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U.S.: Kabul attack won’t spawn sectarian violence
By Ernesto Londoño, The Washington Post December 10
KABUL — The U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan said Saturday that the United States has virtually no information about the motive or culprit behind a rare suicide bombing that killed scores of Shiite worshipers earlier in the week, but he asserted that it was unlikely to spawn sectarian violence.
Ambassador Ryan Crocker said he was skeptical of reports that a hard-line Pakistani militant group that has claimed it carried out Tuesday’s attack has a nascent Afghan offshoot. The prospect has worried Afghans, who fear it could change the dynamics of the Afghan war by exacerbating ethnic and sectarian tensions.
“I very much doubt that there is such a thing,” Crocker told reporters in Kabul on Saturday morning. “I do not see this turning into sectarian violence.”
The attack outside the Abul Fazal Abbas shrine in Kabul during Ashura, the holiest day in the Shiite Muslim calendar, sparked outrage among ethnic Hazaras, most of whom who are Shiite. But so far, the anger appears to be directed mainly toward Pakistan, which prominent Hazaras and Afghan officials accuse of tolerating, and in some cases supporting, attacks on Afghan soil.
Mohammad Mohaqiq, a member of parliament who is among the country’s most influential Hazaras, said Afghans would not be reeled into a cycle of sectarian violence, even if attacks against Shiite civilians were to become commonplace.
“Even if 100 of these attacks happened, they would not break the morale of the people,” he said Saturday. “There is no tension here between Sunnis and Shiites.”
Mohaqiq said Pakistan’s intelligence service was probably behind the attack.
“They want to move the fighting from Pakistan to Afghanistan,” he said.
News outlets in Pakistan have said that Lashkar-i Jhangvi, a militant group with ties to al-Qaeda and the Taliban, claimed to have ordered the attack. The BBC reported Saturday that a man who identified himself as a commander of the group had said in an interview that the bombing was actually carried out by a new Afghan wing.
The man, identified as Ali Sher-e-Khuda, said the attack was an attempt to fight discrimination by “Afghanistan’s ruling Shiite elite.” Ethnic Pashtuns, who make up the majority of the country’s population, are Sunni. Afghan officials and some Pakistani journalists expressed doubts about the man’s account.
Pakistani officials have said they do not support Lashkar-i Jhangvi, adding that they have cracked down on the group. They noted that no attacks targeting Shiites were carried out in Pakistan on Tuesday, the day of the Kabul attack.
The bombing, which killed at least 56 civilians, was particularly jarring because insurgent groups that have been battling NATO and Afghan forces here have seldom carried out large-scale attacks that did not include a military target. If Lashkar-i Jhangvi did it, Crocker said, that would be surprising for a group that commanders in Afghanistan had not previously deemed a threat.
“They have not been on the screen for years,” said Crocker, a veteran diplomat who has also served in Islamabad. U.S. officials have been quick to blame Pakistan-based insurgent groups for large attacks in Kabul. But Crocker said they know next to nothing about who was behind Tuesday’s bombing, saying: “Your speculation would be as good as mine.”
Mohammed Qadir Yurad, 41, a Hazara resident of Kabul, said Tuesday’s attack would not trigger the type of ethnic tension that fueled a civil war in the 1990s.
“Over 30 years of war have passed,” he said. “They have helped Sunnis and Shiites work together.”
Special correspondent Javed Hamdard contributed to this report.
U.S. Troops Could Stay in Afghanistan Past Deadline, Envoy Says
By ROD NORDLAND December 10, 2011 The New York Times
KABUL, Afghanistan — The American ambassador to Afghanistan on Saturday raised the possibility that United States combat troops could stay in the country beyond the 2014 deadline that the White House had set for their withdrawal.
The ambassador, Ryan C. Crocker, speaking at a roundtable event with a small group of journalists, said that if the Afghan government wanted American troops to stay longer, the withdrawal could be slowed. “They would have to ask for it,” he said. “I could certainly see us saying, ‘Yeah, makes sense.’ ”
He emphasized, however, that no such decision had been made.
White House officials said that Mr. Crocker’s comments were consistent with its previously stated position.
“The president never excluded the possibility that there would be some U.S. forces here, but he stressed that security would be under Afghan lead by 2014,” said the embassy spokeswoman, Eileen O’Connor. “The president has always spoken of a responsible winding down of the efforts here, so talk of the possibility of some troops still being here post-2014 is not a change in policy.”
But Mr. Crocker’s comments were an explicit acknowledgment that the post-2014 forces may include combat troops, not just the trainers and advisers who had been publicly mentioned before.
His comments came as the administration was engaged in discussions with the Afghan government on arrangements after 2014. At a conference in Bonn, Germany, last week, President Hamid Karzai and other Afghan officials called for political and military support for at least another decade.
Referring to the NATO summit meeting in Lisbon last year at which Western leaders agreed to transfer security responsibility to Afghan forces by 2014, Mr. Crocker said: “There is nothing in the Lisbon declaration on 2014 that precludes an international military presence beyond 2014. That is to be determined by the parties, who could be numerous, not just us, as we get closer to that date.”
In June, President Obama announced that American troop withdrawals would begin the following month, with 10,000 of the roughly 101,000 American troops then in the country to leave by Dec. 31, and an additional 23,000 to follow by the summer of 2012.
After that, he said, “Our troops will continue coming home at a steady pace as Afghan security forces move into the lead.”
“Our mission will change from combat to support,” he added. “By 2014, this process of transition will be complete, and the Afghan people will be responsible for their own security.”
Of the first 10,000, 4,000 have left, according to a senior NATO official. In most of those cases, personnel who had been scheduled to leave were not replaced, the official said.
“We are on a timeline, as you know,” Mr. Crocker said. “Ten thousand out by the end of the year, that is being met.” With the additional 23,000 by September 2012, he added, “that basically recovers the surge” — the reinforcements Mr. Obama ordered two years ago.
“Beyond that, there are no decisions,” he said, adding, “And as far as I’m aware, there are no formal recommendations yet.”
Asked if that meant that the United States would not necessarily withdraw all combat troops by 2014, Mr. Crocker said, “I don’t know what we’re going to be doing in 2014.”
Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, said that “the president will make decisions on the size and shape of our presence after 2014 at the appropriate time, based on our interests and in consultation with our Afghan and NATO partners.”
“We have been clear that any post-2014 presence by the U.S. would be at the invitation of the Afghan government and aimed at ensuring that we are able to target terrorists and support a sovereign Afghan government so that our enemies can’t outlast us,” she added. “We have also been very clear that we do not seek permanent bases in Afghanistan or a long-term military presence that would be a threat to Afghanistan’s neighbors."
Military leaders have been quietly pushing to keep as many troops in the country as they can during the next two years as a safeguard while responsibility is transferred to Afghan forces.
On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Gen. John R. Allen, the United States and NATO commander in Afghanistan, had been promoting the view that the withdrawals should stop after next year, with the remaining 68,000 soldiers to be kept in Afghanistan through 2013, before cuts resume in 2014. The article said he had not formally recommended that course of action, however.
Mr. Crocker noted that General Allen had made it clear that trainers and advisers would be likely to remain after 2014. Mr. Crocker said that in some cases “major weapons systems will not reach Afghanistan” until after 2014, so Afghans will need assistance learning how to operate and maintain them.
He said he did not expect America’s diplomatic presence to be reduced along with the military pullback. The number of civilian American government employees in Afghanistan increased more than threefold from 2009 to 2011, to more than 1,130, from 320.
“The decisions get made in Washington, but it’s my intention that we’re going to stay pretty steady,” he said. “As the military does draw down, I think our role will even increase in importance.”
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.
Pakistan Taliban Commander Confirms Peace Talks With Government
VOA News December 10, 2011
A senior Pakistani Taliban leader says the militant group has entered into peace talks with the government.
Deputy Taliban commander Maulvi Faqir Mohammad told reporters on Saturday that talks were going in the right direction and that the group may soon sign a formal agreement with authorities.
Mohammad, whose fighters operate in the Bajaur tribal agency, said any deal could be a “role model” for the rest of the border region.
When asked about the Taliban's claims, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said in televised interview that his government has followed a policy of “dialogue, deterrence and development” against militancy and that it is a “continuous” process.
In September, the Pakistani government said it was prepared to “give peace a chance” with militants.
The United States, the source of billions of dollars of aid to Pakistan, is not likely to support peace moves with the Pakistani Taliban, which Washington regards as a terrorist group.
A Taliban spokesman, and Pakistan's military and government last month denied that peace negotiations were taking place.
Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik has said the militant group would have to rid itself of weapons before any such talks could begin.
The government has cut peace deals with the Pakistani Taliban in the past, but they have largely fallen apart. Critics have said the agreements allow the militants to regroup and rebuild their strength to resume fighting the government and foreign troops in neighboring Afghanistan.
It also is not clear if the Pakistani Taliban is united enough as a group to actually strike a lasting deal.
The military has claimed that troops have cleared Bajaur of militants following operations in the tribal agency in recent years.
Pakistan has come under pressure to eradicate militancy since U.S. special forces in May killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in a Pakistani town, where he had apparently been living for years.
U.S. Seeks to Speed Deployment of Afghans to Replace NATO in Pullout Plan
Bloomberg By Viola Gienger Dec 10, 2011
The U.S.-led military coalition in Afghanistan is seeking to enable a steady pace of troop withdrawals after September by bolstering the capabilities of the Afghan army and police.
President Barack Obama’s top military adviser, Army General Martin Dempsey, said the U.S. military is reviewing how to proceed after the first stage of a drawdown is completed in September toward a NATO goal of handing over full responsibility for security throughout Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
Dempsey, who is chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said top commanders are examining ways to speed up the training and deployment of Afghan forces. The coalition plans to have 352,000 army and police trained by October.
Asked about reports that the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan wants to keep the 68,000 American forces that will remain after September until Dec. 2014, Dempsey said that’s based on the mission as it stands today.
“If missions change, if we establish additional milestones, if we reassess and make any changes, then the commander will” determine the troop levels he needs accordingly, Dempsey said at a forum held by the Atlantic Council in Washington.
The higher-level development of skills such as command and control, organization and logistics occurs mostly after basic training, in Afghan units partnered with coalition units, said Brigadier General Carsten Jacobson, a German Army commander who is the top spokesman for the coalition in Afghanistan. ‘On Their Own’
“That gives them the confidence and the expertise so that they can operate on their own,” Jacobson said today in a telephone interview from coalition headquarters in Kabul.
Those Afghan units can then be deployed more widely, relieving coalition forces, based on factors such as security, the level of corruption and the strength of the local government and police in an area, Jacobson said.
Obama announced in July that the U.S. would remove this year the first 10,000 of the 33,000 troops added in the past year, with the remainder exiting in the first nine months of 2012. The strength of Afghanistan’s own army and police will determine how easily Obama can keep his pledge to continue reducing U.S. forces in Afghanistan at a steady pace.
The coalition in recent weeks began handing over the first of 18 areas to Afghan control under the second phase of a handoff of security responsibility. Once that’s completed, about 50 percent of the population will be secured by Afghanistan’s own army and police. Loya Jirga
Coalition commanders were heartened by how the Afghans secured a recent Loya Jirga, or meeting of community leaders from throughout the country, held in Kabul to discuss future relations with the U.S. and others in the coalition, Jacobson said.
“There were numerous attempts” at attacks by insurgents, Jacobson said. “They succeeded in securing it without any serious incidents, so they are getting better. The only thing is we have to be certain that the handover is in responsible chunks.”
The 18 locations contain some areas that are riskier than the seven provinces and districts that made the transition this year, in the first stage of the drawdown, according to Afghan and U.S. officials including Jacobson.
To contact the reporter on this story: Viola Gienger in Washington at vgienger@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at Msilva34@bloomberg.net.
Afghanistan Play, With Experts in the House
New York Times By JENNIFER SCHUESSLER December 9, 2011
“Blood and Gifts,” J. T. Rogers’s play about the history of America’s involvement in Afghanistan in the 1980s, has gotten strong reviews from the critics, who have praised its subtle depiction of a Central Intelligence Agency operative who thinks he is financing anti-Soviet freedom fighters only to see them morph into something more menacing.
But on Thursday the play faced perhaps its toughest audience yet: a house packed with foreign policy hands, including members of all four branches of the military and at least one employee of the C.I.A.
The Council on Foreign Relations had bought all the seats at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center, and at intermission Mr. Rogers professed to be more excited than nervous about playing to such a knowledgeable audience. “I’m the child of a political scientist, so this is like my Comic-Con,” he said. “It’s very wonky, very geekishly cool.”
The crowd, mostly in dark suits and cocktail-party-ready dresses, seemed a far cry from the science-fiction and fantasy fans that descend on San Diego each year in body paint and Darth Vader helmets. But looking at the play’s diplomats, who watched the action from a row of chairs right in front of the audience when not onstage, it was sometimes hard to tell who was dressed for a night at the theater and who was in costume.
Certainly some who have played a real-life role in Afghanistan found Mr. Rogers’s vision convincing.
”The play captured the essence of the Afghan people so perfectly,” including “the way they always want something more, and make sure they get it in every conversation,” said Col. Kathryn Burba, an Army logistics officer recently returned from Kabul and one of the council’s military fellows.
”The thing about relationships in Afghanistan is you start them again every single day,” she added. “If you wake up thinking you have the same relationship you had yesterday, you’re making a big mistake.”
Mr. Rogers, who often features global political themes in his work, vetted “Blood and Gifts” with diplomats, C.I.A. officers and Afghan politicians, refugees and mujahedeen.
After the performance, some in the audience said they especially appreciated the sympathetic portrayal of people like Walter Barnes, the tough-talking but decent-hearted C.I.A. boss who quotes St. Augustine and likes to declare, in a line repeated more than once: “The truth is for us. Not for them.”
Kati Marton, a journalist and the widow of Richard C. Holbrooke, the special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, called Barnes “the ultimate Graham Greene character, trying to do good,” only to see it all go wrong. The play “shows how our abandonment of the Afghans in 1989 is really responsible for the situation today,” she said. “I think Richard would have found it to be a very serious effort.”
If Thursday’s audience was perhaps more inclined than most to credit the American characters with admirable intentions, they also found humor in somewhat different places.
Mr. Rogers said it was the first audience to laugh at his favorite joke: Barnes’s line, in response to the news that “some well-connected yahoo in Wyoming” has donated a shipment of Winchester rifles to the mujahedeen. He says, in essence: You know who surged? Custer surged! (The line, slightly cleaned up for a newspaper readership, derives from a real incident, Mr. Rogers said.)
But it was also the first to remain dead silent, he said, when a hard-line Republican senator from South Carolina responds to one mujahedeen commander’s revelation that his wife had recently burned to death in a Soviet attack by saying, “May Jesus have mercy on her soul.”
Mr. Rogers said, “It was never intended as joke, but someone always laughs.”
Looming over Thursday’s performance wasn’t just the complex question of how to manage our delicate relationship with Pakistan, but the larger question of the future of American intervention abroad.
Col. Chad T. Manske, an Air Force pilot and fellow at the council currently working on a scholarly paper about the intervention in Libya, said the play suggested both the necessity of alliances and the unreliability of allies. ”What the play showed me was that trust is a fickle thing,” he said. “Who can you really trust? I think that’s the question he leaves open.”
New Afghan group claims shrine attack part of campaign
10 December 2011 BBC News
Tuesday's bombing of a Kabul shrine was part of a campaign to target Shia Muslims in Afghanistan, a man claiming to lead a new Afghan group says.
The man, who gave his name as Ali Sher-e-Khuda, told the BBC his group was inspired by Pakistan's Sunni militant Lashkar-e-Jhangvi organisation.
He said the group had not officially sanctioned the Kabul attack, but did not deny his men carried it out.
It has raised fears of a wave of new sectarian violence in Afghanistan.
Afghan officials say the attack was the work of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, but they have cast doubt there is a new Afghan group active in the country with formal links to it.
The killing of at least 71 Shia worshippers earlier this week was the first significant sectarian attack in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban.
Despite suffering years of violence, the country has not seen the attacks between Sunni and Shia Muslims that have been common in Pakistan and Iraq.
'Fighting discrimination'
Ali Sher-e-Khuda spoke to the BBC's Shoaib Hasan at a secret location in the Pakistani border province of Balochistan.
He said his group - which he called Lashkar-e-Jhangvi Afghanistan - is relatively new and operated on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghan border.
He said the organisation was made up of Afghans who are targeting Afghanistan's Shia minority.
"I was born in Nimroz and am of Afghan Pashtun origin," he said.
"[I] set up the organisation with other like-minded young men from Afghanistan. Most of them hail from the provinces around Bamiyan - especially Wardak and Ghazni provinces," he said.
Mr Sher-e-Khuda said Tuesday's bombing was about fighting discrimination by "Afghanistan's ruling Shia elite".
When challenged on the tactic of murdering dozens of innocent worshippers, the militant leader argued it was the only way to counter what he described as "criminal behaviour" by Shias - such as displaying Shia banners in Sunni areas.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai and others believe the attack was mounted by one the established militant groups based inside Pakistan.
"Our information and sources show that the Kabul attack was carried out by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi," Afghan intelligence agency spokesman Lutfullah Mashal said.
Our correspondent says Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is one of Pakistan's deadliest militant groups. As well as being blamed for the killing of thousands of Shias, it has also been linked to a string of high-profile attacks, including the 2002 murder of US reporter Daniel Pearl.
Afghan caution
Mr Mashal said that as far as the National Directorate of Security was concerned, there was no such group as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi Afghanistan.
He said the claim was a tactic by Pakistan's Lashkar-e-Jhangvi to create sectarian tensions as the shrine attack had failed in its goal "to create a rift between Sunnis and Shias" in Afghanistan.
The US ambassador to Afghanistan, Ryan Crocker, said it was not clear who carried out the attack.
"I served in Pakistan for three years, I know all about Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. I am totally unaware of any Afghan affiliate," he said. "I personally doubt very much that there is such a thing."
Demonstrators in Kabul call for bringing war criminals to justice
KABUL, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- Some 100 people including women staged a peaceful demonstration in Kabul on Saturday and demanded justice for those who committed crimes against humanity in Afghanistan over the past three decades of conflicts.
Bearing the banners and placards inscribed with"War criminals should be brought to justice", "War criminals should be ousted from government posts"and"U.S., NATO stop war crimes", the demonstrators gathered in Kabul downtown and after delivering speeches and slogans dispersed peacefully.
Saturday's demonstration held in Kabul, mostly by the families of war victims to mark the Universal Human Rights Day, demanding the punishment of those responsible for committing crimes against humanity over the past three decades of conflicts and civil strife in the war-torn country.
Afghanistan has tremendously suffered over the past three decades of war and civil strife. Several former commanders who were involved in the past 30 years of war and have been accused of abusing human rights are currently legislators and government functionaries in the present Afghan administration.
Organized by a non-governmental agency called"Social Association of Afghan Justice Seekers" the protesters said:"peace in Afghanistan without justice is useless," adding that all those committed crimes against humanity over the past three decades must be brought to justice and be punished.
Afghan Soccer Team Makes Tournament Final; Dedicates Wins To Bombing Victims
December 10, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
KABUL -- Afghanistan's national soccer team has reached the final of a regional tournament in India just days after a twin suicide attack killed dozens, including several family members of the team's players, RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan reports.
Afghanistan's Balal Arezo scored the solitary goal of the semifinal match to defeat Nepal 1-0 in New Delhi on December 9 and give Afghanistan a first-ever berth in the deciding match of the South Asian Football Federation Cup, where the team will play India on December 11.
But the win, one of the greatest days in Afghanistan's modest football history, was overshadowed by tragedy in the war-ravaged country.
The victory comes only a few days after a twin suicide attack on Shi'ite Muslims in the capital, Kabul, and the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif, in which some 60 people were killed, including four family members of one of the team's players, Mustafa Madar.
Two former national soccer team members and an under-17 team player were also wounded in the attack.
Every Afghan player who scored against Bhutan in the quarterfinal on December 7, which Afghanistan won 8-1, embraced Madar, who was on the sidelines.
Following that game, Afghan head coach Mohammed Yusuf Kargar dedicated the win to victims of the attacks and their families. He said the bombings have given his players extra motivation to win the final.
"On the pitch on December 11 the players will be playing for their team, their families, their country, and for their war-suffering countrymen," Kargar told RFE/RL on December 9.
Soccer has faced many setbacks in Afghanistan in the last 30 years. In 1980, the entire national team sought asylum in West Germany following the Soviet invasion the year before.
During the Taliban's rule in the 1990s, all sports were banned and the country's national soccer stadium in Kabul was used for executions.
But in recent years, the sport has reemerged and there are now two professional leagues in the country -- the Afghan National League and the Kabul Premier League.
Despite such gains, the leagues are still suffering from severe underfunding.
Three Days in Afghanistan: The Making of a War Reporter
By John Wendle / Kabul Thursday, Dec. 08, 2011 time.com
War is strange. It can change your life, for good or bad or both, with the speed and ferocity of little else. In the space of a couple days in October, I ticked off two boxes I had in my head, things I needed to be checked to prove to myself that I was a bona fide war reporter. Then came a third day, just this week, that shook the certainties of the first two profoundly.
Just two months ago in Kunar — one of the most dangerous provinces in the country and bordering Pakistan — I hiked a thousand meters straight up a mountain for five and a half hours in the dark with the men of 3rd platoon, bravo company. We landed in Chinooks in a soggy rice paddy, expecting contact. With no night vision and no moon, I scrambled up and over massive boulders, across loose stone and through thorn trees to the small, embattled Shal Outpost. It was the hardest physical thing many of the soldiers — and I — had ever done in our lives.
I soon realized I was proud of myself. This was something I had never felt. This was something I had done on my own through my own strength and determination — though even that determination was bolstered by a persistent stubbornness picked up from my parents and sister and from the support of the soldiers around me.
And my pride came from not only reaching the top of that mountain with the guys, it also came from simply pulling my own weight and not complaining, in helping guys two-thirds my age up rock faces and in not hurting myself. And there was professional pride too — in trying to take pictures through exhaustion. I realized that this was an experience no one could take from me. It was mine and I could look back on it — and it would help strengthen me in difficult times to come.
Then, just a couple of days after, I was almost shot in the face. The sniper's round missed me by a half meter. It was so close it showered sparks all over me and my camera as it ricocheted off a steel post, so close I picked up my camera and looked at the lens to see if it had been smashed. I dropped below the sandbags with PFC Cory Early, the soldier I had been chatting with. He had an astonished look on his face. Probably I had the same on mine.
Conquering that mountain and reaching Outpost Shal ticked the box for doing something truly hard and seeing it through to the end. I've lived in Afghanistan for two years, and have done a lot of hard things: long foot patrols in Marjah and the Arghandab River Valley in 140 degree Fahrenheit heat wearing full body armor and camera gear; and overcoming the terror of unseen dangers of foot patrols — the IEDs that have cost countless soldiers and photographers their legs — and the ambushes.
But up until I was just missed by that sniper, they had been just that: unseen. When it happened, a conversation I had had a year ago with my dad played out. I had been talking to him about what the work was like, but I told him that, though I had been scared before, I had never truly felt like I was a war reporter because I had never been the target of any of the shooting I had seen. My head had never been in anyone's sights before. But that sniper shot had changed that. I can't even say I was scared. Surprised, yes. I hadn't seen it coming. I continued to do my work, to take pictures, shoot video and talk to the soldiers — interviewing them for a story I was working on for TIME. But that was the second box ticked off: being targeted for death in war.
With those two boxes checked, I was confident in my job and in my personal life. I felt I knew who I was and what I was doing in the face of all the uncertainty brought by this war and this kind of life. That changed on Dec. 6 when a blast in central Kabul killed 58 and wounded another 150 people, mostly ethnic Hazaras watching the observance of the Shi'ite holy day of Ashura, in which adherents whip their backs with chains and blades to mourn the martyrdom of Imam Husain and mark his sacrifice. I was among the crowd, maybe 15 meters from where the suicide bomber detonated himself. Before the explosion, my camera and I were already dotted with blood that had flown in showers off the backs, chaines and blades of the men beating themeselves in a frenzy of religious fervor. But, in the blink of an eye, there would be so much more blood.
The explosion radiated out in a circle through the densely packed crowd. The bomb left a closely packed semicircle of bodies in its wake, as if a giant scythe had reached out, cutting people down like wheat in its sweep. Women, children and babies behind the bomber had been blown against a wall, compressed into a piled and tangled line of blood and scorched clothing.
The dead were dead. The wounded were horrifying to behold, moving or just breathing in unnatural ways through their pain. They writhed or simply jerked and shuddered on the ground. Some simply gaped through bloody mouths, blinking in disbelief, covered in dust and gore. I saw one little girl stand up, then collapse back onto the pile of her bloodied brothers and sisters. A baby lay half on her mother's chest with her torso and head lying face first on the ground, not moving. It was the Inferno. It was the second most bloodiest day in Kabul in recent years.
I ran around not knowing what to do or where to go. In the center of it, all I wanted to do was close my eyes and ears and not see anymore. Then I went back to work.
I have covered numerous bombings and attacks in Kabul. Once you hear the boom, you grab your cameras and jump on your bicycle (which makes it easier to get past police checkpoints and to move quickly through traffic jams). Then you deal with the aftermath: the slick of blood and intestines, the heads emptied and collapsed like a deflated soccer ball. But being there when the horror of that day made itself known was a completely different experience.
I am not proud of my work on Tuesday. I almost do not even remember taking the pictures or video that aired on CNN. I know I had to keep working though. It is my job and there were only two other photographers there during the blast. The Afghans deserved to have their story told. And there were others there to help the wounded and carry the dead. I didn't have my tourniquet with me — I usually carry one to bombings — and one tourniquet would not have been enough. I had been so close to the blast, had nearly been trampled and, while getting back to work, was frantically looking for the body of my colleague and friend Joel van Houdt, a Dutch photographer, who had been covering the event with. I was relieved to see him standing, physically unharmed and working as I was. But even though I had come so close to death, had been part of the bomber's target, I did not feel the same way I felt after being nearly shot by a sniper. I did not feel anything.
I do not feel like I have checked a box. I do not feel like this certifies me as a war photographer, videographer or journalist. I do not have any pride in this work. All I feel is sadness for all the babies and little children that were killed. Just sadness and anger that people could do this to others.
I used to tell people who asked that the reason I cover this war was because I have close Afghan friends in Helmand--and I don't want to have to see them run away, die or hide when the civil war begins, as everyone seems to be predicting, after the planned American withdrawal in 2014. The only way I can do that, I explained, was by showing what is going on here and helping bring it to an end — an end that does not lead to a civil war. After Tuesday's bombing I realized I am here not for my Afghan friends, but for all Afghans and everyone fighting here. As my colleague and friend Joel said to me, this is no longer only their war, that war over there, between the Afghans, it is ours too now, and we are here to try to give them a voice against this incomprehensible violence and brutal rage.
Another photographer, my friend Pieter ten Hoopen, told me a day after the bombing that he is afraid of what is to come here in Afghanistan. U.S. troops, a stabilizing force, are withdrawing and the violence will only increase. In the near future, Pieter is afraid that the viciousness of this attack will only make even more brutal attacks imaginable — and that they will be carried out. I, too, am afraid.
Rohrabacher: Pakistan is a radical Islamic terrorist state
Examiner.com By Michael Hughes , Afghanistan Headlines Examiner December 10, 2011
America must end its “irrational relationship” with Pakistan and strengthen ties with India according to Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) in a letter published in the New York Times on Thursday.
Rohrabacher, who is the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs committee on Oversight and Investigations, wrote the letter to support ideas outlined in an article entitled “Can Russia Help Us Withdraw From Afghanistan?” written by a former Bush undersecretary of defense and the executive director of an American national security think tank.
Rohrabacher seconded the notion of working more closely with Russia in Afghanistan to carve a safer northern route for Afghan supplies which would also serve to avoid convoy-protection payments to Taliban-linked warlords. Rohrbacher writes:
An American-Russian alignment based on opposition to Islamic extremism would provide a common interest to underpin a positive reset of relations.
Rohrabacher’s inclination to partner with Russia is interesting given his former role as a speechwriter for President Reagan whose administration supported Pakistani-trained jihadists against the Soviets during the 1980s.
The CIA, in one of the biggest covert operations in U.S. history, pumped billions into funding and arming mujahideen “freedom fighters” to expel the Soviets from Afghanistan in 1989 – an operation that many argue helped fan the very extremism bedeviling NATO today.
Rohrabacher also advocated pivoting towards Delhi because not only do India and the U.S. share common regional objectives, they share the same adversaries as well (whether China knows it or not):
New Delhi is a friend and a potential ally. India is a democracy with security interests in line with ours against Pakistan, a radical Islamic terrorist state and an ally of a menacing China.
U.S. and Pakistani relations have sunk to all-time lows recently after a NATO airstrike killed 24 Pakistani soldiers a couple of weeks ago.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
By Ernesto Londoño, The Washington Post December 10
KABUL — The U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan said Saturday that the United States has virtually no information about the motive or culprit behind a rare suicide bombing that killed scores of Shiite worshipers earlier in the week, but he asserted that it was unlikely to spawn sectarian violence.
Ambassador Ryan Crocker said he was skeptical of reports that a hard-line Pakistani militant group that has claimed it carried out Tuesday’s attack has a nascent Afghan offshoot. The prospect has worried Afghans, who fear it could change the dynamics of the Afghan war by exacerbating ethnic and sectarian tensions.
“I very much doubt that there is such a thing,” Crocker told reporters in Kabul on Saturday morning. “I do not see this turning into sectarian violence.”
The attack outside the Abul Fazal Abbas shrine in Kabul during Ashura, the holiest day in the Shiite Muslim calendar, sparked outrage among ethnic Hazaras, most of whom who are Shiite. But so far, the anger appears to be directed mainly toward Pakistan, which prominent Hazaras and Afghan officials accuse of tolerating, and in some cases supporting, attacks on Afghan soil.
Mohammad Mohaqiq, a member of parliament who is among the country’s most influential Hazaras, said Afghans would not be reeled into a cycle of sectarian violence, even if attacks against Shiite civilians were to become commonplace.
“Even if 100 of these attacks happened, they would not break the morale of the people,” he said Saturday. “There is no tension here between Sunnis and Shiites.”
Mohaqiq said Pakistan’s intelligence service was probably behind the attack.
“They want to move the fighting from Pakistan to Afghanistan,” he said.
News outlets in Pakistan have said that Lashkar-i Jhangvi, a militant group with ties to al-Qaeda and the Taliban, claimed to have ordered the attack. The BBC reported Saturday that a man who identified himself as a commander of the group had said in an interview that the bombing was actually carried out by a new Afghan wing.
The man, identified as Ali Sher-e-Khuda, said the attack was an attempt to fight discrimination by “Afghanistan’s ruling Shiite elite.” Ethnic Pashtuns, who make up the majority of the country’s population, are Sunni. Afghan officials and some Pakistani journalists expressed doubts about the man’s account.
Pakistani officials have said they do not support Lashkar-i Jhangvi, adding that they have cracked down on the group. They noted that no attacks targeting Shiites were carried out in Pakistan on Tuesday, the day of the Kabul attack.
The bombing, which killed at least 56 civilians, was particularly jarring because insurgent groups that have been battling NATO and Afghan forces here have seldom carried out large-scale attacks that did not include a military target. If Lashkar-i Jhangvi did it, Crocker said, that would be surprising for a group that commanders in Afghanistan had not previously deemed a threat.
“They have not been on the screen for years,” said Crocker, a veteran diplomat who has also served in Islamabad. U.S. officials have been quick to blame Pakistan-based insurgent groups for large attacks in Kabul. But Crocker said they know next to nothing about who was behind Tuesday’s bombing, saying: “Your speculation would be as good as mine.”
Mohammed Qadir Yurad, 41, a Hazara resident of Kabul, said Tuesday’s attack would not trigger the type of ethnic tension that fueled a civil war in the 1990s.
“Over 30 years of war have passed,” he said. “They have helped Sunnis and Shiites work together.”
Special correspondent Javed Hamdard contributed to this report.
U.S. Troops Could Stay in Afghanistan Past Deadline, Envoy Says
By ROD NORDLAND December 10, 2011 The New York Times
KABUL, Afghanistan — The American ambassador to Afghanistan on Saturday raised the possibility that United States combat troops could stay in the country beyond the 2014 deadline that the White House had set for their withdrawal.
The ambassador, Ryan C. Crocker, speaking at a roundtable event with a small group of journalists, said that if the Afghan government wanted American troops to stay longer, the withdrawal could be slowed. “They would have to ask for it,” he said. “I could certainly see us saying, ‘Yeah, makes sense.’ ”
He emphasized, however, that no such decision had been made.
White House officials said that Mr. Crocker’s comments were consistent with its previously stated position.
“The president never excluded the possibility that there would be some U.S. forces here, but he stressed that security would be under Afghan lead by 2014,” said the embassy spokeswoman, Eileen O’Connor. “The president has always spoken of a responsible winding down of the efforts here, so talk of the possibility of some troops still being here post-2014 is not a change in policy.”
But Mr. Crocker’s comments were an explicit acknowledgment that the post-2014 forces may include combat troops, not just the trainers and advisers who had been publicly mentioned before.
His comments came as the administration was engaged in discussions with the Afghan government on arrangements after 2014. At a conference in Bonn, Germany, last week, President Hamid Karzai and other Afghan officials called for political and military support for at least another decade.
Referring to the NATO summit meeting in Lisbon last year at which Western leaders agreed to transfer security responsibility to Afghan forces by 2014, Mr. Crocker said: “There is nothing in the Lisbon declaration on 2014 that precludes an international military presence beyond 2014. That is to be determined by the parties, who could be numerous, not just us, as we get closer to that date.”
In June, President Obama announced that American troop withdrawals would begin the following month, with 10,000 of the roughly 101,000 American troops then in the country to leave by Dec. 31, and an additional 23,000 to follow by the summer of 2012.
After that, he said, “Our troops will continue coming home at a steady pace as Afghan security forces move into the lead.”
“Our mission will change from combat to support,” he added. “By 2014, this process of transition will be complete, and the Afghan people will be responsible for their own security.”
Of the first 10,000, 4,000 have left, according to a senior NATO official. In most of those cases, personnel who had been scheduled to leave were not replaced, the official said.
“We are on a timeline, as you know,” Mr. Crocker said. “Ten thousand out by the end of the year, that is being met.” With the additional 23,000 by September 2012, he added, “that basically recovers the surge” — the reinforcements Mr. Obama ordered two years ago.
“Beyond that, there are no decisions,” he said, adding, “And as far as I’m aware, there are no formal recommendations yet.”
Asked if that meant that the United States would not necessarily withdraw all combat troops by 2014, Mr. Crocker said, “I don’t know what we’re going to be doing in 2014.”
Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, said that “the president will make decisions on the size and shape of our presence after 2014 at the appropriate time, based on our interests and in consultation with our Afghan and NATO partners.”
“We have been clear that any post-2014 presence by the U.S. would be at the invitation of the Afghan government and aimed at ensuring that we are able to target terrorists and support a sovereign Afghan government so that our enemies can’t outlast us,” she added. “We have also been very clear that we do not seek permanent bases in Afghanistan or a long-term military presence that would be a threat to Afghanistan’s neighbors."
Military leaders have been quietly pushing to keep as many troops in the country as they can during the next two years as a safeguard while responsibility is transferred to Afghan forces.
On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Gen. John R. Allen, the United States and NATO commander in Afghanistan, had been promoting the view that the withdrawals should stop after next year, with the remaining 68,000 soldiers to be kept in Afghanistan through 2013, before cuts resume in 2014. The article said he had not formally recommended that course of action, however.
Mr. Crocker noted that General Allen had made it clear that trainers and advisers would be likely to remain after 2014. Mr. Crocker said that in some cases “major weapons systems will not reach Afghanistan” until after 2014, so Afghans will need assistance learning how to operate and maintain them.
He said he did not expect America’s diplomatic presence to be reduced along with the military pullback. The number of civilian American government employees in Afghanistan increased more than threefold from 2009 to 2011, to more than 1,130, from 320.
“The decisions get made in Washington, but it’s my intention that we’re going to stay pretty steady,” he said. “As the military does draw down, I think our role will even increase in importance.”
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.
Pakistan Taliban Commander Confirms Peace Talks With Government
VOA News December 10, 2011
A senior Pakistani Taliban leader says the militant group has entered into peace talks with the government.
Deputy Taliban commander Maulvi Faqir Mohammad told reporters on Saturday that talks were going in the right direction and that the group may soon sign a formal agreement with authorities.
Mohammad, whose fighters operate in the Bajaur tribal agency, said any deal could be a “role model” for the rest of the border region.
When asked about the Taliban's claims, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said in televised interview that his government has followed a policy of “dialogue, deterrence and development” against militancy and that it is a “continuous” process.
In September, the Pakistani government said it was prepared to “give peace a chance” with militants.
The United States, the source of billions of dollars of aid to Pakistan, is not likely to support peace moves with the Pakistani Taliban, which Washington regards as a terrorist group.
A Taliban spokesman, and Pakistan's military and government last month denied that peace negotiations were taking place.
Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik has said the militant group would have to rid itself of weapons before any such talks could begin.
The government has cut peace deals with the Pakistani Taliban in the past, but they have largely fallen apart. Critics have said the agreements allow the militants to regroup and rebuild their strength to resume fighting the government and foreign troops in neighboring Afghanistan.
It also is not clear if the Pakistani Taliban is united enough as a group to actually strike a lasting deal.
The military has claimed that troops have cleared Bajaur of militants following operations in the tribal agency in recent years.
Pakistan has come under pressure to eradicate militancy since U.S. special forces in May killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in a Pakistani town, where he had apparently been living for years.
U.S. Seeks to Speed Deployment of Afghans to Replace NATO in Pullout Plan
Bloomberg By Viola Gienger Dec 10, 2011
The U.S.-led military coalition in Afghanistan is seeking to enable a steady pace of troop withdrawals after September by bolstering the capabilities of the Afghan army and police.
President Barack Obama’s top military adviser, Army General Martin Dempsey, said the U.S. military is reviewing how to proceed after the first stage of a drawdown is completed in September toward a NATO goal of handing over full responsibility for security throughout Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
Dempsey, who is chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said top commanders are examining ways to speed up the training and deployment of Afghan forces. The coalition plans to have 352,000 army and police trained by October.
Asked about reports that the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan wants to keep the 68,000 American forces that will remain after September until Dec. 2014, Dempsey said that’s based on the mission as it stands today.
“If missions change, if we establish additional milestones, if we reassess and make any changes, then the commander will” determine the troop levels he needs accordingly, Dempsey said at a forum held by the Atlantic Council in Washington.
The higher-level development of skills such as command and control, organization and logistics occurs mostly after basic training, in Afghan units partnered with coalition units, said Brigadier General Carsten Jacobson, a German Army commander who is the top spokesman for the coalition in Afghanistan. ‘On Their Own’
“That gives them the confidence and the expertise so that they can operate on their own,” Jacobson said today in a telephone interview from coalition headquarters in Kabul.
Those Afghan units can then be deployed more widely, relieving coalition forces, based on factors such as security, the level of corruption and the strength of the local government and police in an area, Jacobson said.
Obama announced in July that the U.S. would remove this year the first 10,000 of the 33,000 troops added in the past year, with the remainder exiting in the first nine months of 2012. The strength of Afghanistan’s own army and police will determine how easily Obama can keep his pledge to continue reducing U.S. forces in Afghanistan at a steady pace.
The coalition in recent weeks began handing over the first of 18 areas to Afghan control under the second phase of a handoff of security responsibility. Once that’s completed, about 50 percent of the population will be secured by Afghanistan’s own army and police. Loya Jirga
Coalition commanders were heartened by how the Afghans secured a recent Loya Jirga, or meeting of community leaders from throughout the country, held in Kabul to discuss future relations with the U.S. and others in the coalition, Jacobson said.
“There were numerous attempts” at attacks by insurgents, Jacobson said. “They succeeded in securing it without any serious incidents, so they are getting better. The only thing is we have to be certain that the handover is in responsible chunks.”
The 18 locations contain some areas that are riskier than the seven provinces and districts that made the transition this year, in the first stage of the drawdown, according to Afghan and U.S. officials including Jacobson.
To contact the reporter on this story: Viola Gienger in Washington at vgienger@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at Msilva34@bloomberg.net.
Afghanistan Play, With Experts in the House
New York Times By JENNIFER SCHUESSLER December 9, 2011
“Blood and Gifts,” J. T. Rogers’s play about the history of America’s involvement in Afghanistan in the 1980s, has gotten strong reviews from the critics, who have praised its subtle depiction of a Central Intelligence Agency operative who thinks he is financing anti-Soviet freedom fighters only to see them morph into something more menacing.
But on Thursday the play faced perhaps its toughest audience yet: a house packed with foreign policy hands, including members of all four branches of the military and at least one employee of the C.I.A.
The Council on Foreign Relations had bought all the seats at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center, and at intermission Mr. Rogers professed to be more excited than nervous about playing to such a knowledgeable audience. “I’m the child of a political scientist, so this is like my Comic-Con,” he said. “It’s very wonky, very geekishly cool.”
The crowd, mostly in dark suits and cocktail-party-ready dresses, seemed a far cry from the science-fiction and fantasy fans that descend on San Diego each year in body paint and Darth Vader helmets. But looking at the play’s diplomats, who watched the action from a row of chairs right in front of the audience when not onstage, it was sometimes hard to tell who was dressed for a night at the theater and who was in costume.
Certainly some who have played a real-life role in Afghanistan found Mr. Rogers’s vision convincing.
”The play captured the essence of the Afghan people so perfectly,” including “the way they always want something more, and make sure they get it in every conversation,” said Col. Kathryn Burba, an Army logistics officer recently returned from Kabul and one of the council’s military fellows.
”The thing about relationships in Afghanistan is you start them again every single day,” she added. “If you wake up thinking you have the same relationship you had yesterday, you’re making a big mistake.”
Mr. Rogers, who often features global political themes in his work, vetted “Blood and Gifts” with diplomats, C.I.A. officers and Afghan politicians, refugees and mujahedeen.
After the performance, some in the audience said they especially appreciated the sympathetic portrayal of people like Walter Barnes, the tough-talking but decent-hearted C.I.A. boss who quotes St. Augustine and likes to declare, in a line repeated more than once: “The truth is for us. Not for them.”
Kati Marton, a journalist and the widow of Richard C. Holbrooke, the special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, called Barnes “the ultimate Graham Greene character, trying to do good,” only to see it all go wrong. The play “shows how our abandonment of the Afghans in 1989 is really responsible for the situation today,” she said. “I think Richard would have found it to be a very serious effort.”
If Thursday’s audience was perhaps more inclined than most to credit the American characters with admirable intentions, they also found humor in somewhat different places.
Mr. Rogers said it was the first audience to laugh at his favorite joke: Barnes’s line, in response to the news that “some well-connected yahoo in Wyoming” has donated a shipment of Winchester rifles to the mujahedeen. He says, in essence: You know who surged? Custer surged! (The line, slightly cleaned up for a newspaper readership, derives from a real incident, Mr. Rogers said.)
But it was also the first to remain dead silent, he said, when a hard-line Republican senator from South Carolina responds to one mujahedeen commander’s revelation that his wife had recently burned to death in a Soviet attack by saying, “May Jesus have mercy on her soul.”
Mr. Rogers said, “It was never intended as joke, but someone always laughs.”
Looming over Thursday’s performance wasn’t just the complex question of how to manage our delicate relationship with Pakistan, but the larger question of the future of American intervention abroad.
Col. Chad T. Manske, an Air Force pilot and fellow at the council currently working on a scholarly paper about the intervention in Libya, said the play suggested both the necessity of alliances and the unreliability of allies. ”What the play showed me was that trust is a fickle thing,” he said. “Who can you really trust? I think that’s the question he leaves open.”
New Afghan group claims shrine attack part of campaign
10 December 2011 BBC News
Tuesday's bombing of a Kabul shrine was part of a campaign to target Shia Muslims in Afghanistan, a man claiming to lead a new Afghan group says.
The man, who gave his name as Ali Sher-e-Khuda, told the BBC his group was inspired by Pakistan's Sunni militant Lashkar-e-Jhangvi organisation.
He said the group had not officially sanctioned the Kabul attack, but did not deny his men carried it out.
It has raised fears of a wave of new sectarian violence in Afghanistan.
Afghan officials say the attack was the work of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, but they have cast doubt there is a new Afghan group active in the country with formal links to it.
The killing of at least 71 Shia worshippers earlier this week was the first significant sectarian attack in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban.
Despite suffering years of violence, the country has not seen the attacks between Sunni and Shia Muslims that have been common in Pakistan and Iraq.
'Fighting discrimination'
Ali Sher-e-Khuda spoke to the BBC's Shoaib Hasan at a secret location in the Pakistani border province of Balochistan.
He said his group - which he called Lashkar-e-Jhangvi Afghanistan - is relatively new and operated on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghan border.
He said the organisation was made up of Afghans who are targeting Afghanistan's Shia minority.
"I was born in Nimroz and am of Afghan Pashtun origin," he said.
"[I] set up the organisation with other like-minded young men from Afghanistan. Most of them hail from the provinces around Bamiyan - especially Wardak and Ghazni provinces," he said.
Mr Sher-e-Khuda said Tuesday's bombing was about fighting discrimination by "Afghanistan's ruling Shia elite".
When challenged on the tactic of murdering dozens of innocent worshippers, the militant leader argued it was the only way to counter what he described as "criminal behaviour" by Shias - such as displaying Shia banners in Sunni areas.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai and others believe the attack was mounted by one the established militant groups based inside Pakistan.
"Our information and sources show that the Kabul attack was carried out by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi," Afghan intelligence agency spokesman Lutfullah Mashal said.
Our correspondent says Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is one of Pakistan's deadliest militant groups. As well as being blamed for the killing of thousands of Shias, it has also been linked to a string of high-profile attacks, including the 2002 murder of US reporter Daniel Pearl.
Afghan caution
Mr Mashal said that as far as the National Directorate of Security was concerned, there was no such group as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi Afghanistan.
He said the claim was a tactic by Pakistan's Lashkar-e-Jhangvi to create sectarian tensions as the shrine attack had failed in its goal "to create a rift between Sunnis and Shias" in Afghanistan.
The US ambassador to Afghanistan, Ryan Crocker, said it was not clear who carried out the attack.
"I served in Pakistan for three years, I know all about Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. I am totally unaware of any Afghan affiliate," he said. "I personally doubt very much that there is such a thing."
Demonstrators in Kabul call for bringing war criminals to justice
KABUL, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- Some 100 people including women staged a peaceful demonstration in Kabul on Saturday and demanded justice for those who committed crimes against humanity in Afghanistan over the past three decades of conflicts.
Bearing the banners and placards inscribed with"War criminals should be brought to justice", "War criminals should be ousted from government posts"and"U.S., NATO stop war crimes", the demonstrators gathered in Kabul downtown and after delivering speeches and slogans dispersed peacefully.
Saturday's demonstration held in Kabul, mostly by the families of war victims to mark the Universal Human Rights Day, demanding the punishment of those responsible for committing crimes against humanity over the past three decades of conflicts and civil strife in the war-torn country.
Afghanistan has tremendously suffered over the past three decades of war and civil strife. Several former commanders who were involved in the past 30 years of war and have been accused of abusing human rights are currently legislators and government functionaries in the present Afghan administration.
Organized by a non-governmental agency called"Social Association of Afghan Justice Seekers" the protesters said:"peace in Afghanistan without justice is useless," adding that all those committed crimes against humanity over the past three decades must be brought to justice and be punished.
Afghan Soccer Team Makes Tournament Final; Dedicates Wins To Bombing Victims
December 10, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
KABUL -- Afghanistan's national soccer team has reached the final of a regional tournament in India just days after a twin suicide attack killed dozens, including several family members of the team's players, RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan reports.
Afghanistan's Balal Arezo scored the solitary goal of the semifinal match to defeat Nepal 1-0 in New Delhi on December 9 and give Afghanistan a first-ever berth in the deciding match of the South Asian Football Federation Cup, where the team will play India on December 11.
But the win, one of the greatest days in Afghanistan's modest football history, was overshadowed by tragedy in the war-ravaged country.
The victory comes only a few days after a twin suicide attack on Shi'ite Muslims in the capital, Kabul, and the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif, in which some 60 people were killed, including four family members of one of the team's players, Mustafa Madar.
Two former national soccer team members and an under-17 team player were also wounded in the attack.
Every Afghan player who scored against Bhutan in the quarterfinal on December 7, which Afghanistan won 8-1, embraced Madar, who was on the sidelines.
Following that game, Afghan head coach Mohammed Yusuf Kargar dedicated the win to victims of the attacks and their families. He said the bombings have given his players extra motivation to win the final.
"On the pitch on December 11 the players will be playing for their team, their families, their country, and for their war-suffering countrymen," Kargar told RFE/RL on December 9.
Soccer has faced many setbacks in Afghanistan in the last 30 years. In 1980, the entire national team sought asylum in West Germany following the Soviet invasion the year before.
During the Taliban's rule in the 1990s, all sports were banned and the country's national soccer stadium in Kabul was used for executions.
But in recent years, the sport has reemerged and there are now two professional leagues in the country -- the Afghan National League and the Kabul Premier League.
Despite such gains, the leagues are still suffering from severe underfunding.
Three Days in Afghanistan: The Making of a War Reporter
By John Wendle / Kabul Thursday, Dec. 08, 2011 time.com
War is strange. It can change your life, for good or bad or both, with the speed and ferocity of little else. In the space of a couple days in October, I ticked off two boxes I had in my head, things I needed to be checked to prove to myself that I was a bona fide war reporter. Then came a third day, just this week, that shook the certainties of the first two profoundly.
Just two months ago in Kunar — one of the most dangerous provinces in the country and bordering Pakistan — I hiked a thousand meters straight up a mountain for five and a half hours in the dark with the men of 3rd platoon, bravo company. We landed in Chinooks in a soggy rice paddy, expecting contact. With no night vision and no moon, I scrambled up and over massive boulders, across loose stone and through thorn trees to the small, embattled Shal Outpost. It was the hardest physical thing many of the soldiers — and I — had ever done in our lives.
I soon realized I was proud of myself. This was something I had never felt. This was something I had done on my own through my own strength and determination — though even that determination was bolstered by a persistent stubbornness picked up from my parents and sister and from the support of the soldiers around me.
And my pride came from not only reaching the top of that mountain with the guys, it also came from simply pulling my own weight and not complaining, in helping guys two-thirds my age up rock faces and in not hurting myself. And there was professional pride too — in trying to take pictures through exhaustion. I realized that this was an experience no one could take from me. It was mine and I could look back on it — and it would help strengthen me in difficult times to come.
Then, just a couple of days after, I was almost shot in the face. The sniper's round missed me by a half meter. It was so close it showered sparks all over me and my camera as it ricocheted off a steel post, so close I picked up my camera and looked at the lens to see if it had been smashed. I dropped below the sandbags with PFC Cory Early, the soldier I had been chatting with. He had an astonished look on his face. Probably I had the same on mine.
Conquering that mountain and reaching Outpost Shal ticked the box for doing something truly hard and seeing it through to the end. I've lived in Afghanistan for two years, and have done a lot of hard things: long foot patrols in Marjah and the Arghandab River Valley in 140 degree Fahrenheit heat wearing full body armor and camera gear; and overcoming the terror of unseen dangers of foot patrols — the IEDs that have cost countless soldiers and photographers their legs — and the ambushes.
But up until I was just missed by that sniper, they had been just that: unseen. When it happened, a conversation I had had a year ago with my dad played out. I had been talking to him about what the work was like, but I told him that, though I had been scared before, I had never truly felt like I was a war reporter because I had never been the target of any of the shooting I had seen. My head had never been in anyone's sights before. But that sniper shot had changed that. I can't even say I was scared. Surprised, yes. I hadn't seen it coming. I continued to do my work, to take pictures, shoot video and talk to the soldiers — interviewing them for a story I was working on for TIME. But that was the second box ticked off: being targeted for death in war.
With those two boxes checked, I was confident in my job and in my personal life. I felt I knew who I was and what I was doing in the face of all the uncertainty brought by this war and this kind of life. That changed on Dec. 6 when a blast in central Kabul killed 58 and wounded another 150 people, mostly ethnic Hazaras watching the observance of the Shi'ite holy day of Ashura, in which adherents whip their backs with chains and blades to mourn the martyrdom of Imam Husain and mark his sacrifice. I was among the crowd, maybe 15 meters from where the suicide bomber detonated himself. Before the explosion, my camera and I were already dotted with blood that had flown in showers off the backs, chaines and blades of the men beating themeselves in a frenzy of religious fervor. But, in the blink of an eye, there would be so much more blood.
The explosion radiated out in a circle through the densely packed crowd. The bomb left a closely packed semicircle of bodies in its wake, as if a giant scythe had reached out, cutting people down like wheat in its sweep. Women, children and babies behind the bomber had been blown against a wall, compressed into a piled and tangled line of blood and scorched clothing.
The dead were dead. The wounded were horrifying to behold, moving or just breathing in unnatural ways through their pain. They writhed or simply jerked and shuddered on the ground. Some simply gaped through bloody mouths, blinking in disbelief, covered in dust and gore. I saw one little girl stand up, then collapse back onto the pile of her bloodied brothers and sisters. A baby lay half on her mother's chest with her torso and head lying face first on the ground, not moving. It was the Inferno. It was the second most bloodiest day in Kabul in recent years.
I ran around not knowing what to do or where to go. In the center of it, all I wanted to do was close my eyes and ears and not see anymore. Then I went back to work.
I have covered numerous bombings and attacks in Kabul. Once you hear the boom, you grab your cameras and jump on your bicycle (which makes it easier to get past police checkpoints and to move quickly through traffic jams). Then you deal with the aftermath: the slick of blood and intestines, the heads emptied and collapsed like a deflated soccer ball. But being there when the horror of that day made itself known was a completely different experience.
I am not proud of my work on Tuesday. I almost do not even remember taking the pictures or video that aired on CNN. I know I had to keep working though. It is my job and there were only two other photographers there during the blast. The Afghans deserved to have their story told. And there were others there to help the wounded and carry the dead. I didn't have my tourniquet with me — I usually carry one to bombings — and one tourniquet would not have been enough. I had been so close to the blast, had nearly been trampled and, while getting back to work, was frantically looking for the body of my colleague and friend Joel van Houdt, a Dutch photographer, who had been covering the event with. I was relieved to see him standing, physically unharmed and working as I was. But even though I had come so close to death, had been part of the bomber's target, I did not feel the same way I felt after being nearly shot by a sniper. I did not feel anything.
I do not feel like I have checked a box. I do not feel like this certifies me as a war photographer, videographer or journalist. I do not have any pride in this work. All I feel is sadness for all the babies and little children that were killed. Just sadness and anger that people could do this to others.
I used to tell people who asked that the reason I cover this war was because I have close Afghan friends in Helmand--and I don't want to have to see them run away, die or hide when the civil war begins, as everyone seems to be predicting, after the planned American withdrawal in 2014. The only way I can do that, I explained, was by showing what is going on here and helping bring it to an end — an end that does not lead to a civil war. After Tuesday's bombing I realized I am here not for my Afghan friends, but for all Afghans and everyone fighting here. As my colleague and friend Joel said to me, this is no longer only their war, that war over there, between the Afghans, it is ours too now, and we are here to try to give them a voice against this incomprehensible violence and brutal rage.
Another photographer, my friend Pieter ten Hoopen, told me a day after the bombing that he is afraid of what is to come here in Afghanistan. U.S. troops, a stabilizing force, are withdrawing and the violence will only increase. In the near future, Pieter is afraid that the viciousness of this attack will only make even more brutal attacks imaginable — and that they will be carried out. I, too, am afraid.
Rohrabacher: Pakistan is a radical Islamic terrorist state
Examiner.com By Michael Hughes , Afghanistan Headlines Examiner December 10, 2011
America must end its “irrational relationship” with Pakistan and strengthen ties with India according to Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) in a letter published in the New York Times on Thursday.
Rohrabacher, who is the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs committee on Oversight and Investigations, wrote the letter to support ideas outlined in an article entitled “Can Russia Help Us Withdraw From Afghanistan?” written by a former Bush undersecretary of defense and the executive director of an American national security think tank.
Rohrabacher seconded the notion of working more closely with Russia in Afghanistan to carve a safer northern route for Afghan supplies which would also serve to avoid convoy-protection payments to Taliban-linked warlords. Rohrbacher writes:
An American-Russian alignment based on opposition to Islamic extremism would provide a common interest to underpin a positive reset of relations.
Rohrabacher’s inclination to partner with Russia is interesting given his former role as a speechwriter for President Reagan whose administration supported Pakistani-trained jihadists against the Soviets during the 1980s.
The CIA, in one of the biggest covert operations in U.S. history, pumped billions into funding and arming mujahideen “freedom fighters” to expel the Soviets from Afghanistan in 1989 – an operation that many argue helped fan the very extremism bedeviling NATO today.
Rohrabacher also advocated pivoting towards Delhi because not only do India and the U.S. share common regional objectives, they share the same adversaries as well (whether China knows it or not):
New Delhi is a friend and a potential ally. India is a democracy with security interests in line with ours against Pakistan, a radical Islamic terrorist state and an ally of a menacing China.
U.S. and Pakistani relations have sunk to all-time lows recently after a NATO airstrike killed 24 Pakistani soldiers a couple of weeks ago.
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