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U.S. criticizes Afghanistan's 'poor' human rights record
By Warren P. Strobel, Mcclatchy Newspapers – Thu Mar 11, 6:56 pm ET
WASHINGTON — The U.S.-backed government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai has a "poor" human rights record, tarnished by widespread impunity for security forces who commit abuses; violence against women; torture and extra-judicial killings, the State Department said in an annual report released Thursday.
Karzai refuses offer to train Afghan National Army
Rezaul H Laskar Press Trust of India - Mar 12 12:38 AM
Islamabad, Mar 12 (PTI) Afghan President Hamid Karzai has virtually turned down Pakistan's offer to train the Afghan National Army while promising to keep Islamabad in the loop about his government's plans to engage the Taliban as part of reconciliation and reintegration efforts.
Witness: Battlefield dead haunt U.S. Marines and Afghans alike
By Golnar Motevalli
MARJAH, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Corporal Jacob Turbett gave out a single groan of pain before the Taliban bullet, which had pierced his heart, ended his life.
Bomb attacks kill NATO soldier, four children in Afghanistan
Thu Mar 11, 12:05 pm ET
KABUL (AFP) – Separate bomb attacks killed five Afghan civilians, including four children, and a NATO soldier in troubled parts of Afghanistan on Thursday, the military said.
Canada wanted Afghan army to keep detainees
Thursday, March 11, 2010 The Canadian Press
NATO allies lobbied Afghan's president for a separate legal framework to handle prisoners captured around Kandahar in late 2006 but those efforts went "nowhere," internal Canadian government memos say.
Russia criticizes US, NATO over Afghan drugs
By Slobodan Lekic, Associated Press Writer
BRUSSELS – Russia's envoy to NATO has sharply criticized the alliance's battle with drug trafficking in Afghanistan, saying it has led to a surge in heroin smuggling that is endangering Russia's national security.
Making war and peace in Afghanistan
BBC ONLINE March 11, 2010.
Guest columnist Ahmed Rashid asks what impact the Nato-led assault in Afghanistan's Helmand province and recent arrests of Taliban leaders in Pakistan could have on the volatile region.
U.S. Troops To Take Over From British In Southern Afghanistan
March 11, 2010
LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. soldiers will take over security from British troops in the Musa Qala area of southern Afghanistan as Washington builds up its force as part of a new counterinsurgency strategy, Britain said today.
Program aims to rebuild Afghan police force, repair its image
By Greg Jaffe Friday, March 12, 2010; The Washington Post A08
KABUL -- U.S. and Afghan officials are beginning a major overhaul of the Afghan police with the goal of cleaning up a force whose recent history of corruption has undermined confidence in the Kabul government and fueled the insurgency.
Some U.S. officials see a growing Taliban-Al Qaeda rift
They believe military pressures in the Pakistani border region are making the Afghan militants reluctant to cooperate with their longtime allies. Not all officials are convinced.
March 11, 2010|By David S. Cloud and Julian E. Barnes Los Angeles Times
Reporting from Washington — A growing number of Taliban militants in the Pakistani border region are refusing to collaborate with Al Qaeda fighters, declining to provide shelter or assist in attacks in Afghanistan even in return for payment, according to U.S. military and counter-terrorism officials.
Exclusive: The Secret Shelters That Protect Afghan Women
Bebe Tells ABC News' Diane Sawyer Why Husband Cut Off Her Nose and Ears
By MARGARET ARO and MARK MOONEY ABC News
KABUL, Afghanistan March 11, 2010 — Not every Afghan is hoping the Americans soon leave their country. Some are actually dreading it.
Afghan Troops Earn Kudos, But Questions Remain
by Corey Flintoff NPR March 11, 2010
U.S. and NATO commanders in southern Afghanistan are sharing credit for the success of last month's offensive in Marjah with their Afghan counterparts.
Security arrangements reviewed for Indians in Afghanistan
New Kerala
New Delhi, March 12 : The government has asked Indians living in Afghanistan to take adequate precautions about their security and warned there was a possibility of diplomats being abducted by the Taliban, highly placed sources indicated Friday.
Afghan Recovery Report: Herat Schools Get Belated Boost
Source: Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) 10 Mar 2010
Long-lost Russian scientific supplies set to benefit students 25 years after arrival. By Shafi Ferozi in Herat (ARR No. 355, 10-Mar-10)
A vast hoard of school laboratory equipment, chemicals and samples sent by the Soviet Union 25 years ago has been found in a warehouse in Herat province and is now finally about to benefit Afghan students.
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U.S. criticizes Afghanistan's 'poor' human rights record
By Warren P. Strobel, Mcclatchy Newspapers – Thu Mar 11, 6:56 pm ET
WASHINGTON — The U.S.-backed government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai has a "poor" human rights record, tarnished by widespread impunity for security forces who commit abuses; violence against women; torture and extra-judicial killings, the State Department said in an annual report released Thursday.
"The country's human rights record remained poor," the report said. Afghan police, now being trained by NATO countries — to speed a U.S. troop withdrawal — enjoyed "pervasive" impunity for abuses ranging from extorting bribes from citizens trying to avoid jail to sexual violence against boys at police checkpoints.
The report noted that Taliban -led insurgents trying to topple Karzai's government were responsible for two-thirds of the estimated 2,412 civilian casualties in Afghanistan in 2009.
"There are a number of developments in Afghanistan that are of concern," said Michel Posner , the assistant secretary of state for human rights, while noting that the country is grappling with a fast spreading insurgency and worsening security conditions.
He cited a move by Karzai last month to gain control of the independent Electoral Complaints Commission , by appointing its members. The ECC led the investigation into last year's fraud-marred election, in which Karzai prevailed, and threw out nearly a third of the votes he claimed.
Posner said the U.S. is studying a newly enacted law that shields powerful warlords and others from prosecution for abuses committed during Afghanistan's long civil war, before the December 2001 formation of the first post- Taliban government. Human Rights Watch and other private groups said Karzai had promised not to sign the law and called for its repeal.
This is the first annual report compiled under President Barack Obama , who some rights advocates say is pursuing an overly pragmatic human rights policy. Shifting policy, Obama has pursued engagement with repressive regimes in Iran , Burma and Sudan and has lowered the profile of human rights in foreign policy.
The administration, Posner said, is pursuing a policy of "principled engagement" with rights abusers. "Words alone don't change behavior," he said.
Globally, the report describes a disturbing trend in which more governments are trying to suppress dissent by clamping controls on the media, particularly the Internet, and on private, nongovernmental organizations.
"Restrictions on freedom of expression, including on members of the media, are increasing and becoming more severe. In many cases, such restrictions are applied subtly by autocrats aiming to avoid attention from human rights groups and donor countries," the report said.
"In a significant number of countries, governments have imposed new and often draconian restrictions on NGOs. Since 2008, no fewer than 25 governments have imposed new restrictions on the ability of these organizations to register, to operate freely, or to receive foreign funding," it said.
It cited numerous countries for restricting freedom of expression or assembly, including China , Cuba , Russia , Venezuela and Belarus .
Egypt , a major U.S. partner in the Middle East , "failed to respect the freedom of association and restricted freedom of expression, and its respect for freedom of religion remained very poor," the report said.
In 2009, it said, "many governments applied overly broad interpretations of terrorism and emergency powers as a basis for limiting the rights of detainees and curtailing other basic human rights and humanitarian law protections."
Human rights groups and many foreign governments say that's precisely what the U.S. did in the years after 2001, with a program of harsh interrogation, secret prisons and indefinite detention of terrorism suspects without trial.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton , who introduced the report, said the Obama administration is committed to scrutiny of its own record. This fall, she said, the U.S. will present a report on U.S. policies to the United Nations Human Rights Council , its first.
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Karzai refuses offer to train Afghan National Army
Rezaul H Laskar Press Trust of India - Mar 12 12:38 AM
Islamabad, Mar 12 (PTI) Afghan President Hamid Karzai has virtually turned down Pakistan's offer to train the Afghan National Army while promising to keep Islamabad in the loop about his government's plans to engage the Taliban as part of reconciliation and reintegration efforts.
During two interactions with the media here yesterday, Karzai said the Afghan government had accepted some of Pakistan's offers for military cooperation, including the supply of ammunition and equipment.
"As far as the training of Afghan soldiers and officers is concerned, my defence minister will study (this proposal) and we will come back on this," Karzai said during an interaction with editors and senior journalists.
The News daily reported that Karzai's comments amounted to "not less than a 'polite no'".
Diplomatic sources told PTI that Karzai had been "less than enthusiastic" about Pakistan's offers to train the Afghan army and police.
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Witness: Battlefield dead haunt U.S. Marines and Afghans alike
By Golnar Motevalli
MARJAH, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Corporal Jacob Turbett gave out a single groan of pain before the Taliban bullet, which had pierced his heart, ended his life.
Medics had carried Turbett from the bank of dirt he was standing on, where the bullet ricocheted and entered his chest, laid him out on the dusty ground of a small Afghan home, and frantically tried to resuscitate him. Above them T-shirts and woolen sweaters on washing lines flapped in the breeze.
It was February 13, late morning. Hours earlier, I had landed by helicopter in a muddy field in Marjah in pitch darkness as last month's massive U.S.-led military assault in southern Afghanistan got underway.
As day broke, the crack of bullets erupted from a few hundred meters away and the troops of Bravo Company, First battalion, Sixth Marines were locked in an intense gunbattle.
Over the first days of the American bid to retake the initiative in the eight-year war against the Taliban, I would witness how U.S. Marines and Afghan civilians alike coped with death.
Shortly after landing in Marjah a platoon of Marines had taken over the house where Turbett now lay dying. Little chicks scurried about the grounds of the mud brick abode, pecking at the floor while above their heads bullets zipped through the air.
As Turbett struggled for breath, the Afghan family that owned the house sat in silence, holed-up inside one of their small rooms, unaware that a man was dying a few feet away. The Marines, through an interpreter, had told the family they needed to use their home as a temporary command post.
The gunfire subsided slightly as the Marines focused on saving their colleague. Then the sound of a toddler crying broke from the room where the family were.
Eventually a tiny girl in a pink dress stepped out from behind a rickety wooden door which was draped in a dirty black curtain, her wizened, bearded father clutching her hand and ushering her to the toilet.
The girl retreated back into the room, oblivious to Turbett's losing battle for his life. Moments later, the 21-year-old from Canton, Michigan, was dead.
Medic David Walden stood up and walked away. As the child cried from inside the room, Walden wept in silence outside. His cheeks were damp with tears and gleamed under the early afternoon sun. His eyes were hidden behind ballistic sunglasses.
Walden and Turbett did not know each other. A fact, Walden said, that made his death even harder to bear.
"I was angry. I think because probably that was my first casualty and he actually died and I didn't know him. First one and hopefully last," Walden said later.
"Blood was in his mouth. We put a needle in his chest to decompress one side that wasn't rising but all that came out was blood," said U.S. Navy Lieutenant Justin Weppner, a doctor from Fredricksburg, Virginia, who leads the medics.
Turbett's friends were given a few minutes to digest the news before being told to get back outside and start fighting again. Turbett's squad, Marine engineers who had been attached to Bravo Company of the First Battalion, Sixth Marines, sat in silence as Weppner told them what had happened.
"I fell apart. I haven't cried like that since I was a kid ... You know it's going to happen to somebody, you just don't expect it's going to happen to the people next to you," said Lance Corporal Robert DeBoo, a 27-year-old from Meyers, Georgia.
"Every time I think about it, I see his wife, and before we left she said 'watch him, look out for him'. So even as a friend I feel like I failed," said 23-year-old Private First Class Kevin Hostetle, another of Turbett's squad mates, from North Fort, Florida.
CIVILIANS
The gunfighting on the edge of Koru Chareh village lasted at least six hours. It fizzled out after Harrier jets were called in for a "gun run" on the Taliban's fighting positions. The aircraft roared through the air, dispensing a loud hail of bullets.
It was time to move out of the home. Turbett's body had been zipped up in a black plastic body bag -- "We keep them inside our packs. We don't like to show it to the Marines, they see it as a bad omen," said medic Joseph Hardebeck -- and floated out of Marjah on a helicopter.
Then the platoon ran along a canal, dodging insurgent rounds. They reached their destination, just behind another platoon: a building of eight bedrooms made from grey concrete blocks with high arched ceilings and surrounded by the signature low-rise mud brick walls of rural Afghanistan.
Intense gunfire aimed at Marine snipers on the roof of the building continued for three days. The Taliban fired a mortar, which landed in one of the courtyards but fell apart on impact. They also tried their luck with rocket-propelled grenades, only to overshoot the building by about 200 meters.
A few days later, Bravo Company got word of the first civilian casualties caused by the fighting. They had no idea if it was a Taliban rocket or one of their own that destroyed the side of the home of 70-year-old Abdelkareem, who like many Afghans goes by only one name.
They went to the bazaar in Koru Chareh, where fruit and vegetable stores had been deserted; tomatoes and onions left to rot in the sun.
With tears in his eyes, Abdelkareem lifted one edge of a pale blue sheet of fabric from his daughter's corpse to reveal the dead body of her three-week old baby, tucked by her side.
The bodies of two others, members of Abdelkareem's extended family, were bundled underneath the rest of the sheet.
When the rocket hit his home, his son Abdelbaki ran out in the direction of the Marines, calling out for help. Father and son were given shelter in an empty shop in the bazaar, while the bodies of their dead family members were kept in another shop next door.
All they wanted, they said, was to get to the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, their ancestral home, to bury the dead in a family cemetery alongside their relatives.
"I have pain in my heart from my grief from yesterday, and I'm suffering a lot," Abdelbaki told a small team of U.S. Marines through their interpreter, as he sat next to his father, who was cloaked in a large woolen blanket.
The Marines apologized to him for his loss and said they would do whatever they could to help him and his family bury their dead. They handed him a large bundle of cash. Abdelbaki thanked them and pleaded to have the bodies taken to Lashkar Gah.
About a week later, residents slowly trickled back into the bazaar in Koru Chareh. The first call to prayer since the operation started bleated from the mosque.
Abdelbaki never made it to Lashkar Gah. The Marines found him an abandoned white pick-up truck to make the journey, but he did not know how to drive it. He buried his dead family in Marjah.
(Editing by John Chalmers)
Golnar Motevalli is a Reuters correspondent who has been based in Kabul since November 2008. She covers the war, Afghan politics and women's rights. Prior to moving to Afghanistan, Golnar worked for Reuters in London, her home town. She was in Marjah district last month when U.S. and Afghan troops launched one of their biggest offensives against the Taliban in the more than eight-year-old war. In the following story, Golnar writes about how civilians and soldiers in Afghanistan are scarred by deaths around them.
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Bomb attacks kill NATO soldier, four children in Afghanistan
Thu Mar 11, 12:05 pm ET
KABUL (AFP) – Separate bomb attacks killed five Afghan civilians, including four children, and a NATO soldier in troubled parts of Afghanistan on Thursday, the military said.
The soldier, whose nationality was not released, was killed when a makeshift bomb exploded in southern Afghanistan, NATO's International Security assistance Force (ISAF) said.
The latest fatality brought to 121 the number of foreign troops to die in Afghanistan so far this year and underscored the increasingly deadly nature of the conflict for the more than 120,000 US-led and NATO forces in the country.
Last year, 77 foreign soldiers died in the first three months of 2009 in Afghanistan, according to the independent icasulties.org website that tracks military deaths.
Four children and another civilian were killed in a separate bomb blast near a NATO-run outpost in Kapisa province, northeast of capital Kabul on Thursday, a military official said.
The bomb, similar to those used by Taliban militants in their attacks on military targets, exploded near a security post run by French troops.
The incident occurred two kilometres (1.2 miles) north of Tagab, close to the main NATO-run Bagram Air Field, which has been troubled by attacks blamed on the Taliban and other insurgents.
"The explosion killed five civilians, including four children, and injured three children," NATO said in a statement, blaming insurgents.
The three injured children "were evacuated by French choppers to Kabul French hospital," said Jacky Fouquereau, a French military spokesman.
The Taliban were in power between 1996 and 2001 before being toppled by a US-led invasion, and the hardline group is now waging an insurgency against the Kabul government and foreign troops in Afghanistan.
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Canada wanted Afghan army to keep detainees
Thursday, March 11, 2010 The Canadian Press
NATO allies lobbied Afghan's president for a separate legal framework to handle prisoners captured around Kandahar in late 2006 but those efforts went "nowhere," internal Canadian government memos say.
The records outline an early strategy of the Canadian government as it faced pressure from the International Red Cross and others to take more responsibility for captured Taliban fighters.
Opposition parties and others have accused the Conservative government of turning a blind eye to potential torture in Afghan jails, despite warnings from its own officials and international human-rights groups.
But uncensored documents shown to The Canadian Press by two confidential sources suggest Ottawa was in fact pressing for an arrangement to remove responsibility for prisoners from Afghanistan's notorious intelligence service and give it to the country's Ministry of Defence.
The idea was to let the fledgling Afghan army operate a detention facility built by the U.S. rather than rely on either the National Directorate of Security or the country's shaky correctional system.
The proposal included a request that Afghanistan create a separate legal framework for terror suspects, similar to the U.S. system of military tribunals.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai was pressed to carve out "a new detainee policy that would have made the Afghan army responsible for prisoners and created a new class of detainees, but efforts have gone nowhere," says a Dec. 4, 2006, memo.
The Afghan army is among the few institutions that enjoy a measure of respect among corruption-weary Afghans.
At the time, Canada lacked the ability to monitor the condition of prisoners it captured, despite being responsible under international law, and was reluctant to institute a monitoring regime.
In 2005, Paul Martin's Liberal government decided to transfer prisoners to the Afghans to avoid handing them to the Americans, a politically explosive proposition since the U.S. was coping with its own detainee abuse scandal.
The proposal to put Afghan soldiers in charge was resisted by the country's defence minister, Gen. Abdul Rahim Wardak, who wanted to concentrate on building the army into a fighting force. And the proposal was apparently rejected because of the insistence that facilities be subject to a U.S.-style system for trying those considered a threat to national security.
A Nov. 24, 2006, Foreign Affairs cable shows that the International Red Cross had serious concerns that Karzai would issue a decree on the matter, rather than create legislation.
The humanitarian agency asked Canada to "engage further" and insisted that any such designation for prisoners come in the form of "legislation, not decrees."
The collapse of the proposal left Ottawa with no alternative for monitoring detainees until officials cobbled together a plan for the underfunded Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission to become the watchdog.
But that plan immediately went awry when Afghan intelligence prevented the commission's inspectors from visiting prisons. It was only with the publication of torture claims that the Conservative government relented and oversaw prisoners itself.
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Russia criticizes US, NATO over Afghan drugs
By Slobodan Lekic, Associated Press Writer
BRUSSELS – Russia's envoy to NATO has sharply criticized the alliance's battle with drug trafficking in Afghanistan, saying it has led to a surge in heroin smuggling that is endangering Russia's national security.
In an interview late Thursday, Dmitry Rogozin also highlighted the lack of cohesion within NATO, saying Moscow is worried about declining public support in Europe for the war.
Russia "is losing 30,000 lives a year to the Afghan drug trade, and a million people are addicts," Rogozin said. "This is an undeclared war against our country."
"We are obviously very dissatisfied with the lack of attention from NATO and the United States to our complaints about this problem."
For years, the allies tried to eradicate poppy crops, but that resulted in a boost to the insurgency as impoverished poppy farmers joined the Taliban. U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal's new policy of trying to win the support of the population means that these farmers are now left alone, enabling them to tend crops that produce 90 percent of the world's heroin.
Last month, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime said Afghanistan's cultivation of opium — the main ingredient in heroin — is unlikely to rise or fall dramatically in 2010, after a major drop over the last two years. But even during 2008 and 2009 Afghanistan was producing far more opium a year than the world consumes, the Vienna-based office said.
Russia claims that drug production in Afghanistan has increased tenfold since the U.S.-led invasion that ousted the Taliban regime in 2001. Smugglers freely transport Afghan heroin and opium north into Central Asia and Russia, and also on to Western Europe.
Rogozin pointed to Washington's inconsistency in its attitude to international drug trafficking saying that in contrast to Afghanistan, it was waging a drug war in Colombia because that was the primary source of cocaine that goes to America.
"But in the case of the heroin which goes to Russia, they are doing practically nothing," he said. "This is not how you treat your friends and partners."
NATO spokesman James Appathurai said the alliance understands Russian concerns, and that the problem affects Europe as well. The most important part of solving the drug trade was helping to defeat the insurgency, and NATO has 120,000 troops trying to do just that, he said.
Appathurai noted that the U.N. cites the Marjah region, where NATO has just completed a large-scale offensive, as one of the world's foremost opium-producing areas. "By helping re-establish government control there, we are making a substantial contribution to the counter-narcotics effort," he said.
"We would welcome increased support from Russia for our overall effort and (NATO) has made very specific requests to Moscow which they are considering," Appathurai said.
Russia contributes logistical support for NATO- and U.S.-led operations by providing a vital land and air transit corridor for the shipment of supplies to the international force. It also services Soviet helicopters and organizes training for the Afghan anti-drug police. But Moscow always has ruled out sending ground troops.
During the Cold War, the Soviets provided military support for the secular Afghan government, and deployed over 100,000 troops to defend it against religious fundamentalists being financed by the United States, Saudi Arabia, Britain, and other Western nations. About 15,000 Soviet soldiers died in the 10-year war in the 1980s.
"Today we are helping them fight the same fanatics whom they supported against us 20 years ago," Rogozin noted.
He expressed concern over weakening support for the nine-year war from America's European allies, "who ended up in Afghanistan without really knowing what they were doing there."
"The result is falling public commitment to the war," he said.
Last month, the Dutch government collapsed because it tried to comply with a NATO request to keep its 2,000-strong contingent in Afghanistan. The Dutch crisis, and growing public opposition in other European countries to further involvement in Afghanistan, has sparked fears that other NATO nations might also pull out their troops.
"NATO is still dominated by the United States, and European allies still fall in line just to keep the alliance going, (by) participating in U.S.-initiated military adventures, even though their national interests in doing so are far from clear," said Ian Buruma, a professor of democracy at Bard College in New York.
"It is hard to see how this can continue for much longer."
In a related development, NATO's top official said Russia's military doctrine — which still identifies the Western military alliance as a top threat — is outdated and "does not reflect the real world."
Speaking in Warsaw, Poland, Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said NATO will "never invade Russia." He has repeatedly called for the two to forge a "strategic partnership" and cooperate more closely in Afghanistan, anti-piracy operations, and countering terrorism and drug trafficking.
___
AP corespondent Vanessa Gera in Warsaw contributed to this report.
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Making war and peace in Afghanistan
BBC ONLINE March 11, 2010.
Guest columnist Ahmed Rashid asks what impact the Nato-led assault in Afghanistan's Helmand province and recent arrests of Taliban leaders in Pakistan could have on the volatile region.
The continuing Marjah offensive is an important test both for Western and Afghan military forces.
But it will also test the Afghan government's ability to deliver speedy governance and provide services to people in areas dominated by the Taliban for years.
The make-up of "the government in a box" promoted by US commanders is precisely what was missing when the first Provincial Reconstruction Teams were set up outside Kabul in 2002.
There was no countervailing Afghan authority to provide services to the people after Western forces were deployed.
That failure is only now being addressed.
But the military situation will remain fraught for some time. The staggered Taliban resistance, their use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and mine warfare will ensure the area remains unsafe for months. And small Taliban groups will return to ambush military convoys as they bring supplies to Marjah.
Despite the promise of continued deployment of US and Nato forces, many population centres and agricultural regions have to be cleared and held in the months ahead if the Taliban are to be decisively rolled back - particularly around Kandahar and Kabul.
Manpower still appears limited and careful decisions will have to be made as to what areas are important because not every area will be possible to clear.
There is still a strong belief in Washington that before any dialogue between Kabul and the Taliban can take place, Western forces have to diminish the militants' capabilities.
Hardening stance
But a series of reported arrests of senior Afghan Taliban leaders in Pakistan has opened another intriguing front.
The US is yet to be convinced that the arrests signal a major U-turn by the Pakistani military, which has been accused of harbouring militants since 2002.
On the face of it, for Pakistan to abandon them just as a major offensive unfolds against the Taliban in Afghanistan would be enormously beneficial.
However, instead there is growing concern that the Pakistan military and its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is hardening its terms for a major say in a new round of the Afghan political merry-go-round, as power-brokers prepare for an end to the conflict in the next 18-24 months.
Senior US officials say the arrest of the powerful second-in-command Taliban leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, in Karachi in early February was accidental, after the CIA pinpointed the location of a meeting of Taliban commanders where Baradar was found.
War and peace making in Afghanistan is likely to get more complicated in the months ahead
The Pakistan military has admitted to holding only Baradar, although between five and eight other Taliban leaders have also been arrested.
Once the arrest was leaked several days after it took place, the Afghan government asked for Baradar and four other Taliban to be extradited to Kabul for questioning.
However, the Lahore high court restrained the government from handing them over to Kabul after a petition was filed by a retired ISI officer, Khalid Khawaja.
Despite repeated requests, US officials have been given only limited access to question Baradar and even less access to others under arrest.
In itself, the arrests have dealt a serious blow to the Taliban's long-term ability to counter the US-Nato offensive in southern Afghanistan.
Baradar was the key logistician and overall political chief for Taliban commanders inside Afghanistan.
Saudi negotiations
But despite his sanctuary, Baradar was at odds with the ISI over the issue of opening a dialogue with Kabul.
The Obama administration is still far from accepting the idea of negotiating with the Taliban leadership
Baradar was known to have been in touch with representatives of the Kabul regime, including the brothers of President Hamid Karzai. Both Mr Karzai and Baradar hail from the Popalzai tribe of the Durrani Pashtuns in Kandahar.
Kabul and the Taliban had enlisted the help of Saudi Arabia in this - but the ISI was not involved.
Over the past 12 months Saudi Arabia has been intermittently involved in helping the two sides hold informal talks that so far have not led to more serious negotiations, although they have the potential to do so.
Senior Pakistani military officials subsequently claimed that Baradar was already on the CIA payroll, having been paid $5m by the Americans to begin talks with Mr Karzai. US officials deny any such payments were ever made.
Moreover, the Obama administration is still far from accepting the idea of negotiating with the Taliban leadership.
The US and Nato have agreed to fund the reintegration of Taliban fighters who want to give up arms, a key element of their current offensive - but not reconciliation.
Senior US officials were annoyed at Mr Karzai in the aftermath of the recent London conference when he went beyond reintegration to offer the Taliban leaders - including Mullah Omar - talks and reconciliation.
The Obama administration is divided over the issue of talking to Taliban leaders.
Politicians and civilian officials insist the Taliban have to be significantly diminished through military offensives over the coming year before any such talks between Kabul and Taliban leaders can be encouraged.
The US Defense Department is more sanguine, believing that talks could be held at the same time as the US military neutralises the Taliban.
All US officials agree that the Taliban has to first make a decisive break from their operational alliance with al-Qaeda.
Pakistani stance
Pakistan's fear of being superseded in any future negotiations stems from the belief that it has more at stake in a stable Afghanistan than any other neighbouring country. Pakistan's most strident demand is that India's role in Afghanistan be drastically reduced. And it wants a say in how power will be shared in Kabul and the critical Pashtun belt in southern and eastern Afghanistan.
There are twice as many Pashtuns living in Pakistan than in Afghanistan, and Pakistan is for the first time waging a successful war against its own Pashtun Taliban.
However, too overt a Pakistani role is likely to be rejected by Mr Karzai, Afghanistan's non-Pashtuns and civil society groups (currently opposed to talks with the Taliban), and even by many Taliban tired of fighting and who would like to end dependence on Pakistan.
Although Pakistan has legitimate security interests in Afghanistan, so do other immediate neighbours like Iran, the Central Asian states and near neighbours like India, China and the Arab Gulf states.
All of them would likely start interfering in Afghanistan if they see growing Pakistani influence.
As President Obama's deadline of July 2011 - to give more responsibility to the Afghan government to start a US withdrawal from Afghanistan - approaches, the war and peace making in Afghanistan is likely to get more complicated.
Ahmed Rashid is the author of the best-selling book Taliban and, most recently, of Descent into Chaos: How the war against Islamic extremism is being lost in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia.
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U.S. Troops To Take Over From British In Southern Afghanistan
March 11, 2010
LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. soldiers will take over security from British troops in the Musa Qala area of southern Afghanistan as Washington builds up its force as part of a new counterinsurgency strategy, Britain said today.
The British government said the move was a first step in a "rebalancing" of forces in the southern province of Helmand to ensure NATO forces are fully effective in countering Taliban insurgents and protecting civilians.
Helmand is the scene of some of the fiercest fighting between U.S. and NATO forces and a resurgent Taliban.
About 500 British troops based in the Musa Qala district, in the northeast of the province, will move in the coming weeks to central Helmand, the most heavily populated part of the province where most British troops are already based.
There will be no change to Britain's overall force of around 9,500 troops in Afghanistan.
Twenty-three British troops have been killed in Musa Qala since British forces first deployed there in 2006. Control of the town of Musa Qala has passed back and forth between British forces and the Taliban in recent years.
U.S. President Barack Obama is sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan to seize insurgent-held areas before a planned 2011 troop drawdown.
The new strategy, designed by U.S. and NATO commander General Stanley McChrystal, puts greater emphasis on securing Afghan population centers and on training Afghan security forces so that they can gradually assume control.
The arrival of U.S. reinforcements "allows us to rebalance all our forces to achieve much improved force densities in central Helmand delivering better protection of the Afghan people," Major General Nick Carter, the British commander of NATO forces in southern Afghanistan, said in a statement.
The improving situation in Musa Qala and nearby Now Zad had also made the move possible, he said.
Further changes in how the forces are deployed were likely "in due course," the government said.
Mainly due to the U.S. surge, troop numbers in Helmand have risen from around 7,700 to more than 20,000 over the last year.
Britain's opposition Conservatives, favorites to win an election due within weeks, have said British troops in Helmand could be stretched too thin to conduct a successful counterinsurgency strategy.
British, U.S., Afghan and other troops last month launched a major offensive in the Marjah area of Helmand -- the biggest since U.S.-backed Afghan forces toppled the Taliban in 2001.
The hotspot for British forces in Helmand in recent weeks has been the Sangin area in the east of the province, where six British soldiers were killed in the first week of March, bringing their total losses to 272 since 2001.
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Program aims to rebuild Afghan police force, repair its image
By Greg Jaffe Friday, March 12, 2010; The Washington Post A08
KABUL -- U.S. and Afghan officials are beginning a major overhaul of the Afghan police with the goal of cleaning up a force whose recent history of corruption has undermined confidence in the Kabul government and fueled the insurgency.
The program, which will probably include sending thousands of officers abroad for training, is designed to rebuild a force of more than 90,000 Afghans who were dispatched to police stations with virtually no training and little supervision. After nearly nine years of war, senior U.S. and Afghan officials said they are essentially starting from scratch.
"We weren't doing it right," said Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, who oversees the NATO training effort in Afghanistan. "The most important thing is to recruit and then train police," he said, emphasizing the steps necessary before any deployment. "It is still beyond my comprehension that we weren't doing that."
With their ranks blotted by bribery, theft, extortion, drug-running and defections to the Taliban, the police stand in stark contrast to the Afghan National Army, which U.S. officials said is well-respected. Caldwell is expected to brief President Obama on the police training program via video teleconference Friday, senior U.S. officials said.
The police are a critical and high-risk element of the Obama administration's new war strategy. As U.S. and Afghan forces drive Taliban fighters from their havens throughout the country, U.S. officials are counting on Afghan police to fill in behind them to prevent the return of insurgents and build support for the struggling Afghan government.
"If we don't get the police fixed, we'll never change the dynamics in the country," Caldwell said. "No matter how well we do clearing and holding, we will never build on that progress and sustain it without a police force. We have to get this right." He called the training effort "the greatest challenge" facing U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
Overseas instruction
A key element of the effort is Afghan Interior Minister Hanif Atmar's plan to send up to 3,000 top police officers each year to Jordan and Turkey for nine months of instruction. Those officers could then be dispatched to bolster the force or replace corrupt or ineffective district and village police chiefs, U.S. officials said.
The program is designed to make up for a critical shortage of about 500 NATO police trainers and a scarcity of training bases for police. Afghan officials also hope that the prospect of a diploma from a foreign police-training center will lure higher-quality recruits and burnish the police's poor reputation among the Afghan people.
"Afghans are crazy about education abroad. I can say that with authority because I used to be the minister of education," Atmar said in an interview. Afghan and U.S. officials are in discussions with officials from Jordan on training Afghan police officers there as soon as possible, he said.
Beginning next week, all new recruits will get at least six weeks of training before being assigned to police stations. U.S. and Afghan officials are also building the Interior Ministry's first training and recruiting offices. About three-quarters of the police officers serving in Afghanistan have received no formal training.
Multiple challenges
The interior minister also has pledged to purge the force of corrupt leaders.
"For a long time, corruption was considered a taboo subject," Atmar said. "It is no longer the case. We have to fight this curse."
In recent months, the Afghan government has brought corruption charges against a handful of police chiefs. The arrests were seen as a step forward for the Interior Ministry, but U.S. and NATO officials said much bolder action is needed to repair the force's reputation.
"It may take a Richter-scale-size event to win back the public's confidence in the police," said Maj. Gen. Michael J. Ward, a Canadian who oversees police development.
In Iraq, for example, virtually all battalion and brigade commanders within the police force were replaced in 2007 and early 2008 in what amounted to a purge of the mid-level leadership. Although Atmar is considered an effective manager, he cannot replace large numbers of officers without jeopardizing his relations with senior Afghan politicians, Western military officials said.
The other primary focus of U.S. and Afghan officials is increasing the size of the police force, which stands at about 92,000 today, to about 110,000 by October. Because of widespread attrition and desertions, Afghan and NATO officials said, they have to bring in about 40,000 recruits over the next nine months to increase the overall force by 12,000 as called for in their plan. In some of the best-trained Afghan police paramilitary units, the most heavily employed police forces in the country, the annual attrition rate has surged as high as 75 percent.
Another challenge is getting newly trained police leaders to southern and eastern Afghanistan, where the fighting is most intense and where they are most needed. Because police officers do not live on heavily fortified bases as Afghan soldiers do, they have suffered heavier casualties than the army has.
The losses have made some top police officers reluctant to serve in the toughest battle zones. In February, for example, the Afghan National Police Academy graduated its second class -- 568 students who had completed three years of courses and training. U.S. officials assumed that as many as half of those new graduates would be assigned to lead police units in the south and east. Instead, only about 3 percent of the officers were assigned to those regions. About three-quarters were kept in Kabul.
A probe in Helmand
In Helmand province, the site of a recent series of large-scale offensives to drive out the Taliban, the newly introduced police have generally performed well, with the exception of a district police chief who Marines said charged locals to return to their homes after U.S. troops drove insurgents from the area in December.
Last week, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates visited the area, the Now Zad district, to examine the progress and tour a market.
Before Gates's visit, the provincial governor removed the police chief from the area, and Afghan officials initiated an investigation into the allegations. U.S. officials said the results of the probe would be a bellwether of Afghans' willingness to deal with graft in the police force.
The incident also demonstrates the central role the police will play in ensuring that the Taliban does not return to districts from which it was ousted.
"I'd rather have no police than bad police, because bad police destroy local faith and confidence in their government and push [the locals] to the Taliban," Brig. Gen. Lawrence D. Nicholson, the top Marine commander in the south, said in an e-mail.
"No matter how hard the Marines and Afghan Army work to earn the public trust, bad police can unhinge those efforts in a heartbeat."
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Some U.S. officials see a growing Taliban-Al Qaeda rift
They believe military pressures in the Pakistani border region are making the Afghan militants reluctant to cooperate with their longtime allies. Not all officials are convinced.
March 11, 2010|By David S. Cloud and Julian E. Barnes Los Angeles Times
Reporting from Washington — A growing number of Taliban militants in the Pakistani border region are refusing to collaborate with Al Qaeda fighters, declining to provide shelter or assist in attacks in Afghanistan even in return for payment, according to U.S. military and counter-terrorism officials.
The officials, citing evidence from interrogation of detainees, communications intercepts and public statements on extremist websites, say that threats to the militants' long-term survival from Pakistani, Afghan and foreign military action are driving some Afghan Taliban away from Al Qaeda.
As a result, Al Qaeda fighters are in some cases being excluded from villages and other areas near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border where they once received sanctuary.
Al Qaeda's attempts to restore its dwindling presence in Afghanistan are also running into problems, the officials say. Al Qaeda was forced out of Afghanistan by the U.S.-led invasion that ousted the Taliban in 2001, and it reestablished itself across the border in Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden and other leaders are thought to have taken refuge.
Al Qaeda is believed to have fewer than 100 operatives still in Afghanistan. Though mounting attacks there is not the network's main focus, it remains interested in striking U.S. and other targets.
But its capabilities have been degraded in recent years, and such attacks now require assistance from the Taliban or waiting for fleeting opportunities, such as the suicide bomber attack on a base used by the CIA in Khowst province in December by a Jordanian double agent who had promised U.S. officials intelligence about Al Qaeda's No. 2, Ayman Zawahiri.
Last year, the organization began offering stipends to Afghans who would escort its operatives into the country, but there are indications that many Taliban are refusing this inducement, one U.S. official said.
"The Afghan Taliban does not want to be seen as, or heard of, having the same relationship with AQ that they had in the past," said the senior official, who is familiar with the latest intelligence and used an abbreviation for Al Qaeda. The officials and others described the assessments on condition of anonymity.
Indications of Al Qaeda-Taliban strains are at odds with recent public statements by the Obama administration, which has stressed close connections among militant groups to help build support from the Pakistani government and other allies to take them on all at once.
U.S. officials remain unsure whether the alliance between Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban is splintering for good, and some regard the possibility as little more than wishful thinking. A complete rupture is unlikely, some analysts say, because Al Qaeda members have married into many tribes and formed other connections in years of hiding in Pakistan's remote regions.
But the tension has led to a debate within the U.S. government about whether there are ways to exploit any fissures. One idea under consideration, an official said, is to reduce drone airstrikes against Taliban factions whose members are shunning contacts with Al Qaeda.
One of the goals of the U.S. effort in Afghanistan and Pakistan is to isolate extremists, both within Al Qaeda and the larger Taliban movement, while encouraging low- and mid-level Taliban fighters to renounce ties with Al Qaeda and reconcile with the Afghan government.
Tactics such as drone strikes and a stepped-up campaign of targeted killings by U.S. Special Operations troops and an intensified military campaign in both Pakistan and Afghanistan have raised the risks to Taliban fighters who assist Al Qaeda, the senior U.S. official said.
The arrest in recent months of several top Afghan Taliban leaders may also be leading some Taliban to reassess their ties to Al Qaeda in hopes of easing pressure from the Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan's spy agency, which long allowed the Afghan Taliban to operate relatively unbothered.
Officials acknowledge there is little evidence to suggest that Mullah Mohammed Omar, the top Afghan Taliban leader, favors cutting ties with Bin Laden and other top Al Qaeda leaders, relationships that go back nearly two decades.
"Al Qaeda has been a very valuable resource to the Taliban in the past," said a U.S. official, who is skeptical of the new intelligence. "And I haven't seen the evidence they really want to cut them loose."
Unease with the continuing relationship is most apparent among the Taliban's mid-level commanders and their followers, the U.S. officials said.
Though they have a common enemy in the United States and a common interest in maintaining their sanctuary, Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban have seen their goals diverge somewhat.
The Taliban has focused on moderating its image as part of its campaign to retake power in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda has drawn closer to other militant groups in Pakistan's tribal belt that are seeking to overthrow the Pakistani government.
Al Qaeda still has a close relationship with the leaders of the Haqqani network, a militant Afghan group based on the Pakistani side of the border in North Waziristan.
The Haqqani group, named for its founder Jalaluddin Haqqani, continues to cooperate with Al Qaeda despite suffering substantial casualties over the last year and a half in CIA drone strikes, officials said.
The apprehension about continuing cooperation with Al Qaeda is especially strong among members of the Quetta shura, the council of Afghan Taliban leaders, based for the last nine years in the Pakistani city of Quetta. Several top shura members have been arrested by Pakistani security services, officials said, which has left the organization at least temporarily in disarray.
Even in the Haqqani organization, some low- and mid-level Afghan fighters are growing leery about continued collaboration with Al Qaeda, a U.S. official said.
"If the Taliban is telling them to get lost, that creates a problem for Al Qaeda," said Barbara Sude, a former CIA terrorism analyst now at Rand Corp., a policy research organization. "Maybe that's the beginning of what we're seeing."
In the past, Al Qaeda was able to offer the Taliban bomb-making experts, experienced fighters and large amounts of cash for operations in Afghanistan in return for haven in Taliban-controlled areas near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
But Al Qaeda's resources and manpower have been greatly diminished over the years.
"Many [Taliban] do not see AQ bringing that much to the current fight," said a military official. "A lot of their resources have dried up, and the quality of their fighters has been significantly degraded."
david.cloud@latimes.com
julian.barnes@latimes.com
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Exclusive: The Secret Shelters That Protect Afghan Women
Bebe Tells ABC News' Diane Sawyer Why Husband Cut Off Her Nose and Ears
By MARGARET ARO and MARK MOONEY ABC News
KABUL, Afghanistan March 11, 2010 — Not every Afghan is hoping the Americans soon leave their country. Some are actually dreading it.
"You can't leave Afghanistan," Manizha, who helps run a shelter for battered women, recently warned "World News" anchor Diane Sawyer. Behind Manizha, women who were beaten, bruised and badly scarred shake their heads in urgent agreement.
The secret women's shelter is run by Manizha -- who, like most Afghans, goes by only one name -- and by New Yorker Esther Hyneman. It is one of a string of shelters and counseling centers that opened in 2007 and have since helped about 1,500 Afghan women escape beatings and abuse that can shock even battle-hardened combat surgeons.
Among the most heartbreaking is the story of Bebe. She is 17, and she says her face was mutilated by her husband, a Talib. Bebe's nose and ears were cut off as punishment for running away to escape the constant pummeling by her husband and his family.
She was married to the radical Muslim when she was 12, Manizha told Sawyer. Her marriage was the result of an outlawed tribal custom called "baad" in which the daughter was given away as compensation for a crime or offense committed by a male member of Bebe's family.
Girls given away in baad transactions are often little more than slaves. Bebe was forced to sleep in a stable with the animals, and beatings and pain became part of life for her.
Bebe tried to escape but was captured. Her husband was ordered by the Taliban to punish her by disfiguring her face. While her brother-in-law held her down, her husband sliced off her nose and ears.
Left for dead, she crawled to her uncle's house, but he refused to help. Bebe staggered on to her grandfather's house. He called her father. The local Afghan hospital was unable to treat her wounds, and suggested her father take her to the nearby U.S. military base, Forward Operating Base Ripley in Oruzgan province.
"She was very scared. She covered up," said Air Force Sgt. Lindsay Clark, a medic who was on duty when Bebe arrived three days after the attack.
Maj. Jeff Lewis, an Air Force surgeon, told ABC News he was used to seeing war wounds, but Bebe's injuries appalled him.
"It was barbaric and shocking to see this, that somebody had done this to this young girl... It was unlike anything I've ever seen," Lewis said. "I'm surprised that ... it still exists, this type of problem in the world." Despite their scars -- from fists, knives, burns, electrical cords -- there is an argument that the women at Manizha's shelter are the lucky ones.These women have found a way out of their brutal marriages. Millions of Afghan women are routinely handed over for marriages while they are still children and endure lives of constant battering.
"Ninety percent of Afghan women have experienced some form of human rights violation, 15 million Afghan women probably need our help," Manizha told Sawyer.
It's not just Afghan women who want things to change.
"Husbands, fathers and brothers, they come for help," Hyneman told Sawyer. "They want a peaceful life... a family life and want to be able to support their children," rather than marry them off at a young age.
Despite Her Scars, Bebe Likes to Sing
"Men want their daughters educated. They beg us all the time. Build schools for our daughters, we want our daughters to go to school. They've learned the price of ignorance and illiteracy," Hyneman said.
That price is starkly visible on Bebe's face and in her behavior. She keeps a hand in front of her, and looks away when she speaks.
When first treated at the U.S. base, Bebe was so modest and shy that she didn't want to show her facial wounds to the male doctor.
"At one point she began screaming, not very pleased with the male presence," Lewis said. The doctor had to rely on Clark and other female aides to clean her wounds and assess the damage.
Bebe recuperated at the U.S. base for 2 1/2 months, slowly letting out details of her ordeal, slowly regaining trust and emerging from her shell. Doctors in the U.S. have offered their services to help reconstruct her face.
But Bebe can't yet fathom what her future holds. When Sawyer asked her what she dreams will happen, Bebe said, "I don't know what will happen in the future."
When Sawyer asks about the offer from American doctors to help her, Bebe tilts her hands up in a gesture of "who knows?" She touches her nose and covers up her face with a scarf.
Her new American friends say that Bebe's courage is inspiring.
"The thing about Bebe, even after everything that had happened to her, she was in such good spirits," said Clark, who said she became "very close" to Bebe.
The medic said Bebe sang a lot. "She would sing about what she saw outside and the people around her and I guess however she was feeling that day is what she would sing about."
But there are many other women like Bebe who have no hope of rescue and the hope of change seems out of reach without help from the outside world.
Education is the answer, Manizha says. "Lots of education and lots of patience with the international community," she says. "You can't leave Afghanistan." Head to Women for Afghan Women's website to learn mroe about how you can help
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Afghan Troops Earn Kudos, But Questions Remain
by Corey Flintoff NPR March 11, 2010
U.S. and NATO commanders in southern Afghanistan are sharing credit for the success of last month's offensive in Marjah with their Afghan counterparts.
They say the Afghans contributed experienced troops and fighting spirit to the operation, which regained control of an area that had been dominated by the Taliban.
The combined force that captured this poppy-growing region included 1,250 Afghan National Army troops and about 600 Afghan National Police officers. They fought alongside nearly 5,000 Marines and soldiers from a U.S. Army Stryker brigade.
But questions remain about the Afghans' tactics and ability to coordinate with foreign troops on the battlefield.
'Impressed' By Performance
Col. Randy Newman, a Marine commander, says on the whole, the Afghan army performed very well.
"I've been impressed with what they've offered us," he says. "Some people will point out some individual actions, small actions in areas where they've done things that we wouldn't prefer, and I don't dispute those."
But Newman says the problem soldiers represent only a very small portion of the number of Afghans involved in the fight.
Experienced Troops
One reason the Afghans performed well, officers say, is that their ranks included many solders with fighting experience in other parts of the country.
Afghan army Col. Farouq Tarakhil points out that this wasn't the first battle for his unit. They have been tested by fighting the Taliban in Khost province and other parts of the country, he says.
Newman says there is no question of the Afghans' courage in battle.
"As often as I've heard stories of them perhaps being mean to the people or something, I've heard equal stories of them being more than eager to enter into the fray," he adds.
But that eagerness was a problem last month for Marines in a combat situation when Afghan soldiers pushed ahead without coordinating with their partners.
Danger Of 'Friendly Fire'
NPR correspondent Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson was with a Marine patrol on the third day of the Marjah offensive, when that lack of coordination delayed an airstrike against Taliban fighters and created a danger of "friendly fire."
The Marines were under fire, taking cover behind a wall, and their captain was trying to call an airstrike on the source of the shooting.
The Marine captain was frustrated because Afghan soldiers had run ahead without telling him, putting themselves too close to an area where he wanted to direct the airstrike.
He also complained that the Afghan army soldiers seemed to be firing in an undisciplined way.
'Get Them Under Control'
The Marines had reports of Taliban fighters with a machine gun, moving to set up an ambush.
The Marine captain yelled to the Marine who was the liaison with the Afghan soldiers, telling him, "That [Afghan army] commander has got to get them under control. Now they are all over the battlefield. And I can't do anything. There is a guy out there with a machine gun and I can't do anything because they are [expletive] around like jackasses."
Eventually, the aircraft was able to fire, taking out its target without hurting any Afghan soldiers.
Solving Local Problems
When asked why he had led his men ahead without telling the Marines, the Afghan captain, Mohammad Gharib, said his men had spotted a teenage boy in the area and wanted to check him out.
The Marjah offensive was designed to test putting the Afghan soldiers in the lead, so technically they were not required to follow the Marines' orders, but Marine officers say they needed to be "reined in."
Now that the shooting has stopped, Afghan soldiers are showing a strong presence in the Marjah area, and Tarakhil says that's a role that brings out their biggest strength.
He says his men know the language and the local culture, and they're better equipped to solve local problems and bring peace to the region.
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Security arrangements reviewed for Indians in Afghanistan
New Kerala
New Delhi, March 12 : The government has asked Indians living in Afghanistan to take adequate precautions about their security and warned there was a possibility of diplomats being abducted by the Taliban, highly placed sources indicated Friday.
"There are intelligence reports that diplomats could be soft targets. After National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon's visit to Kabul last week to assess security arrangements, we are examining all options and working out a better security regimen," said a senior official, who could not be identified.
Menon visited Afghanistan last week to assess security arrangements and enquire about the security measures in place for over 4,000 Indians working in the country on various projects.
"We might revamp security measures in our consulates," said the official.
Currently, there are over 160 Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) personnel providing security to the Indian embassy in Kabul and the four consulates in Jalalabad, Kandahar, Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif.
The Afghanistan government has also been in constant touch with Indian authorities to bolster security arrangements.
Six Indians, including two army officers, were among 16 killed as Taliban suicide bombers carried out coordinated attacks on two Kabul hotels in February.
The suicide squad struck mainly at the Park Residence hotel rented out by the Indian embassy for its staffers and those linked to India's developmental work in Afghanistan.
A car bomb levelled the Arya Guesthouse used mainly by Indian doctors.
--IANS
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Afghan Recovery Report: Herat Schools Get Belated Boost
Source: Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) 10 Mar 2010
Long-lost Russian scientific supplies set to benefit students 25 years after arrival. By Shafi Ferozi in Herat (ARR No. 355, 10-Mar-10)
A vast hoard of school laboratory equipment, chemicals and samples sent by the Soviet Union 25 years ago has been found in a warehouse in Herat province and is now finally about to benefit Afghan students.
Although some of the compounds have deteriorated, about 500 schools will get equipment for a range of chemical, physical, biological, mathematical, geological and electronic experiments. The find even includes human skeletons.
It was all sent at a time when Mohammad Najibullah was the Soviet-backed president of Afghanistan and the Soviet Union had thousands of troops in the country following the 1979 Russian-led invasion.
Now the discovery in a warehouse at Herat's Mahjuba Herawi girls' school has sparked a row over who was to blame for leaving the shipment, valued at 100,000 US dollars, to moulder.
Arwin Taheri, deputy-director of education department in Herat, said, "The materials were supposed to be distributed to all the schools in Herat. However, they were taken to the Mahjuba Herawi school's depot as the depots of the education department were being renovated at the time."
Taheri said a shortage of staff and a lack of familiarity with the Russian language caused it to be overlooked, although he admitted education officials at the time were also negligent.
Some of the materials were expensive and it was ironic that education professionals had often complained about a lack of laboratories in Herat schools.
Taheri is still happy that the schools will finally get the supplies, "After the materials were found, a four-member delegation including the director of the science centre of the ministry of education came to Herat and explained how Herat teachers could use the materials."
Schools will get the equipment in time for the start of the new education year that begins in mid-2010.
However, Nasima Roya, deputy principal of the Mahjuba Herawi school, is not sure that all the materials will be usable, "When they were moving the materials, I noticed that some had turned black inside the boxes as if they were burned, particularly chemical materials which [decompose] over time due to exposure to the air."
The supplies included human and animal skeletons, geological samples, maps, compasses, globes, microscopes, electronics, laboratory equipment and possibly telescopes, she said.
Aziza Tokhi, the school principal for the past 15 years, said she was never authorised by the education ministry to check the warehouse or use the materials. The discovery, she said, was made when the school asked the ministry to shift the goods because it needed a prayer room for pupils.
Some of the school's teachers reject the idea that the problem was a lack of teaching professionals or knowledge of Russian, insisting that there were sufficient numbers of adequately trained staff who would have been able to read the labels on the storage boxes. They blame negligent Soviet-era education officials.
Some students IWPR spoke to are bitter about not having access to the Soviet era consignment. Zemarai Barakzai, 19, who is hoping to go to university, says he might have benefited if the materials had been available, "I was unable to enter the medical university which was my chosen field. I curse those who have deprived us of the use of the laboratory equipment."
Other students were happy at the prospect of using the supplies. Mohammad Noman Soltani, 15, who studies at Soltan Ghiasoddin Ghori school, told IWPR, "The past is the past. We should not waste our time trying to find out who is responsible ... It is important for us to think about the future by starting using the laboratory."
Shafi Ferozi is an IWPR trainee in Herat.
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