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Clinton, in Afghanistan, demands Pakistan step up counterterrorism effort
By Associated Press, Thursday, October 20, 4:32 PM
KABUL, Afghanistan — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday demanded that Pakistan step up the fight against terrorists within its borders, delivering a blunt message that Pakistanis “must be part of the solution” to the ongoing conflict in neighboring Afghanistan.
Clinton Says Door Still Open For Taliban To Talk Peace, Warns Of 'Continuing Assault'
October 20, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Visiting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said in Afghanistan that talks are still possible with the Taliban to negotiate an end to the war there, but that the militants will face continued attacks if they don't cooperate.
Clinton Seeks 'Reality Check' on Afghan Future
VOA News October 20, 2011
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has told a group of women and politicians in Afghanistan that she is there for a "reality check" on the country's future, ahead of talks in Kabul with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
Pakistan to install immigration system along Afghan border
ISLAMABAD, Oct. 19 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan will implement immigration system along its border with Afghanistan in November to check illegal cross-border movement, Interior Minister Rehman Malik said on Wednesday.
NATO says at least 115 militants killed in ongoing operation in eastern Afghanistan
By Associated Press, Thursday, October 20, 2:01 PM
KABUL, Afghanistan — NATO and Afghan forces have killed at least 115 insurgents over the past week as part of an ongoing operation in a northeastern Afghanistan province, the coalition said Thursday, as it looks to curb insurgent activity along the border with neighboring Pakistan.
How Many Ways Can We Lose in Afghanistan?
The Pentagon's process for awarding contracts in Afghanistan is bad for U.S. business, and bad for the rebuilding effort in that embattled country.
Foreign Policy BY ZALMAY KHALILZAD OCTOBER 19, 2011
Steve LeVine writes on Foreign Policy's Oil and Glory blog that my advisory firm Gryphon Partners -- which focuses on investments in Central Asia and the Middle East -- is "upset that a client has lost an oil deal" in Afghanistan.
U.S. and Afghan Troops Battle to Control Key Route
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN and SHARIFULLAH SAHAK October 19, 2011
ASADABAD, Afghanistan - American and Afghan troops have killed at least 115 insurgents as part of a tough fight to gain control of a critical corridor and resupply route to a key American base in northeastern Afghanistan, according to Afghan and American military officers.
Small investors struggle while Afghanistan hopes for
By Zhou Xin
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan is in desperate need of investment to invigorate its tiny, fragile economy, but on top of the grave physical dangers of the decade-old war, businesses are put off by corruption, pitiful infrastructure, and a slothful bureaucracy.
Killing Rabbani
Foreign Policy By Kate Clark Wednesday, October 19, 2011
It is a month since a man claiming to be a peace envoy from the Taleban leadership council (the Quetta Shura) managed to see and kill the former president of Afghanistan and head of the High Peace Council (HPC), Burhanuddin Rabbani. The killing has had major repercussions, with the most senior Afghan officials
China CNPC agrees oil deal with Afghanistan - Afghan official
Reuters Wed Oct 19, 2011
KABUL - Chinese state-owned oil giant China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) has reached final agreement with the Afghan government to develop an oil field there, an Afghan mines ministry official told Reuters on Wednesday.
Pakistan, Afghanistan, And Their 'Strategic Assets'
October 19, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Daud Khattak
Pakistan's demand for action against Taliban leader Mullah Fazlullah, aka FM Mullah, is being seen as an effort to counter recent U.S. pressure for action by Islamabad against the Haqqani network, which is believed to have sanctuaries in the country's North Waziristan region and to be involved in cross-border attacks against NATO forces in Afghanistan.
The death row widows of Kabul
Afghan law makes no allowance for the abuse that drives wives to kill their husbands. Lianne Gutcher meets three women on hunger strike as they wait to die
The Independent Thursday, 20 October 2011
For years, Gul Guncha had put up with her violent and abusive husband. He raped his seven-year-old daughter, then married her off to an old man, who also raped her. He sold their two-and-a-half-year-old daughter for 200,000 afghanis (£2,600) and was attempting to find a buyer for their other baby girl. He started beating Gul Guncha
Hey Herman Cain, Hamid Karzai Knows Your Name
By STEVEN LEE MYERS The New York Times October 20, 2011, 9:45 am
KABUL, Afghanistan – The Republican presidential campaign unexpectedly made its way to Afghanistan on Thursday when Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, brought up recent comments by Herman Cain during a meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
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Clinton, in Afghanistan, demands Pakistan step up counterterrorism effort
By Associated Press, Thursday, October 20, 4:32 PM
KABUL, Afghanistan — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday demanded that Pakistan step up the fight against terrorists within its borders, delivering a blunt message that Pakistanis “must be part of the solution” to the ongoing conflict in neighboring Afghanistan.
Using unusually stern language, Clinton said while visiting the Afghan capital of Kabul that the Obama administration expects the Pakistani government, military and intelligence services to “take the lead” in not only fighting insurgents based in Pakistan but also in encouraging Afghan militants to reconcile with Afghan society.
“We intend to push Pakistan very hard,” Clinton told a joint news conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Clinton will travel to Pakistan later Thursday to deliver the message wrapped in a new formula called “fight, talk, build” that aims to kill unrepentant insurgents, convince those willing to accept certain principles to make peace, and rehabilitate Afghanistan and integrate it back into the region.
“Our message (to Pakistan) is very clear,” she said. “We’re going to be fighting, we are going to be talking and we are going to be building ... and they can either be helping or hindering, but we are not going to stop.”
Clinton, who will be leading an extraordinarily high-level U.S. delegation to Islamabad to make that case, said it was imperative for the U.S., Afghanistan and Pakistan to cooperate. But she said Pakistan bears much of the responsibility.
“We must send a clear, unequivocal message to the government and people of Pakistan that they must be part of the solution, and that means ridding their own country of terrorists who kill their own people and who cross the border to kill people in Afghanistan,” she said.
Clinton noted that U.S. and Afghan forces had recently launched a joint operation against safe havens in Afghanistan used by the Taliban-allied, Pakistan-based Haqqani network. She said the U.S. “would show” Pakistan how to eliminate Haqqani safe havens on Pakistani soil.
“We have to deal with the safe havens on both sides of the borders,” she said, adding later: “No one should be in any way mistaken about allowing (attacks) to continue without paying a very big price.”
The U.S. sees a political settlement with the Taliban as key to ending the war and is pushing Karzai to lead and expand a reconciliation drive, although the Taliban has indicated no public interest in such a deal. A secret U.S. effort to spark negotiations earlier this year angered Karzai, although he had nothing but kind words of welcome for Clinton.
“Reconciliation is possible,” she said. “Indeed, it represents the best hope for Afghanistan and the region.”
Clinton’s tough comments come as Karzai has expressed frustration with his attempts to woo Taliban fighters away from the insurgency amid increasing attacks by the Haqqani network and the murder last month of elder statesman Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was leading the outreach. Rabbani was killed when he greeted a suicide bomber posing as a Taliban emissary bearing a reconciliation message.
Karzai said Rabbani’s assassination made it clear that Pakistan must be on board and involved in reconciliation efforts.
“It brought us to the point where we felt that those who come to talk to us on behalf of the Taliban actually represent assassinations and killings and not a peace process, and therefore the focus of the peace process, we felt, would serve a better purpose taken to Pakistan,” Karzai said as Clinton stood beside him in the garden of the presidential palace.
“We believe that the Taliban, to a very, very great extent — a very, very great extent — are controlled by establishments in Pakistan, stay in Pakistan, have their headquarters in Pakistan and launch operations from Pakistan,” he said. Therefore, he said, the proper “authority” and “venue” for any peace talks is Pakistan.
Clinton was clearly sympathetic to his argument.
“This is a time for clarity, it is a time for people to declare themselves as to how we are going to work together,” she said, referring to Pakistan.
In Islamabad later Thursday, Clinton will be meeting up with CIA chief David Petraeus and the nation’s top military official, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey, for talks with senior Pakistani officials.
Their presence will be a muscular show of diplomatic force that several officials described as a combined message of support and pressure.
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Clinton Says Door Still Open For Taliban To Talk Peace, Warns Of 'Continuing Assault'
October 20, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Visiting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said in Afghanistan that talks are still possible with the Taliban to negotiate an end to the war there, but that the militants will face continued attacks if they don't cooperate.
Clinton, who arrived in Kabul on an unannounced visit late on October 19, was speaking in Kabul following talks with President Hamid Karzai.
Later in the day, she was scheduled to travel to neighboring Pakistan, where she is to be joined by CIA chief David Petraeus and Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey.
Clinton told a joint news conference with Karzai that militants could be part of a peaceful future for Afghanistan or "face continuing assault."
"We are increasing the pressure on the Taliban," Clinton added.
Militants have carried out a number of high-profile assassinations and brazen assaults on major cities and military targets in recent months. The Haqqani network, based in Pakistan, has been blamed for many of the attacks, including one on the U.S. Embassy compound in Kabul.
Clinton also confirmed that a “major military operation” was under way against Haqqani militants on Afghanistan's eastern border.
The comment comes as the international coalition announced that NATO and Afghan forces had killed at least 115 insurgents over the past week as part of an operation in the northeastern Kunar Province. The alliance said that one NATO service member was killed in the fighting.
Clinton also said Pakistan can help negotiate a solution to the Afghan conflict and expects Pakistanis to "support the efforts at talking," explaining that “the terrorists operating outside of Pakistan pose a threat to Pakistanis, as well as to Afghans and others."
Relations between Washington and Islamabad have soured in recent months, with the United States and Afghanistan urging Pakistan to do more against militant sanctuaries in its tribal areas.
U.S. officials have said the Haqqani network was linked to the Pakistani intelligence services -- a charge Islamabad denies.
At a meeting at the U.S. Embassy earlier in the day, Clinton assured civic leaders that their concerns that any deal with Islamist militants could undo advances made in areas such as women's rights and education were "being heard at the highest levels of the U.S. government."
The United States is planning to withdraw troops and hand over security to the Afghans by 2014.
Clinton also met the son of former President Burhanuddin Rabbani, Salahuddin, telling him that his father "was a brave man and trying to do the right thing."
Rabbani, who was Kabul's chief peace negotiator with the Taliban, was assassinated on September 20 by a suicide bomber posing as a Taliban envoy.
Karzai, who said there was a Pakistani link to the killing, has since discontinued attempts to negotiate with the Taliban, saying the process should be led by the country backing them -- a reference to Pakistan.
compiled from agency reports
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Clinton Seeks 'Reality Check' on Afghan Future
VOA News October 20, 2011
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has told a group of women and politicians in Afghanistan that she is there for a "reality check" on the country's future, ahead of talks in Kabul with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
Clinton told the group Thursday at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul that she wants to hear the Afghan people's thoughts about the way forward.
She arrived late Wednesday on an unannounced visit, and is set to meet with Karzai to discuss efforts to reconcile with the Taliban and the transition of security in the war-torn country.
U.S. officials say the secretary will press for a binding strategic agreement between Afghanistan and the United States that will govern relations after 2014 when American troops are scheduled to return home.
Clinton also will preview plans for upcoming conferences on the future of Afghanistan to be held in Istanbul in November and Bonn, Germany in December.
The agenda is expected to include talks on ties between Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan. Both U.S. and Afghan officials have accused Pakistan of supporting insurgent groups in Afghanistan, a charge Islamabad denies.
The Afghan government's peace talks with the Taliban have stalled since last month's killing of former President Burhanuddin Rabbani, who had led President Karzai's outreach to the insurgents as head of the High Peace Council.
A suicide bomber posing as a Taliban emissary killed Rabbani at his home in Kabul September 20.
Rabbani's son, Salahuddin, was among the group Clinton met with Thursday at the embassy. She told him the former president was a brave man who was "trying to do the right thing."
There are currently more than 130,000 international troops in Afghanistan, mostly from the United States.
Most international combat troops are set to leave the country and transfer security to Afghan forces by the end of 2014.
Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.
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Pakistan to install immigration system along Afghan border
ISLAMABAD, Oct. 19 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan will implement immigration system along its border with Afghanistan in November to check illegal cross-border movement, Interior Minister Rehman Malik said on Wednesday.
Speaking at a press conference in Quetta, Malik said that the system would start work in Chaman, the border city in Balochistan and Torkham in northwest Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa.
He said the government has received some messages from Pakistani Taliban for peace talks, however, no such dialogue would be initiated until extremist elements laid down their weapons.
Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani last month said the government will hold talks with the Taliban to end violence in the country, which has claimed lives of nearly 35,000 people including 5,000 security personnel over the past 10 years.
The dialogue offer was made days after a government-called conference of about 60 political and religious leaders suggested to the government to hold talks with the armed group.
The deputy chief of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) Maulvi Faqir had welcomed the dialogue offer and said Taliban would hold direct talks with the government. Another TTP core leader Qari Wali-ur-Rahman sought mediation by Saudi Arabia as a guarantor in case of a peace deal.
Prime Minister Gilani said the security forces would launch military operation in North Waziristan tribal region if the proposed talks with Taliban failed.
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NATO says at least 115 militants killed in ongoing operation in eastern Afghanistan
By Associated Press, Thursday, October 20, 2:01 PM
KABUL, Afghanistan — NATO and Afghan forces have killed at least 115 insurgents over the past week as part of an ongoing operation in a northeastern Afghanistan province, the coalition said Thursday, as it looks to curb insurgent activity along the border with neighboring Pakistan.
The fighting in Kunar province, known for its rugged terrain that leaves coalition supply lines from Pakistan vulnerable to insurgent attacks, comes as NATO is stepping up efforts to secure the country and ready Afghan forces to fully take over security responsibilities before international forces wind down their combat mission in 2014.
NATO said the operation has been going on since around Oct. 15 and has included the use of fighter jets and long-range bombers. The alliance said that one NATO service member has been killed since the fighting began. It was not immediately clear if any Afghan troops had been killed.
“This is a series of multiple, smaller operations that have a combined, larger impact,” said Master Sgt. Nicholas Conner, a NATO spokesman at Bagram Air Field. “Most of the Kunar region is marked with isolated pockets of villages that (Afghan and NATO) forces focus on at the company level or smaller.”
On the diplomatic front, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived Wednesday in the Afghan capital in an unannounced visit. She is expected to encourage President Hamid Karzai to move ahead with Taliban reconciliation efforts and boost cooperation with Pakistan as the Obama administration looks ahead to the withdrawal of combat forces from the country.
Karzai has grown leery of the reconciliation effort and has also said that Pakistan must do more to control the militant networks that find safe haven in the neighboring country and use it as a staging ground for operations that challenge his government’s efforts to rebuild after a decade of fighting against the Taliban.
The diplomatic push comes in tandem with the military operations, which have increasingly focused on eastern Afghanistan. The area has seen an uptick in NATO and Afghan operations after an earlier focus on the Taliban’s traditional strongholds in the country’s south forced the insurgents to shift their efforts to other, often quieter, regions.
The border area with Pakistan has long been a source of concern for NATO and Afghan officials and forces.
The region is rife with militant activity spearheaded by the Haqqani network, an al-Qaida and Taliban-linked movement that operates out of Pakistan and has been blamed for some of the most high-profile attacks in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul.
Kunar falls outside of that insurgent group’s core area but has long been an al-Qaida den, drawing in foreign fighters who pose as much of a risk to Afghanistan’s future security as their Taliban allies.
A host of other groups also operate in the region, where the presence of coalition and Afghan forces has been far less concentrated. That, along with the disputed Durand Line, the 19th century demarcation between present day Afghanistan and Pakistan, has become fertile ground for increased conflicts that draw in not only NATO and Afghan forces, but also the Pakistani military.
NATO’s top commander in Afghanistan, Marine Gen. John Allen said among the militant groups that operate in the area “can move pretty easily back and forth across the border.”
“The ground is very rugged. It is very high,” Allen told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday. “It’s just tough to control the ground.”
He said that sometimes the militants move over the Pakistani side of the border to attack Pakistani troops and frontier scouts.
With the militants sandwiched between two sets of militaries, their hit-and-run operations on both sides of the border have led to allegations by Afghans in the area that the Pakistani military has been firing hundreds of rockets into Kunar and neighboring Nuristan province. NATO and Pakistani officials have said the reports are exaggerated.
The Kunar operation’s main focus is on cleansing the area of insurgent activity, said Conner, the NATO spokesman.
“The fact is, we target bad guys,” he said. In tandem with NATO’s Afghan partners, “we go after them wherever they are; whoever they are.”
“The aim is to create the conditions for a stable and peaceful region where the Afghan government is connected to the Afghan people and vice versa,” he said.
____
Associated Press writer Deb Riechmann contributed to this report.
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How Many Ways Can We Lose in Afghanistan?
The Pentagon's process for awarding contracts in Afghanistan is bad for U.S. business, and bad for the rebuilding effort in that embattled country.
Foreign Policy BY ZALMAY KHALILZAD OCTOBER 19, 2011
Steve LeVine writes on Foreign Policy's Oil and Glory blog that my advisory firm Gryphon Partners -- which focuses on investments in Central Asia and the Middle East -- is "upset that a client has lost an oil deal" in Afghanistan.
Indeed we are upset, but not over the outcome -- losing deals is a normal part of doing business -- and not because the Pentagon failed to "manipulate" the tender on our behalf, as LeVine alleges. Nor do we have a problem with Chinese investment in Afghanistan as such.
We do not believe that Afghans should be required to turn over the development of minerals to the United States as a reward for ongoing U.S. sacrifices in Afghanistan. As my colleagues Alexander Benard and Eli Sugarman explain, we are upset because U.S. taxpayer money was used to set up a process that favored a state-owned Chinese firm against private Western companies. This runs against official U.S. government policy and regulations, which in fact require U.S. government entities to promote American investors' interests overseas.
I am an unashamed advocate of U.S. and Western companies building an economic presence in Afghanistan, Iraq and throughout the region. I decided to establish Gryphon Partners to encourage and facilitate more Western investment in these markets.
In light of its security challenges and weak institutional capacity, Afghanistan in particular needs all the help it can get to attract reliable, responsible foreign investors from around the world. Western companies not only inject advanced technology and business practices into the country in the short term, they generate enduring Western interest in Afghanistan beyond current security-focused government-to-government relations. Western companies have the advantage of being, on balance, less corrupt, more transparent and more attentive to local interests in areas such as employment, technological development, environmental protection and preservation of heritage sites than their Chinese counterparts.
The performance of Chinese companies is improving -- but they have a long way to go.
Developing Afghanistan's natural resource wealth is important. As foreign aid dries up, Afghanistan will become increasingly dependent on mineral and energy development contracts to finance its reconstruction efforts and sustain its security forces. Poor governance has been one of the most persistent weaknesses of the Afghan government.
Promoting efficient and sound practices in lucrative sectors that lie at the intersection of business and government -- a comparative advantage of Western firms -- could yield important gains in encouraging the rule of law and promoting broad-based economic growth. An alternate scenario is that Afghanistan -- already struggling with governance issues -- could succumb to the resource curse, with the country's underground treasures fueling further conflict and a factionalized kleptocracy.
So far, American and Western companies have fared poorly in Afghanistan. The Afghan government has awarded two major mineral development concessions to date. Chinese companies with state backing have won both.
This summer, the American company Freeport McMoran Copper and Gold lost out in the competition for the Aynak Copper mine.
Afghan government officials reported intense Chinese government pressure in support of its national companies, and other investigations have documented massive malfeasance in the way the contract was awarded.
In the second major award involving Amu Darya Basin oil, no U.S. companies even bothered to compete. But two Western companies were among the finalists.
One was our client Tethys Petroleum -- a publicly-traded British firm with many large U.S. investors. The winner was the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), a state-owned company.
As evidence that Chinese companies "have not gotten the only big early resource deals in Afghanistan," LeVine notes that a consortium led by JP Morgan secured a gold contract in Afghanistan. Though a positive development, the contract is relatively small. And despite JP Morgan's involvement, most of the investors in the deal are not American.
It is certainly ironic that Chinese firms are at an advantage over Western companies due to Defense Department procedures. The Pentagon's Task Force for Business Stability Operations is spending some $20 million of American taxpayers' money to organize the bidding rounds for Afghan mineral resources.
Obviously, the Pentagon team does not seek to hand Afghanistan's mineral resources to the Chinese. But flaws in the Pentagon-backed process mean that state-owned Chinese companies are at an advantage over private companies.
Because they are not accountable to shareholders, Chinese firms can offer better commercial terms based on geopolitical motives rather than profit-driven necessities. The process also does not give points for good business practices in areas such as transparency, local employment, and the environment.
Pentagon rules do not check a bidder's past record in actually fulfilling the promises it makes up front to get a contract. And they does not consider the need for Afghanistan to diversify its investors -- it is not in any country's interest to give its business disproportionately to companies from just one foreign country.
To add insult to injury, Pentagon-paid consultants -- along with CNPC management and the Chinese ambassador to Kabul -- participated in signing ceremonies and photographs celebrating the agreement. U.S. officials in effect endorsed the deal with the American seal of approval.
The U.S. government needs to assist American companies seeking to compete in frontier markets. As Secretary Clinton noted in a recent address, U.S. strategic and economic interests are intertwined in unprecedented ways -- "the economic is strategic and the strategic is economic." Economic statecraft is especially critical in Afghanistan, where important rare-earth minerals contracts will open for bidding in the near future. How these tenders are allocated will implicate core U.S. interests, consolidating gains amidst the withdrawal from Afghanistan, adapting to balance of power changes in Asia, and preserving U.S. economic leadership. Smart U.S. government policies and regulations could leverage Western companies on behalf of these strategic objectives. In assisting Western firms, Gryphon Partners and similar private consultants are doing their part.
The Obama administration and Congress should review what happened in the recent tender and reassess the current Pentagon methodology. At the very least, the United States should not harm itself by financing a bidding process slanted toward state-owned foreign competitors, and then celebrating its outcomes when Americans lose. It is not inevitable that Afghanistan's valuable resources fall into the hands of the Chinese.
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U.S. and Afghan Troops Battle to Control Key Route
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN and SHARIFULLAH SAHAK October 19, 2011
ASADABAD, Afghanistan - American and Afghan troops have killed at least 115 insurgents as part of a tough fight to gain control of a critical corridor and resupply route to a key American base in northeastern Afghanistan, according to Afghan and American military officers.
Civilians in the area, as well as American and Afghan soldiers, described an exceptionally intense fight, which was still going on, in which long-range bombers have flown in from as far away as the Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar, the southern Afghan province of Kandahar and Bagram Air Base outside Kabul, the Afghan capital.
The Americans have also fired long-range rockets from more than 100 miles away as the troops have struggled to oust large numbers of insurgents who month after month have attacked convoys on the road and dominated much of this corner of Kunar Province.
“We had too many F16s and F15s to count, almost continuous coverage,” said Capt. Ron Hopkins, 27, the fire support officer of the Second Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment, who was in the command center for the fight.
As parts of the operation were still winding up, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived in Kabul to meet with President Hamid Karzai and other senior figures in the Afghan government to discuss long-term American-Afghan relations and reconciliation with the Taliban, among other subjects.
Kunar, perhaps more than any other area of the country’s northeast, has posed serious problems for American troops, just as it did for the Russians when they occupied the country.
More Americans have died in Kunar than anywhere else in the country outside of southern Afghanistan.
The terrain is made up of tall, arid mountains that rise in successive folds, dropping down into narrow, heavily wooded valleys that provide cover for insurgents. Those valleys have been the site of some of the most iconic fighting of the war, including a series of deadly encounters in the Korangal Valley, where more than 40 Americans lost their lives in the five years that the Americans had an outpost there. It was closed in April 2010. Now in Kunar and elsewhere across the country, NATO troops are making an intense effort to weaken insurgents as much as possible before they withdraw and hand over combat outposts and forward operating bases to the Afghan Army.
The majority of the fighting took place in Ghaziabad and Asmar, two of several districts in Kunar that have become something of a gathering point for large numbers of fighters crossing the border from Pakistan, according to Afghan Army officers.
“Our greatest concentration has been on Ghaziabad District, where we believe the Taliban have built their bases and strongholds,” said Col. Mohammed Numan Atifi, a spokesman for the Afghan National Army’s 201st Corps.
“Our aim is to destroy their bases and their stations in these areas,” he said.
Master Sgt. Nicholas Conner, a spokesman with Regional Command East, said the recent fight was a joint operation with the Afghan National Security Forces.
“The A.N.S.F. was definitely in the lead on this, and the coalition was in a supporting role,” he said.
The enormous air power, however, was provided by the Americans. In addition to the bombers and long-range rockets, they employed a heavily armed plane, the AC-130, which the insurgents have described as “the death plane,” Captain Hopkins said.
As the fighting raged, four children under the age of 6, all from one family, were killed when their rural compound came under fire, said their aunt and grandmother, who were caring for the family’s survivors at the public hospital here in Asadabad, the provincial capital.
Two of the survivors, Nadia, 5, and her brother, Matay, 8, had burns over 35 percent of their bodies and were bandaged from head to toe.
Shrapnel badly cut the feet and ankles of an aunt, Zakira, 22, who lived with them in the compound. As she lay stiffly in her hospital bed, Zakira described days of fighting in which the sound of fire reverberated off the mountains.
“The first day, the noise was very loud and we were afraid, but thought it would be over soon,” she said. “But it kept on, and then five days ago, it was just before lunch, there was so much firing and a round landed in our compound and exploded.”
NATO is investigating the deaths, Sergeant Conner said. Before the assault on the compound, Afghan and American soldiers saw women and children leaving the town, Shal, soldiers involved in the fight said.
“Coalition troops engaged insurgent firing from a house,” Sergeant Conner said. “At the time, they assessed no civilians in the area. The insurgents, especially in the Kunar area, have developed the tactic of attacking coalition troops, then producing ‘civilian’ casualties later with the claim that we did it.”
The United Nations office here said its initial inquiry showed that civilians had died.
“Our preliminary investigation indicates that four children were killed and six others injured,” said Georgette Gagnon, the director of human rights for the United Nations’ Afghanistan office. She welcomed the NATO investigation.
Mimi Wells contributed reporting from Forward Operating Base Bostick in Kunar Province, Afghanistan, and Ray Rivera from Kabul.
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Small investors struggle while Afghanistan hopes for
By Zhou Xin
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan is in desperate need of investment to invigorate its tiny, fragile economy, but on top of the grave physical dangers of the decade-old war, businesses are put off by corruption, pitiful infrastructure, and a slothful bureaucracy.
Even after the billions of dollars of Western aid that have been pumped in, Afghan gross domestic product was only $15 billion last year, a tenth of the size of Cameroon, El Salvador and Uganda, and its jobless rate is around 30 percent.
As it looks beyond the 2014 deadline for foreign combat troops to leave, the government is banking on potentially huge mining projects to bring in cash, not least to pay for the disciplined security forces it needs to prevent the country being sucked into a full-blown civil war.
But without a layer of small enterprises with the capacity to provide jobs, goods, services and taxes, the hoped-for enriching effect of big business will be severely limited.
Yu Minghui, a Chinese merchant who has been trying to build a small steel plant on the outskirts of Kabul since 2003, should be welcomed with open arms.
His factory will employ around 80 Afghans, and in a bright "swords into ploughshares" idea, recycle the military wreckage that decades of conflict has scattered across the country into steel wire for buildings.
Progress has been painfully slow, he says, and the Afghan authorities obstructive and money-grabbing.
"To secure stable power supply alone, I had to wait two years," Yu said. "Even small matters like visa for technicians can be time-consuming, and additional money is sometimes demanded to make the whole process quicker."
Lack of local manufacturing has led to a reliance on imports, which in turn discourages investment in domestic production.
"Low quality products from other countries have a very bad impact on our products," said Ahmad Khalid Yarmand, manager at the Afghanistan Chamber of Commerce and Industries in the western city of Herat. "They are cheap so everyone prefers to use those products more than ours."
VIOLENCE SPREADING
Foreign investment into Afghanistan has always been tiny, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Billions in aid cash is still pouring in, but foreign direct investment in 2010 was about 4 percent of that into neighboring Pakistan, and less than a tenth of Uzbekistan.
In the World Bank's 2011 'Doing Business' report, which measures how regulations affect the ease with which entrepreneurs can start and run companies, Afghanistan ranked 167 out of 183 countries, a survey which does not even include security risks.
Many businessmen were unwilling to talk about the perils of working in a country where fighting kills on average more than 200 civilians every month, violence is spreading into once-peaceful areas, and traveling around swathes of the land is dangerous even for Afghans.
Only last month, insurgents mounted a 20-hour siege in Kabul's diplomatic quarter, showering rockets on the U.S. embassy and the NATO headquarters in what was the longest attack in the capital since U.S.-backed Afghan forces cast the Taliban from power in 2001.
NATURAL DISADVANTAGE
Some elements of Afghanistan's hostile business climate cannot be blamed purely on the war or officialdom.
Landlocked and with few direct international flights, Afghanistan brings in almost all of its goods by truck from Pakistan, with tolls, bad roads and long journeys making prices expensive. Most Afghanistan-bound containers from China sail to Pakistani port Karachi, then are driven across the border.
Ye Shangqiang, a 60-year-old Chinese businessman who has sold construction and decoration products in Kabul since 2003, cited astronomical transport costs as one of the biggest obstacles to commerce.
"These days, the total cost of shipping a 40-feet container from China to Kabul is as high as $20,000 due to delays and corruption," he said.
Ye said the business environment has worsened since his arrival, and he was not optimistic about it improving. "If you have $100,000 investment plans here, I will say go ahead, but if you want to put down $1 million ... think twice."
It will take a long time for Afghanistan to build the structures and culture that promote business, said Nicklas Norling, a fellow with the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and Silk Road Studies Program, a think-tank in Washington.
For the moment, getting money into the treasury is a higher priority.
"Afghanistan is in urgent need of a steady income stream to pay its expenses. Only mining and natural resources exploration can accomplish this in the short term," he said.
Meanwhile, aspiring steelmaker Yu struggles on with indifferent bureaucrats.
"Sometimes I try to explain that my plant can provide at least 80 jobs when it starts full operation. But one Afghanistan official once replied, 'What's that got to do with me?'"
(Additional reporting by Mirwais Harooni; Editing by Daniel Magnowski and Sanjeev Miglami)
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Killing Rabbani
Foreign Policy By Kate Clark Wednesday, October 19, 2011
It is a month since a man claiming to be a peace envoy from the Taleban leadership council (the Quetta Shura) managed to see and kill the former president of Afghanistan and head of the High Peace Council (HPC), Burhanuddin Rabbani. The killing has had major repercussions, with the most senior Afghan officials, including President Hamid Karzai, directly or indirectly accusing the Quetta Shura and Pakistan of being behind the attack, consequently halting talks with the Taleban and cooling bilateral relations. Yet the Afghan government has not produced any evidence to back up these claims. Indeed, the investigation into Rabbani's murder has resulted in no real clues as to the identity of the plotters, who ordered the killing or how leading members of the High Peace Council, as well as President Karzai, were so easily fooled.
The bare bones of the Rabbani assassination plot have now emerged, following the release by the Afghan intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), of a tranche of documents and video testimony, including that of two key people who were arrested after the killing: HPC member and former Taleb, Rahmatullah Wahidyar (whom NDS has said is not suspected of being part of the conspiracy), and the go-between, Hamidullah Akhundzada, who introduced the killer to Wahidyar and Rabbani.
The tale began with Wahidyar, who is a former Taleban deputy minister and former minister in Rabbani's mujahedin government from the 1990s, being asked by the HPC leadership to drum up contacts in the Quetta Shura with a view to starting peace talks. He made contact with a man called Abdul Satar, whom Wahidyar described as "a former Taleban official" (no other details provided), who in turn introduced him to a "former Taleban commander" called Hamidullah Akhundzada. Both Abdul Satar and Hamidullah visited Kabul and met Wahidyar, Massum Stanekzai (the Secretary of the HPC) and Rabbani.
According to Wahidyar, over the next four months, Hamidullah actively reported back on the progress he was making in firming up contacts with the Quetta Shura (although Hamidullah himself makes no mention of any such reporting in his testimony). A week before the killing, he telephoned Wahidyar and said the Quetta Shura would be sending an envoy (although probably not himself) to Kabul in order to discuss opening direct talks with the Afghan government. The man who was sent, Esmatullah, came to Kabul with a letter and two audio messages, one for the HPC and one for Rabbani's ears only.
President Karzai was told about the envoy and saw the letter and heard one of the audio messages. The envoy's letter, a copy of which was released to Tolo TV, is weak. Afghans can negotiate peace, it says, but unless the international military fully leaves, the Afghan struggle against colonialism and for independence will continue (this is pretty well what the Taleban say publicly). One of the audio messages has also been released by NDS and is even thinner on substance; it is basically a series of rhetorical questions for the "honoured teacher", Ustad Rabbani, on whether Afghanistan today is better than the Taleban-era.
All sources say it was Karzai who ordered Rabbani back to Kabul (he was in Iran at a conference where, it was reported, an official Taleban delegation was present). Rabbani cut short his trip, returned to Kabul and within a few hours of landing, received Wahidyar, Stanekzai and the ‘envoy', Esmatullah in his home. He blew himself up in the very moment he greeted Rabbani, killing them both.
NDS arrested Wahidyar and Hamidullah and later handed out their videoed statements to journalists, along with the testimony of the manager of the HPC guesthouse where the killer had stayed and one of the audio messages he had brought.
In his confession, Hamidullah gives his name, father's name and tribe (Zadran) and says he is from Kandahar. He looks to be in his 50s. Wahidyar has said that Hamidullah was a "former Taleban commander" and a "resident of Kandahar". NDS spokesman Lutfullah Mashal has said he appeared to be "an ordinary Taleb, living in Quetta, with no known position during the Emirate and possibly, he is Achikzai." One man who met Hamidullah briefly on one of his earlier visits to Kabul, HPC member and former Taleban ambassador to Islamabad and Saudi Arabia, Habibullah Fowzi, described him as uneducated, not a mullah, and a "former mujahed," rather than an "original Taleb." Fawzi said that, although it is difficult to size a man up in 20 minutes, Hamidullah appeared to be "an ordinary man, not a special man to have for such a mission."
Indeed, in Hamidullah's videoed confession, he comes over as more feckless, than master conspirator. Despite saying he was told about the turban bombing plot in advance, after introducing the killer, Esmatullah, to Wahidyar, he not only accompanied him to Kabul, but also brought his own family along for the trip. Even after seeing news of the assassination on television, he stayed in Kabul. He was clearly not versed in phone security - the NDS arrested him almost immediately after it traced the assassin's final phone calls.
The bottom line of all this is that we are still no nearer to understanding who Hamidullah, the person who established the link to the HPC and Rabbani, ‘is' - his tribe, political background, what he and his family did during the jihad and Emirate, in other words, all the normal questions which everyone always asks in Afghanistan to identify and position an unknown person - and which should have been answered, one would have thought, when the HPC officials first made contact with him.
As to the identity of the killer, Esmatullah, even less is known. He appeared to have been allowed into Rabbani's home, un-vetted, not searched and with no-one even knowing for sure his father's name.
Such appears to have been the very thin thread on which hopes for peace talks with the Taleban were hung. From the evidence released, it remains unfathomable why Wahidyar, Stanekzai, Rabbani and the President himself trusted these men. After the debacle of the shopkeeper impersonating Mullah Mansur (the probable third in command in the Quetta Shura) who managed to get into the Presidential Palace in November 2010 and was given large sums of money, maybe it should not come as a surprise how easily everyone was gulled. However, is difficult to argue with the assessment of the former EU and UN envoy Fransesc Vendrell, that President Karzai set up a way of conducting peace talks which appears to have been inherently problematic and unprofessional, and left the participants vulnerable to trickery and attack.
None of the evidence released so far indicates who ordered the killing and when the Hamidullah-HPC conduit became toxic - was it a plot from the start or, as Hamidullah contends, infiltrated? And if so, by whom?
Nothing, apart from the assumption that the plot appears to have been hatched in Quetta on Pakistani soil, would appear to justify pointing the finger of blame at the Taleban leadership or the ISI - although there is no evidence, either, that they are innocent. However, Karzai's decision to blame Pakistan worked beautifully to dampen anger domestically, calming Rabbani's allies who were against talking to the Taleban in the first place and are ultra-hostile to Pakistan. Possibly Karzai's move also indicates that he himself was never too enamoured of talking to the Taleban either. There has been fall out, however, in the souring of bilateral relations with Pakistan and the shelving of the policy of talking to the Taleban.
The Taleban have hardly made things easier. This assassination was carried out by a man who was, or purported to be, a Taleban envoy. According to the movement's own rules, set out in their code of conduct, suicide bombings must be authorised. Yet spokesmen have neither accepted nor denied responsibility and have, in a gesture of unprecedented evasiveness, largely kept their phones switched off during the last four weeks.
If this assassination was authorised, it would be a clear message that the Taleban leadership does not want a negotiated end to the war. (And in this case, it would not matter whether anyone viewed the HPC or Rabbani as a viable means of negotiation). If it was a rogue operation, then the Taleban has severe command and control problems within its ranks. If it was carried out by a group other than the Taleban, the silence seems only explicable if the Taleban assumed (or knew) it was done with ISI assistance (bearing in mind that the leadership has covered up for the ISI in the past). Whatever the case, the likely aim of killing Rabbani - scuppering the very idea of peace talks - appears to have been very successfully carried out.
Kate Clark is a senior analyst with the Afghanistan Analysts Network.
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China CNPC agrees oil deal with Afghanistan - Afghan official
Reuters Wed Oct 19, 2011
KABUL - Chinese state-owned oil giant China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) has reached final agreement with the Afghan government to develop an oil field there, an Afghan mines ministry official told Reuters on Wednesday.
Jalil Jumriany, policy director at the mines ministry in Kabul, said the terms of the oil project have been finalised and senior officials on both sides were expected to approve it within two months.
"The investment of the project will be huge, and in the first two years, the investment will be at least $200-300 million," Jumriany said.
The deal covering drilling and a refinery in the northern province of Sar-e Pul is the first international oil production deal signed by the Afghan government for several decades. (Reporting by Zhou Xin; Editing by Daniel Magnowski)
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Pakistan, Afghanistan, And Their 'Strategic Assets'
October 19, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Daud Khattak
Pakistan's demand for action against Taliban leader Mullah Fazlullah, aka FM Mullah, is being seen as an effort to counter recent U.S. pressure for action by Islamabad against the Haqqani network, which is believed to have sanctuaries in the country's North Waziristan region and to be involved in cross-border attacks against NATO forces in Afghanistan.
The call came on October 17 from Pakistan's military spokesman, Major General Athar Abbas, in an interview in which he said the notorious cleric, suspected of ordering beatings and beheadings in the tourist resort of Swat, is now hiding in Afghanistan's Konar and Nuristan provinces and launching intermittent attacks in the Pakistani border areas.
Similar complaints have been lodged by NATO forces and the Afghan government about the Haqqanis and other Taliban groups, who they believe are enjoying safe havens in Pakistan's tribal areas and crossing the border into Afghanistan to attack NATO and Afghan forces.
Pakistan Army chief General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani has previously warned of action "if attacks continued in the Pakistani territory from the Afghan side," while Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani warned in a recent statement that "it is time for the U.S. to do more."
Statements from the two sides -- uneasy allies in a 10-year counterterror effort following the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States -- signal an increasingly turbulent period despite sustained efforts to mend damaged ties and move forward with a joint strategy ahead of the planned U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan slated for July 2014.
The Pakistani statements also point to that country's disappointment with militants it once dubbed "strategic assets" in efforts to move ahead with the controversial "strategic depth" policy, which was meant to keep a hold on every key foreign-policy development in Afghanistan in order to keep the country as a hedge in the case of another war with India.
Pakistani officials say militant leaders -- including Faqir Muhammad (Bajaur), Fazlullah (Swat), and Abdul Wali alias Omar Khalid (Mohmand) -- have established bases in the Konar and Nuristan provinces of Afghanistan and are launching sporadic attacks on Pakistani security forces.
In the past few months, such statements from both sides have become practically routine, which can't help the counterterror effort. Instead, such differences are allowing the Taliban and their affiliates more time to readjust and strengthen their positions.
Critics of Pakistan's counterterror policy are still more than dubious that pro-Taliban leaders like Faqir Muhammad could launch attacks against the Pakistani security forces. Their skepticism is grounded in Pakistani statements suggesting that militant leaders like Faqir Muhammad, Fazlullah, Hakimullah Mehsud, and Omar Khalid were given a free hand in the tribal and settled districts over the years.
Indeed, each of those leaders has miraculously escaped the massive operations launched by the Pakistani Army from time to time in areas like Swat, Mohmand, Bajaur, and South Waziristan, casting some doubt on the state's sincerity in dealing with such militants.
However, a different perception is taking root among those supporting Pakistan's policy of strategic depth. They believe militant leaders such as Fazlullah, Maulvi Faqir, and Omar Khalid are now being given active support, or at least safe havens, by the Afghan government to exert pressure on Pakistan to take steps against the Haqqanis in the tribal areas.
The key question is: Are these two supposed allies in the "war on terror," who once joined hands to eliminate the scourge of terrorism from the region, now providing ammunition for those who would make trouble in the region and elsewhere?
If so, where do they stand after fighting for 10 long years and spending billions of dollars and sacrificing thousands of precious lives -- military and civilian -- to defeat Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and their affiliates? What are the implications for the region if both sides are now banking on different sets of Taliban militants?
At a time when pressure is growing on the U.S. government for a complete withdrawal from Afghanistan, the fresh series of allegations and counterallegations is pointing to a new threat in the two neighbors' border zone.
Even a fleeting perception that the two sides are now supporting proxies to achieve their designs could prove disastrous for the region and the world, potentially leading to an end-game that's no more than a new Taliban state, only harsher and more brutal than the one seen in Afghanistan in the late 90s.
It is really time for these allies in the counterterror effort to understand that -- crucially -- support for militants, "good" or "bad," is in no one's interest, and the ultimate result could be a serious blow to regional peace and stability. It is time to win favor through fair play, instead of through proxies.
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The death row widows of Kabul
Afghan law makes no allowance for the abuse that drives wives to kill their husbands. Lianne Gutcher meets three women on hunger strike as they wait to die
The Independent Thursday, 20 October 2011
For years, Gul Guncha had put up with her violent and abusive husband. He raped his seven-year-old daughter, then married her off to an old man, who also raped her. He sold their two-and-a-half-year-old daughter for 200,000 afghanis (£2,600) and was attempting to find a buyer for their other baby girl. He started beating Gul Guncha and the children when she asked the community for help. But their help was no use – and, one day, she snapped. As he beat them yet again, she grabbed a metal pole used to extract hot bread from the kiln, and clubbed him to death.
"There was only violence in my house, no happiness. I was just tired of my life," she said. "I beat him with an iron rod to the head. Suddenly he fell to the ground but I didn't think he would die. Then the next day the prosecutors came to my house and took me to jail."
In many countries, Gul Guncha's story would have won her sympathy and some leniency under the legal system. But not in Afghanistan, where she was sentenced to death by the primary and secondary courts, then waited seven years to find out whether the Supreme Court would uphold her death sentence.
For years, Gul Guncha had put up with her violent and abusive husband. He raped his seven-year-old daughter, then married her off to an old man, who also raped her. He sold their two-and-a-half-year-old daughter for 200,000 afghanis (£2,600) and was attempting to find a buyer for their other baby girl. He started beating Gul Guncha and the children when she asked the community for help. But their help was no use – and, one day, she snapped. As he beat them yet again, she grabbed a metal pole used to extract hot bread from the kiln, and clubbed him to death.
"There was only violence in my house, no happiness. I was just tired of my life," she said. "I beat him with an iron rod to the head. Suddenly he fell to the ground but I didn't think he would die. Then the next day the prosecutors came to my house and took me to jail."
In many countries, Gul Guncha's story would have won her sympathy and some leniency under the legal system. But not in Afghanistan, where she was sentenced to death by the primary and secondary courts, then waited seven years to find out whether the Supreme Court would uphold her death sentence.
She is one of three Afghan women on death row in Kabul who have gone on hunger strike in protest at what they say is an unfair and corrupt justice system that has kept them locked up for years in ignorance of their fate.
Aysha Khalil, 52, and Sayeed Begum, 40, were also convicted for murdering their husbands and given the death penalty. Their appeals have dragged on for years. Gul Guncha, 57, admits that she committed the crime but said she acted to protect her children. The two other women say they are innocent. Fighting back tears while speaking to The Independent at Badam Bagh (Almond Garden) female prison in Kabul, Sayeed Begum said she had been too poor to pay the bribe the primary court judge had demanded in return for leniency. Aysha Khalil said she had been forced to sign a false confession. All three said they had long been abandoned by their lawyers, meaning their cases were lost in the legal system and they had no one to plead for leniency or a pardon.
Aysha started her hunger strike on 31 August, threatening to starve herself to death unless she got to know the status of her case. Her decision to refuse food came after prison authorities said she was no longer allowed to make snacks to sell to prison visitors, a job that broke up the monotony of her existence and provided her with a meagre income. "It is better just to die. My situation is very, very bad," said Aysha, who has been on death row since 2004. "I have lost everything: my family, my children. There is no one to support me."
The women also expressed disgust with the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, who they said pardoned would-be suicide bombers but left women like them to rot. Five women are currently on death row in Afghanistan, according to the Ministry of Justice.
"This is destroying me," said Sayeed Begum, who was a school teacher for 18 years. "They release suicide bombers, but not people like me."
She landed in prison when, after a dispute, her second husband accused her of helping to murder her first husband. During her primary court trial she said the court asked her for a bribe of $3,000 (£1,900) in exchange for a five-year sentence. But she was unable to pay this so was sentenced to 20 years in prison. At her appeal trial in 2007, the judge sentenced her to death. Her file is being evaluated.
Gul Guncha was sentenced to death by the first and second courts, but her case was dismissed by the Supreme Court and handed back to the provincial court.
Aysha's brother-in-law, irate that she turned down his marriage proposal after her husband died, accused her of murdering her husband. She was sentenced to death by the primary and secondary courts, but the Supreme Court refused to accept the decision of the secondary court and referred her case back to the local court.
All three women's cases are stuck in a legal system that sees cases bounce around for years between three courts: the primary court, the secondary (or appeals) court and the Supreme Court. After the Supreme Court passes a death sentence, the judge writes to the president to sign off the execution. "Unfortunately, our legal system is weak," said Shamsullah Ahmadzai, the head of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission's Kabul office. "They [the courts] don't follow the Afghan constitution and don't implement it [the law] on time."
Mr Ahmadzai said that in reality, the women had been handed two punishments. "Being in prison for eight years and then hanging. This is really unacceptable according to global human rights' rules," he said.
Farid Ahmad Najibi, a spokesman for the Ministry of Justice, said he was aware of the women's hunger strike and that their cases were still going through the various courts. He added that it was unlikely that Mr Karzai would ever sign off on their executions. If they were not pardoned by Mr Karzai, they would probably spend up to 25 years in jail.
"As far as I know, the President will not approve [execution] because since this government came to power no woman has ever been hanged, and the presidential palace has never approved hanging a woman," said Mr Najibi. The Afghan President pardons prisoners every year to mark national and religious holidays. Last year, for example, he pardoned 115 women prisoners – including those who were charged with murder – and cut the sentences of 130 female prisoners, according to Mr Najibi.
The director of the women's prison, Colonel Amir Mohammed Amwajpoor, said he brought two officials from the Ministry of Women's Affairs to see the trio. He said they promised to do something about their cases. "I have personally written a letter to the Minister of Justice and the Supreme Court," Colonel Amwajpoor added.
Nazia Faizi, the head of supervision at the Ministry of Women's Affairs' legal unit, said she had taken bananas and apples to the women and promised them that justice would be done. "We told [them] we will release them in accordance with the legal system of Afghanistan and that there is no need to go on hunger strike again. We wrote to the Ministry of Justice asking them to take steps towards releasing them."
But such words sound hollow to the three women, who still have no hard evidence that their circumstances will change. Asked if she was optimistic that her hunger strike would help resolve her situation, Sayeed Begum said: "I hope President Karzai reads about me and that he will make a decision. Many people say they will help me. But nothing ever happens."
The grim statistics
304 The number of women held in Afghan prisons in 2007. The majority had been incarcerated with their children.
10,604 The number of prisoners held in Afghan jails in 2007, compared with just 600 in 2001.
50 The estimated percentage of women prisoners detained for 'moral crimes', according to a United Nations report in 2008.
66 Percentage of women at Lashkar Gah jail held in 2008 for alleged 'illegal sexual relations'. Most were believed to be rape victims.
5 The number of women currently on death row in Afghanistan, according to the Ministry of Justice.
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Hey Herman Cain, Hamid Karzai Knows Your Name
By STEVEN LEE MYERS The New York Times October 20, 2011, 9:45 am
KABUL, Afghanistan – The Republican presidential campaign unexpectedly made its way to Afghanistan on Thursday when Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, brought up recent comments by Herman Cain during a meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
As reporters entered the room where the two met for the usual photo opportunity, Mr. Karzai was asking Mrs. Clinton about remarks Mr. Cain made recently in a television interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network.
“I’m ready for gotcha questions, and they’re already starting to come,” Mr. Cain said in the interview, which was broadcast on Oct. 8. “And when they ask who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan, I’m going to say, ‘You know, I don’t know. Do you know?’ And then I’m going to say, ‘How’s that going to create one job?’”
Mrs. Clinton, a former presidential candidate herself, has typically avoided overtly political issues as secretary of state, but she sought to explain on Thursday.
“He’s a former pizza company owner,” she said to Mr. Karzai.
“Is he that?” he replied in English.
“Oh, yes. He started something called Godfather’s Pizza,” she said.
“Yes, I see, I see,” Mr. Karzai said.
Mrs. Clinton then turned to the American ambassador, Ryan C. Crocker, and went on, laughingly. “The president was saying he saw a news clip about how Mr. Cain had said I don’t even know the names of all these presidents of all these countries, you know, like whatever …”
“All the ’stans whatever,” Mr. Karzai interjected, referring to the countries of Central and Southern Asia, including his.
“All the ’stans places,” Mrs. Clinton repeated.
Mr. Karzai did not seem to take offense, displaying what appeared to be an astute understanding of campaigning in a democratic country. “That wasn’t right,” he said, “but anyway, that’s how politics are.”
Mr. Cain, a former chief executive of Godfather’s Pizza (not the owner or founder) who is riding a wave of attention in recent weeks, went on in the interview to say that “knowing who is the head of some of these small insignificant states around the world” was not critical to a president focused on national security and the economy at home.
He made clear that, if elected, he would read the briefing papers about the leader of, presumably, Uzbekistan. (The president there, for the record, is Islam A. Karimov, whom Mrs. Clinton is expected to meet during a weeklong trip that includes stops in four “’stans.”)
“When I get ready to go visit that country, I’ll know who it is,” Mr. Cain said, “but until then, I want to focus on the big issues that we need to solve.”
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