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Afghan suicide bomber kills military and government officials at wedding
More than a dozen guests are killed by bomber who infiltrated MP's daughter's wedding in northern Samangan province
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 14 July 2012 12.05 EDT Emma Graham-Harrison in Kabul
A suicide bomber has killed a senior anti-Taliban leader, top security commanders and more than a dozen other guests at a family wedding in northern Afghanistan in one of the bloodiest attacks on military and government officials of the war.
Karzai Orders Probe into Wedding Blast
VOA News July 14, 2012
Afghanistan's president has ordered a probe into the suicide bombing at a wedding reception in a northern province, saying "the enemies of Afghanistan once again targeted innocent civilians."
7 Officials in Afghan Investment Agency Quit, Protesting Graft
New York Times By GRAHAM BOWLEY and JAWAD SUKHANYAR July 13, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - Just days after President Hamid Karzai assured the United States and international donors that he was serious about fighting corruption, seven top members of the agency that promotes investment in Afghanistan resigned to protest what they said was rampant nepotism, corruption and mismanagement in their organization.
SpiceJet flies to Afghanistan; to connect Delhi and Kabul
The Economic Times 13 Jul, 2012
SpiceJet, India's preferred low fare airline, today announces further expansion of its network on international route by starting flights between New Delhi and the Afghan capital city of Kabul.
Canada’s Afghan legacy: Failure at Dahla dam
Toronto Star By Paul Watson Star Columnist 14/07/2012
SHAH WALI KOT, AFGHANISTAN - Heavy snow falling high in the Hindu Kush lifts the spirits of farmers far to the south as they scrape out a living in the Taliban’s desert heartland.
Mammoth task awaits as US prepares to quit Afghanistan
Sydney Morning Herald By Craig Whitlock July 14, 2012
WASHINGTON - Even with the recent re-opening of critical supply routes from Pakistan, the US military confronts a mammoth logistical challenge to wind down the war in Afghanistan, where it must withdraw nearly 90,000 troops and enormous depots of equipment accumulated over the past decade.
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Afghan suicide bomber kills military and government officials at wedding
More than a dozen guests are killed by bomber who infiltrated MP's daughter's wedding in northern Samangan province
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 14 July 2012 12.05 EDT Emma Graham-Harrison in Kabul
A suicide bomber has killed a senior anti-Taliban leader, top security commanders and more than a dozen other guests at a family wedding in northern Afghanistan in one of the bloodiest attacks on military and government officials of the war.
The main target was Ahmad Khan Samangani, an ethnic Uzbek MP who was attending the wedding of his daughter and his nephew in Aybak, the capital of the northern province of Samangan, when the blast happened.
Samangani, who rose to prominence during the fight against Soviet forces and then the country's bitter civil war, had survived a previous attempt on his life five years ago.
The former anti-Taliban commander was welcoming guests to the wedding when the bomber struck, said Khalilluah Andarabi, provincial police chief in Samangan.
"I saw parts of bodies, blood all over the reception," Ahmad Jawed, a guest, said of the blast scene. "Many wounded people were crying for help," he told Reuters news agency.
The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, said the bomber had killed 17 people and wounded 43. He has ordered a probe into the killing of Samangani, who he said "played a crucial role in forging national unity".
Also among the dead were Police General Sayed Ahmad Sameh, commander for the western region and a relative of Samangani, the Samangan provincial intelligence chief, Mohammad Khan, and the head of the army training centre in nearby Balkh province, Mohammadullah, who like many Afghans uses only one name. Another MP and a former provincial governor were among the wounded.
"To kill so many senior officials with a single attack is rare, particularly in the north. This is a significant attack," said Kate Clark of the Afghanistan Analysts Network.
"To find similar attacks one would have to look back to the killing of General Daud Daud, security commander for the northern zone, in 2011, and a suicide attack on the sugar factory in Baghlan in 2007, in which six parliamentarians and dozens of other civilians were killed, many of them children."
Samangani may have helped seal his own fate by ordering only basic security checks as a mark of respect to his 5,000 guests. "He told the wedding hall staff and his relatives: 'Don't try to check the people too seriously, I don't want my guests to be disturbed,'" said the deputy provincial governor Ghulam Sakhi.
The bride and groom survived the blast, but the ceremony was cancelled, officials said.
The Taliban denied any role in the bombing, Reuters news agency reported. "Ahmad Khan [Samangani] was a former commander of the mujahideen. He was notorious and many people could have had problems with him," a spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said.
The killing came the day after a provincial governor of women's affairs was killed by a bomb attached to her car in eastern Afghanistan, and the mayor of Shindand district in western Afghanistan was shot dead by unknown gunmen as he left a mosque.
Samangani almost certainly would have created enemies over the years, but he was also a long-term opponent of the insurgent group, which has repeatedly said it considers lawmakers and other government officials legitimate targets.
"After 9/11, commanders in their droves claimed to have been fighting the Taliban. Samangani was one of those whose claim was accurate," said Clark.
"In the late 1990s and early 2000s … he fought the Taliban tenaciously and against the odds."
His killing follows the assassination in recent years of a string of key commanders from the north who once helped lead resistance to the Taliban and might have been candidates to do so again were civil war to return.
As well as the northern police chief killed in 2011, targets have included the governor of Kunduz province Mohammad Omar, and the deputy chief of the national intelligence service, Abdullah Laghmani.
The Taliban might be reluctant to claim a brutal attack on a wedding party, because it violates instructions from the group's leadership to avoid civilian casualties.
• Additional reporting by Mokhtar Amiri
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Karzai Orders Probe into Wedding Blast
VOA News July 14, 2012
Afghanistan's president has ordered a probe into the suicide bombing at a wedding reception in a northern province, saying "the enemies of Afghanistan once again targeted innocent civilians."
President Hamid Karzai said in a statement that among at least 23 people killed in the attack Saturday in Samangan province were lawmaker Ahmad Khan Samangani and General Mohammad Khan, Samangan's provincial intelligence director.
Another member of parliament, a police commander, and a former provincial governor were injured in the attack in the provincial capital of Aybak.
Authorities say the suicide bomber entered the wedding hall and embraced the father of the bride, Samangani, before blowing himself up.
Meanwhile, Amnesty International says the assassination of a prominent female official of the Afghan Ministry of Women's Affairs was meant to undermine what it called the "fragile gains" made for women's rights in Afghanistan. The rights group is urging the Afghan government to bring those responsible for the attack to justice.
Afghan authorities say the director of women's affairs in eastern Laghman province, Hanifa Safi, was killed Friday when a bomb hidden under her car exploded in the provincial capital, Mehterlam. Her husband and daughter were also wounded in the blast, along with at least six other civilians.
Horia Mosadiq, Anmesty International's Afghanistan researcher, said the typical Afghani pattern following incidents like Hanifa is a failure by authorities to adequately investigate the case and bring the perpetrators to justice.
Amnesty International said at the Tokyo International Donors Conference earlier this month that Afghanistan committed to building a stable state based on the "rule of law, effective and independent judiciary and good governance."
Mosadiq said such commitments are "meaningless" if those responsible for violence against women in Afghanistan are able to escape justice.
Amnesty International warned that the Afghan government and its allies must ensure that human rights, including women's rights, "are not compromised or traded away in expedient deals" as Afghanistan pursues a political settlement with the Taliban and other insurgent groups.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, which came just days after the release of a video showing the apparent public execution of a woman by the Taliban.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP and Reuters.
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7 Officials in Afghan Investment Agency Quit, Protesting Graft
New York Times By GRAHAM BOWLEY and JAWAD SUKHANYAR July 13, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - Just days after President Hamid Karzai assured the United States and international donors that he was serious about fighting corruption, seven top members of the agency that promotes investment in Afghanistan resigned to protest what they said was rampant nepotism, corruption and mismanagement in their organization.
In a letter sent to Mr. Karzai late Thursday, the seven senior members of the Afghanistan Investment Support Agency accused the new head of the agency, appointed two months ago, of disregarding proper hiring procedures and instead promoting friends who shared the same tribal or ethnic allegiance or belonged to the same political party. They said that they had no choice but to resign.
The seven officials said the agency, whose mission is to promote private business investment by Afghan and international companies, had enjoyed a good reputation among private sector companies and investors. But, they wrote, “we can no longer argue that A.I.S.A. is free from corruption.”
Copies of the letter were sent to senior figures in the international aid community and companies investing in Afghanistan.
As Mr. Karzai has come under increasing pressure to stanch corruption, the resignations came at a critical time for the country. With American and coalition troops leaving and international donors cutting their aid budgets, the government is trying to attract outside investment to stimulate an economy that has relied heavily on aid and military spending.
Among those who resigned were the director of investment promotion, Rohullah Ahmadzai, and the director of research and policy, Omar Joya.
The allegations, voiced at a televised news conference by those who signed the letter, ignited another debate about corruption in Afghanistan.
Last Sunday, an international donors’ conference in Tokyo pledged $16 billion over four years for the country’s economic development. But for the first time, the pledges included a condition that the Afghan government focus on reducing corruption before it receives all of the money.
At that conference, Mr. Karzai conceded that corruption had undermined the legitimacy of his government. Foreign governments have helped pay for anticorruption efforts, but the Afghans have often quashed high-profile prosecutions of senior officials, and Mr. Karzai has instead regularly blamed foreigners for the corruption of Afghan officials.
The new president of the investment agency, Wafiullah Eftekhar, was appointed in May with the support of the commerce minister, Anwar ul-Haq Ahady, who is known as a Pashtun nationalist.
Mr. Eftekhar had worked for Mr. Ahady at the Finance Ministry. The officials who resigned accused him of appointing 10 of his allies in senior posts, forcing out longstanding and better-qualified staff members, and appropriating funds to move to expensive new offices in a different district of Kabul.
The officials said that the changes at the agency were causing it to lose credibility with investors. “The recruitment of these people has taken place without considering the recruitment procedures, competition and the H.R. policy of A.I.S.A. itself, and this can be entirely qualified as ‘corruption,’ ” they said in the letter.
The agency falls under the responsibility of the Commerce Ministry, but the appointment of the agency chief is approved by Mr. Karzai. The president’s office said he had not yet received the resignation letter.
The former acting president of the agency, Naseem Akbar, resigned in May after he was passed over and Mr. Eftekhar was brought in.
Mr. Eftekhar vehemently denied the allegations leveled at him by the seven former staff members. He said that the spending and promotions were legitimate, free of any political motives. “Nothing is moving here with political aims,” he said. Mr. Ahady said he would look into the matter but pointed out that Mr. Eftekhar’s appointment had been approved by Mr. Karzai.
In an interview, Mr. Ahmadzai, who resigned as the director of investment promotion, said the lack of coordination at the agency had already caused two potential projects to be lost, both in eastern Nangarhar Province: a $10 million business park with Indian investors and a plan with another investor to install electricity poles and cables.
Mr. Joya, who left as director of research and policy, said of Mr. Eftekhar: “Types of corruption exist in A.I.S.A. under his leadership, from nepotism to cronyism and maladministration and failed leadership. He has still not finished with visitors who came with bouquets of flowers to congratulate him as the new head of A.I.S.A.”
On Friday, in Laghman Province, the head of women’s affairs there, Hanifa Safi, died after a bomb that was apparently attached to her car exploded, the Laghman governor’s office said.
The bomb went off as Ms. Safi’s car was traveling though Mehtar Lam, the provincial capital, around 10 a.m., said Zowak Sarhadi, the governor’s spokesman. Ms. Safi’s husband and driver were among 11 people wounded in the explosion.
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SpiceJet flies to Afghanistan; to connect Delhi and Kabul
The Economic Times 13 Jul, 2012
SpiceJet, India's preferred low fare airline, today announces further expansion of its network on international route by starting flights between New Delhi and the Afghan capital city of Kabul.
The launch of Kabul services is a milestone for the airline as SpiceJet would be the sole private Indian carrier to operate services to this country.
The opening of ticket sale is effective from today and commercial flights would start from August 14, 2012. Being a low-cost carrier, SpiceJet would be offering affordable air connectivity between the capital cities of India and Afghanistan.
Kabul is the fourth international destination for SpiceJet and the announcement comes within a fortnight of launch of Dubai flights. SpiceJet currently operates in three international destinations with four routes - Delhi-Kathmandu, Chennai-Colombo, Delhi-Dubai and Mumbai-Dubai. In the Indian domestic market, SpiceJet connects 37 cities with a fleet of 47 aircraft that include Bombardier Q400 NextGen Turboprop and Boeing's 737 aircraft.
Speaking on the announcement, SpiceJet Chief Executive Office, Neil Mills said "Kabul is a very important destination for us. India and Afghanistan have ancient cultural connections and the launch of new services would bridge the distance between the two countries and help to enhance this old relationship. It is our endeavor to offer and maintain a competitive and affordable price structure to make SpiceJet a preferred carrier for inbound and outbound passengers."
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Canada’s Afghan legacy: Failure at Dahla dam
Toronto Star By Paul Watson Star Columnist 14/07/2012
SHAH WALI KOT, AFGHANISTAN - Heavy snow falling high in the Hindu Kush lifts the spirits of farmers far to the south as they scrape out a living in the Taliban’s desert heartland.
The harder winter pounds the distant peaks, the happier they are.
Their fate rides on the rivers of meltwater that flow south each spring, winding through a parched land, filling a network of canals that bring new life to dust-blown furrows.
Kandahar’s dirt-poor farmers feel blessed this year: winter was harsh in the mountains, so spring brought lots of water to give their crops a good start. But now the water is running low as the scorching summer heat rises.
And the farmers worry that most of God’s fleeting gift will hurry past them along the province’s main irrigation system, as it has for decades, leaving crops to shrivel under a punishing summer sun.
Canada had committed $50 million to cleaning up and repairing the irrigation network and the dam that supplies it, but Afghan farmers and officials complain that the project wasted money, taught villagers to expect handouts and lined corrupt people’s pockets.
And after all those costly mistakes, the outdated Dahla Dam’s reservoir is so full of silt that it can’t hold enough water to get crops through the driest months.
“I just want to say to Canadians that if you pave our canals with gold, what can we do with it?” chided Meerab Zakirya, 52, a Mandisar village canal manager. He has to answer to about 1,000 angry Daman district farmers when water runs out.
“If we don’t have water, our main problem is not solved,” he added, both hands clenched to the arms of a white plastic patio chair. “Me, I don’t need money. I want real work. If you want to do something, do it the right way.”
Similar complaints echo across the thousands of desert farms that Canada has struggled to irrigate, into crumbling schools Canadian aid money built, and through the halls of a deeply corrupt justice system Canada helped support despite good intentions.
There are two cardinal rules of development aid: projects must be closely monitored to make sure money isn’t wasted or lost to theft and corruption; and they should be sustainable, so projects survive after foreign experts move on.
After a month-long investigation in Kandahar’s war zone, it’s clear that Canada failed on both counts, tarnishing a legacy that thousands of Canadian troops and civilians died or suffered debilitating wounds trying to build.
The war in Afghanistan was Canada’s biggest overseas mission since the Korean War more than half a century ago. It was also the bloodiest and most expensive.
Since 2002, 158 Canadian troops have been killed in Afghanistan. Four Canadian civilians also perished: two aid workers, a diplomat and a journalist.
Canada spent $1.65 billion on reconstruction and development in Afghanistan from the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001 through last year. Ottawa has committed another $300 million from 2011 to 2014 for development projects and humanitarian assistance.
Since the Harper government gave up the fight in Kandahar province and pulled Canadian combat troops out last fall, uncomfortable questions remain.
Was Canada’s hard-fought sacrifice in Kandahar worth it? Did we squander our legacy by leaving too soon?
“It is true that Canada did exactly what Harper said he would not: ‘cut and run,’” said Nipa Banerjee, who headed the Canadian International Development Agency’s operations in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2006.
While the Harper government has cut non-military aid to Afghanistan by more than half since last year’s pullout, she added, “I must say, some Afghans hardly care, knowing the poor performance of Canadian aid projects.”
Banerjee, a 35-year veteran of foreign aid work, is now a professor at the University of Ottawa’s school of international development and global studies, investigating the effectiveness of Canada’s efforts in Afghanistan.
“My research shows that basically, Canada’s Kandahar venture was a failure, in terms of security, stabilization and development of Afghanistan, and this failure cast a shadow over the earlier recognition gained from Canadian financing of successful Afghan national programs,” Banerjee said.
In late March, the month the last CIDA official left Kandahar, Prime Minister Stephen Harper took a triumphant tone in his final report to Parliament on Canada’s Afghan mission.
The 59-page report boasts of “a strengthened security environment” even though insurgents remain a powerful threat across Kandahar province and attempts to start peace talks with the Taliban have failed.
It also claims “significant progress” on what the government identified as Canada’s three signature projects and six priorities for Afghan aid in June 2008.
The Dahla Dam and irrigation system topped the list, followed by a $12-million plan to renovate or build 50 schools and a $60-million program to immunize seven million children against polio.
Ottawa also set six priorities, led by a push to enable Afghan security forces “to sustain a more secure environment and promote law and order.”
Projects for Kandahar included improving the provincial government’s capacity to deliver core services, promoting economic growth and providing humanitarian aid to refugees and other “extremely vulnerable people.”
At the time, acting foreign affairs minister David Emerson said the aim was “to leave Afghanistan to Afghans in a viable country that is better governed, more peaceful and more secure.
“What is new is that we will significantly concentrate Canadian efforts and our resources on those areas most likely to help us reach that goal,” he said.
Four years later, Kandahar’s government is still corrupt and dysfunctional, the Dahla Dam and its irrigation canals are only partly restored, the schools Canada built are plagued by shoddy construction.
And, Banerjee says, “Kandahar is still called the world’s capital of polio.”
While Harper’s final report acknowledges that the task of rescuing Afghanistan from more than three decades of war is far from finished, it reads like a Canadian version of declaring victory and going home.
“For the first time in our history, the Canadian military engaged in a prolonged counter-insurgency conflict at the same time as Canadian civilian experts provided leadership in governance and development,” it said.
“Through the inevitable setbacks faced, we kept moving forward,” it continued. “Our resolve to help Afghanistan has never wavered. The losses we endured will never be forgotten.”
Yet Afghans give more thanks to God’s will than Canadian aid for what little progress they make each day.
Just up a potholed dirt track from the Dahla Dam, about 35 kilometres north of Kandahar City, an elderly farmer squats barefoot in the dun-coloured desert.
He scrapes at the earth with a rusty sickle, taking out the weeds that suck precious water away from his poppy plants.
The last poppy petals are falling, which means Jan Mohammed, 63, will soon scratch his plants’ green seed pods with a small, razor-edged tool.
The milky latex that oozes out will turn to a brown, sticky resin, the opium that Mohammed must sell to feed himself and his family for another year.
“We thought the Canadians would increase the height of the dam a few metres, which would help improve the water capacity, but it never happened,” he said.
“This dam is quite an old one, built by Americans about 50 or 60 years ago. With the passage of time, it will stop working. The real solution is a new dam, whoever builds it, if it’s Americans or Canadians or our government.”
In a wilting desert breeze, against the rush of water spilling over nearby waterfalls, it sounds like a passing dream.
From the air, the Arghandab River valley is a careless, green brush stroke across an empty grey canvas.
What looks like a mistake sustains life for 80 per cent of the people in Kandahar province.
The river rises in central Afghanistan’s Hindu Kush mountains, giant footmen to the mighty Himalayas.
Then the Arghandab gathers strength for its 560-kilometre journey, flowing southeast and then turning southwest to the edge of the Dasht-e-Margo, or Desert of Death, where the borders of Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan converge to a sharp point.
Before the decades of ruin, the Helmand River was also a major source of hydroelectric power, its waters turning the turbines of the Kajaki Dam.
Morrison-Knudsen, the engineering company that built the iconic Depression-era Hoover Dam, erected the Dahla and Kajaki dams in the early 1950s, when peace, an enlightened king and faith in western technology brought the modern world closer.
Extending the reach of ancient canals, new irrigation networks fed by the dams’ reservoirs helped turn vast stretches of bleak desert lush green.
In those days, Afghanistan was the world’s largest exporter of dried fruits, famous for sweet raisins, pomegranates, nuts and other fruits of farmers’ labour.
During decades of fighting and neglect, silt piled up in the Dahla Dam’s reservoir and canals. Dam gates and other mechanics broke. And the once reliable source of water year round slowed to a trickle after the spring melt passed.
Many farmers switched from crops that couldn’t survive drought to a more hearty plant that is much less thirsty: the poppy.
Soon that was Afghanistan’s biggest cash crop.
The United Nations says opium production increased more than 15-fold from 1979, the year the Soviets invaded, to 2002, the year after U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban and Afghanistan was engulfed in a new war.
Farmers began growing opium across vast parts of the country in the 1990s and the harvest peaked at 4,565 tonnes in 1999, during Taliban rule, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.
Yearly opium harvests and huge, hidden stockpiles that keep prices from falling too low have made Afghanistan the world’s biggest source of heroin, and poured millions of dollars a year into the insurgent war machine.
Banerjee, then CIDA’s chief in Afghanistan, visited the Dahla Dam area in 2004, when southern Afghanistan was still relatively peaceful, but the window of opportunity for large-scale development work was starting to close.
Farmers told Banerjee that if the dam couldn’t be replaced, its height should be increased to hold more water.
Increasing the height of the dam’s 50-metre retaining wall by five metres would reverse the effects of the silt deposits that have cut the reservoir’s capacity by 40 per cent, said Sher Mohammed Atai, an Afghan engineer who heads the provincial government’s Arghandab Irrigation Rehabilitation Project.
Banerjee said she proposed to CIDA’s program desk that a Canadian team visit the dam, weigh the options and launch a feasibility study into the best of them.
“I received no response from CIDA and, obviously, no team was sent out as I had requested,” Banerjee said.
Canadian experts didn’t seriously study the dam until after 2006, Atai said.
In July 2008, former international development minister Bev Oda invited Canada companies to bid on contracts on the Dahla Dam project.
“Once the repairs are completed by 2011, the Dahla Dam will provide a stable water supply to Kandaharis, and its irrigation systems will increase the agricultural productivity to benefit all Kandaharis,” Oda said in January 2009.
She announced that Quebec-based engineering giant SNC-Lavalin and consulting firm Hydrosult had won the contracts totalling $50 million. SNC-Lavalin bought Hydrosult a year later.
(RCMP officers raided SNC-Lavalin’s Montreal headquarters this spring as part of an investigation into corruption allegations spanning at least five countries, including India and Bangladesh. There has been no official statement that Afghanistan is among the five. The company has denied the allegations, but its CEO, Pierre Duhaime, resigned in March. The following month, the RCMP charged two company officials, both Ontario residents, with corrupting foreign officials.)
Sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of a whiteboard, Atai vigorously sketched the Dahla Dam, the locations of several new flow control gates and 77.5 kilometres of restored canals.
Around $500,000 of Canadian aid money also built his agency’s headquarters, where Atai has a large, nicely furnished office — a rare comfort for a Kandahar provincial official.
Atai said he asked the Canadian Embassy in Kabul months ago for a detailed accounting of how the $50 million budget was spent. He is still waiting.
CIDA spokesperson Katherine Heath-Eves declined to provide details on how the money was spent “because this information is considered third-party information under commercial privacy.”
Leslie Quinton, SNC-Lavalin’s vice-president for global corporate communications, did not respond to repeated requests for answers.
Rahim Rahimi, Kandahar province’s economy director, thinks $50 million should have been enough to increase the dam’s height, but too much money was lost to indirect costs, especially payments to private security firms.
Banerjee said she heard similar complaints from Afghanistan’s former minister of rural development Ehsan Zia, who visited the area several times before, during and after Canadians worked there.
“Ehsan Zia told me that most funds were spent on contractual payments to SNC-Lavalin and their housing, home-leave travels, payments to security firms and even protection money to villagers,” Banerjee said.
“If use of paid labour and expensive equipment brought improvements and attained the objective of irrigation water flow in the dry months, the farmers would have welcomed Canadian efforts,” she added. “But without the objectives having been attained, we have to agree that CIDA funds were wasted.”
The high cost of relying on private security, instead of using foreign and Afghan troops, to protect dam workers was clear to the Canadian government even before it announced the project was set to begin, according to a foreign technical consultant’s report.
“Security was proving to be a major issue and a considerable portion of the USD 50 million allocated for the project by the GoC (Government of Canada) would fund a private security firm,” said the 2009 report to Afghanistan’s Ministry of Energy and Water.
Two years ago, Canadian security officials overseeing the Dahla Dam project fled the country following a tense dispute with armed members of Watan Security Management, operated by a cousin of President Hamid Karzai.
As reported by the Star’s Mitch Potter in June 2010, the guns hired to protect the project actually turned on each other in a hair-trigger confrontation.
The U.S. has offered to spend $120 million to fix the Dahla Dam on the condition that Karzai’s government, which loses a lot of the little it earns from taxes to corruption, kicks in $25 million, Rahimi said.
“As I understand things, the central government is not very interested or eager to work in Kandahar. Maybe they will finish it, maybe they won’t,” Rahimi said with a shrug. “Who knows?”
At a recent international donor conference in Tokyo, Canada pledged $227 million from 2014 to 2017 toward the advancement of rights and participation of women and girls in Afghan society, with a special focus on maternal, newborn and child health.
But CIDA is finished with the Dahla Dam.
“Our current priorities, which have a nationwide focus, do not include plans for funding further components of the Dahla Dam,” Heath-Eves said.
Atai, the Afghan engineer, has no doubt that the water level in the Arghandab’s irrigation canals will soon drop to almost nothing
“In a month, the phone will start ringing,” Atai said. “The meerabs (canal managers) from all the districts will be calling me: ‘Oh, director, we don’t have water. We need water!’
“Forty or 50 people will be after me. Every day, meerabs will be fighting with each other.”
An air of defeat, and all the suffering that’s likely to storm in with it, is looming over Kandahar as its people watch foreign troops leave and billions in aid money dry up.
“If they don’t finish (the dam), I will be dead,” Atai said, laughing off a real risk. “Because I promised all of the people: ‘You can be sure that they will increase the height of the dam and we will provide more water for you. Please be quiet!’
“Now, they are waiting for this project. If I know 100 per cent that no Americans, no Canadians want to do this project, for me, my career is not important. I will go sit in my home.”
Still, he’s reluctant to criticize Canadians. At least they tried to do something, he said.
“I’m thankful to them. If they hadn’t done this little work, who would have? It would be nice if they had stayed,” he added.
Zakirya, the village canal manager, is far less forgiving.
Zakirya does a slow boil as he fumes over how Canada handled Kandahar’s water crisis. Canadians could have fixed the dam, he said.
Instead, they brought in expensive machinery and paid Afghan villagers to clean canals that they could have maintained with nothing but picks, shovels and the sweat of their brows, he complained.
“In the long run, it’s just useless,” he scoffed. “Millions of dollars were spent uselessly. In the past, we had a culture of volunteerism, but they even destroyed this culture. When we ask them to clean the canal, they say: ‘Let’s ask some company to clean it for us.
“They are just making our people dull and lazy and want us to be dependent forever. They are not making us independent. We can’t always rely on others. These days we don’t have honesty. Nobody is honest.”
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Mammoth task awaits as US prepares to quit Afghanistan
Sydney Morning Herald By Craig Whitlock July 14, 2012
WASHINGTON - Even with the recent re-opening of critical supply routes from Pakistan, the US military confronts a mammoth logistical challenge to wind down the war in Afghanistan, where it must withdraw nearly 90,000 troops and enormous depots of equipment accumulated over the past decade.
Assuming Pakistan doesn't seal its border again, US and NATO commanders still face the prospect of pulling out at least a third of the cargo from northern Afghanistan on a winding, makeshift network of railways and roads that cross the former Soviet Union.
Those routes carry strategic risks of their own. Access to transit lines depends on the whims of several authoritarian central Asian leaders as well as the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, a long-time nemesis of NATO. Moreover, the cost of shipping goods along the northern routes is about triple that of the much shorter Pakistani lines.
The only other option for departing landlocked Afghanistan is by air - an even more expensive alternative, costing up to 10 times as much as the Pakistani ground routes.
US military logisticians are preparing to bring home 100,000 shipping containers stuffed with materiel and 50,000 wheeled vehicles by the end of 2014, when the United Nations and NATO combat operations are scheduled to cease.
The US military has increasingly relied on the supply lines that cross the former Soviet Union to deliver cargo into Afghanistan since those routes opened in 2009.
After Pakistan sealed its border in November in protest at a US airstrike that killed 24 of its soldiers, the US military shifted about 60 per cent of its supplies to the northern routes, with the remainder arriving in the war zone by air. Although delivery disruptions were largely avoided, the move cost about an extra $US100 million a month.
The importance of the northern routes will become even more acute when the traffic is reversed. By the end of September, 23,000 US troops are scheduled to withdraw from Afghanistan, along with a commensurate amount of materiel.
At first, Russia and several central Asian countries approved deals that let the Pentagon and NATO deliver ''non-lethal'' supplies - no ammunition or armoured vehicles - into Afghanistan, but provided no mechanism to withdraw the equipment. They also opened their airspace for planes carrying troops.
The deals ''focused on the needs of entry and didn't address the needs of exiting'', a central Asia specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Martha Brill Olcott, said. ''All of this changed after Pakistan closed down.''
Over the past several months, the administration of the US President, Barack Obama, and NATO have signed two-way transit deals with many of the former Soviet republics. But negotiations continue over a host of side issues.
''These countries know it's the last chance, it's the last negotiation, so they're going to squeeze very hard,'' Alexander Cooley, a Barnard College professor and expert on US military relations in central Asia, said. ''They can escalate their demands in the confidence that this is a one-off transaction.''
Even with Pakistan re-opening its border, the northern routes are seen as a vital hedge against a change of heart.
From the north, there are two primary ways out of Afghanistan: by rail into Uzbekistan or by road into Tajikistan. Both are authoritarian countries with checkered human rights records.
Beyond that, shipping convoys - which are run by private companies - must cross Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan, with most of the land routes then entering Russia before zig-zagging to ports in Siberia or on the Baltic Sea.
Negotiating with the central Asians has often been as difficult as with Pakistan, US and NATO officials said. The countries distrust, compete with and often try to sabotage each other while seeking to exact more concessions from Washington and its allies. ''They all want to play against each other,'' a senior NATO official said.
The Secretary-General of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said last month the alliance had forged agreements with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan to allow for the withdrawal of equipment.
A NATO spokeswoman declined to release details of the accords, such as transit fees, but acknowledged that weapons and ammunition were still prohibited cargo on the northern land routes.
NATO remains in talks with Russia about establishing an air hub in the city of Ulyanovsk - Lenin's birthplace - that would accept rail shipments from central Asia and then load the containers onto Europe-bound cargo planes.
Vice-Admiral Mark D Harnitchek, a senior US military logistician who was instrumental in setting up the northern routes, said he was confident the network would remain reliable during the withdrawal.
''If you were going to design a system to come into Afghanistan, you wouldn't do it from the north, but it's proven to be robust,'' Vice-Admiral Harnitchek, the director of the Defence Logistics Agency, said last week. ''Those countries have all been remarkably co-operative.''
But many haven't hesitated to exploit their bargaining power to make special demands.
In April, for example, military officials from Kyrgyzstan asked Marine General James Mattis, the head of the US Central Command, if the Pentagon would donate drones after its departure. Meanwhile, Uzbekistan has sought to capitalise on its status as the only country with a rail link to Afghanistan by seeking a 50 per cent surcharge on shipments leaving the war zone - insisting on a premium on what its neighbours earn.
''Everybody wants to up the prices,'' Ms Olcott said. ''The Kazakhs complain that the Uzbeks get much better terms.''
She said the same rivalries have emerged when Washington has sought to pay with used military equipment instead of cash.
''The Uzbeks complain about the Tajiks, or the Kazakhs about Kyrgyzstan, that it will just give them weapons they can effectively use against their neighbours, or against trouble in their own country.''
The Washington Post
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