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International donors pledging $16B in Afghan aid
By BRADLEY KLAPPER | Associated Press
TOKYO (AP) — International donors will pledge $16 billion in aid for Afghanistan over the next four years in hopes of stabilizing the country after most foreign combat troops return home, a U.S. diplomat said Sunday, but the money will come with conditions to ensure it doesn't fall victim to rampant Afghan corruption and mismanagement.
Afghanistan declared a major US non-NATO ally
By BRADLEY KLAPPER | Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The Obama administration on Saturday declared Afghanistan the United States' newest "major non-NATO ally," an action designed to facilitate close defense cooperation after U.S. combat troops withdraw from the country in 2014 and as a political statement of support for Afghanistan's long-term stability.
Handle with care: A fragile Afghanistan in Tokyo
Foreign Policy (blog) By Omar Samad Friday July 6, 2012
Ten years after the first Afghanistan reconstruction conference was held in Tokyo in 2002, Japan will host a second donors' gathering on July 8 to formulate a strategy to ensure the sustainable development of Afghanistan beyond 2014 - the date set for NATO's withdrawal. Tokyo 1 took place at a time of high hope, a clean slate, and enthusiasm
Corruption in Afghanistan still a problem as international donors meet
The Washington Post By Karen DeYoung and Joshua Partlow Saturday, July 7, 2012
When international donors meet in Tokyo on Sunday to chart Afghanistan’s economic future, they will be asked to pledge another decade of support in exchange for the Afghan government’s promises to clean up rampant corruption.
Afghan bureaucrat tasked with recovering millions in bad loans
The Washington Post By Joshua Partlow Saturday, July 7, 2012
KABUL - Abdullah Dowrani’s obscure government office didn’t even exist during the early years of Kabul Bank’s meteoric rise, when the bank took advantage of a fast-and-loose wartime boom and political connections so that it could lavish illegal loans on its shareholders and attract depositors with lucrative lotteries.
Afghan Taliban publicly execute woman accused of adultery; men cheer
Video signals austere Islamist group rules even near Afghan capital
By Hamid Shalizi and Amie Ferris-Rotman 7/7/2012 1:55:12 PM ET
KABUL — A man Afghan officials say is a member of the Taliban shot dead a woman accused of adultery in front of a crowd near Kabul, a video obtained by Reuters showed, a sign that the austere Islamist group dictates law even near the Afghan capital.
This Week at War: The Next Afghan War
Could there be a hot war between Afghanistan and Pakistan?
Foreign Policy BY ROBERT HADDICK JULY 5, 2012
Rather than winding down with the planned departure of NATO troops by 2014, the war in Afghanistan may just be undergoing a metamorphosis, as has happened many times since strife began there in the late 1960s. A slowly escalating old-fashioned war between Afghanistan and Pakistan may soon emerge, joining the internal insurgencies
Good Reads: on Afghan wars, German spies, and the 'American Spring'
This week's best stories look at lessons we should have learned from a decade of war in Afghanistan, from intelligence failures, and from press accounts of the American Revolution.
Christian Science Monitor By Scott Baldauf, Staff writer July 6, 2012
Afghanistan, the land of forever wars - In March 2001, I took my first trip into Afghanistan. The Taliban were firmly in power then, or so it seemed to me, but they seemed incapable of finishing off their main enemies, the Northern Alliance led by Ahmad Shah Massoud.
Clinton stops in Afghanistan during marathon trip
CNN By the CNN Wire Staff July 7, 2012
Kabul, Afghanistan - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton flew to Afghanistan early Saturday as part of a 13-day trip that will tackle some of the thorniest U.S. foreign policy issues.
Inside Afghanistan's hydropower revolution
Small scale hydro schemes are replacing dirty kerosene lamps Badakhshan, despite parts having to be carried in by mules
Guardian.co.uk By Martin Wright in Badakhshan, Green Futures, part of the Guardian Environment Network Friday 6 July 2012
Say the word 'Afghanistan', and you'll conjure up a number of associations in your listener's mind. It's a safe bet that none of them will include 'promising haven of renewable energy'. But that's a pretty fair description of what's underway in the mountainous north eastern province of Badakhshan – "the least developed part of the least developed country in the world".
Taliban Terror or Mass Hysteria: Who Is Poisoning Afghanistan’s Girls?
A recent spate of incidents in which dozens of girls have been forced from school, feeling sick, has set Afghanistan in a tizzy over what the source of the mysterious maladies may be.
TIME By Amy Friedman July 6, 2012
On April 17, 150 girls were transported from their school in the Afghan province of Takhar to a hospital, reporting signs of dizziness, nausea and headaches. Some fainted, and some were vomiting when they arrived; all were released after a few hours. A month later, at least 120 more girls and three teachers in the same province complained
UK must not abandon Afghanistan after Nato pullout, ministers warn
Best way to ensure security in Afghanistan is to provide the money it needs for development, say Nick Harvey and Lynne Featherstone
Guardian.co.uk By Nick Hopkins and Julian Borger Friday 6 July 2012
The UK will have to play "a major role in Afghanistan for decades to come" to stop the country falling back into turmoil after military operations come to an end, two senior ministers have warned.
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International donors pledging $16B in Afghan aid
By BRADLEY KLAPPER | Associated Press
TOKYO (AP) — International donors will pledge $16 billion in aid for Afghanistan over the next four years in hopes of stabilizing the country after most foreign combat troops return home, a U.S. diplomat said Sunday, but the money will come with conditions to ensure it doesn't fall victim to rampant Afghan corruption and mismanagement.
The announcement was expected later Sunday at a Tokyo conference attended by about 70 countries and organizations. The American official traveling with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke ahead of the event on condition of anonymity and said $4 billion per year would be promised from 2012 through 2015.
The U.S. portion is expected to be in the decade-long annual range of $1 billion to this year's $2.3 billion. Officials declined to outline the future annual U.S. allotments going forward, but the Obama administration has requested a similarly high figure for next year as it draws down American troops and hands over greater authority to Afghan forces.
The total amount of international civilian support represents a slight trailing off from the current annual level of around $5 billion, a number somewhat inflated by U.S. efforts to effect a "civilian surge" for Afghan reconstruction, mirroring President Barack Obama's decision in 2009 to ramp up military manpower in the hopes of routing the Taliban insurgency.
Still, it is a large sum of cash designed to allay fears that Afghanistan will be abandoned when NATO and other international soldiers leave the country.
It will come with conditions, as well, with the donors' meeting in Japan expected to establish a road map of accountability to ensure that Afghanistan does more to improve governance and finance management, and to safeguard the democratic process, rule of law and human rights — especially those of women.
Foreign aid in the decade since the U.S. invasion in 2001 has led to better education and health care, with nearly 8 million children, including 3 million girls, enrolled in schools. That compares with 1 million children more than a decade ago, when girls were banned from school under the Taliban.
Improved health facilities have halved child mortality and expanded basic health services to nearly 60 percent of Afghanistan population of more than 25 million, compared with less than 10 percent in 2001.
But donors have become wary of corruption-busting pledges that have not always been delivered. Some highly placed Afghan officials have been investigated for corruption but seldom prosecuted, and some of the graft investigations have come close to the president himself.
The stakes for Afghan President Hamid Karzai are high as he faces international weariness with the war and frustration over his failure to crack down on corruption more than a decade after the U.S. invasion that ousted the Taliban.
Afghanistan has received nearly $60 billion in such aid since 2002. The World Bank says foreign aid makes up nearly the equivalent of the country's gross domestic product.
Those funds, which are needed for basic services such as health care, education and infrastructure, are expected to sharply diminish after international troops withdraw even as the country faces continued threats from the Taliban and other Islamic militants.
The $4 billion in annual civilian aid for comes on top of $4.1 billion in yearly assistance pledged last May at a NATO conference in Chicago to fund the Afghan National Security Forces from 2015 to 2017.
Clinton, who briefly visited the Afghan capital on Saturday before heading to Tokyo, had breakfast with Karzai and acknowledged that corruption was a "major problem."
"We're working hard with our Afghan partners to address this problem here in Afghanistan, knowing that it's much broader than Afghanistan by promoting greater transparency, the rule of law, good governance, working hard to prevent fraud, waste and abuse," she told reporters.
"We're working with the Afghanistan ministries, governors, local leaders who are committed to delivering services to their people, improving their lives," Clinton added. "We take seriously any allegations of corruption that involve U.S. funds."
Clinton also declared Afghanistan as the newest "major non-NATO ally" of the United States, a gesture of political support for the country's long-term stability and aimed at solidifying close defense cooperation after American combat troops withdraw in 2014.
"We see this as a powerful commitment to Afghanistan's future," Clinton said. "We are not even imagining abandoning Afghanistan."
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Associated Press writer Patrick Quinn in Kabul, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.
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Afghanistan declared a major US non-NATO ally
By BRADLEY KLAPPER | Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The Obama administration on Saturday declared Afghanistan the United States' newest "major non-NATO ally," an action designed to facilitate close defense cooperation after U.S. combat troops withdraw from the country in 2014 and as a political statement of support for Afghanistan's long-term stability.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made the announcement shortly after arriving in the country for talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
"We see this as a powerful commitment to Afghanistan's future," she said at a news conference in the grand courtyard of Kabul's Presidential Palace. "We are not even imagining abandoning Afghanistan."
Clinton insisted that progress was coming incrementally but consistently to the war-torn nation after decades of conflict. "The security situation is more stable," she said. Afghan forces "are improving their capacity."
At the news conference, Karzai welcomed Clinton to Kabul and thanked the U.S. for its continued support.
Clinton repeated the tenets of America's "fight, talk, build" strategy for Afghanistan. The goal aims first to defeat dangerous extremists, win over Taliban militants and others willing to give up violence and help in the long reconstruction of Afghanistan ahead.
Fighting still rages as Afghan and U.S.-led coalition forces battle insurgents in the mostly eastern part of the country. Although casualties have fallen among foreign forces as the United States and other nations begin a gradual withdrawal, 215 coalition soldiers were killed in the first six months of the year — compared to 271 in the same period last year.
Reconciliation efforts haven't gained steam, but Clinton said she was pleased to be meeting the foreign ministers of Afghanistan and Pakistan together in Tokyo — a three-way relationship seen as key to stabilizing Afghanistan.
From Kabul, Clinton and Karzai were heading separately to Japan for an international conference on Afghan civilian assistance. Donors were expected to pledge around $4 billion a year in long-term civilian support.
Clinton stressed the importance of the pledges for civilian aid. Afghanistan's cash-strapped government is heavily dependent on foreign largesse, and any significant drop-off in financial assistance after 2014 could set back the country's development.
Asked about the systemic corruption that has plagued the Afghan government, Clinton said the U.S. was working hard with Afghan authorities to eliminate fraud, mismanagement and abuse. She said the meeting in Tokyo would include accountability measures to ensure that money sent to Afghanistan benefits the Afghan people.
"This is an issue the government and the people of Afghanistan want action on, and we want to ensure they are successful," Clinton said.
Nations that once gave more generously to Afghanistan are now seeking guarantees that their taxpayer money will not be lost to corruption and mismanagement.
International donors say that many promises to crack down on corruption have not been carried out. Some highly placed Afghan officials have been investigated for corruption but seldom prosecuted, and some of the graft investigations have come close to the president himself.
In Tokyo, representatives from some 70 countries and organizations will establish accountability guidelines to ensure that Afghanistan does more to improve governance and finance management, and to safeguard the democratic process, rule of law and human rights — especially those of women.
On the major non-NATO ally designation, Clinton said Afghanistan would have access to U.S. defense supplies and training and cooperation.
"This is the kind of relationship that we think will be especially beneficial as we plan for the transition," she said. "It will help the Afghan military expand its capacity and have a broader relationship with the United States."
Designating Afghanistan as a major non-NATO ally was part of a Strategic Partnership Agreement signed by Presidents Barack Obama and Karzai in Kabul at the beginning of May.
On July 4, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Ryan Crocker, and the country's foreign minister announced that the two countries had completed their internal processes to ratify the agreement, which has now gone into force.
The declaration allows for streamlined defense cooperation, including expedited purchasing ability of American equipment and easier export control regulations. Afghanistan's military, which is heavily dependent on American and foreign assistance, already enjoys many of these benefits. The non-NATO ally status guarantees it will continue to do so.
Afghanistan becomes the 15th such country the U.S. has declared a major non-NATO ally. Others include Australia, Egypt, Israel and Japan. Afghanistan's neighbor Pakistan was the last nation to gain the status in 2004.
Clinton arrived in Afghanistan from Paris, where she attended a 100-nation conference on Syria.
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Associated Press writer Patrick Quinn in Kabul contributed to this report.
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Handle with care: A fragile Afghanistan in Tokyo
Foreign Policy (blog) By Omar Samad Friday July 6, 2012
Ten years after the first Afghanistan reconstruction conference was held in Tokyo in 2002, Japan will host a second donors' gathering on July 8 to formulate a strategy to ensure the sustainable development of Afghanistan beyond 2014 - the date set for NATO's withdrawal. Tokyo 1 took place at a time of high hope, a clean slate, and enthusiasm for engagement, but almost no assessment of the gargantuan rebuilding task to be undertaken in a country devastated by more than two decades of warfare. There also was no insurgency to worry about. Tokyo 2 is happening at a time of uncertainty and donor fatigue, but at least the stakeholders now have a vast (and expensive) database to work with. However, the most conspicuous feature Afghans and donors will face next week and beyond, is the fragility permeating the Afghan security, political and economic sectors. Furthermore, the Taliban are now viewed as a real threat to stability.
This is not to say that Afghanistan, a country with a strong society and a weak state, is about to collapse or be engulfed in civil war, as some dramatically predict, but it is to highlight the very real concerns that Afghans have about their predicament, knowing that too much money (and generosity) resulted in less than desired outcomes on all three fronts. Not only are there serious lessons, especially in regards to contracting and prioritization, to be learned about the international side of the engagement since 2002, but also about the Afghan absorption, management and accountability sides as well.
Although the Afghan economy's growth rate has hovered around an average of 8% per annum for the past nine years, income per capita has tripled to more than $520, life expectancy and child and maternal deaths have improved considerably, more than 8 million children have access to education, domestic revenue has increased eight-fold since 2002, and the country's telecommunication and energy connections are impressive, there is still angst about an unresponsive government, a donor-led economy, and a nagging insurgency.
The Afghan ministerial delegation, led by then-interim chairman Hamid Karzai, headed to Tokyo 1 with a short wish list to present to a receptive community of donors, but it did not prioritize key sectors like agriculture, power and water, or institution and capacity building. The main focus was on road building. It took nearly five more years to focus on agriculture and power. The emphasis this time around should be on infrastructure, institution and human capital buildup
Initially, the footprint adopted for rebuilding and securing Afghanistan was light and small. With the re-emergence of Taliban militias from their cross-border hideouts by 2005, and a realization that the impoverished nation needed a more robust effort to make up for two generations of destruction and lack of development in all sectors, a heavier footprint and grander financial investment became necessary to make a difference.
As aid and troop inflows reached new heights by 2010-11, economic, political and public opinion expediencies in major donor nations resulted in a strategic about-face to lower expenditures and start the withdrawal process - some would argue prematurely - anchored in hopes that a half-cooked reconciliation process aimed partly at re-integrating the Taliban would be easily reached. In a country where more than 95% of the local economy is dependent on military spending, American development aid alone has been cut nearly in half this year, from $4.1 billion to $2.5 billion.
Today, as donors gather in Tokyo 2 to pledge once again to support the Afghan economy beyond 2014, Afghanistan stands at a precarious crossroads, either leading toward business-as-usual, a path to serious reform and overhaul, or worsening conditions.
There are two critical goals:
1. Avoiding a repeat of the early 1990s collapse of the communist regime, partly as a result of money supplies running dry from Moscow;
2. Avoiding a repeat of the last 1o years in terms of weak strategizing, weak coordination, less-than-adequate prioritization, mismanagement, waste, graft, nepotism, impunity, and fraud. The fact that after all these years, Afghan state institutions are still having major difficulties with the expenditure of their development budget is a sign of structural dissonance, low capacity, and weak middle-to-upper management skills. Unprofessional auditing systems have given rise to political manipulation.
The immediate remedy is not just about channeling a greater percentage of foreign aid through government channels (although that has to be a consideration), it is about competent leadership at the helm of weak institutions who can restructure and assure fiscal discipline by adopting result-oriented strategies.
The trust factor has eroded so deeply between government and the public, and between the donors and Afghan authorities, that it is becoming increasingly difficult to initiate real reforms, fight corruption (starting at higher levels) and adopt better governance practices. The rebound requires a major effort on the part of the Afghan government to implement widespread consultation and participatory decision-making in order to rebuild confidence.
It is expected that discussions at Tokyo 2 will also focus on regional integration and cooperation. While Afghan security challenges are fed by neighborhood players, all efforts should be made to prevent an economic relapse post-2014 and facilitate a democratic and peaceful transfer of power.
As Afghanistan aims to exploit its underground mineral wealth and oil and gas reserves - to a large extent subject to relative peace and stability - and serve as the regional linkage for the "new silk road," it will be incumbent upon the authorities to adopt laws on access to information, and set up credible watchdog functions, and for all sides to follow strict rules pertaining to transparency, accountability, and environmental and cultural sensitivity.
In the Afghan context, reform requires political will, a competent and committed team, as well as a belief in good governance and rule of law, in creating effective partnerships across international, communal and private, public alignments, and in designing smart and sustainable projects that take into consideration the needs and rights of communities, including women, girls, and minorities.
The Afghan government will reportedly make a request for almost $4 billion of annual aid until 2025, and will agree to sign off on a "Mutual Accountability Framework" spelling out obligations on all sides.
Tokyo 2 needs to make use of best practices and agree on what constitutes a priority program. Donors also need to assure sustainability of all projects proposed by the Afghan side as part of the more than 20 programs that will require funding. There will be a requirement to put in place functional follow-up mechanisms and track established benchmarks.
While the international community takes yet another step to affirm its long-term commitment to Afghanistan -- following the Chicago NATO summit in May and the Bonn 2 conference last December -- Afghanistan will need to give assurances that it is adopting a reformist agenda that not only would enable all transitions to succeed but would make Afghanistan more self-sufficient within in a more stable region. Together they need to reduce the risks inherent to fragility.
Omar Samad is Senior Afghanistan Expert at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington D.C. Formerly, he served as Afghanistan's Ambassador to France (2009-2011) and Canada (2004-2009). He was spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry between 2001-2004.
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Corruption in Afghanistan still a problem as international donors meet
The Washington Post By Karen DeYoung and Joshua Partlow Saturday, July 7, 2012
When international donors meet in Tokyo on Sunday to chart Afghanistan’s economic future, they will be asked to pledge another decade of support in exchange for the Afghan government’s promises to clean up rampant corruption.
It won’t be the first time such vows are made, along with pledges to respect the rule of law and the rights of women and minorities. Similar conferences have been held in London, Kabul, Istanbul and Bonn in the last two years alone.
But it may be the last time the world is willing to believe them. With U.S. and NATO troops on their way out, maintaining Afghanistan’s fragile democracy and economy may seem less urgent, particularly without signs of real progress.
Despite years of U.S. pressure, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has failed to undertake significant reforms to curtail corruption, and there has not been a single high-level conviction in a corruption case. In recent months, the Obama administration has accepted that progress will continue to be slow and fitful.
The Tokyo conference, where Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will head the U.S. delegation, is the civilian-diplomatic bookend to NATO’s May summit. Meeting in Chicago, the alliance confirmed plans to withdraw foreign combat troops by the end of 2014 and pledged about $4 billion a year to pay for ongoing training, equipment and financial support for Afghanistan’s security forces.
In Tokyo, donors are expected to promise $3.9 billion in annual economic and development support at least through 2017 and ideally until 2025. The combined outlays equal roughly half of Afghanistan’s $15.9 billion gross domestic product last year, and the United States expects to contribute half the nearly $8 billion total.
“The numbers are relevant to some, but what’s more relevant is the idea that the international community is agreeing on the need for assistance, the need to keep investing in Afghanistan, and that the Afghans themselves are also taking responsibility for the things they need to do,” said a senior Obama administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity in advance of the meeting.
The World Bank and the Afghan government worked together to come up with the $3.9 billion figure, along with a plan to set priorities to develop revenue-producing mines and other national resources, agriculture and education.
The money is a substantial decrease in the more than $100 billion a year the United States currently spends in Afghanistan. Without it, the administration and its partners fear Afghanistan will slip back to where it was two decades ago, when militant factions fought for control, the economy ceased to function and the Taliban emerged victorious.
“We have to convince our partners and the Afghans and ourselves that we are not leaving Afghanistan in the lurch,” Alex Thier, director of the Afghanistan and Pakistan office at the U.S. Agency for International Development, said Tuesday at a Brookings Institution conference.
But many think more funding will simply perpetuate the waste and corruption that have permeated Afghanistan during more than a decade of U.S. involvement.
Karzai is expected to outline new anti-corruption and accountability measures in Tokyo, even as he has repeated charges that donors are partly to blame for the problems because they have been more eager to spend than to comply with government procedures, transparency and Afghan customs.
The presence of so many outsiders with unlimited money have skewed the fragile Afghan economy in immeasurable ways. Foreign governments and international organizations have employed so many Afghans, usually at inflated salaries, that brain drain and unemployment are expected to soar with their departure.
“We may manage to release a few competent people back to work for their own country if they don’t all leave,” Ronald Neumann, a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, said at the Brookings conference. “But overall, there’s going to be a very large economic shock to Afghanistan.”
Many Afghans are skeptical of Karzai’s renewed promises. “Like the past assistance from the world, the cash from this meeting may end up in the pockets of senior government officials,” Mohammad Nayeem Lalai Hamidzai, a member of the Afghan parliament from Kandahar, said in an interview.
Karzai set anti-corruption as his top priority when he began his second term in 2009, and just last month he called a special session of parliament to promise a government cleanup, Hamidzai recalled. With the pending troop departures, he predicted, corruption will accelerate as “people in power make sure that they can take as much as they can, because the foreigners will not be here forever.”
Since the painful public battles with the Karzai government in 2010, when members of the Afghan elite gutted the country’s largest bank, the U.S. focus on fighting corruption has waned. Asked if he has seen any real progress, a former senior U.S. official who was in the thick of those battles said, “Absolutely not.”
“We gave up our leverage” by continuing the money flow no matter how egregious the scandals, the former official said. “Every time a big issue happened, nobody wanted to push it.” Corruption was “competing with a lot of other issues out there . . . everybody saw it as something that was going to keep them from implementing policies. It always upset Karzai, and he would push back. ”
“If there’s a single lesson that comes out of this,” he said, “it’s that you can’t want it more than they want it. . . . And we wanted it worse than [Karzai] did.”
Current U.S. officials in Afghanistan acknowledge that Karzai has resisted major steps to prosecute high-level corruption or weed out the culture of bribery that is pervasive in conducting business with the government at a local level.
“If taking down organized criminal networks was easy, we would be doing it every day,” said Brig. Gen. Rick L. Waddell, who leads NATO’s anti-corruption Task Force Shafafiyat.
“When society was utterly devastated, survival meant controlling vital avenues of ingress and egress, controlling commodities and tribal trade routes,” Waddell said. “That pattern of behavior doesn’t go away.”
Along with the departure of foreign troops, Afghanistan is facing a presidential election in 2014, and “a democratically elected government . . . is non-negotiable” for international donors, the senior administration official said.
But “we have to be smart about it. We give assistance, then hold them accountable. Then give some more assistance, and hold them more accountable. . . . People obviously don’t have patience. But we’ve invested way too much in this, in money and in kids’ lives.”
Partlow reported from Kabul.
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Afghan bureaucrat tasked with recovering millions in bad loans
The Washington Post By Joshua Partlow Saturday, July 7, 2012
KABUL - Abdullah Dowrani’s obscure government office didn’t even exist during the early years of Kabul Bank’s meteoric rise, when the bank took advantage of a fast-and-loose wartime boom and political connections so that it could lavish illegal loans on its shareholders and attract depositors with lucrative lotteries.
But now this 40-year-old, soft-spoken bureaucrat is the chairman of Afghanistan’s Financial Dispute Resolution Commission and finds himself at the center of his government’s attempt to resolve the notorious financial scandal. His job is simple: recover as much as possible of the nearly $1 billion in loans Kabul Bank doled out to its shareholders, who are among the nation’s most influential businessmen. The scale of the task is not lost on him.
“I’m under extreme pressure,” he said with a wan smile.
Dowrani’s ability to complete his task — and to operate independently of political interference — has emerged as a key test of President Hamid Karzai’s commitment to fighting corruption in Afghanistan. Nearly two years after the central bank took over Kabul Bank, none of the people involved in its near- collapse has been prosecuted, though the bank’s chairman was among 21 people indicted last month.
At this weekend’s donor conference in Tokyo, nations weighing how much money to commit to Afghanistan are looking to the handling of the Kabul Bank scandal as an important signal that Karzai is taking steps to resolve the most egregious examples of graft and bribery.
“The important thing as a nation, as a government, as a system: Are we able to get out of this?” Dowrani said. “Are we able to overcome the challenge?”
U.S. officials involved in the anti-corruption fight remain highly skeptical about Karzai’s commitment to punishing those responsible for the Kabul Bank crisis. Karzai was slow to take action and blamed Western advisers for the problems. U.S. officials were further angered that the indictments did not include the president’s brother, Mahmoud Karzai, or the vice president’s brother, Haseen Fahim, and saw this as the president protecting those closest to the palace.
Still, some Western officials see Dowrani as a ray of hope, an honest, upstanding bureaucrat in a frustrating situation.
“Dowrani is a very good guy, trying to do the right thing in a difficult environment. He needs our full support,” one official said.
So far, Dowrani says his office has recovered $128 million in cash and confiscated $145 million worth of property, including 11 luxury villas in Dubai owned by Kabul Bank’s founder, Sherkhan Farnood. The total is roughly 30 percent of the $937 million in loans the bank doled out. Plus, Dowrani said, the bank’s two most prominent shareholders, Mahmoud Karzai and Fahim, have repaid their loans.
“In some jurisdictions around the world, the total recovery of a failed bank is 30 percent. We have done this in one year,” Dowrani said. “We were with limited resources and limited knowledge, and we were able to do this.”
The International Monetary Fund delayed approving a new line of credit to Afghanistan after the scandal broke, blocking millions in foreign aid. But the IMF recently approved new disbursements, a sign it thinks Afghanistan is meeting its benchmarks for reform.
Dowrani left Afghanistan as a young man to attend college in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. He later moved to the United States and received a master’s degree in law from the University of Houston. He then returned to Kabul and became the director of financial supervision at Afghanistan’s central bank. In 2008, he established the Financial Dispute Resolution Commission, which settles disputes between regulators and the financial and telecom industries.
“There was no precedent for anything in the past like this,” Dowrani said of his office, which has six employees, including three lawyers. “People don’t read the law here. We are not a law-abiding society.”
The central bank took over Kabul Bank in 2010 and provided $830 million to stave off its collapse and guarantee depositors’ money. Since then, efforts have been underway to prosecute fraud and recover missing assets.
Dowrani is aware of the risks. The former central bank governor, Abdul Qadir Fitrat, fled to the United States a year ago, saying he feared for his life after pushing for punishment for the perpetrators of fraud at Kabul Bank. Dowrani’s uncle, former attorney general Abdul Jabar Sabit, whom some saw as a crusader against corruption, was kidnapped last year and remains missing.
The receiver for Kabul Bank, Abdul Hameed Mohebi, was openly nervous about discussing certain individuals in the case. But he praised Dowrani, saying: “He’s confident in his job, he’s honest, he’s professional and he’s a clean person. I wish we had more people like Dowrani.”
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Afghan Taliban publicly execute woman accused of adultery; men cheer
Video signals austere Islamist group rules even near Afghan capital
By Hamid Shalizi and Amie Ferris-Rotman 7/7/2012 1:55:12 PM ET
KABUL — A man Afghan officials say is a member of the Taliban shot dead a woman accused of adultery in front of a crowd near Kabul, a video obtained by Reuters showed, a sign that the austere Islamist group dictates law even near the Afghan capital.
In the three-minute video, a turban-clad man approaches a woman kneeling in the dirt and shoots her five times at close range with an automatic rifle, to cheers of jubilation from the 150 or so men watching in a village in Parwan province.
"Allah warns us not to get close to adultery because it's the wrong way," another man says as the shooter gets closer to the woman. "It is the order of Allah that she be executed".
Provincial Governor Basir Salangi said the video, obtained on Saturday, was shot a week ago in the village of Qimchok in Shinwari district, about an hour's drive from Kabul.
Such rare public punishment was a painful reminder to Afghan authorities of the Taliban's 1996-2001 period in power, and it raised concern about the treatment of Afghan women 11 years into the NATO-led war against Taliban insurgents.
The video was revealed the same day Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was in Kabul to discuss the designation of Afghanistan as the newest U.S. "major non-NATO ally," a political statement of support for the country's long-term stability and a solidifying of close defense cooperation after American combat troops withdraw in 2014.
"When I saw this video, I closed my eyes ... The woman was not guilty; the Taliban are guilty," Salangi told Reuters.
When the unnamed woman, most of her body tightly wrapped in a shawl, fell sideways after being shot several times in the head, the spectators chanted: "Long live the Afghan mujahideen! (Islamist fighters)", a name the Taliban use for themselves.
The Taliban could not be reached for comment.
Despite the presence of over 130,000 foreign troops and 300,000 Afghan soldiers and police, the Taliban have managed to resurge beyond their traditional bastions of the south and east, extending their reach into once more peaceful areas like Parwan.
Women's rights in jeopardy?
Afghan women have won back basic rights in education, voting and work since the Taliban, who deemed them un-Islamic for women, were toppled by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in late 2001.
But fears are rising among Afghan women, some lawmakers and rights activists that such freedoms could be traded away as the Afghan government and the United States pursue talks with the Taliban to secure a peaceful end to the war.
Violence against women has increased sharply in the past year, according to Afghanistan's independent human rights commission. Activists say there is waning interest in women's rights on the part of President Hamid Karzai's government.
"After 10 years (of foreign intervention), and only a few kilometers from Kabul... how could this happen in front of all these people?" female lawmaker Fawzia Koofi said of the public execution in Parwan.
Afghanistan schoolgirls: poisoned or mass hysteria?
"This is happening under a government that claims to have made so much progress in women's rights, claims to have changed women's lives, and this is unacceptable. It is a huge step backwards," said Koofi, a campaigner for girls' education who wants to run in the 2014 presidential election.
Salangi said two Taliban commanders were sexually involved with the woman in Parwan, either through rape or romantically, and decided to torture her and then kill her to settle a dispute between the two of them.
Afghans are 'no different from any American'
"They are outlaws, murderers, and like savages they killed the woman," he said, adding that the Taliban exerted considerable sway in his province.
Earlier this week a 30-year-old woman and two of her children were beheaded in eastern Afghanistan by a man police said was her divorced husband, the latest of a string of so-called "honor killings".
Some Afghans still refer to Taliban courts for settling disputes, viewing government bodies as corrupt or unreliable. The courts use sharia (Islamic law), which prescribes punishments such as stonings and executions.
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This Week at War: The Next Afghan War
Could there be a hot war between Afghanistan and Pakistan?
Foreign Policy BY ROBERT HADDICK JULY 5, 2012
Rather than winding down with the planned departure of NATO troops by 2014, the war in Afghanistan may just be undergoing a metamorphosis, as has happened many times since strife began there in the late 1960s. A slowly escalating old-fashioned war between Afghanistan and Pakistan may soon emerge, joining the internal insurgencies both of those governments are attempting to smother and pitting one state against the other. Cross-border sanctuaries and Islamabad's covert support to the Taliban are well-known features of the current violence. But as the Western military presence inside Afghanistan draws down, the trends leading to direct military escalation between Afghanistan and Pakistan are likely to continue.
The Afghan government will face an increasingly difficult security situation after 2014 and will need a new strategy if it is to survive. The number one security problem from Kabul's perspective is the continued presence of Taliban sanctuaries inside Pakistan, and the support the Afghan Taliban continues to receive from Pakistan's intelligence service. For a decade, U.S. and Afghan officials have pleaded with the Pakistani government to halt this support, to no avail. For Islamabad, groups like the Haqqani Network -- which specializes in periodic raids in downtown Kabul -- are proxy forces that Pakistan can use to keep Afghanistan weak and pliant.
After 2014, the Afghan army and police will bear nearly the full burden fending off the Haqqanis and other cross-border Taliban forces. Afghan military leaders are likely to conclude that they cannot reach a stable end-state by only parrying the Taliban's attacks. The only hope of ending the war on favorable terms is through offensive action against the Taliban's sanctuaries in Pakistan or action that inflicts pain on the leadership in Islamabad. If Kabul hopes to negotiate a settlement with Islamabad and the Taliban, it will have to acquire some leverage first. And that will come only after it has demonstrated a capacity to threaten the Taliban's sanctuaries and other assets inside Pakistan.
Initial trials of such incursions may have begun. Last week, the Pakistani government accused the Afghan National Army of a cross-border raid into the Upper Kurram District. Two Pakistani tribesmen were killed during a 90-minute gun battle. Although this particular incident may be more a case of hot pursuit rather than a deliberate attack, it also shows the Afghan army's willingness to step up its aggressiveness.
The Afghan government may also find it useful to employ the same tactics that Islamabad is using against Afghanistan. Pakistan has its own problem with Taliban insurgents, with these rebels using the Afghan side of the border as a sanctuary from Pakistani security forces. Indeed, in June, a Pakistani Taliban raiding party crossed from its Afghan sanctuary into Pakistan, captured 18 Pakistani soldiers, and videotaped the severed heads of 17 of these prisoners. Pakistan's army chief Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani subsequently complained to U.S. Marine Gen. John Allen, the coalition commander, and urged him to take action to control the Taliban sanctuaries inside Afghanistan.
It seems doubtful that the Pakistani Taliban finding haven in Afghanistan are agents of Afghanistan's intelligence service. But the Afghan government has likely concluded that it needs to obtain leverage over Pakistan if it is to obtain a satisfactory settlement to the war. If the Pakistani Taliban lurking in Afghanistan are a potential source of that leverage, it might be only a matter of time before Kabul makes contact with the Pakistani rebels.
Kayani probably realizes that there is as little chance of him getting a positive response from Allen and Karzai as there is of Pakistan doing anything meaningful about the Taliban problem that runs from east to west. That would explain why the Pakistani Army is taking matters into its own hands the old-fashioned way. Beginning in March, it fired a series of cross-border rocket barrages targeted at suspected Pakistani Taliban base camps in Afghanistan's Kunar province, resulting in the deaths of four civilians.
The Haqqani attacks in Kabul and against U.S. targets in eastern Afghanistan have compelled U.S. officials to consider cross-border special operations raids against Haqqani camps inside Pakistan. Given the military hardware currently in place, the intelligence on the Haqqanis the United States has developed, and the experience its special operations raiders have accumulated, U.S. forces are unlikely to ever get a better opportunity to hit the Haqqani Network and thereby create some incentives for a settlement. But the White House currently has a higher priority, namely disengaging from the conflict. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's apology to Pakistan for a cross-border "friendly fire" incident last November that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers has reopened the supply lines from Afghanistan to the port at Karachi, which the United States will need to extract its mountain of equipment by the end of 2014. The requirements of an orderly withdrawal trumped the risks of widening the war and further angering Islamabad.
Although the United States can withdraw from Afghanistan, the Afghans, at least the vast majority of them, cannot. They are stuck with the Haqqanis, Pakistan's intelligence service, and Islamabad's long-term interest in a weak Afghanistan. The only path to a reasonable settlement lies through offensive action inside Pakistan. Afghans will have to be willing to go where the U.S. military (drones excepted) have feared to tread.
Until the Afghan military can develop greater offensive punch, it will have to turn to proxy forces such as the Pakistani Taliban as tools to gain leverage over Islamabad. Should such proxies fail, Kabul will have to turn to an outside power to support its development of helicopter mobility and artillery and air support, essential elements of a capability to directly attack the sanctuaries and other objectives inside Pakistan.
When he signed the strategic partnership agreement pledging support to Afghanistan through 2024, it is unlikely that President Barack Obama had such a war in mind. But once Kabul becomes solely responsible for Afghanistan's security, it will undoubtedly turn to the United States first to help it develop the offensive capability it believes it will need. Should Washington demur, Kabul will call New Delhi, which could be eager to help.
After 2014, Pakistan should see the wisdom in wrapping up the remainder of al Qaeda and settling the conflict with Afghanistan. NATO's withdrawal will actually reduce Islamabad's leverage and expose it to more forms of pressure. Continuing the conflict will only encourage outside intervention.
If Islamabad decides to fight on after 2014, we should expect to see a messy, multi-level conflict much like the 18th century French and Indian War. That war featured insurgencies, proxy armies, old-fashioned nation-state war, and great power intervention from the far side of the world. A similarly complicated scenario may be headed for the Durand Line. The Afghan war may be about to mutate again -- policymakers should get ready for the change.
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Good Reads: on Afghan wars, German spies, and the 'American Spring'
This week's best stories look at lessons we should have learned from a decade of war in Afghanistan, from intelligence failures, and from press accounts of the American Revolution.
Christian Science Monitor By Scott Baldauf, Staff writer July 6, 2012
Afghanistan, the land of forever wars - In March 2001, I took my first trip into Afghanistan. The Taliban were firmly in power then, or so it seemed to me, but they seemed incapable of finishing off their main enemies, the Northern Alliance led by Ahmad Shah Massoud.
Last March, I went back to Afghanistan after having been away for six years. President Hamid Karzai was still jokingly called the “mayor of Kabul,” because that was about as far as his influence stretched. And the combination of NATO troops and the Afghan National Army seemed incapable of finishing off their main enemies, the Taliban. The story I wrote then found important signs of progress, but worrying signs that much of this progress could be undone if Afghan leaders don’t start getting serious about the challenges they face in security, ethnic reconciliation, and corruption.
Historians and pundits like to describe Afghanistan as the “graveyard of colonial empires,” but the reality is that Afghanistan is a really hard place to rule, for foreigners and Afghan rulers alike. When Mr. Karzai steps down, as the current Constitution says he must at the end of this term in May 2014, his successor will face the same Sisyphean task of pushing for incremental improvements, and then watching gravity bring it all back to the same old chaos.
In this week’s New Yorker, Dexter Filkins brings his own long-view perspective to the question of Afghanistan’s future. The prevailing view is not, despite the best efforts of Osama bin Laden and his band of merry men, a hatred of America built on Islamist values, but rather, a profound disappointment at a wasted opportunity for Afghanistan. The Americans, with all their military and economic might, should have achieved more during their decade-long presence.
“The Americans have failed to build a single sustainable institution here,” Filkins quotes TV journalist Abdul Nasir as saying. “All they have done is make a small group of people very rich. And now they are getting ready to go.” The drone blowback 'fallacy'
It has become conventional wisdom that America’s newest military weapons, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or drones, have become so controversial in the societies where they are used that they actually end up aiding the opposition. In Pakistan’s borderlands, in Afghanistan, and increasingly in Yemen as well, drone strikes – no matter how precise – inevitably kill civilians as well as enemy combatants, a fact that diminishes the US’s military gains because it causes more people to join the anti-American cause.
Christopher Swift, in the latest edition of Foreign Affairs, visits Yemen’s conflict-ridden tribal areas and concludes that the “blowback” effect of America’s drone war is a bit overstated.
Al Qaeda exploits US errors, to be sure. As the Yemen scholar Gregory Johnsen correctly observes, the death of some 40 civilians in the December 2009 cruise missile strike on Majala infuriated ordinary Yemenis and gave AQAP [Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula] an unexpected propaganda coup. But the fury produced by such tragedies is not systemic, not sustained, and, ultimately, not sufficient. As much as al Qaeda might play up civilian casualties and U.S. intervention in its recruiting videos, the Yemeni tribal leaders I spoke to reported that the factors driving young men into the insurgency are overwhelmingly economic. Problems at German spy agency
The resignation of Heinz Fromm, the president of Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, has given a quick peek into the spooky world of intelligence gathering. Mr. Fromm stepped down because of his agency’s inability to keep tabs on Germany’s growing and increasingly violent neo-Nazi movement. (Even a casual viewer of “Hogan’s Heroes” can see why that might be a problem.)
According to this week’s Der Spiegel, Germany’s intelligence agencies suffer from many of the same problems that American spy agencies do, specifically “regional fragmentation, complex chains of command and an excessively bureaucratic system.” The parallels go beyond those structural flaws, of course. Just as American political leaders often failed to grasp the worrisome intelligence reports about Al Qaeda in the early months of the Bush administration, so too did German politicians fail to pay attention to Fromm’s own warnings of the growing far-right menace in Germany.
Related: Think you know Europe? Take our geography quiz! How Britain’s press covered the American Revolution
Remember that moment a year and a half ago, in the early days of the Arab Spring, when it didn’t seem clear which side the Americans were on? Some elements of the Obama administration voiced support for the pro-democratic demands of Egyptian and Tunisian street protesters, while others, notably Vice President Joe Biden, voiced support for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak as a key ally in the region.
In a fascinating story in Foreign Policy, Eliga H. Gould writes about how the British press covered the American Revolution, 236 years ago, and finds parallels to the American reactions to the Arab Spring, both among the news media and the political class.
As with the Arab Spring today, the British felt threatened by the American Revolution in part because their own country had done so well under the order that the revolution sought to topple. Writing in 1776, the author of an English pamphlet warned that the loss of America would dismember Britain's empire by "inclosing [sic] us within the confined seas of England, Ireland, and Scotland." Mindful that Congress was seeking allies in Europe, others worried that Britain's rivals, especially France and Spain, would use the Revolutionary War to expand their empires at Britain's expense, and there were fears that George III's colonies in Canada and the West Indies might someday follow the Americans' example. Whether America's bid for independence succeeded or failed, Britain stood to lose a great deal from the attempt.
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Clinton stops in Afghanistan during marathon trip
CNN By the CNN Wire Staff July 7, 2012
Kabul, Afghanistan - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton flew to Afghanistan early Saturday as part of a 13-day trip that will tackle some of the thorniest U.S. foreign policy issues.
Clinton was in Kabul on a previously unannounced visit and will meet with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
During the trip, the top U.S. diplomat also will meet Israeli and Palestinian leaders, visit Egypt, where tensions are rife between military and civilian leaders, and attend a conference of leading Asia-Pacific nations, the region of increasing strategic focus for the United States.
In Paris, the first stop of the trip, Clinton attended a meeting Friday of the Friends of Syria, a group of more than 60 countries that aims to find a solution to the Syrian crisis.
Clinton lambasted Russia and China on Friday for blocking efforts to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who has lost a key general to defection.
Clinton will travel to Tokyo to attend a conference Sunday about providing future financial support for reconstruction and development in war-torn Afghanistan.
NATO-led troops have been fighting against Islamic militants in Afghanistan for more than 10 years, and the country still has a strong dependency on foreign aid.
Poverty and corruption are widespread in Afghanistan, which came in 172nd out of 187 countries in the United Nations' 2011 Human Development Index, which ranks nations based on life expectancy, education and living standards.
The conference in Tokyo will address Afghanistan's likely financial needs for the period starting in 2015, the time troops from the United States and other coalition members are expected to have withdrawn from the country.
At the start of next week, Clinton will make stops in Mongolia, a resource-rich but economically underdeveloped neighbor of China and Russia; and Vietnam, which is locked in territorial dispute with Beijing over parts of the South China Sea. She also will visit Laos, a small communist-ruled nation in Southeast Asia that has not been visited by a U.S. secretary of state in 57 years.
She will then spend the second half of next week in Cambodia, where senior officials from countries like China, Indonesia and Myanmar are attending meetings organized by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
In Asia, the Obama administration has tried to find a balance between engaging with Beijing while seeking to contain its growing influence. Fostering stronger ties with China's neighbors is a crucial part of this approach.
On July 14, Clinton will travel to Egypt to express support for the country's "democratic transition and economic development," said Nuland, the state department spokeswoman.
But it's a transition that some in Egypt fear may last indefinitely.
Mohamed Morsi was sworn in Saturday as Egypt's first democratically-elected president, taking the helm of a deeply divided nation that is economically strapped and lacks a working government.
His inauguration was overseen by Egypt's military rulers, who have been in control of the country since Hosni Mubarak was ousted last year during a popular revolution.
The generals dissolved the Egyptian parliament last month after a high court ruled that it was unconstitutional. They also named a defense council to oversee national security and foreign policies.
Morsi has suggested that control of legislative powers should return to civilian hands, and some of his supporters are pushing for a confrontation with the military rulers.
Clinton will wrap up her trip with a visit to Israel, where she will meet the country's leadership to talk about "peace efforts and a range of regional and bilateral issues of mutual concern."
High among those matters is likely to be Iran and its controversial nuclear program.
Western powers are concerned that Iran is developing nuclear weapons even though Tehran insists the program is for peaceful, civilian energy purposes.
Israel has said it may attack Iran to halt the program. It has expressed skepticism that the mixture of sanctions and negotiations being pursued at the moment by the United States and European nations is deterring Tehran from pursuing nuclear weapons.
CNN's Jethro Mullen contributed to this report.
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Inside Afghanistan's hydropower revolution
Small scale hydro schemes are replacing dirty kerosene lamps Badakhshan, despite parts having to be carried in by mules
Guardian.co.uk By Martin Wright in Badakhshan, Green Futures, part of the Guardian Environment Network Friday 6 July 2012
Say the word 'Afghanistan', and you'll conjure up a number of associations in your listener's mind. It's a safe bet that none of them will include 'promising haven of renewable energy'. But that's a pretty fair description of what's underway in the mountainous north eastern province of Badakhshan – "the least developed part of the least developed country in the world".
The province may lack development in the conventional sense of the word – even major roads are rough, rutted mud tracks, impassable for much of the winter. It can take hours to make a journey of 30 miles, and you emerge from the jeep feeling as though you've been flung around inside a tumble drier. But Badakhshan doesn't lack resources. If peace ever returns, one distant day, its spectacular landscape will be a magnet for tourism: snowy peaks looming over richly fertile valleys bright with apricot blossom and spring wheat, watered by fast flowing rivers.
And it's these which provide a ready resource of a different kind. Here, among the last outliers of the Hindu Kush, local Afghan communities are working with German engineers and development experts to install run-of-the-river hydro plants. Six are in place to date, with a total capacity of 1.3 MW, bringing light and power to 63,000 people in homes and businesses, who until now had to rely on smoky kerosene lanterns or pricey, unreliable diesel generators. The plants are a small triumph of engineering: in an area with few 'jeepable' roads, many parts have to be carried on mule back – no small task when canals have to be carved out of the mountainsides and electricity poles erected on remote hilltops.
The six plants are part of a wider programme, Energy Supply for Rural Areas (ESRA), run by the Afghan Ministry of Energy and Water and the German overseas development body, GIZ, with the support of consultants, Integration. Together with Afghan colleagues, their staff spent three years crisscrossing Badakhshan, staying in villages, surviving an 'IED' bomb attack and, slowly, cup of tea after cup of tea, winning over local leaders to the scheme. It was painstaking but essential work. Everyone needs to be on board for the schemes to succeed: the district governors, imams and the local 'commanders' (former mujahidin leaders who still wield considerable clout). Even though the province is not a hotbed of Taliban activity, it's seen its share of attacks, and there is little doubt that the plants would be tempting targets had they not won such overwhelming local support. As it is, none has ever been hit.
While the capital costs were met with donor funding, running and repair expenses are covered by the electricity bills. At around five afghanis (£0.06) per unit, hydro power is more than competitive with kerosene or diesel - assuming the latter is even available. Local people are trained to operate and manage the plants as independent businesses, under the umbrella of the Ministry.
The effects on everyday life have been dramatic. Householders love the clean, bright electric light, compared to the smoky and highly flammable kerosene lanterns. Electric water heaters mean there's no need to light a fire – using scarce brushwood gathered from the bare hillsides – every time you want a cup of tea. Schoolteachers told me how children can study in the evening, and "don't hide away at home because they're scared that the teacher will tell them off for not doing their homework". Television makes everyone feel more connected to the outside world – particularly women, who in this very conservative society can feel isolated. "Now they gather at each other's houses to watch their favourite shows with their 'TV friends'". ('Afghan Star', the national equivalent of 'X-Factor', is particularly popular.) And local health clinics have the power, literally, to save lives which could otherwise have been lost.
The hydro's been a boon to local artisans, too. Mohammed Amir, a carpenter in the village of Farghambowl, told me that where it once took him five days to make a door, he can now do so in one, thanks to a new set of power tools. Variations on his story are repeated up and down the street of this and other village bazaars: small businesses which were once struggling – millers, tailors, blacksmiths – are now prospering. Young people who left their homes to look for work as far away as Kabul are returning to set up shop, bringing urban skills such as computer training to their villages.
The power carries with it another plus, too: in return for the wires coming over the hill, farmers have to agree to stop growing opium poppies. Such is the appeal of electricity that this condition seems to be widely observed. Daoula Mohammed, the governor of Jurm district, summed it up: "Daoula Mohammed, the governor of Jurm district, summed it up: "Ask people here what is the single most important project for them – they will always say electricity. One night there was a flood; some sediment had blocked the channel [taking water to the hydro plant]. And the next day, 100 people came from the bazaar with shovels to clear it [to make sure the power came back] If there's a security problem, people can live with it. If there's a problem with water, they can live with it. But if people find they don't have power for just one night, they all come hammering on my door!"
When other planned plants come onstream, including one solar pv farm, over 90,000 people in the area will enjoy the fruits of clean, round-the-clock power and light. And this could be just the start. Whole swathes of the country have huge potential for plants on this kind of scale, whether driven by water, wind or sun.
No one knows just what will happen in Afghanistan when the international forces pull out in 2014. But by rooting such schemes in local communities, ESRA is hoping that they have the resilience to withstand whatever turbulent times lie ahead.
• Martin Wright is Editor in Chief of Green Futures. GIZ / Integration won one of the 2012 Ashden Awards, which reward projects that cut carbon, protect the environment, reduce poverty and improve people's lives
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Taliban Terror or Mass Hysteria: Who Is Poisoning Afghanistan’s Girls?
A recent spate of incidents in which dozens of girls have been forced from school, feeling sick, has set Afghanistan in a tizzy over what the source of the mysterious maladies may be.
TIME By Amy Friedman July 6, 2012
On April 17, 150 girls were transported from their school in the Afghan province of Takhar to a hospital, reporting signs of dizziness, nausea and headaches. Some fainted, and some were vomiting when they arrived; all were released after a few hours. A month later, at least 120 more girls and three teachers in the same province complained of the same symptoms and were again taken in. The next week, 160 girls in Taluquan, the capital of Takhar province, reported being ill. All of these incidents were followed by reports suggesting that either the schools’ air or drinking water had been contaminated. School poisonings have been going on for over three years in Afghanistan — but the recent spate marks a large increase from years past.
On June 6, the Afghan government officially accused the Taliban of poisoning hundreds of girls across the country. But results from chemical testings of school wells and samples taken from the afflicted students show no strange toxins; analysts also suggest that the Taliban do not possess the sophistication to create chemicals that would leave no trace. Still, one man has since confessed to paying girls to take chemicals in their schools. “It was wrong, it was un-Islamic, and it was my fault,” the suspect told a BBC reporter as an Afghan intelligence officer looked on. “I made a mistake.” The man is one of three suspects being held for questioning about the events by the Afghan government; 15 were originally arrested.
Meanwhile, the Afghan Taliban denies that they would target young girls despite their open opposition to the education of girls and women. They blame Pakistani infiltrators. Still others, the World Health Organization included, say there have been no poisonings at all (as there is, indeed, no concrete evidence that has been found) and that young girls are simply experiencing the somewhat rare phenomenon of mass hysteria from living in a war-torn country their entire lives. The evidence for mass hysteria is in fact fairly convincing. The WHO released its findings to the Daily Telegraph, showing that 32 of the 34 schools affected gave samples of water, blood and urine — over 200 samples in all have been tested — and all such searches turned up negative. “According to preliminary findings, incidents’ analysis and the prevailing situation, Mass Psychological Illness is the most probable cause,” a statement from the WHO said. There is also the strange fact that very few teachers have been affected by whatever this mystery malady is.
Mass hysteria is a trauma typically diagnosed in young women — although the dangers of writing off young women as being “hysterical” when they are actually sick are clear. Manizha Naderi, executive director of Women for Afghan Women, a women’s rights organization based in New York City and Kabul, insists these events were a Taliban attack. “Girls are sick, and people just don’t get sick because of hysteria. The events are real, and it’s happening and it’s serious,” Naderi says. According to Naderi, these poisonings are part of a spring offensive by the Taliban that includes burning down schools and killing teachers. Afghanistan’s intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), also believes the Taliban to be responsible and that the attacks are intended to intimidate girls into not attending school as the U.S. and its allies prepare to withdraw troops by 2014.
Pointing the finger at the Taliban is hardly a case of wild speculation: the Ministry of Education has been forced to shut down 550 schools in 11 Taliban-heavy provinces because it could not guarantee the safety of students. For many Afghan schoolgirls, Taliban-inspired fear already haunts their daily lives. The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission Report said that more than 50% of parents keep their daughters away from school for safety reasons: the schools are often far from home, and parents dread what may happen on the long walk to first period.
Still, the situation in Afghanistan has improved in the past decade, especially in terms of education. “Ten years ago, 11 years ago, there was nothing,” says Naderi. “Basically, no girls were in school, there were no school buildings, there was no education, there was no curriculum, there was nothing.” In the years since the Taliban were ousted from Kabul, the education system has improved drastically: fewer than 1 million students were enrolled in school in 2007; now 7 million children are active students, and 2.5 million of those are female, up from only 5,000 when the Taliban were in power. However, as the Afghan Ministry of Education readily admits, the conditions are far from satisfactory: half the buildings where these children attend school are dilapidated, many are unsanitary, and few among the growing population of female students make it past ninth grade.
After the NDS took in suspects, another incident took place. In June, over 100 students, male and female, were taken to a hospital in Bamiyan province after vomiting, fainting and reporting fatigue, headaches and dizziness. Perhaps, as many professionals have said, the effects of living in a war zone for the first nine or 10 or 30 years of life can lead to events such as these. But if so, what does that say about the state of life for young girls in Afghanistan, and how can it be improved? Afghanistan has been at war for over 30 years; despite efforts to lessen the stress and struggle of such a life, the withdrawal of American troops — for better or worse — may create greater change and turmoil in a country that already lives in fear. Perhaps, as Naderi says, people believe this is simply mass hysteria because “they don’t know what else to do.” This way, parents will at least continue to send their girls to school. Despite the announcement from the WHO, Afghan police forces are still convinced that at least a few of the incidents in the past three years must have been plotted by the Taliban. Naderi says the Afghan media have put these events on display, causing many citizens to call for action from the government. If so, it’s a positive sign that Afghans are standing up and taking responsibility for the lives and livelihoods of their young girls. “The civil society isn’t keeping quiet about this, and we’re going to make sure that the government isn’t keeping quiet about this,” Naderi says. “This is a serious event, and it should be taken seriously.”
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UK must not abandon Afghanistan after Nato pullout, ministers warn
Best way to ensure security in Afghanistan is to provide the money it needs for development, say Nick Harvey and Lynne Featherstone
Guardian.co.uk By Nick Hopkins and Julian Borger Friday 6 July 2012
The UK will have to play "a major role in Afghanistan for decades to come" to stop the country falling back into turmoil after military operations come to an end, two senior ministers have warned.
Speaking on the eve of an international conference on Afghanistan, Nick Harvey, the armed forces minister, and Lynne Featherstone, equalities minister, also admitted the west could not expect Afghanistan to make advances in women's rights or human rights.
They said the only way the west could help Afghanistan make progress in any of these spheres, and keep the country on an even keel, is to commit "hard money and action on the ground", and not abandon the nation once Nato's forces have left in two years.
Their warning comes at the end of a week in which three more British soldiers died in Helmand province after an Afghan policeman opened fire on them at a checkpoint.
On Wednesday, the secretary for international development, Andrew Mitchell, said the "green on blue" attack was "dreadful", but insisted such incidents must not deflect from the main task in hand.
The Afghan government, he said, still needed to be convinced it wasn't being "deserted" by the international community. The aim of the donor conference was to reassure the Kabul authorities that they would not suffer the same fate as Mohammad Najibullah, Afghanistan's leader at the time of the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 – who ended up hanging from a lamppost in Kabul.
With the military effort under Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) winding down over the next two years, there is huge concern that countries that spent billions to wage war against the Taliban will not provide enough cash for aid and development.
The conference in Tokyo on Saturday is designed to secure funding of $4bn a year for five years – the UK has pledged £178m per annum but ministers believe other countries must make substantial and firm commitments.
Harvey and Featherstone, who are both Liberal Democrats, said the best way to ensure security in Afghanistan was to provide the money it needs for development, otherwise the country would start to take backward steps.
"Did we send British forces to Afghanistan to liberate women, build schools and government institutions, and persuade Afghans to grow crops other than poppies?" the ministers said. "No. We went as part of a Nato mission after 9/11 because the Afghan Taliban government gave al-Qaida a safe haven.
"Bin Laden may be dead, and his network diminished. But it would be wrong to be complacent about the threat re-emerging in Afghanistan if the state were to fail."
They added: "The Afghan government's ability to provide services to its people, including the rights of women and girls, are part of the picture in building a secure Afghanistan resilient in the face of violent extremism. It is not mission creep it is about who the Afghan people trust to keep them safe. Development and governance go hand in hand with security in creating the conditions for peace."
The reality was that the west cannot "guarantee advancement in respect for human rights and gender equality".
"In May insurgents targeted a secondary school for girls, burning it to the ground. This will be an uphill struggle over a long period. But we have made absolutely clear our commitment to helping Afghan civil society, particularly around the rights of women and girls. Britain will still have a major role to play in the development of Afghanistan for decades to come."
Mitchell, who is travelling to Japan, said: "Tokyo is very much about showing support and giving confidence to the Afghan government that it won't be deserted by the international community following the transition and the drawdown of troops. It shouldn't be forgotten that the reason that the regime of Najibullah ended with him hanging from a lamppost in Kabul was not because he was defeated militarily, but because the Russians stopped paying the bills."
Mitchell said Britain would maintain its current funding levels for Afghanistan but warned that if other donors did not show a similar commitment, the security and development gains of the past few years could be lost.
"We are also trying to ensure that the international community is crowded in behind this agenda, and that there are specific commitments, not vague commitments, and they are specific in terms of timing as well. Britain is seeking to put pressure on other countries – the US, Japan and Europe – to make the same commitments."
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