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AKHBAR TOLO    (TOLO News)

More Afghans turn to TOLO than any other news service as a source of reliable, impartial and accurate information.  TOLO offers the most reliable coverage and analysis of local and international events, presented by a dedicated team of experienced reporters based around the country.  TOLO NEWS, weeknights at 6:00pm.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

30 July 2012

 

 

 

FEATURE STORY

U.S. Says Afghans Abandoned Police Bases

 

 

BUSINESS

No articles featured today

NATION

Karzai Releases Anti-corruption Decree
Allies Rebuke Pakistan on Cross-Border Attacks
U.S. construction projects in Afghanistan challenged by inspector general’s report
U.S. Fund to Rebuild Afghanistan Is Criticized
Afghans in Pakistan face a perilous future
Taking tea with Afghanistan's most fearsome warlord, General Abdul Rashid Dostum
Former AISA Officials Call for Corruption Reform
In L.A., Afghan kids get healthcare, respite from war
A Day Job Waiting for a Kill Shot a World Away
CEO says Ariana Facing Major Challenges
Afghan construction way behind schedule: report
Afghan security forces dying at five times rate of Nato soldiers
Afghan laws banning lavish weddings proving hard to enact
Romney tries to distinguish Afghan policy from Obama
Afghan Media Watchdog Criticizes Karzai's Media Decree
‘US won’t blacklist Haqqanis for safe exit’
I Feel I Was Born in India: Afghan Filmmaker Atiq Rahimi
4 Insurgents Killed, 14 Others Injured in Afghan Offensive

PRESS RELEASES

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FEATURE STORY 

U.S. Says Afghans Abandoned Police Bases

Wall Street Journal
By NATHAN HODGE
July 29, 2012
WASHINGTON

Inspectors from a U.S. government watchdog agency discovered that several American-funded border police bases in Afghanistan have been largely abandoned or left unoccupied, raising questions about the coming hand-over of security duties to local forces.

Among other findings, inspectors found that one base, Lal Por 2, wasn't being used by Afghan border forces because it had no water supply, a report due out Monday states. A second, Nazyan, "may soon be uninhabitable" because of shoddy construction that caused sewage overflow.

All told, the new report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction found most of the facilities on three of the four bases that it inspected—each built to house 93 border police personnel—"were either unoccupied or weren't used for the intended purposes."

The disclosures shed new light on the U.S. investment in Afghanistan's security ahead of the planned withdrawal of most foreign troops by 2014. Creating capable and self-sufficient Afghan security forces is a cornerstone of the U.S. exit strategy. But the report points to questions about whether the U.S. is leaving behind working infrastructure that the Afghan government can sustain.

At issue is the construction of four Afghan border-police bases in eastern Nangarhar province, a key region that borders Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The region is home to a highway that forms a crucial military supply line and trade link to the Afghan capital.

The bases are among the many security facilities the Afghan government will inherit from U.S. and international donors after a decade of reconstruction work.

The U.S. inspection work, carried out between January and July, found extensive evidence of shoddy construction. Leaking fuel lines on generators created fire hazards; drainpipes weren't installed, causing water damage; and poorly installed doors wouldn't close. In one case, a well house at the Lal Por 1 base was being used as a chicken coop, "increasing the risk of sanitation and health issues," the report states.

The inspectors didn't examine whether the Afghan police units which were supposed to occupy the facilities were performing their jobs elsewhere.

All told, the value of the construction contract for the four bases was nearly $19 million. In a written response to a draft of the inspection report, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which awarded the base contract to Road & Roof Construction Co., an Afghan contractor, said it was working to fix the problems uncovered by inspectors.

But the Corps also said the precarious security in the country made it difficult for it to undertake spot checks on construction projects. The report says the bases are "located in extremely remote and predominately inaccessible sites."

Ahmad Jawaid Abdullah, an executive with Road & Roof Construction Co., said the firm was aware of reports of "minor deficiencies" at sites, but added that most of the problems were "not due to construction," but rather poor facility maintenance.

The Corps, Mr. Abdullah added, was aware of water supply problems on one of the bases, but said that alternatives—such as drilling a well at a separate location and pumping water to the site—had been identified. Mr. Abdullah said the wastewater system at the Nazyan site was functional.

Since the end of 2001, Congress has appropriated just under $90 billion for Afghanistan's reconstruction, of which about $52 billion has been allocated toward bankrolling and building up Afghan security forces.

The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or Sigar, was created in 2008 to track the billions of taxpayer dollars the U.S. has poured into Afghanistan for reconstruction projects. The organization got off to a rocky start, with the watchdog agency's original head forced to step down in early 2011 amid congressional questions about its effectiveness.

The White House recently named veteran prosecutor and congressional investigator John Sopko to lead the agency after the top post there was filled by acting heads for over a year.

Write to Nathan Hodge at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

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NATION

Karzai Releases Anti-corruption Decree

TOLOnews.com
Sunday, 29 July 2012

Officials or organizations that neglect Karzai's recently released government reforms will be punished, the Head of Presidential Justice Board, Nasrullah Stanikzai, said on Sunday. "Anyone who disobeys the law will be punished in accordance with Afghan laws," Stanikzai said at a press conference in Kabul on Sunday.

Several parties and various Afghan MPs have criticized the 23-page decree stating that Karzai should begin reform first from his own office.

In reaction to these criticisms, Stanikzai said that government would follow up on corruption cases anywhere under the executive order.

"If corruption exists in the Presidential Palace or in any other organization, the decree orders to fight against it."

He added that the Afghan parliament, Council of Ministers, and the Presidential Justice Board will monitor the implementation of the decree.

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Allies Rebuke Pakistan on Cross-Border Attacks

New York Times
By MATTHEW ROSENBERG and ERIC SCHMITT
July 29, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan

The American-led coalition on Sunday bluntly rebutted an assertion made last week by a senior Pakistani official that American forces had on 52 occasions done little over all to stop Pakistan Taliban militants from using Afghan territory as a springboard for attacks on Pakistani forces in the mountains along the poorly marked frontier.

The coalition statement was unusual in its directness. Even at the lowest points in relations between Pakistan and the United States, American officials in Afghanistan have usually left direct public criticism of Pakistan to more senior officials in Washington.

But with Pakistan increasingly trying to draw equivalence between Afghan Taliban havens in their own country and the presence of Pakistan Taliban factions in Kunar and Nuristan Provinces in northeastern Afghanistan, the coalition pushed back unequivocally on Sunday, offering a reminder of the fraught relationship that the United States and Pakistan are struggling to improve.

“Recent allegations that the Pakistani military has notified the International Security Assistance Force 52 times that insurgent elements were crossing the Afghan-Pakistan border are incorrect,” it said in a statement, using the coalition’s formal name.

“Whenever the Pakistani military has requested assistance, ISAF immediately dispatched the appropriate force to deal with the issue,” it added.

The coalition did not say how many times Pakistan had requested and received assistance, but American officials said the number was far fewer than 52.

Even in language that was phrased as conciliatory, the coalition statement managed to sneak in what Pakistani officials were likely to see as barbs. It noted that the two sides “shared interests” and then cited the need to move against the Haqqani network as an example.

The Haqqanis, a violent Taliban affiliate, are a shared interest only in the sense that they are a major irritant in relations. American officials have long accused Pakistan of supporting the group.

The Pakistani military’s unwillingness to move against the Haqqanis is one of the main reasons that American officials have been so rankled by Pakistan’s newfound eagerness to say it suffers equally from cross-border attacks.

The coalition’s statement on Sunday was the latest in a tit for tat that has pitted Afghanistan and the United States against Pakistan over how best to address what all three consider to be an intensifying threat: the use of northeastern Afghanistan’s remote valleys and cedar-studded mountains as a haven by competing Taliban factions, Al Qaeda operatives and other militants from South and Central Asia.

Responding to the coalition statement, Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, said, “There is no question of doubting the commitment on fighting terrorists from both sides.”

But Ms. Rehman, the official who first raised the 52 occasions at a conference on Friday in Aspen, Colo., added: “We have a critical problem of anti-Pakistan terrorist sanctuaries in Kunar and Nuristan. And we have communicated this at every level and at every opportunity.”

A second Pakistani official said that cross-border attacks from Afghanistan had become increasingly brazen and that Pakistan had, on numerous occasions in the past 18 months, passed along geographic coordinates from where it believed the attacks originated.

The Americans had also been given names of Pakistan Taliban commanders at the locations, including Maulana Fazlullah from the Swat Valley, the official said. He fled Pakistani military offensives and crossed the border as American forces pulled back from northeastern Afghanistan.

The official said the coalition had responded to most, if not all, of Pakistan’s reports of incursions.

The coalition responses, however, were fleeting and ineffective. “It’s not rocket science in how ISAF can assist us,” said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about security issues. “We have not seen anything go down that’s diminishing these attacks.”

Until recently, all three countries had largely kept the problems in northeastern Afghanistan out of the public debate. But a week ago Afghan officials loudly protested what appeared to be an unusually heavy rocket barrage on villages in Kunar, which has suffered sporadic cross-border bombardment in recent years.

The coalition joined in a few days later. Like the Afghans, it was careful to avoid directly blaming Pakistan for firing the rockets, though it implied that was the case.

Pakistan, for its part, denied firing on Afghan territory.

Then, on Friday, Ms. Rehman raised the 52 episodes during a tart exchange in Aspen with Douglas E. Lute, President Obama’s top adviser on Afghanistan and Pakistan, over what each of their countries was — or was not — doing to eliminate Taliban sanctuaries.

Matthew Rosenberg reported from Kabul, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.

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U.S. construction projects in Afghanistan challenged by inspector general’s report

Washington Post
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Monday, July 30, 2012

A U.S. initiative to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on construction projects in Afghanistan, originally pitched as a vital tool in the military campaign against the Taliban, is running so far behind schedule that it will not yield benefits until most U.S. combat forces have departed the country, according to a government inspection report to be released Monday.

The report, by the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, also concludes that the Afghan government will not have the money or skill to maintain many of the projects, creating an “expectations gap” among the population that could harm overall stabilization efforts.

“Implementing projects that the Afghan government is unable to sustain may be counter­productive” to the U.S. counterinsurgency mission, the inspector general wrote. “If goals are set and not achieved, both the U.S. and Afghan governments can lose the populace’s support.”

The study calls into question a fundamental premise of the U.S. strategy to counter the Taliban insurgency — that expensive new roads and power plants can be funded and constructed quickly enough to help turn the tide of war — and it poses a sobering, counterintuitive question for policymakers in Washington: whether the massive influx of American spending in Afghanistan is actually making problems worse.

Many U.S. military commanders, diplomats and reconstruction experts have long believed that large infrastructure projects were essential to fixing Iraq and Afghanistan. Now-retired Gen. David H. Petraeus, the former top commander in both wars who is now director of the CIA, used to say that cash was one of his most important weapons.

But the latest report adds new weight to the argument — voiced by independent development specialists and even a few government officials — that the United States attempted to build too much in a country with limited means to assume responsibility for those projects. All U.S. combat forces are expected to be withdrawn from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

Until now, most critiques have asserted only that the massive U.S. foreign assistance program has led to waste and fueled corruption. The new report goes further by suggesting that some projects may ultimately prove detrimental.

In a written response to the report, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul said it was “speculative” for the inspector general to conclude that some of the projects would have adverse effects. The top Pentagon official responsible for Afghanistan called the report premature and insisted that the announcement of the projects, even though they have not been completed, has generated goodwill and excitement among the Afghan people.

The inspector general’s examination focuses on the Afghan Infrastructure Fund, which was authorized by Congress in 2010 in part to prevent the Defense Department from dipping into a discretionary account for military commanders to bankroll large projects. The infrastructure fund was supposed to allow the Defense and State departments to collaboratively plan and pool money for large infrastructure improvements aimed at supporting the U.S. counter­insurgency campaign.

Since then, Congress has poured $800 million into the fund and the State Department has committed about $1 billion of its funds to related infrastructure programs.

Among the projects criticized by the inspector general is a plan to use costly diesel generators to provide electricity to residents of Kandahar, the country’s second-largest city, until the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers install a new hydropower turbine at a dam in the violence-plagued hills of neighboring Helmand province. Purchasing diesel to run the generators, which produce about 25 megawatts of electricity each — enough to power about 2,500 Afghan homes or small businesses — is projected to cost U.S. taxpayers about $220 million through 2013.

Senior U.S. commanders argued that increasing electricity through the “Kandahar Bridging Solution” would be an important part of the overall American military effort to beat back the Taliban in Kandahar province. Those commanders asserted that more power to operate lights, television sets and fans would please residents and lead many of them to throw their support behind the Afghan government.

But other civilian and military officials have questioned that logic. When U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Kenneth Dahl was the deputy commander of U.S. forces in Kandahar last year, he said he could not find any evidence that the additional electricity was yielding greater employment, stability or support for the government. “This is a bridge to nowhere,” he declared to his staff in 2011.

Back then, Dahl also noticed a disturbing disparity: The installation of the turbine at the dam, which will not occur for at least two more years, will produce significantly less power than the city receives from the generators. Since the Afghan government will not have the financial ability to buy diesel for the generators, that means the city’s power supply will inevitably ebb once the turbine is operational and U.S. funding for diesel ends.

That gap was seized upon by the inspector general. “While the Kandahar Bridging Solution may achieve some immediate [counter­insurgency] benefits because — as stated by USAID officials — ‘people like having their lights on,’ the U.S. government may be building an expectations gap that cannot be met in a timely manner,” the report states.

The inspector general’s report also questions whether a new $23 million road in Helmand province will have adverse effects because the Afghan government has not compensated landowners for the destruction of their property. In addition, the report reveals that four electricity projects — costing a total of more than $300 million from the infrastructure fund — have not yet been awarded to contractors, despite claims from the military and USAID that they will have important counterinsurgency benefits.

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), a frequent critic of Afghan reconstruction efforts, said the report raises fundamental questions about the strategic rationale of U.S. development programs in the war-torn nation. “There’s no data that shows these major projects have changed the security environment in the country,” she said. “We cannot just throw money at a country like this and expect it to have a good ending.”

In its response to the report, the U.S. Embassy defended the importance of large-scale development initiatives. “These critical infrastructure projects have signaled to Afghan populations the U.S. government’s long term commitment to Afghanistan.”

Although the United States has spent almost $90 billion on Afghan reconstruction and development over the past decade, such examinations traditionally had not been conducted by the special inspector general’s office, which was more interested in contracting waste and fraud. This report was approved by a new inspector, former federal prosecutor John F. Sopko, who took charge of the office this month. He has vowed to scrutinize how projects are conceptualized and designed, not just how they are implemented.

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U.S. Fund to Rebuild Afghanistan Is Criticized

New York Times
By MATTHEW ROSENBERG
July 30, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan

Two years ago, as the final pieces of the Obama administration’s troop surge were moving into place in southern Afghanistan, American officials identified a handful of infrastructure projects that they hoped would build popular support for the Afghan government in the Taliban’s heartland.

The Pentagon and State Department secured $400 million from Congress for what was christened the Afghanistan Infrastructure Fund and drew up plans for seven projects, five of them aimed at increasing the electricity supply in southern Afghanistan to light shops and power factories. The projects were to be completed by mid-2013, just as the NATO combat mission was to wind down.

Yet as the remaining surge forces prepare to leave Afghanistan, significant work on five of the seven projects has not yet begun and is unlikely to be completed until well after the NATO mission ends in 2014, according to a new report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, the government agency charged with documenting how billions of dollars in American reconstruction funds are being spent.

As a result, a program that was intended to bring soldiers and civilians together to buttress the Obama administration’s counterinsurgency strategy could end up undercutting it, according to the report, which is to be released Monday.

The difficulties the report describes provide insight into why the results of the surge have appeared ambiguous and the broader American-led reconstruction effort in Afghanistan has often foundered, despite the nearly $90 billion that Congress has appropriated for it over the past decade.

The American Embassy and military command in Kabul, in a joint statement, rebutted the report’s findings, saying that officials had engaged in a “rigorous process” of reviewing and refining the infrastructure projects.

The projects “have signaled to the Afghan population the U.S. government’s long-term commitment to Afghanistan,” the statement said.

The inspector general reached a starkly different conclusion: the potential help for counterinsurgency efforts envisioned by officials is “based on completed projects that are years away from completion.”

“If goals are set and not achieved, both the U.S. and the Afghan governments can lose the populace’s support,” the report added, echoing a concern that some senior American officials have expressed privately.

An American official in Kabul urged patience, saying that the Afghan government, with Western help, was learning how to maintain and operate what was being built, and that it would pick up where the United States left off in the coming years.

“Given the nature of what we’re trying to do here, we don’t expect to be going in one single, linear positive direction,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “It’s more like going up and down and backward a few steps and then forward a few more.”

Some of the difficulties with the Afghanistan Infrastructure Fund were to be expected in a war zone, but officials did not properly prepare for contingencies like the challenge and expense of running power lines through remote areas of southern Afghanistan where the Taliban is strong, the report said.

Other problems were the result of bureaucratic holdups in Washington. A separate power line project in eastern Afghanistan, for instance, had not been put up for bids as of February because the Pentagon was working out how to transfer the money to the State Department, which is to carry out the project through the United States Agency for International Development, the report said.

The Afghan government had little role in designing the projects or seeing the work through, the report said, though American officials in Kabul disputed this assertion.

Four of the five delayed projects involve building power lines; the fifth aims to construct provincial justice centers across the country.

As for the two projects that are roughly on schedule, both were begun under a different program, months before the infrastructure fund was created. They were then incorporated into the fund, which won Congressional financing in 2011.

One of them, the installation of diesel generators in Kandahar, was meant only to improve the city’s energy supply until the power line projects were finished.

The generator project was initially budgeted at $40 million. But because the power lines are so far behind schedule, it “is expected to cost $80 million in fiscal year 2012 and increase to $100 million in fiscal year 2013,” the report said.

Even then, the power lines might not be completed until September 2015, although some American officials say they could be ready by the summer of 2014, a year after the original completion date.

Once completed, it is unclear who will maintain the projects or pay for them — a problem that highlights how each part of the reconstruction mission affects the other.

“If you build a road, you also need to build a government that can keep the road passable,” another American official said, adding: “We’re not building good roads, and we’re not building a good government.”

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Afghans in Pakistan face a perilous future

Living in Pakistan has become increasingly difficult for refugees from the war-torn state.

Aljazeera
By Sanaa Alimia, Sanaa Alimia is a Teaching Fellow and PhD Candidate at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. Since 2010 she has been collecting oral testimonies of Afghans living in
Karachi, Peshawar and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa areas of Pakistan.
29 Jul 2012

Millions of Afghan refugees in Pakistan fear attempts to force them from homes in which some have lived for more than 30 years. They say they have dealt with discrimination and harassment at the hand of Pakistani authorities, who no longer "find them useful", and are anxious for them to face mass deportations before official residency permits expire at the end of this year.

Mass arrests and deportations already took place three years ago. Now individual arrests and deportations, as well as daily humiliations - seen through stop and searches, verbal and physical abuse, and requests for bribes - continue unabated, in what can only appear to be efforts to "encourage" continued repatriation - a policy that is in line with broader US-led aims of winning "hearts and minds" in Afghanistan through "reconstruction" efforts.

Many Afghans in Pakistan cannot return to Afghanistan and are in fact an integral part of Pakistan. However, once revered as the heroic "mujahid", Afghans in Pakistan are now constructed as the destructive "talib" - a complete 180-degree turn from the 1970s-90s, when Afghan migration was actively encouraged by Pakistan, the US and other international actors to defeat the Soviet "menace". Having a sizeable Afghan population in Pakistan, including militarised resistance groups, was strategically beneficial. One former engineer and mujahideen fighter from Kunar province, now a daily wage labourer, told me how Pakistani-sponsored announcements on local Afghan radio promised "free land in Pakistan for Afghans to settle on", and that "at that point, it was a big deal to be an Afghan refugee. We had recognition - we had the attention of the world on us".

Now the situation is starkly different. "[Why is] there is no legitimacy to our status? [Is it] because the war [in Afghanistan] is directed by the US?" the former fighter wondered. "Now these people say that our land is free so we should return [to Afghanistan] ...but we have been here for over 30 years!" As state relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan have deteriorated, so too has the status of Afghans in Pakistan.

Mass arrests and deportations

Surprisingly, little is reported about the shift of Afghan experiences in Pakistan. All too often commentators assume the hospitality that the Pakistani state engendered throughout the 1970s-90s has continued, albeit grudgingly because of the protracted burden on Pakistani state resources. However, the reality is more startling.

In 2009 and 2010 mass arrests and deportations took place, amid discussions of renewing identity cards. That experience has left many Afghans worried this could happen again in the coming months. One Afghan community elder in Karachi who works in the transport industry told me how "many of us were arrested in 2009. I went to a prison to try to bail people out and there were 210 people there, including women. They [the police] would look at our cards and say we had no right to be here. They would either be satisfied with a bribe or, for those of us that could not pay, we were arrested."

In another discussion with a man who has been living and working in Pakistan since 1982 with his family, he said: "There was a time last year [2010] when people were constantly being arrested, one elder had to go and get 150 people released who were arrested at one time. At another point, 40 people were taken! The police said, 'Pay us Rs 10,000, Rs 20,000 [approximately $100-$200] and you can go'. Who had this money?" For those who were deported to Afghanistan, many had no option but to return to Pakistan because of violence, lost land, and poor opportunities in Afghanistan. "I was deported," a trader living in Peshawar said, "but I had to come back. My brother and family are still here. It is difficult here, but it was worse for me there."

Legally speaking, Pakistan has become more stringent against Afghans. Only registered Afghans with a valid computerised Afghan Citizen Proof of Registration Card (PoR) are considered legal persons in Pakistan, of which there are 1.7 million, according to the UNHCR. The remaining 450,000 to 2.2 million, by a 2009 study's estimate, are unregistered and considered illegal immigrants. Even the PoR card, which was introduced in 2006-2007 and designed to last until December 31, 2009 before it was agreed to renew to 2012, will in fact not be renewed, according to Pakistani officials.

While education campaigns and government initiatives have stopped police from conducting mass arrests, discrimination and harassment continues. The "Global War on Terror" has itself transformed Pakistani cities into fortress towns, which affects all people living in Pakistan. For Afghans, it's much worse. At security checkpoints, now a permanent feature of the Pakistani landscape, identity cards are a must.

Perversely, this means that the PoR card, initially designed to ease "refugee management", has combined with increasing hostility towards Afghans to facilitate targeted humiliation. For those Afghans without a PoR card, usually the poorest of the poor, life is even tougher. In an interview with one such family, Abdul Qader, the main breadwinner, says he only moves within his neighbourhood for fear of being arrested. Often, even buying food is difficult. "Sometimes we eat the potato skins from local waste," he told me, sitting in his informally constructed house. For him and his family, return to Afghanistan is not an option, and now remaining in Pakistan is also problematic.

"The police say things like 'this is your tax'. It is a problem for us; without a card it [is] even more of an issue. We are fed up. If you have no card they hassle you. If you have a card they hassle you. If you need to go anywhere they hassle you. They harass you on your [daily] routes," said Abdul Qader.

Deteriorating Afghan-Pakistani state relations

One cannot help but suspect this targeted harassment is a side-effect of deteriorating Afghan-Pakistani state relations and an effective way of humiliating and disciplining the remaining Afghans in Pakistan - or even a tactic to "encourage" repatriation. Whatever the case may be, Afghans in Pakistan sure don't feel welcome anymore.

These experiences should not continue - nor should they remain ignored, silenced and forgotten by history. For Afghans who wish to return to Afghanistan, as many do, this national right and choice must be supported. However, the reality of a continued Afghan presence in Pakistan and of emerging transnational realities in the region cannot be ignored. The majority of Afghans who continue to live in Pakistan are an integral part of the fabric of the state. Many Afghans teach, research, are artists, run successful businesses, trade and work as labourers (which has shaped urban growth in the country).

Through solidarities of friendships and hospitality between Afghans and Pakistanis, the Afghan position in Pakistan has, on the whole, been without inter-community conflict. Many live in shared neighbourhoods, trade, work, marry and study together. One Afghan father in Peshawar notes how when his 15-year-old son was arrested by the police when playing cricket, simply by virtue of being Afghan, it was his son's friends, Afghan and Pakistani, who pooled money together to bail him out: "They all put together whatever they had and got him out of the police station. I did not even know until they told me afterwards".

These realities, and the importance of Afghans in Pakistan, must be acknowledged in practice and law. Afghan rights in Pakistan must be protected and improved.

Pakistan itself faces numerous challenges. It has a huge number of internally displaced persons, is facing crippling issues of power shortages and continues to be engaged in a cancerous alliance with the US in the ill-informed war in Afghanistan. Pakistan has also shouldered the weight of the refugee crisis, while the developed world has only ever tightened its own borders and immigration policies.

Yet this is no justification for the current attitude towards Afghans in Pakistan. The discrimination and humiliation that has played out on the bodies of Afghans to suit changing foreign policies and state-level rivalry between Afghanistan and Pakistan must end. And as discussions regarding the fate of Afghans in Pakistan continue, a repeat of 2009 must not be allowed to occur. This reality must now translate to Pakistani state practice and law.

Note: Names have been changed to protect individual identities.

Sanaa Alimia is a Teaching Fellow and PhD Candidate at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. Since 2010 she has been collecting oral testimonies of Afghans living in Karachi, Peshawar and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa areas of Pakistan.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

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Taking tea with Afghanistan's most fearsome warlord, General Abdul Rashid Dostum

In a rare interview, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, the powerful northern warlord who was a key US ally against the Taliban and threw his support behind President Karzai at the last election, gives an interview at his Kabul home.

Telegraph.co.uk
By Magsie Hamilton-Little in Kabul
29 Jul 2012

It is Friday – holy day – in Kabul. Near the checkpoint barrier a woman begs, her burka hiding her shame, but the only thing she receives is a spattering of dirt cast up by the passing trucks. The barrier lifts. Soldiers in dark green uniforms, rifles slung over their shoulders, wave me through. As I climb out of the car a thousand eyes burn into me, but I am careful not to return anyone’s gaze. Such brazen conduct from a foreign woman would be sure to get me into trouble.

Inside the house, in a marble room with a shiny new lift that wouldn’t look out of place in a Manhattan hotel, a man in a long gown greets me like a long-lost daughter. At six feet tall, he towers a good seven inches above me. I feel my legs wobble – his reputation is nearly as fearsome as his bushy moustache. He is General Abdul Rashid Dostum, Afghanistan’s most powerful warlord, head of the Uzbek tribe, unofficial ruler of the north, and, as the government’s chief of staff, commander of an army of over 25,000 men.

It is only when I tell myself I have nothing to fear that I remember the allegations that make your stomach turn and heart pound, such as the one about how, at Dostum’s command, women had been raped and their breasts cut off before they were killed during the siege of Kabul in 1991. Or the one that told how Dostum ordered two thousand Taliban prisoners to be asphyxiated in metal shipping containers and left to rot in the desert in 2001. Or how he is said to have treated his prisoners – tying them to the muzzles of cannons before firing them into the air. The General has always denied such widely made claims.

I know from experience how genial a host he is, having encountered him on my many previous visits to Afghanistan. A donation of books from my charity to his children’s foundation is a wonderful excuse for a get together to talk politics.

As we sit down to tea in his home, the General is unequivocal about the problems facing Afghanistan in the light of the withdrawal of foreign troops; David Cameron has said he wants to withdraw all combat troops by 2014.

What does the General think of the timing? “Most Afghans believe it is too soon,” he says fearing the country might disintegrate into chaos. I put it to him the comments I have heard from his own soldiers making up part of the Afghan army who complain that their equipment is inadequate. A common complaint is that the foreign armies are kitted out well (although some back home may beg to differ) whereas the Afghan army has their cast-offs. Their boots are falling apart, their helmets have holes.

Dostum is nodding gravely. “We are not ungrateful,” he insists, “but if you commit to any form of assistance, you must do it properly. You have a duty to do a good job.”

It is not just the poor equipment that leaves the Afghan army feeling despondent for the future security of their country. Many talk of a general lack of respect fuelled by events, however accidental or isolated, such as the Qur’an burnings this February – when US soldiers set alight religious texts – or tales of soldiers urinating on dead bodies. Such occurrences have turned many Afghans against those same foreign forces trying to help them.

“Why come here and insult our culture?” says Dostum. “Such events have only served to create an atmosphere of mistrust and anger. New recruits to the Afghan army have to be watched closely in case they are Taliban spies. Acts of disrespect from US troops only serve to strengthen the position of the Taliban and will have made it harder to work out a peaceful solution.”

I first came to Afghanistan after witnessing the bus bombing in London’s Tavistock Square on 7 July 2005. Having studied Islamic history at university, my rose-tinted world of Persian miniatures and Sufi poetry had been shattered by the first-hand experience of Islamic terrorism. To my mind, there were now big questions to be asked – and I wanted answers. Against the advice of friends and family, I packed my bags and bought a plane ticket to Kabul.

Luckily, the Afghans I met took pity on me. I was, of course, a woman; I was an infidel; and I was alone. My first time I stayed among the locals, venturing into the bazaars unchallenged, often donning a burka. Having expected the worst, I found the Afghans proud and strong, as kind as they were canny, and with a nobility that seemed to me to have been all too often lost in our own society. The generosity I had received from those who owned little more than the clothes they stood up in had moved me beyond words.

I had subsequently returned to Britain armed with an entirely new set of questions about the nature of terrorism, the war, and the cultural and religious divisions between our societies, along with a sense of responsibility. I wanted to do something that would help the Afghans that was peaceful and positive. Education was at the heart of what was needed for the long-term regeneration of Afghanistan. However, over 50 percent of the country’s children didn’t go to school at all and reading materials were a scarcity. So I set up a small charity printing books in Kabul for children with little or no access to schooling.

During that initial visit – and in my subsequent trips to the country – I have encountered drug dealers, feudal chiefs and Taliban sympathisers, men of influence whose track records are as murky as the toxic waters of Lake Quargha. In a country where corruption is so endemic it is said to be part of the constitution, I never once batted an eyelid. After all, no one else did.

So does the General believe the Taliban can ever be defeated? “Tell your government,” he roars, letting out a great belly laugh, moustache bristling, “that the Taliban amount to no more than around 9,000 individuals. We know who they are and where to find them. Given the order, I estimate it would take less than a year to destroy their ringleaders. I have said this on many occasions.”

Dostum’s despondency at the current leadership is surprising given that he helped bring President Karzai to power in the first place, backing him in the last elections. “After the troops withdraw, his days will be numbered,” he shrugs. “In Afghanistan we say he is half-Afghan, half-American because he spends so much time in that country and even owns businesses there.”

I hesitate to ask the General his view of what he thinks will happen to the rights of Afghan women in the future, especially given his own alleged track record.

Many women have told me how scared they are of the return to a Taliban-styled government, I say. Women are concerned Karzai will seek peace at any price, and if that means kowtowing to the Taliban on women’s rights, they will do so. “To ensure progress is made on all fronts, Afghan and US leaders must ensure women are actively involved in a settlement that protects the rights accorded to them in recent years.”

His reassurances offer some comfort, but the fact is that Afghanistan remains a very hard place to live as a woman. Despite incremental improvements following the US invasion that brought in new laws protecting women’s rights, oppression is still rife, particularly in the south. It is estimated that 87% of women suffer violence at home, and medical care is so poor that one woman dies every half hour in childbirth.

On the way down in the lift, the sense of apprehension I might previously have felt has all but evaporated as I realise I have survived the meeting unscathed. I ask the General if he has any ideas for a future leader, a Jeffersonian figure who could build the brave new Afghanistan so many of us have been praying for. Is there such a person? Maybe he even plans to stand for office himself, I suggest almost playfully.

He shakes his head firmly. He does not want the job, but it comes as no surprise that he has someone else in mind.

It is no less than I would expect from Afghanistan’s greatest deal-maker. Let’s hope it will be his best deal yet.

 Magsie Hamilton-Little is author of Dancing with Darkness: Life Death and Hope in Afghanistan, £8.99. All profits go to Little Books Afghanistan; www.littlebooksafghanistan.org

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Former AISA Officials Call for Corruption Reform

TOLOnews.com
Sunday, 29 July 2012

Former officials of the Afghanistan Investment Support Agency (AISA) who resigned over increased corruption in the organization met with Parliamentary representatives on Sunday.

‪ The Research and Policy Director, Mohammad Omar Joya, said that the officials resigned due to organization-wide corruption. AISA employees have accused the new General Director of the organization of monetary misuse.

‪The former employees went to the Commission on National Economy to speak about the issue with representatives. ‪

Although the Afghan President set-up a commission to investigate the claims of corruption, the officials who resigned after their allegations, are looking to Parliament to investigate. ‪

‪The former Director of Investment at AISA, Rohullah Ahmadzai, said that an investigation in relation to corruption at the organization is needed.

Speaking to the Commission on National Economy on Sunday, Ahmadzai said, "We want our Parliament to supervise our problem and our actions was for a national change. It was not for fame."

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In L.A., Afghan kids get healthcare, respite from war

Six Afghan children stay with Los Angeles-area families to receive medical attention and experience a different world — including summer camp and the ocean.

Los Angeles Times
By Weston Phippen
July 29, 2012

It doesn't matter what language the children speak. In the argot of their world, a ball is meant to be kicked, tossed or thrown.

And even though most of these six kids from Afghanistan had never seen the ocean close up, they could understand that it, too, was meant to be played with.

"The biggest impression I've got the last few weeks is that kids are just kids," said Matt Dixon, 37, whose family recently hosted one of the children, all of whom were in the U.S. for at least six weeks to receive medical care and enjoy a brief respite from war. The children visited Redondo Beach recently as part of a program run by Solace, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping pediatric patients. During their stay in the Los Angeles area, the children received free medical attention and had their eyes and teeth checked.

Most of the kids spent a week playing along the shore as part of Hammerhead Beach Camp. Hammerhead owners Bruce Kocsis and Jamie Bateman, who opened the camp in 1997 in Manhattan Beach, decided to join forces with Solace and donated a week at the new Redondo Beach location.

"I would love to do this every year," Bateman said.

The children played dodge ball at the camp with local youngsters, learned — or tried to learn — how to surf, kicked sand and didn't have to worry about the dangers in their war-torn homeland.

"Yeah. Yeah. We are best friends. We are good," Faisal, 12, said of the local kids at the camp. Solace, out of safety concerns, asked that the children be identified only by their first names.

Last year Solace sent Faisal to Florida for medical treatment — "There the water is warm and now it's a little bit cold," he said.

But he still dived in, wading with local children who rode the waves on their boogie-boards and were much stronger swimmers. Faisal was one of the last to leave the water when the camp counselor asked everyone to come back, as if trying to soak up every bit.

Faisal served as one of the unofficial translators because he's learning English at the school he attends in Kabul. He smiles but has a serious tone and stands with his hands together behind his back. He was in the program because of suspected heart problems — what turned out to be a small murmur. During his stay he also had his eyes checked.

"He definitely needed glasses," said Nicole Svendsen, Solace's L.A.-branch coordinator. "He has horrible eyesight."

This is Solace's eighth year running the program, but it's only been in the L.A. area for three years. The program manages 200 host families across seven states and boasts that for every $1 donation, doctors donate $10 of medical aid.

Dr. Joanna Wong, a Manhattan Beach pediatrician, said this was her second year donating free medical services. She looked over all six children, referring them to specialists who also donate their services.

"It really opens everyone's eyes to the resilience of the human spirit," Wong said, "and how lucky we are here in America."

Many of the kids are referred to Solace by U.S. troops — "They gave me a soccer ball and chocolate and soda. They are good," Faisal said — while others come here through Solace's Kabul office.

Faisal misses his family but said, "I think David is like my father in Afghanistan, so I don't miss them too much."

David Schmidt, Faisal's host, said this was his second year hosting. He and Faisal spent a lot of time playing soccer and various basketball games. Schmidt laughed as he remembered having to tell Faisal the goal wasn't to spell "horse" first.

Schmidt also remembers being surprised by how mature the 12-year-old was.

"What should we do to help Afghanistan?" he remembers asking Faisal. "Should we build schools or parks?"

Faisal told Schmidt that without peace in Afghanistan, there is no use for schools.

The terror of war is particularly evident in the case of 6-year-old Arefa.

She sees the microwave as a miracle, laughing in awe as it runs, her hosts Jami Valentine and Staci Freeman said. During a recent visit, Arefa is sitting in front of the TV, her head wrapped in a white bandage.

The news on TV sometimes sends her into a fit — when she sees soldiers or large guns, she tries to explain to her host parents in pantomime what happened to her, forming a gun with her hands and then pointing to her burned head and the patchwork of scars across her body. Freeman and Valentine, who are sisters, can only pick out the words Afghanistan and Pakistan, but they know what the girl is trying to explain.

U.S. troops found Arefa with her nomadic parents on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border and referred her to Solace. Apparently, an IED exploded near her family's encampment, and her family's tent burst into flames. Three years later she still has an open wound on her head.

The sisters wash the wound each day, and Shriners Hospital for Children in Los Angeles is donating the services and surgery for a skin graft. But the sisters worry that the physical pain is only half of what Arefa is dealing with.

"She has night terrors," Valentine said. "And so she'll wake up screaming and crying."

The sisters took the girl to the zoo, the beach, Disneyland — where Arefa laughed at everything, even standing in line, they said. They also took her to the movie theater, where Arefa opted to watch "Madagascar 3" through the space between two chairs; now she sings "I like to move it, move it" — a line from the movie.

Arefa will be here for six more weeks because of her wound; the rest of the children were to leave Monday. One of them is 8-year-old Kayhan, who needed major dental work. Six of his teeth had to be pulled and four others capped.

As Kayhan played dodgeball on the beach in Redondo, he ran hard after the ball, falling in the sand but jumping right back up.

"I'll be with him at the beach and there will be 10 other kids and he'll run up and say, 'Hi, my name is Kayhan,'" his host, Dixon, said. "And then he's got 10 more friends."

Dixon has no children of his own. He's a pilot who took off work for most of the six weeks to spend time with Kayhan. Later that day he and Schmidt planned to take Faisal and Kayhan to a Chivas soccer game.

And as much as the kids learned and gained from the beach, the medical care, from wandering into a local Target and being dumbfounded by its size, or the miracle of the microwave, the hosts agreed they'd gained something from the experience too.

"I think [I'll miss] the joy," Schmidt said. "The laughter in my home it brings to me and my wife."

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A Day Job Waiting for a Kill Shot a World Away

New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
July 29, 2012
HANCOCK FIELD AIR NATIONAL GUARD BASE, N.Y.

From his computer console here in the Syracuse suburbs, Col. D. Scott Brenton remotely flies a Reaper drone that beams back hundreds of hours of live video of insurgents, his intended targets, going about their daily lives 7,000 miles away in Afghanistan. Sometimes he and his team watch the same family compound for weeks.

“I see mothers with children, I see fathers with children, I see fathers with mothers, I see kids playing soccer,” Colonel Brenton said.

When the call comes for him to fire a missile and kill a militant — and only, Colonel Brenton said, when the women and children are not around — the hair on the back of his neck stands up, just as it did when he used to line up targets in his F-16 fighter jet.

Afterward, just like the old days, he compartmentalizes. “I feel no emotional attachment to the enemy,” he said. “I have a duty, and I execute the duty.”

Drones are not only revolutionizing American warfare but are also changing in profound ways the lives of the people who fly them.

Colonel Brenton acknowledges the peculiar new disconnect of fighting a telewar with a joystick and a throttle from his padded seat in American suburbia.

When he was deployed in Iraq, “you land and there’s no more weapons on your F-16, people have an idea of what you were just involved with.” Now he steps out of a dark room of video screens, his adrenaline still surging after squeezing the trigger, and commutes home past fast-food restaurants and convenience stores to help with homework — but always alone with what he has done.

“It’s a strange feeling,” he said. “No one in my immediate environment is aware of anything that occurred.”

Routinely thought of as robots that turn wars into sanitized video games, the drones have powerful cameras that bring war straight into a pilot’s face.

Although pilots speak glowingly of the good days, when they can look at a video feed and warn a ground patrol in Afghanistan about an ambush ahead, the Air Force is also moving chaplains and medics just outside drone operation centers to help pilots deal with the bad days — images of a child killed in error or a close-up of a Marine shot in a raid gone wrong.

Among the toughest psychological tasks is the close surveillance for aerial sniper missions, reminiscent of the East German Stasi officer absorbed by the people he spies on in the movie “The Lives of Others.” A drone pilot and his partner, a sensor operator who manipulates the aircraft’s camera, observe the habits of a militant as he plays with his children, talks to his wife and visits his neighbors. They then try to time their strike when, for example, his family is out at the market.

“They watch this guy do bad things and then his regular old life things,” said Col. Hernando Ortega, the chief of aerospace medicine for the Air Education Training Command, who helped conduct a study last year on the stresses on drone pilots. “At some point, some of the stuff might remind you of stuff you did yourself. You might gain a level of familiarity that makes it a little difficult to pull the trigger.”

Of a dozen pilots, sensor operators and supporting intelligence analysts recently interviewed from three American military bases, none acknowledged the kind of personal feelings for Afghans that would keep them awake at night after seeing the bloodshed left by missiles and bombs. But all spoke of a certain intimacy with Afghan family life that traditional pilots never see from 20,000 feet, and that even ground troops seldom experience.

“You see them wake up in the morning, do their work, go to sleep at night,” said Dave, an Air Force major who flew drones from 2007 to 2009 at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada and now trains drone pilots at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. (The Air Force, citing what it says are credible threats, forbids pilots to disclose their last names. Senior commanders who speak to the news media and community groups about the base’s mission, like Colonel Brenton in Syracuse, use their full names.)

Some pilots spoke of the roiling emotions after they fire a missile. (Only pilots, all of them officers, employ weapons for strikes.)

“There was good reason for killing the people that I did, and I go through it in my head over and over and over,” said Will, an Air Force officer who was a pilot at Creech and now trains others at Holloman. “But you never forget about it. It never just fades away, I don’t think — not for me.”

The complexities will only grow as the military struggles to keep up with a near insatiable demand for drones. The Air Force now has more than 1,300 drone pilots, about 300 less than it needs, stationed at 13 or more bases across the United States. They fly the unmanned aircraft mostly in Afghanistan. (The numbers do not include the classified program of the C.I.A., which conducts drone strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.) Although the Afghan war is winding down, the military expects drones to help compensate for fewer troops on the ground.

By 2015, the Pentagon projects that the Air Force will need more than 2,000 drone pilots for combat air patrols operating 24 hours a day worldwide. The Air Force is already training more drone pilots — 350 last year — than fighter and bomber pilots combined. Until this year, drone pilots went through traditional flight training before learning how to operate Predators, Reapers and unarmed Global Hawks. Now the pilots are on a fast track and spend only 40 hours in a basic Cessna-type plane before starting their drone training.

Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, the Air Force chief of staff, said it was “conceivable” that drone pilots in the Air Force would outnumber those in cockpits in the foreseeable future, although he predicted that the Air Force would have traditional pilots for at least 30 more years.

Many drone pilots once flew in the air themselves but switched to drones out of a sense of the inevitable — or if they flew cargo planes, to feel closer to the war. “You definitely feel more connected to the guys, the battle,” said Dave, the Air Force major, who flew C-130 transport planes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now more and more Air National Guard bases are abandoning traditional aircraft and switching to drones to meet demand, among them Hancock Field, which retired its F-16s and switched to Reapers in 2010. Colonel Brenton, who by then had logged more than 4,000 hours flying F-16s in 15 years of active duty and a decade in Syracuse deploying to war zones with the Guard, said he learned to fly drones to stay connected to combat. True, drones cannot engage in air-to-air combat, but Colonel Brenton said that “the amount of time I’ve engaged the enemy in air-to-ground combat has been significant” in both Reapers and F-16s.

“I feel like I’m doing the same thing I’ve always done, I just don’t deploy to do it,” he said. Now he works full time commanding a force of about 220 Reaper pilots, sensor operators and intelligence analysts at the base.

Pilots say the best days are when ground troops thank them for keeping them safe. Ted, an Air Force major and an F-16 pilot who flew Reapers from Creech, recalled how troops on an extended patrol away from their base in Afghanistan were grateful when he flew a Reaper above them for five hours so they could get some sleep one night. They told him, “We’re keeping one guy awake to talk to you, but if you can, just watch over and make sure nobody’s sneaking up on us,” he recalled.

All the operators dismiss the notion that they are playing a video game. (They also reject the word “drone” because they say it describes an aircraft that flies on its own. They call their planes remotely piloted aircraft.)

“I don’t have any video games that ask me to sit in one seat for six hours and look at the same target,” said Joshua, a sensor operator who worked at Creech for a decade and is now a trainer at Holloman. “One of the things we try to beat into our crews is that this is a real aircraft with a real human component, and whatever decisions you make, good or bad, there’s going to be actual consequences.”

In his 10 years at Creech, he said without elaborating, “I’ve seen some pretty disturbing things.”

All of the pilots who once flew in cockpits say they do miss the sensation of flight, which for Colonel Brenton extends to the F-16 flybys he did for the Syracuse Memorial Day parade downtown. To make up for it, he sometimes heads out on weekends in a small propeller plane, which he calls a bug smasher.

“It’s nice to be up in the air,” he said.

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CEO says Ariana Facing Major Challenges

TOLOnews.com
Sunday, 29 July 2012

President Hamid Karzai has issued a pardon of the state-owned Ariana Afghan Airline's loans, its Chief Executive Officer, Nasir Ahmad Hakimi, said on Sunday.

Speaking at the Economic Committee of Parliament, Mr Hakimi said that the Defense, Transport and Aviation and the Hajj Ministries borrowed the loans under Ariana Afghan Airlines.

Hakimi said that, "several high-ranking government officials and competing companies are trying to harm the airlines."

In spite of the pardoned loans and trouble from competitors such as Safi Airways and KamAir, the airline intends to purchase planes from Pamir Airways, which costs over $23m.

The CEO expects the current challenges to be tackled within six months.

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Afghan construction way behind schedule: report

AFP
July 30, 2012
Afghanistan

New US government report has found major reconstruction projects in Afghanistan are so behind schedule they will not yield results before most combat troops leave, The Washington Post said Monday.

The daily said the report by the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, due to be released Monday, also states that the Afghan government will not have the money or skills to maintain many of the projects.

"Implementing projects that the Afghan government is unable to sustain may be counter­productive" to the US counterinsurgency mission, the inspector general is quoted as saying.

"If goals are set and not achieved, both the US and Afghan governments can lose the populace's support."

The analysis examines the Afghan Infrastructure Fund, which was authorized by Congress in 2010, the paper said. Over the past two years, Congress has invested $800 million into the fund, and the State Department has committed about $1 billion of its funds to related infrastructure programs.

The report comes as NATO countries have already started to withdraw their 130,000 troops after more than 10 years of war and ahead of a 2014 deadline for an end to combat operations.

According to The Post, the report suggests that Washington may have attempted to build too much in a country with limited maintenance resources.

Meanwhile, the US Embassy in Kabul called the document "speculative," the paper said.

(Follow timesofoman.com on Facebook and on Twitter for updates that you can share with your friends.)

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Afghan security forces dying at five times rate of Nato soldiers

Afghan security forces are dying at five times the rate of Nato soldiers as Taliban insurgents step up attacks ahead of the withdrawal of foreign troops in 2014, the latest figures show.

Telegraph.co.uk
29 Jul 2012

A total of 853 Afghan soldiers and police were killed in the past four months, government figures show, compared with 165 Nato troops, according to a tally kept by the website icasualties.org.

President Hamid Karzai warned in May that the Afghan death toll would increase as the US-led troops start withdrawing and hand increasing responsibility for security to Afghan forces.

Both NATO'S International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Afghanistan's interior ministry have noted a surge in attacks in recent months since the start of the Taliban's annual summer offensive.

The month of June alone saw the highest number of attacks in nearly two years, with more than 100 assaults a day across the country, including firefights and roadside bombings, the US-led coalition said.

Sediq Seddiqi, an interior ministry spokesman, said at the weekend that there had been a surge in casualties suffered by police in the past four months, with 635 killed and 1,246 wounded.

The upturn comes as Nato countries have already started to withdraw their 130,000 troops after more than 10 years of war and ahead of a 2014 deadline for an end to combat operations.

Source: AFP

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Afghan laws banning lavish weddings proving hard to enact

Reuters
By Rob Taylor
29/07/2012
KABUL

A law curbing the spiralling costs of lavish Afghan weddings is proving difficult to enact, with many lawmakers opposed to legislation meant to contain crippling marriage bills in one of the world's poorest countries, a top government adviser said.

Since U.S.-backed Afghan forces ousted the austere Islamist Taliban in 2001, Afghans have revived the tradition of holding extravagant weddings, costing thousands of dollars, in a country where the average annual income is less than $400.

But after complaints from the families of grooms, who are expected to foot the bill and agree to every request of the bride and her family, the government has been working on new laws capping the number of guests at around 300 people.

"There was an idea in the Ministry of Justice to regularise that, to bring some kind of discipline, so that the family of the bridegroom does not suffer that much," said the ministry's top adviser Mohmmad Qasim Hashimzai.

"But then some people expressed opinions - especially some experts - that it was a private issue, that we should not intrude in the private business," he said.

Hundreds of guests attend Afghan weddings held in luxurious halls or in hotels, with clothing, food and music driving up costs with brides inviting the entire community to celebrations.

The government's bid to regulate the size of celebrations follows a ban last year on expensive weddings and dowries introduced by district governments in some areas to encourage young people to marry instead of postponing their nuptials due to spiralling costs.

The national government has since sought to introduce similar laws curbing expensive weddings across the country.

Parts of the law would also crack down on sleeveless dresses worn by women or other designs thought too revealing by religious conservatives.

Critics said the laws were a reversal for women's rights harking back to the Taliban period when weddings were monitored to ensure they did not breach hardline Islamic values including a ban on music.

Hashimzai said there had been significant opposition to the proposed law within President Hamid Karzai's cabinet.

"If the parliament approves it, it may go through. But there are lots of people who've expressed an opinion ... that it should not go through deeply in private matters, as weddings are a private issue," he said.

And practically, Hashimzai said, the laws would be near impossible to enforce even if they were introduced, as it would require the government to somehow attend every wedding and count guests, as well as judge costs.

"Do we need a policeman to go and stand over there?" he said. "I suppose some people may go to the family of the bride and say there is a rule and you cannot ask us to invite more that 300 guests. There will be some leverage. But I think it will be very difficult to control it."

(Reporting by Rob Taylor; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

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Romney tries to distinguish Afghan policy from Obama

Associated Press
July 29 , 2012
WASHINGTON

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is trying to distinguish his Afghan policy from that of President Barack Obama.

Romney tells ABC News in a Sunday interview that he supports Obama’s plan to pull U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. But he doesn’t agree with Obama’s plan to order 23,000 troops out by Sept. 30, a timeline some military experts warn could complicate next year’s efforts to stabilize the war-torn country.

The former Massachusetts governor says his position could change depending on the counsel of military commanders. He says he’s leaving open the possibility of keeping combat troops in Afghanistan beyond 2014 should conditions change.

Romney is in Israel as part of his first overseas trip as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

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Afghan Media Watchdog Criticizes Karzai's Media Decree

TOLOnews.com
Sunday, 29 July 2012

The Afghan Media Watchdog Nai criticized the recent decree issued by President Karzai regulating and limiting state-owned and private media, calling it another step to undermine freedom of speech in the country.

Speaking at a press conference in Kabul, the head of the media watchdog organization, Sediqullah Tawhidi, said that government is no longer interested in supporting free media and freedom of speech in the country

The decree has ordered the Afghan Ministry of Information and Culture to control the quality and impose standards and limitations on state-owned and privately owned media.

"Once again, they [the Afghan government] have shown that free media and freedom of speech is intolerable for many government officials." Tawhidi said.

The Nai CEO, Abdul Mujib Khelwatgar, believes that no authority should impose restrictions on freedom of speech.

"The Afghan constitution protects freedom of speech. How can the president order the Ministry of Information and Culture to control the words of the people?" Khelwagar said to TOLOnews.

Freedom of speech is considered to be one of the major achievements of the Afghan government in the past decade.

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‘US won’t blacklist Haqqanis for safe exit’

The Nation
By Maqbool Malik
July 30, 2012
ISLAMABAD

Despite repeated accusation of terrorism the US will not declare the Haqqani Network a terrorist entity, not in the interest of peace and stability in the region but for the safe exit of its troops from Afghanistan.

Background discussions with diplomats and security analysts suggest that US is currently in contact with the Haqqani Network to secure guarantees that they would stop targeting the US troops in Afghanistan.
“Pakistan would not react even if the US declares the Haqqani Network a terrorist organisation but would want that all the Afghan resistance groups including the Haqqanis are pushed into the peace process,” a senior Pakistan diplomat told The Nation.

He was of the view that Haqqanis, being Afghan citizens, operate from within Afghanistan and they have no presence in Pakistan. Pakistan supports Afghan-owned and Afghan-led peace and reconciliation process and is committed to facilitate it to make it fruitful process, he added.

Some foreign policy experts and security analysts believe that Pakistan do not have much leverage when it comes to Haqqanis as they operate independently. But they said that “like other resistance groups, including Afghan Taliban, Haqqanis are equally key stakeholders in Afghanistan”.

They believe that it is a complex situation where besides al-Qaeda, Afghan Taliban and other resistance groups like Haqqanis were operating in Afghanistan. They questioned the intention and combat capacity of Afghan and US-led forces in sorting out non-state entities like these and their continued accusations against Pakistan, which itself is victim of terrorism.

“The US-led foreign troops together with Afghan security forces should have overcome this challenge by now. But their policies’ ineptness, partly because of their political compulsions, has rendered them ineffective,” a security analyst who wished not to be named maintained.

Pakistan they believe has been doing it best to contain the defunct TTP and its remnants who always find refuge in Pak-Afghan border whenever Pakistani security forces launch operations. In return, the TTP and its Afghan associates have been mounting fatal attacks on Pakistani security forces from across the border.

“Therefore, there is a greater need for a meaningful reconciliation process in Afghanistan to resolve this problem collectively,” sources said, adding that measures like counter terrorism or military solutions would not help in establishing lasting peace and stability.

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I Feel I Was Born in India: Afghan Filmmaker Atiq Rahimi

Outlook
Jul 29, 2012
New Delhi

French-Afghan writer-filmmaker Atiq Rahimi says he makes it a point to visit India every year because he thinks he shares a mystic connection with the country.

The 50-year-old, who is famous for his novel Earth and Ashes which was later made into a movie directed by him, says India gives him solace and he feels he was born here.

"I sometimes feel my roots are here, I share this connection with India which I don't understand what it is. I feel I was born here, raised in Afganistan and now living in France. I find peace here," said Rahimi, who was in the Capital to attend the 12th Osians Film Festival.

The filmmaker says he is a huge fan of Hindi films and likes to watch them like any other Indian fan. Rahimi is also trying to collaborate with Bollywood artists to make a movie.

"I love Bollywood and Hindi films. I am a huge fan of Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra and Shah Rukh Khan. I have two projects for which I am trying to get in Bollywood actors but it has been delaying cause of financial matters. I hope I make a film soon," he added.

Rahimi says, like him, there are many people in Afghanistan who are crazy about Bollywood films and Indian TV shows.

"We have screenings of TV series and Hindi films there and people there love to watch them. The hall is always packed and we also have serials being telecast on TV," he said.

Rahimi talked about the change in attitude of people in Afghanistan towards cinema and how the younger generation is trying to look beyond subjects of war and plight of women in the country.

"We have about 100 films being made every year and it is not only about war and women issues. The younger breed of filmmakers is looking beyond that and is focusing on the culture and nature of the country.

"There are times when certain organisation who fund the film ask the director to make it on war only, but the younger lot is smart, they take the money but make the film on what they want to," Rahimi added.

He insisted that the major problem the country faces is lack of avenues for artists.

"We don't have film-making schools or academies. We don't even have studios, so that is a major problem. Also there is no platform to show Afghan movies outside, to bring in international market," he said.

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4 Insurgents Killed, 14 Others Injured in Afghan Offensive

TOLOnews.com
Sunday, 29 July 2012

At least four insurgents were killed and 14 others were wounded in a joint Afghan and Isaf operation in eastern Paktia province on Saturday, local officials said.

Two Afghan policemen also were wounded during the offensive.

The operation was conducted in the Komal district of the province after intelligence suggested a number of insurgents were planning an attack on a security checkpoint, the provincial governor's office said in a statement.

"The men came form outside the district," the statement said.

No civilians were harmed during the operation, it added.

Paktia province borders Pakistan and insurgents frequently target local security checkpoints.

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