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Suicide attack kills 16 at Afghan demo
AFP via Yahoo!7 News - Sep 10 08:35am
KUNDUZ, Afghanistan (AFP) - A suicide bomber tore through a crowd of Afghan demonstrators under a heavy police presence on Monday, killing 16 people in the northern city of Kunduz, officials said.
US Hands over Bagram Prison to Afghan Authorities
Sharon Behn VOA News September 10, 2012
The United States handed over control of Bagram prison to Afghan authorities on Monday. President Hamid Karzai has described as an important step towards the recognition of Afghan national sovereignty.
Politicians Welcome Sayyaf's Anti-Taliban Statements
TOLOnews.com By Saleha Sadaat Sunday, 09 September 2012
Afghan senators on Sunday welcomed Afghan MP and former Jihadi leader Abdul Rab Rassoul Sayyaf's statements calling for the Taliban to be crushed, and urged religious leaders to severely condemn the militants' attacks.
Heart of a Lion: Massoud’s complicated legacy
Bravenewwave.com 9 September 2012
On September 09, 2001, Fahim Dashty reported to the northeast Afghanistan headquarters of Ahmad Shah Massoud’s United Front resistance movement.
U.S. Inspector Slams Afghan Army Fuel Program
September 10, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
A U.S. government report has suggested that a $1.1 billion program to provide fuel to the Afghan National Army is in need of "immediate attention."
Taliban deny report that they are ready for peace talks
Mon Sep 10, 2012 11:14am EDT
LONDON/KABUL - (Reuters) - The Afghan Taliban denied a report on Monday that some of their leading members were ready to negotiate a comprehensive peace deal involving a long-term U.S. military presence in Afghanistan.
Sections of Taliban ready to accept US presence in Afghanistan – report
Moderates say they can see no prospect of victory so are prepared to negotiate – but not with the Karzai government
Guardian.co.uk By Julian Borger, diplomatic editor Sunday 9 September 2012
Some senior Taliban figures are ready to negotiate a ceasefire and might be ready to accept a long-term US military presence in Afghanistan as part of a comprehensive peace deal, according to a report to be published on Monday based on interviews with Taliban officials and negotiators.
Pakistan weary of hosting millions of Afghan refugees
Afghans who fled the Soviet invasion and, later, Taliban rule will lose their refugee status in Pakistan at year's end, making them vulnerable to deportation.
Los Angeles Times By Alex Rodriguez September 10, 2012
KHAZANA, Pakistan - Awal Gul knows that home is just a two-hour drive over the jagged ridgeline that separates Pakistan from Afghanistan. But he hasn't been there in more than 30 years, since Soviet tanks rolled into Kabul.
100 Dead As Pakistan Repels Cross-Border Territory Grab By Militants
September 10, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
A government official says Pakistani security forces have pushed Taliban militants who came from Afghanistan back across the border after more than two weeks of fighting in the country's northwest.
Rival Ethnic Groups Clash on Streets of Afghan Capital
Wall Street Journal By NATHAN HODGE and ZIAULHAQ SULTANI September 9, 2012
KABUL - A minor traffic incident in Kabul this weekend escalated into a deadly gunbattle between rival ethnic groups that threatened to rekindle civil-war tensions and marred a major government celebration.
Taliban using Facebook to lure Aussie soldier
The Sunday Telegraph By Anthony Deceglie, Katie Robertson September 09, 2012
TALIBAN insurgents are posing as "attractive women" on Facebook to befriend coalition soldiers and gather intelligence about operations.
Laghman Raid Kills Taliban Shadow District Gov., Insurgents
TOLOnews.com Monday, 10 September 2012
At least 10 Taliban militants including three local insurgent leaders and the shadow district governor were killed in an Afghan and Nato forces operation in eastern Laghman province overnight, local officials said Monday.
Pakistan Intelligence Should Be Blacklisted Alongside Haqqani: Analyst
TOLOnews.com By Sharif Amiry Sunday, 09 September 2012
Pakistan's intelligence agency should also be branded a terrorist group by the US Congress as it is supporting the Haqqani Network, Afghan military expert Noorulhaq Olomi said Sunday.
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Suicide attack kills 16 at Afghan demo
AFP via Yahoo!7 News - Sep 10 08:35am
KUNDUZ, Afghanistan (AFP) - A suicide bomber tore through a crowd of Afghan demonstrators under a heavy police presence on Monday, killing 16 people in the northern city of Kunduz, officials said.
The attack took place in the main square of the city, the force of the explosives sending police riot gear, pieces of flesh, sandals and turbans flinging across the street.
Pools of blood lay next to discarded Kalashnikov rifles and shattered glass, along with bank notes from money exchange stalls that had been set up in the area, an AFP reporter said.
Reports of the death toll varied.
Doctor Shir Jan, who works at the Kunduz central hospital, initially said 21 bodies -- one of them a woman -- had been brought in after the attack, but after the chaos of the initial emergency passed, confirmed a death toll of 16 with 26 wounded.
Police said 15 people were killed, both civilians and police.
Local residents said that people had been gathering for a demonstration connected to the recent killing of civilians and that there had been a strong police presence.
"People had just gathered and were about to begin their demonstration. Police were trying to disperse them. I saw a police truck pass by, then suddenly there was a big bang and a huge column of smoke," said shopkeeper Abdul Sabor.
"I later saw scores of people and police covered in blood."
There was no immediate claim of responsibility but similar attacks in the past have been blamed on the Taliban and their Islamist allies fighting for 10 years to overthrow the Western-backed government and evict NATO troops.
Doctor Jan said three civilians and 13 police were killed.
Lal Mohammad Ahmadzai, the police spokesman for northern Afghanistan, said seven policemen and eight civilians were killed.
"The attacker was on foot. He blew up his explosives as people were about to hold a peaceful protest to condemn the indiscriminate killing of some civilians," Ahmadzai told AFP.
The attack comes just two days after a suicide bomber, whom police identified as a teenager, blew himself up outside NATO headquarters in Kabul, killing six youngsters aged 12 to 17.
The Taliban insurgency is traditionally centred in the south and the east, but Kunduz in the north has seen an increase in violence in recent years.
Last month, a bomb attached to a motorcycle killed 11 people in a market elsewhere in the province, in Archi district near the border with Tajikistan.
Earlier on Monday, the United States formally handed control to Afghanistan of more than 3,000 detainees at Bagram prison, as part of NATO plans to hand over national security to Afghans and withdraw its combat troops by the end of 2014.
US officials confirmed at the weekend that NATO withdrawals are on track with 117,000 foreign troops left in Afghanistan.
The United Nations says 1,145 civilians were killed in the war in the first six months of this year, blaming 80 percent of the deaths on insurgents.
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US Hands over Bagram Prison to Afghan Authorities
Sharon Behn VOA News September 10, 2012
The United States handed over control of Bagram prison to Afghan authorities on Monday. President Hamid Karzai has described as an important step towards the recognition of Afghan national sovereignty.
More than 3,000 prisoners are in Bagram. It and prisons around the country now are under control of Kabul.
Afghan foreign minister spokesman Janan Musazai hailed the transfer.
“Afghanistan reiterates our commitment to the humane treatment of all detainees and prisoners in accordance to our national and international obligations,” he said.
But Rachel Reid, of the human rights group Open Society Afghanistan, worries about the vague regulations of preventative detention, or internment, under which she says Afghanistan can hold future prisoners.
“In our experience in other countries, it’s been very open to abuse, because what it enables a government to do is to detain people without trial and often without a lawyer,” said Reid.
Reid also says there are serious differences between American and Afghans as to what should happen to some 50 non-Afghan prisoners being held in Bagram facility. She says least 30 of the non-Afghans being held are from neighboring Pakistan.
“The Afghans do not want the Americans to keep holding these third-country nationals in Afghanistan, as if it’s some kind of mini-Guantanamo,” she said.
Reid says Afghan officials want the Americans to either hand over the prisoners or take them out of the country.
But U.S. Deputy Public Affairs Officer Jamie Graybeal says those so-called third-country nationals were not included in the memorandum of understanding between the two countries on prison hand overs.
“Their status will be the subject of future discussions at the U.S. Department of Defense and Department of State level," said Graybeal. "Until that time, they will remain in U.S. control.”
Graybeal added that the agreement between the United States and Afghanistan does not limit U.S. authority in capturing and detaining. He says those detainees would be handed over to Afghan authorities “in due course”.
Bagram prison had become a symbol of U.S. control of Afghanistan. Some Afghan officials had said prisoners were being abused there.
The prison hand over took place the day before the 11th anniversary of the September 11 al Qaida terrorist attacks on American soil that led to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Al Qaida had been given safe haven in Afghanistan by the then rulers, the Taliban.
International combat forces are to leave Afghanistan in 2014.
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Politicians Welcome Sayyaf's Anti-Taliban Statements
TOLOnews.com By Saleha Sadaat Sunday, 09 September 2012
Afghan senators on Sunday welcomed Afghan MP and former Jihadi leader Abdul Rab Rassoul Sayyaf's statements calling for the Taliban to be crushed, and urged religious leaders to severely condemn the militants' attacks.
The senators called on Sayyaf to use his influence over the government to help prosecute the criminals and suicide attackers.
"I ask Mr Sayyaf to use his influence on the government as a Jihadi leader to pressure the government to prosecute the suicide attackers and other criminals," Senator Nesar Ahmad Ares said.
Speaking at the 11th anniversary of the assassination of Afghan national hero Ahmad Shah Massoud, Sayyaf said Saturday that the government needed to kill the Taliban "well", meaning to not just kill those behind the attacks, but to "kill them with torture, hang them... for a month in public, cut their right hand and foot, wipe them off the face of the earth."
He said such brutality was required to prevent any suicide attacks from happening again. He also accused the Afghan government of losing its credibility, solemnity, and greatness in its failure to punish the criminals.
Afghan political expert Jawid Kohistani said Sayyaf's statements stemmed from the Taliban's own brutality.
"Sayyaf's statements were a result of the Taliban's bad deeds and are based on Islam and the Quran," he said.
National Coalition of Afghanistan member Fazel Rahmad Orya agreed that Sayyef's statement was based on the Quran.
Sayyef had cited Arabic verses from the Quran to prove the condoning of killing "well".
Other senators including Sayed Farukh Shah Jenab and Hedayatullah Rehayee blamed the religious scholars for not speaking out against the terrorist attacks.
"Millions of dollars have been allocated to provide salaries for the religious mullahs but none of them have condemned even a single suicide attack," Rehayee said.
"It's the responsibility of the religious scholars to condemn killing of innocent people in the mosques," Jenab said.
Meanwhile, Senator Mullah Ghulam Mahiuddin Munsef, who is also a religious scholar, defended the mullahs saying that all the incidents which killed innocent people had been condemned. He instead blamed the country's security forces for failing to stop the suicide attackers.
"The religious mullahs have always issued statements condemning the killing of innocent people, but the security organs have failed to prevent the suicide attacks," Munsef said.
This comes as Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Friday called on the Ulema Council to be more vocal in its condemnation of suicide attacks and the killing of innocent people.
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Heart of a Lion: Massoud’s complicated legacy
Bravenewwave.com 9 September 2012
On September 09, 2001, Fahim Dashty reported to the northeast Afghanistan headquarters of Ahmad Shah Massoud’s United Front resistance movement.
The young journalist hoped the lens of his camera would capture the thoughtful, charismatic Mujhaideen leader.
Dashty and the man the Wall Street Journal called “the Afghan who won the Cold War” were separated by only a few feet in that Takhar province room, yet what neither could have known was that they were moments away from an event that would change the course and iconography of conflict in Afghanistan.
As part of a media company that set out to document Massoud’s resistance to the Taliban, Dashty was in Khvajeh Baha od Din to “collect as many images of the chief” as he could.
While Dashty was filming, two men claiming to be Moroccan journalists entered the room for a pre-arranged interview. Massoud, fluent in Persian and French, regularly gave interviews to foreign media. Dashty figured this would be just another interview.
One of the Moroccan journalists asks Massoud questions in English. As Massood Khalili, an advisor in the United Front movement, began to translate, Dashty saw the cameraman push a button.
Immediately there was a boom as smoke and flames rose from the spot where the “cameraman” stood. The Moroccan journalists were Tunisian assassins.
For Dashty, everything that followed was a series of jump cuts – a plane headed to neighbouring Tajikistan, a hospital in Dushanbe, his brother’s house in the Tajik capital.
National hero
It was 12 days later that Dashty heard his long-time friend’s fate. “He didn’t survive the suicide bomb”.
A couple of days after the assassination was September 11. A few weeks after that, fighters from Massoud’s army fought alongside US troops to oust the Taliban. The interim government of Hamid Karzai declared Massoud “national hero of Afghanistan.”
Since then, the week of Massoud’s death has become a national holiday honouring all of the martyrs of Afghanistan’s decades-long conflict.
For the last 11 years, images of the “Lion of Panjshir” have been posted around the Afghan capital – a billboard high atop a mountain overlooking the city, a square in one of Kabul’s busiest intersections, a giant portrait on the exterior of Kabul international’s arrivals terminal, and thousands of smaller pictures in the cars, homes and businesses of the city’s residents.
To Omar Samad, Afghanistan expert at the US Institute of Peace, the pervasiveness of Massoud’s image is in contradiction to the humility exhibited in his life.
“Ironically, as a modest person he did not like to be called a ‘hero’ or, even, have his pictures displayed”, Samad said.
For some though, Massoud’s government-sanctioned iconic status in general, is troubling, particularly in Kabul.
Unlike other political and wartime figures, Massoud’s heroic status is as much a government orchestration as it is popular sentiment.
Good Strategist
“He was a good strategist,” Islamuddin, a Hezb-e-Islami deputy said.
The victims of Massoud’s strategic competence were the people of Kabul and its surrounding areas, the deputy of the Gulbuddin Hemketyar-led faction seen as the chief rivals of Massoud’s Jamiat-e-Islami, said.
In an interview, Islamuddin paints a very different picture of Massoud.
Asserting dominance
In place of a commander known to recite poetry and play football with his troops, Islamuddin saw a man of arrogance desperate to assert his dominance.
He attributes these personality traits and political motivations to Kabul becoming a violent battleground in the 1990s.
“If Massoud was a good person then who killed thousands of Pashtuns, Hazaras and Uzbeks”, Islamuddin asks of the Tajik leader’s legacy.
Islamuddin accuses Massoud of taking over Kabul in the early 1990s but not affording people the “respect and roles they deserved”.
But criticisms of Massoud are not limited to political enemies who fought his forces during the civil war between 1992 and 1995.
“Haroon”, a lifelong resident of the western neighbourhood of Karteh Seh said that for those caught in the crossfire of the fight for the capital; images of Massoud can evoke memories of times under siege.
“For five years, anything that moved would be shot at”, says the 32-year-old ethnic Pashtun.
This forced residents in areas visible from TV Mountain, the one point from which Kabul’s west and east sides could be seen with relative ease, to temper their movements.
Massoud, he said, was a man who “loved mountains”, both physically and strategically.
“People would walk behind walls. Where there were no walls, openings would be built in houses and in the ground”, Haroon recounted.
Anything to provide cover from the bullets and bombs of Massoud’s forces.
All of this, says Islamuddin, can be traced back to Massoud himself.
“We fought. We killed. But it was all because of Massoud”, he says.
But in separate interviews, both Abdullah Abdullah, former foreign minister, and Dashty point to a 10-minute conversation between Massoud and Hezb-e-Islami leader Hekmetyar as the catalyst for the fighting in Kabul.
In that conversation Massoud “begs Hekmetyar not to send troops into Kabul, to instead find a political solution”, recounts Abdullah.
But, Hekmetyar “insisted on entering Kabul”, says Dashty.
Forgotten martyrs
For others though, what is officially known as martyr’s week is in fact a celebration and glorification of Massoud.
To a former high ranking administration official who asked not to be identified because of his affiliation with mujahideen regimes, all of the images of Massoud belie the notion of a martyr’s week.
“Did you see television today? It’s all about him”, the official said. “What he did do that we didn’t? It wasn’t just him. Who here isn’t a martyr in some way?” says the official who had previously spent many years fundraising for the Mujhaideen, including Ahmad Shah Massoud.
In a nation where over a million people died in three decades of conflict what national martyr week fails to properly document are the names and images of ordinary families who constantly found themselves in the crossfire of various factions, Massoud’s included.
To his supporters though, Massoud was a humble and astute leader who devoted 30 of his 48 years to defending Afghanistan.
Selfless
Abdullah says Massoud’s character was very different from other Mujhaideen leaders.
Abdullah, a medical doctor by trade, often heard stories of Massoud while working at a refugee hospital in the Pakistani border city of Peshawar in 1983. Massoud quickly gained a reputation for selflessness among refugees and Mujhaideen alike.
For Dashty, who suffered burns to two-thirds of his body in the suicide bombing that killed Massoud, the 30 years he “sacrificed” as a freedom fighter is the ultimate example of Massoud’s selflessness.
In time, he says, people will recognise Massoud’s place in Afghan history.
“Just like Che Guevarra. Just like Mahatma Gandhi”.
Samad, the USIP Afghanistan expert, says those who criticise Massoud and accuse him of warlordism fail to realise that he “matured and changed over time from a young inexperienced Islamic revolutionary to a poised and thoughtful moderate patriot who believed in democratic values”.
To Abdullah, Massoud worked tirelessly to defend not only the people’s lives, but also their ideals.
“He is a hero who led a clear struggle for the values of the people” and little else, says Abdullah.
For this selflessness and devotion to uniting the Afghan people despite two decades of conflict, Abdullah says “even more than billboards here and there, he is in the hearts of people”.
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U.S. Inspector Slams Afghan Army Fuel Program
September 10, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
A U.S. government report has suggested that a $1.1 billion program to provide fuel to the Afghan National Army is in need of "immediate attention."
The report comes just four months before control of the program is to be handed over to the Afghan government.
Released on September 10 by Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction John Sopko, the report says there is no evidence that the fuel provided under the program has been used for military purposes.
It says it is impossible to tell how much fuel might have been lost, stolen, or handed over to the Afghan insurgency.
The report says records covering $475 million in fuel payments were deliberately shredded over a four-year period.
Sopko, appointed recently by President Barack Obama to the special inspector general's job on Afghanistan, reportedly told Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in a letter on September 10 that the SIGAR was investigating the reported shredding by officials of the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan.
It recommends suspending the program until it can be determined how many vehicles the Afghan Army has.
Based on reporting by AP and Reuters
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Taliban deny report that they are ready for peace talks
Mon Sep 10, 2012 11:14am EDT
LONDON/KABUL - (Reuters) - The Afghan Taliban denied a report on Monday that some of their leading members were ready to negotiate a comprehensive peace deal involving a long-term U.S. military presence in Afghanistan.
A report to be published by the Royal United Services Institute said some leading Taliban were determined to make a decisive break with al Qaeda as part of a settlement and were open to negotiation about allowing education for girls.
"The Taliban would be open to negotiating a ceasefire as part of a general settlement, and also as a bridge between confidence-building measures and the core issue of the distribution of political power in Afghanistan," the report said.
But a spokesman for the Islamist group in Afghanistan denied that any interviews had taken place. "The report is a lie and is baseless," Zabihullah Mujahid told Reuters from an undisclosed location.
"We have never wanted the Americans to stay in Afghanistan and this has always been our position."
The Taliban, who have been fighting against NATO-led troops for 11 years, have always maintained that any negotiations with Afghan authorities and Washington could only be carried out once there were no foreign soldiers on Afghan soil.
RUSI said its report, entitled "Taliban Perspectives on Reconciliation", was based on interviews with four unnamed Taliban figures, two of whom had been ministers in the former Taliban government and were still close to the inner circle of leadership.
The report cites a person described as a founding member of the Taliban as saying that the group might accept continuing U.S. counter-terrorist operations targeting al Qaeda in Afghanistan as long as the bases were not used to launch attacks on other countries or for interference in Afghan politics.
The report said that from the Taliban's point of view, any ceasefire would need strong Islamic justification and could not hint at any form of surrender.
U.S. officials have said they see signs that insurgent hostility to peace talks may be splintering.
With violence in Afghanistan at its worst levels since U.S.-backed forces ousted the Taliban in 2001, the West is eager to pursue such negotiations, given that it plans to withdraw most of a currently 130,000-strong NATO-led foreign force by the end of 2014.
(Reporting by Stephen Mangan in London and Hamid Shalizi in Kabul; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
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Sections of Taliban ready to accept US presence in Afghanistan – report
Moderates say they can see no prospect of victory so are prepared to negotiate – but not with the Karzai government
Guardian.co.uk By Julian Borger, diplomatic editor Sunday 9 September 2012
Some senior Taliban figures are ready to negotiate a ceasefire and might be ready to accept a long-term US military presence in Afghanistan as part of a comprehensive peace deal, according to a report to be published on Monday based on interviews with Taliban officials and negotiators.
The report, published by the Royal United Services Institute, finds that the Taliban is determined to make a decisive break with al-Qaida as part of a settlement and is open to negotiation about education for girls, but is adamantly opposed to the constitution which it sees as a prop for President Hamid Karzai's government.
The Taliban insurgents will not negotiate with the Karzai government largely because of its record of corruption. They do not trust Kabul to run fair elections, which suggests that, even if the moderates interviewed in the study prevailed within Taliban circles, serious obstacles to a peace deal would remain.
The institute's report, entitled Taliban Perspectives on Reconciliation, is the product of interviews with four unnamed figures, two of whom were ministers in the former Taliban government and are still close to the inner circle of leadership. One is described as being "closely associated" with Mullah Mohammad Omar, the Taliban leader. A third is portrayed as "a senior former mujahideen commander and lead negotiator for the Taliban", although not part of the movement itself, and the fourth is said to be "an Afghan mediator with extensive experience negotiating with the Taliban".
The report concludes: "The Taliban would be open to negotiating a ceasefire as part of a general settlement, and also as a bridge between confidence-building measures and the core issue of the distribution of political power in Afghanistan.
"A ceasefire would require strong Islamic justification, obscuring any hint of surrender," it adds.
Even more surprising, in view of the official Taliban propaganda portraying it as leading a struggle against foreign invaders, the report says the insurgents are "prepared to accept a long-term US military presence in Afghanistan".
According to one interviewee, described as a founder member of the Taliban, a settlement that left US troops operating out of five primary military bases – Kandahar, Herat, Jalalabad, Mazar-e-Sharif and Kabul – might be acceptable as long as the US presence "does not impinge on our independence and religion". In other words, the Taliban might accept continuing US counter-terrorist operations targeting their former ally, al-Qaida, as long as the bases were not used as a launching pad for attacks on other countries or for interference in Afghan politics.
The report even suggests that the Taliban would co-operate in tracking down al-Qaida members, noting that the leadership and base "deeply regret" their past association with the global jihadist group.
Michael Semple, one of the report's co-authors and a former EU envoy to Afghanistan, said that interviewees represented a significant but not yet dominant strand in Taliban views. "We are not saying that this is some kind of poll that says three out of four Taliban members are in favour of a ceasefire," he said. "But there is a part of the movement who see there is no prospect of a military victory and so ceasefire would make sense. This is not the official line, but rather the outer fringe of Taliban thought. It's not mainstream yet."
Semple, now at Harvard University, interviewed another Taliban commander in July, who also admitted there was no prospect of an insurgent victory, but he said that commander was not part of the institute's study.
Contacts between US officials and Taliban representatives have stalled largely because of failure to conclude a confidence-building deal to exchange five Taliban prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay for a US soldier captured by insurgents. Substantive talks, which were due to be held in Qatar, are expected to remain on hold until after the US presidential election in November, but senior US officials said they were holding discussions this week with Pakistan, where the Taliban leadership is based, about the safe passage of insurgent officials for future peace talks.
"Reconciliation remains a key component of our strategy," a senior US official said. "The safe passage working group was meeting this week alone as a piece of that, and Ambassador [Marc] Grossman [the US special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan] will embark on an upcoming trip at some point to continue to pursue this in a very robust manner."
Another senior official stressed that the official US designation on Friday of the Haqqani network, a Taliban faction based in the Pakistani tribal area of Waziristan, would not rule out future talks with the group, and would not lead to the financial sanctions against Pakistan. The official disowned allegations made last year by Admiral Mike Mullen, the outgoing chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, who described the Haqqani network as "a veritable arm" of Pakistani intelligence.
"I want to just unequivocally state that this in no way is the consensus, unanimous view of this administration; that we are making absolutely no effort to begin a process to designate Pakistan as a state sponsor of terrorism," the US official said.
Semple said he did not think the designation of the Haqqanis would have any serious impact on future peace talks.
"The US have already given them a good few chances to to do politics," he said. "They are really at the heart of the nastiest part of the armed struggle."
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Pakistan weary of hosting millions of Afghan refugees
Afghans who fled the Soviet invasion and, later, Taliban rule will lose their refugee status in Pakistan at year's end, making them vulnerable to deportation.
Los Angeles Times By Alex Rodriguez September 10, 2012
KHAZANA, Pakistan - Awal Gul knows that home is just a two-hour drive over the jagged ridgeline that separates Pakistan from Afghanistan. But he hasn't been there in more than 30 years, since Soviet tanks rolled into Kabul.
A refugee of a long-gone era, he doesn't have a patch of land to return to, or a house or a job. That may not matter.
Pakistan is growing increasingly impatient as host of the world's largest refugee community — millions of Afghans who fled the Soviet invasion and, later, Taliban rule. At the end of the year, Afghans in Pakistan will lose legal status as refugees, making them vulnerable to deportation.
"We've spent three decades here, but every day we feel like strangers," said Gul, 45, a thin, silver-bearded Afghan who lives with his extended family of 24 in Khazana, home to a large cluster of refugees living in two-room, thatch-roofed mud huts. "We can't afford to build real houses here. Even if we could, we wouldn't want to because we know this isn't our homeland, and that one day we'll eventually have to go back to Afghanistan."
To Gul, it feels like falling without ever landing. "We're in an awkward situation, stuck between the sky and earth."
Afghan refugees say they feel caught in the gears of conflicting agendas in their homeland and adopted land.
Afghan leaders insist that a shattered economy and the 10-year war against Taliban insurgents make it impossible to begin accepting returning refugees en masse. Pakistani officials say they don't have plans to immediately begin repatriating Afghans, but they also don't plan to continue hosting an estimated 3.5 million Afghans in a country struggling to meet the basic needs of its own people.
"We know what the situation in Afghanistan is, but that's the failure of the Afghan government and the international forces there," said Engineer Shaukatullah, Pakistan's minister of states and frontier regions, who oversees Afghan refugees in Pakistan. "In 10 years, they haven't been able to provide refugees a secure place to live. That means the whole burden is on Pakistan."
Forcing Afghan refugees to go home could jeopardize fragile ties between Afghanistan and Pakistan, said Neill Wright, the chief representative in Pakistan for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. That relationship has already been strained by a recent surge in cross-border militant attacks and accusations from Kabul that Pakistan continues to support the Haqqani network, a potent wing of the Afghan Taliban responsible for high-profile attacks in the Afghan capital and eastern Afghanistan.
There are 1.68 million registered Afghan refugees living in Pakistan, according to the U.N. refugee agency. An additional 1.8 million are unregistered and living in the country illegally, Pakistani officials say. Registered refugees are issued special identity cards that allow them to stay in Pakistan. Those cards expire Dec. 31.
Pakistan has yet to announce what action it will take. Officials in Kabul say large-scale deportations could destabilize Afghanistan at a time when the country is particularly vulnerable. Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government is struggling to accept more of the burden of securing the country before Washington's planned withdrawal of troops by the end of 2014.
U.N. refugee agency officials have been trying to persuade the Pakistani government to extend refugee status for Afghans in the country. But Islamabad isn't ruling anything out.
"They are looking at all the options, including forcing refugees back. That would have huge consequences," Wright said.
In addition to damaging ties with Kabul, deporting Afghans also could harm Pakistan's image in the international community and jeopardize crucial economic and humanitarian aid from international donors.
Nevertheless, the presence of Afghan refugees remains deeply unpopular in Pakistan, a sentiment Pakistani leaders are likely to weigh ahead of what are expected to be hotly contested national elections early next year. Many Pakistanis contend Afghan refugees are a source of rising crime and key players in attacks that continue to beset the country.
"They are involved in it," Shaukatullah said when asked about links between Afghan refugees and terrorism in Pakistan. "They have connections with these things."
It's a misguided stereotype, Wright said, but one that persists. "There's no evidence to support it," he said. "And there are endless media articles that say the refugees are bringing polio into the country and are not contributing to the economy. And yet there are so many who are employed, running transportation companies, manufacturing rugs, doing lots of jobs here in Pakistan."
Especially discouraging for many Pakistanis, Shaukatullah said, is that the rate of Afghans returning to their homeland continues to drop. According to U.N. figures, in 2010, 109,383 Afghan refugees returned to Afghanistan from Pakistan and Iran, which also hosts a large Afghan refugee community. Last year, the number of returning refugees dropped to 52,096.
So far this year, nearly 42,000 Afghan refugees have returned home. Shaukatullah says that's not enough, adding that the return rate is negated by the number of children born to Afghan refugees each year, which he said is about 83,000. Children born to Afghan refugees in Pakistan do not get Pakistani citizenship; many refugees who are in their teens or younger have never set foot in Afghanistan.
Sangar is one of them. The 19-year-old, who, like many Afghans, uses just one name, was born in Pakistan and grew up in the refugee colony in Khazana after his family fled Afghanistan more than 30 years ago. He runs his tailoring business from a tiny, darkened stall no bigger than a garden shed.
"Even if they bulldoze our houses, we won't go," Sangar said, shooing away flies with a fan. "If I'm forced to go to Afghanistan, I don't know what I would do there. I was born here, grew up here and studied here. Pakistan is my country."
alex.rodriguez@latimes.com
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100 Dead As Pakistan Repels Cross-Border Territory Grab By Militants
September 10, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
A government official says Pakistani security forces have pushed Taliban militants who came from Afghanistan back across the border after more than two weeks of fighting in the country's northwest.
Analysts say the initial incursian marked the first time Pakistani militants based in Afghanistan had come into Pakistan and seized territory for a significant amount of time.
The government official, Jehangir Azam Wazir, says the fighting in the Bajur tribal area has killed more than 100 people, including at least 80 militants, 18 civilians, and eight soldiers in recent weeks.
Thirteen more Pakistani soldiers are missing and feared to be in Taliban hands.
Wazir said that hundreds of people who were trapped by the fighting in border villages in Bajur's Salarzai region were finally able to leave.
Pakistani Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan confirmed the militants had retreated but planned to regroup and attack again.
Based on reporting by AP
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Rival Ethnic Groups Clash on Streets of Afghan Capital
Wall Street Journal By NATHAN HODGE and ZIAULHAQ SULTANI September 9, 2012
KABUL - A minor traffic incident in Kabul this weekend escalated into a deadly gunbattle between rival ethnic groups that threatened to rekindle civil-war tensions and marred a major government celebration.
Saturday's fighting pitted ethnic Tajiks from the Panjshir province north of Kabul against ethnic Hazaras, who were on opposing sides of the civil war that leveled much of the capital after the Communist regime collapsed in 1992.
The confrontation occurred during a national holiday to commemorate Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Tajik commander from Panjshir who was assassinated by al Qaeda suicide bombers in 2001. While Mr. Massoud is officially revered as a national hero in Afghanistan, with his portraits bedecking government buildings and the Kabul airport, many Hazaras still harbor bitter memories of a violent offensive against western Kabul by his forces in 1993.
Witnesses in western Kabul said Saturday's fighting erupted after a caravan of Panjshiri vehicles struck down a bicyclist in the largely Hazara neighborhood of Pol-e Sokhta. Supporters of Mr. Massoud convoyed through the Afghan capital in vehicles decorated with posters of their deceased leader, something some Hazaras said they considered a provocative act in their neighborhood.
Ethnic violence in Kabul is unusual, especially considering that the Tajik and Hazara minorities both face a common enemy—the Taliban, a movement representing mostly the country's largest ethnic group, the Pashtuns. For many in Kabul, this outbreak reinforced fears that such ethnic tensions might spiral out of control after most international forces withdraw in 2014, just as it happened after the Soviet withdrawal.
Patricia Gossman, an independent analyst with long experience in Afghanistan, said the civil war has become "the elephant in the room" as foreign forces go home. "This is the undercurrent right now below everything going on in Afghanistan: The fear of a return to that kind of ethnically based divisions and rivalry," she said.
Afghan leaders quickly stepped in to quell the tensions after Saturday's clash. Ahmad Zia Massoud, the brother of the late Tajik commander and Afghanistan's former vice president, issued a statement decrying the behavior of some of the participants in the commemoration.
"Regretfully, a number of peoplemisused the name of the national hero and were cherishing his martyrdom by fixing his pictures in their vehicles and creating uproar in the city," he said. "Those people did an obscene act that resulted in a battle between two brotherly tribes with the same destiny."
Leading Hazara politician Hajji Mohammad Mohaqiq, a former warlord who now sits in the Afghan parliament, also called for calm as he spoke at the funerals of the Hazara victims of Saturday's clash.
Mohammad Agha, a Hazara cook in western Kabul, said his 18-year-old brother was struck and seriously injured by one of the vehicles driven by Mr. Massoud's supporters. When the police failed to detain the Panjshiris, a bloody confrontation ensued between the Hazaras and Afghan police, he said.
"The police did not stop them and let them go, so then a huge number of Hazara people gathered in the square and rushed towards the police check posts," Mr. Agha said.
Enraged demonstrators subsequently torched four police outposts, eyewitnesses said. Evidence of the violence was still visible Sunday around Mazari square, the traffic circle where the hourslong exchange of gunfire took place. The burned-out checkpoints—built from old shipping containers—were still on the square.
"One of our guys was killed here," said a police officer manning one checkpoint, who asked that his name not be used. "Another one was injured and went to the hospital, we were told he also died."
Several witnesses said police opened fire on the crowd, but the final casualty toll was unclear as of Sunday evening. Kabul's chief of police, when asked for comment on the issue, repeatedly hung up on a Wall Street Journal reporter. Other Afghan officials played down the violence, with a spokesman for the Afghan interior ministry dismissing the incident as a local "quarrel." Hazara residents put their death toll at five or six.
Several hospitals in the area reported treating patients for gunshot wounds. Dr. Yunas Haideri, a doctor at the Hakim Nasir Khusrow hospital, said the small private hospital treated six people for wounds. Employees of Watan hospital, a nearby clinic, said they received six patients with gunshot wounds, as well as one fatality.
The fighting in Kabul occurred on the same day that suicide attacker detonated explosives near the heavily fortified headquarters of the U.S.-led coalition in Kabul, killing six people, most of them children. The Taliban said the attack was in response to the Obama administration designating the Haqqani network, an affiliated insurgent group, as a terrorist organization.
While Afghan and coalition officials said the suicide bomber was a teenage child himself, the Taliban denied this account, saying he was a 28-year-old from Logar province. —Habib Khan Totakhil contributed to this article.
Write to Nathan Hodge at nathan.hodge@wsj.com
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Taliban using Facebook to lure Aussie soldier
The Sunday Telegraph By Anthony Deceglie, Katie Robertson September 09, 2012
TALIBAN insurgents are posing as "attractive women" on Facebook to befriend coalition soldiers and gather intelligence about operations.
Australian soldiers are given pre-deployment briefings about enemies creating fake profiles to spy on troops.
Personnel are also being warned that geo-tagging - a function of many websites that secretly logs the location from where a post is made or a photo is uploaded - is a significant danger.
Family and friends of soldiers are inadvertently jeopardising missions by sharing confidential information online, the report warns.
Three Australian soldiers were this month murdered inside their base, allegedly by an Afghan Army trainee.
The dangers of social media are revealed in a federal government review of social media and defence, which was finalised in March but has not been acted upon, Defence sources say.
The review found an "overt reliance" on privacy settings had led to "a false sense of security" among personnel.
The review warns troops to beware of "fake profiles - media personnel and enemies create fake profiles to gather information. For example, the Taliban have used pictures of attractive women as the front of their Facebook profiles and have befriended soldiers."
Many of the 1577 Defence members surveyed for the review had no awareness of the risk, it said, adding 58 per cent of Defence staff had no social media training.
Surveyed troops said social media open "a whole can of worms when it comes to operational, personnel and physical security".
"Many individuals who use social media are extremely trusting," the review said.
"Most did not recognise that people using fake profiles, perhaps masquerading as school friends, could capture information and movements. Few consider the possibilities of data mining and how patterns of behaviour can be identified over time."
The review recommended education for family and friends on the dangers of sharing details like names, ranks and locations.
Several troops argued for a total social media ban. "I see too many members who post info/pics of themselves which identify ... what unit they belong to and where they are serving," one said.
Security expert Peter Hannay, from Edith Cowan University's school of computer and security science, said geo-tag information "can be data-mined and sold to anybody".
The Department of Defence said it was working on new social media guidelines, to be released by Christmas.
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Laghman Raid Kills Taliban Shadow District Gov., Insurgents
TOLOnews.com Monday, 10 September 2012
At least 10 Taliban militants including three local insurgent leaders and the shadow district governor were killed in an Afghan and Nato forces operation in eastern Laghman province overnight, local officials said Monday.
"Afghan army and the Nato-led coalition forces carried out a search operation in the Alishing district Sunday night and the joint forces engaged a group of armed militants in the area," a Selab 201 military corps in east Afghanistan spokesman Noman Atifi told TOLOnews.
He says that the group had planned to place remote-controlled bombs in the road when the clash with the joint forces began at about 03:30AM. The two sides exchanged fire more than two hours and the forces seized many weapons and improvised explosive devices (IED) during the operation, he said.
The well-known Taliban shadow governor for the district Mullah Hazrat and three other Taliban local leaders named Hattahullah, Safiullah and Khudi Noor were among the killed, Atifi said.
"According to intelligence reports and the documents seized during the operation, the insurgents have been training in Pakistan for more than three months and came back to cause insecurity in the district and other parts of the province," he added.
The insurgents were involved in recent attacks on Afghan and Nato troops in the province in which dozens of "our several innocent residents lost their lives", Atifi said.
There were no casualties among the Afghan security forces, Nato or civilians during the operation, he said.
Isaf also mentioned the Alisheng operation in its operational update for Monday.
"An Afghan and coalition security force killed several armed insurgents during an operation to arrest a Taliban attack commander in Alisheng district, Laghman province, today. As the security force cleared the Taliban commander's suspected compound and secured the area, several armed insurgents fired upon the Afghan and coalition troops. The security force returned fire, killing the insurgents," it said.
Multiple insurgents were also detained, it said.
Joint forces also hit a group of insurgents in the same district with an airstrike on Sunday, killing "numerous armed insurgents", Isaf said.
The forces "identified multiple insurgents armed with assault rifles and one heavy machine gun maneuvering near their position" during an operation to capture a Taliban leader and called in the airstrike.
Meanwhile in the south, joint forces arrested a "Taliban attack coordinator" during an operation in Kandahar district, Kandahar province on Sunday, Isaf said.
"The attack coordinator is suspected of planning and directing multiple attacks throughout central Kandahar and is believed to have also plotted several assassination attempts against Afghan officials," it added.
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Pakistan Intelligence Should Be Blacklisted Alongside Haqqani: Analyst
TOLOnews.com By Sharif Amiry Sunday, 09 September 2012
Pakistan's intelligence agency should also be branded a terrorist group by the US Congress as it is supporting the Haqqani Network, Afghan military expert Noorulhaq Olomi said Sunday.
Olomi welcomed the addition of the militant Haqqani group to the US "black list", saying it will help to bring peace and stability in Afghanistan. However, he said Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, widely seen to support network, should also be added.
"Inclusion of this network into the blacklist will undoubtedly isolate Pakistan and is for the benefit of peace and stability in Afghanistan. But as ISI is continuing to support this group, it should also be included in US blacklist," Olomi told TOLOnews.
The US officially designated the Pakistan-based Haqqani Network, which is accused as being behind some of the most high-profile attacks in Afghanistan including those on the US Embassy in Kabul and the Qargha Lake hotel, a foreign terrorist organisation on Friday after months of debate over what impact it would have.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday that it means the US will move against the network wherever it is based in the world, including freezing any assets of the organisation.
Some observers said it may be an attempt to put more pressure on Pakistan to crack down on the network or risk having the US do it themselves. However, Pakistan's Embassy in the US said the matter was an internal affair of America.
Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Janan Mosazai said that Afghanistan sees the move positively.
"Blacklisting the Haqqani Network will decrease their activities in Afghanistan," Mosazai said.
However, the move appears to have angered the Taliban who are being courted by US and Afghan officials to negotiate for peace.
In a statement released Saturday, the Taliban said that there is no difference between the so-called Haqqani Network and the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan – as the Taliban calls itself.
"The honorable Mullah Jalaluddin Haqqani is a member of the Leadership Council of Islamic Emirate," it said of the Haqqani founder.
"America is trying to create and black list a separate entity in the organized and unified rank of Islamic Emirate while its biased media expound the same narrative," it added.
"The Islamic Emirate does not have any trade agreements with any American companies or individuals and neither does it have monetary funds there which could be frozen."
Meanwhile, Reuters reported a senior Haqqani commander saying that the US designation was counterproductive as it will make life more difficult for US troops in Afghanistan and that it will harm peace negotiations.
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