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Pakistan arrests halt UN contacts with Taliban
By Deb Riechmann, Associated Press Writer
KABUL – The arrests of top Taliban figures in Pakistan abruptly halted secret U.N. contacts with the insurgency at a time when the efforts were gathering momentum, the U.N.'s former envoy to Afghanistan said Friday.
Kai Eide lashes out
In a BBC interview, the former UN mission chief, says Pakistan's recent arrests of Taliban leaders have damaged peace prospects
Guardian.co.uk by Julian Borger Friday 19 March 2010
This a transcript of Lyse Doucet's BBC World Service interview tonight with Kai Eide. He says bluntly that the effect of the Pakistani arrests of Abdul Ghani Baradar, and a dozen or so other senior Taliban figures in recent weeks has been
Afghanistan: Karzai's Brother Complicates Kandahar Plans
By Tim Mcgirk / Kandahar time.com
General Stanley McChrystal's plan to reconquer the key Afghan city of Kandahar this summer could fail, influential diplomats, Afghan experts and tribal elders are warning, because of deep resentment against the local face of the Afghan government - President Hamid Karzai's troublesome half brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai.
Exploring The Taliban's Complex, Shadowy Finances
by Peter Kenyon NPR - National Public Radio March 19, 2010
The Taliban have long been associated with the opium trade. Counterterrorism officials say the group has developed what amounts to a sophisticated taxation regime that yields money from the production, processing and transport of opium from Afghanistan.
Amid Afghan surge, disputed base becomes indispensable
by Matt Siegel Fri Mar 19, 7:43 am ET
MANAS TRANSIT CENTRE, Kyrgyzstan (AFP) – An earth mover rumbles slowly past a barbed-wire fence, churning up dirt under what will soon be temporary housing for thousands of coalition troops heading to Afghanistan.
As Taliban makes comeback in Kunduz province, war spreads to northern Afghanistan
Washington Post - Asia/Pasific By Keith B. Richburg Friday, March 19, 2010
KUNDUZ, AFGHANISTAN - For most of the past eight years, this northern province has been relatively peaceful, far removed from the insurgency in the Taliban heartlands of Kandahar and Helmand in the south.
Afghanistan war: lessons from the Soviet war
By Edward Girardet – The Christian Science Monitor via Yahoo! News - Mar 18 2:15 PM
Lashkargar, Afghanistan – It was early summer, 1982. The Soviet war in Afghanistan was gathering momentum against the mujahideen, the country's disparate but increasingly widespread resistance movement.
US never asked India to scale down in Afghanistan: sources
Calcutta News.Net Friday 19th March, 2010 (IANS)
Contrary to speculation, the US has not asked India to scale down its presence in Afghanistan and is closely cooperating on AfPak issues, government sources said here.
Amid Afghan surge, disputed base becomes indispensable
by Matt Siegel – Fri Mar 19, 7:43 am ET
MANAS TRANSIT CENTRE, Kyrgyzstan (AFP) – An earth mover rumbles slowly past a barbed-wire fence, churning up dirt under what will soon be temporary housing for thousands of coalition troops heading to Afghanistan.
Losing the battle to keep female flesh off Afghan TV
By Sayed Salahuddin – Fri Mar 19, 6:20 am ET
KABUL (Reuters) – Eight years after the fall of the Taliban, who banned television and barred women from appearing in public without an all-enveloping burqa, the Afghan government is fighting a losing battle to keep female flesh off TV.
China calls for more world aid to Afghanistan
People's Daily - Mar 18 7:58 PM
China on Thursday called upon the international community to render more support and provide more assistance to Afghanistan, and voiced its support for a leading coordination role by the United Nations in the reconstruction of the south Asian country.
Russians Give Message to U.S. Generals in Afghanistan: Bribe the Taliban
Minutes of Secret Meeting Between Russian Veterans and Gen. Stanley McChrystal Also Say 'More Troops Won't Make A Difference'
By MATTHEW COLE ABC News March 18, 2010 —
Two Russian veterans of the Soviet Afghan war privately warned Gen. Stanley McChrystal last summer that the key to winning the war would be to pay off the Taliban. The official who wrote up a summary of two meetings between the Russians
Afghan MPS demand reparations from Russia for Red Army occupation
Afghan MPs are demanding war reparations from the Russian government for the devastation caused by the Red Army during its nine-year occupation.
By Ben Farmer in Kabul 18 Mar 2010 Telegraph (UK)
A proposal to demand compensation from Moscow has been tabled by the group and will be discussed in the Afghan parliament's lower house, officials have confirmed.
Afghan army losing soldiers faster than hoped: report
The Canadian Press Thursday Mar. 18, 2010 2:18 PM ET
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — They are supposed to be our exit strategy.
But the latest Canadian government quarterly assessment raises concern about the number of soldiers leaving the Afghan National Army, which is expected to take over security in key Kandahar districts by next summer.
Afghanistan spy contract goes sour
By Pratap Chatterjee Mar 19, 2010 Asia Times Online
WASHINGTON - Mike Furlong, a top Pentagon official, is alleged to have run a covert network of contractors to supply information for drone strikes and assassinations in Afghanistan and Pakistan for the United States government.
Defense official says Afghan program was authorized
By Karen DeYoung Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, March 19, 2010
Michael D. Furlong, the senior Defense Department employee under investigation for allegedly running an unauthorized intelligence-gathering operation in Afghanistan, says his now-suspended program was fully authorized by top U.S. military commanders.
Afghan Children 'Face World's Worst Conditions'
March 18, 2010
HERAT, Afghanistan (Reuters) -- Afghanistan is the hardest place in the world to be a child, the South Asia regional director for UNICEF said, with high child mortality rates, poor levels of nutrition and rampant sexual abuse.
Cabinet OKs two weekly holidays
Pajhwok By Rehmatullah Afghan 03/18/2010
KABUL - The council of ministers has approved a Justice Ministry draft law declaring Friday and Saturday as weekly holidays, an official said here on Tuesday.
21 militants killed in NW Pakistan
ISLAMABAD, March 19 (Xinhua) -- At least 21 militants were killed in a clash with tribesmen in northwest Pakistan, local sources said Friday.
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Pakistan arrests halt UN contacts with Taliban
By Deb Riechmann, Associated Press Writer
KABUL – The arrests of top Taliban figures in Pakistan abruptly halted secret U.N. contacts with the insurgency at a time when the efforts were gathering momentum, the U.N.'s former envoy to Afghanistan said Friday.
Kai Eide, a Norwegian diplomat who just stepped down from the U.N. post here in the Afghan capital, said the discussions that he and others from the U.N. had with senior Taliban members began in the spring of 2009 and included face-to-face conversations in Dubai and elsewhere.
He criticized Pakistan for arresting the Taliban's No. 2 and other members of the insurgency, saying the Pakistanis surely knew the roles these figures had in efforts to find a political resolution to the 8-year-old war. Pakistan denies the arrests were linked to reconciliation talks.
"There was an increase in intensity of contacts, but this process came to a halt following the arrests that took place in Pakistan," Eide told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from his home outside Oslo.
Last month's detention of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar — second in the Taliban only to Mullah Mohammed Omar — infuriated Afghan President Hamid Karzai, one of Karzai's advisers told the AP. Besides the ongoing talks, the adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive topic, said Baradar had "given a green light" to participating in a three-day peace "jirga" or conference that Karzai is hosting next month.
However, Gen. Athar Abbas, a spokesman for the Pakistani military, said Friday that Baradar's arrest, which he said was a joint operation with the U.S., was not connected to any peace talks. "Reconciliation or talks have nothing to do with the arrest of Baradar," he said. "It has nothing to do with the talks. Serious arrests are being made continuously."
Eide, whose comments were first reported on Friday by the BBC, said there was a lull in contacts between the U.N. and the insurgents around last summer's Afghan presidential election, but then they intensified.
"It's quite clear that the level of contact was increasing over the last few months to one point and that's when you had the number of arrests in Pakistan," he said.
Eide said there were many channels of communication with the Taliban, including those involving Karzai's representative. Eide said the negotiations must be led by the Afghans, but that contacts have been made by other parties.
"I know many have tried," he said, declining to identify those who have reached out to the Taliban.
Eide said the U.N. had met senior figures in the Taliban leadership as well as people who have the authority from the Quetta Shura to engage in such discussions. Named after a city in Pakistan, the Quetta Shura is the ruling council of the Taliban.
He said he believed that the talks, which he said were still in the early stages, could not have taken place without the blessing of Omar, the Taliban leader. "I cannot say with certainty, but I'm pretty sure," Eide said. "I find it hard to believe that these contacts could take place without his knowledge."
Eide predicted it would take weeks, months or even longer to establish confidence on both sides.
"The reason why I am commenting on this is, of course, that I have always believed that a political process was absolutely required as an integral part of our strategy," he said.
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Kai Eide lashes out
In a BBC interview, the former UN mission chief, says Pakistan's recent arrests of Taliban leaders have damaged peace prospects
Guardian.co.uk by Julian Borger Friday 19 March 2010
This a transcript of Lyse Doucet's BBC World Service interview tonight with Kai Eide. He says bluntly that the effect of the Pakistani arrests of Abdul Ghani Baradar, and a dozen or so other senior Taliban figures in recent weeks has been to set back the prospects of a dialogue, and that Pakistan must have known its actions would have that effect.
KE: Of course I met Taliban leaders, of course I met Taliban leaders during the time I was in Afghanistan. Anything else for me would have been unthinkable, given the emphasis I was placing on it myself, and the mandate that we have. And remember, also, I am a Norwegian and Norwegians always believe in an engagement policy.
Q: What's significant about any meetings is just how senior, how authoritative, the representatives are. Did you meet members of what is called the Quetta Shura, which is one of the main decision bodies for the Taliban leadership?
KE: I believe I can say yes. That is the case. We met senior people in the Taliban leadership and we also met people who have the authority of the Quetta Shura to engage in that kind of discussion.
Q: Of course when they call it the Quetta Shura it's named after the city in Pakistan. The Pakistanis deny the existence of a Quetta Shura, but it's largely believed to be the decision-making body under the authority of Mullah Omar, the spiritual leader of the Taliban. Did he know about these talks?
KE: I find it unthinkable that such contact would take place without his knowledge, and also with his acceptance.
Q: When was your first contact? First by letter?
KE: The first contact was probably spring last year. Then, of course, you moved into the election process, where there was a lull in activity, and then communication picked up again when the election process was over, and it continued to pick up until a certain moment a few weeks ago.
Q: What moment was that?
KE: That was around the moment when the first arrests took place of Taleban representatives in Pakistan.
Q: The first person to be arrested was Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the number two in Taliban command, as I mentioned. He was picked up in the Pakistani city of Karachi. It was said to be an operation done
with American intelligence and Pakistani intelligence. It was described by both the Pakistanis and the Americans as a lucky accident. What do you say?
KE: The intent is unclear to me, because I don't know the circumstances. Then comes the question of the impact. Now his arrest was followed by the arrest of at least ten, twelve, fourteen other rather prominent Taliban members, and what I can say is that the effect of that in total, certainly, was negative on our possibility of continuing the political process that we saw as so necessary at that particular juncture.
Q: When you say negative, what happened?
KE: Most communications stopped. .
Q: So the channels stopped?
KE: Yes.
Q: Do you think that was the intention of Pakistan?
KE: Let me put it this way. If your question had been 'do I believe that Pakistan plays the role it should in promoting a political dialogue that is so necessary for ending the conflict in Afghanistan?' then my question (answer?) would be no, the Pakistanis did not play the role that they should have played. They must have known about this. I don't believe that these people were arrested by coincidence. They must have known who they were, what kind of role they were playing, and you see the result today.
Q: There are many interpretations of reasons for these arrests. One is that Pakistan wanted to stop this channel of dialogue, not just with you, but with the representatives of the Afghan government, including President Karzai, some of his brothers, because Pakistan wants to be in control of this process. Pakistan denies this, but what do you say to that interpretation?
KE: I find that interpretation to be probably the right one.
Q: Did you share all this with the United States privately?
KE: Some of it, yes.
Q: Because senior military and political officials in the United States say it's not the time for talks. We heard from General Petraeus, the head of the US Central Command, saying the Taliban think they have the initiative. Mullah Omar and others are not going to come to the table any time soon, he said.
KE: I believe, on the contrary, that talks are long overdue and had we really engaged in them some time ago, then we could have progressed further than we have today.
Q: There are many who believe that the Taliban believe they are winning. There's a presence in almost all of Afghanistan's thirty-four provinces. Why should they talk if they feel they can prevail and it may be only a matter of time before the foreign troops leave?
KE: I think I have experienced over thirty-five years of engagement in international affairs that we very often misjudge our opponents, or the other side. We did that in the fifties, the sixties, the seventies. We did it in the nineties, and we do it again, I believe, and that perhaps if we had seen it from the point of view of the Taliban, maybe we would have come to a different conclusion than the one we've come to today. I believe that what has happened over the last few weeks may well have hardened the Taliban rather than moved them closer to the table.
At the time of posting this, the interview does not seem to be up on the BBC site, so apologies for the absence of a link.
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Afghanistan: Karzai's Brother Complicates Kandahar Plans
By Tim Mcgirk / Kandahar time.com
General Stanley McChrystal's plan to reconquer the key Afghan city of Kandahar this summer could fail, influential diplomats, Afghan experts and tribal elders are warning, because of deep resentment against the local face of the Afghan government - President Hamid Karzai's troublesome half brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai.
General McChrystal's plan is to restore NATO control through a steady buildup of forces in and around the city of 500,000, recognizing its symbolic importance to the Taliban. The movement was formed in Kandahar in 1994 and Mullah Omar made the city his seat of power even after the Taliban had taken control of Kabul. More recently, say many locals and foreign observers, the city has been slipping back into the Taliban's grasp because of poor governance by the Western-backed Wali Karzai. In a series of interviews with TIME, Afghan politicians, international analysts, diplomats, military officers and some tribal elders blame much of the chaos in Kandahar on pervasive influence-peddling by President Karzai's half brother.
As a former NATO official with years of experience in Kandahar puts it, "You have essentially a criminal enterprise in the guise of government, using us [NATO forces] as its enforcing arm." As a result, says this official who asked not to identified, "the people are turning to the Taliban as the only means of protection and outlet for their anger."
In a telephone interview from his Kandahar home, Ahmed Wali Karzai dismissed the allegations against him, telling TIME, "I'm only a tribal elder. It's my job to help people who come knocking on my door. That's all." But international experts versed in Kandahar's politics say that Wali Karzai has influence stretching way beyond his role as an elder of the Popalzai tribe and chief of the provincial council. His detractors allege that Wali Karzai has the power to settle land disputes; they say he decides who gets plum international development contracts, who stays in jail and which tribes get humanitarian aid. A top international diplomat says one former Kandahar governor complained to him that he couldn't make any appointments inside his own office without a "green light from Ahmed Wali."
Antinarcotics experts in Kabul say that, while they have no evidence linking the President's half brother to drug trafficking, he and his relatives have sway over top police officers in Kandahar and Helmand province who are alleged to have ensured the safe passage of drug shipments along the roads to Iran and Pakistan.
International observers and diplomats in Kabul say Ahmed Wali Karzai retains close ties with units of the U.S. special forces and the CIA in Kandahar. Last October, the New York Times alleged that Wali Karzai had been on the CIA payroll for the past eight years, a charge he denied when speaking to TIME. "I see these people, I talk to them in security meetings, but I have no control," he said. But TIME's sources insist that Wali Karzai in the past has threatened to call down NATO air strikes or arrange night raids by U.S. special forces on tribal elders who defied him. Says one former NATO official: "Most of our intelligence comes directly or indirectly from him. We really didn't see this dynamic because we were so focused on the enemy."
One example of the complexity that McChrystal will face during this summer's offensive can be found in Argandab, a town on the slopes of desert hills outside Kandahar. Over the past two years, several elders from the Alokozai tribe were assassinated one by one. Blame originally fell on the Taliban, but the movement denied responsibility. (And when the Taliban assassinates tribal leaders, it's usually to send a message from the movement.) The murdered Alokozai tribesmen had publicly opposed Wali Karzai, and some of their relatives began to suspect members of his former militia force of being behind the killings. Karzai insists that his ties with the tribesmen are friendly. But many of the Alokozai tribesmen have switched loyalties to the Taliban for their own protection. Canadian troops keep a firebase in Argandab, but one recent visitor there says that after nightfall, Taliban fighters now roam the neighborhoods.
NATO insiders in Kabul say McChrystal is aware that Wali Karzai's role could undermine the Kandahar offensive, since NATO's purpose in restoring security is to allow the Afghan authorities to deliver good governance. Still, these sources say, McChrystal believes that the controversial governor's fate must be decided by others. Wali Karzai remains, after all, the President's kin, though relations between the two may no longer be so close. Several years ago, they had a spat in front of tribal elders in the Kabul presidential palace. President Karzai reportedly told his half brother that he had made "a mess" in Kandahar, to which Wali Karzai retorted, "And you've made a mess of things in the entire country," before stalking out of the palace. But until now, the President has insisted he will act against Wali Karzai only if he's shown evidence to substantiate allegations of his half brother's wrongdoing.
Yet Wali Karzai has his backers, primarily in the CIA, since the agency is reliant on his network for intelligence in the city, say diplomats. (The CIA denies that Wali Karzai is working for them now, or has done so in the past.) His supporters are said to argue that cutting ties with Wali Karzai on the eve of the Kandahar assault could shred their intelligence-gathering capacity.
One international diplomat who deals with the Kandahar tribes says that if Wali Karzai is kept in place, the only way to stave off failure against the insurgency in southern Afghanistan would be to open high-level talks between senior Taliban and President Karzai. But even that is complicated by the President's half brother, says this diplomat, who claims that a Pashtun elder from Quetta, Pakistan, where many of the Taliban leaders are said to be hiding, recently told the President that the insurgents are refusing to talk to Karzai unless he reins in his half brother.
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Exploring The Taliban's Complex, Shadowy Finances
by Peter Kenyon NPR - National Public Radio March 19, 2010
The Taliban have long been associated with the opium trade. Counterterrorism officials say the group has developed what amounts to a sophisticated taxation regime that yields money from the production, processing and transport of opium from Afghanistan.
But cracking the extremist group's finances has proved far more complex than just following the flow of drug money. Counterterrorism officials say the Taliban also pull in funding from diverted Muslim charitable donations and "protection money" from convoys seeking to resupply U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
On the opium front, hard figures are elusive, but the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says that between 2003 and 2008, income from drug production and trafficking flowing to both the Taliban and al-Qaida totaled an estimated $18 billion.
The Taliban have also moved beyond poppy growers to extract money from farmers growing wheat and other staple crops.
Beyond that, there is a steady stream of cash that flows to the Taliban, wittingly or otherwise, from Muslim charities and religious institutions outside Afghanistan.
'Charitable' Donations
Haroun Mir, director of Afghanistan's Center for Research and Policy Studies, says many of those donations come from the oil-rich countries that make up the Gulf Cooperation Council, or GCC.
"There [is] a network of charities in the GCC countries which directly support institutions in Pakistan which are supporting financially these extremist movements such as the Taliban," Mir says. "And our estimates are in Afghanistan that between $150 [million] to $200 million every year reaches directly to Taliban via this network of charities that exists in the Gulf countries."
Mir says he recently asked Bahrain's foreign minister what can be done to halt the money flowing to the Taliban.
"He recognized the problem," Mir says. "But he responded there is no mechanism in the region to monitor the transfer of charity funding. And I think it would be good if the United States government, in cooperation with the countries in the region, creates a mechanism in order to monitor. And he also mentioned licensing of the charity organizations."
Analysts say that in a region where nongovernmental aid groups and charities operating domestically often face severe scrutiny and regulation, such lack of oversight on the religious charities seems a glaring omission.
Financing The Enemy
Other sources of Taliban revenue include extortion rackets that target various groups — including, indirectly, U.S. taxpayers. Resupply convoys navigating the hazardous Afghan highway system frequently have to hire security firms to protect them, and as often, these security firms pay off militias that control key stretches of road.
A November article in The Nation magazine highlighted the phenomenon. The author, journalist Aram Roston told NPR's Fresh Air that militia commanders, some of whom support the Taliban, are finding it extremely lucrative.
The payoffs can amount to "potentially hundreds of millions of dollars. It's a huge chunk of the security part of the logistics operation," Roston says. "It's really worse than irony: It's, in some cases, just funding the same people you're fighting."
Iran's Modest Support
At a December international security conference in Bahrain, a constant topic was Iran's alleged meddling in the region's conflicts, including Afghanistan.
U.S. Gen. David Petraeus told the gathering that Iran is also causing problems for the International Security Assistance Force, known as ISAF, in Afghanistan, the allied NATO forces battling the Taliban. But Petraeus described the support as modest.
"Enough to cause problems for ISAF and Afghanistan in general, but not so much [as] to enable the Taliban to succeed," Petraeus said. "Needless to say, it is not in Iran's interest — a Shiite-led state's interest — to see a Sunni extremist, ultraconservative movement once again take control of Afghanistan."
Defense analyst Christopher Langton says massive financial resources aren't necessary for a group like the Taliban because committing acts of terrorism is relatively cheap compared with waging a war. Still, he said, money can and does play a role in Afghanistan, in sometimes surprising ways.
"For example, Taliban will pay their fighters on a day-to-day basis more than the Afghan National Police pay their police," Langton said. "So in an area where loyalties may be divided, it might be a better deal, if you want to make money just to feed your family, to do a couple of days' fighting for Taliban, or even a bit more."
Fixing A Corrupt Government
The U.S. and other governments say they are making progress in blocking some channels of the Taliban's funding. But many experts point to Afghanistan's massive corruption problem as a critical and daunting obstacle.
Clare Lockhart, who directs the Institute for State Effectiveness in London, says Afghanistan desperately needs to get its civil servants back on the job and revitalize the public institutions that are so important to tracking the flow of money into, out of and around the country.
Lockhart emphatically does not agree with those who say Afghanistan is beyond the rule of law, and says the war and ensuing aid effort combined to weaken the government's ability to deal with corruption.
"I think one of the myths about Afghanistan is that 'Afghanistan is ungovernable.' When I arrived and went around the country in early 2002, in most of the provinces there were functioning finance offices and civil service offices," Lockhart says.
"Actually, one of the tragedies of the last few years," she adds, is that "many of those civil servants actually left their jobs, and they became drivers, assistants and translators for the aid effort instead."
Lockhart says that's one reason the Afghan government can't keep track of money flows in the country, such as the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of customs revenue that pours into Afghanistan each year.
"One of the reasons it's so important to have a public finance system that collects that is that if the national treasury of the government of Afghanistan isn't collecting it, then those funds are probably being collected by somebody else," Lockhart says. "So trying to get a better understanding of the legitimate flows of money, and trying to get a handle on the illegitimate flows — the proceeds of crime, of extortion, of tolls, of bribery — is really important."
It is important and fairly straightforward, analysts say, unless you're also trying to fight a war against the Taliban and other insurgents.
But if Lockhart and those who agree with her are correct, until Afghanistan restores its public institutions and empowers them to track, regulate and report on the flows of money in the country, the financial front in the war against the Taliban will not be winnable.
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Amid Afghan surge, disputed base becomes indispensable
by Matt Siegel Fri Mar 19, 7:43 am ET
MANAS TRANSIT CENTRE, Kyrgyzstan (AFP) – An earth mover rumbles slowly past a barbed-wire fence, churning up dirt under what will soon be temporary housing for thousands of coalition troops heading to Afghanistan.
The housing will provide much-needed extra accommodation as more US troops pour into Afghanistan via the US Transit Centre nestled in Kyrgyzstan's Tien Shan mountains for the surge Washington hopes will quell the Taliban.
With the surge well underway and expectations growing of an upcoming offensive in the former Taliban capital of Kandahar, the Manas Transit Centre continues to grow, its footpaths and tent cities clogged with tired soldiers.
"I'm not going to speak (about the exact number of troops moving through Manas) for security reasons but I am going to tell you that it's most of them," said Colonel Blaine Holt, the senior US military official in Kyrgyzstan.
"Absolutely the lion's share," he said.
No less than 30 percent of all fuel brought into the war-wracked country now comes from Manas, Holt said, and the speed with which it is delivered goes a long way to explaining Washington's efforts to keep Manas open.
"Kyrgyzstan has a very unique geographic position in that I can have a jet over (Afghanistan) in one hour and ten minutes," he said.
Manas is key to the US strategy of overwhelming the Taliban-led insurgency but such an extensive American military presence in the heart of ex-Soviet Central Asia in no way pleases everyone, not least Russia.
Last year a report on state-owned Russian television claimed its film crew had uncovered high-tech listening devices at Manas used to monitor mobile telecommunication in Russia and China.
In February this year, Iran forced down a passenger jet en route to Bishkek in order to snatch Abdolmalek Rigi, an anti-Tehran Sunni militant. While in custody, he said he was coming to Manas to meet US officials.
Holt angrily dismissed the accusations, which he says are part of a misinformation campaign designed to discredit the transit centre.
"The documentary was poorly done. Poor quality and it was a patchwork of things designed to get people nervous about what we're doing here," he said.
As for Rigi: "Preposterous," Holt said. We have zero association with somebody like that, nor would we have any association with anybody like that."
The US Military Air Base at Manas opened in December 2001 as a staging point for the massive US bombing missions during the opening phases of the invasion of Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
In 2009, Kyrgyzstan said it would close the base after receiving a promise of more than two billion dollars in aid and loans from Moscow, which many saw as a sign of Russian anger over the US military presence in its backyard.
In the end, Bishkek pulled an abrupt about-turn after Washington more than tripled the rent it was paying for the base, which -- in what even Holt admits was a cosmetic change -- was renamed the Manas Transit Centre.
Some 38,000 troops were pushed through the transit centre between October and November of last year alone, as coalition forces paved the way for a key push to dislodge the Taliban from their stronghold in Marjah, Helmand Province.
But some observers wonder if the Manas deal -- while necessary in the short run -- will come back to haunt both Washington and Bishkek.
The risk of spillover from the situation in Afghanistan is already worrying the long serving secular rulers of ex-Soviet Central Asia who are already rattled by rising poverty and Islamism in their states.
As security has deteriorated in the previously-calm northern Afghan provinces, reports of militants trickling back in to destabilize the already unpopular governments here have become a source of anxiety.
Manas could be a prime target for Islamists seeking to disrupt US operations in Afghanistan and score a victory in a region with little natural sympathy for radical Islamist ideals.
"I don't think that any Central Asian government has a clear understanding of the long-term security implications," said a prominent Bishkek-based academic who asked for anonymity to speak freely about the base.
In July of last year, Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev won a second term in office in elections which were blasted by western observers for massive fraud, just weeks after Washington inked the new Manas deal.
This put Washington in the uncomfortable position of being seen as trading off democracy and human rights in Central Asia for security, a dangerous position as Bakiyev's unpopular policies spark threats of fresh protests.
"On the democratization issue and so on, it's definitely been negative... the US needs the base like it needs Saudi oil," said the academic.
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As Taliban makes comeback in Kunduz province, war spreads to northern Afghanistan
Washington Post - Asia/Pasific By Keith B. Richburg Friday, March 19, 2010
KUNDUZ, AFGHANISTAN - For most of the past eight years, this northern province has been relatively peaceful, far removed from the insurgency in the Taliban heartlands of Kandahar and Helmand in the south.
But the past year has brought such a dramatic Taliban comeback in Kunduz that Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, is planning to shift some of the ongoing troop reinforcements to the north of the country, the first significant American deployment to the region since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001, U.S. officials say.
The plan for the additional 30,000 U.S. troops that President Obama is sending to Afghanistan had been to focus on the south and east of the country, where the Taliban is strongest. But U.S. officials say that about 3,000 of those troops will be shifted to operations in the north to augment a contingent of German soldiers, which numbers about 1,100 and has been more focused on reconstruction efforts than on battling insurgents.
U.S. officials are concerned about a vital NATO supply line that runs from Tajikistan through Kunduz, amid fears that the Taliban is preparing a campaign of disruption. They also said insurgents, under increased pressure from international forces in the south, are seeking to compensate by stepping up operations in the north in a bid to force U.S. forces to spread out and thus dilute their effectiveness.
Local officials and residents say two of the province's districts are almost completely under Taliban control. There, girls' schools have been closed down, women are largely prohibited from venturing outdoors unless they are covered from head to toe, and residents are forced to pay a religious "tax," usually amounting to 10 percent of their meager wages.
"The Afghan government is the lawful government," said Abdul Wahed Omarkhiel, the government head of one district, Chardara, which lies four miles from the provincial capital, Kunduz city. "But the Taliban's law is the gun."
Warning that their district is too dangerous for a foreigner to venture into, Omarkhiel, other Chardara officials and tribal elders traveled to Kunduz city to meet with a Washington Post reporter. They said disillusionment with the Afghan government, widely seen as incompetent and corrupt, and the slow pace of reconstruction had helped create favorable conditions for a Taliban resurgence.
"When people have problems, they don't go to the government. They don't go to the police," said Moeen Marastial, a member of parliament. "They go to the Taliban, and the Taliban decides. There are no files and no paperwork."
Fertile ground for Taliban
In some ways, Kunduz was always ripe for a Taliban return.
Kunduz's population is about half Pashtun, which is unusual for a northern province. These Pashtuns -- descendants of those who relocated here in the 19th century -- have maintained links with their fellow tribespeople in southern Afghanistan and in Pakistan.
Kunduz is also home to a complex mix of armed groups, including the Hezb-i-Islami militia, loyal to warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar; the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan; and the Haqqani network, led by former mujaheddin commander Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son. All these groups are loosely affiliated with the Taliban. Against that backdrop, officials in Kunduz say they have just 1,500 police personnel for the entire province. "The number of police is not enough, and they are not well-equipped," said Mohammad Razaq Yaqoubi, the police chief in Kunduz. "We need 1,500 more police. And well-equipped. Then we will be able to retake those districts." ad_icon
Some local officials said the Taliban was performing well as a surrogate government in the absence of any Afghan official presence, was dispensing a brand of justice that seemed swift and fair, and had tempered some of the more extreme behavior it had shown during its 5 1/2 -year rule in Afghanistan.
"They are very just solving cases," said Abdul Ghayour, head of the Chardara council. "They satisfy both sides. If it is a serious, serious case, they will solve it within one hour, without wasting your time."
"When they were in power, they were brutal," said Yarboy Imaq, the deputy head of the council. Now, he said, "there are a lot of changes to their policy" in an apparent bid to be "more acceptable to the people." When pressed in an interview, Imaq added uneasily, "If I sit here and say a lot of bad things about the Taliban, I couldn't live there even one night."
Women still bear brunt
One thing that has not changed is the Taliban's view of women.
Immediately after assuming control in Chardara, the Taliban ordered that girls be allowed to attend school only for the first three years. The elders said the Taliban mandated that girls could return to school only if they were sequestered and had female teachers, but there are none in the district.
Boys can continue to go to school but only in traditional Afghan dress, the loose-fitting salwar-kameez, according to locals.
Mahboba Haidar, who runs a women's self-help organization that includes a garment factory and a kindergarten, said the few families that could afford to have moved away from Taliban-controlled areas so their girls can continue in school.
Women in Taliban-held areas are mostly prohibited from venturing out alone or without their burqas. "When women are sick or have to go to the doctor, they have to get permission from them," said Karima Sadiqi, a member of the provincial council. "They are the same Taliban," Sadiqi said. "If they were different, they wouldn't have closed the girls' schools."
The most dramatic sign that the war had spread to the north came Sept. 4, when German troops called in a U.S. airstrike against two NATO fuel tankers hijacked by the Taliban in Kunduz.
The strike killed up to 142 people, a large number of them civilians who had gathered around the trucks to offload gasoline.
Staff writers Karen DeYoung in Washington and Greg Jaffe in Naray, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.
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Afghanistan war: lessons from the Soviet war
By Edward Girardet – The Christian Science Monitor via Yahoo! News - Mar 18 2:15 PM
Lashkargar, Afghanistan – It was early summer, 1982. The Soviet war in Afghanistan was gathering momentum against the mujahideen, the country's disparate but increasingly widespread resistance movement. I'd just trekked for 10 days across rugged mountains from neighboring Pakistan to the beleaguered Panjshir Valley, an assertive thorn against the Red Army's might barely 40 miles north of Kabul.
I was traveling with a half-dozen mujahideen guerrillas accompanying a French medical team being sent to replace a group of volunteer doctors working clandestinely among the civilian population.
My purpose was to report on the largest Soviet-led offensive against the mujahideen to that date. More than 12,000 Soviet and Afghan troops would attempt to crush 3,000 fighters led by Ahmed Shah Massoud, known as the "Lion of Panjshir" and one of the 20th century's most effective guerrilla commanders.
Last month's NATO-led operation in Marjah in Helmand Province – the largest offensive of the current war – put me in mind of the Panjshir. There are clear lessons from the nearly decade-long Soviet occupation that the international community might heed in its ninth year of war in Afghanistan, with the biggest battle campaign now under way.
The Panjshir push was roughly the same size as the Marjah offensive – called Operation Moshtarak – and involved 10,000 to 12,000 coalition and Afghan troops. In the Soviet war, Western journalists reported primarily from the guerrilla side. But in contrast to most of today's media, embedded with NATO troops, we had constant access to ordinary Afghans. We walked through the countryside sleeping in villages, with long evenings spent drinking tea and talking with the locals. Frank conversation doesn't happen when one party wears body armor or is flanked by heavily armed soldiers: Afghans will only tell you what they think you want to hear. Or, even more crucial, what suits their own interests. Hence the highly questionable veracity of opinion polls in Afghanistan today.
Similar to the Marjah offensive, the Soviets warned the population of the impending attack with propaganda leaflets and radio broadcasts. They appealed to the Panjshiris to support the government in return for cash and other incentives, such as subsidized wheat. Their tactic was to force the guerrillas out, but allow the civilians to remain. To make their point, the communists lambasted the guerrillas as criminals supported by foreign interests in the tribal areas across the border in Pakistan, a tactic similar to those used by the Americans against the Taliban today.
APPROACHING THE PANJSHIR THAT SUMMER of 1982, we skirted the massive Bagram Air Base, today run by the Americans but then a hugely fortified Soviet bastion blistering with helicopter gunships and MiGs. On reaching the outer edges of the mighty Hindu Kush, we encountered groups of refugees hiding among the gorges. Days earlier, Massoud had evacuated the area's 50,000 or more people, somewhat less than the population affected by the Marjah campaign. He did this to minimize civilian casualties and to give his fighters free rein.
Before dawn the morning after we arrived, we could hear the ominous drone of helicopters. As the throbbing grew louder, tiny specks appeared on the horizon, gunships sweeping over the jagged snowcapped peaks like hordes of wasps. Soon the hollow thud of rockets and bombs were pounding guerrilla positions. Intermittently, pairs of MiG-23 jets and the new highly maneuverable SU-24 fighter bombers shrieked across the skies dropping their loads.
With two journalist colleagues, I climbed to a 7,000-foot vantage over the valley. Dozens of front-line guerrillas, looking like Cuban revolutionaries with their long hair and beards, lounged among the rocks in the bright sun watching the spectacle. Grinning, they handed us glasses of tea, oblivious of helicopters roaring barely 500 meters overhead. Massoud's strategy was to empty the valley, let the Soviets in, and have fighters hit the occupation forces in their own time.
It was reminiscent of a 19th-century painting of picnickers casually watching a distant battle. We counted no fewer than 200 helicopter sorties that morning, while scores of tanks and armored personnel carriers ground their way up the riverbed, the only way to penetrate the valley because guerrillas had mined the road. Unlike the current anti-NATO insurgency, however, the use of improvised explosive devices was limited; while suicide bombers, a relatively recent tactic introduced by Al Qaeda, were never used by the mujahideen.
There seemed to be many simultaneous operations: Across the valley, M-24 gunships circled like sharks to attack guerrilla positions. Farther on, trucks mounted with rockets fired into mountainsides. Just below, a Soviet machine gun leveled off bursts against guerrillas among the boulders above. Nearby, shirtless Red Army soldiers took breaks sunning on looted carpets spread on the flat roofs of houses, while others redeployed, jogging single file through shrapnel-torn mulberry trees.
The Soviet/Afghan force quickly took the valley, proclaiming victory. The reality was far different. Massoud's experienced guerrillas suffered few casualties and, within days, launched assaults against the entrenched Red Army troops. Afghan government soldiers, too, poorly paid and disheartened, slipped out at night with their weapons to join the resistance.
Massoud eventually made a truce with the Soviets. This enabled the Red Army a "take and hold" policy with several garrisons in the Panjshir. Some civilians returned, while the guerrillas established their own concealed bases in mountains beyond. The truce was much criticized by rival groups of mujahideen, but it was part of a long-term strategy: Massoud had no intention of collaborating with the regime. Occupation troops first had to leave before any unity government could be formed. It's the same refrain today by the Taliban, Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin, and other opposition groups.
For years, Massoud kept the Soviets tied down while focusing on other areas and building a highly proficient regional force denying the communists swaths of countryside. The mujahideen – like the Taliban now – always felt they had time on their side. All they needed to do was wear down the Red Army. At the height of the occupation, the Soviets commanded 120,000 troops in Afghanistan, compared with the 150,000 coalition high expected by next fall with completion of the US troop surge. When the Soviets, who suffered at least 15,000 deaths and thousands of injured, pulled out in February 1989, they had little to show but widespread destruction of much of the country. Three years later, the Moscow-backed regime in Kabul crumbled. Today, it's as if the Soviets had never been there.
Unlike NATO forces, who now make pointed efforts to protect civilians, the Soviets and their Afghan cohorts often deliberately targeted local populations. Throughout its war, however, the Red Army held little more than the main towns. The countryside remained largely in the hands of the mujahideen. Similarly, today, 70 percent of the country is ranked as "insecure" by the United Nations.
THE parallels of the panjshir with today just keep rolling. Today's insurgents fight much like the mujahideen; and, in fact, many now call themselves mujahideen. Many commanders earned their battle spurs during the Soviet war. Their fighters hide among the locals and, often, are the locals. If things get tough, they deploy elsewhere.
Like Marjah, a deliberate joint NATO-Afghan operation, the Soviets made a point of involving Afghan partners and constantly extolled the effectiveness of the Kabul regime in the hope that Afghan security forces would assume the brunt of the war. In reality, the Soviets were running the show just as US, British, and other forces are today.
Ironically, the Soviets did succeed in creating an effective Afghan fighting force. Following the Red Army withdrawal, the communists fought hard and well against fundamentalist mujahideen supported by the Pakistani military in eastern Afghanistan. The communist regime finally fell for political, not military, reasons. There's little doubt that Afghan security capabilities can be improved today, but can the Kabul regime achieve acceptance?
Red Army commanders were very aware that they couldn't trust "their" Afghans. Massoud's mujahideen enjoyed full details of planned operations before launch. Many government, military, and police officials, including senior commanders, secretly collaborated with the resistance, just as pro-Taliban and other insurgent collaborators have infiltrated most ministries of the current administration.
The Soviets also succeeded in building a highly effective network of informers and often thwarted resistance operations based on this intelligence. But they never gained the upper hand. The more effective guerrilla commanders always seemed to keep two steps ahead of the game. (Twice, while reporting for the Monitor during the 1980s, I was nearly captured by Soviet heliborne troops after being informed upon by local Afghans.)
Moscow's attempts to establish hard-core militia fronts by purchasing their allegiance also faltered. The old adage of "you can only rent an Afghan, you can never buy him" remained the rule of thumb. Many militia had "just in case" arrangements with the mujahideen, just as today numerous police and military units collaborating with NATO forces have their own deals with the insurgents.
While the coalition may claim the Marjah offensive routed the Taliban, it will probably have little impact on the long-term fighting capability of the opposition, even if NATO holds terrain captured.
To claim success shows a poor understanding of Afghanistan. Only a small proportion of the insurgents are actually fighting. The majority of sympathizers will have buried their weapons or simply blended in among the civilians. Others are in the process of deploying elsewhere, just as Massoud used the interim to organize fighting fronts throughout the north. There's no way that all these areas can be controlled militarily.
Many of the Western governments operating in Afghanistan focus on their own zones, such as the Dutch in Uzurugan and the Germans in Kunduz. Most officers come for six-month deployments, a period in which no one can even begin to understand this country. It is this lack of understanding about Afghan culture and thought that is the biggest problem today. Crucial, too, is the need for a long-term approach for the next 30 years. Talk of exit strategy only plays into the hands of insurgents biding their time.
The Western missions, barricaded in Kabul compounds, are out of touch with what's happening on the ground. So are their intelligence operations. They spend billions on recovery or security initiatives, yet are reluctant to invest in credible information efforts.
As the Marjah operation demonstrates, there is still the belief that the problem can be resolved by clearing out the insurgents militarily, and holding the territory while installing new top-down structures – "a government in a box."
For most Afghans I've talked to on recent trips to Kabul and eastern, central, and southern Afghanistan, justice, not security, is the principal concern. Even where the military is in control, Afghans slip out to Taliban-controlled areas to seek fair dealing, having more confidence in Taliban sharia courts than in Karzai-regime judges. They see lack of rule of law and international community failure to develop a functioning economy, particularly in the countryside where 80 percent of Afghans live. And they increasingly perceive the coalition as a foreign occupation force, much like the Soviets.
The Soviets thought they could subdue Afghanistan through brute force, political indoctrination, and bribes. They wanted to put across the notion that their form of government had far more to offer than the jihad embraced by the mujahideen. They lost.
The West, following dangerously close to the path of its Soviet predecessor in Afghanistan, must show that it isn't there to impose its own views but to help ordinary people feel they have a future.
•Edward Girardet, author of "The Soviet War" and a forthcoming 30-year retrospective on Afghanistan, has reported for the Monitor since 1979.
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US never asked India to scale down in Afghanistan: sources
Calcutta News.Net Friday 19th March, 2010 (IANS)
Contrary to speculation, the US has not asked India to scale down its presence in Afghanistan and is closely cooperating on AfPak issues, government sources said here.
The US has never asked the Indian government to reduce its presence in Afghanistan, the sources said Friday, a day after India and the US held talks to discuss the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
US intelligence chief Dennis Blair and US ambassador Timothy J. Roemer met Home Minister P. Chidambaram here Thursday to discuss counter-terror cooperation and the threat from the Taliban to the region.
Rebutting reports of divergences between India and the US over integrating the Taliban into the mainstream in Afghanistan, the sources clarified that India was opposed to reconciliation with its overtones of power-sharing. It had no problems with Kabul's plan of reintegration of those amongst the Taliban who want to renounce violence and abide by the constitution.
The Taliban reintegration plan was endorsed at the Jan 28 London conference by around 70 countries including India.
The situation in Afghanistan will figure prominently in discussions between US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Robert Blake and officials of the external affairs Friday and Saturday.
Issues relating to Afghanistan came up for discussions between Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao and key figures of the Obama administration, including US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in Washington this week. Rao said after the talks that the US 'fully recognises' India's role in Afghanistan.
Making it clear that India will not be scaling down its operations in Afghanistan, Rao said: 'The US fully recognises that India has legitimate interests in Afghanistan.
'It appreciates we are a force of stability and moderation in our region. We are not scaling down in Afghanistan.'
Undeterred by the Feb 26 terror strike in Kabul that killed seven Indians, India has reiterated its resolve to continue its multifarious reconstruction work in Afghanistan.
Admitting that there were serious concerns about the security of over 3,500 Indians in Afghanistan, the sources said that the Indian government had reviewed the security situation and was in touch with the Afghan government.
'There is no change in strategy. We have a purely developmental partnership with Afghanistan and that will continue,' an official said.
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Amid Afghan surge, disputed base becomes indispensable
by Matt Siegel – Fri Mar 19, 7:43 am ET
MANAS TRANSIT CENTRE, Kyrgyzstan (AFP) – An earth mover rumbles slowly past a barbed-wire fence, churning up dirt under what will soon be temporary housing for thousands of coalition troops heading to Afghanistan.
The housing will provide much-needed extra accommodation as more US troops pour into Afghanistan via the US Transit Centre nestled in Kyrgyzstan's Tien Shan mountains for the surge Washington hopes will quell the Taliban.
With the surge well underway and expectations growing of an upcoming offensive in the former Taliban capital of Kandahar, the Manas Transit Centre continues to grow, its footpaths and tent cities clogged with tired soldiers.
"I'm not going to speak (about the exact number of troops moving through Manas) for security reasons but I am going to tell you that it's most of them," said Colonel Blaine Holt, the senior US military official in Kyrgyzstan.
"Absolutely the lion's share," he said.
No less than 30 percent of all fuel brought into the war-wracked country now comes from Manas, Holt said, and the speed with which it is delivered goes a long way to explaining Washington's efforts to keep Manas open.
"Kyrgyzstan has a very unique geographic position in that I can have a jet over (Afghanistan) in one hour and ten minutes," he said.
Manas is key to the US strategy of overwhelming the Taliban-led insurgency but such an extensive American military presence in the heart of ex-Soviet Central Asia in no way pleases everyone, not least Russia.
Last year a report on state-owned Russian television claimed its film crew had uncovered high-tech listening devices at Manas used to monitor mobile telecommunication in Russia and China.
In February this year, Iran forced down a passenger jet en route to Bishkek in order to snatch Abdolmalek Rigi, an anti-Tehran Sunni militant. While in custody, he said he was coming to Manas to meet US officials.
Holt angrily dismissed the accusations, which he says are part of a misinformation campaign designed to discredit the transit centre.
"The documentary was poorly done. Poor quality and it was a patchwork of things designed to get people nervous about what we're doing here," he said.
As for Rigi: "Preposterous," Holt said. We have zero association with somebody like that, nor would we have any association with anybody like that."
The US Military Air Base at Manas opened in December 2001 as a staging point for the massive US bombing missions during the opening phases of the invasion of Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
In 2009, Kyrgyzstan said it would close the base after receiving a promise of more than two billion dollars in aid and loans from Moscow, which many saw as a sign of Russian anger over the US military presence in its backyard.
In the end, Bishkek pulled an abrupt about-turn after Washington more than tripled the rent it was paying for the base, which -- in what even Holt admits was a cosmetic change -- was renamed the Manas Transit Centre.
Some 38,000 troops were pushed through the transit centre between October and November of last year alone, as coalition forces paved the way for a key push to dislodge the Taliban from their stronghold in Marjah, Helmand Province.
But some observers wonder if the Manas deal -- while necessary in the short run -- will come back to haunt both Washington and Bishkek.
The risk of spillover from the situation in Afghanistan is already worrying the long serving secular rulers of ex-Soviet Central Asia who are already rattled by rising poverty and Islamism in their states.
As security has deteriorated in the previously-calm northern Afghan provinces, reports of militants trickling back in to destabilize the already unpopular governments here have become a source of anxiety.
Manas could be a prime target for Islamists seeking to disrupt US operations in Afghanistan and score a victory in a region with little natural sympathy for radical Islamist ideals.
"I don't think that any Central Asian government has a clear understanding of the long-term security implications," said a prominent Bishkek-based academic who asked for anonymity to speak freely about the base.
In July of last year, Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev won a second term in office in elections which were blasted by western observers for massive fraud, just weeks after Washington inked the new Manas deal.
This put Washington in the uncomfortable position of being seen as trading off democracy and human rights in Central Asia for security, a dangerous position as Bakiyev's unpopular policies spark threats of fresh protests.
"On the democratization issue and so on, it's definitely been negative... the US needs the base like it needs Saudi oil," said the academic.
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Losing the battle to keep female flesh off Afghan TV
By Sayed Salahuddin – Fri Mar 19, 6:20 am ET
KABUL (Reuters) – Eight years after the fall of the Taliban, who banned television and barred women from appearing in public without an all-enveloping burqa, the Afghan government is fighting a losing battle to keep female flesh off TV.
In a country that remains deeply conservative and male-dominated, the government has the power to impose fines or shut down broadcasters for showing images of women deemed racy. Yet the guidelines seem to be observed largely in the breach.
Urban Afghans are now spoiled for choice with a remarkably vibrant array of TV stations. At any given moment, viewers can flip between news, cooking shows, cartoons, Turkish soap operas, Iranian dramas and hugely popular Indian films, with their gyrating sari-clad heroines.
To get around government restrictions on showing female flesh, TV stations employ full-time pixilators, charged with adding blurry blotches over bare arms, legs, necklines and midriffs. But if you watch long enough, you can easily spot a swaying elbow, a naked ankle or even an exposed strip of waist.
The new information and culture minister, Sayed Makhdoom Raheen, summoned the heads of some 20 private broadcasters and cable operators last month, demanding they revise their programs and follow government restrictions.
"I told them that in addition to your personal interests ... you should not forget your social and Islamic obligations and act responsibly with regard to the morals of the new generation," Raheen told Reuters in an interview.
"There were lots of complaints from the public, especially among families, that some of the TV stations were not observing Islamic cultural traditions, which they called harmful for the young generation.
"It is a serious matter for us. The ministry believes in raising and discussing the issue through understanding, and if that does not succeed, then steps will be taken under the law."
IGNORING RESTRICTIONS
Some TV stations appear to have abided by such restrictions only for a few days. Cable operators, which reach a small share of households, seem to pay the guidelines little heed at all.
Female lawmaker Fawzia Kufi caused a hush followed by laughter among a group of parliamentarians last month when she interrupted a debate on banning female dancing on TV with the suggestion that authorities also ban racy images of men.
Still, the work of the pixilators goes on. Saad Mohseni, Director of Tolo TV, Afghanistan's biggest private TV network which mixes original programing and popular imported fare, said his station has an entire pixilation department.
"They pixilate many things, including 'too much flesh' and any thing (that) may contravene our religious, cultural and social norms," he said in an e-mailed response to questions.
"It naturally makes things a bit more complicated, but we accept that we need to have this procedure in place for Afghanistan."
(Editing by Peter Graff and Sanjeev Miglani)
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China calls for more world aid to Afghanistan
People's Daily - Mar 18 7:58 PM
China on Thursday called upon the international community to render more support and provide more assistance to Afghanistan, and voiced its support for a leading coordination role by the United Nations in the reconstruction of the south Asian country.
The appeal came as Li Baodong, the permanent Chinese representative to the United Nations, was speaking to a UN Security Council meeting on the current situation of Afghanistan.
The international community must keep focused on Afghanistan, which is currently at a key transitional period, and increase support and assistance to enhance Afghan sovereignty and capacity for development, Li said.
The international community should also step up the efforts to assist the country in strengthening its military and police forces, promoting the process of national reconciliation in the nation, he said.
He said that China supports the leading coordination role played by the United Nations in helping Afghanistan in its reconstruction process.
China had actively supported and participated in Afghanistan's peaceful reconstruction, he said, adding that China will continue to provide assistance to Afghanistan within its capacity.
China had invited Afghan President Hamid Karzai to visit China on March 21-25, Li said, adding that he is confident that visit will achieve positive results.
Source: Xinhua
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Russians Give Message to U.S. Generals in Afghanistan: Bribe the Taliban
Minutes of Secret Meeting Between Russian Veterans and Gen. Stanley McChrystal Also Say 'More Troops Won't Make A Difference'
By MATTHEW COLE ABC News March 18, 2010 —
Two Russian veterans of the Soviet Afghan war privately warned Gen. Stanley McChrystal last summer that the key to winning the war would be to pay off the Taliban. The official who wrote up a summary of two meetings between the Russians and U.S. military commanders also wrote that one of the "key take-aways" from the meetings was that extra troops were not the key to victory.
ABCNews.com has obtained a document summarizing the discussions between two veterans of the Soviet Union's failed Afghan war and McChrystal, the top U.S. general in Afghanistan, during an August 2009 video teleconference. The document also summarizes a private in-person meeting in Moscow between the two Russians and American Brig. Gen. Henry Nowak.
The video teleconference was intended to give McChrystal the Russian perspective on how they fought the war against the Afghan mujahideen, and provide advice on how the Americans could fight a better war against the Taliban. One of the two Russians was Vladimir Shabanov, a former Soviet official who was stationed in Afghanistan for ten years, while the other was Soviet war hero Lt. Gen Ruslan Sultanovich Aushev, a Muslim from the Ingush ethnic group.
Chief among the Russians' advice to McChrystal was "money talks." The Russians suggested that the Americans build mosques for Afghans and pay mullahs to preach a Western-friendly form of Islam. "Tribal leaders and regular folks can be bought off," the Russians told their American counterparts.
The written summary of the meetings also says that one of the five "Key Take-Aways" was that "[m]ore troops won't make a difference."
"The Russians entered with 3 X divisions," said the summary, "and as 'thing escalated' would up with 120,000 in country, plus at least equal that number in the neighboring Soviet Republics."
Another "take-away" was that the international coalition was better positioned to win because it has international support and the Soviets did not.
The video teleconference came as Gen. McChrystal, who became commander of the international forces in Afghanistan in June 2009, was assessing the war and how to move forward. Just days after the video teleconference meeting, McChrystal submitted a classified report to Defense Secretary Robert Gates giving three options for the American presence in Afghanistan, two of which involved adding American troops. President Obama announced on Dec. 1 during a speech at West Point that the U.S. would be adding 30,000 more troops.
Lt. Col. Edward Sholtis, a spokesman for McChrystal, told ABCNEWS.com that McChrystal was nearing his decision on the assessment by the time of the meeting, but added that McChrystal "is an open-minded and voracious student of history."
Sholtis also noted that the summary of the two meetings was not written by McChrystal or his staff, but by a Defense Intelligence Agency official, Bruce Fitton, and that the "opinions and conclusions in the document appear to be those of Mr. Fitton and (to the degree that they're accurately represented) those of Lt. Gen. Aushev and Mr. Shabanov." Fitton could not be reached for comment.
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Afghan MPS demand reparations from Russia for Red Army occupation
Afghan MPs are demanding war reparations from the Russian government for the devastation caused by the Red Army during its nine-year occupation.
By Ben Farmer in Kabul 18 Mar 2010 Telegraph (UK)
A proposal to demand compensation from Moscow has been tabled by the group and will be discussed in the Afghan parliament's lower house, officials have confirmed.
An estimated 1.5m Afghans died during the 1980s when Moscow resorted to punitive bombings, barrages and massacres in the Afghan countryside as it unsuccessfully sought to quell the Mujahideen resistance.
The repression drove between five and six million Afghans, or a third of the population, into exile in Pakistan and Iran and devastated rural regions.
Mohammad Saleh Saljuqi, a secretary of the lower house, said: "A proposal has been prepared by a large number of MPs which says the people of Afghanistan, led by the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, want reparations for what happened in Afghanistan during the former Soviet Union's invasion of the country."
Previous aborted calls for reparations have foundered on desires to forge closer links with Russia and confusion over whether to demand compensation for particular massacres or the general destruction of the country.
Amanollah Payman MP said: "Any aggressive country must pay reparations to the country that faced aggression, but a long time has passed since then and Afghanistan now wants to have contacts at a bigger level on international issues."
The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission is already cataloguing atrocities committed throughout the country's 32 years of conflict to further claims for prosecution and reparation.
But Nader Nadery, a commissioner, said any claim for compensation may now be nullified by a recently approved amnesty law, which controversially offers blanket immunity to warlords who committed outrages in the past.
Russia is one of the Paris Club of nations which on Wednesday announced it would write-off a billion dollars of debt owed by Afghanistan.
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Afghan army losing soldiers faster than hoped: report
The Canadian Press Thursday Mar. 18, 2010 2:18 PM ET
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — They are supposed to be our exit strategy.
But the latest Canadian government quarterly assessment raises concern about the number of soldiers leaving the Afghan National Army, which is expected to take over security in key Kandahar districts by next summer.
Although the high attrition rate among Afghan soldiers has always bothered Canadian and NATO mentors, the challenge of recruiting, training and keeping those soldiers has started to weigh more heavily as Canada prepares to wind down its military mission in Afghanistan in 2011.
The report, released late Wednesday in Ottawa, said the benchmark of a capable security force "continues to be challenged by issues relating to attrition, retention and recruiting."
Another battalion, or kandak, of Afghan soldiers under Canadian guidance has reached its top-tier status. That makes two battalion-sized units ready to go, but the report said they're undermanned and the ranks looked thin last fall.
"Leave granted to soldiers around the Eid holiday and following the presidential elections likely contributed to decreased (Afghan National Army) capacity in this quarter," said the quarterly report, which covers the period up to the end of 2009.
"Until targeted ANA growth is realized, benchmarks for shouldering the security burden and leading security operations will continue to be a challenge."
Neither of the two battalions were operating at 70 per cent strength, which is Canada's benchmark goal.
More Afghan troops are being linked with U.S. units for training and that has meant a decline in the number of operations conducted with Canadians.
It's a sign the Afghans don't yet have enough troops to go around.
The overall Afghan army is reporting an attrition rate of about 18 per cent, according to figures released by NATO. It's not clear what the rate is like for units in the south, where most of the fighting is taking place.
Officers with the Canadian-led Task Force Kandahar were not immediately available for comment Thursday.
The quarterly report noted a recent 40 per cent pay increase -- to US$165 a month per enlisted soldier -- has "stimulated recruiting."
The U.S. general in charge of the combined army-police training command in Afghanistan acknowledged last week that high attrition rates were hampering efforts to build security forces.
Lt.-Gen. William Caldwell told a NATO briefing that he has begun to wonder if the allies would reach their goal of expanding the Afghan army to more than 170,000 soldiers by October 2011. A longer-term goal is to reach 240,000 soldiers and 160,000 police within five years.
In September, only 880 young Afghans signed induction papers but by December that figured had jumped to 7,800.
Caldwell attributed the 800 per cent increase to the pay hike, which was also extended to the police.
"Whether you serve in the Afghan National Police or in the Afghan National Army you have pay parity and rank and longevity pay, which is a very positive step forward," he said after briefing NATO's council on March 3.
Putting cops on par with soldiers in terms of pay is seen as a way to combat deep-rooted corruption within police ranks. The Afghan National Police suffer from an even worse attrition rate of 25 per cent.
Low morale has allowed the Taliban to infiltrate police ranks. Five British soldiers were murdered by a rogue Afghan policeman last summer.
In order to beef up security, Caldwell said new Afghan recruits are required to submit to a biometrics scan and background check before they are trained.
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Afghanistan spy contract goes sour
By Pratap Chatterjee Mar 19, 2010 Asia Times Online
WASHINGTON - Mike Furlong, a top Pentagon official, is alleged to have run a covert network of contractors to supply information for drone strikes and assassinations in Afghanistan and Pakistan for the United States government.
The contract built on his decade-long experience in running propaganda programs for the military in Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq.
Officially, Furlong worked in strategic communications for General David Petraeus, the head of the US Central Command. In reality, Furlong was in charge of a project titled "Capstone", under which he hired former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and US Special Forces operatives who helped him gather intelligence on the whereabouts of "suspected militants and the location of insurgent camps" that was then transmitted to high-ranking Pentagon and CIA officials for "possible lethal action in Afghanistan and Pakistan".
To do this, Furlong allegedly tapped the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, a Pentagon research organization that aims to reduce the threat from roadside bombs, to provide him with a US$24.6 million pot of money via two obscure contracting offices - the Cultural Engagement Group at the Special Operations Command Central in Tampa, Florida, and the Counter Narcoterrorism Technology Program Office in Dahlgren, Virginia.
With this money, he allegedly hired a newly minted company called International Media Ventures (IMV) of St Petersburg, Florida, and attempted to subcontract other individuals and companies to run surveillance operations in South Asia.
One of the companies Furlong attempted to subcontract was AfPax Insider, a subscription service run by Robert Young Pelton, author of The World's Most Dangerous Places, and Eason Jordan, a former chief news executive for CNN. After learning more about what Furlong wanted to do, Pelton told Inter Press Service (IPS) that he opted out of the program in late 2009.
"When we suspected what he was doing, we protested. That moral stand cost us millions," he said.
At the time Pelton made his concerns known to IPS that Furlong might have set up IMV for clandestine operations. He says that he told Furlong that "kinetic action" (ie, drone strikes) was incompatible with "the now accepted counter-insurgency strategy".
In a front-page news story written by Mark Mazetti and Dexter Filkins in the New York Times on Monday, Furlong's secret operation was exposed after the CIA filed an official complaint with the Pentagon's inspector general. The New York Times reports that Furlong boasted to unnamed military officials that "a group of suspected militants carrying rockets by mule over the border had been singled out and killed as a result of his efforts".
Contract spies
IMV's chief executive officer is Dick Pack, who ran special operations for an L-3 subsidiary called Government Services Incorporated in Chantilly, Virginia. For example, GSI provided 300 intelligence analysts such as interrogators to the Pentagon in Iraq under a $426.5 million contract signed in 2005.
On IMV's website, Pack, who once ran Delta Force (the elite US commando unit) also claims to have been a mission planner for a rescue of US prisoners of war in Laos, the aborted 1980 rescue mission to free US Embassy hostages in Tehran, the US invasion of Grenada in 1983, as well as an operations officer for the Pentagon responding to the hijacking of a TWA plane to Beirut in 1985.
Another company that Furlong subcontracted was Boston-based American International Security Corporation (AISC), a company run by Mike Taylor, a former Green Beret turned private investigator who was accused in a 1995 lawsuit by Massachusetts state trooper Robert Monahan of helping drug traffickers by providing phony Greek passports and even arranging a jailbreak in Florida.
AISC employed Duane "Dewey" Clarridge, a former senior CIA official who has been alleged to have been involved in a host of scandals from Iran-Contra to creating the fake uranium smuggling scandal in Niger.
In one previous scandal, Clarridge admitted to have arranged for the mining of Nicaraguan harbors in 1984 to destabilize the Sandanistas. "I was sitting at home one night, frankly having a glass of gin, and I said you know the mines has gotta be the solution. I knew we had 'em, we'd made 'em outta sewer pipe and we had the good fusing system on them and we were ready. And you know they wouldn't really hurt anybody because they just weren't that big a mine, alright? Yeah, with luck, bad luck we might hurt somebody, but pretty hard you know?" he told an interviewer once.
Clarridge has long had a close relationship with Robert Gates, now the head of the Pentagon. "If you have a tough, dangerous job, critical to national security, Dewey's your man," Joseph E Persico quotes Gates as saying in a book. "Just make sure you have a good lawyer at his elbow - Dewey's not easy to control."
Furlong started Capstone in 2008 when he was hired as a "strategic planner and technology integration adviser" at the Joint Information Operations Warfare Command at the Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.
At about the same time, Pelton and Jordan had set up a meeting with General David McKiernan, the top US general in Afghanistan, to offer an information-gathering service on Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Pentagon agreed to consider paying for such a service and introduced them to Furlong.
Unknown to either Pelton or Jordan, Furlong then set up a contract with IMV to bring together at least six unrelated companies on the back of this proposal, including AfPax Insider. Whether or not Furlong had approval from higher level officials to provide covert information gathering for drone strikes, together with benign information-gathering or even propaganda, is yet to be determined.
Some senior officials felt that Furlong was doing a good job. In an August 2009 assessment, General Stanley McChrystal, the top US commander in Afghanistan, wrote that "Capstone contracts should be supported as these will significantly enhance monitoring and assessment efforts".
But Furlong seems to have had exaggerated opinions of what he was doing, referring to Taylor and Clarridge as his "Jason Bournes" (the fictitious assassin played by Matt Damon in the Bourne Supremacy films).
He also boasted about achievements that others have said were flat wrong. For example, he told Pelton that he had helped free David Rohde, a New York Times reporter who was held captive for seven months by the Taliban, by sending a US doctor to drug the guards and supply the rope. Pelton says these claims aroused his concerns.
What made the situation complicated was that the New York Times had in fact hired Mike Taylor and Duane "Dewey" Clarridge to help them track down Rohde. The newspaper confirmed to IPS that they had hired the two men but insisted that they had no dealings with Furlong.
In a statement issued by the New York Times to IPS, a newspaper staffer who spoke on condition of anonymity, said: "The newspaper, Rohde and his family had no contact with Furlong. They had not heard of Furlong until Dexter Filkins and Mark Mazzetti began working on their story. As Rohde stated in the series, no one helped them escape. Any claim by Furlong that he helped them escape is false."
The question remains - was Furlong running rogue operations or did he have tacit approval from his bosses? After the news broke in the New York Times on Monday, a Pentagon official who talked to the Washington Post on the condition of anonymity said that it was "not apparent who authorized" the operation but that the "potential for disaster" was obvious.
The Pentagon says that it has placed Furlong under criminal investigation for his activities, after the CIA's station chief in Kabul sent a cable to the Pentagon complaining about the covert operations and his own bosses at the US Strategic Command Joint Information Operations Warfare Center voiced similar concerns. (Exactly why the CIA was worried about this when they were doing much the same thing is unclear, but there has been a long history of animosity between the two agencies.)
Pratap Chatterjee is a senior editor at CorpWatch. This article was produced in partnership with CorpWatch. It is the first of a two-part series.
(Inter Press Service)
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Defense official says Afghan program was authorized
By Karen DeYoung Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, March 19, 2010
Michael D. Furlong, the senior Defense Department employee under investigation for allegedly running an unauthorized intelligence-gathering operation in Afghanistan, says his now-suspended program was fully authorized by top U.S. military commanders.
According to Furlong, the program, which began in late 2008, was requested by Army Gen. David D. McKiernan, the former top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and approved by the U.S. Central Command.
In an interview with the San Antonio Express News published Thursday, he said McKiernan asked him to provide information "that would enhance our understanding of the environment" in the Afghanistan and Pakistan war zones. He denied misusing any U.S. contract funds.
The program was shut down and an investigation begun by the Defense Department's inspector general late last year after complaints by the CIA and a finding by senior officials under the new Afghanistan commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, that Furlong had stepped outside the boundaries of his contract and the law and "didn't want to operate within the constraints of how we do business," according to a U.S. military official familiar with the situation who was not authorized to discuss it on the record.
Most of the contractors hired by Furlong for the $24.8 million program -- one of the military's many "information operations" programs in the region -- were, like Furlong, Special Operations retirees. Revelations about the program have exposed what the official called a months-long "food fight" between the contractors and some segments of the military on one side and the CIA and military intelligence and Special Operations forces on the other, over the dividing line between intelligence and "information."
A spokesman for Furlong's employer, the Nebraska-based U.S. Strategic Command, or Stratcom, said Thursday, "We will not make Mr. Furlong available for an interview in his official capacity." Attempts to reach him at his duty post, Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, where he told the San Antonio paper that he had been locked out of his office, were unsuccessful.
Furlong's interview with the paper marked his first public comment since the Defense Department investigation became public this week. Pentagon spokesman Bryan G. Whitman declined to discuss the investigation, saying, "We are still in the process of gathering the facts surrounding this to determine if there was any inappropriate conduct."
The specifics of what Furlong is alleged to have done remain unclear. Although news accounts have portrayed his program as contributing to efforts to target and kill insurgent leaders, several military officials said it never got that far. "Never did he feed information that resulted in any sort of kinetic action," the official said.
On Wednesday, McChrystal said he was unfamiliar with the details of the case, adding, "I certainly would never condone inappropriate activities under a contract."
A Reagan-era executive order, designed primarily to enhance the powers of U.S. intelligence agencies, prohibits contractors from being used for intelligence-gathering.
As described by the military official, Furlong's activities were allowed to get out of hand because of his high civilian rank -- he is a DISL, or Defense Intelligence Senior Level, equivalent to a general or admiral -- which inhibited more junior officers from challenging him, and because of limited oversight of such activities in the war theater.
"Who was in charge of him? That's the $1,000 question," the official said. "He had a reputation for saying 'Oh, yeah, McKiernan told me he wants this. I talked to [Adm. Mike] Mullen, and he's all over this' " -- a reference to the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman.
In the San Antonio interview, Furlong said he was called to Afghanistan shortly after about 200 Taliban fighters ambushed a U.S. military outpost in Wanat, in eastern Afghanistan, in July 2008, and caused a high number of American casualties. McKiernan, he said, was "fit to be tied" by the surprise attack and asked for help in providing "ground truth" about insurgent activities.
The military official, however, provided a somewhat different version of the genesis of Furlong's operation, saying that Furlong, as an employee of Stratcom, offered to "fill an information-operations need" that was growing in Afghanistan as Taliban attacks increased in 2008 and U.S. attention and resources were shifting there from Iraq. Information operations include "putting out information" to influence the environment and the enemy, as opposed to pulling in information as part of intelligence gathering.
Furlong prepared a "statement of work" that was vetted and approved by McKiernan's command, Centcom, the Defense Department and the CIA, the official said. "Everybody looked at it and said this needs to be very, very clear to focus on information operations only, not intelligence gathering."
Furlong and the military searched for funding for the program, ending up at the Joint IED Defeat Organization, which researches roadside bombs for the military. "It didn't have anything to do with JIEDDO," the official said, but that organization had contract money available. The approved contract, he said, was "very carefully crafted to make sure it was going to be done legally." The funding was approved in spring 2009.
When Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith, McChrystal's communications director, began last fall to examine some of the work done under the contract, the official said, he determined it had crossed the line into intelligence collection, a conclusion that was supported by JIEDDO officials on a visit to Afghanistan last year.
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Afghan Children 'Face World's Worst Conditions'
March 18, 2010
HERAT, Afghanistan (Reuters) -- Afghanistan is the hardest place in the world to be a child, the South Asia regional director for UNICEF said, with high child mortality rates, poor levels of nutrition and rampant sexual abuse.
"The situation in Afghanistan as a whole is one of the most dramatic in South Asia and also in the world. Afghanistan is the most difficult place to be born as a child," Daniel Toole said on a visit to Afghanistan this week.
"If I could take one challenge, it's survival."
Three decades of war and a worsening insurgency have made it ever tougher for an Afghan child just to survive, Toole told Reuters during a visit aimed at highlighting what UNICEF calls the worst conditions for children on earth.
One of the girls he had just met in a woman's shelter was only nine years old when she was forced to marry a total stranger. Another was just 11.
More than a quarter of Afghan children -- 257 out of 1,000 -- will die before they reach their fifth birthday and 165 out of every 1,000 will die in the first year of their lives, more than any place in the world, according to UNICEF data from 2008.
Afghanistan also has the second highest maternal mortality rate in the world after Sierra Leone, with 1,800 women per 100,000 live births dying during child birth, according to UNICEF estimates from 2005.
"On top of that, we overlay the conflict, and so children are being displaced, their food production has been disrupted, so the chances of being yet further endangered by the security situation ... make it that much more dramatic," said Toole.
'Dramatic Stories, Painful Stories'
Violence in Afghanistan is at its worst levels since a U.S.-led invasion in late 2001 overthrew the Taliban. Since then, intense fighting between insurgents and foreign and Afghan troops has forced thousands of civilians to flee their homes.
An increasing number of children are also fleeing across Afghanistan's borders, said Toole, with many turning up as far away as Western Europe without their parents.
Last April, 24 Afghan children aged between 14 and 16 were found living on a sidewalk of a railway station in Rome. The Save the Children aid group said Afghan children now made up one of the biggest groups of unaccompanied minors in the city.
Other major problems facing children in Afghanistan, particularly girls, said Toole, is underage marriage and sexual abuse. Forty-three percent of girls aged 20-24 were married before they were 18, according to UNICEF figures from 2009.
Girls are often married against their will to men more than twice their age and are forced to have sex with their husbands before they reach puberty.
Toole described a visit he made to a women's shelter supported by UNICEF in the western city of Herat. The shelter is the only place in the city where girls who have been sexually abused or married at a young age can seek refuge.
"Two young girls, one who was nine who was married. She didn't even know she was being married until she arrived and was told, 'here is your husband'. Another married at 11 against her will," said Toole after meeting the girls at the shelter.
"Dramatic stories, painful stories, but I think it's the tip of the iceberg. I found myself thinking, 'how many girls have had this happen and can't get to this center?'" he said.
But despite the difficulties facing Afghan children, Toole said progress was being made, especially in education with an increasing number of girls being sent to school. "There is a lot of improvement but there is still so much more to do here, even if I just think about survival," Toole said.
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Cabinet OKs two weekly holidays
Pajhwok By Rehmatullah Afghan 03/18/2010
KABUL - The council of ministers has approved a Justice Ministry draft law declaring Friday and Saturday as weekly holidays, an official said here on Tuesday.
A spokesman for the Cabinet Secretariat told Pajhwok Afghan News the cabinet endorsed the amended first paragraph of Article 41 of the Afghan Labour Law on Monday.
Faizi Zadran said the draft policy had been sent to the Wolesi Jirga, Lower House of Parliament, for approval. "As and when ratified, it will become a law," he added.
Unlike the neighboring countries, Afghanistan still observes Friday as a day-off and works half day on Thursday.
Wolesi Jirga First Secretary Dr Salehuddin Saljooqi acknowledged the draft law was on the house agenda. He hoped lawmakers would soon vote on it.
The head of the General Directorate of the Institute of Legislative Affairs and Academic Legal Research called the move beneficial for Afghanistan's economy.
Associate Professor Syed Yusuf Halim told PAN they drafted the law in line with recommendations from the Ministries of Finance, Labour, Social Affairs, Martyr and Disabled Affairs.
Observing a weekly day-off different from other countries, Afghanistan had to suffer a loss of 2.5 billion afghanis annually, he argued.
"Taking Friday and Saturday as days off will prove beneficial both for the government and traders," hoped Saifullah Sayhoon, a teacher at the Kabul University.
He said there was no problem with two weekly holidays as most countries, including many Islamic nations, were doing so.
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21 militants killed in NW Pakistan
ISLAMABAD, March 19 (Xinhua) -- At least 21 militants were killed in a clash with tribesmen in northwest Pakistan, local sources said Friday.
During the Jirga (tribe council meeting) between the tribesmen on Thursday in Nekah Ziarat area of Kurram tribal agency, some pro- government tribesmen opened fire on a branch of Pakistan Taliban, in which 21 militants wer killed and several others injured.
Besides, at least three militants were killed when a jet aircraft bombed militants' position in Orakzai tribal agency, local media reported.
Militants are active in Pakistan's northwest where the security forces conducted search and clearance operations in the tribal belt bordering Afghanistan.
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