Afghanistan News November 9, 2005

November 9, 2005

Results of Afghan Elections Postponed
By DANIEL COONEY, Associated Press Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan - The release of final results from landmark legislative elections held last September has again been postponed because investigators have not concluded inquiries into allegations of widespread cheating in southern Afghanistan, officials said Wednesday.

The results were initially scheduled to be released last month, but they have been repeatedly delayed by inquiries into widespread fraud.

Peter Erben, the chief electoral officer, told a press conference that the final results would be announced "within a few days" despite officials earlier saying that they would be completed by Wednesday.

Final results have been certified in 33 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces, Kandahar province being the single outstanding one, Erben said.

Allegations of fraud have seen 50 election staff fired and about 3 percent of the ballot boxes taken out of the counting process. Some leading candidates have demanded a vote recount, but election organizers have ruled that out.

"Many people bought their way to power. It happened everywhere," said Safia Siddiqi, a women candidate listed as a provisional winner from eastern Nangahar province. "It was very unfortunate, as the candidates supported by the people have not necessarily won."

The polls have been hailed as the final formal step toward having a representative government after a quarter century of war that left more than a million people dead.

But observers have warned that more than half of those listed as provisional winners are former warlords or others suspected to have ties to armed militias.

Still, the massive exercise in postwar democracy has been welcomed by many, especially women who have never had a strong voice in politics. Sixty-eight women have been listed as provisional winners, slightly more than the quarter of the 249 assembly seats reserved for them.

Once the final results are announced, it won't be obvious where power will lie in the legislature. Nearly all the candidates ran as independents and haven't allied themselves with any individuals or political bloc.

President Hamid Karzai has been careful not to publicly favor anyone, fearing renewed tension if any groups become too powerful.

But observers say the president is expected to have the numbers in the assembly to push through legislation because of the large number of winners from his fellow Pashtuns, the country's ethnic majority.

Parliament is expected to convene in the third week of December, Karzai's spokesman, Karim Rahimi, told reporters Tuesday.

Afghan rebel vows to expel US force -paper
Wed Nov 9, 2:33 AM ET
KABUL (Reuters) - A fugitive Afghan guerrilla leader said war in his country would not end until U.S.-led forces left and urged Islamic groups to unite to expel them as they drove out Soviet forces in the 1980s, a newspaper said on Wednesday.

Former prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is wanted by the United States and his fighters back the Taliban-led insurgency in which more than 50 U.S. soldiers and scores of government troops have been killed this year.

"The only way to solve Afghanistan's war is for foreign forces to withdraw," the Cheragh daily quoted Hekmatyar as saying in a message the paper said was issued to mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan last week.

A senior journalist at the newspaper, Mohammad Dawood, said a copy of the message was sent to his office and it was genuine, but he did not elaborate.

Hekmatyar, a prominent commander of guerrillas who battled Soviet occupying forces in the 1980s, said his campaign would go on until U.S.-led troops left Afghanistan.

He called on mujahideen, or holy warriors, to unite and drive out their "real enemies" as they had driven out the Soviets, the newspaper said.

He described Afghanistan's presidential election last year and September's legislative elections as "futile."

Fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar issued a similar message to mark the end of the Muslim fasting month.

U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban in late 2001 after they refused to hand over Osama bin Laden, architect of the September 11 attacks on U.S. cities that year.

The United States leads some 20,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, most of them American, battling insurgents and hunting their leaders.

Hekmatyar, Omar and bin Laden are all believed to be hiding along the rugged border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Afghan officials say there is co-ordination among their fighters in the insurgency, which has mostly affected southern and eastern parts of the country near the border with Pakistan.

Afghan parliament to hold maiden session in mid December
KABUL, Nov. 8 (Xinhuanet) -- While Afghanistan's election body hasyet to announce the final certified results of the country's first parliamentary polls in over three decades, the maiden session of the parliament will be convened by mid next month, presidential spokesman said Tuesday.

"The first session of the parliament will be held after December 15, or in the third week of the month, if God will," Mohammad Karim Rahimi told reporters at a regular news briefing.

He was confident that no reason would postpone the convening of the legislation.

Some 6.8 million, or over 50 percent of 12.5 million Afghans, registered to vote used their franchise to elect members of parliament and provincial councils in the legislative polls held on Sept. 18.

Final certified results of the landmark elections, according to officials, is likely to be released Wednesday.

Ex-president to run for Afghan parliament speaker
Xinhua 11/07/2005
KABUL - Afghanistan's former President Burhanudin Rabbani, who has secured a seat at the country's first parliament in more than three decades, on Monday hinted to run for the post of head of Wolesi Jirga, or Speaker of the National Assembly.

"I am planning to contest for the post of head of Wolesi Jirga and in this regard I am consulting my friends," Rabbani told Xinhua.

Another hopeful candidate for the post is former Education Minister Mohammad Yunus Qanooni and leader of the opposition alliance the National Understanding Front (NUF) who won a seat to the legislative body from the capital Kabul.

Rabbani, who represented the war-weary Afghanistan at the United Nations from 1992 till the collapse of Taliban regime in late 2001, stressed that he was hopeful to assume the post of National Assembly speaker through democratic means at the house.

Final certified results of the landmark legislative polls for which over 6.8 million or more than 50 percent out of 12.5 million Afghans used their franchise on Sept. 18 is likely to be announced on Wednesday.

Afghanistan Joins Regional Economic Grouping
Radio Free Afghanistan, Afghanistan
9 November 2005 -- A big trade and investment conference opened in Afghanistan's capital Kabul today.
The two-day conference of the Economic Cooperation Organization, or ECO, is aimed at promoting regional development, with a focus on Afghanistan's public sector.

The ECO brings together Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Iran, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The conference, organized by the Afghan Ministry of Commerce, brings together representatives from the governments, businesses and non-governmental organizations from those countries.

India to back Afghan membership for SAARC
NEW DELHI, NOV 8 (PTI) - India will back Afghanistan's inclusion as a new member of SAARC at the summit of the seven-nation regional group in Dhaka later this week.

"We will welcome Afghanistan as a member of SAARC," Minister of State for External Affairs E Ahamed, who will represent India and the SAARC Ministerial meeting on November 11, told PTI here.

The issue of Afghanistan's entry into SAARC is expected to be taken up during the Dhaka meet.

Ahamed will go in place of K Natwar Singh who has been divested of the External Affairs Ministry portfolio in the wake of Government announcing a judicial probe into allegations made in the Volcker Committee report on pay offs to him and the Congress party in Iraqi oil deals during the Saddam Hussein regime in 2001.

Ahamed, who was on a visit to Sudan leading an 18-member business delegation, cut short his visit and returned to the capital this morning following instructions from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that he should represent India at the Dhaka minsiterial meet. He will fly to Dhaka on November 10.

The Prime Minister will be attending the two-day Summit beginning on November 12. The Summit will be preceded by meetings of the SAARC Council of Ministers and Foreign Secretaries. Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran will be leaving for Dhaka tomorrow.

Ahamed said "SAARC should be strengthened and also developed as an economically integrated community in South Asia". Observing that the Prime Minister himself was a great proponent of the economic integration of the countries in the region so that all could reap the benefits, he said "all our neighbours can become partners in India's prosperity".

"We also wish that all our neighbours should look upon India as an opportunity in terms of economic benefit and also as a country having scientific and technological advancement with a robust economy and a very large investment possibility," he stressed.

This would definitely provide opportunities to the neighbouring countries to develop their own economies with India's partnership.

"Therefore, a South Asia Economic Union envisaging integration of these countries will always be helpful to SAARC member countries," he said.

He said when South Asian countries become dynamic in their development and economic advancement, only then these States could be part of the larger Asian development community Officials from SAARC comprising India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Nepal and Bhutan will discuss the agenda which would be considered by the Standing Committee of Foreign Secretaries who will report to the SAARC Council of Ministers. The Council will make its recommendations for consideration by the Summit.

Tackling terrorism and consolidating regional economic cooperation are among the issues expected to figure prominently during the deliberations.

Afghan territory remains source of threat - foreign ministry
MOSCOW, November 8 (RIA Novosti, Russia) - The territory of Afghanistan remains the main source of threat, the Russian deputy foreign minister said Tuesday.

Grigory Karasin, who is also state secretary, said the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a regional body that includes five former Soviet republics, was preparing to set up a working party for Afghanistan.

"Our countries' interest in these efforts is multi-faceted," Karasin said. "First of all, it relates to the development and implementation of coordinated approaches to a wide range of post-conflict settlement issues in Afghanistan."

He said the working party would provide technological, economic and military aid, as well as personnel training, including that for Afghanistan's power structures as part of the fight against terrorism and drug smuggling.

Another reason for the move, Karasin said, is the shared threats still emanating from Afghanistan to the organization's member states, which include Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Russia.

For this purpose, he said, the countries would jointly establish security belts around Afghanistan.

The deputy minister also said the task force would make it possible for the member states to cooperate with other nations and international organizations in dealings with Afghanistan.

Japanese researchers find Buddhist stone caves in Afghanistan
Wednesday November 9, 3:09 PM
(Kyodo) _ A team of Japanese researchers has found Buddhist stone caves believed to date back to the eighth century about 120 kilometers west of the Bamiyan ruins in central Afghanistan, the team said Wednesday.

The team, headed by Ryukoku University professor Takashi Irisawa, confirmed in late October the discovery of a group of caves built on cliffs located 1 km west of the Keligan ruins in the upper Band-e-Amir River area.

The discovery indicates the possibility that the influence of Buddhism may have extended to the area of the upper waters of the river centering around the Keligan ruins around the eighth century, and that the religion's sphere of influence in the region may have been greater than previously thought, team members said. Islam was beginning to gather momentum around that time.

"It will provide an invaluable clue in researching the sphere of Buddhism stretching westward," said Irisawa, an expert on Buddhist culture at the Kyoto-based university.

The group of caves is made up of four layers with seven rooms. The bottom layer, which is the largest, is 4 meters high, 5 meters wide and 15 meters long.

Three rooms in the bottom layer have spaces where Buddhist statues are believed to have been placed, indicating that the rooms may have been used for praying, team members said.

Irisawa said, there is "little doubt that the caves are Buddhist caves as they closely resemble the structure and architectural style of the Bamiyan stone caves."

Xuanzang, a Chinese monk known as Genjo Sanzo in Japan who visited Bamiyan in the seventh century, wrote in his book on his travels called "The Records of the Western Regions of the Great Tang Dynasty" that he had passed more than a dozen temples and some 300 monks on his way to Bamiyan.

The area of the Keligan ruins may have been where Xuanzang passed through, team members said.

A group of stone caves were also found in a village 2 km east of the Keligan ruins.

The cultural landscape and archaeological remains of the Bamiyan Valley, which was destroyed by the country's former Taliban rulers in 2001, were registered on the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's World Heritage list in 2003.

Roadside bomb hits UN convoy in Afghanistan but injures no one
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) - A roadside bomb exploded near a UN convoy in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday, damaging an armoured car but injuring no one, officials said.

The blast occurred on a road from Kandahar city to neighbouring Helmand province, a region plagued by Taliban violence, said Thoryali Khan, a local government leader. Two Afghans suspected of being behind the attack have been arrested, Khan said. Foreign and Afghan UN staff were in the convoy at the time, said Adrian Edwards, a UN spokesman.

However, no Canadian troops from the task force in Afghanistan were involved, said Capt. Francois Giroux, a spokesman for the Canadian provincial reconstruction team in Kandahar.

Meanwhile, U.S.-led coalition forces thwarted another attack after discovering a bomb on a roadside near the eastern city of Jalalabad, a U.S. military statement said.

Militants have stepped up attacks across Afghanistan this year, leaving almost 1,500 people dead, the most in a single year since the Taliban was ousted in 2001.

Former Taliban officials said killed in Pakistan
Wed 9 Nov 2005 6:04 AM ET
CHAMAN, Pakistan, Nov 9 (Reuters) - Gunmen have killed two former officials of Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime in northwestern Pakistan, their relatives said on Wednesday.

Mullah Abdul Mannan Khawajazai and Mullah Mohammad Akbar, who served as Taliban provincial governors and military commanders, were shot in the same attack late on Monday in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, near the Afghan border, said the relatives, who declined to be identified.

Several hundred people attended their burial at Gul Hassan village south of the Pakistani border town of Chaman on Wednesday, witnesses said.

Relatives said they had no information about the identity or motive of the gunmen.

Police in Peshawar, where a large number of Afghans have lived since the Soviet occupation of their country in the 1980s, could not be immediately reached for comment.

Khawajazai was governor of the northern Afghan provinces of Sar-i-Pul and Badghis, while Akbar was governor of the central province of Ghor.

Afghanistan to Accede to the Convention Establishing the WIPO
ag-IP-news Agency, Jordan / November 8, 2005
GENEVA - The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) announced on Tuesday the deposit by the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, on September 13, 2005, of its instrument of accession to the Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO Convention), signed in Stockholm on July 14, 1967, and as amended on September 28, 1979.

The said Convention will enter into force, with respect to the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, on December 13, 2005.

Official HIV/AIDS figures may be an underestimate
(Hewad) To date, 46 cases of HIV/AIDS have been registered in Afghanistan so far, but there may in reality be 400 to 800 cases across the country. Dr Abdullah Fahim, an adviser to the public health ministry, said the official figure of 46 cases is the precise number of those registered by the ministry, while the higher statistic is an estimate. Fahim said the spread of infection was caused in part by people returning from neighbouring countries, and also by shared needle use inside Afghanistan.

(Hewad is a state run daily mostly in Pashto.)

via Afghan Press Monitor (No 188, 07 Nov 05) - published by the Institute for War & Peace Reporting

Open for business, in Afghanistan
By Michael T. Luongo The New York Times TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2005
KABUL On the first day of her first business trip to Kabul, in January 2003, Virginia Sheffield found her car surrounded by "three very excited Afghans with guns."

It was the sort of incident that plays on Afghanistan's reputation as a lawless, violent place, best to be avoided by foreign capitalists.

But contrary to that popular perception, Sheffield and other corporate executives say, Afghanistan is the place to be these days.

Its economy is booming, providing opportunities for foreign businesses small and large, and the risk of falling prey to thugs or terrorists is not only exaggerated, they say, it is diminishing. "This mentality that it's very risky is not the reality," Sheffield said.

Her encounter with the three men with guns took place as she and her husband were entering the grounds of the presidential palace, to meet with President Hamid Karzai. Just as they drove past a sign warning that no photography was allowed, her husband fumbled with his camera, setting off the flash and prompting a rush of guards to their car. "I almost got arrested," she said, but when she showed the guards the photo her husband had inadvertently taken - of his feet - they were allowed in.

Since then, she says, she has spent more time in Afghanistan than in the United States, usually in three-month stints. She runs Sheffield Advisors, a consulting firm for companies doing business in Afghanistan, and also helps manage International Business Services-Afghanistan, which provides temporary office space and other support to newly arrived companies.

Shaun Brogan, a manager at the $25 million, 177-room, Kabul Serena Hotel, downplays the risk of terrorist attack in Kabul and says that misplaced trepidation has hurt business.

In mid-2004, Brogan said, he saw rockets exploding over the city and "heard the bangs, but it wasn't really scary." Foreigners tend to think that rockets go off every day, he said, while they are in fact quite rare. But he also said that the perception alone makes it hard to recruit employees from abroad.

In addition, Brogan said, it is difficult to get international corporations to send people in to sell their products or to help train local employees. "It's very frustrating when you're here trying to set up your business," he said.

The "psychological barrier," Brogan said, is "making them not invest."

On the other hand, said Christopher Newbery, general manager of the hotel, once foreign workers come to Kabul, "then they are great."

To be sure, the threat of violence remains, but foreign executives face up to it stoically, if not casually. "We have had plenty of close calls, rocket attacks in Kandahar which are very close to home," said Ben Preston, 27, manager of the Kabul office of DHL Worldwide Express, the delivery service company.

Preston said he was doing some business inside the offices of Standard Chartered, the first postwar international bank in Kabul, the day before Afghan authorities removed a bomb known as a VBIED, or vehicle-borne improvised explosive device, from a car that was parked in front.

By at least one measure - air travel - Afghanistan has become a safer place. Sheffield said that her first flight on Ariana, the national carrier, "looked like something from a Keystone Cops movie."

"You had people carrying bundles; one guy was actually carrying a tire," Sheffield said. Once on board, her seat belt did not work, so she tied it "in a knot and called it good."

Today, by contrast, flying the airline is "an experience as good as flying in the U.S.," she said.

Karim Khoja, chief executive of Roshan, an Afghan cellphone company, says he, too, witnessed the transformation of air transport from scary to reliable. He recalled the time some of his employees were on an Ariana plane that overshot the Kabul airport runway and barreled into an open field riddled with mines. "We were very lucky that no one got killed that day," he said.

But such incidents pretty much ended after "Ariana brought the Germans in" to train its employees, Khoja said, with happy results for business travelers. "When you think of investment in a country, what does a businessman want to do?" he asked. "He wants to get on a plane. Kabul has progressed in that respect."

In fact, the chaos of everyday life - the pace of construction everywhere, the erratic traffic, the worsening pollution, the unreliability of the work force - usually bothers foreign executives more than the perceived security threats do.

Khoja tries to see the bright side of the endless traffic jams, calling them a "sign of prosperity," but he laments the worsening air pollution they produce. And Preston, the DHL manager, said the broader problem was the absence of enforceable regulations that enabled anyone who could get behind the wheel of a vehicle to get a driver's license.

"It's desperate," Preston said. "What is there in terms of contract law, or any kind of law?"

Even so, he said, he takes the setbacks in stride. "I quite like working in places that are not too glitzy," he said. "It would be boring if it was easy."

Noor Delawari, director of the central bank of Afghanistan, acknowledged the regulatory confusion but said the economy was booming in spite of it, expanding at a projected 14 percent this year, up from 10.6 percent in 2004.

Much of the expansion is being fueled by construction, as the country rebuilds after nearly three decades of war. Housing and commercial centers are sprouting all over Kabul; an industrial park for 40 companies is going up outside the city; and other office parks are planned at sites near Kabul International Airport.

According to Sheffield, it was once possible to show visitors devastation from war.

"Not anymore," she said. "It's disappearing fast."

KABUL On the first day of her first business trip to Kabul, in January 2003, Virginia Sheffield found her car surrounded by "three very excited Afghans with guns."

It was the sort of incident that plays on Afghanistan's reputation as a lawless, violent place, best to be avoided by foreign capitalists.

But contrary to that popular perception, Sheffield and other corporate executives say, Afghanistan is the place to be these days.

Its economy is booming, providing opportunities for foreign businesses small and large, and the risk of falling prey to thugs or terrorists is not only exaggerated, they say, it is diminishing. "This mentality that it's very risky is not the reality," Sheffield said.

Her encounter with the three men with guns took place as she and her husband were entering the grounds of the presidential palace, to meet with President Hamid Karzai. Just as they drove past a sign warning that no photography was allowed, her husband fumbled with his camera, setting off the flash and prompting a rush of guards to their car. "I almost got arrested," she said, but when she showed the guards the photo her husband had inadvertently taken - of his feet - they were allowed in.

Since then, she says, she has spent more time in Afghanistan than in the United States, usually in three-month stints. She runs Sheffield Advisors, a consulting firm for companies doing business in Afghanistan, and also helps manage International Business Services-Afghanistan, which provides temporary office space and other support to newly arrived companies.

Shaun Brogan, a manager at the $25 million, 177-room, Kabul Serena Hotel, downplays the risk of terrorist attack in Kabul and says that misplaced trepidation has hurt business.

In mid-2004, Brogan said, he saw rockets exploding over the city and "heard the bangs, but it wasn't really scary." Foreigners tend to think that rockets go off every day, he said, while they are in fact quite rare. But he also said that the perception alone makes it hard to recruit employees from abroad.

In addition, Brogan said, it is difficult to get international corporations to send people in to sell their products or to help train local employees. "It's very frustrating when you're here trying to set up your business," he said.

The "psychological barrier," Brogan said, is "making them not invest."

On the other hand, said Christopher Newbery, general manager of the hotel, once foreign workers come to Kabul, "then they are great."

To be sure, the threat of violence remains, but foreign executives face up to it stoically, if not casually. "We have had plenty of close calls, rocket attacks in Kandahar which are very close to home," said Ben Preston, 27, manager of the Kabul office of DHL Worldwide Express, the delivery service company.

Preston said he was doing some business inside the offices of Standard Chartered, the first postwar international bank in Kabul, the day before Afghan authorities removed a bomb known as a VBIED, or vehicle-borne improvised explosive device, from a car that was parked in front.

By at least one measure - air travel - Afghanistan has become a safer place. Sheffield said that her first flight on Ariana, the national carrier, "looked like something from a Keystone Cops movie."

"You had people carrying bundles; one guy was actually carrying a tire," Sheffield said. Once on board, her seat belt did not work, so she tied it "in a knot and called it good."

Today, by contrast, flying the airline is "an experience as good as flying in the U.S.," she said.

Karim Khoja, chief executive of Roshan, an Afghan cellphone company, says he, too, witnessed the transformation of air transport from scary to reliable. He recalled the time some of his employees were on an Ariana plane that overshot the Kabul airport runway and barreled into an open field riddled with mines. "We were very lucky that no one got killed that day," he said.

But such incidents pretty much ended after "Ariana brought the Germans in" to train its employees, Khoja said, with happy results for business travelers. "When you think of investment in a country, what does a businessman want to do?" he asked. "He wants to get on a plane. Kabul has progressed in that respect."

In fact, the chaos of everyday life - the pace of construction everywhere, the erratic traffic, the worsening pollution, the unreliability of the work force - usually bothers foreign executives more than the perceived security threats do.

Khoja tries to see the bright side of the endless traffic jams, calling them a "sign of prosperity," but he laments the worsening air pollution they produce. And Preston, the DHL manager, said the broader problem was the absence of enforceable regulations that enabled anyone who could get behind the wheel of a vehicle to get a driver's license.

"It's desperate," Preston said. "What is there in terms of contract law, or any kind of law?"

Even so, he said, he takes the setbacks in stride. "I quite like working in places that are not too glitzy," he said. "It would be boring if it was easy."

Noor Delawari, director of the central bank of Afghanistan, acknowledged the regulatory confusion but said the economy was booming in spite of it, expanding at a projected 14 percent this year, up from 10.6 percent in 2004.

Much of the expansion is being fueled by construction, as the country rebuilds after nearly three decades of war. Housing and commercial centers are sprouting all over Kabul; an industrial park for 40 companies is going up outside the city; and other office parks are planned at sites near Kabul International Airport.

According to Sheffield, it was once possible to show visitors devastation from war.

"Not anymore," she said. "It's disappearing fast."