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Roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan kills police chief, 2 bodyguards
By Associated Press, Published: November 7
KABUL, Afghanistan — A roadside bomb killed a district police chief and his two bodyguards in a restive southern province in the second attack in as many days targeting local authorities in Afghanistan, police officials said Monday.
The roadside bomb in Helmand exploded as Mohammad Saifullah, the police chief in the province’s Garm Ser district, was driving by Sunday night, said Helmand provincial police chief Mohammad Hakim Angar. All three men were killed by the blast.
The province is one of Afghanistan’s most violent, and sits in the heart of the Taliban’s traditional stronghold in the south.
Security responsibilities in Helmand’s capital have already been handed over to Afghan forces by NATO, as part of the U.S.-led coalition’s plan to withdraw its combat troops from the country by the end of 2014. Two other districts in the province are being recommended for an upcoming second phase of handovers, but Garm Ser is not among them.
The police official’s death comes a day after a suicide bomber blew himself up among worshippers concluding prayers on the first day of a main Islamic holiday, killing seven people including two local police officials, in the northern province of Baghlan. A second would-be suicide bomber was captured before detonating his explosives.
The attacks are part of the insurgency’s strategy of targeting Afghan government and security officials, and raise questions about Afghan security forces’ ability to take on the Taliban by themselves after NATO withdraws its combat forces.
The U.S.-led coalition has said it has made significant gains in curtailing the Taliban’s strength.
The coalition’s push in the south of the country, the Taliban’s traditional stronghold, has to a degree lessened the violence. But it has also pushed them to other parts of the country where attacks had been less common.
In the eastern province of Nangarhar’s Behsud district, a combined Afghan and NATO force killed one Afghan and wounded another during an operation targeting a Taliban facilitator who provided logistical support and weapons to insurgents in the area, NATO said in a statement Monday. Two suspected insurgents were detained. The statement did not make clear whether the man killed was a suspected insurgent.
Afghanistan’s eastern border with Pakistan is a particular source of concern for NATO. The area is rife with militant activity, including the al-Qaida and Taliban-linked Haqqani network that operates from what Afghan and coalition officials say are safe havens in Pakistan.
Also in the east, NATO said an Afghan male was shot dead by a joint coalition-Afghan force after he failed to comply with orders and “displayed hostile intent toward the security force.” The incident occurred as the troops were searching for a Haqqani facilitator in Badakshan province’s Argo district, NATO said.
Six militants killed in S. Afghanistan
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Nov. 7 (Xinhua) -- Afghan National Police (ANP) have killed six militants in the country's Kandahar province, the provincial government said on Monday.
"ANP, during routine patrol, spotted six armed militants, including an Afghan and five Pakistani nationals, when they were planting mines and Improvised Explosive Device (IED) along a road in Sayahchoi village of Zhari district Sunday night," the provincial government said in a statement.
Police also seized a handful of weapons near the scene, it added.
The Taliban-led insurgency has been rampant since the militant group announced spring offensive from May 1 against Afghan and NATO-led troops stationed in Afghanistan.
Taliban insurgents, who have often attacked Afghan and NATO-led forces with IEDs and roadside bombs, have yet to make comments.
Kandahar, the birthplace of Taliban, has been experiencing increasing militancy over the past couple of years despite continued military operations since the middle of last year.
Property prices plunge after Kabul violence
By Bilal Sarwary BBC News, Kabul 7 November 2011
The recent string of deadly attacks in Kabul has hit another key area of Afghanistan's capital - the value of its property.
Insurgents in the past four months have demonstrated their ability to strike at will in the city, once considered a relatively safe zone in this violence-marred nation.
The growing violence has forced traders and businessmen to postpone or even abandon their plans to expand economic activities in the city.
Residents, doubtful of the ability of Afghan security forces to protect them, are also making discreet inquiries to sell off their houses and move to the outskirts.
This has led to a crash in the prices of commercial and residential properties in the city.
'Oxygen of trade'
"There are no buyers in the real estate market," says Sher Shah Ahamadzai, a 42-year-old estate agent in Kabul.
Mr Ahamadzai says that is the case even though most properties in exclusive residential areas are now available for huge discounts.
"Before the attack on the Intercontinental hotel [in August], a 1,080 sq ft plot in the plush Wazir Akbar Khan district was going for $160,000 (£101,500).
"The owner has now slashed the price to $145,000 (£91,962). Still there are no buyers," Mr Ahamadzai said.
"Security is the oxygen of trade."
Mr Ahamadzai said there had been attacks in the city before, but they were seen as an exception.
Insurgents have become more organised and more determined to strike the city now. And that is what is making people nervous and jittery.
"Six months ago, I sold a business complex in Wazir Akbar Khan for $4.2m (£2.6m). The owner wants to re-sell it now for $3m (£1.9m)," he said.
'Stab in the heart'
Inhabited by Western diplomats, international aid organisations and affluent Afghans, Wazir Akhbar Khan is considered to be a relatively secure area in Kabul.
"If this is the state of the [property] market here, you can imagine what will be happening in other, not so privileged areas," Mr Ahamadzai added.
One Afghan trader said real estate prices had fallen by 5% in just one month since the Intercontinental attack.
He said that besides the violence, continued uncertainty over US troop withdrawals had also affected property prices.
"The market in Kabul is determined not just by attacks. The question of US bases, troop withdrawals and rumours surrounding them is also harming the market," the trader said.
"I have lost $2m in the last four months buying property. If security improves, I may make up for my losses, but most likely I might not," he said.
Property dealers in the neighbouring Share Naw district say the market is flat and they are struggling to make ends meet.
"I was about to sign the sale deed for a house for $200,000 (£126,830). The buyer didn't agree over some conditions in the contract.
"I told him that we would sleep over it and discuss it the next day."
But the next day the US embassy was attacked.
The buyer returned to Dubai in the evening without signing the papers. I am ready to sell the house now for $150,000," he said.
"Every attack stabs commerce right in the heart."
'Safe in a bank'
Property dealer Haji Baqi - who owns a currency exchange shop in Kabul's main Shahzadah market - said he had lost nearly $300,000 (£191,500) in the past four weeks.
"Investors are like birds. If you fire at them, they will all fly for their own safety. Suicide attacks are scaring investors," he said.
"Within an hour of a big attack, we witness a major fluctuation in the currency market."
Most Afghan traders are withdrawing their money from Kabul and investing it in Dubai, Ukraine and Central Asian countries.
Haji Baz Mohammad is one of them. Mr Mohammad was running a business worth $5m importing wheat, sugar and cooking oil. But he decided to sell his assets and invest his money in Dubai and China instead.
"My money is now safe in a bank. I have insurance and I work in a stable market. In Afghanistan, I always ran the risk of losing all the money," Mr Mohammad said.
The authorities agree that the situation has got worse and warn that it will get even more unstable before getting any better.
"There will be similar attacks targeting Kabul. It will have an impact on trade," a senior adviser to President Hamid Karzai said.
"Security is the key for trade but also to stable life in Afghanistan."
However, there are some traders like Mr Ahmadzai who are determined to stay put in Afghanistan.
"After the attack on US embassy, my friends asked me to leave Kabul and invest my money in Dubai or somewhere else. Even my brothers said the same. But I have refused and will do so in future also," he said.
"In business, sometimes you lose and sometimes you earn. It is nothing new for me. I want to invest in my own country."
Price crash hits Afghanistan capital Kabul's 'poppy palaces'
The Australian By Jerome Starkey November 07, 2011
IF it weren't for the tank traps and grey blast-walls, the extravagant mansions in Kabul's most expensive neighbourhood would not look out of place in a fairytale.
Ornately gilded pillars hold up pastel-hued balconies; brightly coloured domes crown mosaic walls made of mirrored tiles.
Yet Sherpur district, which 130 years ago hosted General Frederick Roberts's cantonment during the Second AngloAfghan war, is anything but magical.
Most of the homes were built by Afghanistan's corrupt political elite on land stolen from the poor and the state in 2003.
While some in the international community objected, others, including mercenaries, embassies, the UN and television journalists, scrambled to pay tens of thousands of dollars in rent, and moved in.
Since then, the massive concrete homes have become a symbol of the corruption within President Karzai's regime and of the Western money which fuelled it.
"Every time I pass by I feel like the buildings are laughing at me," said Nader Naderi, the spokesman for the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission who led an outcry in 2003 when warlords first sent in the bulldozers to evict the refugee families living there.
"Those who commit crimes, particularly the powerful against the poor, they feel immune. These are unique symbols of impunity."
However, as the tide of Western money starts to recede, the fairytale houses, known as "poppy palaces" because of the suspicion that they were built with the proceeds of opium smuggling, are suffering a distinctly real-world price crash.
Owners and estate agents interviewed by The Times said that house prices had plunged by up to 40 per cent in the past six months and rents in some cases had dropped even faster.
Dozens of homes are empty.
Some blame President Obama's announcement in June that American troops would start withdrawing this year.
Others point to President Karzai's decision to drive private security companies out of the city centre. Most spoke nostalgically of "money-is-no-object" tenants, who billed eye-watering rents straight back to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) before its budget was slashed this year.
Richard Scarth, a British chartered surveyor who part-owns a property company in Kabul, said rents were softening, but insisted that "good quality poppy palaces are still in demand". Sales had stalled while landowners "wait and see", he said.
The rent for one 14-bedroom house had dropped from dollars $18,000 a month to $9000.
Another, with 20 bedrooms and 11 bathrooms, chandeliers and an underground saferoom, had been vacant for five months and had fallen from $16,000 a month to $10,000.
"You would have powerful neighbours," said the estate agent Feda Mohammed as he pointed over the razor wire and the sniper screens crowning another compound's 3m walls.
"That is the Ministry of Interior's house; he has lots of guards. There is an American construction company and that's the Spanish Embassy."
About 160 families who survived the landgrab still live in simple mud homes in Sherpur, but the Government has refused to give them official title deeds, according to Sayed Mohammad, a local elder.
"It hasn't happened quickly because we refuse to pay any bribes," he said.
One resident, Abdul Ghayu, said his family was constantly harassed by a senior general in the Ministry of Interior.
"He is part of the land mafia, he is rich and powerful, but God willing, we will resist him," he said.
Others are less optimistic. "If the foreigners leave, the warlords will just take our land," said Mohammad Gul, a shopkeeper. "Otherwise the Taliban will come back and the fighting will start again."
The Times
Ordinary Afghans Voicing Increasing Distrust Of Pakistan's Intentions
RFE/RL By Abubakar Siddique November 06, 2011
Afghans are putting their anger over Pakistani policies regarding their country on full display.
Protests have been staged by Afghan youths objecting to statements made by Pakistani public figures. And Afghanistan's media and civil society have moved to the forefront to resist perceived efforts by their eastern neighbor to fill the vacuum as the West looks to exit their country.
Combined, they help capture the public mood and uneasiness about Pakistani intentions on their soil, even as the two countries' presidents -- Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai and Pakistan's Asif Ali Zardari -- cite progress in restoring trust, as they did during a face-to-face meeting in Istanbul on November 1.
In the eastern city of Jalalabad, located about 50 kilometers from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, hundreds of youth activists gathered on October 30 to protest recent statements made by former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and pro-Taliban Islamist leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman.
Musharraf, who was ousted from the presidency in 2008 and now lives in exile in London, made his controversial remarks before a think-tank audience in Washington on October 26.
"Afghanistan always has been anti-Pakistan because the Soviet Union and India have very close relations in Afghanistan," he said. "So we must not allow this to continue because then one must not [be]grudge if Pakistan orders the ISI [the country's Inter-Services Intelligence agency] to take countermeasures to protect its own interests."
Promoted Violence
Statements made in Peshawar on October 23 by Rehman, the leader of Pakistan's conservative Jamiat Ulama-e Islam party, came under fire because he promoted violence in Afghanistan by the Afghan Taliban, even as he denounced violence in Pakistan by the Pakistani Taliban.
For their statements, Musharraf and Rehman were characterized as hypocrites and accused of fanning conflict in Afghanistan and of looking out only for Pakistani interests.
Saifur Rehman Abid, a local leader, received strong backing as he read out a unanimous resolution the gathering adopted during the October 30 gathering.
"The elected federation of the youth and the Nangarhar Youth Shura [council] strongly condemns the latest statements of former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Maulana Fazlur Rehman about Afghanistan," Abid said. "Afghanistan is an independent country and has a right to sign strategic pacts with any country to preserve its national interests."
'Interfering Openly'
The Afghan media have been quick to criticize such comments, as well.
Kandahar-based analyst Mohammad Omar Sathey says opinion makers and tribal leaders now consider Pakistani interference a key factor for instability in their country since the Soviet invasion in 1979.
"Our civil society, intellectuals, and the public knows that Pakistan is interfering openly," Sathey said. "They think that instability and war in Afghanistan is a source of income for Pakistan because it attracts international help in the name of fighting the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. It also has convinced the international community that its influence inside Afghanistan is the key to resolving the problem there."
Such perceptions are further strengthened by what Afghans see, hear, and read in the Pakistani media about their country.
Aqeel Yousafzai, a Peshawar-based columnist, says that during the past two decades Pakistani media have created a perception that Kabul needs to toe Islamabad's line. Few Pakistani journalists ever report from Afghanistan, despite the fact that Afghan issues often dominate Pakistani news bulletins.
"Overall, the media's role has remained negative," Yousafzai said. "The print and electronic media, the magazines, and the books published in Pakistan still treat Afghanistan as Pakistan's fifth province. Their coverage creates an impression that Afghanistan needs to follow on whatever Pakistan wants it to do."
Afghan politician and popular TV presenter Daud Sultanzoi says that Afghan perceptions of Pakistan can only change if they see a genuine transformation of Islamabad's outlook about their country.
"Pakistan should accept the fact that Afghanistan is not its puppet state," Sultanzoi said. "Another important prerequisite is that a civilian government in Pakistan controls its strategic direction, including control over its military and intelligence services."
RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan contributed to this report
Editor's note: After Afghanistan, new ways of remembering
Globe and Mail Sunday, Nov. 06, 2011
Friday marks the first Remembrance Day since the end of this country’s decade-long combat mission in Afghanistan. More than 55,000 Canadians have served there since 2001, the largest deployment since the Korean War.
Nov. 11 is always an occasion for reflection, a sanctioned, sober time to consider who and what was lost in conflict. But this year presents a unique opportunity to take stock of how a new generation of veterans and their loved ones are reshaping the very notion of remembrance.
Today, The Globe and Mail begins a conversation about how Canadians remember – a series of stories, fragments, photographs and documents submitted by veterans and their families. Together, they speak to the enduring, and evolving, nature of collective and personal memories.
For many of us, a veteran has always been a member of a different generation: a parent, grandparent or great-uncle. As their numbers dwindle, we increasingly remember their sacrifices through the stories, pictures and artifacts they leave behind. This week, our readers share some of these mementoes: a cloth postcard from a Cape Breton miner serving on the Western Front during the First World War; the diary of an Ontario soldier in post-D-Day France; a message home from a Winnipeg man held as a prisoner of war by the Japanese army, recorded on a crude cardboard disc.
Afghanistan veterans, by comparison, are younger. They are often our brothers and sisters, our friends, our cousins, our children. Our knowledge of their experiences comes from a more immediate memory. Today, you’ll hear from a combat engineer who has a special request for all of us on Nov. 11. Later this week, from one of the first and last Canadian soldiers to be injured in Afghanistan, and from an infantryman who still doesn’t think of himself as a veteran.
In the 1910s and 1940s, entire generations came of age in the crucible of war. After Afghanistan, these experiences belong to a small group of people, all veterans by choice.
But in listening to both, common threads emerge. There are anecdotes of camaraderie and loss at the front lines, tales of emotional homecomings and the difficulty of adapting to post-conflict life in one of the most peaceable countries in the world. Underpinning all of their stories, of course, is the pervasive determination that a soldier’s work should not be forgotten.
And in that spirit of permanence, we invite readers to continue the conversation at globeandmail.com in the weeks, months and years ahead, by sharing their acts of remembrance long after the poppies are put away.
Moderate earthquake shakes northern Afghanistan
The Associated Press 11/07/2011
KABUL, Afghanistan—An earthquake of 5.5 magnitude has rattled the Hindu Kush region of northern Afghanistan, but there are no immediate reports of damage or injuries.
The U.S. Geological Survey says that the quake occurred Monday at 4:29 p.m. local time.
The epicenter, in the southern end of Badakhshan province, is 175 miles (280 kilometers) northeast of the Afghan capital of Kabul, where the quake was felt for about 15 seconds.
It also was detected in neighboring Afghan provinces and created slight tremors in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad.
Badakhshan provincial governor spokesman Rashk who, like many Afghans goes by one name, said he had not received any reports of damage.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
By Associated Press, Published: November 7
KABUL, Afghanistan — A roadside bomb killed a district police chief and his two bodyguards in a restive southern province in the second attack in as many days targeting local authorities in Afghanistan, police officials said Monday.
The roadside bomb in Helmand exploded as Mohammad Saifullah, the police chief in the province’s Garm Ser district, was driving by Sunday night, said Helmand provincial police chief Mohammad Hakim Angar. All three men were killed by the blast.
The province is one of Afghanistan’s most violent, and sits in the heart of the Taliban’s traditional stronghold in the south.
Security responsibilities in Helmand’s capital have already been handed over to Afghan forces by NATO, as part of the U.S.-led coalition’s plan to withdraw its combat troops from the country by the end of 2014. Two other districts in the province are being recommended for an upcoming second phase of handovers, but Garm Ser is not among them.
The police official’s death comes a day after a suicide bomber blew himself up among worshippers concluding prayers on the first day of a main Islamic holiday, killing seven people including two local police officials, in the northern province of Baghlan. A second would-be suicide bomber was captured before detonating his explosives.
The attacks are part of the insurgency’s strategy of targeting Afghan government and security officials, and raise questions about Afghan security forces’ ability to take on the Taliban by themselves after NATO withdraws its combat forces.
The U.S.-led coalition has said it has made significant gains in curtailing the Taliban’s strength.
The coalition’s push in the south of the country, the Taliban’s traditional stronghold, has to a degree lessened the violence. But it has also pushed them to other parts of the country where attacks had been less common.
In the eastern province of Nangarhar’s Behsud district, a combined Afghan and NATO force killed one Afghan and wounded another during an operation targeting a Taliban facilitator who provided logistical support and weapons to insurgents in the area, NATO said in a statement Monday. Two suspected insurgents were detained. The statement did not make clear whether the man killed was a suspected insurgent.
Afghanistan’s eastern border with Pakistan is a particular source of concern for NATO. The area is rife with militant activity, including the al-Qaida and Taliban-linked Haqqani network that operates from what Afghan and coalition officials say are safe havens in Pakistan.
Also in the east, NATO said an Afghan male was shot dead by a joint coalition-Afghan force after he failed to comply with orders and “displayed hostile intent toward the security force.” The incident occurred as the troops were searching for a Haqqani facilitator in Badakshan province’s Argo district, NATO said.
Six militants killed in S. Afghanistan
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Nov. 7 (Xinhua) -- Afghan National Police (ANP) have killed six militants in the country's Kandahar province, the provincial government said on Monday.
"ANP, during routine patrol, spotted six armed militants, including an Afghan and five Pakistani nationals, when they were planting mines and Improvised Explosive Device (IED) along a road in Sayahchoi village of Zhari district Sunday night," the provincial government said in a statement.
Police also seized a handful of weapons near the scene, it added.
The Taliban-led insurgency has been rampant since the militant group announced spring offensive from May 1 against Afghan and NATO-led troops stationed in Afghanistan.
Taliban insurgents, who have often attacked Afghan and NATO-led forces with IEDs and roadside bombs, have yet to make comments.
Kandahar, the birthplace of Taliban, has been experiencing increasing militancy over the past couple of years despite continued military operations since the middle of last year.
Property prices plunge after Kabul violence
By Bilal Sarwary BBC News, Kabul 7 November 2011
The recent string of deadly attacks in Kabul has hit another key area of Afghanistan's capital - the value of its property.
Insurgents in the past four months have demonstrated their ability to strike at will in the city, once considered a relatively safe zone in this violence-marred nation.
The growing violence has forced traders and businessmen to postpone or even abandon their plans to expand economic activities in the city.
Residents, doubtful of the ability of Afghan security forces to protect them, are also making discreet inquiries to sell off their houses and move to the outskirts.
This has led to a crash in the prices of commercial and residential properties in the city.
'Oxygen of trade'
"There are no buyers in the real estate market," says Sher Shah Ahamadzai, a 42-year-old estate agent in Kabul.
Mr Ahamadzai says that is the case even though most properties in exclusive residential areas are now available for huge discounts.
"Before the attack on the Intercontinental hotel [in August], a 1,080 sq ft plot in the plush Wazir Akbar Khan district was going for $160,000 (£101,500).
"The owner has now slashed the price to $145,000 (£91,962). Still there are no buyers," Mr Ahamadzai said.
"Security is the oxygen of trade."
Mr Ahamadzai said there had been attacks in the city before, but they were seen as an exception.
Insurgents have become more organised and more determined to strike the city now. And that is what is making people nervous and jittery.
"Six months ago, I sold a business complex in Wazir Akbar Khan for $4.2m (£2.6m). The owner wants to re-sell it now for $3m (£1.9m)," he said.
'Stab in the heart'
Inhabited by Western diplomats, international aid organisations and affluent Afghans, Wazir Akhbar Khan is considered to be a relatively secure area in Kabul.
"If this is the state of the [property] market here, you can imagine what will be happening in other, not so privileged areas," Mr Ahamadzai added.
One Afghan trader said real estate prices had fallen by 5% in just one month since the Intercontinental attack.
He said that besides the violence, continued uncertainty over US troop withdrawals had also affected property prices.
"The market in Kabul is determined not just by attacks. The question of US bases, troop withdrawals and rumours surrounding them is also harming the market," the trader said.
"I have lost $2m in the last four months buying property. If security improves, I may make up for my losses, but most likely I might not," he said.
Property dealers in the neighbouring Share Naw district say the market is flat and they are struggling to make ends meet.
"I was about to sign the sale deed for a house for $200,000 (£126,830). The buyer didn't agree over some conditions in the contract.
"I told him that we would sleep over it and discuss it the next day."
But the next day the US embassy was attacked.
The buyer returned to Dubai in the evening without signing the papers. I am ready to sell the house now for $150,000," he said.
"Every attack stabs commerce right in the heart."
'Safe in a bank'
Property dealer Haji Baqi - who owns a currency exchange shop in Kabul's main Shahzadah market - said he had lost nearly $300,000 (£191,500) in the past four weeks.
"Investors are like birds. If you fire at them, they will all fly for their own safety. Suicide attacks are scaring investors," he said.
"Within an hour of a big attack, we witness a major fluctuation in the currency market."
Most Afghan traders are withdrawing their money from Kabul and investing it in Dubai, Ukraine and Central Asian countries.
Haji Baz Mohammad is one of them. Mr Mohammad was running a business worth $5m importing wheat, sugar and cooking oil. But he decided to sell his assets and invest his money in Dubai and China instead.
"My money is now safe in a bank. I have insurance and I work in a stable market. In Afghanistan, I always ran the risk of losing all the money," Mr Mohammad said.
The authorities agree that the situation has got worse and warn that it will get even more unstable before getting any better.
"There will be similar attacks targeting Kabul. It will have an impact on trade," a senior adviser to President Hamid Karzai said.
"Security is the key for trade but also to stable life in Afghanistan."
However, there are some traders like Mr Ahmadzai who are determined to stay put in Afghanistan.
"After the attack on US embassy, my friends asked me to leave Kabul and invest my money in Dubai or somewhere else. Even my brothers said the same. But I have refused and will do so in future also," he said.
"In business, sometimes you lose and sometimes you earn. It is nothing new for me. I want to invest in my own country."
Price crash hits Afghanistan capital Kabul's 'poppy palaces'
The Australian By Jerome Starkey November 07, 2011
IF it weren't for the tank traps and grey blast-walls, the extravagant mansions in Kabul's most expensive neighbourhood would not look out of place in a fairytale.
Ornately gilded pillars hold up pastel-hued balconies; brightly coloured domes crown mosaic walls made of mirrored tiles.
Yet Sherpur district, which 130 years ago hosted General Frederick Roberts's cantonment during the Second AngloAfghan war, is anything but magical.
Most of the homes were built by Afghanistan's corrupt political elite on land stolen from the poor and the state in 2003.
While some in the international community objected, others, including mercenaries, embassies, the UN and television journalists, scrambled to pay tens of thousands of dollars in rent, and moved in.
Since then, the massive concrete homes have become a symbol of the corruption within President Karzai's regime and of the Western money which fuelled it.
"Every time I pass by I feel like the buildings are laughing at me," said Nader Naderi, the spokesman for the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission who led an outcry in 2003 when warlords first sent in the bulldozers to evict the refugee families living there.
"Those who commit crimes, particularly the powerful against the poor, they feel immune. These are unique symbols of impunity."
However, as the tide of Western money starts to recede, the fairytale houses, known as "poppy palaces" because of the suspicion that they were built with the proceeds of opium smuggling, are suffering a distinctly real-world price crash.
Owners and estate agents interviewed by The Times said that house prices had plunged by up to 40 per cent in the past six months and rents in some cases had dropped even faster.
Dozens of homes are empty.
Some blame President Obama's announcement in June that American troops would start withdrawing this year.
Others point to President Karzai's decision to drive private security companies out of the city centre. Most spoke nostalgically of "money-is-no-object" tenants, who billed eye-watering rents straight back to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) before its budget was slashed this year.
Richard Scarth, a British chartered surveyor who part-owns a property company in Kabul, said rents were softening, but insisted that "good quality poppy palaces are still in demand". Sales had stalled while landowners "wait and see", he said.
The rent for one 14-bedroom house had dropped from dollars $18,000 a month to $9000.
Another, with 20 bedrooms and 11 bathrooms, chandeliers and an underground saferoom, had been vacant for five months and had fallen from $16,000 a month to $10,000.
"You would have powerful neighbours," said the estate agent Feda Mohammed as he pointed over the razor wire and the sniper screens crowning another compound's 3m walls.
"That is the Ministry of Interior's house; he has lots of guards. There is an American construction company and that's the Spanish Embassy."
About 160 families who survived the landgrab still live in simple mud homes in Sherpur, but the Government has refused to give them official title deeds, according to Sayed Mohammad, a local elder.
"It hasn't happened quickly because we refuse to pay any bribes," he said.
One resident, Abdul Ghayu, said his family was constantly harassed by a senior general in the Ministry of Interior.
"He is part of the land mafia, he is rich and powerful, but God willing, we will resist him," he said.
Others are less optimistic. "If the foreigners leave, the warlords will just take our land," said Mohammad Gul, a shopkeeper. "Otherwise the Taliban will come back and the fighting will start again."
The Times
Ordinary Afghans Voicing Increasing Distrust Of Pakistan's Intentions
RFE/RL By Abubakar Siddique November 06, 2011
Afghans are putting their anger over Pakistani policies regarding their country on full display.
Protests have been staged by Afghan youths objecting to statements made by Pakistani public figures. And Afghanistan's media and civil society have moved to the forefront to resist perceived efforts by their eastern neighbor to fill the vacuum as the West looks to exit their country.
Combined, they help capture the public mood and uneasiness about Pakistani intentions on their soil, even as the two countries' presidents -- Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai and Pakistan's Asif Ali Zardari -- cite progress in restoring trust, as they did during a face-to-face meeting in Istanbul on November 1.
In the eastern city of Jalalabad, located about 50 kilometers from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, hundreds of youth activists gathered on October 30 to protest recent statements made by former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and pro-Taliban Islamist leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman.
Musharraf, who was ousted from the presidency in 2008 and now lives in exile in London, made his controversial remarks before a think-tank audience in Washington on October 26.
"Afghanistan always has been anti-Pakistan because the Soviet Union and India have very close relations in Afghanistan," he said. "So we must not allow this to continue because then one must not [be]grudge if Pakistan orders the ISI [the country's Inter-Services Intelligence agency] to take countermeasures to protect its own interests."
Promoted Violence
Statements made in Peshawar on October 23 by Rehman, the leader of Pakistan's conservative Jamiat Ulama-e Islam party, came under fire because he promoted violence in Afghanistan by the Afghan Taliban, even as he denounced violence in Pakistan by the Pakistani Taliban.
For their statements, Musharraf and Rehman were characterized as hypocrites and accused of fanning conflict in Afghanistan and of looking out only for Pakistani interests.
Saifur Rehman Abid, a local leader, received strong backing as he read out a unanimous resolution the gathering adopted during the October 30 gathering.
"The elected federation of the youth and the Nangarhar Youth Shura [council] strongly condemns the latest statements of former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Maulana Fazlur Rehman about Afghanistan," Abid said. "Afghanistan is an independent country and has a right to sign strategic pacts with any country to preserve its national interests."
'Interfering Openly'
The Afghan media have been quick to criticize such comments, as well.
Kandahar-based analyst Mohammad Omar Sathey says opinion makers and tribal leaders now consider Pakistani interference a key factor for instability in their country since the Soviet invasion in 1979.
"Our civil society, intellectuals, and the public knows that Pakistan is interfering openly," Sathey said. "They think that instability and war in Afghanistan is a source of income for Pakistan because it attracts international help in the name of fighting the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. It also has convinced the international community that its influence inside Afghanistan is the key to resolving the problem there."
Such perceptions are further strengthened by what Afghans see, hear, and read in the Pakistani media about their country.
Aqeel Yousafzai, a Peshawar-based columnist, says that during the past two decades Pakistani media have created a perception that Kabul needs to toe Islamabad's line. Few Pakistani journalists ever report from Afghanistan, despite the fact that Afghan issues often dominate Pakistani news bulletins.
"Overall, the media's role has remained negative," Yousafzai said. "The print and electronic media, the magazines, and the books published in Pakistan still treat Afghanistan as Pakistan's fifth province. Their coverage creates an impression that Afghanistan needs to follow on whatever Pakistan wants it to do."
Afghan politician and popular TV presenter Daud Sultanzoi says that Afghan perceptions of Pakistan can only change if they see a genuine transformation of Islamabad's outlook about their country.
"Pakistan should accept the fact that Afghanistan is not its puppet state," Sultanzoi said. "Another important prerequisite is that a civilian government in Pakistan controls its strategic direction, including control over its military and intelligence services."
RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan contributed to this report
Editor's note: After Afghanistan, new ways of remembering
Globe and Mail Sunday, Nov. 06, 2011
Friday marks the first Remembrance Day since the end of this country’s decade-long combat mission in Afghanistan. More than 55,000 Canadians have served there since 2001, the largest deployment since the Korean War.
Nov. 11 is always an occasion for reflection, a sanctioned, sober time to consider who and what was lost in conflict. But this year presents a unique opportunity to take stock of how a new generation of veterans and their loved ones are reshaping the very notion of remembrance.
Today, The Globe and Mail begins a conversation about how Canadians remember – a series of stories, fragments, photographs and documents submitted by veterans and their families. Together, they speak to the enduring, and evolving, nature of collective and personal memories.
For many of us, a veteran has always been a member of a different generation: a parent, grandparent or great-uncle. As their numbers dwindle, we increasingly remember their sacrifices through the stories, pictures and artifacts they leave behind. This week, our readers share some of these mementoes: a cloth postcard from a Cape Breton miner serving on the Western Front during the First World War; the diary of an Ontario soldier in post-D-Day France; a message home from a Winnipeg man held as a prisoner of war by the Japanese army, recorded on a crude cardboard disc.
Afghanistan veterans, by comparison, are younger. They are often our brothers and sisters, our friends, our cousins, our children. Our knowledge of their experiences comes from a more immediate memory. Today, you’ll hear from a combat engineer who has a special request for all of us on Nov. 11. Later this week, from one of the first and last Canadian soldiers to be injured in Afghanistan, and from an infantryman who still doesn’t think of himself as a veteran.
In the 1910s and 1940s, entire generations came of age in the crucible of war. After Afghanistan, these experiences belong to a small group of people, all veterans by choice.
But in listening to both, common threads emerge. There are anecdotes of camaraderie and loss at the front lines, tales of emotional homecomings and the difficulty of adapting to post-conflict life in one of the most peaceable countries in the world. Underpinning all of their stories, of course, is the pervasive determination that a soldier’s work should not be forgotten.
And in that spirit of permanence, we invite readers to continue the conversation at globeandmail.com in the weeks, months and years ahead, by sharing their acts of remembrance long after the poppies are put away.
Moderate earthquake shakes northern Afghanistan
The Associated Press 11/07/2011
KABUL, Afghanistan—An earthquake of 5.5 magnitude has rattled the Hindu Kush region of northern Afghanistan, but there are no immediate reports of damage or injuries.
The U.S. Geological Survey says that the quake occurred Monday at 4:29 p.m. local time.
The epicenter, in the southern end of Badakhshan province, is 175 miles (280 kilometers) northeast of the Afghan capital of Kabul, where the quake was felt for about 15 seconds.
It also was detected in neighboring Afghan provinces and created slight tremors in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad.
Badakhshan provincial governor spokesman Rashk who, like many Afghans goes by one name, said he had not received any reports of damage.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com