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Hamid Karzai demands halt to all airstrikes on Afghan homes
By Joshua Partlow, The Washington Post June 12
KABUL — The new restrictions by NATO on the use of air power in Afghanistan have failed to mollify President Hamid Karzai, who demanded Tuesday that the coalition cease all bombings of Afghan homes, even by forces acting in self-defense.
Afghan heroin trafficker gets life in US prison
June 12, 2012 Associated Press
WASHINGTON – A notorious Afghan drug trafficker was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison for using proceeds of one of the world's largest heroin distribution operations to support the Taliban insurgency.
Taliban bombs kill eight in Afghanistan
AFP News via Yahoo! Philippines News - Tue Jun 12, 7:12 am ET
Taliban bomb attacks killed at least eight people, including women and children, in Afghanistan on Tuesday, officials said.
As U.S. Eyes Afghanistan Withdrawal, Will China Up Its Role?
Beijing faces growing rivalries with its Pacific neighbors, but in Central Asia it finds a warmer welcome
By Austin Ramzy | time.com | June 12, 2012
The U.S. “pivot” to East Asia is looking increasingly like a game of musical chairs. The military, diplomatic and economic shift, which President Obama first presented last fall,
Pakistan Downplays Stalemate With US on Supply Lines
Sharon Behn VOA News June 12, 2012
ISLAMABAD - Pakistan is downplaying a breakdown in U.S.-Pakistan negotiations on the re-opening of supply routes to NATO forces in Afghanistan.
Afghans say former warlord meddling in China oil deal
Reuters By Hamid Shalizi June 11, 2012
KABUL - The Afghan government said on Monday militia loyal to army chief of staff General Abdul Rashid Dostum were disrupting oil exploration by a Chinese state firm, underlining the challenges facing foreign investors in Afghanistan.
As Trade Is Rerouted, a Border Town Booms
Wall Street Journal By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV June 11, 2012
SHER KHAN BANDAR, Afghanistan - Nur Agha, a truck driver from Tajikistan with a jaw full of gold teeth, went from store to store clad in his latest acquisitions: an Afghan checkered scarf, a safari jacket, and a baseball cap.
Earthquake Buries Homes in Northern Afghanistan
VOA News June 11, 2012
A 5.7 magnitude earthquake has struck northeast Afghanistan, causing homes to collapse.
Police accused in Afghan rape
CNN By Mohammed Jamjoom and Ingrid Formanek June 12, 2012
Kabul, Afghanistan - In Afghanistan, where honor crimes are common, killing a rape victim isn't rare. But speaking out is.
Afghan Woman Says Husband Shot Her For Not Having Children
By Zakia Ghiyasee June 12, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Gulsika was 13-years-old when she was forced into an arranged marriage. The first 10 days or so, she says, were pleasant -- but then the abuse started.
Afghanistan: why peace and stability are possible
A Christian Science perspective: Time spent in Afghanistan and getting to know Afghans, along with an understanding of the peace Christ Jesus promised, have convinced this writer that peace is possible.
Christian Science Monitor By Mark Sappenfield, Staff writer June 11, 2012
Afghanistan presents to the world a convincing picture of international crisis and human woe. Foreign forces will cease military operations no later than 2014 and possibly sooner.
Afghanistan Planning Sukuk as Foreign Aid Ends: Islamic Finance
Bloomberg By Liau Y-Sing and Eltaf Najafizada June 11, 2012
Afghanistan plans to sell Islamic bills for the first time early next year, as it prepares for a reduction in international aid after the withdrawal of foreign troops in 2014.
U.S. pulls negotiators from Pakistan with no supply deal
Reuters By Phil Stewart Mon Jun 11, 2012
WASHINGTON - The United States said on Monday it was withdrawing its team of negotiators from Pakistan without securing a long-sought deal on supply routes for the war in Afghanistan, publicly exposing a diplomatic stalemate and deeply strained relations that appear at risk of deteriorating further.
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Hamid Karzai demands halt to all airstrikes on Afghan homes
By Joshua Partlow, The Washington Post June 12
KABUL — The new restrictions by NATO on the use of air power in Afghanistan have failed to mollify President Hamid Karzai, who demanded Tuesday that the coalition cease all bombings of Afghan homes, even by forces acting in self-defense.
“Even when they are under attack, they cannot use an airplane to bomb Afghan homes. Even when they’re under attack,” an emphatic Karzai told a news conference in the presidential palace in Kabul.
Karzai said he had an argument with Gen. John Allen, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, over the weekend about the issue, following a deadly airstrike that killed civilians in Logar province. “I said, ‘Do you do this in the United States?’ There is police action every day in the United States in various localities. They don’t call an airplane to bomb the place.”
Allen issued new orders this week restricting the use of airstrikes on civilian dwellings in response to the Logar deaths and continued criticism by Karzai. U.S. military officials said commanders will be instructed to use other means to get Taliban fighters out of homes and buildings rather than calling in airstrikes. Civilian homes have been damaged by airstrikes 32 times so far this year, according to U.S. military statistics.
“President Karzai and I had an opportunity to have a conversation,” Allen told reporters Monday during a trip to Zabul province in southeastern Afghanistan. “We consulted about the application of certain kinds of fires, and we agreed that we would not apply air fires to civilian dwellings.”
But Allen and other U.S. military officials say the troops still have a right to resort to such weapons in emergencies and when they need to protect themselves. Allen said the new restrictions do not “obviate our inherent right to self-defense.”
But Karzai called for a blanket prohibition on bombings from the air.
“Airplanes are not to be used in civilian areas,” he said. “If they don’t do it in their own country, why do they do it in Afghanistan? It’s just completely banned. Absolutely banned. Absolutely.”
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Afghan heroin trafficker gets life in US prison
June 12, 2012 Associated Press
WASHINGTON – A notorious Afghan drug trafficker was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison for using proceeds of one of the world's largest heroin distribution operations to support the Taliban insurgency.
Haji Bagcho manufactured heroin in secret laboratories along Afghanistan's border with Pakistan and sent drugs to more than 20 countries. He was arrested in May 2009 and brought to the United States to face charges following a years-long investigation by Afghan and American authorities. Prosecutors said his vast drug trafficking network in eastern Afghanistan produced hundreds of thousands of kilograms of heroin, including shipments intended for the U.S., and funneled proceeds to high-level Taliban officials who protected him from police there.
He maintained his innocence during a long and rambling statement at his sentencing hearing in federal court in Washington. His lawyer pleaded for leniency because his client is at least 70 years old and in failing health, and said he doubted a long prison sentence would deter international drug traffickers. But U.S. District Judge Ellen Huvelle rejected those arguments, saying Bagcho was responsible for an "astronomical" quantity of drugs and that a life sentence — the maximum possible prison term — was warranted.
Bagcho was also ordered to forfeit more than $254 million in drug proceeds.
Justice Department prosecutor Matthew Stiglitz said Bagcho was "really in a class by himself" among drug traffickers but that the quantity of drugs only tells part of the story. He urged the judge to take into account "what is it he did with the money generated during this massive drug enterprise."
Bagcho used some proceeds to provide support, including cash, weapons and other supplies, to Taliban commanders who shielded his operation from the police.
"Today's life sentence is an appropriate punishment for one of the most notorious heroin traffickers in the world," Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer said in a written statement.
Afghan authorities and the Drug Enforcement Administration began investigating Bagcho in late 2004 and early 2005, relying on help from, among others, a confidential informant who had once worked as Bagcho's assistant and who described for authorities the inner workings of the drug operation. The assistant told authorities how he traveled with Bagcho to heroin conversion laboratories and how he would help package heroin and transport shipments, often while armed with an AK-47.
Others who provided help included an undercover Afghan police officer who posed as a corrupt official and recorded phone calls with Bagcho in which they discussed potential heroin sales into the United States, and a DEA confidential source who told authorities that his father operated an opium shop where Bagcho bought opium for conversion into heroin.
The DEA bought heroin directly from Bagcho's operation, and also discovered a ledger of transactions during their investigation showing that Bagcho's organization was responsible for trafficking more than 123,000 kilograms of heroin — with a wholesale value of more than $261 million — in 2006 alone. Federal authorities say that amounted to roughly one-fifth of the total amount of heroin produced worldwide that year.
After a first trial ended last fall with a hung jury, Bagcho was convicted in March of conspiracy, distributing heroin for importation into the United States and narcoterrorism. The Justice Department says this case is just the second under the narcoterrorism statute to reach trial. The statute makes it a crime to use drug sale proceeds to finance acts of terrorism.
Speaking rapidly through an interpreter, Bagcho appeared agitated as he proclaimed his innocence, saying he was simply a merchant like his father and grandfather before him and attempting to rehash elements of his trial.
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Taliban bombs kill eight in Afghanistan
AFP News via Yahoo! Philippines News - Tue Jun 12, 7:12 am ET
Taliban bomb attacks killed at least eight people, including women and children, in Afghanistan on Tuesday, officials said.
A suicide bomber on a bicycle targeted a police patrol in the main market of Chahar Bolak, a small town in the northern province of Balkh, regional police spokesman Lal Mohammad Ahmadzi told AFP.
The interior ministry in Kabul confirmed the incident, saying three civilians were killed and five police officers were wounded.
Hours earlier, a roadside bomb ripped through a minibus in the central province of Wardak, killing five civilians, an official said.
Provincial government spokesman Sahidullah Shahid said a mine exploded under the minibus, killing five civilians, including women and children. "Two others are injured," Shahid said.
Four other passengers survived the explosion in the restive province's Sayed Abad district, he said.
Authorities blamed both attacks on the "enemies of Afghanistan", a phrase commonly used by Afghan officials to refer to Taliban and other insurgents.
On Monday, a roadside bomb killed five people in northern Afghanistan and last week twin suicide bombings killed 23 people in the south.
Taliban insurgents regularly use improvised roadside bombs to target Afghan and Western military forces, but they often kill civilians who use the same roads.
For the past five years the number of civilians killed in the war has risen steadily, reaching a record 3,021 in 2011 -- the vast majority caused by insurgents, the United Nations says.
The Taliban are still fighting a bitter insurgency more than a decade after being toppled from power by the 2001 US-led invasion.
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As U.S. Eyes Afghanistan Withdrawal, Will China Up Its Role?
Beijing faces growing rivalries with its Pacific neighbors, but in Central Asia it finds a warmer welcome
By Austin Ramzy | time.com | June 12, 2012
The U.S. “pivot” to East Asia is looking increasingly like a game of musical chairs. The military, diplomatic and economic shift, which President Obama first presented last fall, was envisioned as a response to the winding down of the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the increasing military power of China. Last week, while traveling in Asia, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said that by 2020 about 60% of the U.S. Navy’s warships would be stationed in the Pacific Ocean, vs. a roughly 50-50 split between the Atlantic and the Pacific today. But even as the U.S. shifts to the East, China is looking to its far west, to the very place the U.S. is planning to quit. The U.S. and its allies plan to withdraw most of their troops from Afghanistan by 2014. China, however, has large and growing interests in the country with which it shares a short, mountainous border. Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai met on Friday with his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao in Beijing, where they announced a new strategic partnership. Afghanistan was also made an observer of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a regional security group made up of Russia, China and four Central Asian states, which was holding its annual summit in Beijing.
In recent years, China has become a key investor in Afghanistan. In 2007, China Metallurgical Group won a $3 billion lease to mine the Aynak copper field in Logar province, the largest single project in the country. Last year, Afghanistan approved China National Petroleum Corp.’s bid to drill for oil and natural gas in Sari Pul and Faryab provinces, the first concession granted to a foreign firm. Trade between the two countries is small but rapidly growing, increasing from $25 million in 2000 to $234 million last year. But while China looks to Afghanistan to fulfill part of its appetite for energy and raw materials, its chief interest is security. China has been wary of the U.S.-led Western military presence in the country. At the same time, Beijing suspects that some of the Uighur militants behind attacks in China’s northwestern region of Xinjiang have received training and shelter in Afghanistan under the previous Taliban regime. Likewise, China is a market for Afghanistan’s booming heroin production. Part of Friday’s declaration signed by Hu and Karzai included a renunciation of terrorism, extremism, separatism and organized crime, a sign of China’s concerns about Afghanistan’s influence on stability in Xinjiang.
Hu also met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing last week, where the two reaffirmed their common stance against intervention in Syria. As Panetta was traveling through Asia visiting U.S. allies and partners, Putin’s Beijing turn signaled that China also has friends in the neighborhood. While China is facing rivalries with Vietnam and the Philippines over territorial claims in the South China Sea and with Japan over parts of the East China Sea, the SCO fosters stability among China’s Central Asian neighbors. As the U.S. plots its Afghanistan withdrawal, some observers in Russia and China have suggested that the grouping should lead Afghan peace talks, citing the lack of direct involvement in the U.S.-led war against the Taliban as a key advantage for the regional bloc. But despite the appearances of Sino-Russian comity in Beijing, the massive neighbors have very divergent goals that prevent deep cooperation, independent analyst Bobo Lo argued in a New York Times Op-Ed.
China, which refused any participation in the coalition force in Afghanistan, either through the contribution of troops or in a resupply role, will continue eschewing any military involvement. Instead, Beijing hopes that increased investment will improve stability while helping provide the raw materials consumed by China’s economy. “Faced with the threats of extremism and drugs, the long-term strategy is to start with economics, the establishment of regional transportation networks and to expand Afghanistan’s trade with Central Asia and China, letting China’s economic engine to drive economic development in Afghanistan,” Chen Xiaochen, a journalist and researcher, wrote on Monday in China Business News, a Shanghai-based financial daily. “The local people have employment, and the support for terrorism will be reduced. With the replacement planting, local people will be able to grow fewer poppies. Afghanistan is a high-risk area, but that means returns will be high.”
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Pakistan Downplays Stalemate With US on Supply Lines
Sharon Behn VOA News June 12, 2012
ISLAMABAD - Pakistan is downplaying a breakdown in U.S.-Pakistan negotiations on the re-opening of supply routes to NATO forces in Afghanistan.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar said Tuesday that the two countries had concluded intensive work on technical issues regarding the supply routes before the U.S. team left Islamabad. And she emphasized that the two sides were still working on resolving their differences.
“We are moving, we are interacting, we are consulting, we are engaged in dialogue with them," Khar said. "We would hope that we can see, we can reach a solution that is acceptable to both the people and both the countries.”
Khar also repeated her country’s calls for the United States to apologize for a November U.S. missile strike that mistakenly killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, and an end to U.S. drone strikes on Pakistan territory.
The United States has ignored Islamabad’s protests over the drone strikes and continued to hit militant hideouts in Pakistan's northwestern tribal areas.
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta last week harshly criticized Pakistan for not doing enough to eradicate militants. Pakistan's military leaders then declined to meet with a senior U.S. defense official. On Monday, the Pentagon recalled several of its negotiators from Islamabad "for a short period of time," but said the dialogue will continue.
Maleeha Lodhi, Pakistan’s former ambassador to Washington, said she did not see a new setback with the U.S. team’s departure. Instead she said, it is just a continuation of the deadlock that has persisted for the past six months.
"The offer from the U.S. side is on the table, and from the Pakistan side, of course, its demand is also on the table, which is the United States must apologize," Lodhi said. "That is the key to unlocking the whole issue of the NATO supply routes.”
NATO supplies can either enter and exit Afghanistan through Pakistan, or through Central Asia. But the northern Central Asian route is more expensive.
Security analyst Rustam Shah Mohmand said there could be two explanations for the latest walkout. It could be a tactical withdrawal intended to pressure Pakistan. Or it could be the U.S. team just got frustrated. Either way, the two sides are likely to maintain their ties, said Mohmand.
"For the time being it serves the interest of both governments, so I don’t think the relationship is going to be paralyzed, the relationship is not going to collapse," he said.
Many believe Pakistan has a vital role to play in ensuring a peaceful transition in Afghanistan as international troops begin to leave that country.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague, in Pakistan Tuesday, said he was concerned over a possible rift between the United States and Pakistan. He said he looked to both nations to work together successfully.
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Afghans say former warlord meddling in China oil deal
Reuters By Hamid Shalizi June 11, 2012
KABUL - The Afghan government said on Monday militia loyal to army chief of staff General Abdul Rashid Dostum were disrupting oil exploration by a Chinese state firm, underlining the challenges facing foreign investors in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan signed a deal late last year with China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) for the development of oil blocks in the Amu Darya basin in the north, a project expected to earn the war-torn state billions of dollars over two decades.
The deal covering drilling and a refinery in the northern provinces of Sar-e Pul and Faryab, where Dostum is from, is the first international oil production agreement reached by the Afghan government for several decades.
Two government officials said supporters of Dostum were demanding a share of the proceeds. "Armed men belonging to General Dostum are intimidating the Chinese engineers in the area and creating obstacles to exploring the oil block," a top aide to Karzai said.
He said that at a cabinet meeting chaired by Karzai last week, the mines ministry complained about interference by Dostum, a powerful former warlord who holds the largely ceremonial post of army chief of staff.
A mines ministry official told Reuters that top executives of the CNPC raised concerns over the disruption of their work during Karzai's trip to China last week.
Dostum's National Front party denied the allegations and said the government was trying to defame the general.
"Such allegations will have grave consequences because we enjoy the support of the people," Ahmad Zia Masood, chairman of the party, told a news conference.
China, along with India, has committed billions of dollars to tap Afghanistan's mineral wealth, estimated to be $3 trillion and a key to the country's future after three decades of war.
The Amu Darya oil concession is the second major deal for China after the Metallurgical Corp of China signed a contract in 2008 to develop the huge Aynak copper mine south of Kabul, which is due to start producing by the end of 2014.
Karzai has asked the National Security Council to deal with the issue and the interior ministry is sending 300 policemen to help secure the Amu Darya site.
State-owned CNPC and joint venture partner Watan Group, a diversified Afghan company, will explore for oil in three fields in the basin -- Kashkari, Bazarkhami and Zamarudsay -- which are estimated to hold about 87 million barrels of oil.
(Reporting by Hamid Shalizi; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Myra MacDonald)
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As Trade Is Rerouted, a Border Town Booms
Wall Street Journal By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV June 11, 2012
SHER KHAN BANDAR, Afghanistan - Nur Agha, a truck driver from Tajikistan with a jaw full of gold teeth, went from store to store clad in his latest acquisitions: an Afghan checkered scarf, a safari jacket, and a baseball cap.
"There used to be nothing here, nothing at all," he said, pointing to rows of well-stocked shops and teahouses stretching through this dusty Afghan border town. "And now, there's everything."
The main crossing point between Afghanistan and Tajikistan, Sher Khan Bandar—a few years ago just a village of fly-infested mud houses—is booming these days.
The change started in late 2007 when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built a modern 2,200-foot(670-meter) bridge across the Pyanj River, linking the two countries. The Corps built a border and customs complex the following year.
The former backwater soon turned into a commercial hub as the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan began shifting its overland supply routes from Pakistan to a northern network that runs through Central Asia.
Sher Khan Bandar's real stroke of luck, however, came in November, when Pakistan shut its border to coalition supplies in response to the accidental killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers by U.S. airstrikes. Since then, the Northern Distribution Network has become the coalition's only land route into Afghanistan.
Talks between the U.S. and Pakistan on reopening the southern supply route broke off on Monday. It is uncertain when they will resume.
"The Pakistani move has had a great impact on us," says the Sher Khan Bandar crossing's commander, Afghan Border Police Col. Najibullah Raghestani. "There is more business, more traders, and as a result, more money being spent here."
It isn't clear how long the boom will last, with most North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces due to leave in 2014. But for now, as many 400 trucks come into town every day, almost double the figure from two years ago, Col. Raghestani says. This figure includes an average of 50 vehicles a day carrying food and other supplies for NATO forces, according to customs statistics.
Tanker trucks don't usually cross the bridge: Fuel is fed across the border through a special pipeline, into a storage facility on the Afghan side where it is picked up by separate Afghan convoys.
It isn't just NATO traffic, which is exempt from Afghan customs payments, that is rising. Customs revenue from civilian cross-border trade soared to $24 million in the Afghan solar year that ended in March, from $15 million the year before, Afghan officials say.
"The entire life of the people has been changed," says Mohammed Anwar Jekdalek, governor of Kunduz province, where Sher Khan Bandar is located. "The Pakistani road closure has created opportunities and jobs."
Truck drivers—most of them from Tajikistan, with others from Kyrgyzstan and further afield—usually spend three to four days in Sher Khan Bandar as they clear border formalities and pick up their return cargo—these days, Pakistani cement, potatoes and vegetables. And, while here, they spend.
In Sher Khan Bandar's shopping strip, where many stores and snack bars are packed into dressed-up shipping containers, signs abound in the Cyrillic script used in Tajikistan. There is a towering new mosque, a steam bath that doubles as a hair salon, and DVD shops selling the latest Indian soap operas and counterfeit Hollywood blockbusters.
"Everyone here is expanding," says Hajji Ghafour, a 45-year-old merchant whose container-shop is brimming with Pakistani-made leather shoes, which are popular with Central Asian travelers. He says he now sells $300 of goods a day, from $20 last year.
Across the street, 28-year-old Sharifullah, who moved to Sher Khan Bandar from a nearby village, was making ice-cream the old-fashioned way, his muscles bulging as he swirled thick cream inside a bucket packed with ice. "It's getting better every day," he grinned, looking at the long line of trucks that snaked its way from the border.
Some of the truck drivers plying this route, such as 55-year-old Tilo Toshev of Tajikistan, have been ferrying supplies through Sher Khan Bandar since the Soviet war in the 1980s. Back then, trucks had to cross the river on a ferry, and Sher Khan Bandar was a river port whenever the Pyanj was deep and calm enough for navigation.
This province used to be a Taliban stronghold. In 2009, insurgents captured two tanker trucks carrying fuel for coalition forces from Tajikistan about an hour's drive south of here, killing the drivers. A subsequent U.S. airstrike on the tankers killed some 90 villagers.
Kunduz, however, has become more secure in the past year, in part thanks to the establishment of pro-government militias.
Central Asian drivers plying this route say that, for them, fear is a luxury. "Are we afraid? If you're hungry, you can't afford to be afraid," quipped Mr. Toshev.
His co-driver, Abdulhaleq Sadykov, added that he felt a welcome guest of the Afghans. "No one would harm us here, no one would pick on us," he said hopefully, as he relaxed in a carpet shop. "We are like brothers."
Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com
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Earthquake Buries Homes in Northern Afghanistan
VOA News June 11, 2012
A 5.7 magnitude earthquake has struck northeast Afghanistan, causing homes to collapse.
Afghan authorities fear several people may be trapped underneath the rubble in the Burka district of Baghlan province.
A spokesman for the provincial governor, Mahmood Haqmal, told VOA that at least five people were injured in Monday's quake. He said a delegation has been sent to the area to determine the extent of the casualties and damage.
Homes were also damaged in nearby Takhar and Badakhshan provinces.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the 5.7-magnitude quake struck the Hindu Kush region of Afghanistan and was also felt in parts of Tajikistan.
The USGS reported a 4.2-magnitude earthquake hit the region a few hours later.
People living in Indian-controlled Kashmir also reported feeling tremors from the quakes, but no damage was reported. Authorities in the Himalayan region said they remain on alert.
Some information for this report was provided by Reuters.
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Police accused in Afghan rape
CNN By Mohammed Jamjoom and Ingrid Formanek June 12, 2012
Kabul, Afghanistan - In Afghanistan, where honor crimes are common, killing a rape victim isn't rare. But speaking out is.
In northern Kunduz Province, a distraught mother pleads for justice. She says her 18-year-old daughter was raped and shame brought upon the family.
"I want the government to help us," says Lal Bibi's mother. "If they don't, I'll tell them to come and kill my daughter..." She says she just wants justice.
Lal Bibi's mother describes how five armed and aggressive men stormed into their home.
"They handcuffed my daughter, they tied my hands and my husband's. They were saying they wanted to take my daughter."
According to her parents, Lal Bibi was abducted and over the course of the next five days, was beaten by her abductors and repeatedly raped by one of them.
Five men have been accused in the attack. Authorities say two have been detained and are being held for further investigation. Both men insist they're innocent and say the incident was nothing more than a tribal settlement to resolve a family dispute.
Officials and family members say one of Lal Bibi's relatives angered a family with close ties to an Afghan police commander. The details of the story vary, but there's agreement that Lal Bibi's abduction and abuse was in retaliation for a relationship that her cousin had with the daughter of one of the police commander's subordinates.
All of the accused are members of the Afghan Local Police, or ALP, according to authorities.
Trained by U.S. special forces, the ALP was formed to protect civilians in Afghanistan's badlands -- areas where inadequate security forces struggle to fight the insurgency.
The ALP -- a separate entity from the Afghan National Police -- technically falls under the Interior Ministry's control, but human rights activists charge the mostly illiterate recruits receive minimal training and that they're a de facto militia that creates as many problems as it solves.
Critics of the ALP also say the growing power of these armed militias is unchecked -- that many of its 13,000 members are criminals and former Taliban and have been accused of serious human rights abuses and violent crimes while on duty.
Fawzia Koofi, an Afghan member of parliament and women's rights activist, says she's been opposed to the force since its inception because many members had been part of the Mujahideen and, in some areas, formerly with the Taliban.
"The government provided them with guns and weapons," says Koofi, "and there is no system to monitor and check their functioning, their operation on a daily basis."
She adds: "In many cases they don't respect the rule of law. They end up violating women's rights especially."
Koofi says sometimes ALP members use weapons provided to them by the government to impose "their desire on poor people -- especially the women of Afghanistan."
In Kunduz Province, where Lal Bibi is from, "the ALP are in every district and village" says Nadera Geya, Director of the Women's Affairs Department there. She's alarmed that the ALP "have full control" over a people who are largely "illiterate and know little about the law."
A recent report by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) stated the group has been "accused of committing such acts as harassment of people, beating, murder, robbery, abduction, banditry, extortion," and more.
The report found that ALP members had a "lack of awareness about their code of conduct."
Violations are largely hidden from public view in this closed tribal society. Supporters of the ALP acknowledge there have been problems, but counter criticism by insisting it's been effective in combating the raging insurgency.
"There has been exaggeration in terms of issuing statements and concerns about the ALP," says Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi. "It's a big force. We are now in 67 districts in Afghanistan. They are very useful in most provinces. They are doing their jobs and they are able to provide security so that people can go to school and people can work and people can live and that's very important."
Sediqqi maintains the group is held accountable, adding that last year, 20 members of the group who'd been implicated in violence and human rights abuses were brought to Kabul and tried. He says the Interior Ministry understands the concerns, but that doesn't mean the ALP's overall security achievements should be questioned.
"You know this is Afghanistan," continues Sediqqi, "and most villages did not have schools so they could be literate. But at the same time, what they need to be trained is only to fight insurgency - that's their ultimate job. They're not enforcing law in their areas. That's why we are not focusing lots of attention on how to train them in terms of that."
Officials point to the detention of two of the five men as proof they're taking Lal Bibi's case seriously.
Sharif Safi, chief military prosecutor for Kunduz Province, says in addition to the two ALP members already detained, he's pursuing the other three.
"We've sent at least three warrants to the police chief's office to arrest these three men, but so far they haven't," explains Safi. "I am going to seriously follow this."
But women's rights groups contend that even if the men are sentenced, they'll most probably get off lightly, as decades of tradition have shown.
In Afghanistan, harsh tribal justice often trumps the country's legal system.
"In [this] case," explains Koofi, "I'm sure she cannot go back to her district or her province because of the reputation and prestige of the family. Many people still don't regard her as a victim."
Koofi says traditional society will say Lal Bibi has brought this on herself.
Victimized women like Lal Bibi know they're blamed for the abuse and sexual violence they've suffered and expect little to no mercy. Which is why Lal Bibi has gone into hiding and her future is uncertain.
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Afghan Woman Says Husband Shot Her For Not Having Children
By Zakia Ghiyasee June 12, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Gulsika was 13-years-old when she was forced into an arranged marriage. The first 10 days or so, she says, were pleasant -- but then the abuse started.
Today, seven years later, she lives in a safe house in Kabul, recovering from gunshot wounds. Her husband is in prison awaiting trial for allegedly shooting her in May at their home in the northern province of Takhar.
In an interview with RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan, Gulsika, a native of Kandahar who is now 20, described the trauma she experienced after her husband shot her, apparently because she could not have children with him.
"My intestines were out of my belly, lying on the ground," she said. "My mother-in-law put them back and tied my belly with a piece of cloth. She was telling me 'don't cry.' I couldn't breathe. It was difficult to push the air down my throat."
Gulsika's ordeal, which was brought to RFE/RL's attention by Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission, came months after another domestic abuse case that made headlines around the world in which a 15-year-old Afghan newlywed was allegedly tortured by her husband and in-laws and kept in a basement for several months.
A Dangerous Place For Women
The United Nations Development Fund for Women says nearly 90 percent of Afghan women suffer from some form of domestic abuse, making the country one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a woman.
According to Gulsika, her troubles began when she was pressured by her family into marrying the brother-in-law of her sister.
When she failed to conceive a child, both her husband and mother-in-law began mistreating her.
In order to try to address the problem, Gulsika claims her brother gave her money to go to a doctor, who, after examining her, suggested the husband -- and not her -- was the one unable to have children:
"The doctors performed tests and an ultrasound tests on me," she said. "They told me there was nothing wrong with me. I told my mother-in-law: 'There is nothing wrong with me. Now do something about your son.'"
Gulsika told RFE/RL that the situation got worse when her husband started having an affair with one of his relatives.
After the shooting, neighbors helped bring Gulsika to the hospital, where doctors managed to save her life.
She has mostly recovered from her injuries, but still has trouble walking.
Her husband is in prison awaiting trial and Gulsika has said she hopes he receives a long prison term.
"They can kill me, but I would not go back to him," she said. "They never treated me well. They used to beat me and torture me. I have suffered a lot. I hope I will not be compelled. I really do not want to marry again.”
Interview conducted by RFE/RL Radio Free Afghanistan correspondent Zakia Ghiyasee; Antoine Blua, Freshta Jalalzai, and Mohmand Hashem also contributed to this report
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Afghanistan: why peace and stability are possible
A Christian Science perspective: Time spent in Afghanistan and getting to know Afghans, along with an understanding of the peace Christ Jesus promised, have convinced this writer that peace is possible.
Christian Science Monitor By Mark Sappenfield, Staff writer June 11, 2012
Afghanistan presents to the world a convincing picture of international crisis and human woe. Foreign forces will cease military operations no later than 2014 and possibly sooner. In all likelihood, analysts agree, the Taliban insurgency will not have ended and significant steps toward stability will not have been taken. Will the nation survive?
In early May, a leader seen as “an inspiration” in the effort to persuade the Taliban to lay down their weapons and join a peaceful Afghanistan was gunned down. In rural districts, young girls cherishing only the modest hope of an education have had acid thrown in their faces.
It is precisely the sort of place that, throughout history, has made humanity doubt the existence or administration of a loving God. But in my three trips to Afghanistan for the Monitor, I never once saw it this way, and I am convinced that Jesus would not have, either.
On the night before he was to suffer violence of the most malicious sort – a violence specifically calculated to quench the light he had brought into the world – Jesus made this remarkable statement: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” (John 14:27).
By material reckoning, the Pharisees who opposed his mission accomplished their goal the next day. Jesus died and was entombed. But history is witness that the Spirit that Jesus said animated him won the real victory. The peace that he gave to human hearts knew no defeat – it could not be entombed – because its awesome spiritual power was forever above and apart from the limited reckoning of the carnal mind. This power raised Jesus from the dead and imparted to his disciples the Holy Ghost – that Spirit-born conviction that the risen Christ is more powerful than all, because it is evidence of God’s omnipotent love for each of us.
The peace that the Christ gave – that “passeth all understanding” (Philippians 4:7) – has always been apart from and incomprehensible to the world of bullets and suicide bombs. And it remains in operation, even in Afghanistan.
In Kandahar, I met 9-year-old Nazeka. Her mother was dead. Her father had been taken from their home one night by people she did not know and for reasons she could not comprehend. Later she found him murdered. And yet the reason I can never forget Nazeka was her smile – how she ran among the earthen houses of her neighborhood with her friends, radiant with the undimmed joy of childhood.
In Laghman, I met a council of village elders who set up community watches to defend their girls’ school after it had been burned to the ground by those intent on hindering Afghan progress – a statement of defiance against unjust social customs, and a loving affirmation of value of their own daughters. Their honest conviction even persuaded one local Taliban commander to send his own girls to school.
Afghanistan and its people are not – can never be – lost. Their peace cannot be negotiated or imposed, and the world cannot take it away.
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Afghanistan Planning Sukuk as Foreign Aid Ends: Islamic Finance
Bloomberg By Liau Y-Sing and Eltaf Najafizada June 11, 2012
Afghanistan plans to sell Islamic bills for the first time early next year, as it prepares for a reduction in international aid after the withdrawal of foreign troops in 2014.
Draft laws will be submitted to the government “soon” and an offering of longer-maturity sukuk will take place at the end of 2013, Noorullah Delawari, the head of Da Afghanistan Bank, said in an interview yesterday. Progress stalled in 2011 following the resignation of his predecessor in June over the disappearance of funds from Kabul Bank, which was the largest commercial lender.
The nation, invaded twice in the past four decades and riven by civil war, is looking for alternative financing as it prepares to become self-sufficient by 2025, Wahid Tawhidi, a Finance Ministry spokesman, said in a June 10 interview from Kabul. Total banking assets have increased to $4 billion from $100 million a decade ago, with 10 percent complying with Islamic principles, according to data from the central bank.
“Sukuk will offer the first light to the Afghan debt market,” Sergey Dergachev, who helps manage $8.5 billion of emerging-market assets at Union Investment Privatfonds in Frankfurt, said in an e-mail on June 9. “The good thing will certainly be that dependence on foreign grants will be lowered, and a new market will appear on the map for sukuk investors that will provide interesting diversification opportunities.” Funding Gap
The South Asian country currently sells short-term securities that don’t comply with Islamic tenets to help local banks manage their funds, and these will be replaced by the new Shariah-compliant notes, Khan Afzal Hadawal, the first deputy governor of the central bank, said in a May 28 interview.
The monarchy was deposed in a coup in 1973 and the Soviet Union invaded to support the communists’ claim to power. The nation has been ravaged by civil war ever since, with the Taliban rising to prominence in the mid-1990s until the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. Some U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan after the 2014 withdrawal as agreed by President Barack Obama and his counterpart Hamid Karzai during the signing of a strategic partnership pact in Kabul in May.
Former central bank Governor Abdul Qadir Fitrat quit and fled to the U.S. last year after investigators called him in for questioning over Kabul Bank.
Siamak Herawy, a spokesman for President Karzai, said at the time that Fitrat left the country following a letter from the attorney general asking for an explanation over the scandal. Fitrat said he had resigned because he received threats from officials he had implicated, the Ariana Television channel reported.
The international community has provided $56.8 billion in aid to help rebuild the country since 2001, Tawhidi said. Natural resources such as copper and coal will lift government revenue and fill the funding gap, he added.
Afghanistan has 17 banks, with seven providing Islamic services at booths, Emal Hashoor, the central bank’s spokesman, said in a June 10 interview. About 99 percent of the 30 million people are Muslim, according to the CIA World Factbook. ‘Stabilize’ Markets
“Selling Islamic bonds will help stabilize Afghanistan’s capital market,” the central bank’s Hadawal said. “Sukuk is important to develop the country’s financial market because it complies with Shariah law.”
Global sales of Islamic bonds, which pay returns on assets in accordance with the religion’s ban on interest, almost doubled to $16.6 billion in 2012 from a year earlier, after reaching a record of $36.7 billion in 2011, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
The securities returned 3.8 percent this year, according to the HSBC/Nasdaq Dubai US Dollar Sukuk Index, while debt in developing markets gained 5.6 percent, JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s EMBI Global Index shows.
Average yields on Shariah-compliant notes fell four basis points to 3.69 percent last week, according to HSBC. That’s 194 basis points, or 1.94 percentage points, less than developing- market bonds, a separate JPMorgan index shows. The difference between average yields on Islamic debt and the London interbank offered rate narrowed five basis points to 263 basis points. ‘Cautious’ Banking
The yield on Malaysia’s 3.928 percent dollar-denominated sukuk due in April 2015 was little changed at 1.95 percent yesterday, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The difference in yields between Malaysia’s debt and the Dubai Department of Finance’s securities maturing in 2014 shrank three basis points to 179 and has declined 33 basis points since the end of May.
Afghanistan’s introduction of Shariah-compliant banking laws should draw local investors who shun lending that doesn’t comply with Islamic tenets, Malek Khodr Temsah, vice-president of treasury and investment at Albaraka Banking Group (BARKA) BSC in Manama, Bahrain, said in an e-mail on June 10.
“A government sukuk has the potential to attract considerable sums from Afghan citizens cautious of the country’s traditional and conventional banking system,” he said.
The economy expanded 7.1 percent last year, slowing from 8.2 percent in 2010 and 20.9 percent in 2009, according to the CIA World Factbook. The country isn’t rated by Moody’s Investors Service or Standard & Poor’s. Afghanistan is ranked the 13th poorest country in the world by the CIA, with gross domestic product per capita income of $1,000 in 2011, compared with an estimated $2,800 for neighboring Pakistan. ‘Stability Issues’
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta visited Kabul last week to assess troop pullout plans as attacks on coalition forces by the Taliban and the Pakistan-based Haqqani network escalated. Four French soldiers were killed in the northeastern province of Kapisa at the weekend, the office of President Francois Hollande said in a statement, as the country also prepares to withdraw.
U.S. Marine Corps General John Allen, the top coalition commander in the nation, has “expressed concern at the renewed level of attacks,” said Panetta.
“It’s very hard for mutual funds to invest in Afghanistan,” Anas El Maizi, an Abu Dhabi-based fund manager at Royal Capital PJSC, said in a June 5 interview. “There are so many political uncertainties and stability issues that investors won’t be keen on. It will be local investors or international bodies such as the World Bank that will invest.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Liau Y-Sing in Kuala Lumpur at yliau@bloomberg.net; Eltaf Najafizada in Kabul at enajafizada1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Sandy Hendry at shendry@bloomberg.net
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U.S. pulls negotiators from Pakistan with no supply deal
Reuters By Phil Stewart Mon Jun 11, 2012
WASHINGTON - The United States said on Monday it was withdrawing its team of negotiators from Pakistan without securing a long-sought deal on supply routes for the war in Afghanistan, publicly exposing a diplomatic stalemate and deeply strained relations that appear at risk of deteriorating further.
Pakistan banned trucks from carrying supplies to the war effort in neighbouring Afghanistan last year to protest a cross-border NATO air attack that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, a measure U.S. officials initially hoped would be short term.
That strike fanned national anger over everything from covert CIA drone strikes to the U.S. incursion into Pakistan last year to kill al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, and the supply routes evolved into a lightning-rod issue between the two countries.
After six weeks of negotiations that at least once appeared close to a deal, the Pentagon acknowledged that the team had failed to clinch an accord and was coming home.
"I believe that some of the team left over the weekend and the remainder of the team will leave shortly," Pentagon spokesman George Little told reporters. They could return to Pakistan at any time, if warranted, he added.
With the Pakistan routes unavailable, NATO has turned to countries to the north of Afghanistan for more expensive, longer land routes. Resupplying troops in Afghanistan through the northern route is about 2-1/2 times more expensive than shipping items through Pakistan, a U.S. defence official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The announcement about the negotiators came just days after Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said the United States was reaching the limits of its patience because of safe havens Pakistan offered to Islamist insurgents, who are attacking U.S. forces across the border in Afghanistan.
Pakistan's envoy to the United States had warned that Panetta's comments last Thursday in Kabul were unhelpful to efforts to narrow the differences between the two countries and came at a critical moment in negotiations.
With U.S. negotiators returning home, White House spokesman Jay Carney suggested it was now up to Pakistan to break the deadlock.
"We are ready to send officials back to Islamabad when the Pakistani government is ready to conclude the agreement," Carney told reporters. "And it certainly remains our goal to complete an agreement as soon as possible."
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland echoed those remarks and said "we've had some agreement in some areas."
"I think both sides are going to take some counsel and then we'll see when we can get back to it," she said.
Pakistan's ambassador to the United States, Sherry Rehman, said she did not view the decision to withdraw the negotiators as an "institutional pullout" by the United States.
NO APOLOGY
The United States has rebuffed Pakistan's demands for an apology over the NATO air strike and both sides failed to agree on tariffs for supplies passing through Pakistan.
The Pentagon acknowledged on Monday that Pakistan's powerful army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, declined a meeting last week with a top Pentagon official, Peter Lavoy. "He (Lavoy) was hoping to be able to meet with General Kayani to work through this issue," Little said.
Lieutenant General Curtis Scaparrotti, the No. 2 U.S. commander in Afghanistan, predicted the United States could carry out its planned withdrawal of most of its troops by the end of 2014, even without a deal with Pakistan on ground supply routes.
"It's not really affected us, and I don't expect it to be a problem here in the future," Scaparrotti, in Afghanistan, told Pentagon reporters in a video briefing.
But beyond the cost, the split with Pakistan is a worrisome sign that even seemingly straight-forward commercial agreements between the two countries are elusive. That bodes ill for agreement on other efforts, like tackling militant safe havens, that U.S. officials feel are fundamental for Afghanistan's long-term stability.
Panetta last week urged Pakistan to go after the Haqqani militant network, one of the United States' most feared enemies in Afghanistan, and said Washington would exert diplomatic pressure and take any other steps needed to protect its forces - remarks that sounded alarms in Islamabad.
The United States blames the group for a June attack on a U.S. base in the east in which several insurgents, including some wearing suicide vests, used rocket-propelled grenades.
The attack was foiled, but it underlined the challenge facing Western and Afghan forces in the east where insurgents take advantage of the steep, forested terrain and the Pakistani border to launch attacks and then slip back, commanders say.
Scaparrotti said the United States could still reach its objective of handing over security responsibility to Afghan forces even if Pakistan fails to go after Haqqani safe havens.
"I think we can still attain our withdrawal goals. And I also believe, while very difficult, we can attain our objectives of (an Afghanistan) secured by Afghans in 2014," he said.
(Additional reporting by Laura MacInnis and Andrew Quinn; Editing by Will Dunham)
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