Serving you since 1998
July 2011:   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

July 26, 2011 

Karzai: Long-term Deal With US Must be on Afghan Terms
VOA News July 26, 2011
Afghan President Hamid Karzai says he will not negotiate his terms for a strategic partnership with the United States that will lay out the long-term U.S. role in Afghanistan.

Afghan Lawmakers Tackle Karzai on US Deal
Legislators say president has no right to call national congress to discuss long-term American military presence.
IWPR By Maiwand Safi 25 Jul 11
Afghanistan - President Hamed Karzai is in conflict with Afghanistan’s rebellious parliament again, this time over plans for a “loya jirga” or national congress to discuss future relations with the United States.

Afghan Minister Calls Karzai Government Illegitimate
TOLOnews.com Monday, 25 July 2011
In an audio clip attributed to the Afghan Rural Rehabilitation and Development Minister, he has said that President Hamid Karzai's government has no legitimacy to govern the nation.

Militants attack NATO airbase in Afghanistan
(AFP)
JALALABAD, Afghanistan — Militants injured two security forces personnel in a grenade attack Monday on a major NATO airbase at an airport in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, the local police chief said.

Afghan skirmishes leave 22 militants dead, airport attacked
By Abdul Haleem
KABUL, July 26 (Xinhua) -- The increasing militancy and security forces operations have left 22 Taliban insurgents dead in the southern Helmand province, while anti-government militants raided airport in eastern Nangarhar province over the past 24 hours, officials said.

Tribes Watch and Wait After Karzai Brother’s Killing
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN July 25, 2011
KARZ, Afghanistan - The marble grave of the Afghan president’s half brother, assassinated two weeks ago by one of his own men, lies in this scruffy village that is near Kandahar and bears the family name. The white stone has a quiet to it that stands in stark contrast to the din he left behind.

13 Taliban fighters detained in north Afghan Kunduz: police
KUNDUZ, Afghanistan, July 26 (Xinhua) -- Afghan and NATO-led troops during a combined operation against Taliban insurgents in Kunduz province 250 km north of capital Kabul, arrested 13 militants on Tuesday, provincial police chief Samiullah Qatra said.

Afghan women opposed by former allies
Washington Post By Kevin Sieff July 25, 2011
KABUL - The nine women appointed last year to negotiate with the Taliban were ready to confront the architects of Afghanistan’s most repressive regime. But they were not prepared for a slew of unlikely critics: the very women they claim to represent.

U.S. drawdown, internal crises fuel fears for Afghanistan
McClatchy Newspapers By Jonathan S. Landay Monday, Jul. 25, 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan - The start of the U.S. troop drawdown and a raft of overlapping security, political and economic crises are fueling fears that Afghanistan could sink into wholesale turmoil and even civil war as the U.S.-led international combat mission winds up at the end of 2014.

On patrol with the Afghan army
Our Afghanistan correspondent Jon Boone survived dozens of embedded missions unscathed. Then, one morning, his luck finally ran out . . .
Guardian.co.uk By Jon Boone Monday 25 July 2011
Just as I thought things couldn't get much worse, they did. The decrepit Humvee, a hand-me-down from the US Army, juddered to a halt and smoke billowed from the air vents below the bulletproof windscreen.

A Forbidding Kingdom of Snow Leopards
New York Times By NATALIE ANGIER July 25, 2011
Thomas McCarthy, director of the snow leopard program for the conservation group Panthera, has spent nearly two decades crisscrossing the absurdly rugged Himalayan plateau to study a magnificent, densely furred, rosette-stenciled cat that may well be the world’s most reliable no-show.
Back to Top
Karzai: Long-term Deal With US Must be on Afghan Terms
VOA News July 26, 2011
Afghan President Hamid Karzai says he will not negotiate his terms for a strategic partnership with the United States that will lay out the long-term U.S. role in Afghanistan.

Mr. Karzai said Tuesday that the U.S. must accept all of his conditions for a strategic partnership agreement, including an end to night raids and other military operations by American forces that could cause civilian casualties.

Addressing a gathering in Kabul, the Afghan leader also called on Afghan forces to rise to the challenge of taking control of security from international troops. President Karzai said Afghan forces will soon be able to protect their own country.

Some 33,000 American forces are set to leave Afghanistan by September of 2012. Last week, the first seven areas of Afghanistan were transitioned from NATO control to Afghan forces. Most foreign combat troops are set to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

Violence has increased as Afghans begin taking security control from U.S. and NATO-led forces.

In southern Afghanistan, provincial officials say at least 22 insurgents and two police officers were killed in two separate clashes in Helmand province on Monday.

Elsewhere in Helmand, authorities say a roadside bomb killed two children on Monday.

In the north, NATO says four insurgents were killed Monday during separate operations in Jowzjan province. Five other insurgents were killed in a joint operation targeting a Taliban leader in the eastern province of Laghman on Monday.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Afghan Lawmakers Tackle Karzai on US Deal
Legislators say president has no right to call national congress to discuss long-term American military presence.
IWPR By Maiwand Safi 25 Jul 11
Afghanistan - President Hamed Karzai is in conflict with Afghanistan’s rebellious parliament again, this time over plans for a “loya jirga” or national congress to discuss future relations with the United States.

First floated in April, the idea is to convene the traditional congress to underpin the legitimacy of a possible long-term strategic agreement whereby the US military would retain a significant presence in Afghanistan long past the projected pullout of combat troops in 2014.

The idea of foreign troops remaining in Afghanistan for the long term is hugely controversial, as people weigh their natural suspicion of foreign intervention against the fear that without it, neighbouring states like Pakistan and Iran would seek to destabilise or control their country. (See Afghans Debate Future US Presence.)

Loya jirgas – “grand assemblies” drawn from people across the country – are periodically convened in Afghanistan to debate important national issues and arrive at a consensus view. The idea is that with broad-based participation, the congress will produce decisions that by definition will be accepted by everyone and can therefore be made binding.

A loya jirga was held in 2002, following the ousting of the Taleban regime the year before, and a second was called the following year to approve a new constitution. Last June a “peace jirga” was held at which delegates approved a proposal to negotiate a peace settlement with any insurgent groups willing to come to terms.

Parliament responded angrily to Karzai’s plan, saying approving deals like the one proposed with the US were its own prerogative, and calling a loya jirga to do so would be illegal as it would encroach on legislators’ authority.

The current legislature elected last September, like its predecessor, has not had a good relationship with President Karzai, accusing him of acting in a high-handed manner and ignoring the views expressed and laws made by parliament.

One member, Abdul Hafiz Mansur, said that while the constitution retained the concept of jirgas, the traditional loya jirga as an institution had become embodied in the elected parliament, which had the requisite kind of legitimacy. The members of parliament’s upper and lower chambers – known as the Wolesi Jirga and the Meshrano Jirga – effectively constituted a loya jirga, he said.

“Karzai wants to hold a traditional loya jirga in contravention of the constitution, in order to place his own men there. His action is a threat to the jurisdiction of parliament,” Mansur said. “We acknowledge that jirgas are referred to in the constitution, but why is the president violating [the rules] by arbitrarily convening people and calling it a jirga?”

Another member, Shinkai Zahin Kalokhel warned, “If the demands and views of parliament are ignored, I do not think the people’s expectations of the strategic [US-Afghan] plan and or in other areas will be fulfilled.”

Karzai’s deputy spokesman Siamak Herawi defended the loya jirga plan, insisting that elected politicians would be included in it.

“There is a range of people in parliament from different provinces and with various opinions. But members of the lower and upper houses of parliament, along with elders and representatives of the different parts of Afghanistan will be part of the jirga,” he said. “No one institution has the right to regard this as their prerogative. The jirga is being held to bring members of the national assembly together with other people in order to discuss the issues.”

Previous loya jirgas were criticised because of the role the international community played in providing funding and security. Herawi said that this one would be an entirely Afghan-led affair.

Herawi’s views were echoed by political analyst Habibullah Rafi, who said loya jirgas enjoyed a legitimacy even higher than that of parliament.

“Jirga participants represent the ethnic groups in this country. They don’t need ballot boxes, because the people have voted for them in their hearts. They can even abolish the system of government system and amend laws,” he said. “If the Wolesi Jirga opposes this [loya] jirga, it will be committing a major legal error.”

One of the factors that weakens parliament’s position in its latest standoff with Karzai is that its own legitimacy is widely questioned, following allegations of substantial ballot-rigging in the September election.

“It isn’t a united or [universally] accepted parliament. Some of its members are not committed to this country at all, and work on behalf of others,” legal expert Nasim Nuri said. “Whether to accept or reject this jirga is above the authorities of this parliament. This issue [continued US presence] needs to be addressed by a traditional loya jirga.”

As well as initially refusing to inaugurate the new parliament in January, the Afghan president set up a special court in December 2010 to investigate claims of electoral abuse. That called into question the final poll results as announced by the Independent Election Commission, and verified by the Electoral Complaints Commission with some disqualifications. Those two bodies are supposed to be the final arbiters on election results.

The five-member special court produced its findings in June, announcing that the recounts it had ordered in several areas where electoral fraud was alleged meant that 62 Wolesi Jirga members must stand down and be replaced by others.

Parliament has so far rejected the court’s ruling.

Political analyst Fazel Rahman Oria believes this dispute must be cleared up before parliament can legitimately take a stand on the loya jirga.

Interviews conducted by IWPR suggest the Afghan public is equally divided on Karzai’s right to call a loya jirga, and on whether parliament is in a position to block the move.

Mohammad Ibrahim, a community elder in Kapisa province, northeast of Kabul, said the president had taken the right decision.

“The true representatives of the people are not in parliament. Instead, it contains factions and groups that make deals for their own benefit,” he said. “There will be true popular representatives in the traditional jirga, with no one trying to perpetrate fraud or deceit there. So holding a loya jirga is a good thing.”

Safiullah, a shopkeeper, said the loya jirga was unlikely to be any more representative than parliament itself.

“Everyone knows that agents and puppets of other countries sit in parliament. They’ve sold themselves for dollars. But the jirga that Karzai wants to hold won’t represent the people, either. It will be attended by [local] governors, police chiefs and elders with good relations with government one way or another,” he said. “In my opinion, it would have been better to hold a jirga drawing on legal, political, military and other experts.” Maiwand Safi is an IWPR-trained reporter in Kapisa province, Afghanistan.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Afghan Minister Calls Karzai Government Illegitimate
TOLOnews.com Monday, 25 July 2011
In an audio clip attributed to the Afghan Rural Rehabilitation and Development Minister, he has said that President Hamid Karzai's government has no legitimacy to govern the nation.

But at a press conference on Monday the Afghan Rural Rehabilitation and Development Minister, Jarullah Mansoori, denied that the audio clip contained his voice.

In a four-minute audio clip, a voice that sounds like that of Jarullah Mansoori's says the government of President Karzai as well as the National Council have no legitimacy.

The clip said: "Many people have been killed in the country and he has illegally been president so far. The Parliament has no legitimacy. If they put me in prison and get me fired from my post because of my age, I swear I wouldn't give a damn about it, and I want to assure you all that I would continue to become minister for many times in this country until I am alive."

But Mr Mansoori strongly rejected the audio clip at a press conference, saying he has special reverence to President Karzai.

"No conscientious Afghan could make such remarks. If you go after the sound clip, that's not mine. I'm proud to be a member of the cabinet of the one who is the founder of a new Afghanistan," he said hinting to the Afghan President.

TOLOnews has obtained the copy of a passport which puts the age of Mr Mansoori at 33, which is an inelligible age for a minister's post according to Afghan laws.

Mr Mansoori told reporters that the House of Representatives is one of the biggest achievements and it would be "blasphemous" to call it illegitimate.

"Afghan Parliament is a Mujahid parliament. It would be blasphemous if we call it illegal. We have achieved the parliament after long endeavours and hardship," he said.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Militants attack NATO airbase in Afghanistan
(AFP)
JALALABAD, Afghanistan — Militants injured two security forces personnel in a grenade attack Monday on a major NATO airbase at an airport in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, the local police chief said.

"A few men threw hand grenades at the airport gate and the troops returned fire and the attackers fled," said Sardar Sultani, the police chief for Nangarhar province, of which Jalalabad is the capital.

Two members of the security forces were "slightly injured", he said, without specifying if they were foreign or Afghan military or police.

Witnesses had reported seeing explosions, including rocket fire, at the entrance to the airport.

"There were no gunshots from their side or suicide attacks ... The explosions were from the grenades," Sultani told AFP. He said police were hunting the attackers, who may still be in the area.

An AFP correspondent in Jalalabad said he had heard gunfire, which lasted between 10 and 15 minutes, coming from the airport. He said that the shooting had stopped, but several helicopters were flying over the area.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said it was unable to comment on the attack.

Jalalabad airport, which is heavily protected by US forces, is a key ISAF airbase.

In November 2010, eight Taliban insurgents, including one wearing a suicide belt, opened fire at the airport without inflicting casualties, before being killed.

And in June last year the Taliban attacked the same base in broad daylight with rocket launchers and a car bomb. Two foreign soldiers were injured and several militants killed.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Afghan skirmishes leave 22 militants dead, airport attacked
By Abdul Haleem
KABUL, July 26 (Xinhua) -- The increasing militancy and security forces operations have left 22 Taliban insurgents dead in the southern Helmand province, while anti-government militants raided airport in eastern Nangarhar province over the past 24 hours, officials said.

Afghan police during separate operations in southern Helmand province on Monday eliminated 22 anti-government militants, a statement released by Helmand's provincial administration on Tuesday said.

"In the first conflict, flared up in Musazai village of Musa Qala district, Helmand province at 08:00 a.m. local time Monday when militants raided few police checkpoints and police returned fire killing 14 insurgents," the statement stated.

Two police were also killed in the firefight that lasted for a while, the statement added.

Eight insurgents also sustained injuries during the firefight, the statement further said.

In the second conflict, began in Nad Ali district, Helmand province at 09:00 a.m. local time Monday and lasted for five hours, according to the statement, eight militants were killed.

Notorious for growing poppy and militancy, Helmand 555 km south of capital city Kabul has been regarded as the hotbed of Taliban militants in Afghanistan.

However, Taliban militants fighting Afghan and NATO-led troops have yet to make comment.

In another skirmish which speaks of increasing militancy the armed men attacked Jalalabad airport the capital of Nangarhar province 120 km east of capital city Kabul Monday night, casualties feared, an official said. "Anti-government militants raided Jalalabad airport at around 09: 00 p.m. local time Monday night casualties feared," a police officer Colonel Jahangir told Xinhua. Taliban outfit, according to local media reports has claimed of responsibility, saying Taliban fighters carried out the attack on Jalalabad airport inflicting casualties to Afghan and foreign soldiers based there.

Meantime, Colonel Jahangir asserted that the attackers with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms attacked the Jalalabad airport from eastern direction and the main gate of the airport but security forces after half an hour fighting with the militants pushed them back and brought the situation under control.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Tribes Watch and Wait After Karzai Brother’s Killing
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN July 25, 2011
KARZ, Afghanistan - The marble grave of the Afghan president’s half brother, assassinated two weeks ago by one of his own men, lies in this scruffy village that is near Kandahar and bears the family name. The white stone has a quiet to it that stands in stark contrast to the din he left behind.

Ahmed Wali Karzai’s killing put the region’s spoils up for grabs, and the tribal elite of Kandahar are watching, waiting, and above all, calculating their next move. They all want a piece of the future, and among them are strong men with guns.

Kandahar, the onetime capital of the country, is Afghanistan’s center of gravity and the Taliban’s heartland, deep in the south, where insurgents once penetrated most completely.

“Ahmed Wali Karzai was a lid for Kandahar; he contained it,” said Haji Agha Lalai, a tribal leader. He was a political enforcer for his brother; a kind of C.E.O. of vast economic and smuggling enterprises; go-to man for the Americans; and a bulwark against the insurgency.

He wielded power, tribal leaders can now say, with a Machiavellian ability that made many elders chafe. They say they are unlikely to tolerate that again.

With President Hamid Karzai’s family split by rivalries and the brother he appointed to succeed Ahmed Wali as leader of the Populzai tribe seen as weak, elders predict that the family’s, and by extension the president’s, power in the south is waning. All the possible successors to Ahmed Wali as de facto leader in Kandahar are seen as flawed, suggesting that greater uncertainty and insecurity lie ahead in the scramble to control a rich prize.

Kandahar is the only major city in a rural region dominated by the lucrative poppy trade that supplies the world with most of its opium. Billions of dollars have poured in from American military for security contracts, and billions more from United States and British foreign aid programs. A brisk smuggling trade to and from Pakistan to circumvent Afghan customs yields large payouts to corrupt officials.

The Karzai family’s loyalty to the president has begun to fracture openly, with fights over money as one motive. “I completely disagree with President Karzai on all levels, on the military side, on security and on economics; we are completely at odds,” said Mahmoud Karzai. He cited his brother’s handling of Kabul Bank, in which Mahmoud Karzai was a shareholder and had borrowed more than $22 million from the bank, according to an Afghan anticorruption office report.

The bank was put into receivership after the discovery that it had more than $850 million in bad loans, effectively cutting off the supply of cash to Mahmoud Karzai and other politically connected borrowers. Mahmoud Karzai said he had wanted a plan drawn up for shareholders and borrowers to repay the bank.

Hashmat Karzai, a powerful cousin in Kandahar, has also been battling President Karzai over the outcome of the election from which he was disqualified after accusations of fraud.

Several contenders for provincial governor are outside the family. Among them is Gul Agha Shirzai, a former governor of Kandahar and current governor of Jalalabad. He has a reputation for promoting economic development and for demanding a share of every contract. When he was last in Kandahar, he rewarded members of his own tribe. He fought against people he labeled Taliban, but many of them claim they were wrongly identified, intensifying resentment of the government, tribal elders said.

Another possibility is the current mayor, Ghulam Haider Hamidi, who was close to Ahmed Wali, but whom many Kandaharis describe as distant because he spent many years in the United States. There is also Arif Noorzai, Ahmed Wali’s brother-in-law, who is often described as having links to drug smugglers and ties to the same private security industry that enriched many close to Ahmed Wali, according to a report by the Institute for the Study of War, a nonpartisan policy research group.

Tribal elders complained Ahmed Wali bypassed them in favor of junior members and did not seek their counsel. “He did it to all the tribes, and instability and resentment is the result,” said Haji Mohammed Ehsan, a member of the provincial council and a member of the Noorzai tribe.

While Ahmed Wali was in power, however, his tactics worked. His home was crowded with people who came from Kandahar and neighboring provinces to seek his counsel or ask for favors. His ability to maneuver among them maintained an uneasy equilibrium, albeit one pockmarked by violence. Although attacks by suicide bombers and armed gunmen still took place, he helped the Americans go after the Taliban, effectively eliminating their safe havens in rural districts, although not yet their presence.

One senior American official who formerly worked in Afghanistan described him as a “guy we could always go to and get things done.” The official requested anonymity because of the delicacy of the situation. The price was allowing him great influence over security contracts in the area.

No American diplomats would speak for this article.

“Most of the people feel relief that he’s gone, even in his own tribe,” said Mohammed Satai, a local elder. “Any construction, whether Afghan or foreigner, if they didn’t give him a share, he wouldn’t let them work here.”

A former director of education for the province, Hayatullah Rafiqi, said he had been pressured by Ahmed Wali to hire specific people for jobs as principals at schools. When he refused he was detained and prosecutors asked him to write down the name of every school in the province — there are more than 300. Ultimately, he said, he was released and forced into retirement.

Of more than a dozen people interviewed, only members of the Karzai family believed that Shah Wali Karzai, anointed by President Karzai as the new head of his Populzai tribe, will be able to take his brother’s place. Shah Wali, did not respond to requests through his brother Mahmoud Karzai to meet with The New York Times.

Kandahar elders describe Shah Wali in generally positive terms. The mayor, Mr. Hamidi, recalled asking Ahmed Wali to release someone who had been arrested as a Taliban. Ahmed Wali warned that it was not a good idea, but agreed to mayor’s request. The man later returned to the Taliban, the mayor said. “I believe Shah Wali would not have accepted my request,” he said.

Mahmoud Karzai said politics was not his brother’s first choice. “He doesn’t know every one yet but very soon he will,” he said.

While few of the choices seem appealing, many Kandaharis believe they do need a unifying force. “Any person from any of the districts would come with his problem and go to Ahmed Wali Khan and Ahmed Wali Khan’s door was open,” said Ustad Abdul Halim, a leader of the Noorzai tribe, one of the strongest in Kandahar. “Now the people have lost the door so they are looking until they find a new door.”
Back to Top
Back to Top
13 Taliban fighters detained in north Afghan Kunduz: police
KUNDUZ, Afghanistan, July 26 (Xinhua) -- Afghan and NATO-led troops during a combined operation against Taliban insurgents in Kunduz province 250 km north of capital Kabul, arrested 13 militants on Tuesday, provincial police chief Samiullah Qatra said.

"The special and joint operation was launched in Taws Abad village of Khanabad district at 02:00 a.m. local time, as a result 13 Taliban rebels including their commander Mullah Ibrahim were captured," Qatra told Xinhua.

There were no casualties on the troops during the operation that lasted for a while, he said.

Meantime, Zabihullah Mujahid who claims to speak for the Taliban outfit in talks with media via telephone from undisclosed location confirmed the incident, but insisted only one Taliban fighter and three foreign soldiers were killed during the operation, adding that those captured could be civilians.

However, Qatra emphasized all the 13 people arrested are Taliban fighters and the troops also seized their arms and ammunition during the special operation.
Back to Top
Back to Top
Afghan women opposed by former allies
Washington Post By Kevin Sieff July 25, 2011
KABUL - The nine women appointed last year to negotiate with the Taliban were ready to confront the architects of Afghanistan’s most repressive regime. But they were not prepared for a slew of unlikely critics: the very women they claim to represent.

The Afghan government, along with the United States and other foreign powers, has shifted its focus toward an endgame for the war that could involve a deal with insurgents. That strategy has created a rift between President Hamid Karzai’s High Peace Council — whose nine women and 60 men are charged with directing Taliban negotiations — and the leaders of Afghanistan’s nascent women’s rights movement.

At the heart of the debate: how to preserve the gains of the past 10 years during talks with the notoriously ruthless group.

Since the fall of the Taliban government in late 2001, girls’ schools here have reopened, women have won public office and the burqa is no longer part of a state-enforced dress code. But with the Taliban expected to join a negotiating table where women are vastly outnumbered and outranked, many fear for the future. Female Peace Council members, like Najia Zewari, find themselves on the defensive.

“The women on the council — we want to know that the Taliban will respect our rights, that progress will continue,” Zewari said. “We also want the women of Afghanistan to know that we can be their voice.”

The women of Afghanistan are not convinced.

The men Karzai appointed to the council in October include former warlords and onetime Taliban members. The women are former teachers, activists and politicians, each with horror stories about life under Taliban rule from 1996 until 2001, and injustices they hope to relegate to the past. Together, Karzai said, they could help integrate “our Taliban brothers” into a coalition government.

The presence of women on the panel is further proof, Western officials have said, that the panel is concerned with the rights of all Afghans.

But when the council first met, the nine female members were quickly marginalized.

“The men said ‘Hi, how are you?’ And then they ignored us. We had no voice,” Zewari said.

Members of the High Peace Council have had several conversations with Taliban officials, but negotiations have not formally begun, according to several members of the panel. The Taliban, for its part, publicly denies that such talks have occurred.

“We’re trying to get to a point where both sides can agree on the framework of reconciliation,” one senior member said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The  council’s female members have not been allowed to take part in the initial talks, leaving them exposed to allegations by their fellow women that their presence on the council is merely for show.

“These people do not represent the women of Afghanistan. They're negotiating for our rights — for my rights, for the rights of my daughters — from a position of weakness,” said Fauzia Kofi, a member of parliament.

Many women support the idea of talks with the Taliban, but not without sufficient preconditions and substantial representation, according to Kofi and other prominent female politicians and activists.

Karzai has said that women’s rights would not be sacrificed in the peace process. But the lopsided composition of the High Peace Council and the early experience of its female members have cast doubt on that assurance.

“With the current negotiations, the Karzai government is compromising our rights,” said Suraya Parlika, head of the All Afghan Women’s Union, an advocacy group. “The talks are too soon. They’re too rushed. The women on the council are his pawns.”

Leading men on the council say their female counterparts have unrealistic expectations.

“They want to go as a group of women to meet with Mullah Omar. But that’s just not possible. If they go, they will be killed,” said Ataullah Luddin, the council's deputy director.

“And anyway, we all know that women can’t keep a secret for more than 34 hours,” he said, laughing.

Under the Taliban, Zewari, the female council member, worked discretely with impoverished Afghan women. She was harassed, robbed and beaten.

“I told myself I would not give up. I would work for a peaceful Afghanistan where there’s room for women,” Zewari said. “That means sitting down with the Taliban.”

Many see danger in such reasoning. Once in power, the Taliban could resume its horrific treatment of women, regardless of the terms of any peace deal..

“Some kind of negotiating process with the Taliban is going to be necessary to resolve the conflict. And it is going to endanger women’s rights,” said Tom Malinowski, Washington director of Human Rights Watch. “It's better to face that squarely and to do everything possible to minimize the harm, than to imagine that the Taliban are going to stop believing or acting as they do.”

During the past year, the women of the High Peace Council gained a key ally in their pursuit of reconciliation. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, once skeptical of what Taliban negotiations might mean for women’s rights, endorsed the peace process.

The United States has its own Taliban contacts, and any substantive negotiation will likely be guided by foreign diplomats.

Posters and photos of Clinton pepper the walls of women’s right organizations in Kabul. But some are starting to doubt the pledge that she and other Western officials have made to uphold women’s rights even amid an effort to bring a negotiated end to the war.

“It makes me concerned and confused about the promises made by world leaders," said Kofi. “They’ve always given assurances to Afghan women, but in practice it doesn’t seem that there's much protection.”
Back to Top
Back to Top
U.S. drawdown, internal crises fuel fears for Afghanistan
McClatchy Newspapers By Jonathan S. Landay Monday, Jul. 25, 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan - The start of the U.S. troop drawdown and a raft of overlapping security, political and economic crises are fueling fears that Afghanistan could sink into wholesale turmoil and even civil war as the U.S.-led international combat mission winds up at the end of 2014.

Such an upheaval could spread insecurity across Afghanistan's borders and see it revert to an al Qaida sanctuary — the very outcome that President Barack Obama's war strategy seeks to avert.

"My focus is preparing for the worst," said Amrullah Saleh, Afghanistan's former intelligence chief who fought for the ethnic minority-dominated Northern Alliance against Taliban rule in the 1990s.

The litany of crises include political gridlock, instability in a corruption-hit private banking sector, high-level assassinations, record-high bloodshed and ethnic minorities' fears that they will be cut out of a peace deal that the U.S. and President Hamid Karzai are seeking with the Pashtun-dominated Taliban.

"People are sizing up their options," said a Western official, who requested anonymity to speak candidly. He added that he thinks Afghan political and ethnic leaders will make deals among themselves that avert a "worst-case scenario" and allow Afghanistan's growing security forces to continue fighting the insurgency.

However, he added, "I'm not at all confident that we'll reach a peace deal with the insurgents."

The situation contrasts sharply with the Obama administration's assurances that conditions are stable enough to withdraw by next summer the 33,000 U.S. troops surged last year into the Taliban's southern strongholds, and replace them with Afghan security forces.

The new U.S. envoy to Kabul, Ryan Crocker, acknowledged the uncertainty, saying at his swearing-in ceremony Monday that the U.S. and its allies "must proceed carefully" as they withdraw most of their 130,000-strong forces.

"There will be no rush for the exits. The way we do this in the months ahead will have consequences far beyond Afghanistan and far in the future," Crocker warned.

But reassuring Afghans battered by decades of war will be hard.

"We have so many problems now, imagine what will happen when the foreign troops leave," said H. Mahdood Niazi, who sells pricey jewelry and semi-precious stones to foreigners and the Afghan elite in an upscale mall.

"I am thinking of just shutting up my shop and going anywhere because I know this country is not on the right track," Niazi said.

The value of the national currency, the Afghani, has fallen by 10 percent in the last three months, said Amin Jan Khosty, head of the Shahazda Exchange Market in the capital, Kabul. Businessmen said that the flight of foreign cash abroad is accelerating, and prices in Kabul's overheated real estate market have dropped by up to 40 percent in some areas.

The property value fall began after the U.S. killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan on May 2, which many people realized could lead to a U.S. troop withdrawal, said Haji Abdul Haq, a real estate dealer in Kabul's Kolola Pushta district.

The U.S. drawdown and the "transition" of seven provinces and districts to Afghan responsibility that began this month coincide with a crippling power struggle between President Hamid Karzai and the opposition-dominated parliament.

Lawmakers have impeached the attorney general and five Supreme Court justices and are threatening to impeach Karzai for what they charge is an illegal bid to oust 62 lower house members for alleged ballot fraud. The house members' elections last year were confirmed by the Afghan election commission.

The parliament has responded by refusing to approve Cabinet ministers, respect Supreme Court rulings or pass bills, including an initial $73 million installment of a bankruptcy bailout of the corruption-shattered Kabul Bank, the largest Afghan private bank.

The International Monetary Fund is refusing to bless Afghanistan's annual economic plan until the bailout passes, prompting international donors to withhold tens of millions of dollars in aid.

"Any delay" in international donations to Afghanistan's main reconstruction fund "will have an impact on the speed and success" of the U.S.-led process to complete the transfer of security for the country to the government by the end of 2014, said a World Bank assessment obtained by McClatchy.

The central bank chief has fled the country, alleging that his life is in danger.

"Everyone is after everyone," said Ali Jalali, Karzai's first interior minister. "If this situation continues, it will undermine the very foundations of democracy in Afghanistan."

Western powers hope for a compromise soon. But the standoff has compounded the damage to public trust in Afghanistan's Western-style democratic system, which has seen consecutive presidential and legislative polls that were rife with fraud.

An end to the constitutional gridlock, however, doesn't assure an end to the banking crisis.

It's uncertain if the central bank, which seized Kabul Bank in September to avert its collapse after panicked depositors withdrew more than $600 million, will recoup more than $800 million in fraudulent loans. So far, only $64 million has been recovered. The two former top executives have been arrested, but two major former stockholders, a brother of Karzai and a brother of his first vice president, remain free.

Lawmakers also charge that the second-largest private bank, Azizi Bank, is primed to collapse. That likely would be a mortal blow to the nascent free-market private financial sector of a country whose citizens traditionally have kept their cash under their pillows.

Afghan officials insist Azizi Bank is solvent. But the IMF has made an internal audit of the bank another condition of approving the country's annual economic plan, igniting a rancorous feud with Karzai's government, which says it will begin the review at the end of August.

Violence, meanwhile, is soaring to levels unprecedented since the 2001 U.S. invasion.

The U.S. troop surge into the south and U.S. special forces "night raids" have dealt "a huge beating" to the Taliban and allied groups, said the Western official. And in his July 18 farewell speech as U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus asserted that the number of attacks over the previous two-and-a-half months was lower than the same period last year.

But a July 21 analysis by the respected Afghanistan Analysts Network said Petraeus was citing only attacks on U.S.-led forces, pointing out that the guerrillas have stepped up suicide strikes, bombings and intimidation against Afghan officials and civilians.

The Afghan NGO Safety Office, which provides security reports to aid groups, issued a report this month charting a "staggering" 119 percent rise in insurgency attacks — and a nearly 106 percent rise in civilian casualties — during the 12-month period ending in June.

Five power brokers, including Karzai's half-brother, have been assassinated this year, raising concerns about the security they helped maintain in their regions.

As the U.S. and Karzai try to start peace talks with the Taliban, who have shown no readiness to accept, leaders of Afghanistan's ethnic minorities — comprising around 60 percent of the estimated 29 million people — are warning that they'll fight any deal that they aren't allowed to approve first.

"If they enter into a deal with our enemy, a non-transparent deal, we will reject it," said Saleh, who is a Tajik, the country's second-largest ethnic group, which dominated the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance.

The Western official said the goal is "an Afghan-to-Afghan peace" that respects all ethnic communities' interests. But the convergence of all of these developments is terrifying many Afghans.

"People are afraid that Afghanistan will go back to the pre-9/11 days," said Haq, the property dealer.

The 2001 U.S. invasion reversed the course of a seven-year war that saw the Pashtun-dominated Taliban overrun most of the country. The Northern Alliance, backed by U.S. air power, drove the Taliban and al Qaida across the border into Pakistan's tribal area.

Those ethnic divisions never really healed, and Kabul is rife with rumors that former Northern Alliance commanders are reorganizing their militias.

Mohammad Mohaqeq, the leader of the Islamic Unity Party, which represents Hazaras, a Shiite Muslim minority, said that some of his supporters asked him if they should begin rearming. He said it was too early for that, because U.S.-led international troops have until the end of 2014 to contain the insurgency.

"I think there will be some time, maybe one to two years," Mohaqeq said. "Then we can rearm."

(McClatchy special correspondent Hashim Shukoor contributed to this report.)
Back to Top
Back to Top
On patrol with the Afghan army
Our Afghanistan correspondent Jon Boone survived dozens of embedded missions unscathed. Then, one morning, his luck finally ran out . . .
Guardian.co.uk By Jon Boone Monday 25 July 2011
Just as I thought things couldn't get much worse, they did. The decrepit Humvee, a hand-me-down from the US Army, juddered to a halt and smoke billowed from the air vents below the bulletproof windscreen.

I was now stranded in a broken- down Afghan National Army (ANA) vehicle in the middle of a deadly stretch of highway where only two days earlier there had been a small firefight between the Taliban and the security forces. More to the point, I also had a broken leg.

My right fibula had snapped at the ankle at around 8am that morning after I fell into a flooded irrigation canal near the town of Kandalay in the district of Zhari, the neighbourhood of Mullah Omar (in the days when the one-eyed cleric was gathering his forces for what would ultimately lead to the Taliban conquest of almost the entire country).

I really needed to be in hospital. Instead I was crammed into the front seat of a baking-hot armoured vehicle watching a bunch of Afghan soldiers running back and forth to a nearby puddle, scooping up water into their helmets to cool the engine.

Despite the quantum leap the ANA has made in recent years, they are still not the people to help you when you are in serious difficulties. And it had arguably been more than a little unwise to hitch a lift with the ANA to get back to the relative civilisation of Kandahar City, from where I hoped to get a flight to Dubai or Kabul. Or anywhere with a decent hospital prepared to treat a wounded civilian.

A few days previously, sitting in the comfort of the ANA's 205th "Hero" Corps headquarters on the outskirts of Kandahar, I had been adamant that I wouldn't be driving anywhere in an Afghan military vehicle. On all previous embeds with Nato forces in Kandahar I had never driven anywhere as the roads were considered too risky. Like the troops I flew everywhere by helicopter.

But the "surge" of US troops has changed all that. The roads are safer but there are far too many troops for everyone to move around by air. So I relented and the 30-minute ride out to the district of Zhari, west of Kandahar City, made me realise how small Kandahar is and how absurd it was to fly such short distances by helicopter.

But even if the roads are safe, your life is still in the hands of the ANA, a force where 50% of casualties are due to enemy action and about the same amount is caused by road accidents. Ten minutes into that first ride, after we had just pulled out on to the main road, the driver of the rickety Humvee decided, in classic Afghan style, to overtake a couple of lorries and play chicken with the oncoming traffic. Unfortunately the vehicle in front of us did not flinch and at the last minute the Humvee swerved, colliding with the side of another lorry and wrenching the heavily armoured door.

"It was not my fault! They should get out of the way for us!" The driver shouted, as his companion in the front seat tried to work out how to keep the wrecked door shut for the rest of the journey. He eventually settled on using his seat belt, which he wasn't wearing anyway, to tie it closed.

Happily, although embedded with the ANA, at the time of my accident a platoon of Americans were on hand to get me out of immediate danger. The good humoured infantry troops had produced a stretcher from nowhere, waded the length of the flooded irrigation ditch and hauled me over a couple of walls – all in an effort to avoid the improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that could be anywhere.

IEDs were, in a roundabout sort of way, the cause of all my problems. Because these homemade bombs have become ever more sophisticated it is now almost impossible to detect them. The insurgents have learned to reduce the amount of metal in the bombs to a minimum, making traditional mine-searching devices – essentially souped-up metal detectors – useless. The only way to avoid IEDs is to take bizarre routes through the lush farmland the Americans and their Afghan colleagues are trying to cleanse of Taliban.

It means striking out across heavily ploughed fields, scrambling over the thick mud walls that in Kandahar are used as grape trellises and getting into the thick of lush farmland, with its extraordinary smells of saffron, grapes, tomatoes and marijuana all combined in the steamy morning heat. Often one can be wading waste deep in water just yards from a perfectly solid track being used by bemused looking locals.

If confronted by one of the 8ft-high mud walls with which farmers demarcate their land, US soldiers will typically choose to climb over it, perhaps after smashing off a couple of feet from the top, rather than going through a far- easier-to-navigate hole or doorway – an obvious place for an IED by insurgents, who after years of observing their enemy are well aware of their tactics.

"We hate going through doorways," Captain Max Ferguson, one of the US officers leading the joint American-Afghan patrol, told me. "Every time I take a step through one of those I flinch. It's just a role of the dice whether you are going to step on anything."

The favourite place for US soldiers to put their feet is under water, where even the most resourceful bomb-maker faces fundamental problems of physics and chemistry. And so on that 5am foot patrol we had already waded through a couple of dense, flooded pomegranate orchards that for a moment made me feel like I was in a Vietnam movie, and a couple of water-filled ditches.

Although I've done dozens of patrols all over Afghanistan it's been a long time since I last bothered to take a decent pair of boots. In the days when I did wear the hulking boots I bought years ago from a US Army store I never encountered terrain that warranted the hassle of wearing such cumbersome, sweaty things.

But Kandalay, the village around which we were patrolling, is a place of lush farmland entirely saturated with water from a network of irrigation canals. The terrain was unlike anything I had seen before.

Twenty minutes before my fateful slip Ferguson had already raised an eyebrow at my North Face trainers. "You're wearing sneakers! That's a fail!" He said as I gingerly picked my way through a knee-high quagmire of mud, desperately trying to prevent my shoes being lost to the powerful suction effect below.

The ditch, about 3ft wide and a couple deep, was nothing compared to some of the obstacles we had already tackled that morning. But after a gruelling three-hour patrol carrying body armour and dripping with sweat in the torrid heat, I was looking forward to getting back to the combat outpost and cooling off. I think the ANA were too, and we had picked up speed as we headed for home. At any rate, I was not concentrating as I slipped on the muddy lip of the ditch. I'm not sure exactly what happened, but my foot shot away beneath me, twisting violently inwards and downwards. I heard the bone snap and was in no doubt I was now in serious trouble.

The threat of IEDs have come to shape nearly everything in this war – from the new generation of hulking, super-armoured "MRAP" vehicles that in Iraq are now being toughened up even further to cope with ever more powerful roadside bombs, to the constant worry of soldiers who know their next step might mean death or a lifetime of dealing with terrible injuries.

Mid-patrol one US soldier turned to me and asked whether I was carrying a tourniquet. Yes, I said, pointing, with pride at how organised I had been, to a pocket on my combat trousers where I'd stuffed an army issue black nylon and Velcro strap, complete with sturdy plastic bar for twisting and applying pressure on any ruptured arteries. It is considered an essential bit of kit that, more than anything else, can save you from rapidly bleeding to death after a limb has been ripped off by an IED.

"You've only got one?" the soldier replied, unimpressed.

It's said, although I've never seen it, that some soldiers (particularly those whose job it is to drive around in Stryker vehicles that are far from invulnerable to IEDs despite their massive armour) sometimes wear the things already loosely tied around their arms and thighs in case the worst happens.

Breaking a leg was a personal disaster, not least after my foot became infected and I was hospitalised in a windowless military ward in Kabul for two weeks. But my experience pales in comparison to the horrors of what bombs and IEDs do to soldiers almost every day. During my stay in hospital several of my wardmates were French soldiers whose bodies were covered in shrapnel wounds after a suicide bomber walked up to them and detonated himself. Five soldiers were killed. On the first night the survivors arrived, the man in the next bed to me sobbed himself to sleep.

After my stretcher ride with the Americans I was put in the back of an "MRAP", a giant, almost bombproof, vehicle, that was providing overwatch to the foot patrol. There I had to wait for about 90 minutes for the patrol to finish. There was nothing to do but suck on painkillers and chat to the combat medic who told me about the last casualty he had dealt with a few weeks previously who stepped on an IED. He'd lost both his legs and his genitals. The wounds were so terrible that the medic not only exhausted all his combat gauze – a remarkable material that staunches even the most aggressive pumping of blood – but also the gauze being carried by all the other soldiers in the platoon, as he stuffed the wounded man's wounds with it.

"Some of the people he was closest to are still a bit fucked up about it," he said. "Nightmares and stuff."

That the man is still alive is due to the quick reaction of the medic and the extraordinary resources of the US war machine that was able to scoop him up by Blackhawk helicopter nine minutes after the explosion.

A few days before I had set out for Zhari I toured the ANA's highly impressive hospital that treats people from all over Kandahar and Helmand. The place was full of soldiers and police who had either been shot, blown up or involved in car accidents. One unfortunate soldier had come in two days previously having lost both his legs. In obvious discomfort he could not so much writhe in pain as wriggle slightly. A nurse had to turn him over to help him defecate and to re-dress his horrific wounds.

Noor, my Afghan colleague who had come with me on my ANA embed, turned green at the sight of it and vowed there and then that he would not be going on any foot patrols with me. I rather wish I'd followed his example.
Back to Top
Back to Top
A Forbidding Kingdom of Snow Leopards
New York Times By NATALIE ANGIER July 25, 2011
Thomas McCarthy, director of the snow leopard program for the conservation group Panthera, has spent nearly two decades crisscrossing the absurdly rugged Himalayan plateau to study a magnificent, densely furred, rosette-stenciled cat that may well be the world’s most reliable no-show.

“I’m out here in snow leopard country for half of every year,” said Dr. McCarthy by balky telephone connection from Tajikistan, “and I can easily count on one hand the number of times I just happened to see a snow leopard.”

George Schaller, the renowned biologist and environmentalist and Panthera’s vice president, is vast in experience and reputation and normally raptor-eyed. “I put radio collars on a couple of snow leopards in Mongolia,” he said. “The radio tells me where they are, I go there, I look and look. I see nothing, unless the snow leopard chooses to move.

“If a snow leopard sits quietly and doesn’t want to be seen,” Dr. Schaller said, “you won’t see it.”

To study snow leopards, Dr. McCarthy said, “you have to be very dedicated, or part crazy, or both.”

Yet for all the challenges, the dedicated crazies have carried on, and now a raft of their research is casting light on the rare, mysterious, supremely winterized alpine feline aptly nicknamed “ghost of the mountains.”

Using cannily placed motion-sensitive camera traps, scientists have amassed a wealth of snow leopard images, allowing them to estimate population numbers, identify individuals and track migrations. They’ve also gained a glimpse of the cat’s daily schedule, which seems to involve frequent bouts of territorial marking: cheek rubs, spraying with tail raised, and the digging of little divots in the ground.

Admittedly, the trap method can enrich evidence of leopardian flag planting. “Our rangers know that if you place a camera in an area that funnels the snow leopards past a large rock, the animals will want to spray the rock, and you’ve got them,” said Peter Zahler, the deputy director for Asia programs at the Wildlife Conservation Society of the Bronx Zoo.

Scientists with the conservation society reported in the current issue of The International Journal of Environmental Studies the results of what they called said were the first camera trap records of snow leopards in Afghanistan.

Based on photographs taken at 16 different locations along the vast and frigid Wakhan Corridor of northeast Afghanistan, Anthony Simms and his colleagues suggested that the region they described as “one of the most remote and isolated mountain landscapes in the world and a place of immense beauty” could well be an impressive snow leopard stronghold. “We’ve been surprised at the number of snow leopard detections captured in our survey,” Dr. Simms said in an interview. “It’s a promising sign that we may have a healthier population here than expected.”

Working in southern Mongolia, Panthera researchers have outfitted 14 snow leopards with sophisticated GPS collars that transmit location and motion readings back to the scientists’ computers multiple times a day. “The data we’re getting is just incredible,” Dr. McCarthy said. “The cats are using immense home ranges,” 10 or 20 times bigger than previous estimates. More intimate cat tales emerged as well.

Collars told the scientists when a female snow leopard spent several days dallying with a male. Sure enough, about 14 weeks later, the female’s collar announced that she had entered a cave fit to be a natal den.

Electronic eavesdropping also cast doubt on the stereotype of snow leopard as antisocial hermit. Evidence of two cats sitting together to eat dinner “was quite a shock to us,” Dr. McCarthy said. Beyond mating and mother-cub relationships, he said, “snow leopards are supposed to be solitary.”

Even with the plethora of new findings, scientists still have only the roughest idea of how many snow leopards are out there, or how they are faring in an increasingly humanified world with scant tolerance for other large mammals that refuse to be tamed.

Sparsely distributed across the high mountains of a dozen countries in south and central Asia, snow leopards are considered an endangered species. Researchers estimate that the population has fallen by at least 20 percent in the last 16 years and now stands somewhere between 4,500 and 7,500 free-living cats, but Dr. Schaller said, “those figures are just wild guesses.”

Snow leopards have always been rare, and they have the modest advantage over cousin carnivores like tigers and lions of occupying harsh habitats largely above the tree line, arable soil and easy human grasp.

To Americans, snow leopards are perhaps the most beloved members of the great cat club, the exclusive group that includes tigers, lions, jaguars and leopards. Snow leopards retain the majesty and fluid, predatory elegance of the other big cats while incorporating touches of panda-esque cuteness, the incidental result of adaptations to the cold.

They have wide, furry paws to help them move easily and silently over the snow, and an unusually long, broad tail that serves as both a balance pole for leaping and a wrap-around face muff for sleeping. Despite their name, they are not leopards or, according to a recent genetic analysis, particularly close relatives of leopards.

As William Murphy and Brian Davis of Texas A&M University reported last year in the journal Molecular Phylogenetics & Evolution, the snow leopard’s closest sister species is the tiger. But that kinship ends at the bathroom scale. Whereas an adult male tiger might weigh 550 pounds, said Patrick Thomas, curator of mammals at the Bronx Zoo, a male snow leopard rarely exceeds 100-120 pounds — hardly more than abig pet dog.

Snow leopards neither roar nor purr, and their vocalizations can sound remarkably similar to the yowl of a Siamese cat. As a rule, snow leopards are temperamentally calm and low-key. In contrast to many of the other great cats, Dr. Schaller said, “I don’t know of a single case of a snow leopard that would attack and kill people.”

The same, unfortunately, cannot be said of people’s livestock. One of the major threats to snow leopards is thought to be the growing number of sheep and goat herders who share the cats’ terrain, barely scratch out a living and may react to a poaching cat by shooting or beating it to death.

Applying DNA fingerprinting to snow leopard scat to reconstruct the local cat menu, researchers have seen wide variability in the incidence of livestock poaching. Among the Wakhan population in Afghanistan, snow leopards overwhelmingly stick to a diet of ibex, Marco Polo sheep and other natural prey.

In Mongolia, by contrast, about 22 percent of the resident snow leopard intake consists of domestic sheep and goats. Conservationists are working mightily to confront the problem — by helping villagers build predator-resistant corrals, organizing insurance programs to compensate herders for their losses, or to seek fresh revenue streams by, say, luring wealthy adventure tourists their way. The tourists may never see a snow leopard, but at least their dollars would help ensure that the cats were out there, quietly watching them.
Back to Top
 Back to News Archirves of 2011
 
Disclaimer: This news site is mostly a compilation of publicly accessible articles on the Web in the form of a link or saved news item. The news articles and commentaries/editorials are protected under international copyright laws. All credit goes to the original respective source(s).