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Afghanistan’s Leaders Sour on Pakistan and Peace Talks
By ALISSA J. RUBIN, The New York Times September 29, 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan’s president and other senior leaders announced Thursday that they were rethinking the country’s relationship with Pakistan and its negotiations with the Taliban because talks had yielded so little.
Pakistan Parties to Discuss US Pressure on Haqqanis
VOA News September 29, 2011
Leaders of Pakistan's rival political parties are meeting Thursday to discuss recent U.S. accusations of a link between Pakistan’s government and an al-Qaida-linked militant group.
Pakistan Leaders Call for Peace in Afghanistan
By ZARAR KHAN Associated Press September 29, 2011
ISLAMABAD - Pakistan's political leaders voiced their support Thursday for the country's powerful army in its destabilizing standoff with the United States over allegations the force supports insurgents attacking American troops in Afghanistan.
Interview: Former U.S. Envoy Says Pakistan Stance Toward Afghanistan Is 'A Problem'
September 28, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Former U.S. envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad believes the U.S. relationship with Pakistan "has entered a very sensitive period" in recent months over the issue of Afghanistan.
Analysis: Pakistan's double-game: treachery or strategy?
Reuters By John Chalmers Wed Sep 28, 2011
ISLAMABAD - Washington has just about had it with Pakistan.
"Turns out they are disloyal, deceptive and a danger to the United States," fumed Republican Representative Ted Poe last week. "We pay them to hate us. Now we pay them to bomb us. Let's not pay them at all."
Iran’s hosting of Taliban reflects desire for greater role
By Ernesto Londoño, The Washington Post September 29
KABUL — Iran quietly hosted a delegation of Taliban members in Tehran this month in a powerful and unusual signal of its ambition to shape the trajectory of the Afghanistan conflict as U.S. troops begin to withdraw.
Taliban stalks outskirts of calm Afghan city
Washington Post By Joshua Partlow Thursday, September 29, 2011
MAZAR-E SHARIF, Afghanistan - On the outskirts of one of Afghanistan’s safest cities, the Taliban commander stepped from a copse of plane trees, skirted a cotton field and slipped into the back seat of a car parked on a dirt road. He glanced as a man swathed in white robes drove by slowly on a motorcycle.
Roadside Bomb Kills Three in Western Afghanistan
VOA News September 29, 2011
A roadside bomb has killed at least three people in western Afghanistan.
Thursday's attack occurred when a remote-controlled bomb detonated near police vehicle travelling on an airport road in Herat province.
34 insurgents killed, 36 arrested in Afghanistan
KABUL, Sept. 29 (Xinhua) -- The Afghan police, backed by army and NATO-led Coalition forces, killed 34 insurgents and captured 36 others in different parts of the country over the past 24 hours, Afghan Interior Ministry said on Thursday.
Obama, Uzbek leader discuss Afghan supply route
By Matt Spetalnick and Susan Cornwell Thu Sep 29, 2011 6:10pm EDT
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama and Uzbekistan's President Islam Karimov discussed expanding U.S. use of the central Asian country as a route to supply troops in Afghanistan, a U.S. official said on Thursday, amid growing concern about the viability of Pakistan as a transit route.
Afghanistan mission must go on: NZ Minister
WELLINGTON, Sept. 29 (Xinhua) -- New Zealand Defense Minister Wayne Mapp Thursday paid tribute to Lance-Corporal Leon Smith, the special forces trooper killed in Afghanistan on Wednesday.
U.S. Recalibrates Remarks About Pakistan
New York Times By ERIC SCHMITT September 28, 2011
WASHINGTON - The White House and State Department on Wednesday sought to temper remarks by the nation’s top military officer last week that the insurgents who attacked the American Embassy in Afghanistan this month were “a veritable arm” of Pakistan’s spy agency.
UN: Violence in Afghanistan Jumps About 40 Percent
VOA News September 28, 2011
The United Nations says violent incidents in Afghanistan have increased sharply this year.
A U.N. report says the average monthly number of violent incidents in the first eight months of this year stood at 2,108, a 39-percent increase over the same period a year earlier.
A decade on for the 'American Taliban'
BBC News By Steve Swann and Gordon Corera 29 September 2011
The television images of the bedraggled and bewildered young American detained in Afghanistan months after 9/11 were beamed across the world. They were seared into the consciousness of the country which quickly came to know him as the "American Taliban".
Afghanistan Plans To Bring Back Millions Of Refugees
September 28, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
KABUL -- Afghan officials say an ambitious program is being planned to try and bring back millions of Afghan refugees living in Iran and Pakistan, RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan reports.
Kazakh Officials' Visit To Afghanistan Highlights Growing Ties
September 28, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Officials from Afghanistan and Kazakhstan have met in Kabul to discuss expanding economic and political ties, RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan reports.
Pakistan: We're scapegoats for US frustration over Afghan war
Pakistan's prime minister warned Tuesday that if the US didn't stop lobbing accusations at Pakistan, it would be difficult to tamp down anti-American sentiment in his country.
Christian Science Monitor By Ariel Zirulnick, Staff writer September 28, 2011
A top Pakistani official has warned that public anger toward the US is getting beyond the government's control, and blamed the recent spike in tensions on a US administration increasingly anxious to fulfill its mission in Afghanistan ahead of a planned 2014 withdrawal.
Why the Haqqani Network needs the Afghan War to survive
CNN By Michael Semple, Foreign Affairs September 28th, 2011
The recent spate of spectacular attacks in Kabul reveals as much about the struggle for supremacy within the Af-Pak insurgency itself as it does about the war between the insurgents and NATO. In the span of a single week, Afghans witnessed, first, the closing down of the center of the capital during a 20-hour siege on the U.S. Embassy
Piece by piece, Afghanistan reclaims its history
Reuters By Sanjeev Miglani Thu Sep 29, 2011
KABUL - While everyone else is worrying about Afghanistan's future, a dedicated band of men and women is gathering up its past, hoping that a growing museum collection will show the world Afghan culture is more sophisticated than the tide of news reports suggest.
Afghan Policewomen Complain of Unfair Treatment
Despite attempts to boost recruitment, female officers say they are barred from advancement.
IWPR By Abdul Latif Sahak 28 Sep 11
Afghanistan - Policewomen in northern Afghanistan complain that they are passed over for promotion and forced to do the least desirable jobs, despite the promises of equal treatment they heard when they were recruited.
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Afghanistan’s Leaders Sour on Pakistan and Peace Talks
By ALISSA J. RUBIN, The New York Times September 29, 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan’s president and other senior leaders announced Thursday that they were rethinking the country’s relationship with Pakistan and its negotiations with the Taliban because talks had yielded so little.
As a result, the leaders said, they planned to work closely with the United States, Europe and India to plan the country’s future.
The shift in Afghanistan’s policies emerged in a statement released by the presidential palace on Thursday after a meeting the night before of senior government officials, including the two vice presidents, the national security adviser and several former military commanders who are close advisers to President Hamid Karzai and who fought to push the Russians out of the country in the 1980s.
“Despite making repeated attempts in the past three years, including sending several letters to the Taliban to open negotiations in order to bring peace and stability to the country, our leaders, scholars, influential figures, elders, women and children, old and young are being martyred,” the statement said, referring to a string of assassinations this year, most recently the killing of Burhanuddin Rabbani, the chairman of the peace council.
While the peace talks have yielded little, they had provided Afghanistan and the United States with the hope that there could be a negotiated end to the 10-year-old war. The statement did not rule out the possibility of future talks, but suggested that there was little prospect that they would continue.
With regard to Pakistan, the tone was similarly frustrated.
“Despite three years of talks, coming and going, good intentions and efforts, made by Afghanistan for peace and the initiation of good relations with Pakistan, the Pakistani government has not taken any measures for closing down its terrorist safe havens nor prevented the training and equipping of terrorists on its soil,” the statement said.
One measure of Afghan frustration was the statement’s specific mention of the prospect of a strategic partnership with India, in addition to the United States and Europe. Pakistan considers India its archenemy, and by mentioning it, Afghanistan appeared to be positioning itself in opposition to Pakistan, despite their longtime relationship.
Over the past several months, Afghanistan appeared to have had a reconciliation with Pakistan, and the two countries had been meeting regularly, bilaterally and also with American representatives present. The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Afghanistan was planning to suspend the trilateral talks indefinitely.
It remained unclear how far Afghanistan wished to go in pushing away Pakistan and what approach it would prefer. “The question is peace with whom?” the statement said.
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Pakistan Parties to Discuss US Pressure on Haqqanis
VOA News September 29, 2011
Leaders of Pakistan's rival political parties are meeting Thursday to discuss recent U.S. accusations of a link between Pakistan’s government and an al-Qaida-linked militant group.
The talks come as U.S. Secretary of States Hillary Clinton said the U.S. is conducting a final review on whether to designate the Haqqani network a terrorist organization.
The meeting, organized by Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, will be attended by 58 leaders of political, religious and nationalist parties, as well as Pakistan Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar.
Last week, U.S. Admiral Mike Mullen, the outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called the Haqqani Network a “veritable arm” of Pakistan’s military intelligence agency, the ISI. Pakistan has denied the claim.
In testimony to a senate committee, Mullen blamed the militant group for attacks on U.S. targets in Afghanistan leading to fears that the U.S. would deploy troops to the border area where the militants are based.
The White House on Wednesday refused to endorse Admiral Mullen's statements, instead stressing the importance of Pakistan's help in the fight against terrorism.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said although the Mullen's comment is consistent with the Obama administration's position, he would put it differently.
Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.
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Pakistan Leaders Call for Peace in Afghanistan
By ZARAR KHAN Associated Press September 29, 2011
ISLAMABAD - Pakistan's political leaders voiced their support Thursday for the country's powerful army in its destabilizing standoff with the United States over allegations the force supports insurgents attacking American troops in Afghanistan.
More than 40 political party leaders signed a resolution after a 10-hour meeting in the capital called by Prime Minister Reza Yousuf Gilani to formulate a response to fresh American claims that the army and the nation's spy agency is supporting the Haqqani network. U.S. officials say the Haqqani group is based on the Pakistani side of the Afghan border and is the most deadly militant faction in Afghanistan.
The vaguely worded resolution, born of compromise between the country's feuding parties and reflective of many of their anti-American and pro-Islamist views, called for peace with insurgents in Afghanistan. It also said the country should seek dialogue with Pakistanis in the tribal regions close to Afghanistan, apparently in reference to militants there battling the Pakistani state.
The head of the army and the country's main intelligence agency, which together control Islamabad's policy toward Afghanistan, addressed the meeting, which was closed to the media.
Few expected the delegates to stake out a position that challenged the army, and it is unlikely their rhetoric will ever be reflected in policy. Other similar resolutions have been ignored. At the very least, it was a signal to Washington that the country's elected representatives supported the military, and as such will do nothing to ease strains with Washington.
"'Give peace a chance' must be the guiding central principl
e henceforth," said the resolution, regarding Afghanistan. "Pakistan must initiate dialogue with a view to negotiate peace with our own people in the tribal areas and a proper mechanism for this be put in place."
The claims last week by Adm. Mike Mullen, America's top military officer, sent relations between Islamabad and Washington plummeting and triggered a backlash against America.
The resolution also referenced veiled U.S. threats of unilateral action against the Haqqanis if Pakistan does not act, saying the "the Pakistani nation affirms its full solidarity and support for the armed forces of Pakistan in defeating any threat to national security."
U.S. officials have long talked with Islamabad about links between Pakistan and the militant Haqqani network that is behind much of the violence in Afghanistan. But those discussions were mostly held in private, in the hope that Pakistan could gradually be persuaded to sever the purported ties with the group.
But Mullen seemed to signal a new approach last Friday when he told Congress that that Haqqani network was a "veritable arm" of the spy agency, which he said supported the militants in a recent attack on the U.S. embassy in Kabul.
Pakistani officials have denied the allegations, and accused Washington of making them a scapegoat for U.S. failures in Afghanistan.
Shaikh Rashid Ahmed, the president of the Awami Muslim League, said the head of the army and the spy agency told participants that they had no link with the Haqqani network, but that any contacts they did have were with the "political wing" of the movement and were concerned with the formation of any future government in Afghanistan.
Most analysts say the Pakistani army and the spy agency are tolerating or even supporting the Haqqani network because they want to cultivate it as an ally in Afghanistan once the Americans withdraw. They see little chance of the top brass attacking the group now, especially when the U.S. is calling for peace talks with other militant factions in Afghanistan.
This view has support in Pakistan, where many people perceive the Americans as the illegitimate force in Afghanistan, not the Afghan Taliban. But others oppose it because the militants are ideologically allied to al-Qaida and other extremists who have carried out scores of bombings on Pakistani soil over the last four years.
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Interview: Former U.S. Envoy Says Pakistan Stance Toward Afghanistan Is 'A Problem'
September 28, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Former U.S. envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad believes the U.S. relationship with Pakistan "has entered a very sensitive period" in recent months over the issue of Afghanistan.
Khalilzad is currently a counselor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He has also served as the United States Ambassador to Iraq, and the United Nations. Khalilzad recently discussed the United States' relations with Pakistan and Afghanistan in an exclusive interview in Dari with RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan correspondent Zarif Nazar.
RFE/RL: Many ordinary Afghans believe the Unites States does not talk openly to Pakistan when it comes to issues related to Afghanistan's peace and stability.
Zalmay Khalilzad: There were indeed certain problems in U.S. policy toward Pakistan but that policy is now changing. I have complained about it in the past. On the one hand, the U.S. needs Pakistan's cooperation in providing supply routes for its troops [in Afghanistan] and also in the fight against Al-Qaeda, as many leaders and high-ranking elements of Al-Qaeda have been in Pakistan. Concerns about Pakistan's own future were also among the reasons for U.S. and Pakistani cooperation.
However, at the same time, there were disagreements between the U.S. and Pakistan over the issue of Afghanistan. The U.S. has put pressure on Pakistan in this regard. Nonetheless, the policy of "friendship and pressure" did not work. Pakistan has been both friend and foe to the United States.
Relations between the two countries are getting increasingly complicated. The top commander of the U.S. forces [Admiral Mike Mullen] recently accused Pakistan's security services of being involved in [the September 13] attacks by the Haqqani network on the U.S. Embassy and NATO buildings [in Kabul]. This has opened a new and very sensitive period in U.S.-Pakistani relations.
I think U.S. pressure on Pakistan will increase in the future. Pakistan's stance toward Afghanistan has always been a problem in U.S. policy toward Afghanistan -- this policy has never been successful in overcoming this issue.
RFE/RL: How far will U.S. pressure on Pakistan go? Some experts in the region predict large-scale military and security operations by U.S. forces against militants inside Pakistani territory, at the very least.
Khalilzad: I think there will be economic pressures, such as reducing financial aid or providing aid with preconditions, demanding that Pakistan should demonstrate its willingness to cooperate before getting any assistance.
There are ongoing debates [in the U.S.] about it. Some politicians suggest the U.S. should put preconditions on all its aid to Pakistan. Others say it should set preconditions only on military aid to the country, while continuing to provide humanitarian and civilian aid because civilians do not have any role in military and security decisions.
As for military operations, I believe there will be more such operations. Pakistan has said it does not accept U.S. troops entering its territory. However, the U.S. can use its military planes and unmanned planes to attack those centers that prepare militants attacks on Afghanistan.
If Pakistan doesn't change its policy, relations between the U.S. and Pakistan will be increasingly difficult and complicated.
RFE/RL: The security situation has been worsening in Afghanistan in recent months. Several major attacks and suicide bombings have taken place in Kabul and elsewhere. What should Afghan leaders do to strengthen security in the country?
Khalilzad: With these attacks, the Taliban wanted to create chaos in Afghanistan and they intended to show to the Afghan people and the world that the Afghan government doesn't even have the capacity to defend its important leaders.
It is very important for the Afghan government to demonstrate that it is capable of doing its job and improving its performance.
Providing security throughout the country is directly related to ensuring the rule of law in the country. This has yet to be achieved. The Afghan government should work toward implementing the rule of law, fighting corruption and providing security. With today's realities on the ground, it might take some time.
RFE/RL: Since U.S. President Barack Obama first mentioned the planned withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, many Afghans are worried that their war-torn and poverty-stricken country will once again be abandoned by the international community.
Khalilzad: This issue is very complicated. One the one hand, the international community, and the U.S. in particular, understand that it was a mistake to abandon Afghanistan after the withdrawal of Soviet troops.
Afghanistan was left to deal with its problems alone, and this paved the way for Al-Qaeda to find a safe haven in the country. The international community doesn't want that mistake to be repeated.
On the other hand, the U.S. and other countries are facing growing domestic pressure demanding the withdrawal of their troops from Afghanistan.
The economy is not in great shape in the U.S. and the financial cost of the troops in Afghanistan is being highlighted during election campaigns. It costs billions of dollars and many believe it cannot continue for another five or ten years.
The situation inside Afghanistan has a direct impact on this. The more the Afghan government demonstrates its willingness to work for progress and improvement, the more the international community would want to continue its commitment to Afghanistan.
They want to see that the Afghan government is fighting corruption and ensuring the rule of law. Otherwise, there is a real risk that the international community will be disappointed.
In the future, it is possible that the Afghan government and the U.S. could reach an agreement whereby the U.S. would maintain a small military presence in Afghanistan and provide assistance when necessary so that the situation doesn't spiral out of control. In such a scenario, the financial burden would not be so high that the U.S. wouldn't be able to accept it.
translated from Dari by Farangis Najibullah
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Analysis: Pakistan's double-game: treachery or strategy?
Reuters By John Chalmers Wed Sep 28, 2011
ISLAMABAD - Washington has just about had it with Pakistan.
"Turns out they are disloyal, deceptive and a danger to the United States," fumed Republican Representative Ted Poe last week. "We pay them to hate us. Now we pay them to bomb us. Let's not pay them at all."
For many in America, Islamabad has been nothing short of perfidious since joining a strategic alliance with Washington 10 years ago: selectively cooperating in the war on extremist violence and taking billions of dollars in aid to do the job, while all the time sheltering and supporting Islamist militant groups that fight NATO troops in Afghanistan.
Pakistan has angrily denied the charges, but if its critics are right, what could the explanation be for such duplicity? What strategic agendas might be hidden behind this puzzling statecraft?
The answer is that Pakistan wants to guarantee for itself a stake in Afghanistan's political future.
It knows that, as U.S. forces gradually withdraw from Afghanistan, ethnic groups will be competing for ascendancy there and other regional powers - from India to China and Iran - will be jostling for a foot in the door.
Islamabad's support for the Taliban movement in the 1990s gives it an outsized influence among Afghanistan's Pashtuns, who make up about 42 percent of the total population and who maintain close ties with their Pakistani fellow tribesmen.
In particular, Pakistan's powerful military is determined there should be no vacuum in Afghanistan that could be filled by its arch-foe, India.
INDIA FOCUS
Pakistan has fought three wars with its neighbor since the bloody partition of the subcontinent that led to the creation of the country in 1947, and mutual suspicion still hobbles relations between the two nuclear-armed powers today.
"They still think India is their primary policy," said Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani general and prominent political analyst. "India is always in the back of their minds."
In an interview with Reuters on Tuesday, Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani - unprompted - complained that Washington's failure to deal even-handedly with New Delhi and Islamabad was a source of regional instability.
Aqil Shah, a South Asia security expert at the Harvard Society of Fellows, said Islamabad's worst-case scenario would be an Afghanistan controlled or dominated by groups with ties to India, such as the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance, which it fears would pursue activities hostile to Pakistan.
"Ideally, the military would like Afghanistan to become a relatively stable satellite dominated by Islamist Pashtuns," Shah wrote in a Foreign Affairs article this week.
Although Pakistan, an Islamic state, officially abandoned support for the predominantly Pashtun Taliban after the 9/11 attacks on the United States in 2001, elements of the military never made the doctrinal shift.
Few doubt that the shadowy intelligence directorate, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), has maintained links to the Taliban that emerged from its support for the Afghan mujahideen during the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
Until recently, there appeared to be a grudging acceptance from Washington that this was the inevitable status quo.
That was until it emerged in May that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden - who was killed in a U.S. Navy SEALs raid - had been hiding out in a Pakistani garrison town just two hours up the road from Islamabad, by some accounts for up to five years.
Relations between Pakistan and the United States have been stormy ever since, culminating in a tirade by the outgoing U.S. joint chiefs of staff, Mike Mullen, last week.
Mullen described the Haqqani network, the most feared faction among Taliban militants in Afghanistan, as a "veritable arm" of the ISI and accused Islamabad of providing support for the group's September 13 attack on the U.S. embassy in Kabul.
The reaction in Islamabad has been one of stunned outrage.
Washington has not gone public with evidence to back its accusation, and Pakistani officials say that contacts with the Haqqani group do not amount to actual support.
However, Imran Khan, a Pakistani cricketer-turned-populist-politician, said this week that it was too much to expect that old friends could have become enemies overnight.
He told Reuters that, instead of demanding that Pakistan attack the Haqqanis in the mountainous border region of North Waziristan, the United States should use Islamabad's leverage with the group to bring the Afghan Taliban into negotiations.
"Haqqani could be your ticket to getting them on the negotiating table, which at the moment they are refusing," Khan said. "So I think that is a much saner policy than to ask Pakistan to try to take them on."
REGIONAL GAME
The big risk for the United States in berating Islamabad is that it will exacerbate anti-American sentiment, which already runs deep in Pakistan, and perhaps embolden it further.
C. Raja Mohan, senior fellow at New Delhi's Center for Policy Research, said Pakistan was probably gambling that the United States' economic crisis and upcoming presidential elections would distract Washington.
"The real game is unfolding on the ground with the Americans. The Pakistan army is betting that the United States does not have too many choices and more broadly that the U.S. is on the decline, he said.
It is also becoming clear that as Pakistan's relations with Washington deteriorate, it can fall back into the arms of its "all-weather friend," China, the energy-hungry giant that is the biggest investor in Afghanistan's nascent resources sector.
Pakistani officials heaped praise on Beijing this week as a Chinese minister visited Islamabad. Among them was army chief General Ashfaq Kayani, arguably the country's most powerful man, who spoke of China's "unwavering support."
In addition, Pakistan has extended a cordial hand to Iran, which also shares a border with Afghanistan.
Teheran has been mostly opposed to the Taliban, which is dominated by Sunni Muslims while Iran is predominantly Shi'ite. But Iran's anti-Americanism is more deep-seated.
"My reading is the Iranians want to see the Americans go," said Raja Mohan, the Indian analyst. "They have a problem with the Taliban, but any American retreat will suit them. Iran in the short term is looking at the Americans being humiliated."
ARMY CALLS THE SHOTS
The supremacy of the military in Pakistan means that Washington has little to gain little from wagging its finger about ties with the Taliban at the civilian government, which is regularly lashed for its incompetence and corruption.
"The state has become so soft and powerless it can't make any difference," said Masood, the Pakistani retired general. "Any change will have to come from the military."
Daniel Markey, a senior fellow for South Asia at the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, said the problem lies with a security establishment that continues to believe that arming and working - actively and passively - with militant groups serves its purposes.
"Until ... soul-searching takes place within the Pakistani military and the ISI, you're not likely to see an end to these U.S. demands, and a real shift in terms of the relationship," Markey said in an online discussion this week. "This is the most significant shift that has to take place."
(Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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Iran’s hosting of Taliban reflects desire for greater role
By Ernesto Londoño, The Washington Post September 29
KABUL — Iran quietly hosted a delegation of Taliban members in Tehran this month in a powerful and unusual signal of its ambition to shape the trajectory of the Afghanistan conflict as U.S. troops begin to withdraw.
Iranian officials had apparently hoped to facilitate a meeting between the delegation and Burhanuddin Rabbani, a former Afghan president and leader of the country’s reconciliation efforts, who was attending the same conference in Tehran, his associates said. Although that did not happen, the presence of the Taliban members suggests Iran has cultivated deeper ties with the insurgent group than was previously known and is stepping up efforts to influence its eastern neighbor as the U.S. role recedes.
The relationship between Iran and the Taliban’s central leadership has long been deeply fraught; when the Taliban was running Afghanistan in the 1990s, the two countries came to the brink of war.
U.S. officials have for years accused Iran of fueling the Afghanistan war by providing training and sophisticated weapons to its favored insurgent commanders, although they have described Tehran’s role as minimal compared with other regional players. There have been few signs of senior-level contact between the Taliban and Iran.
Hosting Taliban members at the Tehran conference might have been an attempt by Iran to mend ties as it becomes clear that the group will be a major power broker in Afghanistan after the United States withdraws its last combat troops as scheduled in 2014, analysts said. U.S. officials have launched their own initiatives to talk to the Taliban, to little avail.
“Iran considers itself a regional player with a legitimate stake in Afghanistan, and it doesn’t want to see progress that runs contrary to its political interests,” said Michael Semple, who has decades of experience in Afghanistan as a diplomat and a scholar. “If the price of Iran having a role in the next step is dealing with the Taliban, then they are prepared to do it.”
Reports of the Tehran meeting came as U.S. efforts to promote a dialogue between Afghanistan and its eastern neighbor, Pakistan, appeared to falter Thursday. The Afghan government canceled a meeting with its Pakistani counterpart that was scheduled for next week, part of a U.S.-promoted effort begun early this year to assuage long-standing distrust between the two countries, U.S. officials said.
The Obama administration has asked Pakistan to assist the reconciliation process by eliminating Taliban havens in its territory and pressing the insurgents toward negotiations. But recent high-profile attacks in Afghanistan by the Pakistan-based Haqqani group — for which the United States has publicly held Pakistan at least indirectly responsible — have stirred Afghan antagonism. U.S. officials confirmed the cancellation, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, but said they anticipated that the break in dialogue would be only temporary.
An unusual opening
The Islamic Awakening conference in Tehran was organized by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say in the nation’s policies. The conference, held in mid-September, drew more than 700 scholars and Islamist political figures from around the world.
The Afghan government was represented by Rabbani, who a year ago was tasked with leading Afghanistan’s High Peace Council. Days after attending the conference, Rabbani was slain by a man posing as a Taliban negotiator. The two events do not appear to have been linked.
Council members say they have made virtually no headway in starting peace talks because the Taliban has shown little interest in a negotiated settlement to end the war. But the Tehran conference marked an unusual opening. Arsala Rahmani, a member of the council who traveled to Tehran with Rabbani, said he was startled when he saw Nik Mohammad, a former colleague from their years together as Taliban government officials.
“They seldom come to public events, and when they do, they use aliases,” said Rahmani, who served as deputy education minister when the Taliban controlled Kabul in the late 1990s.
Rahmani said he and Mohammad shook hands but exchanged nothing beyond pleasantries.
“It was not in the typical way Afghans use to greet each other,” he said. “It was done in a very cool manner.”
Rahmani said Mohammad, who was heading the small Taliban delegation, is an influential insurgent leader who is in contact with the top members of the group’s ruling Quetta Shura.
Semple said that although Mohammad is on a U.N. terrorist sanctions list, there has been little public evidence suggesting he is actively involved in running the Afghan insurgency. Mohammad served as deputy commerce minister during the Taliban regime.
Waheed Mozhdah, a political analyst who was with Rabbani’s delegation, said he first learned about the Taliban representatives as he leafed through the conference program and found two names he recognized. The men were listed as representing what was described as the American Opposition Front in Afghanistan: Nik Mohammad and Tayeb Agha.
The latter is an aide to Taliban leader Mohammad Omar and reportedly held talks with U.S. officials this year in Qatar and Germany. Agha apparently stopped talking to Western officials after his role in the talks was disclosed. None of the members of Rabbani’s delegation said they saw Agha, but two noted that some members of the Taliban contingent hid their faces with scarves.
At one point, Mozhdah said, the Iranian hosts asked Rabbani’s team whether it would object to giving the Taliban representatives an opportunity to make public remarks.
“There were various opinions,” said Mozhdah, who worked in the Afghan Foreign Ministry during the Taliban’s reign. “One side said, ‘Let them come and express what they have to say.’ ”
Mozhdah said he objected, arguing to Rabbani that such a move would “damage the relation between Kabul and Tehran.”
The Iranian hosts suggested instead that Rabbani make time to speak privately to the Taliban representatives on the sidelines of the conference, Mozhdah said. In the end, no such discussions took place, said members of Rabbani’s team.
“We feared that if we were to do so, it would show our weakness,” said peace council member Qazi Amin Weqad, who also attended. “We were also scared of getting a negative response, such as, ‘You need to talk to the Quetta Shura.’ ”
A State Department spokesman declined to comment on the Tehran conference. Administration officials have said that Iran has a legitimate interest in Afghanistan and a role to play in promoting regional stability. As part of its own efforts to promote Taliban reconciliation, the Obama administration has sent senior emissaries to all of the countries bordering Afghanistan, except Iran.
Strategic mediation
Iran, a predominantly Shiite nation, supported the Northern Alliance as it fought the Taliban during the 1990s. The Taliban, a hard-line Sunni organization that was in power between 1996 and 2001, came close to war with Iran in 1998 when a number of Iranian diplomats were killed in Afghanistan.
When U.S.-backed Northern Alliance forces toppled the Taliban in late 2001, Iran began to broaden commercial and diplomatic ties with Afghanistan. Iranian leaders have become concerned in recent years that Afghanistan’s insurgency and illicit drugs could spread beyond its western border into Iran.
The presence of Taliban members at the public conference in Tehran appears to have received little notice in Iran, or beyond. But even the limited coverage it got in Iran provides insight into why Iranian leaders decided to invite a Taliban delegation.
An article that appeared Saturday on the influential Iranian news Web site Khabar, which is supportive of the supreme leader, described the presence of Taliban and Afghan government representatives at the conference as a watershed moment.
“Officials who had never gathered in one place were now discussing current issues of the area together,” the article said.
Referring to the U.S. talks with Taliban representatives this year, the piece said: “It should be noted that the radical forces in Afghanistan have not accepted mediations from [the] West.”
Correspondent Thomas Erdbrink in Tehran, staff writer Karen DeYoung in Washington and special correspondent Sayed Salahuddin in Kabul contributed to this report.
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Taliban stalks outskirts of calm Afghan city
Washington Post By Joshua Partlow Thursday, September 29, 2011
MAZAR-E SHARIF, Afghanistan - On the outskirts of one of Afghanistan’s safest cities, the Taliban commander stepped from a copse of plane trees, skirted a cotton field and slipped into the back seat of a car parked on a dirt road. He glanced as a man swathed in white robes drove by slowly on a motorcycle.
“Did you see that man? He is one of my people. He is maintaining security in this area,” said the commander, Mawlavi Hejran. “These gardens are our havens.”
NATO this summer transferred to the Afghan government responsibility for securing Mazar-e Sharif, the northern city known as a bastion of relative calm. But just outside the city, in surrounding Balkh province, the Taliban persists doggedly, exerting what some believe is a tightening grip on life in the area’s farmlands and villages. The situation is similar across much of northern Afghanistan, where the Taliban is not so much surging into new territory but stubbornly refusing to go away.
“The foreign troops think they can suppress the Taliban,” said Hejran, who claims to command 200 men, having inherited the reins last month when his brother was killed by a U.S. airstrike. “But as long as the foreigners are here, the guerrilla war will continue.”
The war in Balkh, far from the Taliban strongholds of Afghanistan’s south and east, offers an explanation for the intractability of this conflict. Insurgents here do not mass to fight the Afghan, U.S. or German troops in the region. Among the ethnic Tajiks and Hazaras who predominate here, the largely Pashtun Taliban has found little support.
But the insurgents evade and calculate, picking targets for assassinations and suicide bombings. Life in bustling Mazar-e Sharif appears normal until suddenly it is not, punctuated by a blast or, in the case of the assault on the local United Nations compound in April that left seven employees dead, a mob whipped up by the Taliban.
Outside the city, insurgents have posted directives in mosques, using Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan stationery, ordering residents to give them 10 percent of their crops. The insurgents make late-night house calls to enforce the demand. “They give you two or three days, then they beat you,” said one resident, who gave his share. Other fliers, bearing images of a sword, pistol and noose, warn Afghans not to send their daughters to school.
“When the sun goes down, they don’t care about the government,” said the resident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear for his safety. “They are ruling the districts and villages.”
In recent months, Afghan forces working with U.S. Special Operations troops have conducted night raids, capturing or killing at least 10 Taliban leaders in the province, according to a senior Afghan intelligence official. But Taliban members and Afghan officials agree that a core group of about 300 to 400 insurgents, who retreat to Pakistan for training and winter refuge, still circulates in Balkh.
“If we didn’t do these operations, the enemy would definitely be trying more commando-style attacks,” said the intelligence official, who was not authorized to speak on the record. “But no matter how much pressure they’re under, how big their losses, they still fight.”
Insurgents’ grievances
Three Taliban members interviewed separately here offered consistent explanations for why they fight. They said they consider the Afghan government corrupt and rapacious. The U.S. and NATO troops, they said, are occupiers waging a war against Islam. The three Taliban members are all Pashtuns, a minority group in Balkh, and they described feeling discriminated against by the locally powerful Tajiks.
“How can it be that the other ethnic groups are human but Pashtuns are not human?” asked Saleh Mohammad, who was secretary to the provincial governor during the Taliban’s 1996-2001 reign. He said that he stayed with the Taliban because he was imprisoned after the group was ousted and that Pashtuns have been excluded from the economic spoils by the current governor, Attah Mohammed Noor, a Tajik.
Mohammad described a vibrant underground support network for the insurgency in Balkh, with residents, including powerful businessmen, funneling them money, motorcycles, weapons and food. But he acknowledged the Taliban’s relative weakness in the north compared with other areas.
“The process of Talibanization is new in Balkh. We are at the stage of propaganda: inspiring people, inviting them to jihad, preaching in mosques,” he said. “Nowadays everyone is praying against the Americans.”
‘Target of terror’
The Taliban’s expanded use of assassinations as a tactic nationwide has exacted its most obvious toll in Kandahar province — where President Hamid Karzai’s half brother and the mayor of Kandahar city were fatally shot — but it has also destabilized the north. Noor, the Balkh governor, is under constant threat of attack and lives amid elaborate security. The top police official in the north, Gen. Daud Daud, was killed this year in a bombing. The police chief of Kunduz was killed in March, five months after the province’s governor died in a mosque bombing.
Those still working have taken note. As of late summer, Kunduz Gov. Mohammad Anwar Jegdalek had not visited the province in more than a month and spends most of his time in Kabul, according to officials who work with him.
“A phenomenon that was confined to Kandahar and the south is becoming countrywide. The political elite now is a target of terror,” said Ashraf Ghani, a top adviser to Karzai. “Now there’s a very heavy northern, as well as southern, focus.”
Hejran, the 35-year-old Taliban commander, was harvesting watermelons last month when he learned that his brother had been killed in a U.S. airstrike. One of his fighters, Sayed Khan, had tipped off Naseem’s location, Hejran said.
“We captured him and slit his throat,” he said in an interview with a reporter that was arranged through intermediaries. “It became a lesson to the others.”
After his brother’s death, Hejran traveled to Peshawar, Pakistan, to meet the Taliban leadership council there. “The leaders said, ‘You are responsible in place of your brother. You are the commander,’ ” he recalled. “They fully equipped me.”
He said he returned and took up a roving existence, traveling with his fighters between deserts and villages, sleeping under trees and in the homes of Taliban sympathizers. A network of informants, including Afghan police officers, tells Hejran’s men about the location of NATO troops, he said. “Without people’s support, we could not do this fight,” he said. “People cooperate with us because they know that [foreign troops] are the enemies of Islam.”
He acknowledged that the pressure from NATO operations has grown but insisted it remains insignificant.
“We are trying to compel the foreigners to leave,” he said. “When they do, we will reconcile with each other.”
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Roadside Bomb Kills Three in Western Afghanistan
VOA News September 29, 2011
A roadside bomb has killed at least three people in western Afghanistan.
Thursday's attack occurred when a remote-controlled bomb detonated near police vehicle travelling on an airport road in Herat province.
Authorities say a female police officer and two civilians were killed in the attack.
At least 10 other people were wounded in the blast, including four policewomen.
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34 insurgents killed, 36 arrested in Afghanistan
KABUL, Sept. 29 (Xinhua) -- The Afghan police, backed by army and NATO-led Coalition forces, killed 34 insurgents and captured 36 others in different parts of the country over the past 24 hours, Afghan Interior Ministry said on Thursday.
"Afghan National Police (ANP) during 12 joint and independent operations, over the last 24 hours, have killed 34 armed insurgents, detained 36 other armed insurgents in Kabul, Nangarhar, Laghman, Kapisa, Baghlan, Helmand, Logar, Wardak, Ghazni and Paktia province," the ministry said in a statement.
A handful of weapons and ammunition were also found and seized by ANP, the statement said, adding four more insurgents were injured during the raids.
Afghan officials often use the word "insurgents" referring to Taliban.
The insurgent group, who stepped up their attacks on Afghan troops and about 130,000 NATO-led Coalition troops stationed in the country since a spring rebel offensive was launched in May this year in the country, has yet to make comments.
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Obama, Uzbek leader discuss Afghan supply route
By Matt Spetalnick and Susan Cornwell Thu Sep 29, 2011 6:10pm EDT
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama and Uzbekistan's President Islam Karimov discussed expanding U.S. use of the central Asian country as a route to supply troops in Afghanistan, a U.S. official said on Thursday, amid growing concern about the viability of Pakistan as a transit route.
On a day when overtures to Uzbekistan seemed to stretch right across Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met her Uzbek counterpart and said both sides want to deepen ties.
And in Congress, changes in U.S. law were pending that would allow more military aid to Uzbekistan, despite its poor human rights record.
Capitol Hill aides said the change was done partly at the urging of the Obama administration, which is shifting more military supply lines to the Central Asian country.
The White House said Obama called Karimov on Wednesday to congratulate the former Soviet republic on its 20th anniversary of independence and that the leaders talked about shared interests in a "secure and prosperous" Afghanistan.
Obama's outreach to Karimov, whose has faced U.S. criticism over his human rights record, came as the United States and Pakistan are locked in a diplomatic crisis over U.S. accusations linking Pakistan's chief intelligence agency to militant attacks on Americans in Afghanistan.
Rising tension between Washington and Islamabad, at times awkward partners in the fight against Islamic militancy, have raised questions about Pakistan's role as a major U.S. supply route for American forces fighting in Afghanistan.
That has prompted U.S. officials to look harder at expanding alternatives to lessen reliance on Pakistan.
CLINTON TALKS TO UZBEK; LAWMAKERS MAKE CHANGES
"We value our relationship with Uzbekistan. They have been very helpful to us with respect to the Northern Distribution Network," Clinton said, referring to the supply route that goes through the Central Asian country to Afghanistan.
She spoke after meeting Uzbek Foreign Minister Elyor Ganiyev. Their dialogue raised "our concerns about human rights and political freedoms," Clinton said, but added that there were "some signs" of progress on that front.
The Senate Appropriations Committee last week approved a bill that would allow the United States to waive restrictions on aid to Uzbekistan if Clinton certifies this is needed to obtain access to and from Afghanistan.
U.S. military aid to Uzbekistan has been restricted since 2004 because of its human rights record. House appropriators have dropped the restrictions from their bill funding foreign aid next year, an aide said, making it likely some version of the change will pass.
An aide to Senator Patrick Leahy said the Obama administration had pushed for easing the restrictions on military aid to Uzbekistan due to concerns about potential limits to continuing cooperation from Pakistan with the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan.
But rather than drop the longstanding restrictions, Leahy, who chairs the panel that funds foreign aid, added the waiver that requires the administration to assess Uzbekistan's progress on human rights, and a report on any diversion of U.S. aid for "corrupt" purposes, the aide said.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told Reuters he had visited Uzbekistan and seen Karimov recently. "I expect a major breakthrough between us and the Uzbeks in terms of ground and air access," Graham said.
"We're going to probably replace 50 percent of what we ship into Afghanistan from Pakistan, will go through the northern route, Uzbekistan," Graham, a member of the appropriations committee, said.
One reason U.S. officials want to expand the Northern Distribution Network is to enable more movement on the network in both directions, a U.S. military spokeswoman said.
She said the network had been seen primarily as a way of getting supplies into Afghanistan, but with the planned drawdown over the coming years, the United States wants agreements letting it haul materiel from Afghanistan as well.
The United States also has been looking to expand overflight options throughout the region, she said.
Human rights groups have urged the United States not to lift restrictions on military aid to Uzbekistan. "The human rights situation in Uzbekistan continues to be among the worst in the world," said Jeff Goldstein, a senior policy analyst at Open Society Foundations in Washington.
(Additional reporting by John O'Callaghan, David Alexander and Andy Quinn; Editing by Will Dunham and Cynthia Osterman)
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Afghanistan mission must go on: NZ Minister
WELLINGTON, Sept. 29 (Xinhua) -- New Zealand Defense Minister Wayne Mapp Thursday paid tribute to Lance-Corporal Leon Smith, the special forces trooper killed in Afghanistan on Wednesday.
The soldier with the Special Air Service Group (SAS) was shot while the SAS were mentoring the Afghan Crisis Response Unit during an operation in the Wardak Province near Kabul.
"Lance-Corporal Smith was a brave and courageous soldier who served his country to his utmost. I would ask media to respect how devastating his death is for his family, and leave them to grieve privately during this difficult time."
Mapp said the second SAS death in Afghanistan in little more than a month showed just how dangerous their mission was.
"It is an important mission, and we intend to complete the deployment."
It was critically important that New Zealand played its part in the fight against global terrorism, said Mapp. "New Zealanders have died as a result of terrorism, and we need to keep working with our allies to make the world a safer place," said Mapp.
The reason for the initial deployment in Afghanistan was to ensure Al Qaeda would not have safe haven in Afghanistan. After Sept. 11, the Taliban government specifically said they would continue to provide safe haven to Al Qaeda, even though the United Nations resolutions required them not to do so, he said.
"The Taliban are still trying to overthrow the Afghan government by force. That is why the 49 nations of NATO/ISAF are there, to enable the elected government of Afghanistan to sustain itself. In doing so we protect New Zealanders from the risk of international terrorism."
New Zealand's deployment in Afghanistan consists of both the SAS and the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), both of which had seen fatalities.
The PRT was working to ensure the Bamyan provincial government could take over full governance and security responsibility, said Mapp.
"Each deployment and each individual mission is dangerous. Every one of our soldiers in Afghanistan knows this, and they continue to serve with great bravery and courage," said Mapp.
Last month SAS soldier Doug Grant, 41, was killed after he was wounded in an attack by the Taliban at the British Council diplomatic offices in Kabul.
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U.S. Recalibrates Remarks About Pakistan
New York Times By ERIC SCHMITT September 28, 2011
WASHINGTON - The White House and State Department on Wednesday sought to temper remarks by the nation’s top military officer last week that the insurgents who attacked the American Embassy in Afghanistan this month were “a veritable arm” of Pakistan’s spy agency.
The comments by Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were the first to directly link the spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, with an assault on the United States, and they ignited a diplomatic furor with Pakistan’s civilian and military leaders, who have denied the accusation.
Asked on Wednesday whether he agreed that the Haqqani network, the militant group blamed for the embassy attack, was “a veritable arm” of the ISI, Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, told reporters, “It’s not language I would use.”
He pivoted quickly to say the Obama administration is united in its assessment that “links” exist between the Haqqani network and the ISI, “and that Pakistan needs to take action to address that.”
Mr. Carney’s comments, echoed by State Department and other administration officials, seemed aimed at supporting Admiral Mullen’s tough comments up to a point, while giving Pakistan a small window to save face.
With American lawmakers considering legislation that would condition billions of dollars in aid to Pakistan on that country’s cooperation in fighting the Haqqani network and other terror groups associated with Al Qaeda, the administration is trying calibrate a response that prods Pakistan to act more aggressively against the Haqqani network but does not rupture already frayed relations.
President Obama’s top national security advisers met Tuesday to discuss a range of familiar options — including unilateral strikes and a suspension of security assistance — intended to get Pakistan’s army to fight militants more effectively. So far, the carrots and sticks have had little impact, American officials acknowledged.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday that the administration was completing “the final formal review” to designate the Haqqani network a terrorist organization, having already designated several of its leaders.
She discussed the matter with Pakistan’s foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, when the United Nations General Assembly met last week, Mrs. Clinton said at the State Department. “We discussed the urgency, in the wake of the attack on our embassy in Kabul and on the NATO ISAF headquarters, for us to confront the threat posed by the Haqqani network,” she said, referring to the International Security Assistance Force.
Mrs. Clinton, echoing private statements by American diplomats, acknowledged the strain that the attack — and its links to Pakistani intelligence — had caused, but she also emphasized the need for Pakistan to address what has become a threat to its own society.
“I have no argument with anyone who says this is a very difficult and complex relationship, because it is,” she said in an appearance with Egypt’s foreign minister. “But I also believe strongly that we have to work together despite those difficulties.”
Mrs. Clinton added that the United States remained committed to attacking any threats, “in particular against those who have taken up safe havens inside Pakistan,” suggesting a willingness to act on its own. But she emphasized previous Pakistani efforts against Al Qaeda and other extremists, “and we’re going to continue to work with our Pakistani counterparts to try to root them out and prevent them from attacking Pakistanis, Americans, Afghans or anyone else.”
In his remarks last Thursday to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Admiral Mullen went further than any other American official in blaming the ISI for undermining the American effort in Afghanistan. A spokesman for Admiral Mullen, Capt. John Kirby, said Wednesday that the admiral stood by his remarks.
Two senior military officials said that while there was no evidence that the ISI had directed or orchestrated the attack against the United States Embassy in Kabul, there was evidence that ISI officers had urged and supported the Haqqani fighters to carry out strikes against those kinds of Western targets. Pakistani military officials have denied this.
Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting.
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UN: Violence in Afghanistan Jumps About 40 Percent
VOA News September 28, 2011
The United Nations says violent incidents in Afghanistan have increased sharply this year.
A U.N. report says the average monthly number of violent incidents in the first eight months of this year stood at 2,108, a 39-percent increase over the same period a year earlier.
The report also said insurgents are conducting more complex suicide attacks involving multiple bombers and gunmen, and that on average, three such attacks have been carried out each month this year, a 50-percent rise from the same period in 2010.
In violence Wednesday, suspected Taliban militants killed eight Afghan policemen and wounded three others at a checkpoint near Lashkar Gah in southern Helmand Province. Authorities are investigating whether a police officer conspired in the attack.
NATO said five of its service members were killed Wednesday across the country. A New Zealand special forces soldier was killed in a gunbattle with insurgents near, Kabul, while three troops died in a bomb blast in eastern Afghanistan. The fifth service member died as a result of a non-battle related injury.
In other news, Afghan and coalition troops discovered three narcotics laboratories in Helmand, containing drugs with an estimated street value of more than $350 million. A coalition statement said the seizure is reportedly the largest ever made by combined forces in Afghanistan.
The laboratories, along with almost 7,000 liters of morphine solution, 100 kilograms of heroin, 80 kilograms of opium, 12 tons of chemical used to process narcotics and a quantity of drug processing equipment were destroyed.
Violence in Afghanistan is at its worst since the U.S.-led invasion in late 2001.
This comes as international forces begin pulling out of Afghanistan and transferring security responsibility to their Afghan counterparts. All foreign combat troops are set to leave the country by the end of 2014.
Some information for this report was provided by AP and AFP.
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A decade on for the 'American Taliban'
BBC News By Steve Swann and Gordon Corera 29 September 2011
The television images of the bedraggled and bewildered young American detained in Afghanistan months after 9/11 were beamed across the world. They were seared into the consciousness of the country which quickly came to know him as the "American Taliban".
On a quiet suburban street in Mill Valley, a prosperous town a few miles north of San Francisco, the Islamic Centre is slowly emptying after holding Friday prayers.
Once the crowds have gone, Abdullah Nana recounts how over a decade ago a white teenager turned up, confused and looking for answers. "He was at a crossroads at that time. He was unsure of his direction in this world. It seemed that Islam and religion was a way for him to spiritually fulfil himself."
Mr Nana says he quickly became friends with the 16-year-old who converted to Islam and soon set himself the daunting task of learning Arabic and memorising the Koran.
That boy was John Lindh, also known as John Walker Lindh, who grew up in a middle-class Catholic family, and is now a prisoner in the "special communications unit" in Terre Haute, Indiana, half-way through a 20-year sentence.
His family argue that it is time to look again at the case of "Detainee 001", the first terror suspect picked up in the "war on terror," which President Bush declared 10 years ago.
According to his father Frank, he is housed in a special wing at the west end of the building which had originally been used as death row. It is here that Lindh, who is enrolled on a correspondence course with Indiana University, has completed the task of memorising the Koran.
Adventure
At the age of 17 he had got his parents' permission to travel to Yemen to study Arabic. He briefly returned to California but couldn't settle so he headed back to Yemen from where he wrote to ask his father if he could go to Pakistan to continue his studies. Frank Lindh replied: "I trust your judgment and hope you have a wonderful adventure."
Once there, Lindh enrolled at a religious school in the village of Bannu in the North West Frontier Province where it seems his views hardened. Without his parents knowing, in June 2001 he slipped over the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan.
Once there, with the assistance of a militant group, he received two months of military training at the al-Farouq training camp which was financed by Osama bin Laden. Twice that summer he met the al-Qaeda leader but Frank Lindh denies his son had anything to do with terrorism, claiming he "was one of thousands of young Muslims who over the years volunteered their services in Afghanistan against the Russian-backed warlords" of the Northern Alliance.
But Michael Chertoff, who was Assistant Attorney General at the time, says Lindh "went to fight for a regime that was hostile to the United States and that supported the 9/11 attacks. So in my book, that's pretty serious. It's not quite treason but it's what I would call a kissing cousin to treason."
Pivotal moment
The original indictment against him shows that Lindh was approached by al-Qaeda to carry out an attack in the United States or Israel but he refused. By early September he was serving in a corps of 75 non-Afghan soldiers in the Takhar region of north-eastern Afghanistan. It was then that everything changed, according to Frank Lindh.
"There was a pivotal moment in history. 9/11 occurred and then the American government made a decision to change our policy very abruptly and invade Afghanistan and topple the Taliban government."
Shortly after the aerial bombardment of the country began, Lindh's unit was forced to retreat, walking through the desert to Kunduz where they surrendered to the Northern Alliance. They were transported to the Qala-i-Jangi fortress on the outskirts of Mazar-i-Sharif which was under the control of the warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum.
When a battle erupted within the fortress, a CIA officer and a hundred prisoners were killed. Lindh was shot in the leg. For the following week, he and other survivors huddled in a basement. He claims that Dostum's forces lobbed grenades down air ducts, killing more prisoners and then pumped in freezing water to try to drown them.
With shrapnel wounds and hypothermia, Lindh managed to get above ground and on 1 December 2001 was handed over to US custody. Anger
It was then, after hearing nothing for seven months and growing increasingly frantic, that Lindh's parents discovered what had happened to him. They saw an online news article which contained a grainy photograph of what they immediately recognised was their son.
Frank Lindh is angry about what happened next. His son was flown to a marine base at Camp Rhino where he claims they "left him in an unheated metal shipping container completely naked for two days and two nights in the desert in Afghanistan" with his "wounds untreated".
There then began what Lindh's mother, Marilyn Walker, describes as an unstoppable "tidal wave" of negative media coverage. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that Lindh was "an al-Qaeda-trained terrorist who conspired with the Taliban to kill his fellow citizens".
"That image was sealed in the minds of people when they were emotionally distraught and in grief after 9/11," says Frank Lindh.
It was into this atmosphere in January 2002 that Lindh was flown back to the United States but in a last-minute plea bargain the authorities dropped the terrorism and al-Qaeda charges in return for Lindh pleading guilty to supporting the Taliban and dropping his claims of mistreatment.
Appearing in court, John Lindh acknowledged: "I made a mistake by joining the Taliban I want the American people to know that had I realized then what I know now about the Taliban, I would never have joined them."
Wrong place
The 20-year sentence was, according to his father, the best he could hope for since "the well was poisoned against my son in the United States".
Michael Chertoff defends the outcome. "He pleaded guilty, the judge imposed what seemed an appropriate sentence and I assume he'll serve it out." Reacting to the claim that Lindh was in the wrong place at the wrong time, Mr Chertoff says: "The prisons are full of people who say they were in the wrong place at the wrong time."
So the visits continue to Terre Haute where, separated by glass, Lindh speaks to his family over a telephone which is monitored.
Lindh never shows a sign of self-pity, his father says, and never complains, but had once told him that this was a deliberate tactic. "He feels that complaining would yield something to the authorities who are imprisoning him," says Frank Lindh.
Lindh's parents try to chip away at what they see as a false public image of the "American Taliban".
Marilyn Walker says: "It's critical for John's life at whatever point he gets out of prison that he is able to live without having to look over his shoulder for someone that wants to do him harm".
Though his parents hope the president will one day grant clemency to allow an early release, they recognise the prospect is unlikely.
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Afghanistan Plans To Bring Back Millions Of Refugees
September 28, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
KABUL -- Afghan officials say an ambitious program is being planned to try and bring back millions of Afghan refugees living in Iran and Pakistan, RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan reports.
The program, which will be discussed at an international conference on Afghanistan to be held in Tokyo next year, envisions the repatriation of more than 3 million Afghan refugees living mainly in the border regions of neighboring Iran and Pakistan.
Afghan Minister for Refugees and Returnees Jamohir Anuri told RFE/RL on September 27 that the government needs international assistance to successfully implement the program.
"Millions of Afghan refugees around the world live in difficulty, with many denied basic rights and access to health care, food, and shelter," he said. "We believe they have a better chance of receiving these things in Afghanistan."
But Anuri said that in order to implement the program Afghanistan would need $1 billion. "This is to accommodate the influx of returnees who will be looking for jobs and will need basic things in order to survive," he said.
Anuri said he recently went to Greece, Italy, and Turkey, where thousands of Afghan refugees are being held in detention.
"Afghan refugees in Turkey and Italy do not face any serious problems, but thousands of refugees in Greece are in very bad conditions," he said. "Many of them don't have any money and are victims of abuse."
Anuri said his ministry has been in contact with the Greek government, which has pledged to resolve the matter.
Information from the Ministry for Refugees and Returnees suggests that over 65,000 Afghan asylum seekers are in Greece, with only 70 of them having been granted residency by Athens.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, more than 5 million Afghan refugees returned to Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002 after international forces ousted the Taliban.
But it said the unstable security situation since then has displaced hundreds of thousands of Afghans internally and forced others to go abroad.
In its 2011 strategic plan, the UNCHR urged the international community to do more to help Afghanistan attract returnees from abroad.
It suggested implementing community-based projects to improve shelter and infrastructure and to grant financial assistance to those in areas where there are high numbers of repatriated refugees.
* This story has been amended to correctly reflect the source of Afghan refugee statistics. It is the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, not the UN Commission on Human Rights.
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Kazakh Officials' Visit To Afghanistan Highlights Growing Ties
September 28, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Officials from Afghanistan and Kazakhstan have met in Kabul to discuss expanding economic and political ties, RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan reports.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Kazakh Emergency Situations Minister Vladimir Karpovich signed agreements in areas of trade, education, mining, and transport on September 27.
Afghan Commerce Minister Anwar Ahadi said the deals agreed include the export of 500,000 tons of Kazakh wheat to Afghanistan.
"We will be receiving a large amount of Kazakh wheat, flour, and cereals to combat our shortages," said Ahadi.
In a statement, he added that Kazakhstan produced more than 25 million tons of wheat this year, of which it only needs about one-third for domestic use.
The countries have also agreed to work on several joint projects.
A railway line linking Kazakhstan with Afghanistan via Turkmenistan is being constructed and is due to be finished soon, the statement said. The railway will allow vital resources to be imported to Afghanistan and improve trade.
Meanwhile, commercial flights between the two countries are also set to start next year.
Karpovich, who led the high-ranking delegation to Kabul, conveyed his condolences to Karzai over last week's assassination of former President Burhanuddin Rabbani. The chairman of the High Peace Council, Rabbani was killed by a suicide bomber.
Karpovich called Rabbani's death a "huge loss" for Afghanistan.
Karzai, meanwhile, welcomed greater ties with Kazakhstan saying that Kabul-Astana relations have improved substantially over the last decade.
"We welcome every step that is taken towards the development of bilateral ties," he added.
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Pakistan: We're scapegoats for US frustration over Afghan war
Pakistan's prime minister warned Tuesday that if the US didn't stop lobbing accusations at Pakistan, it would be difficult to tamp down anti-American sentiment in his country.
Christian Science Monitor By Ariel Zirulnick, Staff writer September 28, 2011
A top Pakistani official has warned that public anger toward the US is getting beyond the government's control, and blamed the recent spike in tensions on a US administration increasingly anxious to fulfill its mission in Afghanistan ahead of a planned 2014 withdrawal.
Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani told Reuters yesterday that a top US military official's accusation of Pakistani government complicity in terrorist activity was increasing anti-American sentiment – already on the rise after the controversial Navy Seals raid on Osama bin Laden's compound this spring.
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"The negative messaging, naturally that is disturbing my people," Gilani said in the interview. "If there is messaging that is not appropriate to our friendship, then naturally it is extremely difficult to convince my public. Therefore they [the US] should be sending positive messages."
Gilani said Washington should provide the "political space" for his government to convince a skeptical Pakistani public of the value of a relationship with the United States.
The outgoing US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, said last week that the Haqqani network is a "veritable arm" of Pakistan's intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence. He accused Pakistan of directly supporting the militant group, which carried out a brazen attack on the US Embassy in Kabul earlier this month.
While Prime Minister Gilani blamed Washington's stepped-up accusations on frustration with the Afghanistan war, US officials say it has more to do with Pakistan's increasing use of groups like the Haqqani network as proxies in Afghanistan, CBS reported last week.
The increasingly tough U.S. rhetoric reflects a U.S. belief that Pakistani intelligence in recent months has more aggressively facilitated cross-border attacks by the Haqqanis, one senior military official said Wednesday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.
Many Pakistanis are concerned that Mr. Mullen's comments are a preface to increased drone strikes and other unilateral actions on Pakistani soil, The Christian Science Monitor reports from Karachi, Pakistan. “It’s a grave situation,” said an elderly tribesman watching television coverage of the blowback from Mullen's comments. “Our motherland has already been bleeding and now America plans to attack Waziristan. Over our dead body.”
Such angry responses have prompted Pakistani officials to caution the US to tread carefully. Some in Washington have sought to play down Mullen's comments, given in a hearing before the Senate Armed Forces Committee.
A Pentagon official told the Washington Post that Mullen's comments were "overstated and contributed to overheated reactions in Pakistan and misperceptions in Washington." The most that intelligence indicates, he said, is that Pakistan "treads a delicate if duplicitous line, providing support to insurgent groups including the Haqqani network but avoiding actions that would provoke a US response" – such as this month's attack on the US Embassy in Kabul.
The internal criticism by the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to challenge Mullen openly, reflects concern over the accuracy of Mullen’s characterizations at a time when Obama administration officials have been frustrated in their efforts to persuade Pakistan to break its ties to Afghan insurgent groups.
US military officials have hedged Mullen's statement, saying that his accusations could be interpreted many ways and that the problem lies not in the statement itself but in how some US lawmakers and Pakistani officials interpreted it. The US has long accused Pakistan of allowing the Haqqani network to operate relatively freely in the border region and providing support for the group, but Mullen took the allegation a step farther by saying the group acts as a "veritable arm" of the ISI – a characterization that fails to take into consideration cultural and regional norms, one official told the Post.
That interpretation might be valid “if we were judging by Western standards,” said a senior U.S. military official who defended Mullen’s testimony. But the Pakistanis “use extremist groups — not only the Haqqanis — as proxies and hedges” to maintain influence in Afghanistan.
“This is not new,” the official said. “Can they control them like a military unit? We don’t think so. Do they encourage them? Yes. Do they provide some finance for them? Yes. Do they provide safe havens? Yes.”
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Why the Haqqani Network needs the Afghan War to survive
CNN By Michael Semple, Foreign Affairs September 28th, 2011
The recent spate of spectacular attacks in Kabul reveals as much about the struggle for supremacy within the Af-Pak insurgency itself as it does about the war between the insurgents and NATO. In the span of a single week, Afghans witnessed, first, the closing down of the center of the capital during a 20-hour siege on the U.S. Embassy, and then, exactly a week later, this past Tuesday, a political assassination: a suicide bomber packed his turban full of explosives and killed the chief of the High Peace Council, Burhanuddin Rabbani, a former president of Afghanistan.
Taliban spokesmen claimed responsibility for the Rabbani killing on Tuesday, but the group firmly denied any involvement on Wednesday. Investigations into Rabbani's death now need to establish exactly who tasked the suicide bomber; if the Quetta-based Afghan Taliban in fact assassinated one of the group's main interlocutors, the movement cannot seriously expect to move forward as a key player in a political process. Another possible scenario exists: one in which regional spoilers who want to sustain the armed struggle are acting on their own. If the operation was run from the Pakistani tribal area of Waziristan, as some are now suggesting, the Rabbani assassination may be an operation on which the Quetta-based Taliban leadership simply was not briefed.
Think back to the attack on the embassy in Kabul. Immediately following the siege, nearly everyone pointed at the so-called Haqqani network, since the tactics used mirrored those of their previous exploits, such as the June attack on the Hotel Intercontinental and the August assault on the British Council. Yesterday, even the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen said that the Pakistani intelligence services, or the ISI, were involved. But blaming the Haqqani network is like using a kind of militancy shorthand, as the much-used moniker fails to capture the complex nature of the politico-military organization that is expanding its scope, network, and political aspirations from a base in North Waziristan.
In fact, understanding militancy in Waziristan, especially if it served as the origin of the Rabbani assassination, is vital to charting a course for NATO's possible negotiations with the Taliban, and is unavoidable in any discussion of extricating NATO from South Asia.
Here are the basics. Jalaluddin Haqqani was one of the leading Pashtun commanders of the jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s. From the Zadran tribe, he is one of the few major commanders who made his peace with the Taliban, serving its government in the 1990s as a border affairs minister. The sons of the now aging Jalaluddin front the organization. Although the eldest son, Khalifa Seraj, is meant to be the senior decision-maker, his younger brother, Badruddin, is probably the family member most closely involved in the embassy siege and seems to be more active and accessible. In part, the brothers draw upon fighters from the Zadran tribe in the border provinces who were loyal to Jalaluddin during the 1980s. But the Haqqanis' lethal effectiveness derives from the wide range of Pakistani tribal fighters at their disposal. In effect, they have an unlimited supply of men for small-arms ambushes and attacks on NATO posts and administrative centers.
Mullen Takes on the ISI
What is new here, and key to understanding the attack on the embassy (and perhaps even the Rabbani assassination), is that over the last two years the Haqqanis have developed what amounts to a special forces capability. They have built up intelligence-gathering networks and infiltrated government institutions in Kabul and the surrounding provinces. With the help of al Qaeda and Central Asian fighters, foreign militants in Waziristan have developed advanced combat training and technology for roadside bombs. The Haqqanis draw on this expertise without actually controlling the groups who deliver it. Rather than the Haqqani Network, it would be more appropriate to call this the Waziristan Militant Complex.
Even if they outsource some of their special operations, the Haqqanis feverishly guard the one part of their operation they consider far too valuable to let out of their control: propaganda. Young fighters take combat video courses in the North Waziristan capital of Miran Shah and then accompany their comrades on attacks to collect footage. The Haqqani video editors then splice the bloody footage with B-roll snatched from satellite channels and YouTube. The result is a library of slick jihadi videos, glorifying the fighters and martyrs, stressing the precise and devastating nature of their attacks, and lampooning the Afghan government. Some even include credits claiming to be made by the "Cultural Committee of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan." The Waziristan militants are projecting themselves as chiefs of the Islamic Emirate brand, which is important because they are trying to sideline, at least in the eyes of those watching, their Afghan jihadist counterparts.
Attacks such as the embassy siege speak volumes about the nature of the broader Af-Pak insurgency. The Haqqanis are boosting their political influence by taking center stage in the war. Granted, the Kandaharis in southern Afghanistan have launched their share of spectacular attacks - such as the Sarposa prison break and the coordinated Fedayeen attacks in Kandahar City - but in terms of impact on the public consciousness, the Haqqanis simply overshadow anything their counterparts in Kandahar have been able to pull off. Most significantly, there is no evidence that the Taliban's chief military commander, Qayyum Zakir, has anything to do with the planning and execution of this ongoing string of Waziristan-Kabul attacks. Traditionally, the Haqqani brothers have always been careful to stress that they are under the authority of Mullah Omar and the Taliban Movement. But the embassy assault suggests that that is changing.
Yemen's Hijacked Revolution
For the moment, the war goes on, and, despite U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker's assertion that the embassy siege was "not a big deal," the fact is undeniable that Kabul remains as vulnerable as ever, as shown by the Rabbani assassination. Meanwhile, a more serious complication is coming into clear view. The Rabbani assassination notwithstanding, there is still a chance that the Taliban's Kandahari leadership in the south will, in the coming months, opt for a political process and negotiations. And despite their claims of allegiance, the Waziristan militants are positioning themselves as separate players in NATO's Afghanistan endgame.
If the Waziristan Militant Complex was, in fact, responsible for the Rabbani assassination, in an effort to spoil a possible political process, it is a starting pushback against the Kandahari Taliban leadership. Even within Waziristan there is a question of who runs each of the operations. Despite their origins as a marginalized border tribe, the Haqqani brothers may now be eyeing a future role on the Afghan national stage. The Haqqanis' backers in Pakistan will have to make their own decision about whether they are going to take part in a negotiated reconciliation, or if, as Washington has suggested, they will ramp up their proxy war inside Afghanistan.
Palestine's Rocky Path to the United Nations
The bottom line is that the militants in Waziristan depend on the jihad for their survival and thus have to oppose any settlement. After all, if there's no war in Afghanistan, they have no reason for being. But what does that mean for the future? At a minimum, NATO will have to deal with Waziristan separately from any deal made with the official Taliban leadership. As a corollary, in trying to make sense of Taliban intentions - which is a difficult enough task in its own right - it would be wise to regard the attacks coming out of Waziristan as a separate and distinct matter. Because as a negotiated settlement unfolds, the Waziristan Militant Complex will almost certainly be back again to sabotage it, with more spectacular attacks and the videos that always follow.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of Michael Semple.
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Piece by piece, Afghanistan reclaims its history
Reuters By Sanjeev Miglani Thu Sep 29, 2011
KABUL - While everyone else is worrying about Afghanistan's future, a dedicated band of men and women is gathering up its past, hoping that a growing museum collection will show the world Afghan culture is more sophisticated than the tide of news reports suggest.
Kabul's rebuilt National Museum, near the haunting remains the bombed-out royal palace, is running out of secure rooms to house centuries-old Buddhas, gold and silver coins from antiquity and other rare artifacts.
Many of the museum's original pieces were broken, destroyed or stolen during the Taliban era or the civil war that preceded it in the 1990s, but some have been pieced back together and a series of archeological digs have also unearthed new treasures.
Among the fresh discoveries are a wooden Buddha dating back to the fifth century and Buddha heads made of clay and plaster.
They are helping a whole nation slowly rediscover a classical past as a confluence of cultures from India to China and from Iran and central Asia to the East.
"Each week there is a new find. Most museums in the world are static, but this one is growing," said Anne Feenstra, a Dutch architect involved in restoring the museum which itself was heavily damaged in the civil war.
A statue of the Buddha sitting cross-legged is placed in a glass box up a flight of stairs in the museum building, while the headless figure of Kushan king Kanishka, restored after it was destroyed by the Taliban, adorns another corner.
Some walls have pictures of treasures lost during the civil war or to the Taliban, who famously showed their contempt for Afghanistan's pre-Islamic heritage by blowing up two giant, centuries-old Buddha statues carved into a hillside in Bamiyan.
A group of high school girls in head-scarves listen in a hallway as a teacher explains the country's Buddhist past, part of the museum's drive to build awareness in a generation that has seen too much conflict and extremism.
"Afghanistan is an amalgamation of cultures of the region," Information and Culture Minister Sayed Makhdoom Raheen told a conference in Kabul this month where he appealed for help to preserve the nation's heritage.
After 30 years of war, Afghanistan is often portrayed as simply a land of warring tribes, defined by a battle against outside powers. Reconnecting with its past reminds Afghans they have a more complex and sophisticated culture.
If Afghanistan can preserve its monuments, it can show its own people and the world that as a key part of the ancient silk route it was once a crossroads of Asia, a creative melting pot with a cosmopolitan spirit, Raheen said.
"We have seen massive destruction and decay, but many relics still exist," he said. "They must be saved from annihilation."
MUSEUM REBORN?
The national museum, on the edge of the capital, barely survived after it become the front lines of the fighting that gripped Kabul during 1992-94.
As warlords battled for control of the city, fighters pillaged the national museum, selling the choicest artifacts on the black market and using museum records to light camp-fires.
In 1994 the building was shelled, destroying its roof and top floor. The final assault came in 2001, when the Taliban decided all images must be smashed and installed a group charged with this task that demolished about 2500 works of art.
Some of the collection of Hellenistic sculptures, gold jewelry worn by nomads and ancient manuscripts did survive the war, stashed away in the underground vaults of the central bank just before the Taliban seized power.
These are so valuable that they can't be exhibited in the antiquated museum. Instead, they have been touring the world, drawing crowds from San Francisco to London and Bonn.
The United States this year committed $5 million to building a new museum with state-of-the-art security systems and climate control features next to the old one, so that the Hidden Treasures exhibition can finally return home.
"Restoring such artifacts is essential to both Afghan identity, and the identity of our collective human experience," said Rahim B.Kanani, a U.S.-based columnist who has written extensively on Afghanistan.
(Editing by Emma Graham-Harrison and Yoko Nishikawa)
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Afghan Policewomen Complain of Unfair Treatment
Despite attempts to boost recruitment, female officers say they are barred from advancement.
IWPR By Abdul Latif Sahak 28 Sep 11
Afghanistan - Policewomen in northern Afghanistan complain that they are passed over for promotion and forced to do the least desirable jobs, despite the promises of equal treatment they heard when they were recruited.
Female officers in the Afghan National Police, ANP, say their assignments commonly consist of low-level roles like serving at checkpoints or in prisons, even working in the force’s kitchens.
“Officials appoint women only because they want to show foreign countries that they respect women’s rights and that there are women in the police,” Sergeant Zeba, a recruitment officer at the ANP headquarters for Balkh province, said.
The reality was, she said, that few women could rise to senior positions because of widespread chauvinism, and also because they lacked the political connections and ability to pay bribes to gain advancement.
Colonel Najiba is the only women in the north to have reached senior rank, as the officer responsible for gender and human rights issues in the ANP’s 303 Pamir Zone.
She stresses that she is the exception, and that none of the 400 other policewomen in the north has risen to a senior role. Instead, they are routinely treated as inferiors, excluded from important security and strategy meetings, and passed over when praise is being handed out.
“Policewomen are treated like [common] soldiers. High-ranking officials talk to them as though they were speaking to their servants or cleaners,” Colonel Najiba said. “The rude way women are treated means they get fed up with their work. The spirit of patriotism and service goes away, and they only work for the money.”
She dismissed the argument made by senior officers that policewomen were limited in what they could do by the rule that they could not work night shifts. “In many cases,” she said, “women do work alongside men during overnight operations.”
Sergeant Fatima, attached to ANP headquarters in Balkh, said the 40 or more female officers employed in the province were all in low-level roles. “The highest position is held by a woman who works as a rank-and-file functionary in the passport department,” she said.
She said policewomen in other provinces were promoted to higher positions than those in Balkh, even though the relatively safe environment there should make that possible.
The sergeant also complained that female officers did not have the same access to police vehicles as men.
“Policemen can use the vehicles at any time,” she said. “They take them back to their homes at night and go out with their families in them at the weekend.”
Another police officer, Fawzia, said she and her female colleagues had to work harder than their male peers.
“For instance, when security checks are being conducted, 20 policemen take turns at searching vehicles,” she said. “But a policewoman must do so from morning till night, because she’s the only woman there and there’s no one to share the work with her.”
Women play a particularly important role as they can staff checkpoints to deal with the problem of male insurgents who disguised in burqas, and attend house searches where there are women present. (See Police Recruit More Women to Bolster Searches http://iwpr.net/report-news/police-recruit-more-women-bolster-searches .)
“If there weren’t any policewomen, then the traditions of this country would restrict the work of policemen, because they can’t search houses or women in cars without policewomen being present,” Fawzia said. “So why do we get overlooked? They should give senior roles to women and see whether we are capable of working in those positions.”
The pressures have taken their toll on Fawzia, who said, “I’m very fed up. I want to leave this job.”
Fariba Majid, head of the provincial department for women’s affairs in Balkh, agreed that discrimination was a barrier for female police officers.
“Men always seem to think women are weak, yet they can’t perform most tasks unless there are women present,” she added.
Lal Mohammad Ahmadzai, spokesman for the Pamir police zone, insisted the ANP treated men and women equally.
Afghan interior ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqi also denied claims of systemic discrimination, arguing that since policewomen were such an essential part of the force, there would be no point in making them so unhappy they wanted to leave.
Sediqi said the ministry was placing even greater emphasis on recruiting women to the ANP.
Interior ministry figures show the ANP now has about 1,100 female officers, 500 of them in the capital Kabul. The current recruitment plan envisages the nationwide figure rising to 5,000 by 2014.
Some policewomen say institutionalised discrimination within the force colours the way they are perceived by the public.
One policewoman, who asked to remain anonymous, said she and her colleagues lost respect when they patrolled the streets on foot and wearing old uniforms.
“Policemen aren’t issued with pistols even though they really have to be able to defend themselves if they need to,” she said.
She said children made fun of her and other female officers, stopping them in the street to ask, “Mister commander, where’s your car? Where are your bodyguards?” Abdul Latif Sahak is an IWPR-trained reporter in Balkh province.
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