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France's Afghanistan decision raises worries
Troops' accelerated departure after the killings of four French soldiers marks a breaking of Western ranks. It could also serve as a message to insurgents that such attacks are an effective way to push U.S. allies out of the fight.
By Laura King, Los Angeles Times January 29, 2012
Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan
After France, the deluge?
The announcement by French President Nicolas Sarkozy that his troops would sharply accelerate their departure from Afghanistan cast a harsh light on potential cracks in the U.S.-led military coalition in the country.
France's Afghanistan decision raises worries
Troops' accelerated departure after the killings of four French soldiers marks a breaking of Western ranks. It could also serve as a message to insurgents that such attacks are an effective way to push U.S. allies out of the fight.
By Laura King, Los Angeles Times January 29, 2012
Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan
After France, the deluge?
The announcement by French President Nicolas Sarkozy that his troops would sharply accelerate their departure from Afghanistan cast a harsh light on potential cracks in the U.S.-led military coalition in the country.
Taliban’s Qatar Office Not Yet Officially Opened: Peace Council
TOLOnews.com By Shahla Murtazawey Saturday, 28 January 2012
No Taliban office has officially been opened in Qatar, Afghan High Peace Council officials said on Saturday.
Sandy Gall: 'I fear Afghanistan will become like Vietnam'
Veteran TV correspondent Sandy Gall on his adventures in Afghanistan, the Taliban and his family's charity clinic in Kabul
The Observer By Tim Adams Sunday 29 January 2012
Your new book, War Against the Taliban, is really the third instalment of your long personal engagement with Afghanistan that began in 1981. Is it a labour of love?
British troops will leave when Afghans are ready to take over, says Cameron
Prime minister's comments follow France's announcement that it will withdraw its soldiers a year ahead of schedule
Guardian.co.uk By Conal Urquhart and agencies Saturday 28 January 2012
British troops will only be withdrawn from Afghanistan when Afghan security forces are ready to take over their role, David Cameron said on Saturday.
Britain says Afghan withdrawal must be carefully phased
By Adrian Croft
LONDON (Reuters) - Foreign troops must carefully phase their withdrawal from Afghanistan ahead of an end-2014 deadline, British Prime Minister David Cameron said on Saturday, after France suggested giving Afghan forces full responsibility for security in 2013.
Afghan lawmaker blasts France’s early troop withdrawal
AP By RAHIM FAIEZ Saturday, Jan. 28, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - An Afghan lawmaker has sharply criticized France’s plans to hand over security in her troubled province to Afghan troops within a few months, saying that her country’s forces are unprepared to handle the job and more violence would result.
Afghan peace council member kidnapped by Taliban
Reuters By Mirwais Harooni Jan 29, 2012
KABUL - The Taliban have kidnapped a member of Afghanistan's peace council during a bid to promote talks in the volatile east, underscoring the difficulty negotiators face in winning support for nascent negotiations from the Taliban front line.
50 more militants surrender in Baghlan, Afghanistan
PUL-E-KHUMRI, Afghanistan, Jan. 29 (Xinhua) -- Fifty more militants surrender to the government in the northern Afghan province of Baghlan, a provincial police source said Sunday.
Hina Rabbani Khar to visit Kabul on Feb 1
January 29, 2012 16:07 IST Rediff.com
Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar will visit Kabul on February 1 to boost Pakistan-Afghanistan ties and efforts to engage the Taliban that were affected by the assassination of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani last year.
Pakistan Knew Where Bin Laden Was Hiding, Panetta Says
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 28 January 2012
US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta still believes Pakistani officials knew where Osama bin Laden was hiding before US forces went to get him.
Out of Afghanistan: incredible stories of the boys who walked to Europe
The country is so dangerous it's no wonder so many leave, travelling alone across the Middle East in search of a new life
Caroline Brothers The Observer UK, Sunday 29 January 2012
Behind the security bars of a spartan, white-tiled room, 25 youths are arranging bedrolls on the floor. The workers on the Salvation Army nightshift, who watch over these lone foreign teenagers in a shelter in a gritty corner of Paris, are distributing sheets and sleeping bags; there are a couple of boys from Mali and a contingent of Bangladeshis;
Afghanistan must confront its terrorism of women
2012-01-29 19:30 The Korea Herald
KABUL ― Recently, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) office in Kudoz province reported the rescue of a young woman who had been imprisoned in her in-laws’ dungeon for seven months. Fifteen-year-old Sahar Gul was forced to marry an older man who serves in the Afghan army.
An all-woman team in Afghanistan sets a record for Seabees
U.S. military officials say the first all-female construction team in Seabees' history just took on a construction job from start to finish. And they did it in record time, in the mountains of Helmand province, Afghanistan.
By Catherine Saillant Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES — It was an unusual job even for the Seabees, the U.S. Navy's construction forces trained to hold a hammer in one hand and a Beretta M9 in the other.
Afghan Soldier Detained with Explosives
TOLOnews.com Sunday, 29 January 2012
An Afghan soldier has been detained with an explosive laden motorbike, local officials said.
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France's Afghanistan decision raises worries
Troops' accelerated departure after the killings of four French soldiers marks a breaking of Western ranks. It could also serve as a message to insurgents that such attacks are an effective way to push U.S. allies out of the fight.
By Laura King, Los Angeles Times January 29, 2012
Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan
After France, the deluge?
The announcement by French President Nicolas Sarkozy that his troops would sharply accelerate their departure from Afghanistan cast a harsh light on potential cracks in the U.S.-led military coalition in the country.
Although the Obama administration and the NATO force sought to portray Friday's declaration in Paris as neither surprising nor unilateral, it marked not only an effective end to France's combat role in Afghanistan, but a breaking of Western ranks as an unpopular war drags into a second decade.
The French declaration also generated concern that attacks in which Afghan forces turn their weapons on Western mentors will now be seen by insurgents as an effective method of pushing wavering allies out of the fight. Four French troops were killed and more than a dozen injured this month when an apparently rogue member of the Afghan army opened fire on them, igniting outrage in France as a presidential election nears.
Numbering about 3,900, the French contingent is the alliance's fifth-largest, but it is dwarfed by the U.S. deployment of about 90,000. Moreover, some of the smaller national contingents have been deployed in more fiercely contested areas of the country, and are seen as playing a more crucial battlefield role.
President Hamid Karzai's office raised no public objection to the French decision, announced during the Afghan leader's visit to Paris. But it drew swift expressions of dismay back home, particularly in the northeastern province of Kapisa, where Afghan forces hadn't been scheduled to assume security control until later this year. Now that transfer is to take place in March.
"We don't accept this decision, because Afghan forces are not ready to take over security responsibility in Kapisa province," said Khwaja Ghulam Mohammad Zamarai, a member of the provincial council, echoing sentiments voiced by a number of local officials.
In Kapisa, some officials and tribal elders said France had maintained a largely defensive stance in the region, primarily guarding the safety of its own troops and having little real effect on the security situation in more dangerous areas of the province, such as the Tagab Valley. Even so, many believed the French pullout would embolden insurgents in the province, a gateway to the capital just 50 miles to the southwest.
"We will see a slide into violence," predicted Tahira Mujadedi, a lawmaker from Kapisa. "Insecurity will definitely grow."
More troubling to some was France's declared intention to urge other members of the coalition to complete their combat missions by the end of next year, rather than the previously agreed-upon winding down in 2014. Officials said France would raise the issue this week at a meeting of NATO defense ministers, and at an alliance conference in Chicago in May.
"This development will affect the morale of the Afghan forces, and also the thinking of the other NATO nations," said Atiqullah Amarkhil, a former Afghan army general who is now a defense analyst.
Although combat deaths inevitably serve as a grim reminder of the war's cost, few events do more to erode domestic political support in troop-contributing nations than fatalities that come at the hands of Afghan troops.
Underscoring the sense of grievance and mistrust between Western trainers and their trainees, the French soldiers who were killed and wounded were unarmed and clad only in athletic gear after a workout at their base. For France, it was the second such loss in a month, following a similar incident that left two Foreign Legionnaires dead.
NATO's International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, said an early departure of French troops and transfer of Kapisa would not cause any significant military disruption.
"ISAF sees no effects to our current campaign plan," said U.S. Army Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings, a spokesman for the coalition. "We always have alternate and contingency plans when it comes to these types of potential changes or realignment of ISAF troops."
Western diplomats in Kabul took a studiedly neutral stance, saying privately that any criticism of the French move would only inflame the situation. The U.S. Embassy in Kabul declined to comment, referring to remarks a day earlier in Washington by State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland, who said the French move was not precipitous.
"This was a national decision of France," she said. "It was done in a managed way. We will all work with it."
Nile Gardiner, a foreign policy expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington, said France's decision is "without a doubt unhelpful for the overall NATO operation in Afghanistan. It sends the wrong signal to the Taliban, and it sends a message of weakness from France."
"However, I don't think this is going to change the approach of the United States or Great Britain in Afghanistan," he said. "The war continues."
Coming just three months before a presidential election, Sarkozy's decision is a popular one with a French public overwhelmingly against the war. Sarkozy's main rival and the current leader in the polls, socialist Francois Hollande, has pledged a withdrawal by the end of the year.
Gardiner criticized Sarkozy for putting what he called his political self-interests ahead of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization mission in Afghanistan, adding that he fears the French leader's action could influence other European nations, particularly Germany.
"This could place additional pressure on [German Chancellor] Angela Merkel to pull out German troops more quickly," he said.
laura.king@latimes.com
Times staff writer Richard Simon in Washington and special correspondents Aimal Yaqubi in Kabul and Kim Willsher in Paris contributed to this report.
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Interview: Afghan analysts say France's early pullout to boost Taliban
by Abdul Haleem, Yangtze Yan
KABUL, Jan. 29 (Xinhua) -- French President Nicolas Sarkozy's decision to withdraw his forces from Afghanistan by 2013, a year ahead of 2014 set by the NATO for troops pullout, would bolster Taliban's morale in fighting NATO-led forces stationed in the country, Afghan analysts said Sunday.
"No doubt, the pullout of French forces before 2014 would psychologically encourage Taliban militants to increase attacks against international forces stationed in Afghanistan," a security analyst from Kabul-based think-tank, the Research Center for Strategy Studies, Wahid Mujda, told Xinhua in an interview.
A man in Afghan army uniform opened fire and killed four French soldiers and injured 15 others in Kapisa province on Jan. 20. The bloody incident prompted France to suspend training Afghan troops and pull out its forces in 2013, he said.
"Since the districts of Alasai and Tagab in Kapisa province are unstable, the government of France wants Afghan forces to take over the security charge of the both districts in 2013, but the Afghan forces are not capable enough to take over the responsibility there," said Mujda who worked with Taliban foreign ministry before the outfit's regime ouster in late 2001.
When his opinion was sought towards early exit of NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) from Afghanistan, the former Taliban official said, "the speedy pace of foreign forces withdrawal would encourage Taliban to speed up their attacks and thus force more nations to follow France in taking their troops out of Afghanistan."
Asked to comment on Afghan President Hamid Karzai's ongoing visit to Europe and the inking of strategic agreements partnership with Italy, France and Britain, the analyst believed that signing agreements is part of the efforts to have international community' s support beyond 2014 when the NATO-led forces complete pullout of Afghanistan.
"The government of Afghanistan wants to have international community's support after 2014 but keeping in mind the financial crisis in Europe, the world community support would not be as generous as in the past decade," Mujda observed.
Another analyst agreed with Mujda that early withdrawal of NATO- led forces from Afghanistan would boost Taliban's morale to intensify activities.
"In fact, early withdrawal of French forces after killing four soldiers in Kapisa province by Taliban, is a retreat in war on terror which eventually will encourage Taliban and al-Qaida fighters to intensify attacks against international forces based in Afghanistan," said Nazari Pariani, the editor-in-chief of Mandegar daily.
"If we want to win the war on terror we should tolerate casualties, otherwise, the France early withdrawal to encourage Taliban to intensify attacks and make excuse for other nations to follow the step and take their forces out of Afghanistan," Pariani told Xinhua.
He also hailed inking strategic agreements with Italy, France and Britain but was of the view that the international community's support to Afghanistan would be reduced after the completion of foreign forces' drawdown in 2014.
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Taliban’s Qatar Office Not Yet Officially Opened: Peace Council
TOLOnews.com By Shahla Murtazawey Saturday, 28 January 2012
No Taliban office has officially been opened in Qatar, Afghan High Peace Council officials said on Saturday.
A key official at the High Peace Council, Masood Stanekzai, told TOLOnews in an exclusive interview that talks are still going on about conditions to open an office for the Taliban in Qatar.
Mr Stanekzai stressed that the peace talks can only be successful with the leadership of Afghans.
He emphasised that the Taliban office in Qatar should only be opened with the aim of holding peace talks.
"A lot of discussions have to be made to reach a final point of agreement. The Afghan government has already welcomed opening of a Taliban office in Qatar to facilitate peace talks," Mr Stanekzai said.
Mr Stanekzai said the US special envoy Marc Grossman, during his recent visit to Kabul, has reassured the Peace Council that the United States will support whatever Afghans want in the peace talks.
"We welcome any process that is Afghan-led and is aimed at facilitating an inter-Afghan dialogue. If we raise our steps without reaching an understanding, no positive results will be achieved," he added.
No peace will last for long if others hold direct talks instead of Afghans.
It comes as based on media reports some of the high-level Taliban representatives have already arrived in Qatar.
Mullah Omar's former secretary Mullah Tayeb Agha, former Taliban foreign minister Shir Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai, former Taliban ambassador to Saudi Arabia Shabuddin Delawar are among the Taliban representatives in Qatar, according to reports.
A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, has told the Daily Telegraph that official talks are to begin in Qatar in the near future.
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Sandy Gall: 'I fear Afghanistan will become like Vietnam'
Veteran TV correspondent Sandy Gall on his adventures in Afghanistan, the Taliban and his family's charity clinic in Kabul
The Observer By Tim Adams Sunday 29 January 2012
Your new book, War Against the Taliban, is really the third instalment of your long personal engagement with Afghanistan that began in 1981. Is it a labour of love?
Yes, it is in a way. I hadn't really planned it, but I suppose it began when we all saw the coffins coming back through Wootton Bassett. It made me want to try to explain what these men had been fighting for. And why it had all gone wrong.
It must sometimes feel that you have spent half a lifetime engaged with this particular corner of the world?
It sometimes seems like that. I had been with the mujahideen for the Russian occupation for ITV, and I was there for the civil war that followed, which was even more destructive in some ways. By that time I had set up a charity to help people who had lost limbs to mines [Sandy Gall's Afghanistan Appeal], so I've been back pretty much every year for 30 years.
If you were to boil down your sense of where the war against the Taliban went wrong, it would seem to resolve itself to a single word: Iraq.
Yes, I think that's true. I don't think anyone expected the Taliban to offer such resistance. So in 2003 America apparently moved all of their intelligence and spy satellite resources out of Afghanistan and into Iraq. They obviously believed Afghanistan had been dealt with.
One of the themes of the book is the misplaced faith that Britain and America had in Pakistan, whose intelligence services seem, in your reading, to have been supporting the Taliban throughout?
Several military figures told me we had the wrong mindset in our approach to Pakistan. The Foreign Office seemed to see Pakistan as an old ally; it's a post-colonial legacy, perhaps. If the Americans had ever cut off money to Pakistan the thing might have been over in months.
In some ways this book is a brief history of the military being let down by politicians. Would it be fair to say your sympathies lie with the armed forces?
Well I think that is partly because I couldn't get too many politicians to talk to me. Of course I wrote to Blair and John Reid and so on. I didn't get any reply. Much later, last year, I was awarded a CMG [Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George] and Cherie Blair wrote me a letter of congratulation, though I didn't know her. I wrote back asking if she might mention my request for an interview with her husband. She did try, but when it was heard that the subtitle of my book was "Why it all went wrong" I think that ended it.
What would you have asked him?
The same as I asked everyone. How on earth did we end up in this mess?
If the troops pull out now will we leave the country better than we found it?
Whatever they say no one has any idea what will happen if they do pull out quickly. I fear it might be like Vietnam. I was in Saigon when it fell. The Americans negotiated that peace settlement with very little in hand because the troops had already gone. You'd hope that they would not put themselves in that position again.
Your charity's clinic in Kabul has survived a lot of tough times. Which period was the worst?
It was very difficult with the Taliban in power. They wanted to run everything. We had women working in the clinic and one day all the watchmen came roaring in and told them all to go home. They did not dare return for months. We had four Land Rovers and the Taliban stole three of them. In the end when the EU withdrew support for charities in Afghanistan we effectively had to hand the clinic over. After 9/11 we got a call from the health authority asking us to come back and open up again.
It has been very much a family concern?
Yes, my eldest daughter lived in Kabul for seven years and ran the charity. And then Carlotta, my younger daughter, worked there for a while too before she became a journalist – she's now the Afghan and Pakistan correspondent for the New York Times. My wife runs the UK end of it from our home in Kent.
Do you keep a track of how many people you have helped in that period?
We have fitted at least 20,000 people with artificial legs or calipers. And many, many more have had physiotherapy of one kind or another. We have lately been doing a lot of work helping children born with club feet or hip displacement.
When you originally set the foundation up you had some qualms about getting emotionally involved as a journalist?
I did. And I still have qualms about that to a degree. I was urged to do it after I wrote my first book, but there were a couple of times since when I have had to avoid certain stories to prevent reprisals against the clinic.
Do you miss the frontline involvement?
I don't. Unless you are a very odd person you don't enjoy combat as a journalist. You are just there to tell a story. War is bloody dangerous, I know that much. I did go to Kandahar this time but I felt at my age I was probably a bit old to be embedded. It's too hot for one thing. When I went with the mujahideen in 1981 we walked for 12 days straight in the mountains. I'm obviously not fit enough to do that now.
Would you say that you worked through the golden days of television journalism?
I think it was that. We were always short of money of course. It was always "Can we afford to go?" I remember missing the Tet offensive by a few days, because someone had been havering about the expense. What we did have in our favour, though, was the ratings. On ITN we would consistently be in the top 10 of viewing figures for the week. People really wanted to see what was going on in the world, even if the news was mostly bad. I'm not sure it's quite the same now.
Though I'm sure you have more books to write, I am guessing this may be your last word on Afghanistan?
I can't imagine writing another book about it all. Though there are certainly chapters in the story that haven't yet been written.
Can you still hope for a happy ending?
Oh, one has to hope. The Pakistanis need to be persuaded that it is in their best interests to ally themselves wholeheartedly with the west. If that can happen, then who knows?
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British troops will leave when Afghans are ready to take over, says Cameron
Prime minister's comments follow France's announcement that it will withdraw its soldiers a year ahead of schedule
Guardian.co.uk By Conal Urquhart and agencies Saturday 28 January 2012
British troops will only be withdrawn from Afghanistan when Afghan security forces are ready to take over their role, David Cameron said on Saturday.
Speaking with Afghan president Hamid Karzai at Chequers, he said "I don't want to see some sort of cliff edge in 2014 when all of the remaining troops come out at once but clearly, between now and 2014, the rate at which we can reduce our troops will depend on the transition to Afghan control in the different parts of Afghanistan and that should be the same for all of the members of Nato."
Cameron's comments follow the decision of France to withdraw its troops a year ahead of schedule after four French soldiers were killed by an Afghan soldier they were training. The move has been criticised in Afghanistan.
The prime minister said Britain "has paid a heavy price" for fighting insurgency but insisted progress was being made. He paid tribute to the latest British casualty in Afghanistan, a soldier from the 1st Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment, and said his thoughts were with the man's family.
A total of 397 British forces or Ministry of Defence personnel have died while serving in Afghanistan since October 2001.
Cameron and Karzai signed a pledge setting out the next stage in relations between Britain and Afghanistan.
The "enduring strategic partnership" renews a 2005 agreement and sets out a shared vision of a secure, stable and prosperous Afghanistan able to maintain its own security and prevent the country from being used as a safe haven for international terrorists.
Cameron said the level of violence was down across the country, particularly in Helmand, and the building of the national army and police force were "on target".
"I think part of achieving that is not just what we are doing on the ground with all the Nato partners but also the need for what the president and I have often spoken about, for a political process that ensures all Afghans, if they give up violence, if they give up terror, can play a part in a strong democratic state for the future."
Karzai said Britain had been Afghanistan's "steadfast friend" over the last decade. The Afghan people "appreciate" the sacrifices that have been made, he added.
"May I convey to the people of Britain the gratitude of the Afghan people for all that Britain has offered Afghanistan, for having been ready to sacrifice, and having been ready to share, hard earned taxpayers' money with Afghanistan for the benefit of Afghan life."
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Britain says Afghan withdrawal must be carefully phased
By Adrian Croft
LONDON (Reuters) - Foreign troops must carefully phase their withdrawal from Afghanistan ahead of an end-2014 deadline, British Prime Minister David Cameron said on Saturday, after France suggested giving Afghan forces full responsibility for security in 2013.
"I don't want to see some sort of cliff edge in 2014 when all of the remaining troops come out at once," Cameron said during talks in London with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
"But clearly, between now and 2014, the rate at which we can reduce our troops will depend on the transition to Afghan control in the different parts of Afghanistan..."
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Friday France would pull its combat troops out at the end of 2013, a year before an end-2014 deadline fixed by the United States and its NATO allies for handing over responsibility for security to Afghan forces.
"We have decided, in agreement with President Karzai, to call on NATO to give some serious consideration to the Afghan army taking full charge of NATO combat missions in the course of 2013," Sarkozy said at a news conference with Karzai in Paris.
He said he would raise this at a meeting of NATO defence ministers in Brussels on Feb 2 and 3.
However, some foreign troops, Sarkozy said, would stay on after 2013 to train the Afghan army - which western countries are building up with the aim of making it strong enough to maintain security without outside help after the end of 2014.
Foreign countries are already handing over responsibility for security in parts of Afghanistan to Afghan forces.
The idea of speeding up that transfer has been floated in the past, in part to provide a cushion to Afghan forces to take charge of security at a time when foreign troops would still be available to help in an emergency.
It was unclear whether Sarkozy's suggestion was meant merely to feed into this debate, or whether he was expecting the United States and its allies to agree to a serious acceleration in handing over to Afghan forces.
In Washington, U.S. defence officials said the United States, which has the lion's share of foreign troops in Afghanistan, was standing by NATO's goal of gradually handing over security responsibilities to Afghan forces by 2014.
"That transition has begun, and we have made considerable progress toward this goal over the past year, thanks to the gains of the military surge and the development of Afghan security forces," Pentagon press secretary George Little said.
Consultations on transition would continue at the meeting in
Brussels next week, he said, ahead of a NATO summit due in Chicago in May.
A U.S. defence official said that, "U.S. forces continue to plan to transition through to the end of 2014. Our policy has not changed."
In Brussels, a NATO spokeswoman echoed the Pentagon's comments, saying "transition is well on track to be completed by the end of 2014, as we all agreed."
SUPPORT AFTER 2014
Foreign countries have promised to support Afghanistan with aid and advice for years after combat troops leave.
But they have scaled back their ambitions for Afghanistan to seek a minimum level of stability that would prevent the country from again becoming a haven for al Qaeda.
The United States also began talks with Taliban insurgents in late 2010 in a slow-moving process to try to reach, or at least begin to shape, a political settlement by the end of 2014.
With the western troop presence becoming increasingly unpopular inside Afghanistan, some officials have said the withdrawal of troops might make it easier to reach a settlement with insurgents - who use their opposition to foreign forces to rally support.
Cameron plans to pull out 500 British soldiers this year but has not yet set out a timetable for further withdrawals.
He made clear, however, that British combat troops would stay to the end of 2014 - though Britain has said it will not expand its area of operations in southern Afghanistan to fill in for departing troops from other countries.
"We ... want to have a long-term relationship with Afghanistan, long after our combat troops come home, and that will happen at the end of 2014," he said.
Britain has some 9,500 troops in Afghanistan as part of the 130,000-strong NATO-led force. U.S. forces number some 90,000. France has 3,600 troops in Afghanistan.
Karzai and Cameron signed a partnership agreement setting out how their countries would work together after 2014.
Karzai said the agreement "will take us into a future where Afghanistan will benefit from the assistance and cooperation and help of Britain towards becoming a fundamentally strong democratic state." The Afghan president was asked no questions at a tightly controlled media event.
(Additional reporting by Tim Castle in London, David Alexander in Washington, John O'Donnell in Brussels; Editing by Myra MacDonald)
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Afghan lawmaker blasts France’s early troop withdrawal
AP By RAHIM FAIEZ Saturday, Jan. 28, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - An Afghan lawmaker has sharply criticized France’s plans to hand over security in her troubled province to Afghan troops within a few months, saying that her country’s forces are unprepared to handle the job and more violence would result.
Tahira Mujadedi, a member of parliament from Kapisa province, also criticized France’s decision to withdraw all of its troops from Afghanistan early.
She said Saturday that it would be “a big mistake” for President Hamid Karzai to back a French proposal to speed up the overall NATO timetable for handing all combat operations to Afghan forces to 2013, a year earlier than now planned.
Ms. Mujadedi argued that Afghan forces in Kapisa are not ready to go it alone in fighting the Taliban insurgency, which is especially strong in several of the province’s districts. She warned that if NATO forces pull back from Kapisa, it could also destabilize nearby Kabul, the Afghan capital.
“We have had so many attacks, ambushes and also suicide attacks in Kapisa,” Ms. Mujadedi said. “Unfortunately, our national police and army, while present in Kapisa, are unable to provide good security for people.”
French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced Friday after a meeting with Mr. Karzai in Paris that French troops would speed up their withdrawal plans and leave the country by the end of next year, instead of by 2014. He said that Afghan forces would take over responsibility for Kapisa from French forces there by the end of March.
The decision calls into question the unity of the U.S.-led coalition force in Afghanistan.
Mr. Sarkozy also said that he and Mr. Karzai had agreed to propose withdrawing all international forces by 2013 at a NATO meeting next month. Mr. Sarkozy said Paris has informed the U.S. of its plan and he would call President Barack Obama about it Saturday.
The early withdrawal announcements came after four unarmed French troops were shot dead Jan. 20 at a base in Kapisa province, just east of the capital of Kabul, by an Afghan soldier suspected of being a Taliban infiltrator.
Mr. Karzai’s office confirmed in a statement Saturday that responsibility for Kapisa’s security would be transferred from NATO troops to Afghan forces by the end of March at Mr. Sarkozy’s request.
The NATO coalition has started to hand over security in several areas of Afghanistan, aiming to transfer about half of the country in the coming months. But Kapisa was not on the current list of provinces to be handed over in the coming months, according to U.S. Navy Lt. James McCue, a spokesman for the international force.
Ms. Mujadedi said that France should not leave the Afghan mission early because of its soldiers’ deaths, arguing that such incidents happen in war.
“When military forces are present in a war zone, anything can happen,” she said. The French troops “are not here for a holiday,” she added.
But the killing of the unarmed French troops by an Afghan soldier whom they were training has deepened discontent with the Afghan war in France, where Mr. Sarkozy is facing a tough election this year. France has about 3,600 troops in the international force, which is mostly made up of American troops.
A sense of mission fatigue has been growing among some European contributors to the 10-year allied intervention in Afghanistan. The new idea floated by Mr. Sarkozy to withdrawal all NATO troops by the end of next year would accelerate a gradual drawdown that Mr. Obama has planned to see through until the end of 2014.
France’s announcement could step up pressure in other European governments like Britain, Italy and Germany, which also have important roles in Afghanistan – even if the U.S. has the lion’s share by far.
Mr. Karzai, who praised the role of France and other NATO allies, didn’t object at Friday’s joint news conference when Mr. Sarkozy said the 2013 NATO withdrawal timetable was sought by the two countries.
But the Afghan leader appeared to suggest that it was a high-end target.
“Yes, Mr. President, it is right that Afghanistan has to provide for its own security and for the protection of its own people, and for the provision of law and order,” Mr. Karzai said.
“We hope to finish the transition – to complete this transition of authority to the Afghan forces, to the Afghan government, by the end of 2013 at the earliest – or by the latest as has been agreed upon – by the end of 2014,” Karzai said.
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Afghan peace council member kidnapped by Taliban
Reuters By Mirwais Harooni Jan 29, 2012
KABUL - The Taliban have kidnapped a member of Afghanistan's peace council during a bid to promote talks in the volatile east, underscoring the difficulty negotiators face in winning support for nascent negotiations from the Taliban front line.
Mavlawi Shafihullah Shafih, a low level member of the High Peace Council set up by President Hamid Karzai to liaise with insurgents, disappeared on Friday in the Asmar district of the eastern province of Kunar, authorities said on Sunday.
Shafih, a former education department head in neighbouring Nuristan province, had travelled from Kabul to meet insurgents and encourage them to join the peace process after Taliban leaders proposed opening a representative office in Qatar.
"As soon as he left his car Taliban captured him," said Shahzada Shahid, another member of the 70-member council who had travelled to the Kunar capital of Asadabad in an effort to free Shafih with support from community elders.
Shafih's abduction comes four months after the head of the High Peace Council, former president Burhanuddin Rabbani, was assassinated by an insurgent carrying a bomb hidden in his turban. The attack wounded four people, including Masoom Stanekzai, head of the council's secretariat.
It also comes after an offer by the Taliban's leadership to open an office in Qatar to lay the ground for possible peace talks with the United States and its main allies, including the Afghan government.
Fazlullah Wahidi, the provincial governor for Kunar, said Shafih had been carrying a letter from a senior member of the peace council to give to insurgents in Kunar, which lies along the rugged and porous border with Pakistan.
A Taliban spokesman could not be reached for comment.
Mohammad Ewaz Naziri, the Kunar police chief, said Shafih had not alerted authorities of his visit.
"He went to Asmar without informing us. We don't know where and how he went missing," he said.
Two senior council members told Reuters last week that they believed the Taliban were willing to soften hardline ideologies in order to end the war with NATO and Afghan forces ahead of the departure of foreign combat troops in 2014
But Mohammad Ismail Qasimyar, the council's adviser on foreign relations, said while he saw signs of moderation among the Taliban leadership, a peace deal had the potential to split front-line fighters with more hardline views. (Editing by Rob Taylor and Robert Birsel)
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50 more militants surrender in Baghlan, Afghanistan
PUL-E-KHUMRI, Afghanistan, Jan. 29 (Xinhua) -- Fifty more militants surrender to the government in the northern Afghan province of Baghlan, a provincial police source said Sunday.
"A total of 50 anti-government militants, including several group commanders, have renounced violence and joined the government in Baghlan-e-Markazi district late on Saturday," provincial police chief of Baghlan, Asadullah Shirzad, told Xinhua on Sunday morning.
He said the former group of militants belonged to Hizb-i-Islami.
Hizb-i-Islami, with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar as its leader, is the second largest militant group fighting the government.
With these people joining the peace process, the security situation will be further improved in Baghlan province, police chief Shirzad said, adding with the mediation of local elders, more militants would give up militancy and join the peace process in near future.
Police chief Shirzad also said more than 100 militants, with a majority of them Taliban, have joined the peace process in the province, some 160 km north of Kabul over the past couple of days.
Local media reports recently said peace talks between the Afghan government and Hezb-i-Islami militants are heading towards a positive direction.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Jan. 21 confirmed that he personally held peace talks with a delegation of Hizb-i-Islami recently.
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Hina Rabbani Khar to visit Kabul on Feb 1
January 29, 2012 16:07 IST Rediff.com
Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar will visit Kabul on February 1 to boost Pakistan-Afghanistan ties and efforts to engage the Taliban that were affected by the assassination of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani last year.
Khar will become the first Pakistani woman politician to lead a delegation to Afghanistan when she arrives in Kabul on a daylong trip.
The visit is being seen as "an icebreaker in bilateral ties", The News daily quoted its sources as saying.
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani decided to send Khar to Afghanistan to shore up bilateral ties during a meeting held on January 24.
That meeting had focussed on the regional security situation and the reconciliation process in Afghanistan.
After a gap of several months, Pakistan and Afghanistan have quietly revived efforts to engage the Afghan Taliban ahead of the withdrawal of US troops from the war-torn country.
Ties between Islamabad and Kabul were hit by the assassination of Afghan High Peace Council chief Rabbani, which Afghan leaders blamed on elements based on Pakistani soil.
Premier Gilani and Afghan President Hamid Karzai had a very tense meeting on the sidelines of the SAARC Summit in the Maldives last year.
Pakistan's foreign office has said it is committed to working with Afghanistan to identify Rabbani's killers.
During a recent address in parliament, Khar said Rabbani's assassin had travelled to Afghanistan from a refugee camp in Pakistan but the two sides have made little headway in identifying those who planned the killing.
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Pakistan Knew Where Bin Laden Was Hiding, Panetta Says
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 28 January 2012
US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta still believes Pakistani officials knew where Osama bin Laden was hiding before US forces went to get him.
Intelligence reports found that Pakistani military helicopters had flown over the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan where Mr bin Laden was hiding, Mr Panetta said in a CBS News interview to air on Sunday.
Panetta said in the interview: "I personally have always felt that somebody must have had some sense of what was happening at this compound. Don't forget, this compound had 18-foot walls... It was the largest compound in the area. So you would have thought that somebody would have asked the question, 'What the hell's going on there?'"
Suspicions that Pakistan knew where Mr bin Laden was hiding influenced Washington's decision not to tell Pakistani officials in advance of the raid what was going to happen in case they warned the fugitive terrorist, he said.
Panetta admitted in the interview that he does not have "hard evidence" that Pakistan knew of Mr bin Laden's whereabouts.
In a US special force operation on May 2 killed al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden in the garrison city of Abbotabad near Pakistani capital Islamabad.
The relations between the US and Pakistan started getting more strained after the attack.
Pakistani officials has condemned the attack and called on the US not to repeat similar attacks.
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Out of Afghanistan: incredible stories of the boys who walked to Europe
The country is so dangerous it's no wonder so many leave, travelling alone across the Middle East in search of a new life
Caroline Brothers The Observer UK, Sunday 29 January 2012
Behind the security bars of a spartan, white-tiled room, 25 youths are arranging bedrolls on the floor. The workers on the Salvation Army nightshift, who watch over these lone foreign teenagers in a shelter in a gritty corner of Paris, are distributing sheets and sleeping bags; there are a couple of boys from Mali and a contingent of Bangladeshis; the rest have travelled overland, by every conceivable method, from Afghanistan.
The youngest are 13 years old, pint-sized cousins from Kabul who arrived that morning after a journey of five months. They take off their trainers and place them at the end of their bedrolls. One of them, Morteza, gingerly peels off his socks. The undersides of his toes are completely white.
I ask what happened to his feet. "Water," he says. Where was he walking in water? Mohammed, the boy on the next bedroll who knows more English, translates. "In the mountains," he says. Which mountains, I ask, thinking about the range that forms the border between Turkey and Iran. "Croatia, Slovenia, Italy,'' Morteza says. Mohammed intervenes. "Not water,'' he clarifies. "Snow."
Suddenly I understand. Morteza's feet are not waterlogged or blistered. He has limped across Europe with frostbite.
The next day I run into them watching the older Afghans play football in a park. Morteza's 13-year-old cousin Sohrab, pale and serious beyond his years, recounts, in English learned during two years of school in Afghanistan, what happened. "Slovenia big problem,'' he says, explaining how he and Morteza, "my uncle's boy'', were travelling with eight adults when they were intercepted by the Slovenian police. Two members of their group were caught and the rest made a detour into the mountains. They spent five days in the snow, navigating by handheld GPS, emerging from the Alps in Trento, in the Italian north.
Morteza acquired frostbite on the penultimate part of a 6,000km journey that detoured through the Balkans: through Macedonia, Serbia and Croatia. Their aim is to join their uncle who lives in Europe, the solution their relatives found after Morteza's father was killed in an explosion. His mother died earlier "in the war''; Sohrab lost his own father when he was 11.
Morteza and Sohrab are among the world's most vulnerable migrants. Like scores of Afghan teenagers in transit across Europe, they are in flight from violence or the aftershocks of violence that affect children in particularly harsh ways. Those who turn up in Paris have spent up to a year on the road, on the same clandestine routes as adults, but at far greater risk.
No one knows how many unaccompanied Afghan children have made it to Europe. Paris took in just over 300 in 2011 – the biggest nationality among the 1,700 lone foreign minors in its care. Sarah Di Giglio, a child-protection expert with Save the Children in Italy, says that last year the number of Afghan boys – there are almost never girls – passing through a day centre in Rome had doubled from the year before, to 635.
Asylum statistics are another measure, though they give only a rough indication since many children never make a claim. Still, at 4,883, Afghans were the biggest group of separated foreign children requesting asylum in 2010, the majority in Europe.
While some are sent out of Afghanistan for their own safety, others make their own decision to leave. Some are running from brutality, or the politics of their fathers, or recruitment by the Taliban. Others have been pushed onwards by the increasing precariousness of life in Pakistan and Iran, countries that host three million Afghan refugees.
Blanche Tax, who is responsible for country guidance at the United Nations refugee agency in Geneva, says security is deteriorating in Afghanistan, which Unicef described two years ago as the world's most dangerous place to be a child. From January to September, she said, 1,600 children were reported killed or injured, 55% more than the previous year.
A report to the general assembly of the UN security council on 13 December 2011, meanwhile, said "the killing and maiming of children remains of grave concern". "The most frequent violations continued to be recruitment and use of children, including for suicide bombing missions or for planting explosives,'' the report continued. It highlighted a recent rise in "cross-border recruitment by Taliban – as well as attacks on schools''. And it added 31,385 cases of "severe acute malnutrition" among minors to a litany of child-specific damage that already includes landmines, sexual violence and forced labour.
It is from this maelstrom, and its spread to Afghanistan's south, north and east, that Morteza, Sohrab and others have fled. I first came across adolescents like them three years ago, when I saw them squeezing between the railings of a Paris park to sleep on cardboard among the shrubberies or in the bandstand, along with adult refugees. When the police raided the park and started to patrol it with dogs, they bedded down under the swings of a playground, or on the edges of a canal.
Subsequent raids have moved them on again, but they still play football there or under a railway bridge, in teams that sometimes take on the local boys. They find the undersized Salvation Army shelter by word of mouth, or through a reception office for unaccompanied foreign minors run by a French NGO called France Terre d'Asile (FTDA). It's the only emergency place of refuge for the children, and is oversubscribed: lately 20 or so have been turned away each evening, to sleep in a corner of a park or metro station, or walk the streets all night in order to keep warm.
In the entrance to the FTDA office for minors I stumble upon Omar, a slender 16-year-old with a ski hat pulled low over his eyes. He is leaning on the counter by himself, too tense to wait on the seats with the other boys. He is doodling with a yellow marker pen on a sheet of paper on which someone before him has pencilled the word "Tunisia".
"All my family are very worried about my father,'' Omar says. "We don't know where he is.'' This is almost the first thing he tells me. He expresses this same anxiety four times in our conversation, and I realise that what initially I took for tension was distress.
From a village in Afghanistan's Logar province, just south of Kabul, Omar says he is the eldest of five. Enmities from the Soviet era up-ended his life. "I did school in Afghanistan for three years and I wasn't able to go more,'' he said. "My grandfather said don't go to school, we have enemies who will kill you; stay in the house and don't go out in the village a lot." His father and grandfather had "done jihad with the Russians", he said; those they had sided against came back and "gave a warning". His grandfather sold their almond orchard and paid $11,000 to a smuggler to get him and his father out.
Travelling with Omar's uncle, the three made it as far as Turkey before being stopped by the police. Everyone scattered. Separated in the confusion, Omar was deported to Afghanistan. He said his uncle had contacted his grandfather to let them know he was all right; from his father they have had no word.
Omar set off again, spending the next five months on the road. He moved in and out of the hands of smugglers, was held with dozens of others in "passenger houses'', then abandoned in a deserted place on the Turkish side of the border with Greece. There, he and his companions waited, night after night without shelter, for a guide. Finally they gave up and struggled back to Istanbul.
On his second attempt Omar swam a wide canal and walked for five hours in wet clothes, heading on his smuggler's instructions towards the lights of a Greek town. There he was picked up by the police and held for three days in a room with 15 men. The next four nights he spent in a train station in the northern Greek town of Alexandroupolis, until a railway employee paid his fare to Athens. He waited 25 days in another passenger room before being crammed, with 32 others, into the back of a truck. Told to bring two packets of biscuits and no water, they spent 30 hours inside. "There was no air and it smelt very bad," he said. The driver abandoned them in Italy.
He caught trains to Milan, and then Cannes, with three other boys. "We slept on the earth next to the sea and we were so cold," he says. Arriving in Paris, he spent six nights on the street before asking at this office for help. "I want to live here,'' he says. "People don't hurt me in France." And yet, they already had. A few days earlier three men had mugged him in a Paris park. They stole his bag that contained his last €30 and the slip of paper that bore his grandfather's phone number, severing his last link to his family.
In the state of anxiety he was in, it was hard for him to think about the future. "I want to have peace,'' he said. And if he were able to stay in France? "I'd like to go to school,'' he said, "if they give us the opportunity to go." For many of the kids going to school seems like an enormous privilege, but first they have to be accepted as minors. That means going before a judge, who can order bone x-ray exams – which have a two-year margin of error – if he disbelieves their age; they may have to wait months to get formal protection.
By the time they turn 18, these teenagers will have to prove they speak French and have embarked on a profession in order to have a chance of regularising their status. For Afghan boys with almost no prior schooling, the pressure is enormous. "They have no time to have their adolescent crises,'' says Pauline Ferrais, head of the education service at the Maison du Jeune Réfugié (MJR), a day centre. As Pierre Henry, managing director of FTDA, puts it: "Some have spent one or two years on the roads of Asia and Europe in extreme conditions playing with the laws of survival, and we ask them to respect very strict rules in an education system that makes no allowances for them." Yet teachers remark that those who do go to school have a dynamic effect on the class. It's something that's been noted by Romain Levy, the deputy mayor for Paris with special responsibility for minors. "Because of their motivation they act as an engine and pull the other kids up," he says.
But Paris's budget for providing for minors is stretched. And elsewhere in Europe the likelihood that these boys will get a second chance at a childhood is waning. Sweden, alarmed by the 1,693 Afghan teenagers who requested asylum there in 2011, has teamed up with Britain, Norway and the Netherlands to create the European Return Platform for Unaccompanied Minors, or Erpum, an EU-funded project that aims to send them back.
Susanne Bäckstedt, its Stockholm-based co-ordinator, denied reports that Erpum wanted to establish care centres in Kabul. She said the programme would be voluntary, and only involve minors who had exhausted asylum appeals and wanted to rejoin their families. "We are not discussing care centres,'' says Bäckstedt. "We will only send them back if their family can be traced.'' That, she says, meant "a welcoming family'' who would come to the airport to meet them.
Erpum hopes to start repatriations of 16- and 17-year-olds this year, provided the Afghan Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation agrees; Bäckstedt confirmed Erpum has a target of deporting 100 Afghan minors by the end of 2014. The prospect has alarmed child-protection bodies, who fear such initiatives will push those in Europe underground. They want reassurances over how the minor's best interest would be established, stress the danger to the tracers of inaccurate information, and warn that families who have spent thousands of dollars to send a son to safety will have incurred debts in which collateral can include the betrothal of a younger sister to an older man. "Family tracing is not as innocent as it sounds," says one children's rights researcher. The European Council on Refugees and Exiles also opposes returning minors to Afghanistan.
Governments concerned about deterring minors from embarking on hazardous journeys risk missing the point about why children flee in the first place, says Judith Dennis, policy adviser at the UK Refugee Council. "We share concerns that children's journeys to safety are often dangerous,'' she comments, "but it is inappropriate to suggest that the international response should be to discourage them from escaping the threats in their country.''
Every Afghan minor who has survived the endurance test that reaching Europe entails has a story of equal parts courage and grief. Some of them are too frightened, or too traumatised, or simply too young to be able to explain the forces that have borne them here.
I meet Jalil, a round-faced 16-year-old from Kunduz, in Afghanistan's north, between classes at the MJR, where he is taught French. "This is my first school,'' he says with pride. His only education hitherto had been from a neighbour in Afghanistan who came to his house at night to teach him English, "one word at a time", from a book.
Jalil took his future into his own hands after being orphaned. He had lost his mother to "a heart sickness" when he was nine or 10 and was living with his father, who was killed "three years and four months ago". "Someone said he helped the Taliban," Jalil tells me. He didn't witness the attack. "But my brother saw that and now he is mad,'' Jalil says. "He can't talk. It is like he is finished. He is 22 years old.''
He and his younger siblings moved to his uncle's house, where he was often beaten. "He was cruel, cruel, cruel," Jalil says of his uncle. His brother-in-law helped him get away, paying $4,000 to a smuggler to get him to Turkey. Barely 15, he went first to Pakistan, then Iran, and on to Turkey and Greece. He had no money so he stayed there "a long time", living by washing windows, then crossed into Italy from the Greek port of Patras by clinging to the chassis of a truck. After a nine-month journey he reached Paris in August, and slept for a month in the street. Now he is learning the language and goes every day after class to "the library with headphones" at the Pompidou Centre. "I go there and listen to French," he says. "The plan is I study more to be a doctor, but if I cannot do a big job I will do a little job. If I can't be a doctor I will be an electrician.''
Pierre Henry of FTDA believes that Europe should be investing in these teenagers. "You don't win war, democracy, hearts with occupying armies,'' he says, pointing out that educating these minors would help create the diaspora that will one day rebuild their country. "It puts paid to all our values if we can't take care of those among the world's disinherited children who come to us."
A week later I pass by the meeting point where the new arrivals gather to be chosen for the 25 places in the Salvation Army shelter. Forty-five boys are waiting in a ragtaggle line against a supermarket wall, and every one of them is new. Sohrab and Morteza, the boy with frostbitten feet, have left; they are back on the road. There is no sign of Omar. Jalil, who lined up here four months ago, now has a place in a hotel, though sometimes he stops by a nearby soup kitchen, where many Afghans gather, to speak his language again. The others have disappeared on their search across Europe for some place that will allow them to stay. They leave only their stories behind.
Hinterland, a novel by Caroline Brothers about Afghan boys in Europe, is published on 2 February by Bloomsbury, £14.99. To order a copy for £11.99 with free UK p&p, go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0330 333 6846
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Afghanistan must confront its terrorism of women
2012-01-29 19:30 The Korea Herald
KABUL ― Recently, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) office in Kudoz province reported the rescue of a young woman who had been imprisoned in her in-laws’ dungeon for seven months. Fifteen-year-old Sahar Gul was forced to marry an older man who serves in the Afghan army. She was then kept in the dungeon by her husband’s family and brutally tortured for months, because she refused to work as a prostitute.
Over the past 10 years, the AIHRC has received more than 19,000 complaints related to violence against women. Despite making some progress in investigating the complaints and referring them to the justice system, as well as in raising public awareness about the issue, the challenges remain huge.
Since 2002, many efforts have been made to improve women’s lives in Afghanistan. The country has enacted several new laws and established a fairly advanced legal framework to end discrimination against women, including a new law that criminalizes any act that results in violence against women.
But laws and policies alone are not sufficient to protect women from horrific domestic abuse. Indeed, the Gul case is hardly the only well-publicized case. There was also Gulnaz, a young woman who was jailed for adultery after being raped by a relative (she was recently released after a presidential pardon, but may be forced to marry her attacker). The husband of another young woman, Aisha, cut off her nose and ears when she ran away.
Violence against women in Afghanistan persists for many reasons. First, the country has inherited a patriarchal tribal tradition that assumes women’s inferiority. Women are therefore deprived of their basic rights and freedoms.
Second, there is a strong political incentive to deprive women of their rights. Radical groups receive immense support from the large share of the population that opposes women’s rights. The Taliban, for example, have consistently used an anti-women policy to appeal to tribal and rural people.
Third, family pride and honor are deemed more important than a woman’s individual well-being and safety. For example, if family members beat or abuse a woman, she has few options. Often, her only choice is to remain silent or risk disgracing the family. If she does report the matter to the authorities, the case will almost certainly never be properly investigated, nor the perpetrators ever prosecuted. Gul, for example, complained to the police about her abusive in-laws, but she was returned to the family when some of their influential contacts intervened.
Fourth, laws are often arbitrarily applied, and sharia (Islamic law) frequently takes precedence over civil legislation, resulting in widespread impunity for crimes of violence against women. For example, in October 2010, the Afghan Supreme Court ruled that women who run away from home can be charged with prostitution, unless they go to the police or an immediate relative’s home. It is this mindset that led to Gul’s victimization.
Finally, while the Taliban lost power ten years ago, discrimination and violence against women has occurred in Afghan society for centuries. Thus, despite some progress, public and official sensitivity to violence against women is only slowly emerging.
The Afghan government must take several steps to protect women fully. Above all, perpetrators of violence against women should be prosecuted and tried under due process of law. This will require strengthening the rule of law and ending the prevailing culture of impunity.
That, in turn, requires educating the public further about human rights and women’s rights through school textbooks, continuing education courses, and a vigorous media campaign. It also requires persuading representatives and policymakers to develop policies and allocate budget revenues to combat violence against women, and training police and judges to handle cases of violence against women without deferring to claims of family honor. Perhaps most importantly, non-constitutional justice systems, such as sharia, must be monitored and checked, if not prohibited altogether.
As for Sahar Gul, her case must be thoroughly investigated, and the police and judiciary must commit to bringing her torturers to justice. Furthermore, Gul’s case, and others like it, should be studied in order to understand the roots of such crimes. Until Afghanistan’s leaders begin to address this problem seriously, our country will continue to bear the scar of violence against women on its face.
By Mohammed Musa Mahmodi
Mohammad Musa Mahmodi is executive director of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. ― Ed.
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An all-woman team in Afghanistan sets a record for Seabees
U.S. military officials say the first all-female construction team in Seabees' history just took on a construction job from start to finish. And they did it in record time, in the mountains of Helmand province, Afghanistan.
By Catherine Saillant Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES — It was an unusual job even for the Seabees, the U.S. Navy's construction forces trained to hold a hammer in one hand and a Beretta M9 in the other.
First, the team selected to build barracks high in the mountains of Afghanistan consisted of eight women, who are all stationed at Naval Base Ventura County in California. And second, the women completed the job far ahead of schedule.
Beating deadline made up for long days and freezing nights in tents without plumbing, building four 20-by-30-foot structures, said Gafayat Moradeyo, the mission commander. But when the women returned to Bagram Air Field, their Afghanistan base, they learned that they had nailed another achievement: a place in naval history.
Military officials say they are the first all-female construction team to take on a construction job from start to finish in the Seabees' 70-year history. And they did it in record time in the barren rocky mountains of Helmand province, a Taliban stronghold and the focus of recent combat efforts.
At first, the women had their doubts about the achievement. But after checking with military historians and naval museums, they confirmed their status, said Shelby Lutrey, 29, one of the builders.
"It's definitely something to be proud of," she said. "There is nothing wrong with hard work and good results."
The Seabees were created during World War II to fill a critical demand for construction workers who could also fight. Today, there are nine battalions operating out of two U.S. bases, deploying overseas to build airstrips, bridges, roads, living quarters, just about anything needed in a military operation.
Women first joined the Seabees in 1972 and, 22 years later, earned the right to serve alongside their male counterparts in combat zones, said Russell Stewart, a spokesman with the U.S. Naval Mobile Construction Battalion Four.
The team members have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan for years — some are on their third overseas tours. In mid-November, when the call went out for a team of Seabees to build barracks huts, the women put up their hands, Stewart said.
There weren't a lot of male Seabees available at the time, and Moradeyo, from the Chicago area, saw it as an opportunity for the women to prove themselves. At Bagram Air Base, the mission commander gathered her team, laid out what needed to be done, assembled the building materials and packed a pallet of construction tools for the trip to Helmand province.
Moradeyo and Lutrey, who are still in Afghanistan and were interviewed by phone, demurred when asked if they got any ribbing from their male counterparts. But Stewart, the Seabee spokesman, said that, initially, there was plenty of skepticism.
"Unlike most times Seabees show up to a new location, this team was welcomed with rolling eyes and comments on the order of, 'Really, a group of girls?' " Stewart said.
The builders reportedly changed minds in short order. Working 12-hour days, they agreed on site to double the size of their task, adding an operations center and a gym to the barracks already planned.
Mornings were so cold that ice coated the piles of wood, soaking their gloves as they began throwing up the buildings. They took showers using freezing water pulled by bucket from a well. They ate rice and beans. They disposed of solid waste in a bag and then burned it in a pit, Lutrey said.
"When you join the military, that's what you expect," said the native of Scottsdale, Ariz. "It might not be the most comfortable, but it's necessary."
The women worked so well together that they finished the job, including installing electricity and utilities, in two weeks. It normally takes about three weeks to complete such a project, Seabees officials said.
Lutrey chalked it up to a strong team spirit. They knew the post's soldiers had been living out of tents and mud huts, she said, and they wanted to prove the team's efficiency by quickly providing more comfortable shelter.
"It was probably one of the smoothest builds I've done while in Afghanistan," said Lutrey, who's in her third year of service. "We had a lot of camaraderie. We pushed each other to get the job done."
Besides Moradeyo and Lutrey, the work was completed by Kadisha Lee, Carla Diazcastillo, Amber Mann, Kacie Dunlavey, Jessica Vera and Shayla Miles.
Will the team stay together? Not likely, Moradeyo said. Seabees, each with differing areas of expertise, rotate in and out of construction teams.
Moradeyo, for instance, was on another assignment in an undisclosed location recently with a different group of builders — one that included men.
Though immune to the deprivations of working under austere conditions, she said stray thoughts of home enter her mind sometimes as she looks down at her cracked hands and dirt-rimmed nails.
"I think, 'Oh my God, I need to get a manicure,' " she said. "And then I keep going."
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Afghan Soldier Detained with Explosives
TOLOnews.com Sunday, 29 January 2012
An Afghan soldier has been detained with an explosive laden motorbike, local officials said.
The detained man was a soldier at Herat police headquarters in counter narcotics section.
Officials at Herat Police Headquarters said that the soldier was carrying several kilos of explosives and was planning to attack Afghan security forces in the province.
Western Herat has already been transitioned to Afghan forces.
Enemy infiltration into the Afghan security forces has been a big concern.
There have been many incidents of Afghan soldiers turning out to be enemy sleeping agents.
The concern has caused foreign troops in Afghanistan to keep half an eye on Afghan forces working with them
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