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Afghan private security firms given 4-month deadline
by Waheedullah Massoud – Mon Aug 16, 9:01 am ET
KABUL (AFP) – President Hamid Karzai will give armed contracting firms in Afghanistan four months to disband, his spokesman said Monday, sparking fears of a potential security crisis in the war-torn country.
US backs Afghan plan to ditch security contractors
By Heidi Vogt, Associated Press Writer – Mon Aug 16, 6:10 am ET
KABUL, Afghanistan – The U.S. military supports the Afghan government's plan to dissolve private security companies and is tightening oversight of its own armed contractors in the interim, an official said Monday.
US wants gradual Afghan contractor withdrawal
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US Defense Department promised Monday to work with Afghan authorities who ordered the elimination of private security firms but made clear that it favored a more gradual withdrawal.
Afghan Taliban call for joint probe into civilian deaths
by Lynne O'donnell – Mon Aug 16, 5:04 am ET
KABUL (AFP) – The Taliban waging a vicious insurgency in Afghanistan have signaled a willingness to cooperate with international forces, the UN and human rights groups to investigate civilian deaths in the war.
Karzai “Syndicate” Flies The Cash-Rich Skies From Kabul
By Arthur Kent, Skyreporter.com
August 15, 2010 -- A shadowy syndicate with “clear and substantial” links to the family of President Hamid Karzai and their closest business partners has spirited massive amounts of hard currency through the smuggling gateway known as Kabul Airport, mainly to the Gulf banking haven of Dubai.
Al-Qaeda 'group leader' killed in Afghanistan: NATO
Mon Aug 16, 9:33 am ET
KABUL (AFP) – The NATO force in Afghanistan said Monday it had killed an Al-Qaeda cell leader after he was pinpointed by alliance aircraft while carrying out an attack on a police post.
Gates, Petraeus differ over Afghanistan exit
by Andrew Gully – Mon Aug 16, 3:29 am ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – US Defense Secretary Robert Gates insisted Monday the July 2011 date to start withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan was set in stone, putting him at odds with his top Afghan war commander.
Petraeus says capturing bin Laden still priority
WASHINGTON, Aug. 15 (Xinhua) -- Capturing or killing al-Qaida mastermind Osama bin Laden is still a priority for the United States, David Petraeus, the general who commands all U.S. forces in Afghanistan, was quoted as saying Sunday.
Gen. David Petraeus says Afghanistan war strategy 'fundamentally sound'
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran The Washington Post Monday, August 16, 2010; A01
KABUL -- In his first six weeks as the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus has seen insurgent attacks on coalition forces spike to record levels, violence metastasize to previously stable areas, and the country's president undercut anti-corruption units backed by Washington.
U.S. hopes to begin Afghan security transfer by spring
Pentagon chief Gates says that with NATO training troops ahead of schedule, some Afghan forces may be given security responsibilities, freeing up Western troops to focus on insurgent-held areas.
Los Angeles Times By David S. Cloud and Richard Serrano August 16, 2010
Reporting from - With training of Afghanistan's army and police ahead of schedule, American officials now believe the U.S.-led military coalition could begin transferring some security responsibilities to Afghan forces as early as spring.
Analysis: Probing war crimes in Afghanistan
KABUL, 15 August 2010 (IRIN) - The rising number of civilian casualties and the leaking of thousands of confidential war papers by whistleblower website Wikileaks have prompted fresh calls to bring alleged war criminals in Afghanistan to book.
Blast at funeral kills five Afghans
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Aug. 16 (Xinhua) -- An explosion hit a funeral killing five mourners and injuring 20 others in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, spokesman for provincial administration Daud Ahmadi said Monday.
Kabul's frustrated expats run the streets
by Claire Truscott
KABUL (AFP) – The group of foreigners jogging past mounds of fetid trash on the streets of Kabul attract bemused stares from locals, but the brief escape from bulletproof cars is a welcome break for ex-pats living in war-torn Afghanistan.
Afghan refugees mull return home after Pakistan floods
By Augustine Anthony – Sun Aug 15, 7:13 am ET
AZA KHEL, Pakistan (Reuters) – Floods ravaged tens of thousands of Afghan refugees who have been living in Pakistan for decades after fleeing Soviet occupation and civil war.
Afghan couple stoned by Taliban for adultery
By Mohammad Hamed
KUNDUZ, Afghanistan (Reuters) – A man and woman were publicly stoned to death by the Taliban in Afghanistan's once-peaceful north over an alleged love affair, a provincial government official said on Monday.
Afghan Women and the Return of the Taliban
By Aryn Baker time.com Thursday, Jul. 29, 2010
The Taliban pounded on the door just before midnight, demanding that Aisha, 18, be punished for running away from her husband's house. They dragged her to a mountain clearing near her village in the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan, ignoring her protests that her in-laws had been abusive
Afghan police foil terrorist attack in Taliban birthplace
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Aug. 15 (Xinhua) -- A truck full of explosive material was intercepted on Sunday in Taliban's birthplace of Kandahar in south Afghanistan, foiling a possible deadly terrorist attack, Afghan police said.
Afghan Government to Build 1680km Gas Pipeline
Tamim Shaheer TOLO news August 14, 2010
An agreement for the extension of a gas pipeline from Central Asia to South Asia through Afghanistan's soil will soon be signed, officials say
Afghan Clerics: Peace Process Stalled Until Shari'a Implemented
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty August 15, 2010
Afghanistan's largest gathering of clerics has called for the revival of strict Islamic law as a way to achieve reconciliation with the Taliban, RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan reports.
13 members of a family killed in mini-bus accident in NE Afghanistan
TALIQAN, Afghanistan, Aug. 15 (Xinhua) -- Thirteen people, including women and children, were killed and three others injured when a mini-bus plunged into a river in Takhar province, northeast Afghanistan on Sunday, a local official said. "The incident happened in Farkhar
Body of British aid worker killed in Afghanistan is repatriated
By the CNN Wire Staff August 16, 2010
Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- The body of Dr. Karen Woo, one of 10 volunteer medical aid workers fatally shot August 5 in the remote mountains of northeast Afghanistan, was repatriated Monday from Kabul, the British Foreign Office said.
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Afghan private security firms given 4-month deadline
by Waheedullah Massoud – Mon Aug 16, 9:01 am ET
KABUL (AFP) – President Hamid Karzai will give armed contracting firms in Afghanistan four months to disband, his spokesman said Monday, sparking fears of a potential security crisis in the war-torn country.
"Today the president is going to issue a four-month deadline for the dissolution of private security companies," Waheed Omer said.
Omer gave notice last week that Karzai intended to deal with private security firms, calling it "a serious programme that the government of Afghanistan will execute".
He said the firms employ 30,000-40,000 armed personnel across Afghanistan. These are employed by more than 50 companies, roughly half of them Afghan.
"The deadline is the first of January 2011, but that has to come in the decree. The decree will come soon," Omer told reporters.
Omer said last week that Karzai had spoken to his Western backers as well as leaders of the US and NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) who contract the companies to safeguard many aspects of their work, including supply convoys.
Following the collapse of the Taliban regime in a 2001 US-led invasion, prinvate security firms rushed in to fill a vacuum created by a lack of adequately trained police and army forces.
In 2006 the Afghan authorities began registering, regulating and licensing the firms but there have been questions about the activities of some.
"It's not about regulating the activities of the private security companies, it's about their presence, it's about the way they function in Afghanistan," said Omer, highlighting the challenges the firms have posed to the government.
"It's about the way they have developed into alternative forces for the government of Afghanistan, all the problems that they have created," he said.
The flourishing sector provides security services to the international forces, the Pentagon, the UN mission, aid and non-governmental organisations, embassies and Western media companies in Afghanistan.
But Afghans criticise the private security forces as overbearing and abusive, notably on the country's roads.
Karzai has often complained that they duplicate the work of the Afghan security forces, and divert resources needed to train the army and police.
ISAF said Monday dissolving private security firms would not be practical or possible until an alternative force was ready to take over.
"It's very clear for the Afghan side and for us as well to dissolve private security companies as soon as possible," ISAF spokesman General Josef Blotz told reporters.
"But there's a condition to it and this condition is that we need to have enough Afghan national security forces that can provide the necessary security which is prerequisite for the private secruity companies to do it," he added.
The Pentagon last week played down Karzai's plans, saying the issue was under discussion, though conceded there were problems.
Colonel David Lapan, Pentagon spokesman, said efforts were underway to address issues raised by Karzai in a way that also met US security needs. But Omer was decisive.
"The government of Afghanistan has decided that the security companies have to go," he stressed.
Allison Stanger, author of "One Nation Under Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power and the Future of Foreign Policy", said eliminating private security firms would pose a major problem for Western forces.
"Ending the use of private security contractors in Afghanistan effective immediately would be equivalent to accelerating the end of Western involvement in Afghanistan," she said.
"Our current programmes simply cannot be sustained without that vital support -- unless we were to further increase the number of uniformed personnel on the ground," she said.
It would also cut off a major source of jobs because more than 90 percent of security contractors in Afghanistan are Afghans, she added.
At an international conference in Kabul on July 20, donors endorsed sweeping Afghan government plans to take responsibility for security by 2014.
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US backs Afghan plan to ditch security contractors
By Heidi Vogt, Associated Press Writer – Mon Aug 16, 6:10 am ET
KABUL, Afghanistan – The U.S. military supports the Afghan government's plan to dissolve private security companies and is tightening oversight of its own armed contractors in the interim, an official said Monday.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has called repeatedly for banning private security companies, saying they undermine government security forces. Contractors perform duties ranging from guarding supply convoys to personal security details for diplomats and businessmen.
A presidential spokesman said last week a deadline to abolish private security contractors was imminent. In his inauguration speech in November, Karzai said he wanted to close down both foreign and domestic security contractors within two years.
As in Iraq, the conduct of security contractors in Afghanistan — particularly those working with U.S. forces — has been a source of tension, with complaints that they are poorly regulated and effectively operate outside local law.
"Certainly we understand President Karzai's statements that he is determined to dissolve private security companies. We are committed to partnering with the government in meeting that intent," said Brig. Gen. Margaret Boor, head of a new task force to better regulate and oversee private security operations. The group, called Task Force Spotlight, started work in June.
However, Boor declined to give a timeline saying private security contractors can only be phased out as the security situation improves. That could be a long time given worsening security in recent months in areas of northern and central Afghanistan that had previously been relatively safe.
About 26,000 armed security contractors work with the U.S. government in Afghanistan, including 19,000 with the U.S. military, Boor said. The majority of military contractors protect convoys, though some also provide base security, said Maj. Joel Harper, a spokesman for NATO forces.
Karzai has said such responsibilities should fall to either enlisted military or police, though it's unclear how soon Afghan forces would be ready to take on additional jobs.
Boor said private contractors were needed right now to keep development projects and military operations running.
"Since the Afghan army and the Afghan police are not quite at the stages of capability and capacity to provide all the security that is needed, private security companies are filling a gap," Boor said.
Though the task force is new, she said it is already taking steps to improve oversight of security firms, including registering all contractors and ensuring they have the necessary qualifications and receive training on appropriate use of force.
NATO troops operate under firm rules spelling out conditions under which they can use deadly force.
Private security contractors in Afghanistan are subject to Afghan law, unlike the situation that persisted through most of the war in Iraq, where those working for the U.S. military were immune from prosecution by Iraqi authorities.
Contractors in Iraq lost their immunity when a U.S.-Iraqi security pact took effect Jan. 1, 2009. The move to tighten oversight followed Iraqi outrage over a Sept. 16, 2007 shooting in which 17 Iraq civilians were killed in a Baghdad square.
Blackwater said its guards were protecting diplomats under attack before they opened fire, but Iraqi investigators concluded the shooting was unprovoked.
In Afghanistan, contractors have been in the spotlight on several occasions.
In 2009, a private security contractor hired to protect the U.S. Embassy in Kabul was exposed for holding lurid parties flowing with alcohol, with guards and supervisors photographed in various stages of nudity. A U.S. government investigation also found Amorgroup employees frequented Kabul brothels.
In February, U.S. Senate investigators said the contractor formerly known as Blackwater hired violent drug users to help train the Afghan army and declared "sidearms for everyone" — even though employees weren't authorized to carry weapons. The allegations came as part of an investigation into the 2009 shooting deaths of two Afghan civilians by employees of the company, now known as Xe.
Last month police a crowd of angry Afghans shouted "Death to America" after an SUV driven by U.S. contract employees from DynCorp International was involved in a traffic accident that killed four Afghans.
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US wants gradual Afghan contractor withdrawal
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US Defense Department promised Monday to work with Afghan authorities who ordered the elimination of private security firms but made clear that it favored a more gradual withdrawal.
President Hamid Karzai gave a four-month deadline to firms to disband armed personnel, who are criticized by many Afghans as overbearing and seen by the Afghan government as diverting resources needed to train the army and police.
The Pentagon, the overwhelming source for the firms' contracts, did not comment directly on the deadline but said it shared Karzai's goal of eventually eliminating the need for private security companies.
But Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the dissolution should take place "in a deliberate way and a way that recognizes the scale and scope of this challenge."
"Everybody looks forward to the day when private security companies can be eliminated altogether from Afghanistan because the security situation is such that they're no longer needed," Whitman said.
"Until that time, though, we're going to continue to work with the government of Afghanistan to improve the oversight and management as well as developing plans to progressively reduce their numbers as the security conditions permit," he said.
Karzai's spokesman, Waheed Omer, said that private firms employed 30,000-40,000 armed personnel across Afghanistan. They are employed by more than 50 companies, roughly half of them Afghan.
Whitman said that 26,000 of the personnel were contracted by the US government, of which 19,000 were paid by the Defense Department. Others were mostly with the State Department and the US Agency for International Development.
The firms provide security across violence-wracked Afghanistan to groups ranging from foreign militaries and embassies to non-governmental organizations to media companies.
The United States and its allies would likely count on security firms to support future international operations in Afghanistan.
The United States plans to start withdrawing combat troops from Afghanistan in mid-2011, although General David Petraeus, the US commander in the country, said Sunday he could recommend a delay if the situation requires it.
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Afghan Taliban call for joint probe into civilian deaths
by Lynne O'donnell – Mon Aug 16, 5:04 am ET
KABUL (AFP) – The Taliban waging a vicious insurgency in Afghanistan have signaled a willingness to cooperate with international forces, the UN and human rights groups to investigate civilian deaths in the war.
A committee "should be formed to assess the very issue and conduct investigations into the civilian casualties across the country," the Taliban said in a statement late Sunday.
The probe should include representatives from the Taliban -- calling itself the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan -- NATO forces, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, and UN human rights organisations, the statement said.
The overwhelming majority of civilian deaths and injuries in the war, nearing the end of its ninth year, have been blamed on the Taliban.
The group relies largely on roadside bombs and suicide attackers, which kill and maim indiscriminately.
Civilian casualties rose by 31 percent in the first six months of 2010, the United Nations said last week, with casualties among children up 55 percent.
The number of deaths caused by insurgents had risen from half in the same period last year, now accounting for 76 percent of the 1,271 deaths and 1,997 people wounded, it said in a report.
The Taliban statement said civilian casualties were being used as "propaganda by the Western media" which were ignoring deaths caused by the NATO troops fighting to quell the insurgency.
It said an investigative committee "should be given a free hand to survey the affected areas as well as people in order to collect the precise information and the facts and figures and disseminate its findings worldwide".
It is not the first time that the insurgents have called for a joint committee to investigate civilian deaths.
While a similar attempt four years ago was rejected, according to non-government organisation workers in Kabul, the latest move was Monday welcomed by an independent Afghan rights watchdog.
Afghan Rights Monitor (ARM) said that in allowing independent investigations into civilian deaths in areas under their control, the insurgents should adhere to certain conditions, including "providing genuine, concrete and certifiable guarantees for the safety and security of human rights investigators (and) reporters".
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Karzai “Syndicate” Flies The Cash-Rich Skies From Kabul
By Arthur Kent, Skyreporter.com
August 15, 2010 -- A shadowy syndicate with “clear and substantial” links to the family of President Hamid Karzai and their closest business partners has spirited massive amounts of hard currency through the smuggling gateway known as Kabul Airport, mainly to the Gulf banking haven of Dubai.
Since 2007, the group has exploited the airport’s compromised policing and customs procedures. The controls were weakened by interference from the Karzai regime’s top law enforcement appointees, as reported first here at Skyreporter.com (from page 43 forward in Recent Stories).
One European diplomat tells Skyreporter: “There can be no doubt on the matter. The interconnectivity of banking, security, airline and other assets indicates clear and substantial links to the Karzai family and their associates.”
The revelations concern an organization separate and distinct from New Ansari, the cash-swapping enterprise under investigation by U.S. and Afghan officials.
Investigators suspect New Ansari of laundering both profits from heroin trafficking and cash generated by the Taliban. They complain that President Karzai is obstructing the U.S.-backed agencies probing the scam.
Like Ansari, the network linked to the Karzais declared some cash exports to the regime’s banking and customs authorities, according to sources speaking on condition of anonymity. But the sheer volume of currency begs any credible explanation of where the money comes from.
“The Obama administration and our own governments are finally coming to grasp the full extent of the problem,” says the European official, who also asks to remain unnamed due to increasing tensions within Kabul’s diplomatic community over how to address corruption, which is rapidly turning the Western-sponsored Afghan regime into a global pariah.
“It’s no surprise that Karzai is resisting investigations. His brothers Qayoom, Mahmoud and Wali and their political allies are among the main beneficiaries.”
Qayoom Karzai gained notoriety as the member of Afghanistan’s parliament least likely to attend sittings, but whose personal fortune has surged within a business empire led by his profiteering 55-year-old brother Mahmoud. The network also includes half-brother Ahmed Wali, the family’s rapacious point man in Kandahar.
The organization is bolstered by Hamid Karzai’s top political allies, the same strongmen who bankrolled his fraud-ridden 2009 campaign for re-election.
From London, a forensic specialist experienced in tracing misdirected aid funding tells Skyreporter: “The Karzais have got it covered, right from their compounds in Kabul and Kandahar to the banks of Dubai. They’ve got armed convoys on the ground, no customs hassles at Kabul Airport and even their own airline to the Gulf.
“Add to that an embarrassment of cash riches, and you’ve got a fully integrated network.” The analyst cannot be named due to ongoing investigations in London, Dubai and Kabul.
Although the capital’s airport began to bleed contraband from the earliest days of its reopening by the U.S.-led coalition, sources agree that the smuggling of heroin, cash and other valuables exploded in the wake of the dismantling of effective policing in the autumn of 2006.
The new revelations concern the timeframe commencing in mid-2008, shortly after Mahmoud Karzai and his partner Sherkhan Farnood flexed the muscle of their central business, Kabul Bank, the richest of Afghanistan’s 17 banks, to scoop up Pamir Airways, a competitor to the country’s other airlines, Ariana and Kam.
Frequent commuters on Pamir’s two-and-a-half-hour flight from Kabul to Dubai regularly witnessed men boarding at Kabul Airport after all other passengers had been seated. These travellers, lugging heavy cartons or suitcases, were driven to the plane in armoured SUVs manned by armed guards.
Skyreporter’s police sources have confirmed the guards as employees of Khurasan Security Services, a firm created by Khalil Fruzi, Kabul Bank’s executive officer and one of Karzai’s and Farnood’s key associates. Khurasan is now nominally run by Fruzi’s brother.
Once on board the Pamir 737s, the couriers were escorted by the cabin crew to seats evidently held vacant for them.
“One time I asked this man if I could help,” a witness tells Skyreporter. “He was well dressed, he wore a Western suit. He said ‘thanks, but I can manage.’ Then he pushed a big box onto an open seat. It looked so heavy when it came down. I asked how much it weighed and he said 50 kilos. He was very relaxed, like he did this every day.”
Currency dealers estimate that 50 kilos of the note most common to large-scale exchange in Afghanistan, the U.S. $100 bill, could total $5 million or more.
The witness, who asks that his name be withheld out of concern for his family’s safety, says that when he saw the same man bearing a similar load on a third occasion, he asked an acquaintance among the Pamir Airways cabin crew what was going on.
“He told me: ‘it’s money going to Dubai.’ He said this happened on at least one Pamir flight on that route each day. Sometimes the courier had two or three boxes or suitcases.”
Similar accounts come from a former Pamir Airways employee in the Afghan capital, as well as security officials at Kabul Airport and airline ground agents at Dubai’s Terminal Two, the emirate’s smaller regional terminal used by Afghanistan’s carriers.
A police source says that in Kabul, “sometimes the packages are taken through the VIP channel, but many times the money is taken from the armoured car to the airplane directly.
“There is no attempt to hide this, and everyone understands that only money or other very valuable goods would be handled in this way.”
The Pamir frequent flyer tells Skyreporter he eventually struck up conversations with the well-dressed courier, who gave his name as Haji Rafi Kandahary.
On later trips the witness saw another man, dressed casually in jeans and shirt “like a European”, also carrying boxes or suitcases similar to Kandahary’s.
“I spoke with this other man several times. He said his name was Haji Bashir, originally from Kandahar but now living in Herat. Again I asked my friend in the crew who this man was, and I was told he was a courier working for Pamir Airways carrying money from Kabul Bank.”
According to the forensic specialist: “this isn’t some small-time hawala operation, swapping capital from one location to another, one person or business to another.
“This is industrial strength exporting. It’s a disgrace to every nation with personnel on the ground in Afghanistan.”
Previously the Karzai brothers have denied any wrongdoing when confronted over their business and paramilitary affairs. Hamid Karzai claims he earns only $525 a month as president, has only $19,000 in the bank and owns no land or property.
“These are effortless claims to make,” according to the European diplomat, “particularly given the indirect ownership enjoyed by members of the Kabul government.”
Here again, Kabul Bank’s Sherkhan Farnood enters the picture. Farnood enables an unknown number of regime figures to benefit from multi-million dollar villas in Dubai by way of titles in Farnood’s name.
Among these are Karzai’s first vice-president, Mohammed Fahim, and Fahim’s brother Haji Hasin, who runs his family’s lucrative businesses. Hasin is one of the Afghan regime’s richest men. And like Mahmoud Karzai, he is one of the principal owners of Kabul Bank.
Meanwhile, the Afghan people pay the price for corruption, and do so in money and blood.
Last year, Afghan civilians paid a billion dollars in bribes to underlings in the Karzai regime’s bureaucracy and security forces, according to Integrity Watch Afghanistan. Against an average yearly per capita income of just $502, that’s $156 in bribes.
U.S. officials like General David Petraeus and envoy Richard Holbrooke admit that one of the Taliban’s key recruiting tools is their ability to point at the rampant criminality in and around the Western-backed regime, its “malignancy” of corruption, in Holbrooke’s words.
Yet blameless Afghan children, women and men continue to die in the crossfire, a small detail that hasn't caused even a ripple of turbulence for Air Karzai.
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Al-Qaeda 'group leader' killed in Afghanistan: NATO
Mon Aug 16, 9:33 am ET
KABUL (AFP) – The NATO force in Afghanistan said Monday it had killed an Al-Qaeda cell leader after he was pinpointed by alliance aircraft while carrying out an attack on a police post.
In other incidents linked to the Al-Qaeda-sponsored Islamic insurgency five Afghan civilians and a handful of rebels were killed in a string of weekend clashes, Afghan authorities said.
Abu Baqir, described as "a dual-hatted Taliban sub-commander and Al-Qaeda group leader", was killed on Sunday when his truck was targeted in an airstrike in northern Kunduz province, a hotbed of the insurgency.
Another militant was also killed and several others captured while seeking treatment for their injuries in a local hospital, NATO's International Security Assistance Force said in a statement.
It did not give further details about the Al-Qaeda commander.
Afghanistan is in the grip of an Islamic insurgency being waged by the remnants of the Taliban, who are said to be supported by Al-Qaeda operatives who once used Afghanistan as a safe haven and training ground.
Also at the weekend a roadside bomb, a weapon of choice for the Taliban and other insurgents, struck an Afghan funeral, killing five mourners in the troubled southern province of Helmand, an official said.
Daud Ahmadi, a spokesman for the Helmand administration, said the bombing in the province's troubled Sangin district "was the work of the Taliban".
Twenty other people were injured in the blast, the spokesman said. He said Sarwan Qala village whre the bombing took place was under Taliban control.
Seven insurgents were targeted from the air by US-led forces and killed while planting homemade bombs elsewhere in Helmand and neighbouring Kandahar province, also on Sunday, Ahmadi said.
The United Nations mission for war-scarred Afghanistan said this month that civilian casualties were up by more than 30 percent in the first half of the year, blaming the Taliban roadside bombs for the bulk of the deaths.
The United States invaded Afghanistan in late 2001 to rid the country of the Taliban, who had sheltered Al-Qaeda leaders including Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect behind the 9/11 attacks.
The number of US and NATO troops in Afghanistan fighting the intensifying insurgency is nearing its peak of 150,000, under the command of US General David Petraeus.
An ISAF spokesman told reporters in Kabul that battlefield assessments indicate that fewer Taliban commanders had been seen taking part in the war in recent months.
Instead, he said, they were operating from hideouts in neighbouring Pakistan.
"This demonstrates the progress we're making in putting on the pressure and building fear in the minds of insurgents," said General Josef Blotz.
Nevertheless, pressure is building from electorates in the US and its NATO allies to end the military commitment to Afghanistan as casualties mount at the momentum for victory appears to be slipping away.
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Gates, Petraeus differ over Afghanistan exit
by Andrew Gully – Mon Aug 16, 3:29 am ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – US Defense Secretary Robert Gates insisted Monday the July 2011 date to start withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan was set in stone, putting him at odds with his top Afghan war commander.
Gates and General David Petraeus were in lock-step on the need for a gradual withdrawal, but a series of interviews exposed discord over the flexibility of the start date given last November by US President Barack Obama.
"There is no question in anybody's mind that we are going to begin drawing down troops in July of 2011," Gates told The Los Angeles Times.
But Petraeus, asked in a separate interview whether he could reach that juncture and have to recommend a delay to Obama because of the conditions on the ground, replied: "Certainly, yeah.
"I think the president has been quite clear in explaining that it's a process, not an event, and that it's conditions-based," he told NBC television's "Meet the Press" program on Sunday.
"The president and I sat down in the Oval Office and he expressed very clearly that what he wants from me is my best professional military advice."
Afghanistan, with the help of its Western backers, is trying to build up its army and police so that they can take responsibility for security from US-led NATO forces by the end of 2014.
The Taliban, toppled in a 2001 US-led invasion, still control large swathes of the south and have put up stiff resistance to a surge of 30,000 more US troops due to swell American numbers to 100,000 in the coming weeks.
US public support for the near nine-year war and Obama's handling of it are at an all-time low, according to opinion polls here, while the death toll for American troops hit a record monthly high in July of 66.
Both Gates, in the LA Times, and Petraeus, in a series of interviews with NBC, The New York Times and The Washington Post, sought to reassure a skeptical public that the American-led coalition can succeed in its aims.
Petraeus told The New York Times he did not just want to preside over a "graceful exit," while Gates suggested some security responsibilities could begin to be transferred to Afghan forces as early as early next year.
Obama's mid-2011 deadline to begin a limited withdrawal has been strongly criticized by some who believe it sent out the message America is not in the fight for the long-term and boosted the Taliban's resolve to wait it out.
Others attack him for not pulling out troops fast enough as they believe US and NATO forces are bogged down in an unwinnable conflict.
Petraeus, giving his first major interviews since assuming command of more than 140,000 coalition troops in Afghanistan last month, also said he would be prepared to negotiate with Taliban with "blood on their hands."
The general, who helped turn around the Iraq war for Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush -- partly by wheeling and dealing with warring factions -- said a new reconciliation and reintegration strategy aimed at persuading Afghan insurgents to change sides was "fairly imminent."
There is "every possibility, I think, that there can be low- and mid-level reintegration and indeed some fracturing of the senior leadership that could be really defined as reconciliation."
In his interview with The Washington Post, Petraeus said 365 insurgent leaders and 2,400 rank-and-file fighters have been killed or captured over the past three months.
The operations have led "some leaders of some elements" of the insurgency to begin reconciliation discussions with the Afghan government, he told the newspaper, characterizing the interactions as "meaningful."
Petraeus formally took over command of the Afghan war in July after Obama dismissed General Stanley McChrystal after he and his staff made disparaging comments about senior US administration figures.
The interviews came hours before the icasualties.org website announced that the total number of foreign troops killed since the start of the Afghan war in 2001 had topped 2,000, including 1,226 Americans and 331 from Britain.
Last week, the United Nations said the number of civilian casualties in the Afghan war had risen sharply in the first six months of this year to reach 1,271 Afghans. Another 1,997 people were wounded.
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Petraeus says capturing bin Laden still priority
WASHINGTON, Aug. 15 (Xinhua) -- Capturing or killing al-Qaida mastermind Osama bin Laden is still a priority for the United States, David Petraeus, the general who commands all U.S. forces in Afghanistan, was quoted as saying Sunday.
Talking to NBC's "Meet the Press," Petraeus said bin Laden "remains an iconic figure and I think capturing or killing is still a very, very important task for all of those who are engaged in counter-terrorism around the world."
Petraeus said bin Laden is probably in extremely remote mountainous area between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and it took him several weeks to send out "a congratulatory message out or a message of condolence".
In the same interview, Petraeus also said the timetable of U.S. troops' withdrawal from Afghanistan will be driven by situation on the ground.
"Certainly, I am aware of the context within which I offer that advice," Petraeus said, "But that just informs the advice; it doesn't drive it. The situation on the ground drives it."
Obama has set July 2011 as a deadline to begin withdrawing troops. Petraeus said the challenge now is to demonstrate signs of progress.
Petraeus, who previously served as head of the U.S. Central Command, assumed command of U.S. Forces Afghanistan and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan last month.
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Gen. David Petraeus says Afghanistan war strategy 'fundamentally sound'
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran The Washington Post Monday, August 16, 2010; A01
KABUL -- In his first six weeks as the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus has seen insurgent attacks on coalition forces spike to record levels, violence metastasize to previously stable areas, and the country's president undercut anti-corruption units backed by Washington.
But after burrowing into operations here and traveling to the far reaches of this country, Petraeus has concluded that the U.S. strategy to win the nearly nine-year-old war is "fundamentally sound."
In a wide-ranging hour-long interview with The Washington Post, he said he sees incipient signs of progress in parts of the volatile south, in new initiatives to create community defense forces and in nascent steps to reintegrate low-level insurgents who want to stop fighting.
With public support for the war slipping and a White House review of the conflict due in December, Petraeus said he is pushing the forces under his command to proceed with alacrity. He remains supportive of President Obama's decision to begin withdrawing troops next July, but he said it is far too soon to determine the size of the drawdown.
"We are doing everything we can to achieve progress as rapidly as we can without rushing to failure," Petraeus said in his wood-paneled office at NATO headquarters in Kabul. "We're keenly aware that this has been ongoing for approaching nine years. We fully appreciate the impatience in some quarters."
But he warned against expecting quick results in a campaign that involves building Afghan government and security institutions from scratch, and persuading people to cast their lot with coalition forces after years of broken promises -- all in the face of Taliban intimidation and attacks.
"It's a gradual effort. It's a deliberate effort," he said. "There's no hill to take and flag to plant and proclamation of victory. Rather, it's just hard work."
Petraeus said he would provide his "best military advice" to Obama, who will make the decision on troop levels next year. But the general's presence in Kabul, as opposed to the U.S. Central Command headquarters in Tampa, could make him a far more forceful voice for attenuating the drawdown if he chooses to make that case.
He said it is too early to ascertain when Afghan security forces can assume responsibility for various parts of the country. Officials from some NATO nations, where public support for the war is lower than it is in the United States, want to announce at a November meeting of alliance foreign ministers a list of provinces to be handed over. Some Obama administration officials also are pushing for a transition plan before the White House review. But some of the once-quiet provinces in the north and west, deemed likely targets a few months ago, are now wracked by spiking insurgent violence.
"We're still in the process of determining what is realistic," Petraeus said. That, he said, depends on the progress of security operations over the next several months. "It's a process, not an event. It's one that's to be conditions-based."
'Resilient' enemy
Petraeus's return to the battlefield from his perch as Central Command chief was the result of desperate circumstances -- Obama's decision to fire Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal for flippant comments he and his staff members made to a magazine reporter -- yet it has provided the United States and NATO with what almost certainly is the last and best chance to reverse a foundering war. Petraeus literally wrote the military's book on counterinsurgency strategy, and he engineered a dramatic turnaround in Iraq that many assumed impossible. But Afghanistan is in many ways a more daunting environment, and there is no guarantee that the same counterinsurgency tactics applied in Baghdad will work in Kandahar.
Asked whether he was certain that the counterinsurgency strategy, which emphasizes protecting the civilian population, can be effective in a country where many people regard the insurgents more as miscreant relatives than an existential threat, Petraeus refrained from an unequivocal endorsement.
"The enemy has shown himself to be resilient," he said. "The enemy does fight back. He is trying, in his assessment, to outlast us."
Although he is not tackling Afghanistan as he did Iraq, where he began overhauling the war plan upon arrival, he is seeking to duplicate some of the methods that served him well in Baghdad, foremost among them incessant engagement with the country's political leader. He meets with Afghan President Hamid Karzai about once a day -- far more often than the U.S. ambassador does -- in an effort to transform him and his government from weak links to essential partners in the counterinsurgency mission.
The principal changes Petraeus enacted over the past six weeks have largely been refinements or expansions to steps taken by McChrystal and his predecessors. McChrystal began the practice of frequent meetings with Karzai, and a tactical directive by Petraeus that restricts the use of airstrikes in an effort to minimize civilian casualties builds upon a document written by McChrystal.
Petraeus called all the adjustments he has made since taking over "nothing very dramatic." He did not conduct a top-to-bottom examination of the strategy, as he did when he went to Baghdad or as McChrystal did when he arrived in Kabul last year, largely because he played a key role in developing the current approach in Afghanistan.
But his decision not to call for a strategic reassessment means he effectively has no grace period. With more than 80 percent of the surge forces on the ground and the rest arriving later this month, the mission is at a stage where "what you have to do is to start turning inputs into output."
"I didn't sign up for a honeymoon," he said.
General sees momentum
Petraeus contends that the counterinsurgency strategy is showing momentum in Helmand province, where about 20,000 U.S. Marines and 10,000 British troops have sought to create inkblots of security in six key districts. Some areas, such as Marja, a former Taliban stronghold, have proved to be tougher to pacify -- insurgents are continuing an aggressive harassment campaign -- but other places, such as the districts of Nawa and Garmsir, are becoming more stable and may feature prominently in his year-end presentation to the White House.
He also said he is encouraged by developments in Arghandab district on Kandahar's northern fringe, where two U.S. Army battalions have been engaged in an arduous mission to clear insurgents from pomegranate orchards and vineyards seeded with makeshift but lethal anti-personnel mines.
"We got intelligence we gathered from the Taliban that said, 'Don't worry, fellows. The time has come now. Stop fighting, lay down your weapons and fade away, and just wait until they leave,' " he said. "Of course, in this case our forces are not leaving."
Other U.S. units will begin clearing operations in districts to the west of the city this fall. But already, Petraeus said, missions by U.S., NATO and Afghan special-forces teams to target Taliban leaders in the Kandahar area have tripled over the past four months.
Nationwide, those forces have killed or captured 365 insurgent leaders and about 2,400 rank-and-file members over the past three months, he said, providing the most detailed accounting of the increase in counter-terrorist operations this year.
The operations have led "some leaders of some elements" of the insurgency to begin reconciliation discussions with the Afghan government, Petraeus said. Some military officials have suggested that insurgent leaders are simply testing the waters because they perceive the Afghan government to be desperate, but Petraeus characterized the interactions as "meaningful," although he cautioned against raising "undue expectations."
Perhaps his most significant accomplishment since arriving in Kabul has been to get Karzai to endorse the creation of armed neighborhood-watch groups. The president initially expressed concern that the program could result in the creation of militias similar to those that ravaged the country in the 1990s and led to the Taliban's rise.
Petraeus insisted that those groups could play an important role in preventing insurgents from taking over areas where there are few security forces. The program, he said, "has real potential to create problems for the Taliban."
Afghan officials close to Karzai have expressed concern about Petraeus's willingness to heed the president's concerns.
"We had an excellent relationship with General McChrystal," one of them said. "We hope it will be the same with General Petraeus."
Petraeus called his relationship with Karzai "healthy," acknowledging "moments in which we have come at different issues from a different perspective." But he has refrained from criticizing Karzai in public, even after the president lashed out at the arrest of one his aides for allegedly soliciting a bribe to impede an investigation into a massive money-laundering scheme.
"We need to see what the outcome is," Petraeus said.
A new tone
At the headquarters here, the at-times freewheeling style of McChrystal's staff of Special Forces officers has given way to a more disciplined culture under Petraeus. At the daily morning meeting of senior commanders, generals used to tap e-mails on their secure laptops as they received briefings. These days, the computers are closed. Everyone is focused on the discussion at hand.
The meeting often involves more talk of the non-combat aspects of counterinsurgency. At a recent session, the briefings focused on the country's upcoming parliamentary elections, the floods in Pakistan and Iran's commercial interests in Afghanistan.
Petraeus maintains a rigorous schedule. Up at 5:30 a.m. to read his intelligence briefing book. Forty-five minutes of exercise. And then travel or meetings until late in the evening. But some of his aides say the routine is less grueling than his Centcom job, when he spent more than 300 days a year away from his base in Tampa. Here, they note, they at least get to sleep in the same bed most nights.
Although he has brought his personal staff from Central Command and a few other senior officers who helped him in Iraq -- including Brig. Gen. H.R. McMaster, who leads an anti-corruption team, and Col. James Seaton, who runs his strategic planning group -- he is retaining McChrystal's three U.S. deputy commanders: Maj. Gen. Michael T. Flynn for intelligence, Maj. Gen. William C. Mayville for operations and Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith for communications.
One policy he has opted not to continue, however, is his predecessor's asceticism. He suggested that the fast-food restaurants McChrystal ordered closed on bases probably will reopen soon.
"With respect to Burger Kings, all options are on the table," he said.
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U.S. hopes to begin Afghan security transfer by spring
Pentagon chief Gates says that with NATO training troops ahead of schedule, some Afghan forces may be given security responsibilities, freeing up Western troops to focus on insurgent-held areas.
Los Angeles Times By David S. Cloud and Richard Serrano August 16, 2010
Reporting from - With training of Afghanistan's army and police ahead of schedule, American officials now believe the U.S.-led military coalition could begin transferring some security responsibilities to Afghan forces as early as spring.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said in an interview that given faster-than-expected progress in training army units, it was likely that those forces could assume primary responsibility for security sooner in less violent areas of the country, freeing up NATO troops for operations elsewhere.
"With more Afghan forces, we can be on a path to transition in more places around the country," Gates said. "The success with the [Afghan] army in particular, I think, bodes well for in fact beginning to have some transitions maybe as early as this spring, but certainly beginning in the summer."
Gates was referring to the recent announcement by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization training command in Afghanistan that it had reached its 2010 goal of 134,000 trained Afghan troops two months early.
His comments are part of an effort by senior civilian and military officials to counter growing doubts in the U.S. and Europe about the war. In separate interviews, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the senior commander in Afghanistan, also pointed to what he called "small pockets of progress" in several areas.
Gates and Petraeus played down the possibility of rapid cuts in U.S. troop levels starting in July 2011, the point at which President Obama said the 30,000-troop increase he ordered late last year would start to reverse.
"There is no question in anybody's mind that we are going to begin drawing down troops in July of 2011," Gates said in the interview Thursday. But so far, he said, "there hasn't even been a discussion of a steep decline quickly" at the top levels of the administration.
His comments were a pointed rebuttal to lower-level officials in Washington who have privately asserted that Obama will rapidly withdraw troops beginning next summer.
Gates disputed that notion, emphasizing a consensus among himself, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Obama.
"As the president has said, and Hillary has said and I've said, the pace and the number are going to depend on the conditions on the ground," Gates said.
Petraeus emphasized in an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press" that any drawdown would depend on gains in quelling the insurgency and establishing competent Afghan forces.
Despite the gains in numbers, the Afghan national army remains heavily dependent on the U.S. for logistics, air cover and planning of operations, which are usually conducted with U.S. advisors or jointly with NATO units. U.S. commanders say the Afghans are often staunch fighters and can be invaluable, particularly because they speak Dari and Pashto.
But the army and, to a greater extent, the police remain beset by attrition, drug use and corruption. Meanwhile, the insurgency has been making inroads in areas outside its traditional strongholds in the south and east.
The international military command said Sunday that insurgents attacked a district police station in northern Afghanistan a day earlier, an assault that ended with a NATO airstrike that killed two of the attackers.
Petraeus left open the possibility that he might recommend against anything more than a token drawdown starting next July.
"The president didn't send me over here to seek a graceful exit," the general was quoted as saying by the New York Times. Petraeus took over as the top commander in early July, after Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal was replaced for comments he and his aides made that were published in a Rolling Stone article.
Whether Obama is willing to remain heavily engaged in Afghanistan beyond next year is unclear, especially if signs of lasting progress are elusive and public support for the war continues to diminish.
"What the president very much wants from me, and what we talked about in the Oval Office, is the responsibility of a military commander on the ground to provide his best professional military advice," Petraeus told NBC. "Leave the politics to him."
The comments by Gates and Petraeus reflect the difficult position in which they find themselves. They need to show gains, especially in order to reassure nervous allies, but they are unable to endorse a rapid pullout next year because of the possibility that security will remain tenuous at best.
Although the U.S.-led training effort is ahead of schedule, it still is 750 trainers short of what it needs, Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell, commander of the training mission, told reporters last week. North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries have failed to send promised personnel, forcing the United States to send additional units and to rely more heavily on contractors to ready Afghan units.
If Afghans are able to take over responsibility for more areas of the country by next spring, it will free up U.S. and other NATO troops to move to still-violent regions, rather than permitting withdrawals, Gates said.
"It's incumbent on us to show greater progress, to show sustained progress," Petraeus said. "I would argue that the progress, if you will, really just began this spring."
Petraeus said operations in central Helmand province have improved security for residents. He said advances also are underway in Kandahar and the southern part of Herat province, even as the Taliban has been "fighting back very hard."
"All of these," he said, "are small pockets of progress."
david.cloud@latimes.com
richard.serrano@latimes.com
Times staff writer Laura King in Kabul, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.
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Analysis: Probing war crimes in Afghanistan
KABUL, 15 August 2010 (IRIN) - The rising number of civilian casualties and the leaking of thousands of confidential war papers by whistleblower website Wikileaks have prompted fresh calls to bring alleged war criminals in Afghanistan to book.
Immediately after the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) released a 10 August report on civilian casualties, the UK-based Amnesty International said the Taliban must be prosecuted for war crimes.
“The Taliban and other insurgents are becoming far bolder in their systematic killing of civilians. Targeting of civilians is a war crime, plain and simple” Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific director, said in a press release.
Taliban insurgents have been widely condemned for their alleged deliberate, widespread and systematic attacks on civilians.
UNAMA’s report - rejected by the Taliban as biased and one-sided - blamed the insurgents for 76 percent of the 3,286 civilian casualties (1,271 deaths and 1,997 injuries) reported in January-June 2010.
UNAMA attributed 12 percent of the civilian casualties (223 deaths and 386 injuries) to pro-government forces.
The report blamed the Taliban for the rising number of civilian casualties, while welcoming the reduction in military harm to non-combatants by pro-government Afghan and foreign forces. Civilian casualties attributed to US/NATO forces were described as unintentional or “collateral” damage.
The leaked US/NATO war documents, however, point to possible war crimes committed by pro-government forces, according to the founder and director of Wikileaks, Julian Assange.
What are war crimes?
A war crime is a serious violation of international humanitarian law (IHL) committed during international or internal armed conflict, according to Marnie Elspeth, a legal adviser with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
Willful killing and torturing of a protected person (wounded or sick combatant, prisoner of war, civilian); using prohibited weapons or methods of warfare; and making improper use of the distinctive red cross or red crescent emblem or other protective signs, are war crimes, she said.
Other serious human rights violations - mostly reported during war and social turmoil - are crimes against humanity which include murder, deportation, imprisonment, torture, sexual offences and prosecutions based on religious, ethnic and other kinds of discrimination.
“These acts and other inhumane acts reach the threshold of crimes against humanity only if they are part of a widespread or systematic practice,” Elspeth told IRIN, adding that isolated human rights violations fell short of the category of crimes against humanity.
Who should address the crimes?
Primary responsibility for the investigation of war crimes and crimes against humanity and the prosecution of alleged perpetrators lies with states, according to IHL and the Geneva conventions.
Where a state is unable to do this, it can ask the international community, the UN and NGOs to provide support.
In 1993 and 1994, the UN Security Council authorized the setting up of International Criminal Tribunals to try individuals accused of war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
“Suspected war criminals must be prosecuted at all times and in all places, and states are responsible for ensuring that this is done,” said ICRC’s Elspeth.
The killing of hundreds of thousands of civilians and various other serious crimes committed in the past three decades of war have been attributed to different Afghan and foreign warring parties and militia groups.
However, war crimes and crimes against humanity have hitherto not been officially investigated by the government or the UN.
“War crimes have occurred in Afghanistan and the government is committed to bringing the criminals to justice in areas which are controlled by the government,” said Hamid Elmi, a spokesman of President Karzai.
He said many criminals were fugitives and therefore beyond the judicial writ of the government.
Any request for international cooperation to investigate and adjudicate war crimes must come from Afghanistan’s judiciary, said Elmi.
Pacifying the insurgents
A transitional justice plan, which aimed to uncover egregious rights violations committed in 1979-2001, has been dumped by the government of President Hamid Karzai, human rights groups say.
Karzai has been accused of forging strategic alliances and providing political support to powerful warlords and militia leaders who have allegedly committed appalling crimes over the past 30 years, and of embarking on a controversial peace strategy.
“For his personal survival, Karzai is trying to offer the Taliban a blank cheque… tantamount to blanket impunity, legitimacy and power-sharing,” said Ajmal Samadi, director of the Afghanistan Rights Monitor, a Kabul-based human rights organization.
Karzai has rejected such criticisms but has repeatedly called on the insurgents to cease violence and engage in conventional politics.
The insurgents, however, have vehemently dismissed such calls and vowed to expand their armed rebellion.
Afghanistan’s recent history is replete with rights violations - perhaps many war crimes and crimes against humanity - but there has been little domestic political will or capacity to investigate and bring alleged local and foreign criminals to account.
“As the guardian of IHL, the ICRC supports efforts to end impunity for international crimes and is keenly interested in the establishment and jurisprudence of international criminal tribunals,” said ICRC’s Elspeth.
“But as a neutral and independent organization, we strongly believe that we will only be able to do this by ensuring continuous and confidential dialogue with all parties to the conflict.”
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Blast at funeral kills five Afghans
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Aug. 16 (Xinhua) -- An explosion hit a funeral killing five mourners and injuring 20 others in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, spokesman for provincial administration Daud Ahmadi said Monday.
"A group of mourners were busy burying a relative at a graveyard in Sarwan Qala village of Sangin district on Saturday when a bomb went off suddenly killing five on the spot and injuring 20 others," Ahmadi told Xinhua.
He blamed Taliban insurgents for carrying out the blast, saying the village is in Taliban control.
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Kabul's frustrated expats run the streets
by Claire Truscott
KABUL (AFP) – The group of foreigners jogging past mounds of fetid trash on the streets of Kabul attract bemused stares from locals, but the brief escape from bulletproof cars is a welcome break for ex-pats living in war-torn Afghanistan.
For the small crowd of intrepid foreigners whose lives are confined to heavily-secured pockets of the Afghan capital, the weekly "Hash" is a chance to do something normal in an environment that is anything but.
On a run earlier this month bodyguards and armoured cars securing the route tried to be low-key, but the surreal scene of Westerners running was hardly inconspicuous.
"Car at the rear, goats in the front," bellowed the leader of the 12 runners, dodging a farmer's herd to reach an old military fort at the top of Kolola-Poshta hill in a residential district of the dusty, fortified city.
Pausing briefly to fly a kite on a roof with an excited group of young men, they ran past the gilded homes of former Afghan warlords, through bustling bazaars where men clad in traditional Muslim garb looked on mystified.
"I really don't know why they run, maybe it's a race," said university student Ahmad Wais. "Cultures are different but it looks a bit funny to Afghans. Some people might think they are weird."
"Maybe they do it for exercise. I don't think it's dangerous," said tailor Feda Mohammad, watching the band of sweating foreigners jog past.
Others were more familiar with the group, which meets every week in a different secret location to tackle 10 kilometres (seven miles) of the city's roads and hills, except when intelligence reports suggest a greater risk of attack.
The Kabul group is one chapter of a loose worldwide federation of "Hash House Harriers", which describes itself as "a drinking club with a running problem" and has a weakness for innuendo-laced rituals that take place when the running and walking are done.
Set up by a group of beer-loving British colonial officers and expatriates in what was then Malaya in 1938, "Hashing" marries exercise with drinking and an irreverent humour well-matched to the needs of Kabul's battle-worn expatriates.
Most of the runners and walkers work for aid groups, embassies or private security firms, their lives closely entwined with the ongoing war around them.
"Kabul, Kabul, What a wonderful place to hash! We have such fun, dodging the s...(expletive) and trash!..." went one chant, part of a rude repertoire of rhymes the Hashers sang in a circle after the run, dishing out punishments for arbitrary "sins" such as flirting with a fellow Hasher.
The Hashers say the runs provide much needed respite from their daily lives cooped up in armoured cars and behind blast walls -- though not all aspects of running in Afghanistan's dirty capital are enjoyable.
During this recent run, barefoot toddlers chased the group along filthy alleyways lined with clogged drains and running sewers, flies buzzing around as the runners covered their mouths from the stink.
Minutes later the group had left the impoverished surrounds and climbed to the top of an old Soviet base, marked by an Olympic-sized swimming pool that was used for public executions under the 1996-2001 Taliban government.
The brutal reminder of militant Islamic rule contrasted with the spectacular view that made the run worthwhile -- Kabul's raw beige beauty -- mud hills and houses set against rugged rocky mountains in the distance.
Back at the starting point, the runners grabbed a drink and formed a circle as a burly American security contractor donned a jester's hat to preside over the naming of new Hashers.
The newly-named bowed their heads as they were doused in egg and flour, cheered by the eclectic 50-strong crowd of Australians, Americans, Britons, a Canadian, South African and one Afghan.
The Hash later took on a more sombre tone to commemorate British Hasher Karen Woo, one of ten aid workers killed a week earlier in remote northeastern Afghanistan.
An official memorial had taken place a day earlier, with a plaque laid in Kabul's British cemetery for Dr Woo and her colleagues.
But for Woo's fiance Mark "Paddy" Smith and her friends, who have lost many loved ones to the conflict, a more fitting remembrance came in the form of a run and a song.
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Afghan refugees mull return home after Pakistan floods
By Augustine Anthony – Sun Aug 15, 7:13 am ET
AZA KHEL, Pakistan (Reuters) – Floods ravaged tens of thousands of Afghan refugees who have been living in Pakistan for decades after fleeing Soviet occupation and civil war.
Now as they survey kilometers of flattened mud and brick houses in a refugee camp in northwest Pakistan, some contemplate returning to an Afghanistan still gripped by violence.
Roaring waters shattered dreams.
"The river swallowed everything. We have no house no business, nothing to eat, nothing to wear," said Nizam Ali who just passed his 12th grade exams and was planning to pursue further studies in the nearby city of Peshawar.
"No one is helping us, it now looks as if we have no other choice but to go back to Afghanistan."
Men who were busy spreading soaked bed-sheets and mattresses over a dry patch of land nodded in agreement. "This is what we have left," said Khair Mohammad, carrying a stack of clothes and bed-sheets on his back in Aza Khel refugee camp,
Millions of Afghans fled to Pakistan and Iran in the 1980s after the Soviet invasion and, while many of them went home after the U.S.-led forces overthrew the Taliban in 2001, an estimated 1.7 million remain in Pakistan, mostly in refugee camps.
Last year Pakistan agreed to let the displaced Afghans stay until the end of 2012, after a resurgence of violence along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border hindered repatriation efforts.
PAST AND PRESENT UNCERTAINTY
Going back to Afghanistan could mean exposure to some of the conditions they fled in the first place. Many left while the Afghan mujahideen were fighting Soviet troops. That was followed by civil war. Now, the Taliban battle U.S.-led NATO troops.
The floods have forced the refugees to move about 100 meters away from Aza Khel, along a railroad track and a highway median. It's not far but perhaps as traumatic as leaving Afghanistan since that has been their home for decades.
"No one has come to this area, there might still be bodies lying in there, under the rubble," said 24-year-old Sultan Habib, a cook who worked in a restaurant in a nearby city.
"I know two or three boys who are still missing."
Aza Khel began as a small settlement along a railway track about 30 years ago. It gradually grew into a village, with merchant shops, tea stalls and grocery and food shops.
Stability the refugees had established over many years simply vanished with the floods.
One mosque, where perhaps they prayed for the future of Afghanistan, is surrounded by three feet of water, along with the cleric's podium.
Kitchen pots, mattresses and ceiling fans were strewn in thick mud. Children splashed and swam in a pool of muddy water created by the floods, oblivious of the hazards of stagnant water that could give rise to fatal diseases. Dead animals lay in the open.
There are other dangers. Armed men come around at night and steal, leaving refugees few opportunities to salvage what it was not swept away.
Like in many other parts of Pakistan, the Afghan refugees were furious over the government's perceived slackness in the crisis. Some could not fathom the magnitude of the crisis.
""In fact the government opened the gates of a nearby dam without telling us. They never warned us. They are responsible for this disaster. We only ask help from Allah," said Jawad Khan.
(Editing by Michael Georgy and Sanjeev Miglani)
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Afghan couple stoned by Taliban for adultery
By Mohammad Hamed
KUNDUZ, Afghanistan (Reuters) – A man and woman were publicly stoned to death by the Taliban in Afghanistan's once-peaceful north over an alleged love affair, a provincial government official said on Monday.
If confirmed, Sunday's executions in Kunduz province would be the first of their kind by the Taliban in the area and follow a call last week by Afghan clerics for a return to sharia and capital punishments carried out under the Islamic law.
They also come a week after officials said the Islamist militants publicly flogged and executed a woman accused of adultery in northwestern Badghis province.
"The two were stoned to death in a bazaar of Dasht-e Archi district on the accusation of committing the act of adultery," said Mohammad Omar, the governor of Kunduz.
The Taliban arrested the two, who were each engaged to be married to other people, at the request of their families after they tried to elope, said district police chief Hameed Agha.
The hardline Islamists, who drew international criticism for such punishments when they ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, have distanced themselves from the incident in Badghis.
A spokesman for the group said on Monday he was not aware of the Kunduz incident.
Sharia prescribes punishments such as stonings, lashings, amputations and execution. A gathering of clerics, meeting last week to discuss reconciliation with the Taliban, expressed support for such punishments, known as "hodud."
Some Afghans still refer to Taliban courts for settling disputes, viewing government bodies as corrupt or unreliable.
Despite the presence of more than 140,000 foreign troops, backed by 300,000 Afghan soldiers and police, the Taliban have managed to spread beyond their traditional strongholds in the south into formerly peaceful areas like Kunduz.
On Monday, a spokesman for NATO-led forces criticized the Taliban for carrying out what he said were acts of indiscriminate violence against ordinary Afghans. "They have increased acts of violence and repression against innocent Afghans," Brigadier General Josef Blotz told reporters.
"The insurgents have clearly given up winning over the population, knowing that they don't have an appealing vision for the people."
A U.N. report last week showed civilian casualties had risen by 31 percent over the first six months of 2010, with 1,271 killed, and that the Taliban and other insurgents were responsible for 76 percent of casualties.
(Writing by Sayed Salahuddin; Additional reporting by Andrew Hammond; Editing by Paul Tait and Sanjeev Miglani)
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Afghan Women and the Return of the Taliban
By Aryn Baker time.com Thursday, Jul. 29, 2010
The Taliban pounded on the door just before midnight, demanding that Aisha, 18, be punished for running away from her husband's house. They dragged her to a mountain clearing near her village in the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan, ignoring her protests that her in-laws had been abusive, that she had no choice but to escape. Shivering in the cold air and blinded by the flashlights trained on her by her husband's family, she faced her spouse and accuser. Her in-laws treated her like a slave, Aisha pleaded. They beat her. If she hadn't run away, she would have died. Her judge, a local Taliban commander, was unmoved. Later, he would tell Aisha's uncle that she had to be made an example of lest other girls in the village try to do the same thing. The commander gave his verdict, and men moved in to deliver the punishment. Aisha's brother-in-law held her down while her husband pulled out a knife. First he sliced off her ears. Then he started on her nose. Aisha passed out from the pain but awoke soon after, choking on her own blood. The men had left her on the mountainside to die.
This didn't happen 10 years ago, when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan. It happened last year. Now hidden in a secret women's shelter in the relative safety of Kabul, where she was taken after receiving care from U.S. forces, Aisha recounts her tale in a monotone, her eyes flat and distant. She listens obsessively to the news on a small radio that she keeps by her side. Talk that the Afghan government is considering some kind of political accommodation with the Taliban is the only thing that elicits an emotional response. "They are the people that did this to me," she says, touching the jagged bridge of scarred flesh and bone that frames the gaping hole in an otherwise beautiful face. "How can we reconcile with them?"
That is exactly what the Afghan government plans to do. In June, President Hamid Karzai established a peace council tasked with exploring negotiations with Afghanistan's "upset brothers," as he calls the Taliban. A month later, Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, a New York — based NGO, flew to Kabul seeking assurances that human rights would be protected in the course of negotiations. During their conversation, Karzai mused on the cost of the conflict in human lives and wondered aloud if he had any right to talk about human rights when so many were dying. "He essentially asked me," says Malinowski, "What is more important, protecting the right of a girl to go to school or saving her life?" How Karzai and his international allies answer that question will have far-reaching consequences. Aisha has no doubt. "The Taliban are not good people," she says. "If they come back, the situation will be worse for everyone." But for others, the rights of Afghan women are only one aspect of a complex situation. How that situation will eventually be ordered remains unclear.
As the war in Afghanistan enters its ninth year, the need for an exit strategy weighs on the minds of U.S. policymakers. The publication of some 90,000 documents on the war by the freedom-of-information activists at WikiLeaks — working with the New York Times, the Guardian in London and the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel — has intensified international debate. Though the documents mainly consist of low-level intelligence reports, taken together they reveal a war in which a shadowy insurgency shows determined resilience; where fighting that enemy often claims the lives of innocent civilians; and where supposed allies, like Pakistan's security services, are suspected of playing a deadly double game. Allegations of fraud and corruption in the Afghan government have exasperated Congress, as has evidence that the billions of dollars spent training and equipping the Afghan security forces have so far achieved little. In May, the U.S. death toll passed 1,000. As frustrations mount over a war that even top U.S. commanders think is not susceptible to a purely military solution, demands intensify for a political way out of the quagmire.
Such an outcome, it is assumed, would involve a reconciliation with the Taliban or, at the very least, some elements within its fold. But without safeguards, that would pose significant risks to the very women U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promised in May not to abandon. "We will stand with you always," she said to female members of Karzai's delegation in Washington. Afghan women are not convinced. They fear that in the quest for a quick peace, their progress may be sidelined. "Women's rights must not be the sacrifice by which peace is achieved," says Fawzia Koofi, the former Deputy Speaker of Afghanistan's parliament.
Yet that may be where negotiations are heading. In December, President Obama set a July 2011 deadline for the beginning of a drawdown of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. That has made Taliban leaders feel they have the upper hand. In negotiations, the Taliban will be advocating a version of an Afghan state in line with their own conservative views, particularly on the issue of women's rights, which they deem a Western concept that contravenes Islamic teaching. Already there is a growing acceptance that some concessions to the Taliban are inevitable if there is to be genuine reconciliation. "You have to be realistic," says a senior Western diplomat in Kabul, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "We are not going to be sending troops and spending money forever. There will have to be a compromise, and sacrifices will have to be made." Which sounds understandable. But who, precisely, will be asked to make the sacrifice?
Stepping Out
When the U.S. and its allies went to war in Afghanistan in 2001 with the aim of removing the safe haven that the Taliban had provided for al-Qaeda, it was widely hoped that the women of the country would be liberated from a regime that denied them education and jobs, forced them indoors and violently punished them for infractions of a strict interpretation of Islamic law. Under the Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, women accused of adultery were stoned to death; those who flashed a bare ankle from under the shroud of a burqa were whipped. Koofi remembers being beaten on the street for forgetting to remove the polish from her nails after her wedding. "We were not even allowed to laugh out loud," she says.
It wasn't always so. Kabul 40 years ago was considered the playground of Central Asia, a city where girls wore jeans to the university and fashionable women went to parties sporting Chanel miniskirts. These days the streets of Kabul once again echo with the laughter of girls on their way to school, dressed in uniforms of black coats and white headscarves. Women have rejoined the workforce and can sign up for the police and the army. Article 83 of the constitution mandates that at least 25% of parliamentary seats go to female representatives.
During Taliban times, women's voices were banned from the radio, and TV was forbidden, but last month a female anchor interviewed a former Taliban leader on a national broadcast. Under the Taliban, Robina Muqimyar Jalalai, one of Afghanistan's first two female Olympic athletes, spent her girlhood locked behind the walls of her family compound. Now she is running for parliament and wants a sports ministry created, which she hopes to lead. "We have women boxers and women footballers," she says. "I go running in the stadium where the Taliban used to play football with women's heads." But Muqimyar says she will never take these changes for granted. "If the Taliban come back, I will lose everything that I have gained over the past nine years."
It would be easy to dismiss such fears as premature. The Taliban leadership has not yet shown any inclination to reconcile with Karzai's government. But a program to reintegrate into society so-called 10-dollar Talibs — low-level insurgents who fight for cash or over local grievances — is already in place. Koofi worries that such accommodations may be the first step down a slippery slope. Reintegrating low-level Taliban could mean that men like those who ordered and carried out Aisha's punishment would be eligible for the training and employment opportunities paid for by international donors — without having to account for their actions. "The government of Afghanistan needs to make it clear, not just by speaking but by action and policy, that women's rights will be guaranteed," says Koofi. "If they don't, if they continue giving political bribes to Taliban, we will lose everything."
Clinging to the Constitution
Both the U.S. administration and Karzai's government say such worries are overblown. Afghanistan's constitution, they insist — which promotes gender equality and provides for girls' education — is not up for negotiation. In Kabul on July 20, Clinton said that the red lines are clear. "Any reconciliation process ... must require that anyone who wishes to rejoin society and the political system must lay down their weapons and end violence, renounce al-Qaeda and be committed to the constitution and laws of Afghanistan, which guarantee the rights of women."
Afghan women cling to such promises like a talisman. But ambiguities abound. Article 3 of the constitution, for example, holds that no law may contravene the principles of Shari'a, or Islamic law. What constitutes Shari'a, however, has never been defined, so a change in the political climate of the country could mean a radical reinterpretation of women's rights. Karzai has already invited Taliban to run for parliament. None have done so, but if they ever do, they may find some like-minded colleagues already there. Abdul Hadi Arghandiwal, the Minister of Economy and leader of the ideologically conservative Hizb-i-Islami faction, for example, holds that women and men shouldn't go to university together. Like the Taliban, he believes that women should not be allowed to leave the home unaccompanied by a male relative. "That is in accordance with Islam. And what we want for Afghanistan is Islamic rights, not Western rights," Arghandiwal says.
Traditional ways, however, do little for women. Aisha's family did nothing to protect her from the Taliban. That might have been out of fear, but more likely it was out of shame. A girl who runs away is automatically considered a prostitute in deeply traditional societies, and families that allow them back home would be subject to widespread ridicule. A few months after Aisha arrived at the shelter, her father tried to bring her home with promises that he would find her a new husband. Aisha refused to leave. In rural areas, a family that finds itself shamed by a daughter sometimes sells her into slavery, or worse, subjects her to a so-called honor killing — murder under the guise of saving the family's name.
Parliamentarian Sabrina Saqib fears that if the Taliban were welcomed back into the fold, those who oppress women would get a free ride. "I am worried that the day that the so-called moderate Taliban can sit in parliament, we will lose our rights," she says. "Because it is not just Taliban that are against women's rights; there are many men who are against them as well." Last summer, Saqib voted against a bill that authorized husbands in Shi'ite families to withhold money and food from wives who refuse to provide sex, limited inheritance and custody of children in the case of divorce and denied women freedom of movement without permission from their families. The law passed, and that 25% quota of women in parliament couldn't stop it. Saqib estimates that less than a dozen of the 68 female parliamentarians support women's rights. The rest — proxies for conservative men who boosted them into power — aren't interested.
Despite her frustrations with her parliamentary colleagues, Saqib is a firm supporter of the constitutional quota. "In a society dominated by culture and traditions," she says, "we need some time for women to prove that they can do things." If the constitution were revised as part of a negotiation with the Taliban, she says, the article mandating the parliamentary quota "would be the first to go." Arghandiwal, the Economy Minister, would love to see the back of it. "Throughout history, constitutions have changed, so we have to be flexible on this," he says. The quota for women, he claims, "makes them lazy."
Threats in the Night
For many women, debates over the constitution are an abstract irrelevance. What matters is that mounting insecurity is eroding the few gains they have made. Taliban night letters — chilling missives delivered under the cover of darkness — threaten women in the south of the country, a Taliban stronghold, who dare to work. "We warn you to leave your job as a teacher as soon as possible otherwise we will cut the heads off your children and shall set fire to your daughter," reads one. "We will kill you in such a harsh way that no woman has so far been killed in that manner," says another. Both letters, which were obtained by Human Rights Watch, are printed on paper bearing the crossed swords and Koran insignia of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the name of the former Taliban government. Elsewhere, girls' schools have been burned down and students have had acid thrown in their faces. In May, mounting violence in the west of the country prompted the religious council of Herat province to issue an edict forbidding women to leave their homes without a male relative. The northern province of Badakhshan quickly followed suit, and other councils are considering doing the same.
The edicts are usually justified as a means of protecting women from the insurgency, but Koofi, the member of parliament, says there is a better way of doing that: improved governance and security. That will not just protect women but also strengthen the Afghan government's hand in the course of negotiations. "We need to marginalize the Taliban by focusing on good governance," she says, fearing that a quick deal would bring only a temporary lull in the violence — enough to permit the international coalition a face-saving withdrawal but not much more than that. Afghanistan's women recognize that dialogue with the Taliban is essential to any long-term solution, but they don't want those talks to be hurried. They want a seat at the table, and they worry that Afghanistan's friends overseas are tiring of its dysfunctional ways. "I think it is possible to make things better if the international community supports good governance," says Koofi, "but they are too focused on an exit strategy. They want a quick solution."
For Afghanistan's women, an early withdrawal of international forces could be disastrous. An Afghan refugee who grew up in Canada, Mozhdah Jamalzadah recently returned home to launch an Oprah-style talk show, which has become wildly popular. Jamalzadah has been able to subtly introduce questions of women's rights into the program without provoking the ire of religious conservatives. "If I go into it directly," she says, "there will be a backlash. But if I talk about abuse, which is against the Koran, and then talk about divorce, which is permitted, I am educating both men and women, and hopefully no one notices." Jamalzadah says her audience is increasingly receptive to her message, but she knows that in a deeply traditional society, it will take time to percolate. If the government becomes any more conservative because of an accommodation with the Taliban, she says, "my program will be the first to go."
That would be Afghanistan's loss. Jamalzadah's TV show is an education for the whole nation, albeit sometimes in unexpected ways. On a recent episode, a male guest told a joke about a foreign human rights team in Afghanistan. In the cities, the team noticed that women walked six paces behind their husbands. But in rural Helmand, where the Taliban is strongest, they saw a woman six steps ahead. The foreigners rushed to congratulate the husband on his enlightenment — only to be told that he stuck his wife in front because they were walking through a minefield.
As the audience roared with laughter, Jamalzadah reflected that it may take about 10 to 15 years before Afghan women can truly walk alongside men. But once they do, she believes, all Afghans will benefit. "When we talk about women's rights," Jamalzadah says, "we are talking about things that are important to men as well — men who want to see Afghanistan move forward. If you sacrifice women to make peace, you are also sacrificing the men who support them and abandoning the country to the fundamentalists that caused all the problems in the first place."
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Afghan police foil terrorist attack in Taliban birthplace
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Aug. 15 (Xinhua) -- A truck full of explosive material was intercepted on Sunday in Taliban's birthplace of Kandahar in south Afghanistan, foiling a possible deadly terrorist attack, Afghan police said.
"A truck stopped for checking in 10th precinct of Kandahar city today and police discovered 17,000 kg explosive device from it," police chief in southern region Mohammad Shafiq Afzali told Xinhua.
With discovering such huge explosive device, a big terrorist attack was foiled, he further said.
Four persons have been detained in this regard, he emphasized.
Taliban militants had in the past twice targeted Kandahar prisons with explosive-laden vehicles, enabling inmates to escape and inflicting casualties on the guards of the prisons and non- combatants.
Kandahar, the birthplace and former stronghold of Taliban militants has been the scene of increasing militancy over the past couple of years.
Afghan and NATO-led troops are expected to launch a major offensive against Taliban hideouts in future to ensure lasting peace in Kandahar.
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Afghan Government to Build 1680km Gas Pipeline
Tamim Shaheer TOLO news August 14, 2010
An agreement for the extension of a gas pipeline from Central Asia to South Asia through Afghanistan's soil will soon be signed, officials say
The Ministry of Mines and Industries said on Saturday that the technical studies of a new pipeline project starting from Turkmenistan, a central Asian country and extending to Pakistan and India in South Asia through Afghanistan's soil will be discussed in the 10th joint conference among Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, India and Pakistan.
The project will be finalised in the 11th conference to be held between these four countries in the next one month.
The Ministry said that with the construction of this extensive pipeline, which will continue 1680km in Afghanistan's soil, besides granting huge taxes to the Afghan government, job opportunities will be provided for thousands of Afghans.
Economic experts have cited lack of security a major problem confronting the project, and have urged government to provide sufficient security for the implementation of this project.
"The Afghan government will take $3 billion as tax annually after the project is completed," Sayed Masoud, an economy expert told TOLO news.
"Since security is very important for the implementation of this project, it is also very important to what extent Pakistan acts honestly in terms of the project," he added.
"In areas where gas stations are to be established, new towns will be built due to economic growth and gas supplies," Khan Jan Alokozay, deputy of Afghanistan's Chambers of Commerce, told TOLO news.
Afghanistan has long been the crossroads between Central Asian countries and South Asia, and the new gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to India through Afghanistan's soil will help boost the shattered Afghan economy.
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Afghan Clerics: Peace Process Stalled Until Shari'a Implemented
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty August 15, 2010
Afghanistan's largest gathering of clerics has called for the revival of strict Islamic law as a way to achieve reconciliation with the Taliban, RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan reports.
About 350 members of the Council of Ulema, or religious clerics, gathered on August 12 in Kabul and subsequently released a statement in which they appealed to the Afghan government to implement a strict interpretation of Shari'a, or religious, law, including punishments such as death by stoning for adultery and the cutting off of thieves' hands and feet.
A draft of the council's resolution was reportedly sent to the office of President Hamid Karzai for his approval.
"The lack of implementation of Shari'a [punishment] has cast a negative impact on the peace process," said the 10-point resolution issued after the meeting, Reuters reported.
"We, the ulema and preachers of Afghanistan...earnestly ask the government not to spare any efforts in the implementation of Shari'a punishments," it read.
Amnesty International has called the country's legal system "ill" and urged Karzai not to approve the resolution.
Horya Musadiq, a Kabul-based researcher for Amnesty International, told Radio Free Afghanistan that implementing Shari'a would be degrading and a clear violation of human rights.
"Amnesty International considers punishments such as stoning, executing, or cutting human beings' parts off as totally inhuman," she said. "It is an insult to the human being. We are strongly against it."
The Afghan government should instead enact comprehensive reforms of Afghanistan's judiciary system to comply with international standards.
Musadiq added that she believes the Council of Ulema should not be relied upon as it suffers from a "lack of professionalism," which she said increases the risk of biased or faulty decision-making.
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13 members of a family killed in mini-bus accident in NE Afghanistan
TALIQAN, Afghanistan, Aug. 15 (Xinhua) -- Thirteen people, including women and children, were killed and three others injured when a mini-bus plunged into a river in Takhar province, northeast Afghanistan on Sunday, a local official said. "The incident happened in Farkhar district this morning as a result 13 people including women and children and the head of the family Abdul Rashid lost their lives and three others sustained injuries," governor of Farkhar district Mawlawi Abdul Aziz told Xinhua.
All the victims belonged to the same family, he further said.
He blamed carelessness of driver for the mishap, saying reckless driving on battered and congested roads in the province often causes deadly accidents.
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Body of British aid worker killed in Afghanistan is repatriated
By the CNN Wire Staff August 16, 2010
Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- The body of Dr. Karen Woo, one of 10 volunteer medical aid workers fatally shot August 5 in the remote mountains of northeast Afghanistan, was repatriated Monday from Kabul, the British Foreign Office said.
"We would like to thank all those who have expressed sympathy and support over the past week -- the public reaction has been overwhelming and generous," the 36-year-old physician's family said in a statement.
"However, we would also like to take this opportunity to emphasize that while Karen was the only U.K. national involved in this incident, she was part of a team of brave and selfless people who were determined to make a difference, and the sacrifice of the whole group and their families should be recognized. Our sincere condolences go out to those families and friends of the other victims, who we are sure have been as deeply affected as us."
The British Airways plane carrying Woo's body landed at 2 p.m. at London's Heathrow Airport.
"We now ask to be given privacy and space to grieve in peace while we undergo formalities and make the necessary arrangements," the family's statement said. Woo's funeral will be private, it said.
The general surgeon joined the Nuristan Eye Camp as the team's doctor to help promote maternal health care in Nuristan communities. She was to have married August 20.
"She was an incredible person who obviously touched many lives," her fiance Mark "Paddy" Smith told CNN last week. "She touched mine particularly. And I'm very thankful for that and I could feel that strength that she was sending me."
Six Americans, a German and two Afghans were also killed.
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