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Taliban blow up Afghan phone tower
By NOOR KHAN, Associated Press Writer
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Taliban militants blew up a telecommunications tower Friday in southern Afghanistan following a warning to phone companies to shut down the towers at night or face attack.
Afghanistan's Helmand a tough battleground
by Bronwen Roberts
KABUL (AFP) - Afghanistan's southern Helmand province, where Britain's Prince Harry has been combating the Taliban, is a harsh battleground where extremists have teamed up with powerful opium lords.
Governor of Afghanistan's volatile Helmand says 'transferred'
KABUL (AFP) - The governor of Afghanistan's volatile Helmand province, where Taliban hold some districts and opium cultivation is flourishing, has been transferred out of the job, he said Friday.
Britain to withdraw Prince Harry from Afghanistan
By Luke Baker
LONDON (Reuters) - Prince Harry is to be withdrawn from Afghanistan after news leaked on the Internet that he had been secretly serving on the front lines there for 2-1/2 months, Defense Ministry sources said.
US to send trainers for Afghan forces: top brass
TODAYonline - Feb 28 6:20 PM
The United States plans to send thousands of soldiers to train Afghanistan's security forces but this will require cutting troop numbers in Iraq, a top military official said Thursday.
Insecurity Hindering Return Of Afghan Refugees
Scoop.co.nz - Feb 28 11:36 AM Press Release: United Nations
Insecurity hindering return of Afghan refugees to their homeland, says UN agency
27 February 2008 - Many Afghan refugees living in neighbouring Iran and Pakistan are reluctant to return to their homeland due to the deteriorating security situation there and difficulty in sustaining their new lives, a senior official with the
Obama says Europe must do more in Afghanistan
By Jeff Mason Thu Feb 28, 7:55 PM ET
BEAUMONT, Texas (Reuters) - European nations must step up their efforts in Afghanistan and not count on the United States and Britain to do the "dirty work" in fighting the Taliban, Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said on Thursday.
US Distances Itself From Musharraf
By FOSTER KLUG
WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States' second-ranking diplomat signaled Thursday that the Bush administration is distancing itself from Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf after opposition victories in last week's elections.
Afghanistan: ‘A tale of two students’ tells nation’s fate
Source: Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty 28 Feb 2008
Marjan and Malalai have a lot in common. Both are Afghan. Both are girls. Both are 17-years-old. But for all the rest, the teens might as well inhabit different planets.
Visas for War Zone Translators Halted
Current Quotas Are Nearly Filled
By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, February 29, 2008; Page A10
The State Department has stopped processing the applications of 551 Iraqi and Afghan translators seeking special visas to come to the United States, because the current legal quota of 500 visas for the program this year is about
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Taliban blow up Afghan phone tower
By NOOR KHAN, Associated Press Writer
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Taliban militants blew up a telecommunications tower Friday in southern Afghanistan following a warning to phone companies to shut down the towers at night or face attack.
The militants fear U.S. and other foreign troops are using mobile phone signals to track insurgents and launch attacks against them. A Taliban spokesman on Monday said militants would blow up towers across Afghanistan if the companies did not switch off their signals overnight.
Insurgents made good on that threat Friday, destroying a tower along the main highway in the Zhari district of Kandahar province, said Niaz Mohammad Serhadi, the top district official.
The tower was owned by Areeba, one of four cellular companies in Afghanistan. Company officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
Phone companies moved into remote areas of Afghanistan after talks with tribal elders, who asked for the towers to be built, said Abdul Hadi Hadi, spokesman for the Telecommunications Ministry.
"When they destroy any tower, it shows direct enmity to the people of that area. I don't think the destruction of the towers has any direct effect on the government. It is the people who suffer," he said.
Thousands of customers will be affected by the tower attack, Serhadi said. Police have increased security around other phone towers, he said.
Militants have threatened mobile phone companies in the past, accusing them of collusion with the U.S. and other foreign military forces.
Communications experts say the U.S. military has the ability, using satellites and other means, to pick up cell phone signals without the phone company's help. Cell phones periodically send signals to the network even when they are not making calls.
The U.S. has said it has killed more than 50 mid- and top-level Taliban leaders over the last year.
Mobile phones were introduced to Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. They have become the principal means of communication and one of the fastest-growing and most profitable sectors in the country's economy.
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Afghanistan's Helmand a tough battleground
by Bronwen Roberts
KABUL (AFP) - Afghanistan's southern Helmand province, where Britain's Prince Harry has been combating the Taliban, is a harsh battleground where extremists have teamed up with powerful opium lords.
It has also proven to be deadly terrain for British troops who moved into the province in early 2006 and fought hard to establish pockets of control at great cost -- most of the nearly 90 British troops lost in Afghanistan since the Taliban defeat in 2001 were killed in Helmand.
The British have been stretched to their limits, facing some of their most intense fighting in decades -- worse than in Iraq, some say -- with complaints from commanders of a shortage in helicopters and other hardware.
Harry's deployment in the province, where most of Britain's 7,700 soldiers are stationed, makes him the first British royal to be sent on active duty in more than a quarter-century.
Helmand's vast desert of powder-fine and often-scorching sand stretches to the unregulated border with Pakistan.
The border is a crossing point for fresh Taliban fighters and weapons into the country -- and, in the other direction, opium headed out to international drugs markets.
The new supplies often move up through the district of Garmser where Harry, 23-year-old grandson of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II and third in line to the throne, spent several weeks after flying out in mid-December.
He was brought in for a three-month deployment, but that is now in question after news of his presence leaked out.
Garmser is also a blooding ground for Taliban recruits who, officers have told AFP, often have their first encounters here with the international forces helping the Afghan government restore order after decades of lawlessness.
The roughly 150 British troops in Garmser, many of them Gurkhas, are based in the ruins of a former madrassa and agricultural college.
One of their fortresses is atop a mound of earth built by British soldiers in Afghanistan around 100 years ago during the three Anglo-Afghan wars, which Afghans remember as a proud resistance to an attempted invasion.
From there the Taliban fighters move into Helmand's other hotspots, such as Kajaki -- the site of massive hydropower dam -- and Sangin, where the British military says it has brought some stability after months of bitter conflict.
Prince Harry, son of Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana, has left Garmser to work in another part of Helmand, although further details cannot be reported for security reasons.
The prince, who is serving in the Household Cavalry, has been working as a battlefield air controller.
Afghan officials admit Taliban fighters in the province include hundreds of foreign "jihadists"; and they acknowledge that at least three of its more than a dozen districts are in the control of the rebels.
The town of Musa Qala was in Taliban hands for 10 months until December, becoming a base for the hardliners who implemented there the harsh version of justice they imposed during their 1996-2001 rule, including executions.
Afghan and British soldiers led the campaign that recaptured Musa Qala in December, and say they will move into the other districts too.
The intensity of the fighting is tied to Helmand's lucrative illegal opium crop: the province produces most of Afghanistan's opium which accounts for 90 percent of world supply and is worth about four billion dollars annually.
The opium and linked heroin production contribute funds for the insurgency -- partly through a "tax" imposed on farmers, sometimes a fee to protect crops from eradication and during transportation.
In a sign of the relationship, fierce fighting erupted this week between a government drugs eradication team that was guarded by police and the Taliban, who were protecting opium poppies.
The clash left 29 Taliban dead, officials said.
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Governor of Afghanistan's volatile Helmand says 'transferred'
KABUL (AFP) - The governor of Afghanistan's volatile Helmand province, where Taliban hold some districts and opium cultivation is flourishing, has been transferred out of the job, he said Friday.
Asadullah Wafa, appointed provincial governor in December 2006, told AFP his "transfer" came after he had made repeated requests to President Hamid Karzai to be moved out of the tough post.
Wafa said he has been appointed as director of a complaints committee in the national security section of Karzai's office.
Karzai's office would not comment on the move, seen as significant with Helmand a key nexus of a Taliban-led insurgency and producer of most of Afghanistan's illegal opium.
No replacement has been announced.
A leading member of the Helmand provincial council said on condition of anonymity that Wafa was "dismissed" for weak administration and failing to crackdown on drugs mafia networks, and because of international pressure.
Wafa was involved in the expulsion last month of a leading European Union official and a top British diplomat working with the United Nations following allegations they had contacted Taliban in Helmand without Karzai's knowledge.
Most of the 7,500 British troops in Afghanistan are based in Helmand, including Britain's Prince Harry. The province experiences some of the worst violence of an insurgency led by the Taliban, who are trying to regain power after being ousted in late 2001.
On January 31, a Taliban suicide bombing in the provincial capital Lashkar Gah killed Wafa's deputy governor and five other people.
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Britain to withdraw Prince Harry from Afghanistan
By Luke Baker
LONDON (Reuters) - Prince Harry is to be withdrawn from Afghanistan after news leaked on the Internet that he had been secretly serving on the front lines there for 2-1/2 months, Defense Ministry sources said.
Military commanders have drawn up plans for his removal from the country but it is not known exactly when it will happen.
"It will be relatively quick, and it will be an ordered and dignified retreat, but there's no need to rush it," a source at the ministry said.
Harry, the son of Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana and third in line to the British throne, was made aware of the news leak shortly after it was broadcast around the world on a U.S. Web site on Thursday.
The leak raised concern that Harry, who is on the front lines in Helmand, a dangerous province of southern Afghanistan, could become a "high-value target" for al Qaeda, the Taliban and other Islamist militants.
Harry, 23, was deployed to fight against the Taliban in December, seven months after plans to send him to Iraq were scrapped following threats from Iraqi militants to kidnap or kill him.
The military posted him only after the British media and selected members of the international press agreed not to report his presence until he had returned from a scheduled 4-month deployment. The embargo was broken on Thursday after German, Australian and U.S. Web sites reported he was in Afghanistan.
The breaking of the embargo, a rare agreement in Britain's usually free-for-all media environment, infuriated the military.
"Now that the story is in the public domain, the chief of staff and I will take advice from the operational commanders about whether his deployment can continue," the head of the army, General Richard Dannatt, said on Thursday in a statement.
"I am very disappointed that foreign Web sites have decided to run this story without consulting us," he said.
During his deployment, Harry has been responsible for calling in air strikes against Taliban positions, has conducted foot patrols through villages and has fired on suspected militants, media photographs and film footage released since Thursday have shown.
"EXEMPLARY CONDUCT"
"His conduct on operations in Afghanistan has been exemplary. He has been fully involved in operations and has run the same risks as everyone else," said Dannatt.
In interviews given to reporters sent out to cover his deployment as part of a so-called "pool" arrangement, Harry said he was aware that if his presence in Afghanistan was reported it could make him a target for al Qaeda or other militant groups.
"Once this film comes out ... every single person that supports them will be trying to slot me," he said.
"Now that you come to think about it, it's quite worrying. But as I say, now that this film has been made and now ... people will know I'm out here, no doubt I'll be a top target."
Talking about his experiences on the front lines, Harry said: "I haven't really had a shower for four days, I haven't washed my clothes for a week. It's very nice to be sort of a normal person for once."
(Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
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US to send trainers for Afghan forces: top brass
TODAYonline - Feb 28 6:20 PM
The United States plans to send thousands of soldiers to train Afghanistan's security forces but this will require cutting troop numbers in Iraq, a top military official said Thursday.
There are "3,000 trainers we've been short out there. We'd like to get those trainers out there as fast as we can," the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen told reporters.
"Clearly in Afghanistan the training mission is at the top. We need more trainers than anything else," he added. "Clearly it will take forces drawdown in Iraq to provide the headroom in order to meet that mission."
The United States poured about 30,000 extra troops into Iraq last year to stabilize parts of the country shaken by a bloody insurgency after the 2003 US-led invasion.
It is now gradually reducing troop numbers again, judging that security has improved.
In an interview published Thursday in the New York Times, the US commander for the Middle East, William Fallon, said that as troops were removed from Iraq he hoped to add a "couple of thousand" trainers for the Afghan army and police.
The United States has around 26,000 troops in Afghanistan operating alongside NATO-led multinational forces to stamp out an insurgency by fighters for the Taliban regime that was deposed in 2002. It also has forces there on a separate anti-terrorism mission.
The Pentagon said last month it would send an extra 3,200 Marines to Afghanistan, 1,000 of which would be tasked with training the Afghan army. — AFP
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Insecurity Hindering Return Of Afghan Refugees
Scoop.co.nz - Feb 28 11:36 AM Press Release: United Nations
Insecurity hindering return of Afghan refugees to their homeland, says UN agency
27 February 2008 - Many Afghan refugees living in neighbouring Iran and Pakistan are reluctant to return to their homeland due to the deteriorating security situation there and difficulty in sustaining their new lives, a senior official with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said today.
Erika Feller, UNHCR's top protection official, has been meeting with refugees and the authorities in Iran, which is currently hosting some 920,000 Afghans who have fled violence in their country over the course of the past 20 years.
"What has struck me during this visit is the variety of situations Afghan refugees are living in and the fact that the lack of security in Afghanistan is topmost in influencing their decisions to return home," Ms. Feller said, as she wrapped up her five-day mission.
During the peak of the refugee returns in 2004, there were up to 5,000 people going back to Afghanistan every day; that was the same number of returnees in all of 2007.
"So, we are at a turning point and have to reflect on the way forward with the Iranian authorities for those remaining here," noted Ms. Feller.
The refugees Ms. Feller met with cited lack of security, employment, education, health clinics and access to land in Afghanistan as some of the main concerns associated with returning home. Female Afghan refugees, who can work informally and move around freely in Iran, fear they would face restrictions in Afghanistan.
"Investing in education, the skills and capacity of the refugees is really important so they can make a real contribution back home in Afghanistan to rebuilding their country, or - if they go to a new country - in restarting their lives," she stated.
The Assistant High Commissioner for Protection lauded Iran's "very solid track record" in providing assistance to Afghan refugees, who generally have access to basic health care and education and have not been forced to return to the war-torn nation. "I heard many times how refugees feel part of this culture with a number being born here and knowing no other life," she said.
Ms. Feller discussed the situation of the refugees and their concerns with the Government's Bureau for Aliens and Foreign Immigration Affairs. She hopes to conduct similar visits to Afghanistan and Pakistan in the months ahead.
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Obama says Europe must do more in Afghanistan
By Jeff Mason Thu Feb 28, 7:55 PM ET
BEAUMONT, Texas (Reuters) - European nations must step up their efforts in Afghanistan and not count on the United States and Britain to do the "dirty work" in fighting the Taliban, Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said on Thursday.
Obama, the front-runner to become his party's nominee for the White House, praised Britain's Prince Harry for secretly serving on the frontlines of the war and said other NATO allies should be doing more.
"With respect to our NATO allies, I've been very clear that we do need more support from them. We also may need to lift some of the constraints that they have placed on their forces there," Obama said on his campaign plane.
"You can't have a situation where the United States is called upon to do the dirty work, or the United States and Britain are called upon to do the dirty work, and nobody else wants to engage in actual firefights with the Taliban."
The Illinois senator said that characterization of avoiding combat did not represent each NATO country's position, and he did not single out specific nations.
Germany has faced growing pressure from NATO partners in past weeks to increase the number of German troops in Afghanistan and shift them from the north to dangerous southern regions.
Obama said Washington would pay closer attention to the opinions of its allies on foreign policy issues under an Obama administration, a nod to the strained relations that resulted between some European countries and the United States after the Iraq war, which he opposed.
"It is, I think, important for us to ask more from our European allies," he said. "It is also important for us to send a signal that we're going to be listening to them when it comes to policies that they find objectionable, Iraq being at the top of the list."
In a debate on Tuesday, Democratic hopeful and New York Sen. Hillary Clinton chastised Obama for not doing anything to address the situation in Afghanistan when he chaired a Senate subcommittee on Europe and was in a position to hold hearings.
On Thursday, Britain's Ministry of Defense said Prince Harry, third in line to the British throne, had served as a combat soldier on the front lines in Afghanistan for 2 1/2 months.
Obama praised the 23-year-old soldier: "I think that the fact that Prince Harry is serving is commendable, and I'm sure the people of Great Britain are very proud of him."
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US Distances Itself From Musharraf
By FOSTER KLUG
WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States' second-ranking diplomat signaled Thursday that the Bush administration is distancing itself from Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf after opposition victories in last week's elections.
Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte told senators that the United States is supporting Pakistan's people as they choose their leaders after the parliamentary elections. But he made scant mention of Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 coup, during his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Senior Bush administration officials, including Negroponte, have previously underlined their view that Musharraf has been essential to the U.S.-led fight against extremists along Pakistan's rugged border with Afghanistan.
Negroponte testified that "Pakistan has been indispensable" to that fight and said the U.S. looks "forward to working with the leaders who emerge" from the formation of a new government.
When pressed by a lawmaker about whether the U.S. would continue to back Musharraf, Negroponte said, "Musharraf is still the president of his country, and we look forward to continuing to work with him."
U.S. lawmakers and Pakistani opposition leaders have criticized the Bush administration for its steadfast support of the former army general despite his crackdown on the opposition, judiciary and media. The Bush administration promoted Musharraf as a moderate leader able to hold together the nuclear-armed country.
Musharraf has faced intense criticism since he declared a state of emergency in November and purged the Supreme Court before it could rule on the disputed legality of his re-election as president a month earlier.
Republican Sen. Dick Lugar of Indiana said the United States should make it clear to Pakistan's people that U.S. interests "lay not in supporting a particular leader or party, but in democracy, pluralism, stability and the fight against violence."
The parties of slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and another former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, finished first and second in the Feb. 18 parliamentary elections. The Pakistan Muslim League-Q, a party loyal to Musharraf, lost heavily.
Negroponte said Pakistan's recent elections were a "big step" toward civilian democracy and reflected the will of the voters, despite the deaths of more than 70 people on election day.
"The violence could have been worse," Negroponte said. "The Pakistani people refused to be intimidated by a wave of murderous terrorist attacks prior to election day."
Democratic Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware also urged the administration to move from "a policy focused on a personality, Musharraf, to one based on an entire country."
Biden proposed that the United States triple nonmilitary aid for schools, roads and clinics and demand accountability for the military aid the U.S. gives Pakistan. Biden was part of a U.S. congressional delegation that traveled to Pakistan to observe the elections.
The United States has pumped nearly $10 billion (euro6.6 billion) in aid into Pakistan since Musharraf sided with the U.S. in the drive to topple the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan and hunt down al-Qaida after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.
After the Senate hearing, a rights group, Human Rights First, expressed disappointment that the Bush administration has not pushed Musharraf to reinstate judges.
Aaron Zisser, a member of the group, said Pakistan should immediately reinstate the judges, and "U.S. foreign policy, including its aid relationship with Pakistan, should support these measures."
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Afghanistan: ‘A tale of two students’ tells nation’s fate
Source: Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty 28 Feb 2008
Marjan and Malalai have a lot in common. Both are Afghan. Both are girls. Both are 17-years-old. But for all the rest, the teens might as well inhabit different planets.
Marjan's biggest worry is deciding about her future career. The high-school student from the northern city of Mazar e-Sharif is having a hard time choosing whether to become a lawyer or teacher. Marjan attends Hashem-e Barat girls' school in the relatively prosperous and peaceful northern province of Balkh.
In an interview ahead of the start of the new academic year in most Afghan areas, Marjan tells RFE/RL that she loves going to school, studying, and socializing with friends and playing sports like volleyball.
"I really like it when our teachers give us homework. I enjoy doing my homework. And I like reading books. We have a library at school. We read books there," Marjan says.
Malalai, by contrast, is living a life-or-death drama.
Malalai would love to go to university and study to become a professional. Yet she's unsure whether she will even be able to finish high school in southern Helmand Province.
Unlike Balkh, Helmand is one of the least secure areas in Afghanistan. The province is known as a hotbed of Taliban violence and is the biggest drug-producing province in the war-torn country.
Many obstacles stand in Malalai's way. The Taliban, which forbid girls from studying during its severe rule, has burned down several local schools and attacked students and teachers. Those are fairly significant disincentives in an area where some conservative parents do not want daughters attending schools anyway.
"The situation is not good, but I still go to school. We appreciate our teachers helping us here at the school. We are very afraid of going to school because of insecurity, but they try to calm us down. We try hard and our teachers also want us to be teachers and doctors in the future," Malalai says.
Record Number Of Students
The contrasting fates of Marjan and Malalai starkly illustrate the different pace of progress across Afghanistan today. They also highlight the ups and downs of Afghanistan's education system as students and teachers in 9,000 schools in 29 provinces prepare for the new academic year's start on March 23.
The Afghan Education Ministry expects some 6.5 million children -- some 35 percent of them girls -- attend schools across the country. Historically, that's a record number of students, Zuhur Afghan, a ministry spokesman, told RFE/RL.
Many Afghans believe that restoring and expanding the county's education system has been one of Afghanistan's success stories after the fall of the hard-line Taliban in 2001.
The Education Ministry says it intends to start construction on 30 new schools in each province. In addition, at least one teacher-training school is being set up in every province. More than 50 million new textbooks will also be distributed at schools during the first day of the new academic year.
By any measure, this is massive success in a country where a few years ago girls couldn't even attend school and nonreligious subjects were barely taught. But success has come with a price.
Zuhur Afghan, the Education Ministry spokesman, says the lack of security remains the major concern for education workers.
As the Taliban has become more active over the past two years, they have increasingly aimed attacks at soft targets such as aid workers and other civilians. Officials say more than 230 people in the education sector have been killed. More than 220 others, including teachers and students, have been wounded in Taliban attacks. Many schools have also been torched, leaving 300,000 children temporarily out of school.
The Education Ministry acknowledges the international community's financial support to Afghanistan's education system. Most recently, the United Nations Children's Fund has appealed to donors to provide an additional $15 million for Afghan schools.
That's a drop in the bucket compared to the $3 billion that the Education Ministry says is needed to rebuild its educational system over the next five years. Nonetheless, Zuhur Afghan says the funds are needed now to build new schools and provide textbooks and other school materials.
"Sixty percent of our schools do not have a building; lessons take place in mosques, tents or simply under trees. Many schools lack desks, blackboards, and chalk. Many of our schools do not have water and sanitation facilities, such as bathrooms," Afghan says.
Nafisa Ghiyasi, the head of the Hashem-e Barat school in Mazar-e Sharif, tells RFE/RL that a key issue for her school was a shortage of classrooms. She says the school was waiting for funds from the government and donors to pay for new building and other key expenses, but the money never came.
Building ... Brick By Brick
So teachers and students took the matter into their own hands. "Everybody made a contribution," she says. "Some people brought bricks, others provided construction materials, while others offered their labor. And in a few weeks, parents and teachers built six additional classrooms."
Ghiyasi says such initiatives demonstrate that Afghans want their children to get an education. It's an opportunity that many parents never had.
Yet Ghiyasi says it's not enough and that her school, with some 4,000 students and more than 110 teachers, still faces shortages of just about everything.
"Teachers say, 'I don't want to go far, give me a job in the city center.' But there are too many teachers in city centers -- more than schools need. Other places lack teachers. For instance, my school faces a shortage of teachers of physics, math and English," Ghiyasi says.
Most teachers, especially female tutors, are reluctant to take jobs in remote villages. Zuhur Afghan says that the lack of female teachers in villages "is a huge issue" because most parents in villages refuse to send their daughter to school if the teacher is not a woman.
To attract more female teachers to village schools, the ministry has offered to pay them three times more than their regular salary. The ministry also offers jobs to the husband or a male relative of the female teacher to enable them to travel to and stay in rural areas.
Still, it's not easy drawing talent from big cities, and the Education Ministry has asked the government to provide additional funds to increase teachers' wages over the next three years.
"We have far too many challenges facing schools and teachers," Ghiyasi says. "Nevertheless, we should try to rebuild the education system both through our own power and donors' assistance. We owe it to future generations."
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Visas for War Zone Translators Halted
Current Quotas Are Nearly Filled
By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, February 29, 2008; Page A10
The State Department has stopped processing the applications of 551 Iraqi and Afghan translators seeking special visas to come to the United States, because the current legal quota of 500 visas for the program this year is about to be reached, according to department officials.
The applicants, all of whom have worked for U.S. military forces, received an e-mail notice from the State Department's National Visa Center last week. "We have temporarily stopped processing cases," the message said, adding that "the applicant should NOT make any travel arrangements, sell property or give up employment until the US Embassy or Consulate General has issued a visa."
The halt is the latest obstacle for many of the several thousand translators who have worked for U.S. military units in Iraq and Afghanistan, risking their lives and leaving their families vulnerable to retaliation from insurgents who see them as accomplices of American troops. More than 250 interpreters working for U.S. forces or their contractors have been killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Many American service members have worked to help their former translators gain a visa to come to the United States under a 2006 congressional program initially designed to admit 50 translators per year, a quota later increased to 500.
Because most of the 551 whose applications are now held in abeyance must travel to Jordan, Syria or Kuwait to meet with U.S. Embassy personnel as part of the application process, the notice has created concern not just among the hundreds of potential refugees, but also among their sponsors, many of whom are current or former U.S. military personnel who worked with the translators in the war zone.
A bill sponsored by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and signed into law by President Bush last month raised to 5,000 the number of special visas available this year to Iraqi translators and other Iraqis who worked for the U.S. government or American contractors in the war zone. Officials with the departments of State and Homeland Security are still analyzing the legislation to work out the details of how the new program will be implemented.
"We are working on this now with Congress, USCIS [U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service], and PRM [State's Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration] to see if we can get a broader interpretation that would make it immediately applicable to the Iraqis who have already applied," said one official involved in the process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the policy is under development.
One sticking point, according to State Department officials, is that the new legislative language calls for any Iraqi seeking a special visa to have "experienced or is experiencing an ongoing serious threat as a consequence" of being employed by the United States. The officials are attempting to work out what type of evidence is needed to substantiate "an ongoing serious threat as a consequence of that employment."
The visa program that has been halted contained no such provision, although the translators had to provide a letter signed by a flag officer or the U.S. ambassador in Iraq attesting to their honorable service.
Kennedy, in a statement issued yesterday, said: "It's appalling that the administration is taking so long to issue the guidance necessary to continue the Special Immigrant Visa program for Iraqis with close ties to our government. . . . Every day we delay only further endangers these heroic Iraqis who have saved American lives."
Kirk W. Johnson, who runs the List Project, a nonprofit group seeking to bring threatened Iraqis who worked for U.S. forces to the United States, criticized the suspension and called on the Bush administration to simplify the application and processing system.
"If this doesn't prove why it's President Bush's responsibility to whip these bureaucracies into shape, and why the best intentions of Congress can only nudge things, I don't know what else can," said Johnson, a former staffer with the U.S. Agency for International Development in Iraq. "Until the president weighs in, the bureaucracies will not solve this."
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