[Afghan News] November 15, 2011

[یاسمینه]

Poll: Afghan support for Taliban steadily declining, people feel growing sense of insecurity
By Associated Press, Updated: Tuesday, November 15, 1:38 PM
KABUL, Afghanistan — Support for the Taliban among Afghans has steadily declined in recent years and people strongly back a government peace initiative, according to a survey funded in part by the U.S. government.
But the survey released Tuesday by the nonprofit San Francisco-based Asia Foundation also showed a population weary of insecurity and corruption, and distressed by poverty and corruption.
The survey found that an overwhelming majority of Afghan adults, 82 percent, back reconciliation and reintegration efforts with insurgent groups. It said that the number of people who said they sympathized with the aims of Taliban had dropped to 29 percent compared to 40 percent last year and 56 percent in 2009.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been making peace overtures to the Taliban for years with the backing of the international community. These efforts however were dealt a major blow by the Sept. 20 assassination of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was leading the government’s U.S.-backed initiative.
The survey was conducted prior to Rabbani’s death.
Beyond that, while the survey showed some confidence in Afghanistan’s economic development, it also showed dissatisfaction with the state’s ability to deliver both security and clean government.
“The biggest problem at the national level is insecurity, followed by unemployment and corruption” said Bruce Tolentino, the foundation’s country representative.
A lack of security was identified as the biggest problem in the country by 38 percent of those polled, especially in the south and east where insurgents are fighting Afghan security forces and U.S.-led coalition troops. Of those asked, 71 percent said they feared traveling from one part of Afghanistan to another.
Although roughly half of those polled thought the Afghan police and army were “unprofessional and poorly trained,” a growing number of people thought they were steadily improving. There was also a small reduction in the number of people who feel the two security forces can operate without foreign help, although a majority think they can’t.
The U.S.-led coalition has spent tens of billions of dollars to try and train more than 300,000 Afghan army and police forces so they can gradually take charge of security as the foreign forces end their combat mission at the end of 2014 and go home or move into support roles.
But a series of spectacular attacks by the Taliban this year — many occurring after the survey was conducted — has raised doubts about the ability of Afghan security forces. They include a September attack against the U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters that led to a 20-hour standoff in downtown Kabul.
The survey found some indications of optimism, particularly in terms of the country’s development.
Nearly half of those asked, or 46 percent, thought the country was moving in the right direction. Reconstruction and rebuilding, good security in some areas and improvements in the education system were the main reasons. But for the first time since the survey began in 2004, a rising number now think that Afghanistan is moving in the wrong direction — an increase to 35 percent from 27 last year.
This confidence, such as it is, appeared however to be linked to development and economic growth that analysts warn may be fragile, and tied to the country’s war economy.
The survey found that of those who thought the country was moving in the right direction, 40 percent said reconstruction was the primary reason.
U.S. and international aid to Afghanistan is expected to decline by the end of 2014, and an Afghan economy largely driven by international aid and international military spending is then widely expected to go into recession.
U.S. State Department and USAID assistance will be cut from $4.1 billion in 2010 to $2.5 billion in 2011. The World Bank found that 97 percent of the gross domestic product in Afghanistan is linked to spending by the international military and donors.
In issues related to governance, although the survey said a majority of Afghans were satisfied with the performance of the government, it did not address the issue of whether they were satisfied with the country’s leadership or its president. Karzai has been criticized by the Afghan opposition and by the international community for not doing enough to combat corruption, and for ignoring institutions such as the parliament.
In 2011, for the first time, the majority of respondents said corruption was a major problem in all facets of daily life.
Sixty-four percent said corruption was a major problem in their provincial government and 76 percent said they thought corruption was a major problem for Afghanistan as a whole.
“The majority of respondents say that the government is doing a bad job in fighting corruption,” the survey report said.
The survey also found that although Afghans expressed increased satisfaction with the government’s performance in delivering services, they were not impressed by the country’s nascent democratic institutions in general. “Since 2008, there has been a steady rise in those who say they are dissatisfied with the way democracy works in the country,” the survey said.
The survey was conducted among 6,348 adults in July in all of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, excluding some dangerous areas. The survey, conducted with financial backing from the U.S. Agency for International Development, has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

Afghan-US Strategic Partnership Not Finalised, Spanta Says
TOLOnews.com Monday, 14 November 2011
National Security Advisor to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, while speaking at the House of Representatives on Monday, said that the talks between Afghanistan and the United States of America over the long term strategic agreement have not been finalised yet.
Discussions over ending night raids by foreign troops and handing over responsibilities of prisons to Afghan authorities are underway, Dr Rangin Dadfar Spanta, Karzai's National Security Advisor said.
Mr Spanta said that the Jirga will talk about the Afghan-US strategic partnership and peace process in the country, and that it only holds a consultative role. The final decision will be made by the House of Representatives.
"We have reached an agreement on the issues related to economy and governance, but discussions on judicial authorities and governance are still continuing," Spanta said.
The National Security Advisor called the agreement important and emphasised that a statement will not require approval from the House of Representatives.
Some MPs believe that holding a traditional Loya Jirga to discuss such an important issue is not constitutional.
Haji Mohammad Mohaqeq, representing Kabul province in the Afghan Parliament said, "Why does the government not consult the parliament? It seeks advice from MPs linked to it as if it is a personal issue."
But Dr Spanta said that the President has sought advice from the parliament.
"The President has consulted his advisors and had also sought advice from Mr Mohaqeq during meetings I had attended. I wish Mr Mohaqeq had spoken frankly during those meetings," Spanta said.
The Traditional Loya Jirga is expected to be held on November 16th this year and 2,000 representatives from all over Afghanistan will attend it.
Meanwhile, the Taliban has claimed to have gained access to some very important and secret documents about the Jirga security plan. But the claim has been denied by the government officials.
At the same time Isaf officials have said that Taliban are trying to somehow disturb the Jirga and have started a propaganda campaign.
William Trillion, Isaf's relations officer said: "We are aware that there is a document that exists, we continue to examine that document but at this point it's nothing more than a piece of fabricated propaganda to disrupt the peaceful Jirga process."
Security concerns come as on Monday a suicide bomber who wanted to enter the Jirga compound was identified by security forces and shot dead and two other suspects were detained, according to Afghan officials.

Suicide bomber tests Afghan security at loya jirga meeting
Afghan forces killed a suicide bomber trying to enter the site of high-level loya jirga meeting that starts Wednesday. Recent attacks and a report that the Taliban obtained security details of the meeting have Kabul on edge.
Christian Science Monitor By Tom A. Peter, Correspondent November 14, 2011
Kabul, Afghanistan - More than 2,000 Afghan leaders are converging on Kabul for a high-profile, four-day loya jirga, or grand assembly, further testing security capabilities of a city already on high alert after several recent scares.
On Sunday evening, the Taliban announced that they had received a copy of the security plan to protect Wednesday's loya jirga, at which Afghan leaders will discuss strategic relations with the US and negotiations with the insurgency. NATO and Afghan officials rejected the Taliban’s claim, saying the security plan published on the group's website was a forgery.
On Monday afternoon, Afghan police killed a suicide bomber trying to enter the area where the loya jirga will be held.
Following a number of significant attacks and assassinations inside Kabul, the warnings have much of the city on edge. Still, those involved in the loya jirga say that threats are commonplace in Afghanistan and few Afghan officials seem to place much weight on them.
“In our province, tribal elders are always threatened or warned about giving suggestions or information to the government, but it’s our duty to help the country and we’re not going to be stopped by fear,” says an elder from Helmand Province who has already arrived in Kabul, and asked to remain anonymous for security reasons. “The enemies of Afghanistan are using every chance to make problems for the people, but now this loya jirga will be conducted.”
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Afghanistan has held only 15 to 20 loya jirgas in the past 300 years, six of which took place in the past decade. These meetings call together leaders from around the country to decide major issues such as adopting a new king or constitution. Delegates are expected to pass their recommendations on Afghan-US relations and talks with the insurgency on to the parliament.
While several people have criticized the upcoming meeting as unnecessary now that Afghanistan has a parliament system, it remains a major event that a number of Afghans view as a critical part of their political system.
With 2,000 leaders meeting in one place, however, the loya jirga is an attractive target for the Taliban and other antigovernment forces. A number of Afghan and international organizations will close during the gathering for security reasons.
The last loya jirga was held in the summer of 2010. The Taliban attacked with rockets and suicide bombers during President Hamid Karzai’s address to the gathering. Though the president made light of the attacks as they were happening, his chief of intelligence and the minister of interior were fired immediately after for allowing the security breech.
As for this loya jirga: “Everyone knows where the police have checkpoints and the Army is stationed. I don’t believe that it is a big issue if the Taliban did get the security plan. Even if they got it, no one is going to be scared or not attend the loya jirga,” says Haji Abdul Ahmad Durrani, a member of parliament from Wardak Province. He adds that he has received six death threats warning him not to attend.
Meanwhile, as security threats abound in Kabul, Afghan and NATO forces say they have made progress against the Taliban in restive Paktika Province, capturing the organization’s spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid.
However, in a phone call on Monday afternoon, someone answered Mr. Mujahid’s regular phone number and represented himself as Mujahid, saying, “I’m not arrested. No one is arrested by the name of Zabiullah Mujahid. This is propaganda.”
Several people within the Taliban's public relations apparatus have traditionally represented themselves as Mujahid. It is possible that Afghan and NATO forces may have apprehended one of the people who serves as Mujahid, while other spokesmen remain at large.

Afghan Finance Minister: IMF to Reinstate Credit Program
VOA News November 15, 2011
Afghan officials say the International Monetary Fund has reached a deal to restore a credit program for Afghanistan, over a year after the country lost millions of dollars in international funding due to the Kabul Bank scandal.
The Afghan Ministry of Finance said Tuesday that the IMF has approved a three-year, $129 million loan to support economic reforms.
The move could help facilitate the flow of tens of millions of dollars in foreign aid and development projects that could not be approved without an IMF seal of approval.
The IMF suspended the credit program in September 2010 after Kabul Bank, then the country’s largest financial institution, nearly collapsed because of mismanagement, cronyism and questionable lending.
Afghanistan’s Finance Ministry says it has agreed to undertake reforms in its banking and financial sector, and customs and revenue departments, as well as improve public financial management.
Earlier this month, the IMF said Afghan authorities had made “important progress” in managing the crisis at the bank, which had lost more than $900 million in funds.
The IMF is expected to formally announce the decision later Tuesday.

Taliban in Afghanistan Vows to Disrupt Loya Jirga
VOA News November 15, 2011
The U.S. State Department says it is confident that this week's traditional assembly of Afghan leaders will affirm the close ties between the United States and Afghanistan.
More than 2,000 Afghan politicians, tribal elders and community leaders are gathering in Kabul on Wednesday to begin a several day loya jirga to discuss relations with the United States and reconciliation efforts with the Taliban.
State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Monday that the U.S. has the “utmost respect” for the loya jirga, saying he has “great confidence” that it will reaffirm the “strong partnership” between the two countries.
On Sunday, the Afghan Taliban threatened to disrupt the assembly, releasing documents that it says are top-secret security arrangements for the meeting.
Both NATO and Afghan officials have dismissed the documents as fake, saying the posting is an attempt to intimidate those planning to attend the meeting.
Afghan officials have stepped up security in advance of the gathering. On Monday, Afghan security forces killed an attempted suicide bomber outside the venue of the jirga. Two other would-be attackers were arrested.
During a similar gathering in 2010, Taliban militants carried out an attack relatively close to the tent where the jirga was being held, injuring three civilians.
Jirga participants this week are expected to discuss what presence, if any, the United States will have in Afghanistan following the scheduled withdrawal of all foreign combat troops in 2014.
They are also to cover plans by the Afghan government to make peace with the Taliban. Those plans were undermined in September by the assassination of President Hamid Karzai's chief negotiator, Burhanuddin Rabbani.

Afghan Oil Fields Aren’t a Curse – Yet
The New York Times By GRAEME WOOD November 14, 2011
SAR-E POL, Afghanistan - The Afghan government has a knack for botching everything: if Afghan officials were cooks, as the saying goes, they could ruin rice. The Chinese, by contrast, have an impressive record over the last couple of decades, and their achievement in the sphere of rice-cooking goes without mentioning.
So there was reason for more optimism than is usual in Afghan business deals in September, when the Afghan Ministry of Mines agreed to a partnership with the Chinese National Petroleum Company to extract oil in the basin of the Amu Darya River, in northern Afghanistan. Will the Chinese knack for business cancel out the Afghan anti-knack? The agreement, which is the first international oil deal in the country since well before the Taliban era, is a noteworthy test case. If it holds — and all indications suggest it will — it could draw hundreds of millions of dollars of investment to the area around Afghanistan’s northern border with Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan and create thousands of jobs for Afghans (and Chinese).
There is some reason for pessimism, of course. Last year, when a Pentagon memo surmised that Afghanistan’s mineral deposits might be worth as much as one trillion dollars, the prevailing reaction was something like resigned despair. Woe to the country cursed by resources — the last thing Afghans need is more to fight over. Then again, how much worse can things get? There is hardly a mineral-rich hellhole on the planet whose standard of living Afghans wouldn’t gladly trade for their own.
But the preliminary resource exploration going on in northern Afghanistan suggests that even if Afghanistan is beset by a thousand curses, the curse of resource wealth is not yet among them. In the short term, oil exploration may even be one of the few stabilizing elements of the Afghan economy. “The oil fields are an opportunity for everyone in this place,” Nazar Mohammad, the geologist who oversees oil and gas exploration in the area of Sheberghan for the Ministry of Mines, told me when I accompanied an Afghan delegation to Sar-e Pol early this month. “We will have jobs. We will have security.”
The region under exploration is among Afghanistan’s safest. It lies between the northern cities of Mazar-e Sharif and Maimana, and its population skews toward Uzbeks and Hazaras, and away from Pashtuns, who constitute the bulk of antigovernment fighters. The nearest big city, Sheberghan, is the stronghold of Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Afghan Uzbek politician who has enjoyed an uneasy relationship with the government of Hamid Karzai and who stands accused of war crimes for allegedly killing hundreds, possibly thousands, of Taliban prisoners in Dasht-e Leili in December of 2001.
The Afghans and their Chinese partners face an easier time setting up their operation here than if the oil lay under the whizzing bullets of Kunar. Still, the Afghan government’s preparations to protect its assets are visible already, perhaps a year before any oil will be pumped. When the Afghan government is serious, and when there is money on the line, evidently it is capable of rousing itself to action.
The skyline along the road from the town of Sar-e Pol to the rural site of the oil fields is dotted with large polygonal towers, newly built to accommodate uniformed security forces. The Ministry of Mines is employing locals as guards to ensure tranquility in the area before hundreds of Chinese engineers and managers arrive next year. Primitive refineries stocked with Russian drilling equipment left over from the 1990s have not been looted or stripped for metal parts; thanks to protection by the local guards, they are intact, with plates in Cyrillic still affixed to the gauges.
The Afghan national government is famously flimsy outside of Kabul, in the areas where local potentates, or more often anarchy, rule the roads. Here among the oil fields in the north is one of the few places where the trend runs in reverse. The Kabul government is granting local bureaucrats like Nazar Mohammad their wish that local people be employed and wealth spread around. During our visit to Sheberghan, there were few mentions of Dostum, who was reportedly away in Uzbekistan at the time. The meetings in Mohammad’s office took place not under the Uzbek’s portrait but under those of Karzai and the late Ahmed Shah Massoud.
Kabul seems to be using the Chinese involvement in this project to create an alliance with local people in the Amu Darya basin, cutting out regional strongmen like Dostum. Even if the area grows richer as a result, that success won’t make the country’s south or east any safer. But for now, this alliance is one of the few ways in which the Afghan government has made itself unambiguously stronger outside its capital.
Graeme Wood is a contributing editor at The Atlantic. He has lived and traveled in the Middle East for most of the last 10 years.

Spokesman for Taliban Denies Report of His Arrest
By FAROUQ JAN MANGAL and ROD NORDLAND November 14, 2011 The New York Times
KHOST, Afghanistan - A Taliban spokesman whose provocative and taunting media reports have often infuriated Afghan and Western officials firmly denied that he had been captured Monday.
His arrest had been reported by local officials in the Sar Hawza District, a remote eastern area in Paktika Province along the Pakistan border, where the Taliban have been active.
An Afghan government official there reported that the spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, was among suspects detained during joint coalition and Afghan military operations. A second government official in Paktika confirmed the account. Both spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to release the information.
Reached on his usual cellphone number a few hours later, Mr. Mujahid angrily denied their accounts. “I am talking to you on the phone right now,” he told an Afghan reporter who has frequently interviewed him in the past. “I am safe and sound and living in a safe place.”
“Those people who were arrested in Paktika do not belong to us,” Mr. Mujahid said. “They are just some innocent civilians, and the forces of the puppet government may have forced the guy to confess and say he is Zabiullah Mujahid. As I said, I am safe and on the run and always looking after myself.”
The reporter said the voice matched that of the man who over the past year has been the spokesman for Taliban activities in eastern and northern Afghanistan.
Afghan officials and those with the international forces operating here have maintained that Mr. Mujahid — one of two Taliban spokesmen — is not an individual, but rather a persona used by a number of Taliban insurgents adopting the same name and Afghan cellphone numbers, and operating from Pakistan just across the border.
However, many Afghan journalists he speaks to by telephone maintain that his voice has not changed at least in the past year, suggesting he is a single individual, as he — or his persona — has insisted.
Whether persona or person, Mr. Mujahid is regarded even by some of his enemies as an effective communicator, reacting quickly to events and using a variety of new media to get the Taliban’s message out.
On Sunday, he sent out in a mass e-mail what he said was the security plan for the major council, or loya jirga, set to begin in Kabul on Wednesday. While officials denied that the document was genuine, if it was a fake, it was an elaborate one. Its wealth of details, like private phone numbers of intelligence officers, made it appear legitimate. The security plan was also posted on a Taliban Web site.
On Monday, Lutfullah Mashal, the spokesman for the National Directorate of Security, the Afghan intelligence agency, said security forces had killed a suicide bomber as he tried to enter the gate of the Polytechnic University, where the loya jirga will be held.
But he said the e-mailed security plan was a fake. “It’s not our plan, or if it is our plan, it’s the previous loya jirga plan,” he said, speaking to journalists on Monday. “The plan Zabiullah Mujahid sent to you — he sent it to me also in my e-mail — if it was the genuine plan, then the Taliban would not have made it public; they would have used it.”
He said the failure of their attack had driven the Taliban to rely “on a kind of psy-ops instead.”
Taliban insurgents did attack the last loya jirga, narrowly missing Mr. Karzai with a rocket attack, and prompting him to dismiss his interior and intelligence ministers.
Farouq Jan Mangal reported from Khost, and Rod Nordland from Kabul, Afghanistan. Sharifullah Sahak and Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting from Kabul.

Spec-Ops Command: SEAL raid book 'a lie'
By KIMBERLY DOZIER - AP Intelligence Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. military is denouncing a former Navy SEAL's book that claims to describe the "real" version of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
"It's just not true," U.S. Special Operations Command spokesman Col. Tim Nye said. "It's not how it happened."
Laden with conspiracy theories and attacks on the Obama White House, Chuck Pfarrer's "SEAL Target Geronimo" claims an alternative version of the raid in which the SEAL team shot bin Laden within 90 seconds of arriving at the Pakistan compound where the al-Qaida mastermind was holed up.
Pfarrer claims the White House issued a fictional and damaging account of the raid that made the SEALs looks inept. He says President Barack Obama's speedy acknowledgement of the raid was a craven political move that rendered much of the intelligence gathered on the raid useless.
Pfarrer's account broke into Amazon's top 20 book sales list last week, and Pfarrer has appeared on Fox News, CNN and in other venues to promote it.
"I have truth on my side," Pfarrer said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I spoke to the guys on the ground and in the secondary bird," he said, referring to the aircraft full of a second SEAL team that was there to rescue the first if it came under attack so far inside Pakistan's borders.
"This is a fabrication," Nye countered, issuing an on-the-record denial on behalf of Navy SEAL Adm. Bill McRaven, who took command of all special operations this summer.
In his previous role, McRaven executed the raid in May as head of the military's elite Joint Special Operations Command. Nye said McRaven was concerned the book would lead Americans to doubt the administration's version of events. He also disputed Pfarrer's portrayal of friction between the CIA and the military special operations forces who carried out the raid.
"We have never come forward and gone after an author and say that is a lie," Nye said. "That tells you how far off the mark we believe this book is."
Nye says Pfarrer had no access to any troops connected to the mission. He said there will be no investigation into whether individual SEALs spoke to Pfarrer because his account is so off-base.
Among his other claims, Pfarrer insists the stealth helicopter that the White House said crashed within moments of launching the raid — and local Pakistanis reported hearing crash — actually crashed later. He says the SEALs were able to launch their raid as they'd planned it all along, landing on top of the building while another team surged from below.
Pfarrer defended the book as a patriotic way to laud the "heroes of the bin Laden mission." He insists the money he earns will barely cover his medical bills for a long and losing battle with colon cancer. His ruddy complexion and expansive girth bely an illness the personable Pfarrer says has now spread to his lungs.
Pfarrer claims he is still part of the fighting SEAL network, even intimating that he was part of the bin Laden raid preparation.
"In the weeks and months leading up to Neptune's Spear (the code name for the bin Laden mission), it was my privilege to help troops and platoons train for submissions and run parallel HVT (high-value target) missions," Pfarrer writes.
"That is categorically incorrect," spokesman Nye said of the passage. "He was not involved in mission planning, execution or close mission analysis."
Two senior military officials with knowledge of the raid seconded that denial. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Pfarrer deflected that criticism, saying he was conducting training for the SEAL Team 6's parent organization, the Naval Special Warfare Command, through his defense security company Acme Ballistics. He refused to describe how closely such training was related to the raid, saying the contracts are classified.
That is Pfarrer's frequent refrain when asked for proof of his controversial claims: that the accounts are from a top secret world only he has access to and that a reader must take his word on faith.
But Pfarrer gets a multitude of facts wrong in describing events that are part of the public record. For instance, Pfarrer states that Obama appointed McRaven as the first Navy SEAL to head JSOC in April of this year. McRaven was actually appointed to that post in early 2008 by President George W. Bush. He states that the Army Special Forces Green Berets were established in 1962, instead of 1952. When U.S. special operations forces rehearsed for the famous Son Tay Raid in Vietnam in 1970, they trained at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, not Offutt in Nebraska.
And a jet bombing run, not a drone strike, killed Iraqi al-Qaida ringleader Abu Musab al Zarqawi in 2006.
A series of special operations leaders have stepped forward to say Pfarrer is at best misinformed and at worst a profiteering self-promoter.
"The reaction is stunning, chagrined, disappointment," said retired SEAL Rear Adm. George Worthington.
"This is exactly the sort of thing the special operations community does not need," added retired Navy SEAL Capt. Rick Woolard, known for commanding some of the most elite units, and a contemporary of Pfarrer's.
Pfarrer has made a two-decade career out of his roughly eight years with the SEALs. After retiring as a lieutenant in the late 1980s he co-wrote the screenplay for the 1990 film "Navy Seals," starring Charlie Sheen. Two books about SEALs followed. His current book traces his own history with the unit, and finishes with two chapters on the raid. It includes romantic descriptions of the SEAL raiders.
"When a room is entered, SEALs go into a state like satori — a wide-awake Zen consciousness," Pfarrer wrote. "All of the SEAL's senses are magnified."

1 killed, 17 injured in donkey bomb blast in N. Afghanistan
KABUL, Nov. 15 (Xinhua) -- A policeman was killed and 17 civilians were injured Tuesday morning when an explosion took place in Faryab province, some 425 km northwest of Afghan capital city of Kabul, the Interior Ministry said.
"A policeman with Afghan National Police (ANP) was martyred and 17 civilians were injured when a mine planted on a donkey was detonated by a remote control device at about 11:00 a.m. (local time) Tuesday in Ganj bazaar area of Ghormach district," the ministry said in a statement.
The ANP has shifted all injured people to a district hospital. It said an investigation has been initiated.
This is the second blast in the insurgency-hit country since Tuesday morning.
Five civilians, including a woman, were wounded earlier Tuesday morning when a magnetic mine attached to their vehicle went off in Qara Bagh district, some 40 km north of capital Kabul, the Kabul police said in a separate statement.
No group has claimed responsibility for the incidents so far.
Tuesday's attacks happened amid the government's preparations to open the traditional Loya Jirga, or grand assembly of tribal elders, lawmakers and government functionaries on Wednesday to discuss the proposed U.S.-Afghan strategic partnership amid Taliban threats.
Taliban militants fighting Afghan and NATO-led troops have vowed to derail the Loya Jirga, which is expected to draw over 2, 000 participants.

Australian Opposition Leader visits troops in Afghanistan
CANBERRA, Nov. 15 (Xinhua) -- Australian federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott on Tuesday made a surprise visit to Australian troops in Afghanistan.
Australian troops are due to withdraw by 2014 under the present timeframe, although the Australia federal government has suggested some numbers may stay to continue training the Afghan army.
Abbott said briefings he have had from senior Australian officers in Tarin Kowt had given him confidence the timetable for handing over control to Afghan security forces was on track.
However, he also hinted that he would support continuing the military presence past this date if he believed it would benefit Afghanistan.
"My strong suspicion would be that, while it might well be possible to start significant draw downs of troops within a few years, it would be wrong to think that Australia's involvement with Afghanistan will terminate at that point, or that the West's involvement should terminate at that point," Abbott said in a statement released on Tuesday.
Four Australian soldiers have been killed and several others wounded by members of the Afghan National Army this year, and Abbott said the recent killings of three Australian troops by an Afghan counterpart was tragic, but that such incidents were unavoidable during war.
"I did have some comments [from troops] to the effect that they didn't like it when casualties were politicized, but I also have got very strong feedback that they understand that you can't have casualty-free combat," Abbott said.
After receiving a raft of high-level briefings, Abbott said he had always been very confident that Australia is making a difference in Afghanistan.
The visit in Tarin Kot came while Abbott is on his way home from a week-long trip to the United Kingdom.
About 1,550 Australian troops are currently training and mentoring some 3,500 Afghan soldiers.

Interview with a Taliban Insider: Iran's Game in Afghanistan
A long-time senior strategist for the Taliban regime who fought under the name Abu Walid al Masri was recently released from Iran after nearly a decade in captivity. In an exclusive interview, he describes Iran's relationship to the Taliban, why it and other countries may have known Osama bin Laden's hiding place, and the country's strategy in post-occupation Afghanistan
The Atlantic By Leah Farrall Nov 14 2011
ALEXANDRIA, Egypt - A beachside cafe in Alexandria may not seem like a place where you'd find a man who counts among his old friends Taliban leader Mullah Omar, military commander Jalaluddin Haqqani, and past and present leaders of al Qaeda. But that's where I met with Mustafa Hamid, better known as Abu Walid al Masri, a senior mujahidin figure who was among the first Arabs to arrive in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets some 30 years ago, and the first foreigner to swear allegiance to Mullah Omar.
Regarded in the militant milieu as "a school in himself," as the historian Basil Muhammad put it, Hamid is an independent but respected and valued figure. He's also a journalist who worked for the Arabic-language Al Ettihad news during the Soviet-Afghan war and was Al Jazeera's Kandahar bureau chief during the latter years of the Taliban's reign. Hamid has also emerged as a prominent historian of the Afghan jihad, authoring 12 books on this topic. He also serves as a contributing author for the Taliban's flagship publication, al-Samud.
Until two months ago, Hamid had spent the better part of the past decade under house arrest in Iran, he said, after being detained entering the country when Afghanistan fell to coalition forces in late 2001. His detention, he told me, "was a very bad experience that affected my family and I greatly in health and morale. But it also had one benefit for me: I was sitting and writing. Without being in jail, I think I would have never finished my books."
Now, after a sustained lobbying campaign by family members, Hamid is free. We met back in his Egyptian homeland nearly two years after we first began talking online, a months-long conversation (and, at times, debate) we had over email about our respective ideas.
"I thought Iran intended to hold me forever," he said when we met at the cafe. "They denied that I was there but after the campaign from my family, my presence became known and if the outside world knows someone is there, then they have a chance of a deal being made for their release."
Hamid knows more than most about the machinations driving Iran's detention and release of foreign fighters who had illegally crossed its borders; he served at times as the unofficial Taliban emissary to the country. But he hotly contests that he represented al Qaeda or its interests to the government in Iran, as is alleged by the United States.
"Al Qaeda did not send me, nobody sent me. I made the proposal to Mullah Omar to reach out to Iran when he came to visit us in the village south of Kandahar airport, in 1997, and he agreed." The proposal Hamid recounts would have been part of efforts aimed at unlocking the Iranian embargo that later intensified after several Iranian diplomats were killed in 1998 by Taliban forces at Mazar-i-Sharif, an event that also led Iranian forces to mass at the border. "The closing of the borders brought great harm to the Afghan people," Hamid says.
Hamid suggested to Omar that the Taliban try to normalize relations with Iran as well as Pakistan, he says, which was also "causing problems at the border" at the time. "I told Mullah Omar that he should seek good relations with these countries because Afghanistan had no ports and no sea access, so my argument for reaching out was from the strategic point of view," Hamid says.
Hamid says that Omar agreed, dispatching him to talk to their Iranian counterparts about normalizing relations and opening up cross-border routes for supplies and food. But Hamid failed, and the effort was unpopular among a key constituency. Some within al Qaeda were unhappy that Hamid had talked to Iranian officials and were very aggressive to him when he returned, he told me. Still, al Qaeda also wanted to engage with Iran, Hamid says, but for different purposes. It wanted to establish its own private transit routes through the country, according to Hamid. "Al Qaeda tried to find its own routes into and out of Afghanistan without the Iranian government and tried to do it through Baluchistan," an ethnic region spanning Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
The failed diplomatic mission did not end Hamid's ad-hoc liaison role for the Taliban government. As war loomed in Afghanistan in late 2001, he was again dispatched to reach out to Iran. The Taliban leadership, Hamid says, wanted him to figure out what position Iran would take in the coming U.S. war against the Taliban, and whether the Iranian government might be willing to assist the group. Hamid and a number of Afghan officials met at the border with Iranian counterparts, who suggested the Taliban retreat to the south. "This made the Afghans angry," Hamid remembered. "They realised that Iran would continue to play its own game in Afghanistan, and the region." This led Hamid to believe that the Iranian government, in other words, would not try to help the Taliban retain control over Afghanistan.
When Herat fell unexpectedly to coalition forces the next day, marking the beginnings of the Taliban's collapse, Hamid and the small group with him were trapped and had to cross into Iran. He recalls linking up with some Tajiks from the al Nahda party, formerly a militant group operating in Tajikistan, some of whose members Hamid says he had earlier trained at the famed al Farouq training camp in the mid 1990's. (Al Farouq was destroyed by U.S. cruise missiles targeting al Qaeda following the August 1998 African Embassy bombings). The Tajiks helped the group to cross the border, Hamid remembers, dodging gunfire from Iranian border guards.
When Hamid and the others with him were detained by Iranian authorities, the Tajiks from al-Nahda helped to negotiate their release. They had a presence in Iran, Hamid said of the Tajiks, and "they had some work to do there [in Iran] or some job." " I don't know what kind of job, whether it was political, economical, or for communications with the outside world, but in late 2001 they were still in Iran." Several years earlier, the Tajiks had helped Hamid to resettle his family in Iran using faked documents. In late 2001, after being released from border custody, Hamid made his way to his family in Iran.
Hamid was, like other Arabs who have fled to Iran, put under heavy surveillance. But Hamid's situation was better than most. He suspects his is most likely because of his previous dealings with elements in the Iranian regime, which gave him what he believes was "a margin of manoeuver." Other Arabs who had arrived in Iran were treated much worse. They were, by Hamid's account, also naïve. They failed to recognise that Iran "had always played its own game," said Hamid, and would accordingly play them too.
According to Hamid, in the year or so immediately following the 2001 U.S. invasion, Iran had what amounted to an open door policy for the fighters and associated officials fleeing Afghanistan. "They allowed Arabs and their families fleeing Afghanistan to enter," Hamid recalled, and "they even offered to assist some of them."
Iran's goal, Hamid suspects, was to "map the network" of Arabs in the country. Although most arrivals were largely unhindered, they were under heavy surveillance. The following year, in 2003, Iran began to round up many of those who had sought sanctuary after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan. "Iran was able to make a very big hit on the Arabs, when they arrested or deported around 98 percent of them," he said. Hamid was himself detained, though not deported. He spent some time in a large prison before being transferred into the custody of intelligence, he says, which held him for two years.
After his release, Hamid says he was put into a guarded house, unable to leave -- although his family was allowed to come and go, because they had lived in the country for many years. Others in Iran who were not known to the regime, or who had little value, did not fare so well. "Iran only kept those who it could use as playing cards," Hamid says. "Because the Americans say I am important, they thought that they had caught a big fish." Hamid believes that those who remain in Iran -- which reportedly include senior al Qaeda and Egyptian Islamic Jihad leaders as well as a number of other militants of significant stature or experience -- are being held as bargaining chips. "The others who remain, they are being treated as playing cards," he said. "Iran wants to use them to make a deal, and so I don't feel that they are going to release them for this reason."
But Hamid is not the only figure of note to have been released. He was sent back to his home country after prolonged negotiations with the Egyptian government, but other people have been quietly released at Iran's border and handed over to smugglers who facilitate their travel to Pakistan or Turkey. Among them, Hamid claims, have been several bin Laden family members, including Saad bin Laden as well as Hamza bin Laden and his mother, Umm Hamza. Both bin Laden sons are now dead; Saad died some time ago in a drone strike in Waziristan while Hamza was killed alongside his father in the Abbottabad raid.
According to Hamid, Umm Hamza was released at the border about six months before bin Laden's killing and delivered to a smuggling gang who then facilitated her return to her husband in Abbottabad. For this reason, Hamid believes that many governments, including Pakistan, Iran and the United States, knew bin Laden's whereabouts. "The place of bin Laden was not a secret, he was sitting under house arrest in that garrison town," he said.
Hamid is adamant about this point, arguing that the smuggling gangs know everything and often sell information about their own activities. "Using smuggling gangs, it is a fact of life there on the borders, everything is smuggled, people, narcotics, weapons, anything making money. The Americans use them and give the facilities to collection information on the Taliban and others," he said. Such gangs are widely used and not only by the Americans, according to Hamid. "The gangs sell information to the Americans or to anyone who will pay."
"It is well known that all the governments in the region use the same gangs," Hamid said, again arguing, "It is unrealistic that they did not know that Umm Hamza was going to her husband. ... It is impossible that [the gangs] did not know. Pakistan knows, America knows, Iran knows. The gang itself will sell this information to anyone who has an interest to know. America has the interest and the money to have discovered the route of the lady from the border."
Sitting with me in Alexandria, Hamid suspects another reason that he was released and others were not was that, as he put it, "Iran knows the Taliban is coming back and perhaps expects me to play a similar role again when it, and other countries must deal with the Taliban in post-occupation Afghanistan."
Hamid believes that he was released in part because his freedom would somehow serve Iran's interests in the region, particularly its future dealings with the Taliban after the U.S. withdrawal. As for the other militants remaining in Iran, how well they fare will depend, Hamid believes, on whether or not there is tension between Iran and the U.S. and between Iran and other Arab governments. Their ongoing detention is likely so long as no rapprochement takes place, Hamid believes. If he is right, then recent events in the U.S., and the implication of Iran in a purported plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador in Washington, DC, suggest that rapprochement may be a ways off and that the remaining militant figures and their families still detained in Iran will not be going anywhere soon.

Afghans tentatively seek a voice after 30 years of conflict
Reuters By Christine Kearney Mon Nov 14, 2011
MAZAR-I-SHARIF - After three decades of occupation, civil war, Taliban rule and a NATO-led military campaign, ordinary Afghans remain powerless and without a unified voice.
Many are too afraid to talk. The few that do speak out are barely able to share ideas with each other, much less address authorities.
"There is one thing missing in Afghanistan, which is the people's voice," said Saeed Niazi, an activist based in Kabul who aims to get ordinary Afghans much more involved in nation building as the country prepares for the exit of foreign combat troops by the end of 2014.
There are an estimated 1,000 civil society groups in the country but, with a literacy rate of about 28 percent, most Afghans have no idea such groups exist.
Some groups are viewed with suspicion because of foreign funding but, without funding, they cannot exist.
"A civil society is still unknown for people in Afghanistan. They don't understand it," Kunduz province community leader Abdul Mohammed Aiymaq told a conference in Mazar-i-Sharif that drew activists from nine northern provinces in late October.
Underscoring the problem, Mohammed Kazem Amini, a newsletter publisher in Faryab province, told the meeting: "Even the people in the city do not know anything about the idea of a civil society, or what is democracy."
Security fears mean lawmakers and district officials have very little direct contact with Afghans in areas where the insurgency is strongest, such as Taliban strongholds like Helmand and Kandahar provinces in the south, on the Pakistan border.
"The government in reality is very badly disconnected from the people, particularly in the insecure areas. Security is a big challenge," said Aziz Rafiee of the Afghan Civil Society Forum. "None of these parliament members have been able to go directly back to their constituents and talk to them."
U.S. embassy spokesman Gavin Sundwall said civil society groups were vital in a country like Afghanistan, which lacks a robust system of political parties, so alternative views could be debated.
But poor security diminished the ability of such groups "to enhance their own capacity and legitimacy," he said.
"KILLED AND NO ONE WOULD NOTICE"
The first half of this year was the deadliest for civilians since the U.S.-backed overthrow of the Taliban 10 years ago, according to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).
It said 1,462 civilians had been killed in conflict-related incidents and blamed insurgents for 80 per cent of those deaths -- up nearly a third on the same period last year.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), responsible for security in much of the country, says the picture is improving, but their figures exclude attacks that kill only civilians, as well as attacks on Afghan security forces operating without international troops.
"Security is not OK," Aiymaq, the Kunduz community leader, told the Mazar meeting. "If we have security, then we will have peace-building."
The London School of Economics (LSE) spent $20,000 backing the Mazar conference. LSE researcher Marika Theros said one activist told her: "You could speak out in the provinces and be killed and no one would notice."
Western donors have channeled hundreds of millions of dollars to civil society groups, including larger Afghan non-governmental organizations, but some Afghans complain these are merely extensions of Western agencies and that cash has been creamed off.
Even when there is funding, workers have to be careful. Some aid groups, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they conceal that their money comes from the West for fear people their contacts could be killed, especially in dangerous provinces like those on the Pakistani border.
Besides violence, other major issues community leaders want to raise include jobs, women's rights and education.
Abdul Ghani, a deputy provincial council chief in Sar-e-Pol, 295 km (185 miles) northeast of Kabul, said many of his province's 340 schools were under tents and trees. Women were not being educated and were often mistreated by their husbands.
Ghani said corruption was also rife because government salaries were not high enough.
NO MONEY, MORE PROBLEMS
Few speakers at the Mazar conference offered specific solutions for a movement still in its infancy. Not all those slated to speak showed up. Many talked in general terms about "building democracy," and some talked about religion.
Others drank tea and said they were just happy to be there.
Communications are a huge problem. Phone lines are non-existent and mobile networks are often limited to big cities. Coverage shuts down at night in some areas under threat from insurgents.
Internet coverage is generally sparse, unreliable and expensive, meaning activists are often unable to collect information or collaborate.
Ethnic divisions also make it harder for activists to unite.
"Everyone calls themselves Afghan but they don't believe in that," said Nasima Azkiya, a 28-year-old youth leader from Mazar-i-Sharif. "They prefer their own ethnic identity."
Niazi, the Kabul-based activist, argued the government's reliance on Western backing "has made the people dormant."
"Afghans have lost a sense of national identity through three decades of dictatorships and wars," Niazi said.
Still, many Afghans remain optimistic. Niazi will travel to an international conference in Germany next month about Afghanistan's post-2014 future. Officially, only two civil society members will be taking part.
"Sometimes (Afghans) are disappointed in some powers, politicians, policies, but never themselves. They are still hopeful," he said.
(Editing by Daniel Magnowski and Raju Gopalakrishnan)

Australia to Send Afghan Refugee Home for First Time
VOA News November 15, 2011
Australia says it will for the first time send home an Afghan asylum seeker whose application has been rejected.
Immigration Minister Chris Bowen said Tuesday that 26-year-old Ismail Mirza Jan will be deported Saturday under a new agreement with Afghan authorities.
Jan, a member of Afghanistan's minority Hazara ethnic group, says he fears for his life if he is returned to Afghanistan. But Australian authorities say they have concluded it is safe for him to go home.
The Australian government is under political pressure to stem a flow of asylum seekers from Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and other countries, many of whom risk death in hazardous boat trips across the Indian Ocean when they flee their countries.
At the end of June, more than 1,000 Afghans were in Australian detention centers fighting decisions that deny them refugee visas.
Officials said Jan's application was rejected because he had failed to disclose that he was previously denied status as a refugee in Britain.

Energy starved Pakistan revives multi-billion Trans-Afghanistan pipeline
by Muhammad Tahir
ISLAMABAD, Nov. 15 (Xinhua) -- Energy starved Pakistan and the natural resources rich Turkmenistan have revived the multi-billion Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline after almost 12 years of stalemate as officials of the two countries initiated the Gas Sales and Purchase Agreement (GSPA) on Monday.
The signing of the GSPA in the presence of Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov and Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani for the earlier estimated 7.5-billion-US-dollar Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline has been hailed as a milestone to materialize the long-awaited project.
The 1,680-km-long TAPI gas pipeline backed by the Asian Development Bank will bring 3.2 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day (bcfd) from Turkmenistan's gas fields to Multan and end at the northwestern Indian town of Fazilka.
The agreement is a follow-up to the "inter-governmental agreement" (IGA) signed by Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov and Indian Petroleum Minister Murli Deora in the Turkmen capital city of Ashgabat in December last year.
This would be followed by the signing of "Heads of Agreement" and Transportation and Transit accords by the end of this year, said a senior Pakistani Petroleum Ministry official Ejaz Chaudhry.
Afghanistan was quick to welcome the GSPA hours after it was signed in Islamabad and an Afghan official said they have already chalked out policy about the transit fee and the total cost of the pipeline would be determined afterwards. More negotiations with India will also be held in the coming months, officials said.
To overcome its fast growing energy crisis, Pakistan is also pursuing gas from Iran and Pakistan will receive Iranian gas by mid-2014 under an agreement reached between the two sides. Despite the U.S. pressure, Pakistan is going ahead with the Iran gas line and the country's Petroleum Minister Dr. Asim Hussain has said that a survey for the Iran gas line has been completed.
Iranian officials insist that they have laid the pipeline up to the Pakistani border and will pump gas after Pakistan laid the pipeline along the border region with Iran.
Pakistan has also held series of talks with Qatar to import gas but this project has not been vigorously pursued after Islamabad reached an agreement with Iran.
Under the GSPA, Turkmenistan's gas price will be 70 percent of the crude oil parity price at the international market and it will be 10 percent cheaper than the Iranian gas. Pakistan and the Iran GSPA allows Islamabad to renegotiate price one year before pumping Iranian gas into the Pakistani system if Pakistan has alternate gas on a cheaper rate.
Pakistanis believe that Iranians are very tough negotiators and they will have their own arguments when Pakistan opts for price negotiation for a reduction in the price of Iranian gas.
Whatever the future outcome would be, Pakistan has now two options to get gas either from Iran or Turkmenistan to deal with the energy shortage. Analysts believe that Pakistan should be quick to get gas from one country in view of the energy crisis. The government has already announced that the gas supply may be interrupted during the winter. Gas supply will also be suspended to industries for a few days in a week to ensure supply to the consumers, officials said. Economists are of the view that less gas supply to industries badly affects production but the country is running short of gas and has no option but to observe load- shedding.
A lot of work has already been done on the Iran-Pakistan pipeline, but the U.S. opposition and the high price of the Turkmenistan gas may slow down the Iran-Pakistan project, some analysts believe. Islamabad insists that there is no U.S. pressure on the Iran gas line and will pursue it.
The TAPI is also facing several challenges and the most serious problem would be its security as it will pass through southern Afghanistan, the birthplace of Taliban. Afghan leaders have repeatedly said that the U.S.-backed regime in Afghanistan would ensure security of the pipeline but the doubts about the capability of Afghan security forces are still there. The security challenge will further deepen after the 2014 withdrawal of foreign forces from the country.

The violence in northern Afghanistan today is so complicated that even Afghans have trouble untangling its roots
Foreign Policy BY ANNA BADKHEN NOVEMBER 14, 2011
SIOGERT, Afghanistan - From time to time, Qasim looks at me in the rearview mirror of his taxicab and plays tour guide.
"See this shrine?" He nods toward a green flag that flutters from a stake jutting out of the ground amid the white flashes of unpicked cotton. Behind it rise the breast-shaped clay roofs of the village of Siogert. "Seven brothers were killed here. They were Uzbek. They were fleeing the Taliban, in 1997. We were all fleeing then."
"See this flag?" Another stake, this one driven into a mud wall by the road. Short, diagonal grooves dimple the wall: the palm marks of the men who molded it by hand out of the desert. "One brother killed another brother here, over land. It was after the fall of the Taliban.
Then someone killed the killer; I'm not sure who."
In rush hour Mazar-e-Sharif, Qasim's yellow-and-white Corolla crawls through a roundabout near the western gate of the Blue Mosque, the legendary burial place of Ali, the Prophet Mohammed's son-in-law. In the morning fog, the turquoise shrine shimmers, as if it were encased in ice. Men draped with thin camel-wool blankets stroll through the mist in reverent quietude to feed the 10,000 white doves said to flock here.
Qasim's eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror. "In the time of the Taliban in this place they hanged a young man."
At an unpaved intersection several blocks away, Qasim's car rocks gently over a bomb crater. On this spot last July, a suicide bomber detonated a device strapped to his bicycle, killing four people. "See this?" Qasim says. "I was at a cafe down the block, finishing my lunch. Had I left a minute earlier, I wouldn't have been here today."
Each murder clings to the Bactrian plains like soot from a bukhari stove, like a patina of rot, until it becomes part of the landscape: indelible, unredeemable, conditioning people's memories and yearnings. Until it takes root in a land harrowed by centuries of village-scale ethnic cleansings and fratricides. "The problem is in this soil," a local police officer once told me, "and it keeps cropping up."
I have been coming here for a decade. At times, it has seemed possible to render the war that torments northern Afghanistan in simplistic terms. Ten years ago, with the help of a U.S.-led invasion, the region's secularists, monarchists, Islamic conservatives, soldiers of fortune, and armed hangers-on kicked the Taliban out of power. Recently, after several years of relative calm, the Taliban have made a comeback here. They are steadily claiming territory and facing little resistance from either NATO -- which is too busy fighting in the south -- or the locals, who feel betrayed and abandoned by the West and its kleptocratic protégés in Kabul.
But the violence that torments the Khorasan's infinite plains does not boil down to a fight between insurgents and a weak government backed by a NATO occupation, with millions of disillusioned, and mostly destitute, civilians stuck on the ever-shifting battlefield. Sometimes it emerges from a helix of revenge that began with a property dispute. Sometimes it is a suppuration of an ethnic wound inflicted decades or centuries ago but never truly healed. Sometimes it is all of the above, or none.
On the northbound road that runs from Mazar-e-Sharif toward the Amu Darya -- the Oxus River of Kipling and Alexander the Great -- Qasim nods toward a gully where white blotches of last week's premature snow, slow to melt, fold into ultramarine shadows. It was here that Taliban gunmen killed Sober, a well-loved teacher from Siogert, a village of 1,400 families of ethnic Turkmen and Tajiks, last June. A month ago, half a mile up the road, arbaki vigilantes -- untrained minutemen recently armed to fight the insurgency under a U.S.-sponsored program -- killed two Taliban fighters from a nearby village. The vigilantes' leader happens to be Sober's nephew.
Was it a counterinsurgency operation? I ask Azim Bai, Siogert's Turkmen elder, over tea with lamb jerky and cake.
"Perhaps," he says.
Was it a revenge killing?
"Yes," he nods enthusiastically.
So, does it settle things, then, between you and the Taliban?
"No," says Azim Bai. "As long as there are Pashtuns here we will always have war. There will never be peace between us."
But, I say, almost half of Afghanistan is Pashtun. There are four ethnic Pashtun villages within a two-hour walk of Siogert. They have been here since the 1890s, when Afghan Emir Abdur Rahman resettled 10,000 Pashtun families north of the Hindu Kush as part of his ethnic cleansing campaign against the indigenous Hazaras and Uzbeks.
Azim Bai nods. He sips his tea. He says nothing.
A week ago, on the second day of Eid al-Adha, which marks the culmination of the hajj and commemorates the sacrifice of Abraham, a record snowfall entombed the Khorasan. Two feet of snow fell in just a few hours. Then the temperature climbed into the 60s, and the snowmelt turned the loess desert the color and viscosity of melting chocolate, flooded village irrigation canals, inundated Mazar-e-Sharif's unpaved side streets.
For days, gutters in the city have been running with freezing mud, sewage, and the blood of animals sacrificed during Eid. I think somewhere in that composite of soil, refuse, and human waste there must be other blood as well: the blood of the young man hanged to the indifferent wing-claps of Mazar's fabled white pigeons, the blood of Sober and the two dead Taliban, the blood of the two brothers who quarreled over land. The blood of the 3,000 Pashtun Taliban soldiers massacred by Hazara and Uzbek militiamen here in 1997. Of the 6,000 Hazaras the Taliban mutilated, shot, and decapitated the following year. Of all the armies that slaughtered and were slaughtered upon this soil, almost incessantly, for the last 2,500 years.
"See this?" Qasim nods toward the window again. We are driving through the desert at sunup. All I see are the frosted jags of the Hindu Kush, saw-toothed against the blush of dawn sky, and, much closer, a golden eagle lifting up heavily from an outcropping of limestone to hunt for breakfast. The bird's shadow scythes through the juniper smoke of bukhari stoves in the slanted light of a cold November sunrise.
Qasim sees a crime scene.
"There was a mullah five years ago, Mullah Ghafur," the taxi driver says. "He was Baluch, from Karaghuzhlah. A man called Shir killed him. I think it was over money. Shir was Uzbek."
And we drive on, mapping the Khorasan's unwritten history of violence. It has no order. No clear-cut cause and effect. No closure. No end in sight.

Disarming Afghan Politicians
Serving legislators get four guns apiece, and some forget to hand them back when they’re voted out of office.
IWPR By Abdol Wahed Faramarz 14 Nov 11
Afghanistan - In a parliamentary scandal of a peculiarly Afghan variety, former members are failing to hand back the firearms they were issued with.
As well as around 400 Kalashnikov rifles and pistols, computers have gone missing from former members’ offices, parliamentary staff say.
Although the loss of weapons and other items may seem minor in a country awash with guns and plagued with corruption, it is seen as symbolic of wider problems with the political system.
Every member of the upper or lower house of parliament can claim four firearms for the purposes of personal protection, but if they lose their seats, as many did in the September 2010 election, they are supposed to give them back.
Parliament’s security chief Sher Aziz Kamawal says 115 former deputies are holding onto 396 rifles and pistols, with no legal justification.
“Under the law, former members of parliament are not authorised to fire, keep or carry these weapons,” he said. “If some incident occurs, they will be held responsible, because they’re carrying the weapons without an official licence.”
Kamawal said that while some politicians claimed they still needed armed protection after leaving office, “parliament has no responsibility or role to play in ensuring the security of former legislators”.
Moin Marastial, a former member for the northern Kunduz province, said he would hand back his parliament-issue weapons the moment he received a formal written request.
“When I’m officially asked about it, I will be prepared to return the weapons to parliament,” he said.
Kamawal said his staff had in fact written to former lawmakers asking them to return firearms.
When IWPR asked Mohammad Ali Setegh, who represented Daikondi in central Afghanistan until September last year, to comment on weapons he might be holding, his angry response was to deny he had been voted out of office at all.
“I am still a member of parliament with the same powers,” he said. “I will hit back hard at anyone who tries to defame me.”
Parliament’s director of finance Aziz Jahed expressed disappointment that parliamentary offices had been stripped by their occupants.
“We didn’t search legislators’ vehicles on entering or leaving parliament because we trusted them,” he said. “They abused their positions and took away four laptops and more than 30 desktop computers.”
He said public appeals for the return of the computers had fallen on deaf ears.
One former parliamentarian, Mohammad Yaqub, from Badghis province in northwestern Afghanistan, told IWPR that he still had his laptop but planned to return it as soon as possible, and that he had already given back his desktop computer.
Abdul Sattar Khawasi, a member of the current parliament, said such cases reflected a general failure to tackle systemic corruption.
“In the past ten years, not one corrupt individual has been dismissed or prosecuted on the watch of the international community and [President Hamed]Karzai’s government,” he said.
Khawasi said the sense of impunity had created a climate where people stole as much as they could from government institutions. In light of this, he said, the removal of weapons from parliament was “not just administrative corruption; it’s beyond corruption”.
Another serving parliamentarian, Qazi Nazir Ahmad Hanafi, warned that the case would undermine public faith in legislators.
Pointing out that it was members of the last parliament who designed the rules for borrowing and returning weapons, he asked, “What will people think of these individuals, knowing that they are no longer members of parliament?”
Kabul university student Shazia said the reports confirmed everything that people thought about politicians.
“From the very start, we were crying out that parliament was a safe haven for thieves and criminals, but no one would believe us,” she said. “The theft of weapons and computers – things that are of no great value – proves that these thieves won’t even leave small items of national property alone . Where has the ten billion dollars’ worth of assistance from the international community gone?”
Another resident of the Afghan capital, schoolteacher Ainoddin, expressed similar cynicism, asking, “If the law itself is a thief, why complain that there are thieves? There’s clearly no government and no law –everyone is a thief.”
Abdol Wahed Faramarz is an IWPR-trained reporter in Kabul.

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