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Afghan leader's half brother gunned down in south
By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) — The powerful half brother of President Hamid Karzai was gunned down in his heavily fortified home by a close associate Tuesday, setting off a power struggle in southern Afghanistan and raising doubts about stability in a critical area for the U.S.-led war effort.
Profile: Why Was The Afghan President's Brother Ahmad Wali Karzai So Controversial?
July 12, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
In the murky world of Afghan politics, there were few figures murkier -- yet more important -- than Ahmad Wali Karzai.
The younger, half-brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the 49-year-old Ahmad was universally considered to be the most powerful politician in Kandahar, Afghanistan's second-biggest city and the birthplace of the Taliban.
France to Withdraw 1,000 Troops from Afghanistan
VOA News July 12, 2011
France says it plans to withdraw 1,000 of its combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2012.
Pakistan to pull troops from Afghan border if U.S. cuts aid
ISLAMABAD, July 12 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan Defense Minister Chaudhry Ahmad Mukhtar has threatened that the government will pull back troops from the tribal regions along border with Afghanistan in reaction to the suspension of nearly 800 million U. S. dollars of military aid.
US moves toward Afghan guerrilla war
ASIA TIMES By Brian M Downing Jul 12, 2011
The United States is beginning an interesting new dimension to the 10-year-old war in Afghanistan. Counter-insurgency efforts will be complemented by an expanded unconventional warfare campaign in many insurgent-controlled areas. This change in approach may have a considerable impact on the stalemate and hasten meaningful negotiations.
Why the US won't leave Afghanistan
Opinion Al Jazeera July 12, 2011
Surge, bribe and run? Or surge, bribe and stay? How US military bases and the energy war play out in Afghanistan.
Sarkozy heads to Afghanistan to see French troops
AFP 12/07/2011
PARIS - French President Nicolas Sarkozy was en route Tuesday to Afghanistan's Kapisa region to visit French troops, a source at the Elysee told AFP.
Afghan Villagers at Border Flee Shelling From Pakistan
Wall Street Journal By MARIA ABI-HABIB JULY 12, 2011
KABUL - As many as 12,000 Afghan civilians have fled villages along the border with Pakistan since mid-June, seeking refuge from frequent artillery barrages fired by Pakistani security forces, displaced families and the United Nations say.
AIHRC Concerned Over Rise in Human Trafficking
Tolo news July 12, 2011
Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission on Tuesday voiced concern about a surge in women and child trafficking in the country.
MPs Claim Azizi Bank on the Verge of Collapse
Tolo news July 11, 2011
Some parliamentarians on Monday warned that Azizi Bank, Afghanistan's second-biggest private financial institution, is on the brink of collapse.
Lawmakers allege Afghan bank made questionable loans; Azizi Bank insists it’s on solid footing
Associated Press July 11, 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan lawmakers demanded assurances Monday that a top Afghan bank is on solid financial footing and not facing collapse like the corruption-ridden Kabul Bank. Azizi Bank officials said rumors of problems at the bank were baseless and offered to open its books to auditors.
AFGHANISTAN: The worst place to be a mother
KABUL, 12 July 2011 (IRIN) - Authorities are striving to improve health conditions for women in Afghanistan, where maternal mortality and female life expectancy indicators are the worst in the world, says a new report.
Suspect in Mutilation of an Afghan Woman Is Freed
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN July 11, 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan - The only suspect arrested in the case of a woman mutilated for leaving her husband has been released, local Afghan officials and the woman’s father said Monday, in a move that has angered human rights advocates and the woman’s family.
‘Love Crimes of Kabul’: Meet the Sex Outlaws of Afghanistan
Wall Street Journal By Nick Andersen July 11, 2011
Filmmaker Tanaz Eshaghian says Westerners haven’t gotten the real story about the life of women in Afghanistan.
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Afghan leader's half brother gunned down in south
By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) — The powerful half brother of President Hamid Karzai was gunned down in his heavily fortified home by a close associate Tuesday, setting off a power struggle in southern Afghanistan and raising doubts about stability in a critical area for the U.S.-led war effort.
The assassination of Ahmed Wali Karzai, a wheeler-dealer and the key to his half brother's power in the south, leaves the president without an influential ally to handle the tricky job of balancing the interests of the region's tribal and political leaders, drug runners, insurgents and militias.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, but officials immediately cast doubt that they were involved. If they were, it could undercut the president's own effort to talk peace with insurgents as foreign forces begin their exit.
The gunman's motive was unclear. He was identified as Sardar Mohammad, who had provided security for Wali Karzai and members of his family. Tooryalai Wesa, the provincial governor of Kandahar, described Mohammad as a close, "trustworthy" person who had gone to Wali Karzai's house purportedly to get him to sign some papers.
The two men met alone in a room. As Wali Karzai was signing the papers, the assassin "took out a pistol and shot him with two bullets — one in the forehead and one in the chest," Wesa said. Another official, however, said the wounds were to Wali Karzai's head, hand and leg.
Wali Karzai's bodyguards then rushed into the room and gunned down Mohammad.
The assassination took place less than two hours before the president held an outdoor news conference with French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Kabul. Before it started, tears welled up in the eyes of Karzai associates. When Karzai arrived, he spoke in a somber voice.
"This morning my younger brother Ahmed Wali Karzai was murdered in his home," the president said. "Such is the life of Afghanistan's people. In the houses of the people of Afghanistan, each of us is suffering and our hope is, God willing, to remove this suffering from the people of Afghanistan and implement peace and stability."
Later that evening, the president flew south to Kandahar to be with his slain brother and relatives. A funeral was scheduled for Thursday, and Wali Karzai was to be buried in Karz, the Karzai family village in Kandahar province — the spiritual birthplace of the Taliban movement and the site of recent coalition military offensives.
Wali Karzai, who was in his 50s, was for years a lightning rod for criticism of corruption in the government. He was seen by many as a political liability for Karzai after a series of allegations including that he was involved in drug trafficking. He denied the charges. The president repeatedly challenged his accusers to show him evidence of his sibling's wrongdoing, but said nobody ever could.
With no concrete evidence to force his ouster, U.S. officials worked to persuade Wali Karzai to align his activities with coalition goals, or at least not impede them.
"Mr. Karzai has been the target of endless accusations about being a drug dealer and many other things," said Bruce Riedel, an ex-CIA officer and former adviser to the White House on Afghan policy. "As far as I know, talking to people in the U.S. government, these are accusations backed up by very little evidence."
The death of Wali Karzai, who helped shore up his family's interests in the Taliban's southern heartland, leaves a void, he said.
"Like him or hate him, he was a key political player in Kandahar and it will be hard to find someone to fill his role," said Riedel, now a senior fellow focusing on counterterrorism for the Brookings Institution in Washington.
Wali Karzai was a controversial figure within the U.S. government. There were allegations that he was on the CIA payroll for years, partly for helping recruit a paramilitary force to rein in the Taliban.
Rustam Shah, former Pakistan ambassador to Afghanistan, said Wali Karzai's tribal maneuverings in Kandahar laid the foundation for the president's strength in the south — and created powerful enemies for his brother as well.
"He had created influential rivals and enemies who were sitting on the wrong side of the tribal lines when he was alive but now may come into prominence in the tribal infrastructure of Kandahar," Shah said. "The president will have to be very careful to move quickly to consolidate and maintain his power structure in Kandahar."
Wali Karzai had been the target of multiple assassination attempts, including ones in 2008 and 2009.
His house is hidden behind 8-foot (2.5 meter) blast walls on a Kandahar street barricaded at either end by guards who search vehicles for explosives. Every day, scores of tribal leaders and others from the south arrive in hopes of getting Wali Karzai's help resolving disputes. They gather in a large room on the first floor dominated by an 8-foot painting of Wali Karzai's father.
According to a government official with knowledge of the investigation, Wali Karzai had been meeting in his home with five provincial council members and a number of local village elders, including the assassin. The official said Mohammad was a close friend and had represented Wali Karzai many times in their shared home village of Karz. Mohammad was the village elder of Karz and was his emissary and travel companion throughout Kandahar, the official said.
At about 11:30 a.m., Mohammad asked Wali Karzai to speak with him privately and to sign some papers in an adjoining room, the official said. Three shots rang out and Wali Karzai's bodyguards ran into the room where they found him on the floor with bullet wounds to his head, hand and leg, the official said. The bodyguards then shot and killed the assassin.
In their statement claiming responsibility for the attack, the Taliban said the assassin "was in contact with the mujahideen for a long time" and fired at his victim as he was leaving the bathroom.
Kandahar provincial police chief Gen. Abdul Razaq said that for more than seven years, Mohammad had been both a security coordinator and close friend of Wali Karzai. Mohammad also provided security for members of the Karzai family, Razaq said, adding that police investigating the death had arrested several security men who were guarding Mohammad's home in Karz.
"Today was not the first time he was armed and with Ahmed Wali Karzai alone," said Razaq. "He had many opportunities before now, so something must have changed."
The White House said the U.S. condemned "in the strongest possible terms" the murder of the president's half brother and would work with Afghan officials to investigate the killing. "Our prayers and sympathies are with the Karzai family during this difficult time," White House spokesman Jay Carney said.
U.S. Gen. David Petraeus, the outgoing commander of NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said in a statement, "President Karzai is working to create a stronger, more secure Afghanistan, and for such a tragic event to happen to someone within his own family is unfathomable."
A senior official in the British Foreign Office said the killing was likely to lead to a period of "turbulence" in Kandahar, but insisted it would not affect the process of handing over security to Afghan forces — a transition set to begin in seven areas of the country this month, although not in Kandahar.
Mohammad Yusuf Pashtun, an adviser to Karzai, said that he doubted Wali Karzai's death would sway the president from his efforts to negotiate peace with the Taliban. "I don't expect Karzai's mind to change about reconciliation," he said.
However, Rahimullah Yusufzai, an analyst and Pakistani journalist who has interviewed Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, said the death could alter the president's approach to seeking a political resolution to the nearly decade-long war.
"We don't know if they (Taliban) were involved but I think his death will affect a lot of the president's thinking, particularly about future negotiations with the Taliban," said Yusufzai.
Karzai blames the Taliban for the death of his father in Pakistan in the 1990s.
"If it is determined that the Taliban were behind the killing then the president may wonder at his decision to reconcile with the Taliban," Yusufzai said.
Riechmann reported from Kabul. Associated Press writers Amir Shah, Rahim Faiez, Solomon Moore and Heidi Vogt in Kabul, Kathy Gannon in Islamabad, and Kimberly Dozier, Adam Goldman, Ben Nuckols and Julie Pace in Washington contributed to this report.
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Profile: Why Was The Afghan President's Brother Ahmad Wali Karzai So Controversial?
July 12, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
In the murky world of Afghan politics, there were few figures murkier -- yet more important -- than Ahmad Wali Karzai.
The younger, half-brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the 49-year-old Ahmad was universally considered to be the most powerful politician in Kandahar, Afghanistan's second-biggest city and the birthplace of the Taliban.
But the source of his power extended far beyond his official position as the head of Kandahar's elected provincial council.
And it was exactly questions over where his immense power and wealth came from that made him both so controversial and difficult to define.
That he was powerful, there is no doubt. Just last month, a delegation of tribal elders from Kandahar went to Kabul to lobby President Karzai to make Ahmad Wali the governor of Kandahar -- a step which would have given him virtually monopoly rule over the province.
One of Ahmad Wali Karzai's supporters, Agha Lalai Dastgiri, told RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan: "About 20 days ago a delegation representing all the tribes, more than 100 people, went to Kabul. They visited the president and asked him to appoint Ahmad Wali Karzai as Kandahar's governor, because the people think that would decrease and solve their problems."
Dastgiri is a member of the Kandahar Provincial Council and the head of the Kandahar Peace Commission.
One source of Ahmad Wali Karzai's power was undoubtedly his close family ties to his brother. Like the president, Ahmad Wali Karzai was an elder of the powerful Popalzai Pashtun tribe in southern Afghanistan and, with his brother, rose to power with U.S. support in the wake of Washington's 2001 invasion to topple the Taliban.
But while those important familial and regional ties may have helped him be elected to the Kandahar Provincial Council in 2005, he soon proved highly adept at amassing power and money on his own account.
When Ahmad Wali Karzai died on July 12 by an assassin's hand in his own heavily guarded home in the southern city, he was widely considered to be among Afghanistan's 10 richest men.
And the very fact that he had so much money immediately made it difficult to know even what might have motivated his killer -- Sardar Mohammad, a senior bodyguard trusted by the family -- to fatally shoot him in the head and chest before being immediately shot dead himself by other guards.
Accusations Of Corruption
Among the most persistent charges leveled against Ahmad Wali Karzai -- both by critics and some allies -- were corruption and links to the drug trade.
In Western media, and Western capitals, he was so often portrayed as a symbol of cronyism that he became a lightening rod for criticism of all that is wrong with President Karzai's administration.
"The New York Times" reported last year that senior U.S. officials spent months weighing allegations against Ahmad Wali Karzai, including that he paid off Taliban insurgents, that he laundered money, that he seized government land, that he reaped enormous profits by facilitating the shipment of opium through his region.
The top-level U.S. review of Ahmad Wali Karzai included a classified briefing presided over by General Stanley McChrystal on March 8, 2010, at NATO headquarters in Kabul.
But, the paper reported, the U.S. review ultimately concluded that the evidence, some compelling, some circumstantial, was not clear enough to persuade President Karzai to dismiss his brother.
And it was considered advisable to leave things in place in Kandahar as the United States itself prepared to launch a major operation to increase security in Kandahar, which began late last year and continues today.
Ahmad Wali Karzai consistently denied all allegations against him, saying they were politically motivated.
After "The New York Times" published an article in October 2008 headlined "Reports Link Karzai's Brother to Afghanistan Heroin Trade," he told reporters at a press conference that the accusation was "just a rumor."
He continued: "Up to this minute, nobody is able to prove it. So it is like a ghost. People say there is a ghost but you cannot see it, you cannot touch it, you cannot hear it, and [still] it is [supposedly] there. So all the accusations 'The New York Times' is saying in its report, I am ready to answer one by one."
Ahmad Wali Karzai told Britain's "Financial Times" last year: "It's very difficult to be the president's brother, believe me."
...And CIA Ties
But the now-deceased Kandahar kingpin's relations with Washington may have been still more complicated that the consistent criticism of him might suggest.
Just how complicated they could be was hinted at two years ago by a spate of media investigations into persistent rumors he had received regular payments from the CIA for much of the past eight years.
"The New York Times" reported in September 2009 that the U.S. intelligence agency paid him for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force -- the Kandahar Strike Force -- that conducts raids against suspected insurgents at the CIA's direction in and around Kandahar.
Similarly, the paper reported, Washington paid Karzai for allowing CIA and U.S. commandos to rent a large compound outside the city.
Ahmad Wali Karzai subsequently called the newspaper's report "ridiculous" and White House spokesman Robert Gibbs refused to comment on any relationship between Karzai and the CIA, as did CIA spokesman George Little.
Power Vacuum In Kandahar
Now, with Ahmad Wali Karzai's assassination in Kandahar, Washington has lost someone who --depending upon which reports one finds credible -- was simultaneously both a partner and a liability for the West.
Just how much of each may be become clearer as more details of his death -- and the motives of his assassin -- become known. But for now the bizarre circumstances of his shooting by a trusted associate only shrouds his life in greater mystery than ever.
More immediately, Ahmad Wali Karzai's death plunges Kandahar into a power vacuum at a critical time for U.S. hopes to increase security in Kandahar as Washington prepares for an initial withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan next year.
Despite the steady criticism of Ahmad Wali Karzai as a polarizing figure in Kandahar who could complicate efforts to win over the population and supplant the Taliban, many U.S. and foreign officials have also at times recognized his huge reach within the city. He was seen as someone with the contacts to get things done, even if one had misgivings about his methods.
"The death is a huge loss, as it happened at a time that the power transition and national reconciliation is in progress," Khalid Pashtoon, a member of parliament from Kandahar and the first deputy of the lower house in the Afghan parliament, told RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal. "In addition, the area is plagued by daily fighting and insecurity. Ahmad Karzai was an influential person in the whole area."
The latest assassination attempt was not the first upon Ahmad Wali Karzai's life. There were previously at least two attacks against the provincial-council office in Kandahar that Karzai claimed were directed at him. One was in November 2008, another in April 2009. The attack in 2009, by four suicide bombers, killed 13 people.
Ahmad Wali Karzai, who was married and had five children, was born in Kandahar city in 1961 and moved to the United States in 1982, where he lived in Maryland and Virginia before moving to Chicago to run an Afghan restaurant. He returned to Afghanistan in 1992.
Asked about the secret of his power in Kandahar, he told "The Washington Post" last year that decades of experience in Afghanistan was his only key:
"I know how to talk to the people," Ahmad Wali Karzai said. "I know how to deal with these tribes. I know what their needs are. I know how to address their needs. This is the skill I have learned."
Radio Free Afghanistan's correspondent Salih Mohammad Salih and Radio Mashaal's correspondent Hassiba Shaheed contributed to this report
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France to Withdraw 1,000 Troops from Afghanistan
VOA News July 12, 2011
France says it plans to withdraw 1,000 of its combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2012.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said during an unannounced visit to Afghanistan Tuesday the drawdown is necessary to end the war. He added that there was “never a question of keeping French troops in the country indefinitely.”
France currently has about 4,000 troops stationed in Afghanistan. Mr. Sarkozy says the first troops to leave will be those stationed in the Surobi area on the outskirts of Kabul. The remaining 3,000 soldiers will be based mostly in the eastern part of the country .
President Sarkozy spoke to reporters after meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and U.S. General David Petraeus. His visit comes a day after a French soldier died after being accidentally shot by another French soldier. An investigation of the shooting has been opened.
A total of 64 French soldiers have died in Afghanistan since the war began in 2001.
All international combat troops are set to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014, transferring security control to local forces.
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Pakistan to pull troops from Afghan border if U.S. cuts aid
ISLAMABAD, July 12 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan Defense Minister Chaudhry Ahmad Mukhtar has threatened that the government will pull back troops from the tribal regions along border with Afghanistan in reaction to the suspension of nearly 800 million U. S. dollars of military aid.
The defense minister told local TV Express in an interview scheduled to be broadcast Tuesday night that the government would pull back troops from the nearly 1,100 check posts set up along the Pak-Afghan border, who have been deployed to check illegal cross-border movement.
He said that 300 million U.S. dollars of this aid specifically goes to troops serving in this troubled region. "This money (U.S. military aid) is not for fighting the war, but is money that we have spent already," he said, adding that Pakistan could not afford to keep its military out in the mountains or in the border areas for a long period of time.
"The next step would be that the government or the armed forces will pull back the forces from the border areas," said the defense minister.
The U.S. aid was blocked to react to Pakistan's decision to expel over 100 U.S. military personnel who had been in Pakistan to impart training to Pakistani forces.
Reports said that the United States is also angry at Pakistan's refusal to grant more visas to its military officers. The U.S. is also considering a move to mount pressure on Islamabad to take more steps against the militants.
To a question about the U.S. Defense Minister Leon Panetta's assertion that al-Qaida chief al-Zawahiri is hiding in Pakistan, Mukhtar said that he hoped the United States would not repeat the mistakes it made in the raid to kill Osama Bin Laden. "This time round we hope the Americans will work with the Pakistanis and share their intelligence," he added.
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US moves toward Afghan guerrilla war
ASIA TIMES By Brian M Downing Jul 12, 2011
The United States is beginning an interesting new dimension to the 10-year-old war in Afghanistan. Counter-insurgency efforts will be complemented by an expanded unconventional warfare campaign in many insurgent-controlled areas. This change in approach may have a considerable impact on the stalemate and hasten meaningful negotiations.
The US is training scores of special forces teams to infiltrate into and operate in areas that the Taliban and other insurgent forces have gained control of in the past few years. Such operations have been in effect for a few years now, but the program is enjoying greater support. Many recently retired special forces personnel
are being asked to return to active duty - a sign that the program is significant and growing.
The teams will be inserted into insurgent-dominated districts, chiefly in the south and east, and charged with conducting reconnaissance, interdicting the movement of men and materiel, directing air strikes, killing political and military leaders, and otherwise wreaking havoc in the insurgents' base areas.
The teams will likely be accompanied by Pashtun scouts from the particular districts who will provide knowledge of the terrain, mountain trails, hiding places, and local notables - friendly or not. Some of these scouts will be defectors whose loyalties will have been thoroughly looked into, though suspicions will remain. This aspect of the effort parallels the Chieu Hoi program of the Vietnam War, which placed Vietcong defectors with US troops conducting operations in tough areas.
It is hoped that the scouts, in conjunction with special forces teams, may in some districts be able to form local guerrilla bands to further weaken Taliban control - an insurgency within an insurgency. Even when the Taliban ruled most of Afghanistan (1996-2001), there were regions that resisted them and even formed insurgent bands to fight them. Today, many local tribes dislike the Taliban but acquiesce to them owing to intimidation or to the perception of their inevitable ascendancy. The identities of such tribes are reasonably known in Kabul and will be likely areas of concentration.
Efforts to build anti-Taliban insurgencies will draw from 1990s programs that lured mujahideen fighters to the government side after the withdrawal of Soviet troops from certain provinces. The Afghan social group (qawm) was useful in attracting defectors as one member on the government side used social ties to attract other members of his qawm.
The program seeks to further reduce the insurgents' momentum, throw their logistics and base areas into disarray, force them to withdraw prime troops from contested districts, and in time, bring the insurgents to a negotiated settlement.
Across the Durand Line? Special forces teams might be used in cross-border operations into Pakistan, especially into the North Waziristan tribal area where the Haqqani network, al-Qaeda and kindred groups enjoy safe havens. Another prospective area would be in the northern part of Pakistan's Balochistan province, which is another insurgent base area and only 150 kilometers from the reasonably secure towns of Kandahar and Lashkar Gah.
United States special forces personnel have trained Pakistani militias along the frontier and so already have knowledge of the terrain and the troops operating there. Furthermore, the US has built its own intelligence network inside Pakistan, which has been successful in targeting leaders of the Haqqani network and most notably in finding and killing Osama bin Laden.
This intelligence network greatly irritated the Pakistani army and Inter-Services Intelligence service (ISI), and cross-border operations by US special forces will only increase the irritation. The US must be prepared for this. Only a few months ago, a cross-border incident led to a crisis in US-Pakistani relations, the constriction of US/International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) supply convoys, and eventually to an apology from General David Petraeus, then the US's top man in Afghanistan.
Since then, however, events have put the Pakistani army and ISI on the back foot. The discovery of Bin Laden living comfortably near an army base, increased revelations of ties with various militant groups, and most recently suspected complicity in the murder of Syed Saleem Shahzad, Asia Times Online's Pakistan bureau chief, have cast a harsh light on a darker part of Pakistan.
Many countries are looking on Pakistan as a rogue state - and a failing one. Nonetheless, stepped-up cross border activity may bring not only increased tension between the US and Pakistan, but also firefights between their troops.
Prospects Guerrilla operations and the smaller troop levels they require will allow the US to rely less heavily on supply routes winding through Pakistan - a country whose military is now deemed unreliable. A lighter logistical load can be increasingly borne by northern routes from Russia - a country whose commitment to containing Islamist militancy is now deemed quite reliable.
The US has already reduced its reliance on Pakistan for logistics. A year ago, the preponderance of US/ISAF supplies came through Pakistan, but today only 40% do so, and that number is slated to dwindle to 25% by the end of 2011. Pakistan is becoming less important to the US.
Special forces operations will reduce the need for massive firepower, which has long been a source of irritation in the Afghan people and a recruitment attraction for insurgent groups. Heavy fire power will be confined to extracting a beleaguered team or on identifying a sizable insurgent force.
Guerrilla warfare could well allow the US to increase its effectiveness against the insurgents while at the same time reducing its troops levels and expenditures. Both will be welcome in the increasingly restive US public. Unconventional warfare might even intrigue the public, which retains considerable attraction for imaginative forms of war, resonant as they are with romantic figures such as T E Lawrence and less illustrious green berets of the Vietnam War.
President Barack Obama's reduction of troop levels will almost certainly require consolidation into a number of enclaves in the south and east where counter-insurgency operations have met with success and some Pashtun tribes remain hostile to the Taliban. This will in effect cede more territory to the insurgents, but paradoxically this will have advantages. The more territory ceded to insurgent groups, the more territory they must defend from US guerrilla forces.
Many observers will wonder why such unconventional warfare hasn't already been more widely put into effect. After all, the Taliban have controlled large parts of the south and east for a few years now and the US has long had a number of troops capable of such ops. Indeed, one of the principal missions of the green berets during the cold war was to organize insurgencies behind Soviet lines in the event Western Europe were to fall to the the Red army.
Unfortunately, bureaucratic inertia and doctrinal commitment to conventional warfare won out, until recently. Many might even wonder if such operations would have been a more effective response to the September 11, 2001, attacks than overthrowing the Taliban and occupying a country so fragmented and fractious. But wisdom comes only late in the day.
Brian M Downing served with indigenous forces during the Vietnam War and is the author of The Military Revolution and Political Change and The Paths of Glory: War and Social Change in America from the Great War to Vietnam. He can be reached at brianmdowning@gmail.com.
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Why the US won't leave Afghanistan
Opinion Al Jazeera July 12, 2011
Surge, bribe and run? Or surge, bribe and stay? How US military bases and the energy war play out in Afghanistan.
Pepe Escobar
Among multiple layers of deception and newspeak, the official Washington spin on the strategic quagmire in Afghanistan simply does not hold.
No more than "50-75 'al-Qaeda types' in Afghanistan", according to the CIA, have been responsible for draining the US government by no less than US $10 billion a month, or $120 billion a year.
At the same time, outgoing US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has been adamant that withdrawing troops from Afghanistan is "premature". The Pentagon wants the White House to "hold off on ending the Afghanistan troop surge until the fall of 2012."
That of course shadows the fact that even if there were a full draw down, the final result would be the same number of US troops before the Obama administration-ordered AfPak surge.
And even if there is some sort of draw down, it will mostly impact troops in supporting roles - which can be easily replaced by "private contractors" (euphemism for mercenaries). There are already over 100,000 "private contractors" in Afghanistan.
It's raining trillions
A recent, detailed study by the Eisenhower Research Project at Brown University revealed that the war on terror has cost the US economy, so far, from $3.7 trillion (the most conservative estimate) to $4.4 trillion (the moderate estimate). Then there are interest payments on these costs - another $1 trillion.
That makes the total cost of the war on terror to be, at least, a staggering $5.4 trillion. And that does not include, as the report mentions, "additional macroeconomic consequences of war spending", or a promised (and undelivered) $5.3 billion reconstruction aid for Afghanistan.
Who's profiting from this bonanza? That's easy - US military contractors and a global banking/financial elite.
The notion that the US government would spend $10 billion a month just to chase a few "al-Qaeda types" in the Hindu Kush is nonsense.
The Pentagon itself has dismissed the notion - insisting that just capturing and killing Osama bin Laden does not change the equation; the Taliban are still a threat.
In numerous occasions Taliban leader Mullah Omar himself has characterised his struggle as a "nationalist movement". Apart from the historical record showing that Washington always fears and fights nationalist movements, Omar's comment also shows that the Taliban strategy has nothing to do with al-Qaeda's aim of establishing a Caliphate via global jihad.
So al-Qaeda is not the major enemy - not anymore, nor has it been for quite some time now. This is a war between a superpower and a fierce, nationalist, predominantly Pashtun movement - of which the Taliban are a major strand; regardless of their medieval ways, they are fighting a foreign occupation and doing what they can to undermine a puppet regime (Hamid Karzai's).
Look at my bankruptcy model
In the famous November 1, 2004 video that played a crucial part in assuring the reelection of George W. Bush, Osama bin Laden - or a clone of Osama bin Laden - once again expanded on how the "mujahedeen bled Russia for 10 years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat."
That's the exact same strategy al-Qaeda has deployed against the US; according to Bin Laden at the time, "all that we have to do is to send two mujahedeen to the farthest point East to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaeda in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note, other than some benefits to their private companies."
The record since 9/11 shows that's exactly what's happening. The war on terror has totally depleted the US treasury - to the point that the White House and Congress are now immersed in a titanic battle over a $4 trillion debt ceiling.
What is never mentioned is that these trillions of dollars were ruthlessly subtracted from the wellbeing of average Americans - smashing the carefully constructed myth of the American dream.
So what's the endgame for these trillions of dollars?
The Pentagon's Full Spectrum Dominance doctrine implies a global network of military bases - with particular importance to those surrounding, bordering and keeping in check key competitors Russia and China.
This superpower projection - of which Afghanistan was, and remains, a key node, in the intersection of South and Central Asia - led, and may still lead, to other wars in Iraq, Iran and Syria.
The network of US military bases in the Pentagon-coined "arc of instability" that stretches from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf and South/Central Asia is a key reason for remaining in Afghanistan forever.
But it's not the only reason.
Surge, bribe and stay
It all comes back, once again, to Pipelineistan - and one of its outstanding chimeras; the Turkmenistan/Afghanistan/Pakistan (TAP) gas pipeline, also known once as the Trans-Afghan Pipeline, which might one day become TAPI if India decides to be on board.
The US corporate media simply refuses to cover what is one of the most important stories of the early 21st century.
Washington has badly wanted TAP since the mid-1990s, when the Clinton administration was negotiating with the Taliban; the talks broke down because of transit fees, even before 9/11, when the Bush administration decided to change the rhetoric from "a carpet of gold" to "a carpet of bombs".
TAP is a classic Pipelineistan gambit; the US supporting the flow of gas from Central Asia to global markets, bypassing both Iran and Russia. If it ever gets built, it will cost over $10 billion.
It needs a totally pacified Afghanistan - still another chimera - and a Pakistani government totally implicated in Afghanistan's security, still a no-no as long as Islamabad's policy is to have Afghanistan as its "strategic depth", a vassal state, in a long-term confrontation mindset against India.
It's no surprise the Pentagon and the Pakistani Army enjoy such a close working relationship. Both Washington and Islamabad regard Pashtun nationalism as an existential threat.
The 2,500-kilometer-long, porous, disputed border with Afghanistan is at the core of Pakistan's interference in its neighbour's affairs.
Washington is getting desperate because it knows the Pakistani military will always support the Taliban as much as they support hardcore Islamist groups fighting India. Washington also knows Pakistan's Afghan policy implies containing India's influence in Afghanistan at all costs.
Just ask General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Pakistan's army chief - and a Pentagon darling to boot; he always says his army is India-centric, and, therefore, entitled to "strategic depth" in Afghanistan.
It's mind-boggling that 10 years and $5.4 trillion dollars later, the situation is exactly the same. Washington still badly wants "its" pipeline - which will in fact be a winning game mostly for commodity traders, global finance majors and Western energy giants.
From the standpoint of these elites, the ideal endgame scenario is global Robocop NATO - helped by hundreds of thousands of mercenaries - "protecting" TAP (or TAPI) while taking a 24/7 peek on what's going on in neighbours Russia and China.
Sharp wits in India have described Washington's tortuous moves in Afghanistan as "surge, bribe and run". It's rather "surge, bribe and stay". This whole saga might have been accomplished without a superpower bankrupting itself, and without immense, atrocious, sustained loss of life, but hey - nobody's perfect.
Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for the Asia Times. His latest book is Obama Does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily represent Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
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Sarkozy heads to Afghanistan to see French troops
AFP 12/07/2011
PARIS - French President Nicolas Sarkozy was en route Tuesday to Afghanistan's Kapisa region to visit French troops, a source at the Elysee told AFP.
It will be his third visit to the battle-scarred country since he became president. His earlier trips took place in December 2007 and in August 2008 after 10 French troops were killed in fighting with the Taliban.
After arriving in Kabul, Sarkozy was due to leave immediately for the French military base in Tagab in Kapisa province northeast of the capital.
His visit comes a day after a 22-year-old French soldier was killed in "accidental fire" by another French trooper.
In June, Sarkozy said "several hundred" French troops would be withdrawn from Afghanistan before the end of 2011.
"Between now and the end of the year, early next year, several hundred French soldiers will return to France in full agreement with the decision taken by the American president," Sarkozy said at a European Union summit.
His office had earlier said France would carry out a progressive pullback of its 4,000 troops "in a proportional manner and in a timeframe similar to the pullback of the American reinforcements."
US President Barack Obama recently ordered all 33,000 US surge troops home from Afghanistan by next summer and declared the beginning of the end of the war, saying the withdrawal would begin this July.
Sarkozy said he shared Obama's belief that security had improved since the death of Osama bin Laden and that the handover to Afghan troops and police was proceeding smoothly.
Should the situation improve, the pullout of all Western combat troops in 2014 might be "brought forward", he said.
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Afghan Villagers at Border Flee Shelling From Pakistan
Wall Street Journal By MARIA ABI-HABIB JULY 12, 2011
KABUL - As many as 12,000 Afghan civilians have fled villages along the border with Pakistan since mid-June, seeking refuge from frequent artillery barrages fired by Pakistani security forces, displaced families and the United Nations say.
"Afghans are fleeing village by village," said Ilija Todorovic, head of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees office that covers the mountainous Afghan border provinces of Kunar and Nangarhar targeted by Pakistani fire. "The shelling started in January, picked up in the spring and intensified in June with entire towns destroyed."
The most recent surge in the shelling, which is causing a crisis in relations between Kabul and Islamabad, occurred as the U.S. steps up pressure on Pakistan to clamp down on militants following the killing of Osama bin Laden in May. While Pakistan's security establishment tolerates and even assists Afghan insurgents, the Pakistani army is fighting a separate Pakistani Taliban insurgency in tribal areas along the border.
Pakistan has played down the recent border violence, saying the shelling targets Pakistani Taliban fighters staging attacks on the Pakistani border areas of Dir, Mohmand and Bajaur from hideouts in Afghanistan. Gen. Athar Abbas, Pakistan's chief military spokesman, said the Pakistani troops have opened fire to prevent these militants from crossing the border. "There may have been few civilian casualties, but now the situation is under control," he said.
Afghan officials and witnesses, however, paint a different picture. Recent Pakistani shelling has killed nearly 50 people, Afghan officials said. They said nearly 800 rockets have been launched in the past month alone.
"The Pakistani government has to take serious action to avoid the damaging of relations and to avoid a deepening lack of trust," said Waheed Omar, spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
One of the Afghans displaced by the recent border violence is Khan Wali, a 37 year-old farmer from Shaygal wa Shital district in Kunar province. "The shelling started in the morning, killing two children in our village and forcing the rest of us to flee to our relatives' homes," he said "Our village is deserted since 20 days ago. We have no camps, and some aid groups are giving us wheat. We are asking our president to allow our border police to shell Pakistan back."
The Afghan government says it will not retaliate.
Pakistan has been fighting homegrown Taliban militants in the tribal regions along the border for more than three years. Militants regrouped in Mohmand after defeats in the Swat Valley and South Waziristan. The army launched an offensive earlier this year involving 4,000 soldiers that won back control of most of Mohmand.
But Pakistani commanders estimate around 800 Taliban fighters remain lodged in the mountains and regularly move into Afghanistan to replenish supplies.
The U.S.-led coalition says the shelling is an issue between Pakistan and Afghanistan and wouldn't comment on why the attacks are taking place, or take side in the dispute between two ostensible allies.
"We have contacted coalition forces several times, but we haven't seen any cooperation from them so far," says Wasifullah Wasefi, the Kunar governor's spokesman.
The U.S.-led coalition pulled out from Nuristan in 2009 and from parts of neighboring Kunar last year, a shift that allowed some Pakistani Taliban and al Qaeda members to find refuge in the region's remote valleys. U.S. Special Operations Forces, however, continue acting in the area, frequently killing insurgents in night raids and air strikes.
Complicating the matter is the fact that Afghanistan never recognized the British-drawn border with Pakistan, the so-called Durand line that divided between the two countries Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, the Pashtuns. The border is porous and many tribes living along it consider it their right to move freely across.
Stepped-up military operations in southern Afghanistan by U.S., British and Afghan forces since last year also has led to an influx of insurgents into the eastern provinces, including Kunar, Nangarhar and Nuristan, Afghan and Western officials said.
On a recent visit to Mohmand, a Pakistani tribal region on the border with Kunar, Lt. Gen. Asif Yasin Malik, the top commander for the northwest, said Pakistan had repeatedly asked for better U.S. and Afghan cooperation in controlling the border, but failed to secure it. —Tom Wright, Zia Sultani and Zahid Hussain contributed to this article.
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AIHRC Concerned Over Rise in Human Trafficking
Tolo news July 12, 2011
Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission on Tuesday voiced concern about a surge in women and child trafficking in the country.
The latest report by Afghan independent human rights commission on trafficking of women and children said human traffickers used coordinated methods to allure women and children to take them outside the country.
The report calls on the Afghan government and the international community to take necessary measures to prevent human trafficking.
It covers twenty provinces and 457 respondents, who became the victim of human trafficking, participated in the report.
The report finds poverty, unemployment, corruption and insecurity as the factors behind an increase in human trafficking.
After women and children are trafficked out of the country, they get sexually abused and face other sorts of violence.
Suraya Sobhrang, a commissioner for AIHRC, said: "Afghanistan is a source of human trafficking and also on the crossroads of such activities."
"There is no security and most parts of the country lack the influence of the central government," she added.
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MPs Claim Azizi Bank on the Verge of Collapse
Tolo news July 11, 2011
Some parliamentarians on Monday warned that Azizi Bank, Afghanistan's second-biggest private financial institution, is on the brink of collapse.
But the allegation was dismissed by governor of Azizi Bank.
An investigation into Azizi Bank by International Monetary Fund has been impeded by some government officials for several times, some lawmakers claimed.
Governor of Azizi Bank Mirwais Azizi denied having any connection with International Monetary Fund.
On Monday the Afghan House of Representatives, fearing Azizi Bank would have the same fate as that of Kabul Bank that sank the country into crisis, discussed the bank and warned of possible bankruptcy.
Hossain Fahimi, Afghan MP, said: "I want to announce to all Afghans from here that Azizi Bank would face the same fate as the Kabul Bank."
"Azizi Bank is facing collapse. Most clients of Onyx Construction Company have taken loans from Azizi Bank. Loans should be based on regulations," another member of parliament, Monawar Shah Bahaduri, said.
Some parliamentarians accused "certain lawmakers" of receiving cash to keep their mouth shut regarding the issue.
"Today early in the morning, they brought me one million dollars and asked me to keep quiet," Abdul Zaher Qadir, Afghan MP, claimed without elaborating further.
But Governor of Azizi Bank Mirwais Azizi told TOLO news: "We totally dismiss this allegation. Azizi Bank has only one building and all the other physical assets belong to the bank. The bank has no other property to sell."
Mr Azizi further said that "around $200 millions of $550 millions of deposit in Azizi Bank are paid in loans and the remaining 300 to 350 millions of dollars are available in cash in the bank and in the central bank."
Legislators asked the acting governor of the central bank to update the house this weekend about the current state of Azizi Bank.
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Lawmakers allege Afghan bank made questionable loans; Azizi Bank insists it’s on solid footing
Associated Press July 11, 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan lawmakers demanded assurances Monday that a top Afghan bank is on solid financial footing and not facing collapse like the corruption-ridden Kabul Bank. Azizi Bank officials said rumors of problems at the bank were baseless and offered to open its books to auditors.
The financial condition of Azizi Bank is important because Kabul Bank’s near-demise due to mismanagement and questionable lending has left the nation in financial crisis. The International Monetary Fund’s displeasure over how the Afghan government has handled the Kabul Bank crisis has jeopardized billions of dollars flowing into a country at war and heavily reliant on foreign aid.
Fraidoon Mohtasheme, the bank’s senior customer relations manager, told The Associated Press in an interview at the bank that accusations of liquidity problems were “baseless” and “politically motivated.” He said the bank, which employs 2,500 people, has solid liquidity and was not involved in investments outside Afghanistan.
“Everything is fine and normal,” he said.
Mohtasheme said the bank would comply with the IMF’s earlier request for an independent audit if the Afghan central bank wanted it done.
“If the central bank says that a company needs to come and do an audit, we don’t have any issues,” he said.
Mohtasheme was responding to allegations — which lawmakers made during a heated discussion in parliament — that Azizi Bank had made illegal loans and was headed for the same crisis as Kabul Bank. Afterward, the parliamentarians demanded that the acting central bank governor appear at a weekend session to answer questions about the stability of Azizi Bank.
Abdul Zahir Qadir, a lawmaker from Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan, claimed he had been offered money to not talk publicly about suspected problems at the bank. Manar Shah Bahdery, a parliamentarian from Herat province in the west, claimed the bank had given illegal loans to a construction company, but didn’t elaborate. Still another, Ahmad Bahzad, also from Herat, claimed the company had been told to keep quiet about its loans from the bank.
In an advertisement, aired Monday evening on local television, the bank said it was one of the “transparent banks” in Afghanistan and was working to expand its network of 74 branches around the nation.
“Azizi Bank is not involved in any political affairs and is trying to strengthen the banking system in the country by offering timely services,” the televised ad said. “Today, one of the members of parliament at the parliament said that Azizi Bank has problems. The leadership of the Azizi Bank says that these are all baseless allegations and amounts to a conspiracy.”
The ad went on to allege that the comments by lawmakers were based on “private hostility” and that they were an “attempt to weaken the banking system in the country.”
The bank reported $562.5 million in assets and $513.5 million in liabilities in a statement of its financial position as of Dec. 31, 2010.
The Kabul Bank crisis began last year, as the public discovered the bank made hundreds of millions of dollars in questionable loans to shareholders and politically connected individuals. Some used the loans to buy luxurious mansions in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Others used the money to invest in risky prestige projects like an airline and shopping malls in Kabul. Since then, Kabul Bank has became a symbol of the country’s cronyism and deep-rooted corruption and is now considered a bellwether on attempts to root out patronage and show accountability to world financial institutions.
Late last month, the former governor of the Afghan central bank resigned after fleeing to the United States.
Abdul Qadir Fitrat said he left Afghanistan after receiving threats to his life. He complained that he was being made a scapegoat while the Afghan government had refused to charge politically connected individuals involved in making or receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in questionable loans.
Several days later, authorities arrested two former executives of Kabul Bank for allegedly bilking the bank of hundreds of millions of dollars. It was the first time that anyone has been arrested for activities at the bank. The Afghan attorney general’s office has not disclosed details about the charges being faced by Sherkhan Farnood, former bank chairman, and Khalilullah Ferozi, the former chief executive officer, saying only that they are accused of together taking as much as $1 billion from the bank illegally.
A recent USAID inspector general report estimated that fraudulent loans diverted $850 million to Kabul Bank insiders.
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Associated Press writer Rahim Faiez contributed to this report
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AFGHANISTAN: The worst place to be a mother
KABUL, 12 July 2011 (IRIN) - Authorities are striving to improve health conditions for women in Afghanistan, where maternal mortality and female life expectancy indicators are the worst in the world, says a new report.
According to the State of the World’s Mothers 2011 report, published on 24 June by NGO Save the Children, about 50 women die in childbirth each day in Afghanistan. One in three is physically or sexually abused and the average life expectancy of women is 44.
It said that more than 85 percent of Afghan women are illiterate, while 70 percent of school-age girls do not attend school for various reasons - conservative parents, lack of security, or fear for their lives.
Taking all indicators into consideration, “Afghanistan is the worst country” to be a mother, concluded the report, which assessed 164 countries. Children in Afghanistan, along with those in sub-Saharan Africa, too have the highest risk of death in the world. One child in five, the report said, dies before reaching age five meaning ‘every mother in Afghanistan is likely to suffer the loss of a child”.
“Despite improvements and achievements, we are still very concerned about maternal mortality in Afghanistan," Health Ministry spokesman Kargar Norughli told IRIN. The ministry was therefore giving “high priority to tackling maternal mortality and morbidity".
One strategy that has been adopted is the training of birth attendants. “The country is rapidly heading in the right direction but [it] will take time to establish the optimum human resource base to satisfy the requirement for skilled birth attendants to ensure that each pregnancy and delivery receive appropriate, timely and equitable care,” said Tahir Ghaznavi of the UN Population Fund, UNFPA.
Some 750 professional midwives graduate each year after 24 months of training and the number was expected to grow to 800 in 2012. “If one takes into account the number of midwives graduating in 2011, 2012 and 2013; some 2,300 midwives are expected to graduate and join the existing midwives,” Ghaznavi told IRIN.
Clinics far away
Part of the problem, said the Health Ministry’s Norughli, was that 85 percent of the population live 3-4 hours away from healthcare facilities and 35 percent either live too far from a healthcare centre or do not have access to such a facility at all.
There is also a widespread lack of public awareness about maternal care among communities especially in rural areas, lack of medical facilities available in remote parts of the country, and poor roads or transportation facilities.
Afghanistan is a land-locked, mountainous country where in some places it can take a day to travel on foot, or by donkey or horse, from one district to the next.
Save the Children said only 24 percent of births were attended by professional birth attendants. Some 76 percent of women either deliver at home with no help (their husbands being reluctant to take them to a professional birth attendant), or die on the way before reaching a healthcare facility.
"The old tradition of giving birth before an elderly, uneducated and unskilled woman is still widely practised in some remote parts of Afghanistan," the report said.
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Suspect in Mutilation of an Afghan Woman Is Freed
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN July 11, 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan - The only suspect arrested in the case of a woman mutilated for leaving her husband has been released, local Afghan officials and the woman’s father said Monday, in a move that has angered human rights advocates and the woman’s family.
The suspect, Sulaiman, who like many Afghans has one name, was released with the knowledge of the governor in south-central Oruzgan Province, said the provincial attorney, Ghulam Farouq. Police officials had said that Mr. Sulaiman, the woman’s father-in-law, had confessed to taking part in the mutilation in 2009, though Mr. Farouq said he had recently insisted he was innocent.
On Monday, Mr. Farouq gave two different reasons for the release of Mr. Suleiman: that there was no one in Afghanistan to press the case against him — because the victim is now in the United States — and that he did not cut off the girl’s nose himself.
“If someone commits a crime, then nobody else should be punished or arrested,” Mr. Farouq said. “The crime was committed by his son, Quadratullah, and this innocent guy was imprisoned for 11 months.”
The governor of Oruzgan Province could not be reached for comment on Monday.
The woman, Bibi Aisha, came to national attention when Time magazine used a photo of her on its cover in August 2010, with the suggestion that this was what would happen to women if the West left Afghanistan. A child bride, Aisha (Bibi is an honorific; Aisha asked that her family name be withheld) had fled her arranged marriage to a Taliban fighter, but was captured and returned to the village where her husband, father-in-law and two brothers-in-law cut her nose and ears off after getting approval from the local Taliban mullah, said Aisha’s father, Mohammedzai, who was interviewed by telephone on Monday.
He added that Mr. Sulaiman was one of the people who held down his daughter while her husband cut her. The mutilation took place in Chora, a remote area of Oruzgan Province. Left for dead, Aisha fled to the safety of a women’s shelter in Kabul run by the advocacy group Women for Afghan Women, which publicized her plight a year later.
“The man they let out, he was Aisha’s father-in-law,” said Mr. Mohammedzai, his voice cracking as he spoke. “He was there at the time when they chopped off her nose and did the cruelty to her. He was one of the culprits and should have been punished, but the government released him.”
“We don’t know who released him,” he said. “We don’t know at all. It’s either government weakness or our weakness. We don’t have money to pay the government and we don’t have someone in the government to support us.”
The other perpetrators have not been apprehended because the area is controlled by the Taliban and the police cannot enter it, the police have said. Aisha’s husband, Quadratullah, who is a Taliban commander, fled to Pakistan or goes back and forth, according to women’s rights advocates who have tracked the case.
With the help of nonprofit women’s groups and the American Embassy, Aisha later went to the United States, where a foundation offered to finance reconstructive surgery. However, the operations have yet to take place because doctors felt she was still too distraught to handle the multiple surgeries that would be necessary as well as the long healing period, said Manizha Naderi, who runs Women for Afghan Women, which has also helped organize Aisha’s care in the United States. Now living in New York and learning English, Aisha has been emotionally distressed, although she is gradually stabilizing, Ms. Naderi said.
“When somebody goes through violence like this there’s trauma afterward,” she said. “For a long time she had nightmares that they were coming after her again and cutting her nose all over again.”
“It’s very bad he’s out,” Ms. Naderi said of Mr. Sulaiman’s release. “It sends out a message that it doesn’t matter how violent or how cruel the crime is; if you have connections or money you can get out on the street. It just shows that the justice system is very weak and corrupt.”
Aisha’s Afghan lawyer, Niamatullah Sarabi, said he had not been informed of Mr. Sulaiman’s release until afterward and that the case he had brought against Mr. Sulaiman had gone nowhere.
Human rights advocates said the release demonstrated the depth of the problems in the country’s justice system.
“Impunity has always been expected” in the justice system, said Nader Naderi, the deputy director of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. “Releasing him is a betrayal of the women who seek justice and of the police who tried to arrest them.”
The provincial attorney, Mr. Farouq, who said he was new to Oruzgan Province, said that since he had arrived a few months ago, Mr. Suleiman had insisted that he was not guilty. “It was a huge cruelty to keep him for 11 months in prison,” he said.
“I asked my colleagues if he was innocent and the colleagues said he was not present at the incident, he was outside the country at the time and was arrested when he returned in order to help the police and attorney to arrest his son.”
Separately, at least four men who worked to remove land mines from western Afghanistan were found beheaded on Sunday and Monday. They had been kidnapped with 24 of their colleagues, who were released Monday, according to statements from Afghan officials, the United Nations and the Mine Action Coordination Center of Afghanistan.
Abdul Waheed Wafa and Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting.
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‘Love Crimes of Kabul’: Meet the Sex Outlaws of Afghanistan
Wall Street Journal By Nick Andersen July 11, 2011
Filmmaker Tanaz Eshaghian says Westerners haven’t gotten the real story about the life of women in Afghanistan.
“Westerners assume, whether unconsciously or consciously, that there’s this nation where the women are just sitting around being miserable, quiet, downtrodden, sad,” she says, remembering her time in Afghanistan. “You forget that these are human beings. No one just sits around being quiet and sad, anywhere.”
Iranian-born Eshaghian, the Emmy-nominated director of the 2008 documentary “Be Like Others,” recently returned to her native Middle East to shoot her newest film, “Love Crimes of Kabul.” The HBO-produced documentary premieres tonight on the premium cable network.
The film is set inside Kabul’s Badum Bagh prison, where three women are held awaiting trial for offenses related to sexual transgressions. Their alleged crimes: one girl ran away from home, another had premarital sex with her fiance, a third is accused of the same.
“It’s a very controlled society,” Eshaghian said in a recent interview. “The assumption is that if you run away, you must have committed a sexual act. It’s their version of a girl running away, smoking crack and sleeping with half the neighborhood. Everything there is just much more G-rated.”
Watching women in jail could make for a depressing documentary. But the film is light and open, and the three women at the center are surprisingly bubbly and often even comic in their acceptance of their conservative Muslim society’s harsh response to their crimes of passion.
“In societies where you live a really dark existence, you’ll meet people and they’re laughing, cracking up,” Eshaghian said. “I think that’s just the human spirit responding to where it finds itself.”
Perhaps the strongest spirit in Eshaghian’s film is that of Kareema, a young girl who has sex before marriage with Firuz, a man she falls in love with. After she discovers that he has no intention to marry her even after he impregnates her, Kareema turns herself in to the police. Both she and Firuz are imprisoned for their crime. To avoid further shame and jail time, Firuz is forced to marry Kareema.
“Kareema’s kind of strength is not uncommon in societies with limitations,” Eshaghian said. “Given limitations, women become stronger.”
It was a dangerous shoot for the New York City-based filmmaker. Although her previous film, “Be Like Others,” explored the topic of men seeking sex change operations to become women in modern Iran, Eshaghian’s Iranian heritage made filming there less difficult.
In war-ravaged Afghanistan, however, she said she found filming tough and exhausting. The crew swept in and out for a quick five week period; early in the shoot, a suicide bomber blew up the gate in front of her crew’s hotel.
“It’s a tough society,” Eshaghian said. “People are traumatized and impatient.”
But the war wasn’t always on the minds of the people she filmed, most of whom were members of the country’s deeply religious underclass. A showing of the film at June’s Human Rights Watch Film Festival prompted a lot of comments from audience members curious about the ongoing U.S. conflict in the region.
Eshaghian was amused when she heard these kinds of questions.
“Do you think anybody in this film looks like they give a s— about the war?” Eshaghian said, laughing. “Unless it hits them on the head, they don’t care about the war.”
Still, Eshaghian said that her return to the Middle East reminds her of how different social interactions are there than in New York City. Widespread government corruption and inefficiency in many countries in the region promote a different kind of social safety network, she said.
“Relationships between people are just so much warmer there than they are here,” she said. “Here, I think everyone is so organized and systematized, that we think we don’t need each other. We can just depend on the system. There, because you have to depend on each other, they give more. It’s more human, something is less robotic about it. When I go back there, I feel more human, my spirit feels better. Something gets lifted, and I feel human.”
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