Afghanistan News September 29, 2005

September 29, 2005

'Endless' Gripes Expected in Afghan Vote
By MATTHEW PENNINGTON, Associated Press Writer Wed Sep 28, 6:31 PM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan - The chief electoral officer in Afghanistan's election last week said Wednesday he expects "an endless stream" of complaints from losing candidates, and he urged them to respect the results.

Peter Erben of the U.N.-Afghan Joint Electoral Management Body said he was "absolutely satisfied" with the progress of counting the more than 6 million votes cast in the Sept. 18 polls for new national and provincial assemblies.

The elections were widely viewed as a pivotal step toward Afghanistan's democracy on a path laid out in 2001, when U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban for refusing to hand over al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden after the Sept. 11 attacks.

He said the count was about half-complete, and due to finish on schedule around Oct. 4.

Erben said that as the count is completed in each province, there will be a period for complaints before official results are announced by Oct. 22.

"We will have over 5,000 candidates losing the election, and this will lead to a very high level of accusations (about) the process," he said at a news conference. "Over the coming week as the results become clear, we will have an endless stream of complaints.

"We obviously hope that those who do not win seats will accept the result and the fact that they will have to try to win a seat next time."

Erben condemned the killing late Tuesday of a candidate in northern Balkh province — the eighth fatal assault on a candidate since before the election, which is seen as a key step in Afghanistan's transition to democracy after two decades of war.

He said the security situation remained calm at the 32 vote-counting centers across Afghanistan.

Overall counting is on schedule, Erben said, but he noted that extra staff were being deployed at larger centers such as the western province of Herat and in the capital, Kabul, to finish tallying votes on time.

Erben said that 4 percent of ballot boxes nationwide had been quarantined for investigation due to reported irregularities. He said that was an acceptable proportion, and signaled electoral authorities' intention to review such cases.

U.N. curbs staff after Kabul bomb; Taliban vows more
By David Brunnstrom
KABUL (Reuters) - The     United Nations said on Thursday it had restricted movements of its staff in Kabul after a suicide bombing killed at least 10 people, while the Taliban said it had 45 more suicide attackers awaiting orders to strike.

Wednesday's bombing at a military training center set up by U.S.-led forces to train a new national army was the worst suicide attack in the capital since the Taliban's 2001 overthrow.

The Taliban claimed responsibility and vowed more.

U.N. spokesman Adrian Edwards said U.N. staff in the city, who are already under night-time curfew, had been placed on restricted movement as a precaution.

"While we are assessing the situation, is restricted movement on staff," he said.

The security office serving non-governmental organizations has told staff to stay on high alert and advised against unnecessary movement.

The threat to aid workers was underlined on Wednesday when an Afghan working for a Bangladeshi aid agency was shot dead and a Bangladeshi aid worker wounded in an attack in Parwan province north of Kabul.

Arif Islam, a project manager for the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, said it was unclear who carried out the attack that came a day after a Bangladeshi U.N. worker was wounded by a roadside bomb in the eastern province of Nangarhar.

In Wednesday's attack in Kabul, a suicide bomber in the uniform of an army lieutenant rammed a motorcycle into a convoy of buses carrying Afghan soldiers in the eastern part of the city, opposite a base of     NATO-led peacekeepers.

Defense Ministry spokesman Zahir Azimi said 10 people were killed, including the bomber. Eight were Afghan army officers or non-commissioned officers and one the civilian driver of one of the buses. Other Afghan officials said 12 people died.

IRAQ-STYLE TACTICS?
The bombing came 10 days after landmark parliamentary elections, which passed off relatively peacefully despite militant threats, but there has been a surge in violence since.

Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi claimed 20 deaths in the attack and said most of the victims were foreigners.

"Most of them were foreign soldiers and officers but their Afghan slaves are covering this up," he said by telephone from an undisclosed location.

Hakimi vowed more attacks on foreign forces and said 45 suicide bombers were awaiting orders from Taliban commanders.

"American and British forces are our first target and then we will launch attacks on others," he said.

The attack has again raised fears that insurgents may be importing Iraqi-style tactics into     Afghanistan.

Newsweek magazine this month quoted a Taliban commander as saying he had been to     Iraq for training and wanted to make use of the expertise acquired in Afghanistan.

While Kabul has seen several suicide attacks on foreign peacekeepers and civilians since the Taliban's overthrow, it has been spared the extent of Islamic militant violence seen in Iraq.

But 2005 has seen a surge in violence in the troubled south and east and roadside bomb attacks of the type seen in Iraq have become an almost daily occurrence.

More than 1,000 people, most of them insurgents, have died so far this year in the bloodiest period since U.S.-led forces drove out the Taliban for refusing to give up al Qaeda leader     Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks on U.S. cities.

The dead include more than 50 U.S. troops killed in combat, the bloodiest period so far for U.S. forces in the country.

(Additional reporting by Saeed Ali Achakzai and Yousuf Azimy)

Experts Examine Body of Afghan Bomber
By AMIR SHAH, Associated Press Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan - Experts are trying to identify the body of a man who launched a suicide attack outside a military training center in Kabul, killing nine people and wounding 36, the Defense Ministry said Thursday.

A purported Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for Wednesday's attack that broke 10 days of relative calm after landmark parliamentary elections and underscored the terrorist threat still facing     Afghanistan as it moves slowly toward democracy.

Defense Minister Rahim Wardak said experts were trying to identify the dismembered body of the attacker who drove a motorbike between buses in the parking lot of the Afghan army training facility in the east of Kabul as staff were leaving for home.

Wardak blamed "enemies of peace and stability in this country" for the bombing but was skeptical of the Taliban claim.

"The Taliban tell lies. Let's wait for the investigation to be completed," he told The Associated Press.

Officials said eight training center staff, including officers, and one civilian driver were killed, along with the attacker. Three civilians were among the 36 wounded, seven of whom have been discharged from hospital.

The bombing, the worst to hit Kabul in at least a year, added to fears that insurgents here could be copying tactics used in     Iraq.

This year has seen an upsurge in violence in Afghanistan, but mostly in the volatile south and east where Taliban-led insurgents are strongest. More than 1,300 people, many of them rebels, have died in the past seven months.

Suicide attacks are comparatively rare in the Afghan capital, which is patrolled by thousands of     NATO peacekeepers. However, a suicide blast in the southern city of Kandahar in June killed 20 people, including the Kabul police chief.

Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammed Zaher Azimi said foreigners were helping investigate the bombing. He said witnesses recounted that the attacker had been wearing an army uniform with the rank of major.

In a call to AP nearly five hours after the attack, purported Taliban spokesman Mullah Latif Hakimi said the bomber was a 22-year-old Afghan fighter from the hard-line militia he identified as Mullah Sardar Mohammed.

Hakimi's account of the attack differed from witness accounts. He claimed the attacker, disguised in uniform and riding a motorbike, struck at army headquarters as foreigner instructors were training Afghan cadets.

Information from Hakimi in the past has sometimes proven exaggerated or untrue. Afghan and U.S. military officials say he is believed to speak for factions of the rebel group, though his exact ties to the Taliban leadership cannot be verified.

Army Interrogator Set to Plead Guilty
By ALICIA A. CALDWELL / Associated Press / Wed Sep 28, 6:00 AM ET
FORT BLISS, Texas - The last of nine soldiers charged with abusing detainees in Afghanistan following the deaths of two prisoners at the Bagram Airfield detention center was headed to trial, although he has said he would plead guilty.

The trial of Sgt. Joshua R. Claus, a military intelligence interrogator, was to begin Wednesday. Military investigators said Claus forced one detainee to roll across the floor and kiss another soldier's boots.

He also is accused of forcing water down the throat of another detainee known as Dilawar and tightly twisting a hood over the man's head.

Dilawar died at the detention center in December 2002. No one has been charged with causing his death.

Pvt. Glendale C. Walls, who said Claus ordered the detainee to kiss his boots, pleaded guilty last month to abuse and standing by as Claus and another soldier did the same thing. He was sentenced to two months in jail.

The most serious charges in the case were against Pfc. Willie V. Brand, who was convicted by a military jury of assault, maltreatment, maiming and making a false official statement. He was spared jail time but got a reduction in rank and pay to a private, the Army's lowest rank.

Spc. Brian E. Cammack was sentenced to three months in prison for abuse.

Claus, Walls and another soldier were from the MI battalion at Fort Bragg, N.C., while the other six were reservists with the Cincinnati-based 377th Military Police Co.

Charges against five other reserve soldiers, including Capt. Christopher M. Beiring, who commanded the reservists at Bagram, were announced earlier this month.

Two soldiers, reservists from the Cincinnati-based unit, were acquitted earlier this month of charges that they beat a detainee known as Habibullah and later lied about it.

Another of the Ohio reservists was given a letter of reprimand for dereliction of duty after criminal charges against him were dropped.

A look at the Afghanistan prison abuse scandal
Associated Press / September 28, 2005
Here's a look at the cases against 14 soldiers accused of abusing two Afghan detainees who later died. The trials have been held at Fort Bliss, Texas.

_ Sgt. James P. Boland, of the reserve 377th Military Police Co. in Cincinnati, was initially charge with maltreatment, dereliction of duty and assault. All charges were dropped, and he was given a letter of reprimand for dereliction of duty. He has since left the Army.

_ Spec. Brian Cammack, of the 377th MP Co., pleaded guilty to assault and two counts of making a false official statement. He was sentenced to three months in prison, reduced in rank to private, and given a bad-conduct discharge.

_ Pfc. Willie V. Brand, of the 377th MP Co., was convicted on charges of assault, maiming, maltreatment, and making a false official statement. He was reduced in rank to private.

_ Sgt. Anthony Morden, of the 377th MP Co., pleaded guilty to one count of assault and two counts of dereliction of duty. He was sentenced to 75 days in prison, reduced in rank to private, and given a bad-conduct discharge.

_ Sgt. Christopher W. Greatorex, of the 377th MP Co., was acquitted of charges of assault, maltreatment and making a false official statement.

_ Sgt. Darin M. Broady, of the 377th MP Co., was acquitted of charges of assault, maltreatment and making a false official statement.

_ Capt. Christopher M. Beiring, commander of the 377th MP Co., has been charged with dereliction of duty and making a false official statement. A trial date has not been set.

_ Staff Sgt. Brian L. Doyle, of the 377th MP Co., has been charged with dereliction of duty and maltreatment. A trial date has not been set.

_ Sgt. Duane M. Grubb, of the 377th MP Co., has been charged with assault, maltreatment and making a false official statement. A trial date has not been set.

_ Sgt. Alan J. Driver, of the 377th MP Co., has been charged with assault and maltreatment. A trial date has not been set.

_ Spec. Nathan Adam Jones, of the 377th MP Co., has been charged with assault, maltreatment and making a false official statement. A trial date has not been set.

_ Spec. Glendale C. Walls, of the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion from Fort Bragg, N.C., pleaded guilty to charges of dereliction of duty and assault. He was sentenced to two months in prison, reduced in rank to private and given a bad-conduct discharge.

_ Sgt. Selena M. Salcedo, of the 519th MI Battalion, pleaded guilty to dereliction of duty and assault. She was reduced in rank to specialist or corporal, fined $250 a month for four months and given a letter of reprimand.

_ Sgt. Joshua Claus, of the 519th MI Battalion, is scheduled to stand trial Wednesday on charges of maltreatment, assault and making a false official statement. He has announced plans to plead guilty.

via KRIS-TV, TX

OPINION: Afghan Elections Deserve Our Attention
Cinnamon Stillwell / San Francisco Chronicle / Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Something remarkable happened in Afghanistan this month. The war-torn country held its first parliamentary election in 35 years and 12.5 million people, men and women, were registered to vote.

Terrorists mounted a desperate attempt over the preceding months to stop the election, but to no avail. Despite killing 1,000 people, including seven candidates and six poll workers, several of them women, the harbingers of destruction failed to intimidate the Afghan people. And thanks to U.S., NATO and Afghan forces, violence was at a minimum the day of the election. As Interior Ministry spokesman Lutfullah Mashal put it, "After all their boasting, it's a big failure for the Taliban."

The U.N.-Afghan election commission accomplished a momentous task in pulling off the election. In what's being called "one of the most difficult logistical operations ever undertaken by international electoral workers," 6,000 polling sites were set up all over the country. In some cases, donkeys, camels and airplanes were needed to transport voting materials. Some 5,800 candidates sought seats in the 249-seat national assembly, 68 of which were reserved for women. Candidates such as the 25-year-old Sabrina Sagheb stirred things up in a country long wracked not just by gender inequality but by virtual apartheid.

As in last year's presidential election, the Afghan people showed themselves well up to the task of democracy. At just over 50 percent, the turnout was lower than last time, but the numbers were still pretty impressive, considering the circumstances.

Defying threats of violence and their own rugged landscape, Afghans made their way through deserts and mountains so they could take part in the democratic process. A third of them were women, who, perhaps more than anyone else, understand what's at stake. Even in conservative outlying areas, Afghan women participated in fairly large numbers. One of them, 18-year-old Khatereh Mushafiq, explained, "We are also now taking part in the government and in society. People must take part, people must have a say."

Too Quiet on the Media Front

Despite the magnitude of these events, one could be forgiven for not having heard a lot about them in the mainstream media. Although the election was reported, it certainly wasn't front-page news. Instead, it was relegated to the back pages, along with any positive developments occurring in Iraq. The nonchalance with which much of the media treats democratic elections if they happen to occur in Afghanistan betrays either outright bias, a lack of interest or pronounced cynicism. Either that or the hurricane season got the better of them.

Considering such omissions, it's little wonder that Americans are still confused as to what the war on terror is all about. And the Bush administration hasn't done enough to correct this communications gap. But the U.S. military certainly has. Curious readers will find ample information at the Department of Defense (DOD) and Central Command (Centcom) Web sites, not to mention the Afghan blogs and Web sites that fill in the gaps.

Those who remember the brutality and horror of Afghanistan under the Taliban do not take elections lightly. We don't want to see any more men and women shot in the head in soccer stadiums in front of cheering audiences or buried up to their necks and stoned to death. Or women confined to their homes and beaten on the streets if unaccompanied.

The outlawing of music, kite flying and art featuring human forms was a testament to the utter darkness and despair that enveloped Afghanistan under the Taliban. The notorious destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas was the ultimate act of despotism over creation itself. If anyone needs a refresher course of what life was like under the Taliban, the bleak film Osama is a good place to start.

All of this is a far cry from today's Afghanistan. Although the country has a long way to go, change is clearly in the air. In a testament to the return of romance and cultural life to a country long lacking in both, the Shakespeare's plays, including "Romeo and Juliet," were performed in Kabul last month.

Afghanistan's version of MTV, Tolo-TV, is hugely popular among the youth, and a new show, "Afghan Star," is offering them yet another form of democracy, à la "American Idol." Sadly, the station's lone female host, Shaima Rezayee, was murdered in what looks to have been an honor killing, demonstrating that the backward pull is still alive and well. All the more reason to continue supporting the progressive elements in Afghan society.

Selective Humanitarianism

Critics of the war in Iraq maintain that they supported the liberation of Afghanistan, but there were several large anti-war rallies that took place in San Francisco, Washington and other cities during the Afghan action. A few Democratic politicians went on record opposing the action as well. There are some, it seems, who are against employing the U.S. military for any reason other than humanitarian missions. But should the humanitarian element happen to coincide with America's interests, as it does in the Muslim world, they suddenly lose interest.

If one is interested in humanity, the fact that al-Qaeda's training camps in Afghanistan, which we now know from their own lips were processing thousands of terrorists, are gone is reason enough to rejoice. The Afghan people are certainly happy to be free of al-Qaeda's grip, as exemplified by the strong condemnations of terrorism that marked the fourth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Ironically, these acts of barbarism were what turned Afghanistan and the United States into allies.

Those who wear the mantle of feminism should have cause to celebrate the downfall of the Taliban as well. Although the ubiquitous burqa can still be seen shrouding far too many women's bodies, it is no longer legally required. The emergence of at least some female faces speaks to this reality. Following other parts of the country, the first Women's Center just opened up in Paktika province. Most importantly, women are back at work, in school, and visible in everyday life.

Anti-war activists like to counter that by being in Iraq the United States has somehow "forgotten about Afghanistan." But when positive developments like the election occur in Afghanistan the silence from such critics is deafening. Concentrating solely on terrorist attacks, opium farming and warlordism, they see only the negative. Afghanistan is indeed a tribal culture mired in ancient customs, and outside of Kabul much work still needs to be done. But simply giving up isn't an option.

Other detractors of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan insist that because America backed the jihadists against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the '80s, it should forever after relinquish all responsibility for the place. But alliances shift over the course of history, and it's easy to pass judgment in hindsight. Just because a country stumbles along the way doesn't mean that it can't do right later on.

Whether or not one buys the political reasons behind the decision to go to war in Afghanistan, the people are no longer under the boot of the Taliban's seventh century barbarism, and this is a worthy outcome in and of itself. In the words of 36-year-old Mohammed Twahir, "Before there was no democracy, now we have democracy. Democracy means freedom."

While Afghanistan certainly has struggles ahead, this by no means precludes acknowledging progress when it has occurred. And last week's election was progress.

If one truly cares about human rights, then they should be celebrated in all cases, even when one's political foes helped bring them about. This is the definition of true humanitarianism.

Cinnamon Stillwell is a Bay Area writer.

Afghan 'mass graves' investigated
BBC News / Wednesday, 28 September 2005

The Afghan government is investigating what appear to be mass graves in the south-eastern province of Paktika.

Human skulls, bones and old clothes were found in Sra Qala (Red Fort), 10km from provincial capital, Sharan.

A senior provincial security official told the BBC the graves probably held the remains of up to 500 soldiers and may date back to 1989.

He said they may also contain villagers killed for allegedly supporting the former communist government.

Culverts

The official told the BBC's Bilal Sarwary he believed former provincial governing officials may have been involved in the massacre.

But he said the influence of local militias made it difficult for witnesses to talk.

The remains are believed to be of soldiers of the 9th Brigade that fell in 1989 to mujahideen fighters.

Some of the soldiers had been taken alive, the official said.

The graves were found close to culverts near Sharan.

Former Voice of the Taliban Relives His Years of Detention
By CARLOTTA GALL / The New York Times / Published: September 27, 2005
KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 26 - It has been a long journey for Abdul Salam Zaeef, the former Taliban envoy who became one of the most visible faces of Afghanistan's Islamic government after the Sept. 11 attacks, holding daily news conferences at which he defended the Taliban's determination to fight rather than give up Osama bin Laden.

Nearly four years later, much of it spent in American detention, he has returned to Afghanistan a more subdued man, who no longer uses his title of mullah, but wears the same thick black silk turban and long beard that are the hallmarks of the Taliban.

Mr. Zaeef, 37, was living in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, when he was arrested there in January 2002. Since then, he said, he has been through detention in Pakistan, a week in a cell on an American warship, months at American air bases in Afghanistan and, finally, more than three years at the Guantánamo Bay camp in Cuba. He was released early this month.

In an interview in a government safe house in Kabul, he said his American guards at Guantánamo had told him that he was no longer considered a danger. "They said, 'You are not guilty, and to be in prison for so long is not right,' " he said. "They said that to me a lot."

The chief spokesman for the American military in Afghanistan, Col. James Yonts, confirmed that Mr. Zaeef was released in early September.

Stephen Hadley, the American national security adviser, said Mr. Zaeef was taken into custody because he was on the administration's terrorist list. Speaking at a news briefing in Kabul on Monday, he said the release of Mr. Zaeef and others was being decided on a case-by-case basis, depending on their role in the Taliban, the extent to which they have cooperated in ending terrorism, and the effect their return will have on bringing others into the reconciliation process.

Sebaghatullah Mojadeddi, the chief of the Afghan government's Peace and Reconciliation Commission, said Mr. Zaeef had not been charged during his time at Guantánamo. "In my opinion, he had no sin," Mr. Mojadeddi said of Mr. Zaeef. "And if he was guilty, he spent enough time there."

Mr. Mojadeddi said the American military was gradually releasing the remaining 102 Afghan detainees at Guantánamo.

Mr. Zaeef is now living at the Afghan government's expense in a rented house in the capital, where he was reunited with his family - his two wives and eight children - and is protected by government guards. "He can stay as long as he wants, but he is free," Mr. Mojadeddi said.

A former minister of transportation, before two years as the Taliban envoy to Pakistan, Mr. Zaeef is one of the most prominent Taliban officials to return under the government reconciliation program. Two others were released recently by the Americans and ran for Parliament.

Mr. Zaeef, however, is hesitant about what he will do next. "I am tired; I just want to be with my family and see my children," he said. He has no plans to return to his home province of Kandahar, he said, or to help the government persuade other Taliban members to cease fighting, although he supports the effort.

"They should continue talking to them to find out what they want, and why they are still fighting," he said. "Maybe we can find a solution."

In his role as ambassador, Mr. Zaeef was seen as the main conduit to the Taliban leadership after Sept. 11, but he was also regarded as a moderate figure, despite his daily diatribes on his embassy verandah accusing American forces of genocide in Afghanistan.

Mr. Zaeef said that during that period, he was in touch with Pakistani and American officials, and talked to Hamid Karzai, now the Afghan president, once by telephone. He also organized several delegations of senior clerics to consult with the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, to try to avert war, he said.

"My advice was that Afghanistan did not have the power to bear this heavy load, and that if we did not find a solution, then the government of Afghanistan would fall," he said, recalling his conversation with the Taliban leader.

His mission failed, he said, because it was too difficult for a poor and powerless country like Afghanistan to reach an understanding with a superpower that he described as "very emotional" about using force.

"Afghans are not the natural enemies of America," he said. "We had this extremist problem, but war is not the solution to that."

Mr. Zaeef said American and Pakistani officials even offered him money at the time to break with Mullah Omar and set up his own moderate political party. It could have saved him from nearly four years' imprisonment, but he said he never considered it.

Details of Mr. Zaeef's role during the war could not be independently verified, although his position as something of a go-between is well documented.

Even now Mr. Zaeef demurs from pronouncing Mr. bin Laden the perpetrator of the World Trade Center attacks. "I don't know who did those attacks, but when they happened, I condemned them," he said. "I believe in security and peace."

Under pressure from the United States, Pakistan eventually forced Mr. Zaeef to cease his news conferences, and then, after the fall of the Taliban, to close the embassy. He said he had been told by the Pakistani Foreign Ministry that he could stay in the country for "a reasonable time," but on Jan. 2, 2002, he was taken into custody.

He spent two nights in Peshawar and then was handed to Americans, he said, and was taken by helicopter to another base, then to a ship at sea.

American military officials confirmed the handing over of Mr. Zaeef by the Pakistanis and his presence on the amphibious assault ship Bataan at the time.

Mr. Zaeef was questioned only about the whereabouts of Mullah Omar and Mr. bin Laden.

He said he had never been in touch with Mr. bin Laden, but had talked to Mullah Omar about 8 to 10 days before the fall of Kandahar, the Taliban's spiritual capital and their last urban stronghold. But he found the leadership in disarray.

"I was asking, 'What should we do?' but, he said: 'I also don't know what to do. You will have to decide for yourselves,' " Mr. Zaeef recalled.

After five or six days on the ship, he was transferred to Afghanistan, first to Bagram Air Base for a month, and then to the Kandahar base for roughly three months. He complained of bad treatment in both places, including being stripped and left outside in the snow overnight in Bagram, causing him to lose consciousness. Soldiers often kicked detainees, he said, "because there was no law or rules."

"Whatever the guards wanted, they could do to us," he said. "They were looking at us as the enemy."

In Guantánamo, however, he said he had few problems.

Colonel Yonts said that no incidents of abuse against Mr. Zaeef had been reported, but that the Army was looking into the matter. Mr. Zaeef is critical of his American captors for holding him without charge for nearly four years, for the sole reason, he said, of trying to get information from him.

"I am 100 percent sure they knew I was not involved in those attacks," he said, referring to Sept. 11. "They only wanted information from me."

But he reserved his harshest words for the Pakistani officials who had handed him over to the Americans. "Pakistanis always have two-faced policies," he said. "Pakistan is always telling the thief to steal things, and at the same time telling the owner to watch out for thieves."

Afghanistan: Basic Needs And A Bit Of Luxury Thanks To Drug Money
adnkronosinternational (AKI, Italy)
Kabul, 28 Sept. (AKI) - (by Syed Saleem Shahzad) - For anyone who has heard stories of desperate poverty in Afghanistan, it may come as a complete surprise to see brand new land cruisers and smart Japanese-made cars on the streets of the capital Kabul. There is wealth in this war-torn country and no one in Kabul is shy about admitting that it comes from the billions of dollars in drug money - some 60 percent of the real GDP in Afghanistan. This money has boosted the individual living standard of Kabulis and helped make Kabul one of the most expensive cities in Asia.

Soon after dawn, the electricity supply is cut in Kabul and the generators begin to hum in every nook and corner of the city. That buzz is a familiar accompaniament until dusk when the electricity is restored but does little to disturb daily life as many Kabulis have enough money to generate electricity for their own needs.

The same rule applies for water and other basic needs which the national government has failed to provide, and ordinary Afghans innocently admit that drug money plugs the gap.

“There is no general lawlessness in Afghanistan. Especially in the south and south eastern provinces," argues Al-Haaj Bedar Khan, the vice-president of the Export Promotion Bank of Afghanistan and a candidate for parliament from Kabul in the recent elections.

"The government does not have any role in providing the basic necessities of life. Any ordinary cultivation like wheat or vegetables does not help anyone make ends meet whether it's a farmer, the middle man, or the retailers," said Khan who is also a prominent tribal elder from the region of Jaji, in the southern Paktia region, known for the cultivation of poppy and its trade.

"The government does not have money for compensation, so when a farmer grows poppy he earns several times more money that an ordinary crop. The same profit ratio is also earned by the middle man and the effect goes down the whole chain wherever the money passes and that’s how a natural substitute has taken root all over Afghanistan,” he added.

Afghanistan is estimated to produce 87 percent of the world's supply of opium (4,519 tonnes this season, down two percent from 2004 ), with nearly half of the country's 4.5 billion dollar-economy coming from opium cultivation and trafficking.

In the capital, most Kabulis seem to be involved in the drug trade in one way or another. Whether it's their relatives in their native villages cultivating poppy, or a family member who frequently travels between the south and the north of the country trafficking opium, or being involved in the development of heroin.

Even if they are the 10 to 20 percent of the city's population that refuses to be involved in the drug business, they do benefit directly or indirectly with the increase in sales in their shops due to the flow of drug money.

It is also common knowledge in Afghanistan that both warlords and the Taliban control the drug trade, and at times mutual interest helps them overcome their bitter enmity for drug ends.

Earlier this week, the government in Afghanistan admitted that it had considered licensing its vast poppy crops and using them to produce opium-based medicines, though it ruled out such a move in the immediate future.

A feasibility study about licensing poppy cultivation in Afghanistan was conducted by the Senlis Council, a drug policy research organization based in Europe. The group said that the research showed a world shortage of painkillers, like opium-based morphine and codeine, in the developing world in particular, and that a licensing system in Afghanistan and local production of painkillers could give farmers a steady legal income.

However, Afghanistan's anti-narcotics minister, Habibullah Qaderi, ruled out adopting such a program until security conditions in the country improved. The United Nations has also rejected such a call to legalise Afghanistan's opium industry.

Tajik president calls for solution to Afghanistan's drug problems
cALMA ATA, Sept. 27 (Xinhua) -- Tajik President Emomali Sharipovich Rakhmonov said Tuesday the flow of illegal drugs from Afghanistan can not be stopped only by combat, according to reports from the Tajik capital of Dushanbe.

To tackle the problem from the roots, the Afghan people should be given more job opportunities and their living conditions shouldbe improved, Rakhmonov said at a European Union (EU) anti-drugs meeting.

The president said the large amount of capital got from drugs trade is channeled to terrorist groups, so fighting drugs trade isof great significance to the world anti-terrorism campaign.

Terrorism has no borderlines, and is not confined to any particular nations or religions. So there should no be no double standards in combating terrorism, he said.

Tajikistan has a 1,344-km borderline with Afghanistan and has become a major route for drugs being smuggled to Europe and Russia from Afghanistan.

Since the Russian troops handed over border control to the Tajik army this June, drug trafficking from Afghanistan has become more rampant.

Rakhmonov said the Tajik border army is in the stage of being built up, the country needs other countries and world organizations to help tighten border security.

Russian and Western countries have recently increased border control assistance to the ex-Soviet republic to curb the flow of illegal drugs.

AFGHANISTAN: Low government presence threatens disbandment of illegal armed groups
KABUL, 27 September (IRIN) - A government-led effort to disband illegal armed groups is proceeding slowly in remote parts of Afghanistan where Kabul's writ remains weak, officials at the National Disarmament and Reintegration (DR) Commission say.

"In most of the districts where irresponsible regional armed commanders receive money through unlawful means, including illegal tax collection and enforcing people to smuggle narcotics, the public have raised their voices to expedite the collection of arms and establish a stronger administration," Masoum Stanekzai, a minister advising Afghan President Hamid Karzai and deputy head of the DR commission, explained.

Following completion of the UN-backed Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) of ex-combatants programmes in late June, the government and the UN have set their sights on getting the guns out of herds of armed men that still roam the countryside.

Successor to the DDR effort begun in October 2003, which sought to disarm and dissolve the large private armies maintained by regional warlords, the Disbandment of Illegal Groups (DIAG) effort will address just that.

More than 60,000 former combatants were disarmed by the DDR, taking the international community nearly 20 months and over US $150 million to complete. In addition to the decommissioning of ex-combatants, around 35,000 light and medium weapons and 11,004 heavy weapons were collected across the country.

Conversely, DIAG aims to dismantle an estimated 1,800 illegal armed bands of men, comprised of up to 100,000 individuals, who continue to pose a major security concern in many parts of the country.

Financed by the Japanese government, DIAG is run by the interior and defence ministries and the national security agency, and overseen by the UN.

But the challenge in doing so is great. More than three years after a US-led coalition toppled the Taliban regime, these groups are still regarded as a threat to stability.

However, according to the DR commission, newly ratified legislation will soon be in force, effectively banning the unlicensed ownership of private arms and ammunitions. Under new regulations only those with the necessary permits issued by the interior ministry will be allowed to bear arms.

Moreover, all arms being stored in caches would be collected, in addition to all unlicensed small weapons kept at home, officials at the DR commission explained.

Since its launch in early June, more than 20,000 arms have been collected by DIAG across the country, Stanekzai reported, noting that strict measures should be undertaken to ensure an arms-free society through nationwide awareness, adding that they would also seek help from members of the upcoming parliament in this regard.

"Weapons registered in the Ministry of Defence have been collected by the DDR. Remaining weapons out of government control would be collected through the DIAG process," Ahmad Jan Nowzadi, public information officer of ANBP in the capital Kabul, added.

Meanwhile, 16 former Afghan Military Forces (AMF) commanders, whose units had been decommissioned as part of the nationwide disarmament process, were awarded with one-month business management courses designed by Afghanistan's New Beginnings Programme (ANBP). The certificates were distributed as a part of the commanders' reintegration programme on Thursday in Kabul.

Afghanistan's only escalator leads to shopping heaven
NewKerala.com, India / September 28, 2005
By Can Merey, Kabul: It looks like a spaceship that has landed on the wrong planet. It is Afghanistan's very first shopping mall, gleaming with shops while on the dusty road outside people pump water and grim soldiers drive by in armoured vehicles.

The mall, which opened here this month, offers a lesson in contrast. It also boasts another first for Afghanistan, an escalator, which customers can use to reach upper floors - if they dare.

"People are afraid of the escalator. They are amazed to see something moving by itself," says Anwar Hussein, manager of the hotel that shares a nine-storey building with the shopping centre.

Customers afraid to use the escalator can take the lift in the safe knowledge there will be no power blackout because the building maintains its own generators.

The mall owners also claim their building is the only fully air-conditioned one in the capital and are advertising it as a cool haven for families during the national capital's searing summer months -- and as a warm, comfortable place to while away freezing winter days.

Mall director and co-owner Habib Safi is confident that visitors will not only use the centre to escape the city's harsh climate but will also spend money in its 90 shops.

"You have to take risks," the businessman said.

Shop proprietors who have leased space in the mall also believe in the newly emerging shopping frenzy.

"It is nice to shop here. The markets outside are dusty," said shop owner Abdul Kasim.

The dresses displayed in his shop windows are imported from Turkey, their designs being rather daring for Afghanistan.

Kasim is hoping for a good turnover regardless of the fact that many women in Kabul still wear the traditional, all-disguising burka.

Women can still wear these clothes at home, Kasim reckons.

But there are few customers strolling in the aisles between the gold, textile, furniture and electrical appliance shops and the caf? on the ground floor that offers "coffee to go".

The ample lighting, meticulously clean aisles and Afghan pop music blaring from invisible loudspeakers baffle potential customers.

The music only stops when the muezzin calls for prayers. It is only then that the casual visitor can recognise that they are still in Afghanistan.

Despite such peculiarities the first customers are excited.

"That is real development. I wish Afghanistan were full of shopping malls," said customer Abdul Fatah, who had just purchased a silver wristwatch.

The mall owners, who are already planning on expanding their retail empire beyond the city, could not agree more with Fatah.

Habib Safi plans to erect two skyscrapers with an incorporated shopping mall in the western Afghan town of Herat. In his office hang blueprints for the structures, which are to be called the Twin Towers.

Christening the Herat towers after their New York counterparts, whose destruction was plotted by Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, is not at all tasteless, argues one of Safi's employees.

"The difference is that our towers won't collapse," he smirks.

In rare case, Dutch try 2 Afghan ex-generals
By Marlise Simons The New York Times THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2005
Two former Afghan generals who had hoped to live quietly as political refugees in the Netherlands have found themselves in a Dutch court, accused of crimes committed almost two decades ago during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

Heshamuddin Hesam, 57, and Habibulla Jalalzoy, 59, were senior officials of the feared Khad secret police during Communist rule of Afghanistan in the 1980s and both are now accused of torture and war crimes at the first trial of its kind in the District Court of The Hague.

Judges have heard gruesome accounts from witnesses who said they had been beaten, starved, deprived of sleep for days on end and given hours of electric shocks until they passed out from pain.

During such brutal interrogations of opponents to the regime, Russians were often present, witnesses said.

Human rights groups believe the trial is the first to investigate atrocities in Afghan prisons during the Soviet occupation. They say it is an extremely rare legal examination of Afghanistan's poor human rights record resulting from decades of warfare.

One other trial, which took place in Britain, dealt with atrocities during the Taliban regime of the 1990s. In July, an English jury sentenced a former Afghan commander to 20 years in a British prison for torture and hostage-taking.

"These are the only trials to date dealing with Afghan human rights crimes," said Patricia Gossman of the Afghanistan Justice Project, a human rights group based in Kabul, who was reached by telephone. "But they are critical because this is the first sign people see here that there is no complete immunity for the past. The Afghan judiciary is not capable of handling any such sensitive cases."

The current trial, held under a combination of Dutch and international law, is also another step in the widening application of "universal jurisdiction," which allows courts in one country to judge human rights crimes committed in another, regardless of the person's nationality.

While international tribunals are dealing with large-scale atrocities such as those from the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone, it is also the national courts in Europe that are gradually taking on more cases involving asylum seekers living on their soil.

In recent years a Swiss court has sent a Rwandan to jail for war crimes, Danish and German courts have convicted refugees from the former Yugoslavia and a Spanish judge has handed a life sentence to a former Argentine military officer. Last year, a Dutch court sentenced a former officer from the Congo to 30 months in prison for torture.

The two Afghans on trial here have been charged under Dutch laws that flow from the Geneva conventions and from the 1984 United Nations Convention Against Torture. Although these treaties were ratified here long ago, the Dutch government set up its own war crimes investigation unit in the late 1990s - a result of more and more asylum seekers coming to the Netherlands.

Investigations of the two Afghan generals began when they sought political asylum in the 1990s, requiring them to describe their past professions. This landed them on a list of persons who claim persecution but who may have been involved in human rights abuses themselves.

Close to 30 Afghans are known to be on that list, a fraction of the estimated 30,000 Afghans who have fled to the Netherlands over the past decade.

The two men were refused asylum, but stayed on in the Netherlands, where their presence caused much unrest among other Afghan refugees who feared them, said Fred Teeven, the chief prosecutor.

Hesam was the head of the Afghan military intelligence from 1983 to 1991 and later served as military attaché to Moscow. His subordinate, Jalalzoy, was chief of interrogations.

Both men have agreed that they held those jobs, but have denied giving any orders to mistreat prisoners. Hesam said that he followed the instructions of Russian military advisers.

Human rights groups say that more than 200,000 people were tortured by the Afghan secret police during that period and that up to 50,000 prisoners died.

One witness, Same Khan, a former subordinate of Hesam, told investigators that in Afghanistan "suspects were always tortured because without torture they would not confess," Teeven told the court. Quoting from Kahn's testimony, he continued: "Electric currents were applied to fingers, toes, ears or nose. The most painful spots were the tongue and the testicles."

One victim told the court that he had been subjected to more than 14 hours of electric shocks. Often people died.

The lengthy police investigation has been extremely difficult because it involved crimes that occurred a long time ago in a distant land and a different culture, according to Wim de Bruin, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office. He said that investigators had made numerous trips to Afghanistan and other countries to hear some 30 witnesses, 11 of them torture victims.

In court, Teeven said that the Khad secret police, which had military and civilian branches, was beyond any doubt a much-feared organization that had been created and financed by the Soviet KGB, whose members were often present during interrogations of important prisoners. Among the political prisoners were military personnel, civilians and members of armed Islamic groups, he said.

Fear of the Khad remains deep-rooted among Afghan refugees in the Netherlands, Teeven told the court. During the investigations and even during the trial, he said, witnesses and court translators had been threatened by associates and relatives of the two defendants.

Some witnesses had withdrawn their names from the record or changed their testimony, the prosecutor said.

Liesbeth Zegveld, a public defense lawyer for Hesam, said that a fair trial was not possible because the defense was not given enough time and funds to prepare such a complex case. She said the prosecution had unfair advantages and had made inappropriate use of immigration files.

The defense team also argued that in a trial that depended largely on witnesses, rather than hard evidence, it was improper to pay money to witnesses.

Zegveld criticized government investigators for paying witnesses the equivalent of $100 for each session.

"They call it compensation," she said in an interview. "I call it buying of witnesses in a country where people are very poor. We have not paid our witnesses. The situation is very politicized."

This week, as the prosecution asked for prison sentences of 12 years for Hesam and 9 years for Jalalzoy, the two sat motionless, listening to their interpreters.

The verdict, expected in three weeks, will be handed down by a panel of three judges. There is no jury in the case.