, that some of the Afghans were involved in this fighting and they received money from the foreigners and they worked to the benefits of the foreigners,'' he told the luncheon at the heavily guarded presidential palace in Kabul.

Afghanistan's first popularly elected Parliament in three decades convened last week, three months after legislative elections.

The country had no elected National Assembly since 1973, after which coups and a Soviet invasion plunged the country into decades of chaos that killed more than 1 million people.

That period was followed by the rule of the extremist Taliban militia, which is blamed for a steady stream of violence, mainly in the south, as part of its opposition to the U.S. and Mr. Karzai's rule. Police said they arrested three Taliban fighters, including one who was allegedly planning a suicide attack in Kandahar.

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PAKISTAN HINTS AT OPENING MORE TRADE ROUTES WITH AFGHANISTAN
Tuesday December 27, 2005, 2:17 pm
ISLAMABAD, Dec 27 Asia Pulse - Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz Saturday said his government was mulling opening more trade routes between Pakistan and Afghanistan to strengthen bilateral relations.

Apart from the construction of additional roads for easy transportation of goods, the prime minister added, the widening of the Torkham-Jalalabad Highway was also being pondered to provide a fillip to trade links between the neighbours.
 
At a meeting with tribal elders in Peshawar, the capital of the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP), Shaukat Aziz Pakistan attached top priority to trade ties with the landlocked Central Asian country.

"Greater Pak-Afghan trade relations are the need of the hour." He hoped, "a commonality of interests, the bond of religion, good neighbourliness and the joint struggle against the (former) Soviet Union will help forge closer trade links between the two countries." He observed the Torkham-Jalalabad Highway, lacking the required transportation facilities, was not suitable for strong bilateral commerce. "We plan to widen the Peshawar-Torkham Road so as to enable all kinds of vehicles to ply it conveniently." Shaukat Aziz said he would soon visit the semi-autonomous tribal belt to explore the possibility of opening more trade routes with Afghanistan and discuss in detail the subject with local elders.
(Pajhwok Afghan News)

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President calls for strengthening of Iran's cultural bonds with Tajikistan
Tehran, Dec 25, IRNA
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday that Iran, Tajikistan and Afghanistan should further strengthen their cultural bonds given that Farsi is the common language spoken in the three states.

The transportation networks among the three Persian-speaking countries would strengthen their cultural bounds and bring about economic growth, he noted in meeting with President of Tajikistan's Assembly of Representatives Saidullo Khairullayev.

The Tajik official, heading a parliamentary delegation, arrived in Tehran on Saturday on a six-day visit.

Ahmadinejad added that the presidents of Iran, Tajikistan and Afghanistan are to hold a joint meeting in a near future aimed at preparing the ground for cultural development of the three countries.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran welcomes any plan that can expedite development of cultural, economic, political and sport relations among the three countries."

He expressed hope that all the potentials will be utilized to draw up a long-term cooperation plan.

Khairullayev for his part hailed the personality of Iran's president and termed him as a great politician in the world of Islam.

He conveyed the greeting of the Tajik president to his Iranian counterpart, stressing that the government and nation of Tajikistan would not forget the assistance Iran has rendered to them in recent years.

He invited President Ahmadinejad to pay an official visit to Tajikistan.

He attached importance to cultural and political ties between Iran and Tajikistan and termed the construction of Anzab Tunnel as well as Sang Toudeh power plant as good examples of extensive cooperation between the two states.

President Ahmadinejad held a meeting with Tajik President Imomali Rakhmonov on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting in New York in September.

The two presidents also held another meeting on the sidelines of the OIC heads of state summit held in Mecca, Saudi Arabia early December.

Khairullayev and his entourage arrived in Tehran on Saturday and held a meeting with Majlis Speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad Adel.

The Tajik delegation will also visit two historical cities of Isfahan and Shiraz.