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Pakistani Role Seen in Taliban Surge at Border
Taliban to open schools in Afghanistan
Top Afghan honour for outgoing US commander
Eleven 'suicide bombers' arrested in Afghanistan
Undermanned NATO troops face a spring challenge in Afghanistan
Onetime Afghan Resistance Leader Resurfaces as Terrorist Ally
Afghan women's quiet revolution hangs by a thread
Afghan pilgrims sent to jail
Italy rejects Afghan troop pull out call
The Mysteries of Kabul
Cdns scramble to compensate Afghan farmers
Afghan suspected in killing is again locked up
Mr Benn where has our £400m Afghan aid money gone?
Power outage protests shut Pakistan-Afghan Highway
Pakistani Role Seen in Taliban Surge at Border
The New York Times By CARLOTTA GALL January 21, 2007
QUETTA, Pakistan - The most explosive question about the Taliban resurgence here along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is this: Have Pakistani intelligence agencies been promoting the Islamic insurgency?
The government of Pakistan vehemently rejects the allegation and insists that it is fully committed to help American and NATO forces prevail against the Taliban militants who were driven from power in Afghanistan in 2001.
Western diplomats in both countries and Pakistani opposition figures say that Pakistani intelligence agencies - in particular the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence and Military Intelligence - have been supporting a Taliban restoration, motivated not only by Islamic fervor but also by a longstanding view that the jihadist movement allows them to assert greater influence on Pakistan's vulnerable western flank.
More than two weeks of reporting along this frontier, including dozens of interviews with residents on each side of the porous border, leaves little doubt that Quetta is an important base for the Taliban, and found many signs that Pakistani authorities are encouraging the insurgents, if not sponsoring them.
The evidence is provided in fearful whispers, and it is anecdotal.
At Jamiya Islamiya, a religious school here in Quetta, Taliban sympathies are on flagrant display, and residents say students have gone with their teachers' blessings to die in suicide bombings in Afghanistan.
Three families whose sons had died as suicide bombers in Afghanistan said they were afraid to talk about the deaths because of pressure from Pakistani intelligence agents. Local people say dozens of families have lost sons in Afghanistan as suicide bombers and fighters.
One former Taliban commander said in an interview that he had been jailed by Pakistani intelligence officials because he would not go to Afghanistan to fight. He said that, for Western and local consumption, his arrest had been billed as part of Pakistan's crackdown on the Taliban in Pakistan. Former Taliban members who have refused to fight in Afghanistan have been arrested - or even mysteriously killed - after resisting pressure to re-enlist in the Taliban, Pakistani and Afghan tribal elders said.
"The Pakistanis are actively supporting the Taliban," declared a Western diplomat in an interview in Kabul. He said he had seen an intelligence report of a recent meeting on the Afghan border between a senior Taliban commander and a retired colonel of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence.
Pakistanis and Afghans interviewed on the frontier, frightened by the long reach of Pakistan's intelligence agencies, spoke only with assurances that they would not be named. Even then, they spoke cautiously.
The Pakistani military and intelligence services have for decades used religious parties as a convenient instrument to keep domestic political opponents at bay and for foreign policy adventures, said Husain Haqqani, a former adviser to several of Pakistan's prime ministers and the author of a book on the relationship between the Islamists and the Pakistani security forces.
The religious parties recruited for the jihad in Kashmir and Afghanistan from the 1980s, when the Pakistani intelligence agencies ran the resistance by the mujahedeen and channeled money to them from the United States and Saudi Arabia to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, Mr. Haqqani said.
In return for help in Kashmir and Afghanistan the intelligence services would rig votes for the religious parties and allow them freedom to operate, he said.
"The religious parties provide them with recruits, personnel, cover and deniability," Mr. Haqqani said in a telephone interview from Washington, where he is now a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The Inter-Services Intelligence once had an entire wing dedicated to training jihadis, he said. Today the religious parties probably have enough of their own people to do the training, but, he added, the I.S.I. so thoroughly monitors phone calls and people's movements that it would be almost impossible for any religious party to operate a training camp without its knowledge.
"They trained the people who are at the heart of it all, and they have done nothing to roll back their protégés," Mr. Haqqani said.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, President Pervez Musharraf, under strong American pressure, pledged to help root out Islamic extremism, and, as both head of the army and president, he has more direct control of the intelligence services than past civilian prime ministers. But according to several analysts, Pakistani intelligence officials believe it is more prudent to prepare for the day when Western troops leave Afghanistan.
Pakistan has long seen jihadi movements like the Taliban as a counter to Indian and Russian influence next door in Afghanistan, the Western diplomat and other analysts said, and as a way to provide Pakistan with "strategic depth," or a friendly buffer on its western border.
In Pashtunabad, a warren of high mud-brick walls and narrow lanes in Quetta, the links of the government, religious parties and Taliban commanders to a local madrasa are thinly hidden, said a local opposition party member who lives in the neighborhood.
Three students from the madrasa went to Afghanistan recently on suicide missions, he said. The family of one of the men admitted that he had blown himself up but denied that he had attended the school. The man's brother suggested that he had been forced into the mission and that someone had recruited him for payment.
"Nowadays people are getting money from somewhere and they are killing other people's children," he said. "We are afraid of this government," he said. His father said he feared the same people would try to take his other son and asked that no family names be used.
President Musharraf relies on the religious party Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam, or J.U.I., which dominates this province, Baluchistan, as an important partner in the provincial and national parliaments.
At a madrasa, called simply Jamiya Islamiya, on winding Hajji Ghabi Road, a board in the courtyard proudly declares "Long Live Mullah Omar," in praise of the Taliban leader, and "Long Live Fazlur Rehman," the leader of J.U.I.
Members of the provincial government and Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam are frequent visitors to the school, the local opposition party member said, asking that his name not be used because he feared Pakistan's intelligence services. People on motorbikes with green government license plates visit at night, he said, as do luxurious sport utility vehicles with blackened windows, a favorite of Taliban commanders.
Maulvi Noor Muhammad, a Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam representative from Baluchistan in the National Assembly, recently received a guest barefoot while sitting on the floor of a grubby district office in Quetta, a map of the world above him painted on the wall to represent his belief in worldwide Islamic revolution.
He denied providing the militants any logistical support. "The J.U.I. is not supporting the Taliban anymore," he said. "We are only providing moral support. We pray for their success in ousting the foreign troops from the land of Afghanistan."
On a recent morning, the deputy director of the Jamiya Islamiya madrasa, Qari Muhammad Ibrahim, declined to meet a female reporter for The New York Times but answered a question from a local male reporter.
He did not deny that some of the madrasa's 280 students had gone to fight in Afghanistan. "In the Koran it is written that it is every Muslim's right to fight jihad," he said. "All we are telling them is what is in the Koran, and then it's up to them to go to jihad."
NATO officials and Western diplomats in Afghanistan have grown increasingly critical of Pakistan for allowing the Taliban leaders, commanders and soldiers to operate from their country, which has given an advantage to the insurgency in southern Afghanistan. In September, Gen. James L. Jones, then NATO's supreme commander, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Quetta remained the headquarters of the Taliban movement.
Still, Pakistan has insisted that the Taliban leadership is not based in Quetta. "If there are Taliban in Quetta, they are few," said Pakistan's minister for information and broadcasting, Tariq Azim Khan. "You can count them on your fingers."
American officials and Western diplomats noted that, when put under enough pressure, Pakistan had come through with flashes of cooperation. But that only seems to reinforce the view that Pakistan's intelligence agencies are more in touch with what is going on in the Taliban insurgency than the government lets on publicly.
For instance, a senior Taliban leader, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Osmani, who operated on both sides of the border, was killed in an airstrike in Afghanistan on Dec. 19, after Pakistan helped track him, an American official in Afghanistan said.
At the same time, a kind of dirty war is building between Afghan and Pakistani intelligence agencies. A senior Afghan intelligence official said one of its informers in Pakistan was recently killed and dumped in pieces in Peshawar, a border town. The Afghan intelligence service has also recently arrested two Afghan generals, one retired, who have been charged with spying for Pakistan, as well as a Pakistani suspected of being an intelligence agent.
President Musharraf has acknowledged that some retired Pakistani intelligence officials may still be involved in supporting their former protégés in the Taliban.
Hamid Gul, the former director general of Pakistani intelligence, remains a public and unapologetic supporter of the Taliban, visiting madrasas and speaking in support of jihad at graduation ceremonies.
Afghan intelligence officials recently produced a captured insurgent who said Mr. Gul facilitated his training and logistics through an office in the Pakistani town of Nowshera, in the North-West Frontier Province, west of the capital, Islamabad.
NATO and American officials in Afghanistan say there is also evidence of support from current midlevel Pakistani intelligence officials. Just how far up that support reaches remains in dispute.
At least five villages in Pishin, a district northwest of Quetta that stretches toward the Afghan border, lost sons in the recent fighting in Kandahar between the Taliban and NATO forces, opposition politicians said.
One village, Karbala, is a main center of support for the jihad, local people say. Unlike the other villages, which blend into the stark desertlike landscape with their mud-brick houses and compound walls, Karbala has lavish houses, mosques and madrasas, suggesting an unusual wealth.
Farther on, in the village of Bagarzai, lies the grave of Azizullah, a religious scholar who used only one name and acquired fame as a Taliban commander.
Only 25, he was killed with a group of 15 to 20 men in an airstrike in the Afghan province of Helmand on May 22, said his father, Hajji Abdul Hai. Thousands of people attended his funeral, including senior members of the provincial government, the father said.
Mr. Hai, 50, who is a Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam member, denied that his son had been persuaded to fight by anyone. "From the start it was his spirit to take part in jihad," his father said. "It's all to do with personal will. If someone agrees, then he goes. Even if someone wishes to, no one can stop him."
It is an argument that supporters of the jihad use frequently. But for some of the families mourning their sons, there is no doubt that the madrasas and the religious parties are the first point of contact.
That was the conclusion reached by the family of Muhammad Daoud, a 22-year-old man from Pishin who disappeared more than a year ago.
"In our search we went to many places and everyone said different things," said his father, Hajji Noora Gul. "We went to the madrasa in Pashtunabad, but no one was ready to tell us his whereabouts."
"Even the madrasa people did not know," he added. "Behind the curtain of the madrasa, maybe there are other people who do this. Maybe there are some businessmen who take them."
Then, he said, a Taliban propaganda CD came out showing his son with a group of others taking an oath before the Taliban commander, Mullah Dadullah.
"He had a shawl over his head and was preparing for a suicide bombing," Mr. Gul said. "He said, 'I am fighting for God, and I am ready for this.' "
His eldest son, Allah Dad, 33, blamed the jihadi groups and the Inter-Services Intelligence. "We don't know how he made contact with those jihadi groups," he said. "There are some groups active in taking people to Afghanistan and they are active in Quetta.
"All Taliban are I.S.I. Taliban," he added. "It is not possible to go to Afghanistan without the help of the I.S.I. Everyone says this."
David Rohde contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan.
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Taliban to open schools in Afghanistan
By NOOR KHAN, Associated Press Writer Sun Jan 21, 1:48 AM ET
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - The Taliban's governing body decided to open schools in the areas controlled by the militants in Afghanistan, the purported chief spokesman for the hardline militia told The Associated Press.
Abdul Hai Muthmahien said that Mullah Omar and other Taliban leaders decided that from March, Islamic education will be provided in at least six southern provinces - first for boys and later for girls.
"The U.S. and its allies are doing propaganda against the Taliban," Muthmahien said in a phone call to an AP reporter from an undisclosed location late Saturday. "Taliban are not against education. The Taliban want Shariah (Islamic) education."
During its six years of fundamentalist rule, the former Taliban regime barred girls from class, and it has since waged a campaign of violence against state schools. Since its ouster by U.S.-led forces in late 2001, millions of Afghan children - including girls - have gone back to school, many for the first time.
The Taliban's announcement appears aimed at undermining the standing of the democratically elected government of President Hamid Karzai and challenging its writ over southern regions where insurgents have a foothold. It's the first sign since the militia's ouster that it wants to provide social services.
The Taliban last year carried out about 200 arson attacks on state schools and killed some 20 teachers, as its insurgency has gathered strength.
That's been a setback to a massive foreign-backed education campaign over the past five years to get Afghan children back to school - regarded as one of the successes in efforts to rebuild the war-battered country.
Since the Taliban's ouster, there has been a five-fold increase in the number of children attending school, according to a report by the development agency Oxfam, published late last year.
Some 5 million children, including girls, now attend school in Afghanistan, up from less than a million during Taliban rule. But 7 million children still do not receive any formal instruction.
Muthmahien said the Taliban's ruling council, or shura, had alloted $1 million to fund the new schools to open in the provinces of Kandahar, Zabul, Uruzgan, Helmand, Nimroz and Farah, and it would provide textbooks - the same used during Taliban rule. He said the schools program had been agreed with tribal elders in those regions.
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Top Afghan honour for outgoing US commander
Sat Jan 20, 11:59 AM ET
KABUL (AFP) - President Hamid Karzai presented the outgoing commander of the US-led coalition with Afghanistan's highest honor in recognition of his work in the post-Taliban nation.
Karzai presented Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry with the Ghazi Amanullah Khan medal the day before the commander is due to leave the country at the end of his tour of duty.
The US-led coalition entered Afghanistan in 2001 at the helm of an invasion that toppled the extremist Taliban government from power. It is now hunting down Taliban and other militants behind a virulent insurgency.
Eikenberry assumed command of the coalition in May 2005. Since October last year he has been in command of about 12,000 US troops after about 11,000 came under the control of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.
He has been nominated for the position of deputy chairman of NATO military committee in Brussels, a spokesman said. The coalition will now be headed by two two-star generals.
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Eleven 'suicide bombers' arrested in Afghanistan
Sat Jan 20, 8:09 AM ET
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) - Authorities in Afghanistan's southern city of Kandahar said they had arrested 11 suicide bombers in the past week, including two Pakistan nationals.
The NATO-led military force in the province said meanwhile one of its vehicles was struck by an explosive device but there were no injuries to the troops.
Five Dutch soldiers with the International Security Assistance Force were wounded in a similar attack in Uruzgan province Friday, the Dutch news agency ANP said. ISAF confirmed the casualties but not their nationality.
Kandahar's intelligence chief Abdul Qayoom said nine alleged suicide bombers were arrested in various parts of the troubled city in the past week.
"They wanted to carry out attacks in different locations of Kandahar province. They were arrested with cars and explosives," he said.
Two more were arrested on Saturday, provincial governor Assadullah Khalid said. They were Pakistan nationals from Baluchistan province and had confessed, he said.
Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban movement in the early 1990s, was hit by several suicide blasts last year, including one that killed a Canadian diplomat in January.
Nearly 140 suicide bombings struck across Afghanistan in 2006, according to the US military. Last year was the worst in a Taliban-led insurgency launched after the extremists were toppled from government in 2001.
In another attack similar to others blamed on Taliban last year, an explosion ripped through a tanker supplying fuel from Pakistan to the US main base in Kandahar and set ablaze several others late Friday, the military said.
The blast was likely caused by an explosive device. The trucks were parked outside the base before being allowed to enter, Afghan army general Rahmatullah Raufi told AFP.
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Undermanned NATO troops face a spring challenge in Afghanistan
By Kim Barker, Chicago Tribune | January 21, 2007
KABUL, Afghanistan -- NATO will face one of the toughest challenges this spring in its 58-year history -- holding together an already stretched alliance in Afghanistan while battling an increasingly savvy Taliban-led insurgency.
Sign up for: Globe Headlines e-mail | Breaking News Alerts There are not enough troops in Afghanistan, military officials agree. Some countries have refused to deploy to the south, the hot spot of the fighting and the traditional power base of the Taliban. Aside from the United States, the governments that have sent troops to the dangerous areas -- Britain, the Netherlands, and Canada -- are fighting not only a resurgent Taliban, but also increasing political resistance at home.
A split has also emerged between leaders in the US military and NATO over the approach toward the Taliban and neighbor Pakistan. And just last week, US Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates indicated that US soldiers might have to make up the shortfall in Afghanistan, at the same time President Bush wants to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq.
Privately, some US officials expressed concern that the United States is being asked to meet unfair demands in Afghanistan. "That's what's disappointing," said one military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. "Do we have to save the day here because NATO won't at least meet its obligation?"
In its most ambitious military undertaking so far, NATO assumed control of all of Afghanistan from the US military last year. The plan was for NATO to take over responsibility for Afghanistan and for the US military to gradually scale back its commitment.
That has not happened. About 11,000 of the 31,000 NATO troops are from the United States. As many as 13,000 other US troops are also in the country, training the Afghan Army, building roads, or hunting for terrorists.
The US troop level in Afghanistan is at its highest level since the Taliban were driven out in late 2001. And last week, the top US commander in Afghanistan asked to extend the combat tour of about 1,200 soldiers in preparation for the expected spring offensive by the Taliban.
The next few months are seen as crucial to the future of Afghanistan, with some Western diplomats and military leaders talking about the potential for a "tipping point" this year, a time where more and more Afghans could switch sides to the Taliban if nothing changes.
The US military official said there has been discussion of sending another American Marine battalion to fill the gap in Afghanistan, adding that the United States had no intention of allowing Afghanistan to fall to the Taliban. But, he admitted, "basically we're out of troops."
In an interview, General David Richards, the British commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan whose tenure ends early next month, reiterated the need for additional soldiers.
"At no stage have I said anything other than NATO needs more troops here," said Richards, adding that NATO still managed to repel Taliban attacks last year.
"What we ought to do is win. This campaign is eminently winnable. What we need to do is a little bit more, a little bit longer," he said.
But unless the United States steps in, troop levels will probably not increase in the near future.
A NATO conference in late November failed to win the requested number of troops from member countries. Some countries, such as Germany and France, have refused to send a significant number of soldiers to the troubled south or east, where most of the fighting takes place.
At the conference, member nations agreed to rush to help in emergencies anywhere in Afghanistan, but it is not clear what qualifies as an emergency.
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Onetime Afghan Resistance Leader Resurfaces as Terrorist Ally
Voice of America (VOA) By Gary Thomas Washington 19 January 2007
In recent months the Taleban has ratcheted up its attacks on U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. According the outgoing U.S. director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, al-Qaida has also been active in the area as it forges new alliances with like-minded extremist groups from their home base in Pakistan. But, as VOA correspondent Gary Thomas reports, another Afghan extremist leader who was once a recipient of U.S. aid has now joined the fray.
In the murky world of intelligence, the term "blowback" is often used to describe the unintended consequences of a covert operation.
During the 1980s, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar received the lion's share of U.S. covert assistance, funneled through Pakistani intelligence, to the resistance battling the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Now Hekmatyar has resurfaced as an ally of al-Qaida and his onetime rivals, the Taleban.
Larry Goodson, a professor of Middle East studies at the U.S. Army War College, says the re-emergence of Hekmatyar as a terrorist leader is a prime example of blowback.
"The whole strategy we used was sort of subcontracting the proxy war in the 1980s through the Pakistanis," he explained. "Now the Pakistanis, of course, insisted on it and we went along with it. You can argue that we didn't have any choice. But, in any event, one of the byproducts of that was the Taleban. Another byproduct, a much more direct byproduct, really, was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar."
Hekmatyar, an ethnic Pashtun, led the Hezb-i-Islami, one of the seven major parties that made up the Afghan resistance. They often quarreled among themselves.
Ahmad Rashid, a Pakistani journalist who has written extensively about Afghanistan over the years, says Hekmatyar developed a particular reputation for the ruthlessness of the attacks he led even from his own allies in the resistance.
"Everybody hated him, because he was so ambitious and wanted to kill everyone," he explained. "He's killed more Afghans than Soviet troops."
But former CIA officer Michael Scheuer, who served in Pakistan, says that is not quite fair. He says Hekmatyar, while ruthless, was nevertheless useful to the CIA, even when, Scheuer notes, some elements of the U.S. government objected to his methods.
"Generally speaking, the diplomats in our government -- the White House, the National Security Council, the State Department -- didn't have much use for Hekmatyar," he recalled. "They thought he was a bad, evil man. From the [Central Intelligence] Agency's perspective, he was doing the only thing we wanted done in Afghanistan, and that was kill Russians."
Larry Goodson, who has dealt with Hekmatyar during his days in Afghanistan, says even then Hekmatyar made no secret of his deep mistrust of the West in general and the United States in particular.
"He was always virulently, as long as I knew him anyway, virulently anti-Western," Mr. Goodson added. "He'd tell you to your face how bad the Americans were even as he was getting the lion's share of the American aid. So it's not really very surprising that he is so opposed, leaving aside the tribal issues and all the other issues, that he is so opposed to the American-supported government of Hamid Karzai."
When Kabul fell to the mujahedin guerillas in 1992, the guerrillas soon began fighting among themselves as they jockeyed for power, destroying large parts of the capital in the process. Hekmatyar became prime minister. But the bitter fighting paved the way for the advent of the Taleban, which was welcomed as a pacifying force by a war-weary populace. Hekmatyar fled to Iran.
After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, Hekmatyar returned to Afghanistan. He recently claimed to have even helped Osama bin Laden escape when the al-Qaida leader was cornered by the ferocious U.S. bombing in Tora Bora in 2001.
Michael Scheuer says the United States should have dealt with Hekmatyar and other mujahedin leaders now fighting the United States when it had the chance in 2001.
"One of the mistakes in going into Afghanistan was we sort of neglected the last generation of the mujahedin, the people who fought the Soviets and defeated them," he noted. "When we went in, we should have either tried to co-opt them, or we should have killed them. And we did neither. And as a result, they have now resurfaced to become part of the jihad against the American-led coalition."
Hekmatyar is believed to be moving back and forth from the Bajaur tribal agency in Pakistan to Kunar province in Afghanstan. He now has common cause with his former competitors for power, the Taleban, to dislodge the Karzai government in Kabul. Many Western analysts believe that Pakistan would like to see a weaker, less pro-Western government in Kabul, and that Hekmatyar is back in favor with his former mentors of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate.
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Afghan women's quiet revolution hangs by a thread
Each step toward equality has been a struggle, but the nation's instability is eroding their gains.
By Alissa J. Rubin, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer January 21, 2007
Kabul, Afghanistan - EACH morning, the policewoman puts on her uniform, goes to her precinct office, sits behind a bare desk. And waits.
She is one of several officers appointed to make it easier for women to report domestic violence. Her job ought to be one of the busiest in the district. Instead, Pushtoon, who goes by one name, has one of the loneliest.
"Last week we had one woman. Before that there had not been anyone for several weeks," she said, twisting hands left scarred by her attempt at suicide years ago in a Taliban jail. "Women are afraid to come, but we are not allowed to go to them.
"The police chiefs will not let us. They say it is unsafe for women officers," she said.
Five years after the end of the Taliban era, there are new opportunities for women in Afghanistan, and notable efforts are underway to make their daily lives better, especially in Kabul, the capital. Improving the status of women has been a core goal of U.S. policy here, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said at a congressional hearing in 2005 that enshrining women's equality in the Afghan Constitution was an important advance for the entire region.
But conversations with dozens of women suggest that each step forward has been a struggle. Afghan society remains deeply uncomfortable with the idea of women gaining independence and authority. The Taliban's resurgence has reversed incremental gains, particularly in the south. If the Taliban incursions spread, more women are likely to lose ground.
Families in the south that recently began allowing their daughters to go to school and wives to enroll in vocational programs have pulled them out because of Taliban attacks.
"Women's future depends so much on security. As much as se-curity deteriorates, women's situation deteriorates," said Masuda Jalal, former acting minister of women's affairs. "At the first sign of insecurity, the head of the family protects his women and children, and the first measure they take is to keep them inside the house."
Women who have gained ground haven't talked of the constitutional principles of equality. Instead, they focus on the respect accorded women by the Koran, and on the importance of mothers and homes, where older women have long held positions of power.
Their goal, often unstated, is to convince fathers and brothers, husbands and sons that when a woman is empowered, the males benefit as well. They hope their daughters will at least have more choices than they had.
Women are learning to drive, some at their husbands' urging so they can help with family errands. Small numbers have opened bank accounts. Women have become a regular presence on television talk shows, and they deliver weather reports and other news features.
According to Farsona Simimi, a popular television talk show host, "There is a quiet revolution here." But, she added, "I do not know whether it will succeed."
Pushing a stone uphill
THREE times in the last century, the status of women has improved, only to suffer reversals.
The first time was in the 1920s, when ruler Amanullah Khan abolished the requirement that women be completely covered in public and encouraged his wife to wear a hat without a veil. He was ousted by the mullahs.
The lot of women improved again in the 1960s, when four women were elected to parliament. One of them was the mother of Nasrine Gross, now an Afghan American lecturer in sociology at Kabul University.
A family album contains photos of her mother and several friends at a picnic 40 years ago. They wear knee-length dresses with short sleeves; a couple of them have beehive hairdos, strands blowing free in the summer breeze as they lean against a sleek car. Two men in Western clothing stand nearby.
"No one can believe these pictures were taken here," Gross said.
In the 1970s, political turmoil stymied women's progress. But in the next decade, ruling communists prohibited women from wearing burkas and appointed many to government posts. More than 50 were given judgeships, and many others took positions in the police and healthcare professions.
When the Taliban took power in 1996, it banned all education for women, even small girls. It removed women from almost all jobs outside the home and required them to cover their faces in public by wearing a burka. In some areas, it demanded that house windows be painted black so women could not see out and men could not see in. Women were whipped in public for the smallest infraction.
Educated Afghans and international aid workers say the U.S.-backed government of President Hamid Karzai has done little besides removing the Taliban restrictions. He has only one woman in his Cabinet of 25 and none among his top advisors.
Several Afghan women said that they had encouraged Karzai to do small things, such as have his wife accompany him to public events, but that he had never done so.
In the name of Islam
RAHALA Salim was one of those who became a judge under the communists, and she recalls watching in horror as the Taliban dismantled every vestige of protection for women.
"As a judge, when I saw women coming to me crying because they had been abused, I felt responsible, I felt I had to defend their rights," said Salim, who was removed from her post by the Taliban. Under its rule, she said, "if a man was accused of rape, it was the woman who was arrested and blamed."
Salim knew from her legal studies that Sharia, or Islamic law, offered women some legal protection. The Koran and hadiths, the sayings of the prophet Muhammad, are open to an array of interpretations. And early Islam glorifies several women, including Muhammad's daughter Fatima, who is portrayed as an independent leader of her people.
"We have to know the real Sharia; we have to be able to point to passages in the holy Koran and say, 'Here, read this,' " Salim said. "In Islamic history, men have been the boss. They want to be the boss forever. That's why they never want women to appear in public, but that is not Islam; that is cultural tradition."
The notion of Islam as a pillar of freedom came from Salim's mother.
"My mother didn't have any sons, and so my father took a second wife, and it made her extremely sad and it made her life very hard," Salim said. "She told me, 'Unless you can have enough education, you can never stand against men. You must learn Islam so you can struggle against them.' "
During the Taliban era, Salim began to teach the Koran. Once a week, 70 women would gather for classes, sometimes at her house, sometimes elsewhere so the Taliban would not become suspicious.
"l would cook something as if we were just gathering for a meal, and then we would recite the holy Koran and discuss Islamic questions and then political issues," she recalled.
After the Taliban fled, Salim ran for parliament. But she understood that she would need the mullahs behind her, and when she was elected, she asked them whether she could address families in the mosque. Her appeal opened the door for women to enter there. In her district, women never had; they prayed at home.
"It was the first time that women saw the inside of the mosque," she said. Then, with the mullahs' assent, she asked the families to send their daughters to school.
Other women have reached similar conclusions: that if they are to persuade men to stand behind them, they will need mullahs as allies and Islam as a shield.
Jalal, the former women's minister, has convened meetings of mullahs to discuss Koranic interpretations of women's rights. A meeting last summer in Kabul drew 100 mullahs from around the country. She also has asked new "women's councils" to work closely with local mullahs. So far, the councils are active primarily in Kabul and on its outskirts.
In Chakadera, a district at the foot of mountains about an hour north of Kabul, Maseema Sakhi acts as the local liaison to the Women's Affairs Ministry. A tiny, graceful woman of 45, she went to college and teaches at the local grade school. But she married a village man and lives in a typical Afghan mud compound with several generations of family, where chickens and turkeys roam the yard.
She has made overtures to local mullahs, so when there are domestic problems they consider coming to her.
Recently a girl arrived in the village in tattered clothes, exhausted and battered. She had run away from her husband's family. She said she had been badly beaten and was afraid she would be killed.
In the past, the elders and the mullah might have forced the girl to tell them where she came from and taken her back, all but condemning her to death. This time, the mullah sent for Sakhi.
"She had walked three days and three nights through the mountains without stopping. Her feet were torn," Sakhi said. "She said she was so miserable in her home that she wished a wild animal would eat her. We took her to the women's ministry, and now she is in a shelter and she calls me her mother."
'Someone should listen'
PUSHTOON, the policewoman, never thought of herself as a crusader.
Her mother died when she was an infant. Brought up by her father in Logar province, south of Kabul, she gained a rudimentary knowledge of reading.
At 13, she was married to a man many years her senior. At 15, she bore the first of her six children. The family moved to Pakistan, where her husband, who was often unemployed, took up with a younger woman.
Depressed, confused and only dimly aware of how the Taliban treated women, Pushtoon returned to Logar to claim a piece of land her father had left her when he died. She wanted to sell it to help support her family.
But the Taliban arrested her, saying she must have killed her husband since he wasn't with her. Her only relatives were her husband's family, and they wanted the land for themselves. The Taliban accused her of murder and took her to the women's prison in Kabul.
Locked in a cell barely large enough for a bed, she became desperate.
"I was shouting and shouting that I was innocent, and no one was listening," she recalled, nervously touching the braid on the cuff of her police uniform.
After six months, she shut herself in a tiny, squalid latrine, lighted a match and held it to her clothing.
"The flames licked over the material and burned my hair and was burning my face and burned my hands," she said. "I burned myself to die there. That would have been better than a life in prison. I knew no one in Kabul. No one came to visit me. I had two daughters and four boys and they were in Pakistan and I missed them."
But she didn't die. And a few days later the Taliban released her. She still has scars on her hands and a dark, pitted mark on her forehead from the flames. She covers it with the ornamental red makeup that some Afghan women daub above their brows.
And she has a cause.
She cited the case of a woman who sought her help: "Her husband didn't have a job. He was home all the time and he beat her every day. He broke two of her teeth, and he put a pillow over her mouth when he hit her so she wouldn't shout and so the neighbors would not hear."
Such women are often afraid that if they complain, their husbands will kill them and they will bring dishonor to their families, Pushtoon said.
"I am doing this job now," Pushtoon said, "because when a woman says she is innocent, someone should listen."
'Happy Morning'
FARSONA Simimi has taken a different road, becoming a popular television talk show host on the Tolo network, one of Afghanistan's new private stations.
She uses the nonthreatening idiom of shows such as "Bride" and "Happy Morning" to help women think about asserting their rights and to help men understand the problems women face. She often alternates taboo topics with ones that even the most conservative men would not oppose.
"Today I had two subjects on the family program: how to teach a child and how to get dark spots out of a shirt," she said with a smile.
Dressed modestly in a high-necked white blouse and an ankle-length white skirt, only her veil suggests her independent views: It perches so far back on her head that it looks in danger of slipping off, and it shows a swath of her slightly hennaed hair.
"When I first was on TV, my family was afraid for me," she said. "People said to my husband, 'How can you let her do that?' "
A year ago, one of Simimi's female colleagues was slain. Many people think it was because someone in her family considered her too modern. She wore blouses and tight jeans and went to clubs at night, said colleagues at Tolo.
It has taken almost three years, but Simimi has found that her audience is beginning to trust her. Women telephone her at the station and send her e-mails, and when she attends weddings or other large gatherings, they seek her out to ask questions or tell her their stories.
Her greatest regret is that television cannot yet show the cracked ribs and the burns and the other abuses women suffer.
"But we can talk about some of these things. One of our main topics on the family program is men beating their wives.. And we talk about arranged marriage from many perspectives, [such as] the father picks a person and doesn't talk about it or discuss it with the woman."
When she looks at her own family, she sees the problem writ small. Her young son recently told her as she was leaving for work, "Mama, you must wear a bigger scarf."
"Now, where did he get that idea? He is only 8, but he spends time with his father, with his grandfather - they must say some of these things," she said.
"It will take a long, long time for things to change. We must wait for this generation to grow up, and then maybe in two more generations we will see some changes."
The sewing circle
OUTSIDE Kabul, where villages sit lonely in the mountain desert, women's prospects are far bleaker. In Chakadera, Sakhi's village, formation of a sewing circle was seen as a major advance. It allowed women to meet and share their stories. But the conversations often turn to domestic violence.
Chakadera was on the front line when the Taliban took over, and its women were forbidden even to go to the village market. They married first cousins because those were the only people they could meet. Now the women gather in a school room to sew, to laugh a little, cry, and support those among them most battered by their men.
But no one knows how long the sewing group will last. In early autumn, a nearby school was burned. If there is another attack, the women might not be allowed to go out, or their daughters to go to school.
For now, Sakhi said, "everybody can come here to sew and weave and forget her sorrows for two or three hours each week."
One of the women, Malalai, 29, managed a smile even though she expressed little affection for her husband, who forbids her even to buy clothes for their children without his permission. Married at 15, she was a mother of three boys and two girls before she was 24. She wants a different life for her girls.
"I want them to get an education, to work, and only then to get married," she said.
What will happen if the Taliban returns?
She brushed her hand over several spools of thread sitting before her on the floor, knocking each one over as if they represented the sewing circle, the dreams for her daughters, the possibility of a different future.
"Gone," she said. All gone.
Rubin recently was on assignment in Afghanistan.
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Afghan pilgrims sent to jail
Staff Report Daily Times (Pakistan)
KARACHI: The FIA produced in Malir Court 118 Afghan pilgrims, including nine women and two travel agents, Saturday morning.
The Afghan pilgrims were sent to jail for 14 days on judicial remand by Judicial Magistrate Zahida Parveen, however, the court turned Allah Buksh and his grandson Nisar over to the FIA authorities after approving a five-day remand.
Allah Buksh and Nisar had allegedly provided fake Pakistani documents to the Afghan pilgrims. The Afghan men were taken to Landhi jail and the women sent to the women's prison. Due to a shortage of space at the passport cell, the Afghan pilgrims stayed in the airport overnight.
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Italy rejects Afghan troop pull out call
Associated Press Sunday, January 21, 2007 via NDTV.com, India
Italy's foreign minister rejected calls by far-left parties in Premier Romano Prodi's coalition to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, saying such a move would isolate Italy in the international arena.
Greens and communist lawmakers in the center-left government have
threatened to vote against more financing for Italy's 1,800-strong contingent in Afghanistan.
They were angered after Prodi said his government would not oppose a US request to expand a military base in northern Italy.
"Leaving Afghanistan ... where no country, not China, not Russia, is maintaining that they have to leave, isn't a political act," Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema said Saturday in a speech to members of his center-left Democrats of the Left Party.
"It would be a choice that would isolate it."
NATO in Afghanistan
There are some 30,000 troops under the NATO umbrella in Afghanistan.
A rebellion against the Afghanistan mission could put Prodi in a tight spot: his government relies on a slim parliamentary majority to pass legislation.
The date for the vote on financing is expected to be set soon.
Prodi has agreed to keep Italy's troops in Afghanistan, although he has resisted NATO's request to increase the contingent.
Even without the far-left's backing, the financing could be approved if it wins support from members of the opposition bloc of former Premier Silvio Berlusconi.
Berlusconi told reporters on Saturday that his Forza Italia party would vote in favor of refinancing of the mission, the Italian news agency ANSA reported from Genoa, where he was attending a political rally.
Another conservative leader, Umberto Bossi, said lawmakers from his Northern League would also help Prodi's forces if the Afghanistan mission financing was put to a confidence vote.
"We can't abandon the army," Bossi said, ANSA reported from Turin.
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The Mysteries of Kabul
The New York Times By JOSHUA HAMMER January 21, 2007
AN icy wind blasted in our faces as we trudged up a rocky slope on the southern outskirts of Kabul, the war-shattered capital of Afghanistan. Around us rose a moonscape of treeless, dun-colored hills, broken by clusters of mud-walled squatter huts. I squinted into the sunlight, looking east toward the earthen citadel of Bala Hissar, a stronghold from the time of the Silk Road to the post-Soviet wars. High above us, another wall of mud brick and stone - a fragment of the ancient rampart of Kabul, constructed before the arrival of Islam in a futile attempt to defend the city against invaders from Arabia and Central Asia - snaked along the ridgeline.
"It's always been easy to conquer Afghanistan," said my companion, Jonathan Bean, the American co-founder of the Great Game Travel Company Afghanistan, which shepherded about 70 Western tourists, including several dozen Americans, through this rugged land last year. "The problem is keeping control of it."
After an hour's slog up trackless scree to the top of the ridge, Jonathan and I, along with our security guard, a lean, gray-bearded Pashtun named Shafik Ullah, reached the rampart. We followed it for a mile, sometimes walking alongside it, sometimes balancing ourselves on its crumbling surface. Perforated with apertures for archers, 30 feet high in places, the barrier climbed toward the summit of Kabul's highest hill, 7,200 feet above sea level.
The Hindu Kush, a massif of snow and ice, loomed 30 miles to the north; Kabul lay far below us, obscured behind a layer of dust and smoke that smudged the panorama like a dirty fingerprint. Jonathan opened a thermos of coffee, and we warmed ourselves amid piles of stones and spent cartridges, the remains of a military post used by Ahmad Shah Massoud and his Northern Alliance fighters during the battle for Kabul in the early 1990s. "You can feel the history all around us," Shafik said.
In the 1970s, tens of thousands of visitors poured into Kabul each year, when the Afghan capital rivaled Kathmandu as the favored Central Asian haunt for young backpackers who bunked down in cheap hotels and congregated on fabled Chicken Street to smoke hashish and while away the hours in coffee and carpet shops.
Then came the Russians, then the Taliban, and then the bombings following 9/11, pretty much destroying Kabul's reputation as a favored stop on the Hippie Trail. Now, however, even though much of Afghanistan remains dangerous, tourists are beginning to trickle back in, some lured by the thrill of the unknown, others by the pleasures offered by such new tourist spots as the Kabul Serena, an elegant $36.5-million hotel that claims a "five-star ambience" in the heart of the city. As many as 5,000 Western tourists visited Kabul last year, Jonathan Bean told me, most of them affluent Europeans and Americans who have traveled to "30 or 40" countries, including developing ones. "Most our clients are experienced travelers," Jonathan said. "They've trekked in Nepal, gone on safari in East Africa. Some have returned after coming here in the 1960s and 1970s. They see Afghanistan as the next great adventure-travel destination."
Most tourists who pass through view Kabul as an overnight stopover on the way to more remote corners of the country: the rugged Pamir Mountains in the northeast; the exotic bazaar town of Mazar-i-Sharif; and Bamiyan, the former site of the giant stone Buddhas that were destroyed by the Taliban. But those who linger for a few days, as I did, will discover a vibrant capital, steeped in tumultuous history and rich with Silk Road atmospherics.
"Kabul is the definition of the frontier town," I was told by Rory Stewart, the British diplomat turned author of the "The Places in Between," a best-selling account of his winter walk from Herat to Kabul just after the Taliban's defeat. Today Mr. Stewart lives in Kabul, where he runs the Turquoise Mountain Foundation, which trains local craftsmen and is helping to renovate the decrepit Old Town by the Kabul River. The city is "a pluralistic place, with a fascinating history, half a dozen languages and countless subcultures," he said.
The city's security remains a cause for concern. Although most of the violence is concentrated in Taliban strongholds in the country's southeast, a handful of attacks have rocked the capital during the last year, including a suicide-bomb explosion on Sept. 8 at Massoud Circle, a major traffic hub, that killed 2 Americans and at least 16 Afghans. Anti-Western riots broke out last May in the aftermath of a fatal collision involving an American military convoy and civilian vehicles; crowds chanted "death to America" and attacked restaurants, hotels, police stations and shops, and British marines evacuated 21 European diplomats from the city.
MOST foreign aid workers and diplomats live inside walled compounds guarded round the clock by private security teams, and the United Nations restricts its employees to hotels and restaurants in the capital that meet its stringent security regulations, including high blast walls and buildings set back several dozen yards from the road. Those who live in the city said the United Nations also put out daily threat warnings: "Green City," meaning one could travel around the city freely; "White City," no unnecessary travel; and "Red City," advising foreigners to stay indoors.
Yet with a few spectacular exceptions, the capital has remained violence free. "NATO and Afghan security forces have done a good job," I was told by Vince White, a Ministry of Finance consultant who has lived in Kabul for nearly five years. "The security companies try to make us paranoid," he said. "They depend on expatriate fear for their business."
Jonathan Bean regularly takes foreign tourists on walking tours of Kabul with a single, unarmed Afghan security guard. "People love Kabul," Johnathan said. "They've heard nothing positive about the place - that it was destroyed, that it's dangerous. Then they get here and get a big surprise - they see a bustling bazaar city, full of life."
In a week of exploring the city, from the windswept, near-deserted ramparts to the teeming, labyrinthine passageways of the Mandayi Bazaar, I never once felt threatened. To the contrary, I was welcomed everywhere by Afghans eager to show me that their country and city were groping their way toward recovery.
My arrival at Kabul's airport from New Delhi, on a dreary November afternoon, however, offered a hint of the still-shaky state of affairs in Afghanistan. The electricity in the terminal had been cut, and, in the semi-darkness, laborers dumped piles of baggage on the floor beside the immobile conveyor belt, setting off a scramble among my fellow passengers. An elderly Pashtun in a shalwar kamiz (a traditional shirt often seen also in Pakistan and India) and a gray turban elbowed me aside and lunged for an overstuffed cardboard box. Two airport policemen stood by idly, watching the chaos. Bags in hand, I stumbled through the frantic crowd, hailed a battered taxi, and headed for the Gandamack Lodge, a renovated 1930s villa owned by Peter Jouvenal, an old Afghan hand and former BBC cameraman. (The Gandamak, which opened in 2002, originally occupied a house that had belonged to one of Osama Bin Laden's wives; Mr. Jouvenal moved it into its current building last year.)
It didn't take me long to discover one of the newest hubs of expatriate Kabul. A photojournalist friend directed me to the Cabul Coffee House, a cozy establishment, painted adobe-pink and filled with Central Asian handicrafts, located on a muddy alley in the lively Qal-I-Fatula district.
Opened last year by two American women and the Afghan husband of one of them, the Cabul Coffee House functions as a sort of cross between Starbucks and a Manhattan literary bar. In addition to its lattes and double-shot cappuccinos, it offers readings and lectures one or two nights a week. I got there at about six o'clock on a Tuesday evening to find several dozen Westerners, including aid workers, teachers, contractors and consultants, along with a smattering of Afghans, eating cheeseburgers, Greek salads and kebabs while waiting for the cultural program to begin. (The fact that so many foreigners had ventured into the streets of Kabul after dark was perhaps the most telling indication of the capital's relative stability.)
The guest speaker was Whitney Azoy, a Princeton-educated former United States diplomat to Afghanistan. Mr. Azoy had left the foreign service decades ago and transformed himself into one of the world's experts on buzkashi, Afghanistan's national sport, a sort of polo played with a goat carcass.
When I arrived, I found Mr. Azoy huddled in a corner of the cafe with the American screenwriter of "Pretty Woman", J. F. Lawton, who had been in the country for weeks researching a documentary about buzkashi. Then Mr. Azoy stood before the crowd and delivered an hourlong talk, accompanied by slides, about his discovery of this rough, fast-paced sport in the mountains of northern Afghanistan during his diplomatic tour in the 1970s. There was an unspoken poignancy to his lecture and his slides, all of which had been taken during that era: the world he was describing in loving detail was soon to by obliterated by the Soviet invasion and the subsequent civil war. (Although buzkashi is not indigenous to Kabul, President Muhammad Daoud brought it to the capital in 1978; matches have returned to Kabul, on a sporadic basis, since the Taliban's fall.)
The following day I hired a driver at the Gandamack and set out to see the National Museum of Afghanistan, in western Kabul. Large sections of capital remained wrecked after decades of war and neglect; beggars swarmed over us at intersections, and the traffic in the downtown area, along the Kabul River, was horrendous. In the heavy rain, the myriad unpaved streets had turned into quagmires. (During dry periods, I would soon discover, an opaque layer of dust and car exhaust hangs over the city bowl.) As we drove west along the Darulaman Road, past the former Soviet Embassy - an area of heavy fighting in 1993 and 1994 between Massoud and rival warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar - I looked over empty tracts and the hulks of shelled, bullet-pocked buildings. The devastation was ubiquitous.
The National Museum itself bears testimony to the traumas of the last two decades. Until 1992 it contained one of the finest collections of art and cultural artifacts in Asia: 100,000 pieces from two millenniums of Afghan history. During the fight for Kabul, mujahedeen armies occupied and looted the museum; the structure was shelled in 1993 and fire destroyed the roof and the second floor. By the time the Taliban seized power, only a few thousand pieces remained; the museum's staff had hidden away the best works. Then, in 2001, Taliban leaders ordered all art objects depicting the human form destroyed, and cadres set upon the remaining exhibits with axes and sledgehammers, ruining 2,500 more works.
But the museum, like much of Kabul, is struggling back to life. The two-story, gray concrete villa was rebuilt with Greek, American and Italian money in 2004. When I arrived, workmen were laying tiles in the lobby and putting the finishing touches on a marble staircase, a project being financed by an Austrian aid group. Though most galleries were locked and display cases empty, I pushed through a half-open door and came upon a magnificent collection of 18th- and 19th-century wood-carved deities and monarchs from Nuristan, a mountainous province northeast of Jalalabad. These surreal treasures, reminiscent of West African fertility gods and Picasso's cubist works, were recently patched back together after being hammered into fragments by Taliban zealots. After admiring the several dozen works - hatchet marks and gouges still visible in the wood - I met with Omara Khan Massoudi, the museum's general director.
Mr. Massoudi was preparing the museum's second exhibition since the Taliban's fall, set to open in the winter of 2007: photographs and artifacts salvaged from the covered bazaar in Tashqurghan, a unique, mud-walled complex of mosques, shops and homes, bombed into rubble by the Soviets in 1982. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam donated glass cases for the exhibition, and those cases will later be used to house the permanent collection. "I hope within two years we can restore the museum to something like it was," Mr. Massoudi told me. "It all depends on security."
Many of Kabul's most impressive structures are off limits to tourists. The citadel of Bala Hissar - occupied over the centuries by the Mongols, the Moguls and the British - is now a military installation. The surrounding grounds were mined during the Soviet occupation and have yet to be cleared. The domed hilltop mausoleum of Nadir Shah, father of the aged present-day monarch, Zahir Shah, remains closed while its vandalized marble facade is painstakingly restored.
I did gain entry to the Babur Gardens, a rehabilitated complex of rose gardens and poplars beloved of the Mogul emperor who won Kabul from a rival in the 16th century and made Kabul his capital. Among its treasures is a small marble tomb, built by another Mogul emperor, Shah Jahan, who later built the Taj Mahal. I also visited the OMAR Mine Museum, which displays hundreds of Soviet-era personnel and anti-tank mines, along with an arsenal's worth of mortar shells, bullets and cluster bombs, a testament to the brutality of the Soviet occupation.
The real fascination of Kabul, I found, lies in the ordinary rhythms of life here, in the bustle of a reviving city. Early one morning Jonathan and Shafik met me in the lobby of the Serena (perhaps the only luxury hotel in the world that operates on a cash-only basis), to which I had moved after a few nights at the Gandamack, and led me on foot along the Kabul River to the Mandayi Market.
Destroyed by British forces in the 1840s, and again during the 1990s civil war, this rebuilt bazaar is the nerve center of the Afghan capital. Shafts of sunlight penetrated serpentine alleys lined by canvas-covered wooden stalls; the harsh light illuminated the bearded faces of Pashtun merchants and their bountiful wares: nuts, spices, dried fruits, tea, slabs of raw meat, live turkeys, blankets, beads of lapis lazuli. Sparks flew from the spinning wheels of knife sharpeners, and strips of beef sizzled in huge pans of sesame oil. Adolescent boys careened through the passages pushing wheelbarrows, sending shoppers scurrying for safety; two butchers led a bleating black sheep to a rear courtyard for slaughter.
We turned into a cacophonous bird market, where bright-green parakeets and budgies flitted by the hundreds inside bamboo cages. Five ethnic Uzbek men, swathed in wool blankets, with dark faces and almond eyes suggesting their Mongol ancestry, marched single-file through the alley and struck a deal for a fighting partridge, a large, red-beaked bird whose killer instinct is legendary. "The High Court has ruled bird fighting illegal," Shafik told me, "But it happens every Friday morning across the city. It's a part of life in Kabul."
THAT evening, Vince White, the American consultant, took me to a teetering building in the shadow of the domed Pul-i-Khishti Mosque, the dominant edifice of central Kabul. We had come to attend a weekly gathering of Sufi Muslims, members of a mystical sect whose ritualistic music, qawwali, and dance were banned during the Taliban era but have since been revived. We slipped past hashish-smoking men in a muddy alley, climbed to the building's second floor, removed our shoes and entered a fluorescent-lit room.
Seated on the green-carpeted floor were burly ethnic Tajiks wearing the beretlike brown pakul, popularized by Massoud; Pashtuns with prophets' white beards and billowing turbans; sloe-eyed Uzbeks and Hazaras; and a Medusa-haired ascetic in rags who flopped down beside me and began haranguing me in Dari, Afghanistan's dominant language (close to Farsi). All other eyes were focused on an elderly sitarist in a white turban, an adolescent drummer, a harmonium player, a virtuouso of the rubab - a mandolinlike Afghan instrument - and a black-haired young vocalist who is regarded, Mr. White told me, as one of Afghanistan's finest Sufi singers. "All of these people are poor," he said, over the singer's wailing vibrato. "This is a great escape from the problems of life in Afghanistan."
I stared across the room at a black-bearded gnome shrouded in a white robe. His head was bobbing, his face frozen in a rictus of ecstasy. The wild-haired ascetic clapped his hands to his cheeks and began to sway back and forth. A young Pashtun poured me a cup of Afghan green tea, and I sipped contentedly as the music wafted over me. Then, near midnight, my companion and I headed back to our car, through a darkened alley, past the sweet aroma of hashish, and the huddled forms of men warming themselves around a wood fire glowing in a barrel. Kabul - raw, ruined, yet stirring back to life - had never seemed more magical.
VISITOR INFORMATION
GETTING THERE
There are no direct flights between the United States and Kabul, Afghanistan. Flights between J. F. K. and Dubai begin at about $700. From Dubai, you can connect to Kam Air (www.flykamair.com; 888-952-6247), a private Afghan airline with daily flights between Dubai and Kabul. A Dubai-Kabul round trip costs about $430.
The U.S. dollar is almost universally accepted in Afghanistan.
HOTELS
The best hotel in town by far is the Kabul Serena (Froshgah Street; 93-79-9654-000; www.serenahotels.com), in the heart of the congested downtown area, near the Kabul River and the Mandayi Market. Opened in November 2005, the $36.5 million showpiece, with 160 rooms and 17 suites, was reconstructed out of the carcass of the old Kabul Hotel near Zamegar Park. Double rooms are about $140 a night: all have high-speed Internet connections, with Wi-Fi in the lobby. Public spaces are crammed with Afghan carpets, along with antique furniture, copperware and local art.
The Safi Landmark Hotel and Suites (Charahi Ansari, Shar e Naw; 93-20-220-3131) is a somewhat downscale alternative to the Serena in Kabul's restaurant and entertainment district. It has 90 rooms, 40 apartments and Wi-Fi. Double rooms are $100 a night.
Peter Jouvenal's Gandamack Lodge (93-70-27-6937 or 93-79-56-9904; www.gandamacklodge.co.uk), on Sherpur Square, is a dark, atmospheric hangout for foreign correspondents and aid workers, as well as the occasional adventure traveler. It has 15 pleasant rooms, which cost $115 a night, a good restaurant, a basement bar called the Hare and Hound and frequent cultural events, including lectures and movie screenings. It's an intimate, slightly down-at-the-heels alternative to the Serena.
RESTAURANTS
One of the hottest new cafes in Kabul is the Cabul Coffee House (Street No. 6, Qalle Fatullah neighborhood; 93-75-200-5275). A warm and cozy place, it's the closest that the Afghan capital has to Starbucks, and offers excellent burgers, salads, quiches and quesadillas, along with wireless Internet. There are frequent evening cultural events - such as a lecture I attended by an expert on buzkashi, which resembles polo played with a goat carcass - that seem to bring in much of the city's expatriate population.
La Cantina (93-798-271-915 or 93-79-924-336; http://LaCantinaKabul.blogspot.com), in the Shar e Naw neighborhood, is a lively Tex Mex spot that has become increasingly popular among the United Nations and aid worker crowd. It's open for lunch Thursday through Sunday, dinner from Tuesday through Sunday
Red Hot Sizzlin' (District 16, Microyan 1, Nader Khan Hill Area), on Kabul's outskirts, is the favorite haunt of the red-meat-eating private-security corps. A handsomely renovated red bungalow with a summer garden, the Australian-owned restaurant offers big helpings of chili, burgers and steaks.
For authentic Central Asian cuisine, the most popular spot is Samarqand (93-799-281-674 or 93-70-65-6586), down Charahi Shaheed Street from the Kabul Business Center in the Shar e Naw neighborhood.
TRANSPORT AND GUIDES
Afghan Logistics and Tours (93-799-391-462 or 92-70-479-435) provides good cars and drivers who speak some English for $40 to $50 a day within Kabul, more if you're traveling outside of town. The service is reliable and the drivers invariably pleasant
For guided tours of the city and the rest of Afghanistan, the Great Game Travel Company Afghanistan (93-799-489-120; www.greatgametravel.com) is the place to go. The co-founders and co-owners, André Mann and Jonathan Bean, have a fleet of four-wheel-drive vehicles and a staff of well-informed English-speaking guides and security advisers. A day tour of Kabul runs to about $100. It also offers a variety of other tours, including a weeklong trek through the Pamir Mountains and a trip by vehicle to Bamiyan, Herat and Mazar-i-Sharif.
SHOPPING
Kabul's fabled Chicken Street is lined with sellers of carpets, jewelry, furniture and a wide variety of antiques from across Central Asia; make sure to bargain hard for everything. The Afghan Gallery (Kolola Pushta road, first bus stand, after the Netherlands Embassy, toward Khairkhana; 93-799-712-442 or 93-75-201-6347) is an Afghan cooperative selling carpets, paintings, sculptures, jewelry and dresses made by local artists and craftsmen.
TRAVEL WARNINGS
On its Web site (www.state.gov), the State Department strongly warns United States citizens against travel to Afghanistan. Those who do travel to Kabul and other parts of Afghanistan are encouraged to register with the United States Embassy through the State Department's travel registration Web site, https://travelregistration.state.gov, and to obtain updated information on travel and security. The embassy (93-70-108-001 or 93-70-108-002; http://afghanistan.usembassy.gov) is in Kabul on Great Masood Road between Radio Afghanistan and the Ministry of Public Health (the road is also known as Bibi Mehro Road).
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Cdns scramble to compensate Afghan farmers
By MURRAY BREWSTER
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (CP) - A handful of dirt poor, displaced Afghan farmers returning to their land west of Kandahar have arrived home to a somewhat rude surprise: a nearly completed road cutting across their property.
The farmers, in the Zhari district, north of the former Taliban hotbed of Bazar-e Panjwaii, are growing increasingly frustrated because unlike their brethren closer to the town, they do not have a land compensation deal.
Many of the landowners have been away from their homes for months, driven away by heavy fighting between Canadian-led NATO forces and Taliban militants last summer and fall.
They have only recently been allowed to return to their villages and arid pockmarked land, where many of them grow grapes, melons, wheat, corn and barley.
"There is frustration among the farmers, but I would argue it's not as much about Route Summit so much, as it was their inability to get back on to their land," said Brig.-Gen. Tim Grant, the commander of Canadian troops in Afghanistan.
"A lot of these folks have been living in displaced persons camps or with relatives in Kandahar City. They were unable to go back and lead a normal life."
The 4.5 kilometre road, known to the Canadians as Route Summit, is very near completion after almost four months of construction and sacrifice. At least three Canadian soldiers died last fall defending road or construction crews.
Initially bulldozed through out of military necessity during the bloody fighting of Operation Medusa in September, these days the army is promoting its economic value to sometimes skeptical Afghans, who for centuries have been used to using an old narrow, winding dirt road to move their produce to the market town of Bazar-e Panjwaii.
Some farmers have grumbled no one consulted them and they didn't want the road, which is broken into three district construction sections; the area from the main highway to the Argandaub River; a bridge over the river and the last stretch, running south into the town.
In late December, after weeks of sometimes frustrating negotiations with tribal elders, officers at the Canadian provincial reconstruction base were able to strike a deal to compensate farmers on the southern stretch of Route Summit.
Those farmers already have cash in their hands, said Grant.
"That has gone very smoothly," he said.
Negotiations with tribal elders on the northern leg in Zhari, where Taliban attacks and fighting were taking place until just recently, have not concluded.
"Are there some who will be affected by Route Summit and their property has been damaged? Absolutely," he said.
"We will make sure we deal with them through the district council and make sure their recompensed for the damage."
Part of the problem, Grant said, is that people are still returning to their homes and the army must figure out who owns individual plots of land and what damage has been done.
The actual construction cost of the road is being split three ways.
The Canadians have assumed roughly Cdn$500,000 for the design and building of the 1.4 kilometre portion running into Panjwaii. The Germans have agreed to spend the equivalent of $1.8 million for the northern portion in Zhari, while the Americans are expected to build the bridge over the Argandaub River.
Thus far, the cost of compensating farmers is estimated at $218,000. No figures were available for the number of farmers compensated to this point.
Of Afghanistan's 63 million hectares of land, only eight million is arable, with the remainder being high mountains or desert wasteland. At the same, farming is the source of roughly 85 per cent of the livelihoods in the country, according to a recent international survey.
Knowing that many of the people who took up arms with the Taliban last fall were poor farmers, Grant recognizes that keeping people happy and occupied on their land is something that's in the army's best interest.
"The biggest thing in my mind is that we're getting large numbers of farmers back on to their property at a key time: planting season," he said.
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Afghan suspected in killing is again locked up
Probe of fatal attack on diplomat tests police mettle
THE GLOBE AND MAIL by GRAEME SMITH
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN -- A suspect in the death of a Canadian diplomat is back in Afghan custody after escaping police scrutiny for almost a year, in a case that illuminates the difficult struggle to bring the rule of law to a feudal land.
Pir Mohammed was first arrested about a year ago, when police traced him as the last documented owner of a minivan that exploded in Kandahar city on Jan. 15, 2006. The attack killed Glyn Berry, political director of the provincial reconstruction team, and was a shocking introduction for Canadians to the violence to come as the military geared up its mission in the volatile south. Since then, 44 Canadian soldiers have died fighting the Taliban.
Mr. Mohammed, who walked out of jail less than two days after his initial arrest after calling in favours with influential members of his tribe, was taken into custody again last month after being stopped at a checkpoint in Kandahar city. His vehicle -- a black Toyota Surf, with plate number 599 -- was listed as a potential bomb threat in a bulletin from Afghan intelligence.
"When we caught him again, we thought, maybe now we can investigate him properly," said Captain Sher Ali Farhad, the Afghan National Police officer who led the initial criminal investigation of Mr. Mohammed. "We thought maybe now the police are strong."
The arrest gave investigators a second chance at cracking the Berry case. But it also opened the door to yet another test of the independence of the police force, which has been subject to intense reform efforts by the Canadian mission in the year since Mr. Berry's death.
In his initial moments in custody, Mr. Mohammed boasted to his captors that nothing had changed. "I still have power," he said, according to officers.
This quickly proved true. Once again, Mr. Mohammed's tribesmen lobbied for his release.
"We are angry about this," said Mullah Naqib a local warlord, referring to the second arrest. "He is from a good family. Three hundred elders came to visit me when they heard he was captured. If he is not released, these elders will cause problems for the government."
Mr. Mohammed's family includes religious teachers who are respected members of the Alokozai tribe; Mr. Naqib is the leader of the Alokozais, a former anti-Soviet commander who ranks among the three most influential men in Kandahar. He was instrumental in securing the suspect's release after his first arrest last year.
Mr. Naqib is prominent enough that he was greeted with a friendly handshake by Prime Minister Stephen Harper during a visit last spring. Mr. Harper faced questions in the House of Commons when The Globe and Mail published an article on Dec. 11, revealing how Mr. Naqib persuaded local authorities to release Mr. Mohammed. The second arrest of Mr. Mohammed happened only two days later, on Dec. 13.
The grey-bearded elder discovered that influencing Mr. Mohammed's fate wasn't as easy after his second arrest, however. In fact, Mr. Naqib couldn't secure his full release, though he managed to persuade the police chief to allow Mr. Mohammed one week of temporary leave so he could celebrate the Eid holidays that started Dec. 31.
"Pir Mohammed . . . by command of the chief of police, will be released until the end of Eid, and then he will again be arrested for investigation," said a handwritten note, filed with Mr. Mohammed's police record, and signed by the head of the city's counterterrorism unit.
That kind of favour is highly unusual. A senior police source said he's never heard of such a leave granted for any other suspect, much less a terrorism suspect held in the squat, one-storey interrogation centre adjacent to police headquarters in downtown Kandahar.
General Asmatullah Alizai, Kandahar's chief of police, sighed wearily when asked about Mr. Mohammed. By all accounts, the new chief has battled corruption in his department since taking the position in October. Mr. Mohammed's case was only the latest example of local powerbrokers trying exert influence over police, he said.
"I respect the tribes, but first I respect the law of Afghanistan," he said. "They can call me every day, but I will follow the rules."
The chief said he bent the rules for Mr. Mohammed, granting his temporary leave, only after receiving an order from his superiors in Kabul.
Mr. Naqib confirmed that he went over the chief's head, taking his complaint to counterterrorism authorities in the capital. But that represented a new level of effort for Mr. Naqib. The powerbroker is accustomed to officials respecting his requests as a matter of routine, partly because of his vast network of tribesmen, and perhaps also because of his rumoured arsenal of weapons left over from decades of war.
The last time the old warrior sprang Mr. Mohammed from prison, it only required a conversation with the chairman of Kandahar's provincial council.
After police linked him to the bomber's vehicle, they searched his house and claimed to discover a Kalashnikov rifle and a rocket launcher. But the investigation stopped there, once members of his tribe intervened to secure his release, and the evidence against Mr. Mohammed remains far from conclusive.
This time it was more difficult, Mr. Naqib admitted, but not because the city police have grown less corrupt. Rather, he said, he's facing competition from a powerful new tribe in southern Afghanistan: the Canadians.
"The Canadians told the government to keep him in jail," Mr. Naqib said. "It's a very bad action."
At police headquarters, Gen. Alizai was cryptic when asked whether the Canadian mission had exerted an influence over Mr. Mohammed's case.
"Of course they should have an interest in this case, because it involves a Canadian diplomat," he said.
A Foreign Affairs spokeswoman confirmed that Canada is talking with Afghan authorities about the case, but provided few details.
"The Canadian government is encouraging Afghan authorities to take appropriate actions to bring those responsible for Glyn Berry's murder to justice, in accordance with the law," the spokeswoman said.
After spending Eid with his family, Mr. Mohammed returned to custody on Jan. 6. Mr. Naqib said he instructed the young man to surrender after the holiday, but police say they went in search of the suspect and rearrested him.
The next week, Gen. Alizai said, the head of the Ministry of Interior's counterterrorism branch visited Kandahar to escort the suspect back to the capital for questioning.
"Kabul saved me some headaches," Gen. Alizai said with a chuckle.
The lesson from Mr. Mohammed's unusual path through the justice system is that Kandahar's police still need better training, a stronger chain of command, and more esprit de corps, said RCMP Superintendent Dave Fudge, the senior civilian police officer at Canada's provincial reconstruction team.
"Some things are moving forward, but are things completely fixed? From this story alone, you can see it's not fixed yet," Supt. Fudge said.
The PRT already contributes to police training but most programs are aimed at fresh recruits, Supt. Fudge said. The reconstruction team recently pitched the idea of establishing a new $3-million to $4-million police training facility in Kandahar city to educate the middle ranks of police officers, and Supt. Fudge said he's waiting for approval from Ottawa.
Gavin Buchan, who replaced Mr. Berry as the PRT's political director, said that the whole structure of Kandahar's government must also be taught to avoid interfering with police matters.
"We want there to be an environment in Kandahar where rule of law is scrupulously respected, and where police actions are a matter for decision making purely in the police chain of command," Mr. Buchan said. "But anyone who tells you that governance can be completely overhauled in the space of six months is extremely optimistic, or availing themselves of some locally procurable products."
There have been some significant steps toward reform since Mr. Berry's death. Kandahar got a new police chief, a new system for paying salaries directly to officers and laws were rewritten to give the Kabul government more authority over police -- reducing, in theory, the influence of local powerbrokers.
A recent study concluded that many places in Afghanistan are encountering similar conflicts between official and unofficial justice systems. Village councils and tribal elders have meted out their own kind of justice for centuries, emphasizing mediation and arbitration to solve problems. The country started to develop a modern structure of police, prosecutors and judges in the late 1800s, but it never entirely replaced the tribal system. Formal justice fell apart entirely during recent decades of war, and responsibility for solving disputes often fell to warlords such as Mr. Naqib.
The study, titled The Clash of Two Goods, published in November by the United States Institute of Peace, recommended blending both the formal and informal justice systems.
"Over all, justice officials, including police . . . prosecutors, and judges have very little actual authority to make or implement their decisions," the study said.
Officers on the front lines say they're caught between the theory of how the system should work and the reality of how powerful men, in fact, run the city of Kandahar.
On a morning soon after Capt. Farhad's officers rearrested Mr. Mohammed, he said he awoke to find an envelope taped to his front door. It was a so-called night letter, a written threat of the kind often distributed by the Taliban.
Capt. Farhad said he's taking the threat seriously, and has hired armed guards to follow his children on their walk to school. But he said he's unsure how much real protection he can offer his family, in a city where so many people are stronger than the law.
'Some guy wearing a uniform thinks he can do anything . . .'
General Asmatullah Alizai, 49, says he took on a daunting task when he accepted the job as Kandahar's police chief. When he arrived in October, he said, the force was so rife with corruption that he decided to start a law-and-order campaign by focusing on his own ranks.
"Some guy wearing a uniform thinks he can do anything in Kandahar," Gen. Alizai said in an interview. "I want to make them follow the laws."
Three months later, the new chief acknowledges that he's a long way from solving the internal problems. But he credits some of the relative calm in recent weeks to his reforms, which include adjusting the tribal representation within the force. Before his arrival, villagers complained of police units dominated by officers from a single tribe preying upon their tribal rivals.
"The police were bothering people, and I wanted to stop this," he said.
Another major problem for the battle-weary force is the urgent need for better equipment, he said.
"At least, you should give us better equipment than our enemies have," he said.
The Taliban are attacking police with recoilless rifles, machine guns and even anti-aircraft weapons, Gen. Alizai said. "But we are issued counterfeit Czech-made Kalashnikovs, not even the real Russian models," he said. "These guns are as likely to kill us as kill our enemies."
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Mr Benn where has our £400m Afghan aid money gone?
thisislondon.co.uk Evening Standard - Jan 20 3:30 PM
Hundreds of millions of pounds in British aid has been pumped into Afghanistan to help children like little Dawoud. And yet he is dying.
Head swollen, stomach distended and muscles wasting away, he is in the advanced stages of malnutrition - and so are thousands more like him.
Enraged charity workers told yesterday how the British aid that could - and should - be saving them is failing to get through.
And they point the finger of blame squarely at Britain's International Development Secretary, Hilary Benn.
Alarmingly, it is not just children like Dawoud who are paying the price for Britain's aid failures, but also our soldiers in the southern province of Helmand.
The appalling lack of food there, say the aid workers, is driving local men to join the Taliban because it is the only way they can feed their families.
Norine MacDonald, president of the Paris-based Senlis Council, one of the leading agencies in the region, said: "Hilary Benn has spent nearly £400million in Afghanistan.
"Where has that money gone? It is certainly not reaching the people who need it most.
"Mr Benn should explain himself or stand down."
The organisation claims Mr Benn's department has staff on the ground in Afghanistan but they do not leave the relative safety of their offices in the capital, Kabul.
Instead, the British aid is given to the Afghan government to distribute - even though the administration is riddled with corruption.
The agency provided exclusive pictures to support its claims and cites the case of two-year-old Dawoud, who is unlikely to live to see his third birthday.
Dawoud is just one of the hidden victims of the war on terror which is now bringing famine and disease to the region.
His father, Khudinazar, brought him to Kharoty, one of several hastily thrown- up mud-hut camps just a few miles from Camp Bastion, the British Army's multi-million-pound headquarters in Helmand.
Driven from their homes by the heavy fighting, a devastating drought and the destruction of local farmers' poppy crops, hundreds of Afghans are heading to these unofficial refugee camps to wait in vain for international help.
The camps have no electricity, no fresh water, no doctors, no schools and little of anything else.
Aid workers say the only escape for the desperate and starving is to join the Taliban insurgents, who promise food, shelter and a 'joining bonus' of $200 (£101) - a king's ransom in Afghanistan.
In Kandahar, Afghanistan's second largest city, medical staff are also struggling to cope.
The child malnutrition ward in the Mirwais Hospital has become a dying room.
Starving baby
The Senlis Council documented last week how staff at the hospital tried to calm a starving baby girl, holding her in their arms and trying to rock her to sleep.
Her eyes sunken and her arms and legs wasted, there was little the doctors and nurses could do for her.
"She has been here for several days. It is highly likely she will die," said one doctor.
"There is insufficient food and medical care in the ward,' he added.
"Many of the children here will die. We really have no way of treating them.
"The mothers are with the babies in the ward and they themselves have no food."
The World Food Programme says 2.5million Afghans are in danger of starvation and five million more are not getting enough to eat.
The UN body's assessment is stark. It says 61 per cent of children under five are suffering from malnutrition and nearly seven per cent are described as 'wasted'. The numbers are growing.
The main killer is kwashiorkor - a type of childhood malnutrition first seen in Africa, which is believed to be caused by insufficient protein.
More than half the children affected die and those who survive suffer permanent stunted growth. It can also retard mental development.
"Make no mistake, this is a famine," says Ms MacDonald, who has spent much of the past three years in Helmand.
"Children are starving to death. There is no food and virtually no foreign aid. People here are being left with a choice.
"Either join the insurgency and get money to feed your family or watch them die."
The Canadian former lawyer, whose work is funded by Swiss philanthropist Stephan Schmidheiny - reputedly worth £1.6billion - is adamant that the blame lies with Britain's Department for International Development and its counterparts in the US and Canada.
"DFID has deserted Britain's own troops," she said.
"Millions of pounds of aid that it has poured into the country is simply not getting through to the south.
"That is fuelling the insurgency. I have met men in the camps. They are not terrorists. They are not Taliban.
"But they end up going to fight because they need to feed their families. British troops are dying as a direct result."
Helmand's governor, Mohammed Daud, is also frustrated by the UK aid department's lack of progress.
He said: "Promises to get projects up and running have not been kept and there hasn't even been a DFID representative in Helmand for two months."
The Department has around 18 staff at any one time in Afghanistan, but the security situation means they are mainly confined to Kabul.
Last night a spokesman insisted DFID was doing all it could and was committed to spend £217million on aid for Afghanistan over the next two years - more than £20million in Helmand alone during the next 12 months.
He said: "The UK has provided food aid and essential items like soap and blankets for 3,000 internally displaced families in Helmand.
"This was distributed by the Government of Afghanistan. UK officials are monitoring the situation.
"The UN has reassured us that in Helmand the basic needs of these families are being met."
He added: "DFID has also committed £1million towards the Government of Afghanistan's drought-response efforts."
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Power outage protests shut Pakistan-Afghan Highway
'Pakistan Times' NWFP Bureau
PESHAWAR: Khayber Agency's beleaguered Kokikhel tribesmen have blocked the Pak-Afghan Highway, while protesting against the unending electricity load shedding in their areas.
Sources told that the scores of Kokikhel tribesmen have blockaded the international highway between Pakistan and Afghanistan at teddy Bazaar by burning tyres, staging sit-ins and voicing slogans against the Wapda officials on the main road. Tankers, trailers and scores of vehicles remained standstill on the Pak-Afghan Highway.
Sources said that the persistent electricity load shedding kept pestering Jamrud Division of Zalakhel, Sher Khankhel, Kataykhel, Manyankhel and Torkhel besides several other areas, which has also rendered tube-wells inoperative creating an acute water crisis.
Kokikhel tribesmen have demanded from the Political Administration to take measures ending the electricity load shedding immediately.
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