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Taliban Strikes Preliminary Deal for Qatar Office
VOA News January 3, 2012
The Afghan Taliban said Tuesday it has reached a preliminary agreement to open a political office in the Gulf state of Qatar, in a move that could help facilitate peace talks to end the war in Afghanistan.
The announcement came in an e-mailed statement from Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid.
He also said the Taliban is asking for the release of prisoners held at the U.S.-run Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba as part of the peace negotiations.
U.S. officials have recently been quoted as saying that Washington is open to negotiating a peace agreement with the Taliban, and that a possible deal could include the transfer of Taliban prisoners.
In December, Vice President Joe Biden said the Afghan Taliban are not America's enemies, and that the insurgent group did not represent a threat to the U.S. unless it continued to harbor al-Qaida terrorists.
U.S.-led forces ousted Afghanistan's Taliban government following the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. Those attacks were carried out by al-Qaida, which had training camps in Afghanistan.
Afghan officials at first resisted the idea of a Taliban liaison office in Qatar. But Afghan President Hamid Karzai later said his government would accept this.
The news follows months of failed efforts by Afghan and U.S. officials at starting talks with the Taliban to end the 10-year-old war in Afghanistan.
The September assassination of President Karzai's peace envoy, former president Burhanuddin Rabbani, appeared to have seriously set back efforts at achieving a peace deal.
Afghan Taliban Publicly Embraces Talks
January 3, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty By Abubakar Siddique
After a decade of insurgency, the Afghan Taliban says it has reached preliminary agreement to set up a "political office" in Qatar and is willing to enter talks.
The group did not say when the office would open.
"We are now ready to open a political office outside the country [Afghanistan] along with our strong presence inside the country for negotiations with the international community," a Pashto-language statement issued to journalists said. "In this regard we have reached an agreement with Qatar and other relevant sides."
The Taliban office is seen by Western and Afghan officials as key to moving forward with efforts to reach a negotiated end to a decade of war in Afghanistan.
In Kabul, Afghan analyst Wahid Mozhdah called the move a good omen. "I think this is a good step because one of the major problems so far was that the Taliban did not had an address where they can be contacted and from where they can issue their statements and let their positions be known," he said. "It will pave the way for beginning the peace talks."
Mozhdah, a former Taliban diplomat, said many Taliban officials -- including former deputy foreign minister Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai and Tayyab Agha, a key political adviser to Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar -- are already in Qatar to oversee the opening of the the office.
The Taliban statement, also issued on their purported website the "Voice of Jihad," said that the group is demanding the release of its prisoners from the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay as a form of prisoner exchange.
Kabul last month recalled its ambassador to Qatar for consultations over reports that the Taliban was planning to open an office in the Persian Gulf state.
But last week, President Hamid Karzai said his government would accept the Qatar location if the United States insisted on it -- adding that Saudi Arabia or Turkey would be preferable venues.
The Taliban first emerged in 1994 in southern Afghanistan and controlled most of Afghanistan before the demise of their regime in late 2001. The group and its allies have been fighting President Hamid Karzai's Western-backed government and NATO-led troops during the past decade.
The hard-line Islamist movement vowed that it would not drop its goal of establishing a theocratic government.
"The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan [the Taliban] has always said that the occupation must end," the Taliban statement said. "And Afghans should be allowed to form an Islamic government that would not harm anybody."
with additional agency reporting
Suicide Bombing Kills 4 in Southern Afghanistan
VOA News January 3, 2012
A suicide bombing in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar has killed at least four children and a police officer.
Local Afghan officials say Tuesday's attack happened in southern Kandahar city when a suicide bomber riding a motorcycle detonated his explosives near an Afghan police checkpoint.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.
Also Tuesday, NATO said one of its service members was killed by a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan, though it provided no other details.
NATO service member killed in S. Afghanistan
KABUL, Jan. 3 (Xinhua) -- A NATO service member was killed in a blast in Afghanistan's restive southern region on Monday, the military alliance confirmed on Tuesday morning.
"An International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) service member died following an improvised explosive device (IED) attack in southern Afghanistan, yesterday," the NATO-led ISAF said in a press release.
However, the brief release did not reveal the nationality of the victim, only saying "it is ISAF policy to defer casualty identification procedures to the relevant national authorities."
Forty nine countries are contributing 130,000-strong forces in Afghanistan with over 90,000 of them American mainly stationed in the east and south, followed by 9,500 from UK mainly based in southern Afghanistan.
This is the first casualty of NATO-led troops, reported by the military alliance in 2012.
A total of 566 NATO soldiers, most of them Americans, have been killed in Afghanistan in 2011.
Afghan child bride had escaped torturers but was sent back
Outcry over case of Sahar Gul who was returned to her in-laws despite their attempts to force her into prostitution
Guardian.co.uk By Jon Boone Monday 2 January 2012
Kabul - A 15-year-old Afghan girl who was nearly tortured to death by her husband and his family attempted to escape her attackers more than four months ago but was sent back home by local authorities, it has emerged.
Sahar Gul, a child-bride married off to a soldier called Gulam Sakhi who then tried to force her into prostitution, is being treated for horrific injuries in a hospital in Kabul after she was rescued last week.
During her ordeal several of her fingernails were ripped out with pliers and one of her ears was badly burned by an iron. Her husband is now on the run, and her mother-in-law and sister-in-law have been arrested.
Her case has caused uproar in Afghanistan and Hamid Karzai, the country's president, has vowed that those responsible will be punished.
But disturbing new details about how the local community and authorities responded to her abuse has highlighted the ambivalence many Afghans have over how far women should be able to exercise the most basic legal rights.
"She ran away to her neighbour's house and told them that her husband was trying to make her become a prostitute," said local community leader Ziaulhaq. " 'If you are a Muslim, you must tell the government what is happening to me,' she told them."
The locals said they did take the case to the authorities. When the police arrived Sahar's mother-in-law tried to fight them off, screaming all the while that her son had "bought" the girl who therefore had to do what she was told.
She appeared to be alluding to the dowry paid by Sakhi's family, a sum thought to be around £2,700.
Locals say the family simply promised to stop hurting her. Ziaulhaq also alleged that bribes were paid to government officials to hush up the affair.
Although she emphatically denied money was paid, Rahima Zarifi, the women's affairs chief in Baghlan province, said she could not remember the details of the case, or why Gul was sent back home.
The abuse resumed and continued for months until a male relative visited. When he found the girl, who had been starved in a locked basement for weeks, Gul was almost unable to speak.
Fauzia Kufi, an MP who campaigns on women's issues, said that even then local authorities attempted to resolve the abuse through "traditional means. Basically they wanted the relative to sit down with his sister's abusers and work out an agreement," she said.
Kufi also claims there was strong pressure not to publicise the case.
"Many people don't take these sorts of crimes seriously and don't think it should be reported," she said.
"Even the local authorities have blamed the department for women's affairs for not trying to solve it locally between families in the traditional way."
Horrific abuse of women is still common in Afghanistan, particularly against brides who can be regarded as chattels by their husbands or are exchanged between families in order to resolve feuds.
The government is frequently unwilling to enforce laws it has often been forced to pass by the country's international backers, and the writ of the state often does not run in areas far away from urban centres.
However, the case of Gul was not in the remote countryside but in Puli Khumri, an important, mid-sized town which boasts one of the country's few factories. Kufi also claimed that local sources told her that Sakhi, despite having a warrant out for his arrest, returned briefly to his home on Sunday night and that locals did not inform the police.
The claim is strongly denied by community leaders who say they were appalled by the crimes of the family and never attempted a low-key, traditional mediation between the parties.
Abdullah Fahim, a senior adviser to the minister of public health, said the case was part of the "bitter reality" of Afghanistan.
"We have several cases like this, especially in remote parts of the country where there is not a strong attitude to women's rights," he said.
He added that the ministry had dedicated a team of psychiatrists to the girl: "Her physical wounds are getting better day by day, but we are very concerned about her mental condition because she has been tortured for a long period of time."
The law on the elimination of violence against women was passed more than two years ago and criminalised many abuses for the first time, including domestic violence and child marriage.
But a recent UN report found only a small percentage of reported crimes against women are pursued by the Afghan government.
Between March 2010 and March 2011, prosecutors opened 594 investigations involving crimes under the law – just 26% of the incidents registered by the Afghan human rights commission.
Taliban vow to stop fighting Pak military to focus energy against U.S. forces
Examiner.com By Michael Hughes , Afghanistan Headlines Examiner January 2, 2012
Based on the directive of their supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban on Sunday pledged to stop fighting Pakistan’s armed forces in order to focus their attention and attacks on the US-led coalition in Afghanistan according to The Nation.
A high-level delegation of the Afghan Taliban finally succeeded in bringing together disparate Pakistan militant groups on a single platform in a joint shura to agree to forego not only fighting Pakistani security forces but to end suicide attacks, kidnappings and killing of innocent people within Pakistan, particularly in the militancy-hit tribal areas.
Mullah Omar was worried the increasing number of Pakistani Taliban diverting their attention from Afghanistan to Pakistan was making it difficult for the Afghan Taliban to continue its resistance against NATO and ISAF forces. Any individual or group found guilty of defying the shura’s decree would be dealt with according to the Islamic Sharia. A Taliban leader quoted Omar as saying:
"Convey my message to the Pakistani Taliban that you have forgotten the real purpose, which is to fight the invading forces in Afghanistan and liberate it from their occupation”.
Agreeing to the pledge were three Pakistani Taliban groups operating in South Waziristan led by Maulvi Nazeer, Hakimullah Mahsud and Maulana Waliur Rahman, Hafiz Gul Bahadur’s group in North Waziristan and the powerful Haqqani Network. Nazeer and Bahadur reportedly had already signed a peace deal with the Pakistan army.
Mullah Omar has not surfaced since the flight of the Taliban from Kabul in 2001 and according to reports is sheltering in and around Quetta, the capital of Pakistan's restive southwestern Balochistan province.
The timing of the move to unite comes in the wake of increased tensions between the U.S. and Pakistan governments after a NATO airstrike killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at the end of November.
2011 was a year that saw relations between the U.S. and Pakistan sink to an all-time low while NATO made little progress against the insurgency despite the Obama "surge", in what is now the longest running war in U.S. history.
Reports: Afghan, Pakistani Militants Unite to Fight US-led Troops in Afghanistan
VOA News January 2, 2012
Reports from Pakistan say al-Qaida and Afghan Taliban leaders have asked Pakistani militants to stop targeting Pakistani security forces and instead concentrate on battling U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan.
The reports quoted unnamed sources as saying that following the intervention of Afghan Taliban supreme commander Mullah Omar, the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban formed a joint five-member committee with other Pakistani militant groups.
A pamphlet issued in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal region Sunday called on Pakistani militant groups to unite and "avoid unwarranted killings and kidnappings for ransom." The pamphlet said those found guilty would be subject to punishment under Islamic law.
According to the reports, the five groups that pledged to unite and work with the Afghan Taliban include the powerful Haqqani network, the Maulvi Nazeer group, the Hakimullah Mehsud group, and the Maulana Waliur Rahman group, all operating from South Waziristan, as well as the Hafiz Gul Bahadur group based in North Waziristan.
Weary of bloodshed, a Taliban leader in Afghanistan weighs reintegration
Stars and Stripes By Martin Kuz January 2, 2012
NISHIGAM, Afghanistan - The Taliban leader hid his face beneath a black ski mask as he rode in the back seat of an Afghan army pickup truck. He knew to avoid needless risk.
If the wrong person saw him, his life might end before he could convert from insurgent to peacemaker.
The truck rattled into the parking lot of the Nishigam government center in the Ghaziabad district of northern Kunar province. The walled compound sits five miles from Pakistan in one of Afghanistan’s most violent regions.
The man had agreed to meet here with Lt. Col. Dan Wilson, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment.
Wilson wanted to persuade the commander to “reintegrate.” The term refers to enemy fighters who receive amnesty in exchange for aiding coalition forces and publicly renouncing the Taliban.
The nationwide program has lured few insurgents in Kunar. There is a powerful deterrent: Repudiating the Taliban carries the threat of death for an ex-militant and his family.
Recent events had magnified the urgency of the covert meeting.
Five days earlier, on Dec. 9, a suicide bomber killed six people outside a mosque a quarter-mile from the government center.
The victims included the Ghaziabad police chief and an Afghan intelligence officer.
The assailant, a 12-year-old boy, had crossed the border from Pakistan and found sanctuary in Nishigam.
The attack cut deep for Wilson, 48, of San Diego.
He worried that the bombing imperiled the fragile progress his unit had made against the Taliban-led insurgency in Kunar’s borderlands.
The battalion, stationed at Forward Operating Base Bostick, about 15 miles north of Nishigam, patrols a 40-mile stretch of the Kunar River Valley, a winding seam in the Hindu Kush mountains.
Coaxing an adversary to switch sides could reduce the unrest in Ghaziabad and, he hoped, nurture a wider perception of an enemy in decline.
“A guy like him is important,” Wilson said.
“If he reintegrates, other [militants] could do the same, and then people in the villages start to feel like they can stand up to the Taliban.”
Afghan soldiers guided the insurgent from the truck into an unlit room. He pulled off his mask.
His thick black hair, swept to one side, nested above small, almond-colored eyes. Deep lines rutted the cheeks of his narrow face and disappeared into an ample beard.
He had the coarsened skin and sinewy build of a man who had devoted years to roaming the Hindu Kush, hunting soldiers.
Wilson entered. At 6 feet 2, he stood several inches taller than his rival commander, who wore a white shalwar kameez under a green camouflage jacket that swaddled him like a blanket.
The two shook hands not far from where their men have often sought to kill each other.
“I am glad we can talk,” Wilson said. He patted his chest with his right hand, a gesture of sincerity in Afghan culture.
“It is important for us to find a way not to fight.”
The insurgent tapped his chest in turn. “Thank you for this meeting,” he said. He spoke Pashto and had a high, grating voice, as if he were being gently choked.
“It is good to talk with the Americans.”
They sat on the floor as twilight’s shadows blackened the room.
Wilson asked him to recount his path to war.
He recalled fighting against the Taliban before the U.S. invasion in 2001. He laid down his gun after the Islamic regime fell, only to wind up in jail years later when Afghan officials accused him of working with the Taliban, an allegation he denied.
His family paid a fine for his release. He pursued his revenge on the government by engaging in the activity for which he had been arrested. He joined the insurgency, leaving behind his village to move into the mountains.
His fighters targeted U.S. and Afghan troops with mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, small-arms fire and improvised explosive devices. He claimed to operate on orders from Pakistan’s intelligence agency.
At 45, he has tired of bloodshed. Night raids by coalition forces have killed six members of his family, he told Wilson.
“Everything in the mountains has been destroyed,” he said. He spat into a clay goblet he had lifted to his lips. “We are coming back to the villages. We want to have our lives again.”
The insurgent said he controlled upward of 100 fighters in Ghaziabad, a number confirmed by U.S. and Afghan sources.
“I am the commander of this area,” he said. “No one will fire on you if I tell them not to.”
Wilson nodded. “I want to bring good things to your people,” he said. “If we can build a trust, I think it is possible.”
He discussed details of reintegration, explaining that funding exists to create jobs for former insurgents to provide village security and build roads, bridges and other civic works. He emphasized one caveat. “I can’t bring projects and good things to your district without you going public,” Wilson said. “Are you aware of that?”
The fighter understood. But he was not ready. He needed to ensure his family’s safety.
Wilson replied that he would wait. “I will never lie to you,” he said. “I promise you that.”
The men agreed to talk again. They shook hands once more, and the Taliban commander offered a promise of his own.
“I guarantee you I will bring you 1,000 people to be on the side of government,” he said.
Wilson patted his heart. “Thank you for coming,” he said. “If we can work this out, you and I will fight together.”
The lieutenant colonel left the room. The insurgent stayed a few more minutes. When it was time to go, he put on his mask.
WFP launches food voucher projects in Kabul to support poor families
KABUL, Jan. 3 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) inked an agreement with the Afghan Ministry of Labor, Social Affairs, Martyrs and Disabled (MoLSAMD) here on Tuesday to support the vulnerable people in the war-torn Afghan capital, a statement of the WFP released here said.
In line with the agreement, the WFP would provide 3 million U.S. dollars over a six-month period, which will enable food assistance through monthly cash vouchers to extremely vulnerable households in Kabul, the statement added.
The project, the statement said, is designed to help the urban poor cope with high food prices and the voucher distribution will start in mid January 2012.
"We are very happy to be working in partnership with the MoLSAMD to help contain the impact of high food prices on the Afghan urban poor," WFP deputy country director Bradley Guerrant said in the statement.
Some 18,900 households (about 113,000 individuals) consisting mainly of poor women and households headed by disabled persons will benefit from the project, the statement said, adding each monthly voucher is worth 1,250 Afghanis or about 25 U.S. dollars and can be exchanged for food items in selected local shops.
The United Nations World Food Program is currently implementing voucher projects in three more Afghan cities of Mazar-e-Sharif, Herat and Jalalabad to assist vulnerable families.
NATO reports 'incredible' Afghan drugs seizures
AFP 02/01/2012
The NATO-led force in Afghanistan said Monday it had made "incredible" seizures of drugs in Afghanistan last year and dealt a blow to the finances of the Taliban-led insurgents.
"Narcotics trafficking has been a key generator of funding for the insurgency, but that source of revenue is diminishing," Brigadier General Carsten Jacobson, spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force, told a news conference.
"Afghan security forces, together with ISAF partners, seized an incredible amount of illicit drugs and related material in 2011 versus 2010."
Opium seizures rose 13 percent and those of hashish climbed 59 percent, while the amount of marijuana and morphine confiscated soared 1,208 percent and 10,113 percent respectively, according to the figures from ISAF, which did not give the amounts of drugs seized.
"Counter-narcotics operations are successfully disrupting the insurgents' ability to process opium into heroin. We will continue to choke off revenue generated by the sale of illicit drugs in 2012," Jacobson said.
ISAF's optimism is in stark contrast to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), which in October said opium production in Afghanistan rose 61 percent in 2011 from the previous year, when the harvest was hit by disease.
The UNODC estimates this year's output at 5,800 tonnes against 3,600 tonnes last year, with a slight increase in area under poppy cultivation to about 13,1000 hectares (324,000 acres) in 2011.
After a slight decrease in 2010, Afghanistan will again be responsible for 90 percent of the global opium production, with 78 percent of the total coming from the troubled south, the UNODC said.
According to UNODC country head Jean-Luc Lemahieu, this year opium will generate about $700 million for the Taliban, who have been fighting a decade-long insurgency against the Afghan government and its NATO-led ISAF allies, and several billion dollars for criminal syndicates while also fuelling corruption in the country.
"We will continue to defeat them on the battlefield and we will continue to take their revenue away wherever we can," Jacobson told AFP.
"An insurgency is never defeated in one field alone. An insurgency can only be defeated by efforts all across the board, that is their fighters in the field, the money that they finance themselves with, the political process that brings stability and governance to the regions of Afghanistan."
"Once this process becomes so overwhelming that the insurgents cannot to anything against it anymore, the insurgency will dry out."
In December, Afghanistan and its seven neighbours launched a programme to cooperate in the fight against drug trafficking.
Afghans Complain About Uruzgan Projects
No meeting of minds as traders grumble about market facilities put in place for them by foreign aid agency.
IWPR By Ahmad Shah Jawad 2 Jan 2012
Afghanistan - Residents of Afghanistan’s Uruzgan province say poor coordination between foreign NGOs and local government is reducing the effectiveness of aid projects.
One project that has caused particular disquiet is a new market for dried fruit and nuts in the Chora district, constructed this year by the German aid agency GIZ, formerly GTZ.
Traders say the covered market, known as the Karvan Sarai (Caravanserai), is made of low-quality raw materials, largely clay and wood, with plastic sheeting used for roofing. They say a building like this will not stand up to the harsh climate.
“The Karwan Sarai is on the verge of collapse even before construction is complete,” almond trader Mohammad Daud said. “All the poles used in the building have become warped and the roofs are falling down. We don’t want to put our businesses at risk by using this building.”
Abdol Qayum, a tribal elder in Chora district, claimed the original agreement was that the Karwan Sarai market would be made of concrete, but it ended up being constructed with clay bricks.
The head of GIZ in Uruzgan, Marcus Lange, rejected claims that the materials used were inferior or unsuitable.
“The market is built with materials like clay, based on engineering principles that mean it will last 20 years,” he said. “It’s very well built.”
Lange said GIZ consulted local people before the work began building began, but they could not agree on the best way to proceed.
“The building I use as my office is made of clay and I like it a lot,” he continued. “I built the Karwan Sarai out of clay for this reason. It isn’t just my personal preference – most of the houses in Chora district are made out of clay. We also considered the effect of the seasons. If we’d built it out of concrete, it would have been cold in winter and warm in summer.”
More generally, the arguments about the pros and cons of the market appear to reflect an uneasy relationship between local government and international NGOs operating in Uruzgan.
The head of the provincial department for economic affairs, Khodai Rahim, said GIZ had never submitted reports about its activities or budget.
“Every NGO should report to us on its activities every six months, but they [GIZ] have not done so,” he said.
Lange declined to discuss GIZ’s financial affairs.
“I can’t give information about the budget,” he said. “But I can say that our activities in Chora district are for the benefit of residents. Karwan Sarai was completed within a year, and 100 labourers worked on it on a daily basis. It was a good employment opportunity for residents of the district.”
The local government chief in Chora district, Mohammad Azim, expressed open hostility towards GIZ, saying its construction projects there, which have included roadbuilding as well as the Karvan Sarai market, were “merely symbolic, and not of benefit to people in the district”.
Locals went to Uruzgan governor Mohammad Omar Sherzad with their complaints about the market, and he promised to investigate. He claimed that foreign aid organisations often left him in the dark about projects they were implementing.
“When the people came to me, I set up a committee which I ordered to obtain the plans for Karwan Sarai and check them to see whether the contract says the building should be made of concrete or clay,” he said. “I will make every effort to ascertain whether the work was done according to plan. We will definitely take legal action if it wasn’t.”
A resident of Chora district, Fazel Karim, said that when Sherzad came to inaugurate the completed market, they told him he should not give it his blessing¸but he ignored them.
“We are confident that the project budget was over two or three million dollars,” Karim said. “If all that money had been spent on the market and all the buildings had been made of concrete, everything would be fine now.”
Mohammadollah, an economic expert in Uruzgan, said the Afghan government needed to be fully aware of what foreign aid organisations were doing.
“It is surprising that money is brought into Afghanistan in the name of reconstruction, yet the government isn’t aware who had that money, where it went and what happened to it,” he said.
Ahmad Shah Jawad is an IWPR trainee journalist in Uruzgan province.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
VOA News January 3, 2012
The Afghan Taliban said Tuesday it has reached a preliminary agreement to open a political office in the Gulf state of Qatar, in a move that could help facilitate peace talks to end the war in Afghanistan.
The announcement came in an e-mailed statement from Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid.
He also said the Taliban is asking for the release of prisoners held at the U.S.-run Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba as part of the peace negotiations.
U.S. officials have recently been quoted as saying that Washington is open to negotiating a peace agreement with the Taliban, and that a possible deal could include the transfer of Taliban prisoners.
In December, Vice President Joe Biden said the Afghan Taliban are not America's enemies, and that the insurgent group did not represent a threat to the U.S. unless it continued to harbor al-Qaida terrorists.
U.S.-led forces ousted Afghanistan's Taliban government following the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. Those attacks were carried out by al-Qaida, which had training camps in Afghanistan.
Afghan officials at first resisted the idea of a Taliban liaison office in Qatar. But Afghan President Hamid Karzai later said his government would accept this.
The news follows months of failed efforts by Afghan and U.S. officials at starting talks with the Taliban to end the 10-year-old war in Afghanistan.
The September assassination of President Karzai's peace envoy, former president Burhanuddin Rabbani, appeared to have seriously set back efforts at achieving a peace deal.
Afghan Taliban Publicly Embraces Talks
January 3, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty By Abubakar Siddique
After a decade of insurgency, the Afghan Taliban says it has reached preliminary agreement to set up a "political office" in Qatar and is willing to enter talks.
The group did not say when the office would open.
"We are now ready to open a political office outside the country [Afghanistan] along with our strong presence inside the country for negotiations with the international community," a Pashto-language statement issued to journalists said. "In this regard we have reached an agreement with Qatar and other relevant sides."
The Taliban office is seen by Western and Afghan officials as key to moving forward with efforts to reach a negotiated end to a decade of war in Afghanistan.
In Kabul, Afghan analyst Wahid Mozhdah called the move a good omen. "I think this is a good step because one of the major problems so far was that the Taliban did not had an address where they can be contacted and from where they can issue their statements and let their positions be known," he said. "It will pave the way for beginning the peace talks."
Mozhdah, a former Taliban diplomat, said many Taliban officials -- including former deputy foreign minister Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai and Tayyab Agha, a key political adviser to Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar -- are already in Qatar to oversee the opening of the the office.
The Taliban statement, also issued on their purported website the "Voice of Jihad," said that the group is demanding the release of its prisoners from the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay as a form of prisoner exchange.
Kabul last month recalled its ambassador to Qatar for consultations over reports that the Taliban was planning to open an office in the Persian Gulf state.
But last week, President Hamid Karzai said his government would accept the Qatar location if the United States insisted on it -- adding that Saudi Arabia or Turkey would be preferable venues.
The Taliban first emerged in 1994 in southern Afghanistan and controlled most of Afghanistan before the demise of their regime in late 2001. The group and its allies have been fighting President Hamid Karzai's Western-backed government and NATO-led troops during the past decade.
The hard-line Islamist movement vowed that it would not drop its goal of establishing a theocratic government.
"The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan [the Taliban] has always said that the occupation must end," the Taliban statement said. "And Afghans should be allowed to form an Islamic government that would not harm anybody."
with additional agency reporting
Suicide Bombing Kills 4 in Southern Afghanistan
VOA News January 3, 2012
A suicide bombing in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar has killed at least four children and a police officer.
Local Afghan officials say Tuesday's attack happened in southern Kandahar city when a suicide bomber riding a motorcycle detonated his explosives near an Afghan police checkpoint.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.
Also Tuesday, NATO said one of its service members was killed by a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan, though it provided no other details.
NATO service member killed in S. Afghanistan
KABUL, Jan. 3 (Xinhua) -- A NATO service member was killed in a blast in Afghanistan's restive southern region on Monday, the military alliance confirmed on Tuesday morning.
"An International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) service member died following an improvised explosive device (IED) attack in southern Afghanistan, yesterday," the NATO-led ISAF said in a press release.
However, the brief release did not reveal the nationality of the victim, only saying "it is ISAF policy to defer casualty identification procedures to the relevant national authorities."
Forty nine countries are contributing 130,000-strong forces in Afghanistan with over 90,000 of them American mainly stationed in the east and south, followed by 9,500 from UK mainly based in southern Afghanistan.
This is the first casualty of NATO-led troops, reported by the military alliance in 2012.
A total of 566 NATO soldiers, most of them Americans, have been killed in Afghanistan in 2011.
Afghan child bride had escaped torturers but was sent back
Outcry over case of Sahar Gul who was returned to her in-laws despite their attempts to force her into prostitution
Guardian.co.uk By Jon Boone Monday 2 January 2012
Kabul - A 15-year-old Afghan girl who was nearly tortured to death by her husband and his family attempted to escape her attackers more than four months ago but was sent back home by local authorities, it has emerged.
Sahar Gul, a child-bride married off to a soldier called Gulam Sakhi who then tried to force her into prostitution, is being treated for horrific injuries in a hospital in Kabul after she was rescued last week.
During her ordeal several of her fingernails were ripped out with pliers and one of her ears was badly burned by an iron. Her husband is now on the run, and her mother-in-law and sister-in-law have been arrested.
Her case has caused uproar in Afghanistan and Hamid Karzai, the country's president, has vowed that those responsible will be punished.
But disturbing new details about how the local community and authorities responded to her abuse has highlighted the ambivalence many Afghans have over how far women should be able to exercise the most basic legal rights.
"She ran away to her neighbour's house and told them that her husband was trying to make her become a prostitute," said local community leader Ziaulhaq. " 'If you are a Muslim, you must tell the government what is happening to me,' she told them."
The locals said they did take the case to the authorities. When the police arrived Sahar's mother-in-law tried to fight them off, screaming all the while that her son had "bought" the girl who therefore had to do what she was told.
She appeared to be alluding to the dowry paid by Sakhi's family, a sum thought to be around £2,700.
Locals say the family simply promised to stop hurting her. Ziaulhaq also alleged that bribes were paid to government officials to hush up the affair.
Although she emphatically denied money was paid, Rahima Zarifi, the women's affairs chief in Baghlan province, said she could not remember the details of the case, or why Gul was sent back home.
The abuse resumed and continued for months until a male relative visited. When he found the girl, who had been starved in a locked basement for weeks, Gul was almost unable to speak.
Fauzia Kufi, an MP who campaigns on women's issues, said that even then local authorities attempted to resolve the abuse through "traditional means. Basically they wanted the relative to sit down with his sister's abusers and work out an agreement," she said.
Kufi also claims there was strong pressure not to publicise the case.
"Many people don't take these sorts of crimes seriously and don't think it should be reported," she said.
"Even the local authorities have blamed the department for women's affairs for not trying to solve it locally between families in the traditional way."
Horrific abuse of women is still common in Afghanistan, particularly against brides who can be regarded as chattels by their husbands or are exchanged between families in order to resolve feuds.
The government is frequently unwilling to enforce laws it has often been forced to pass by the country's international backers, and the writ of the state often does not run in areas far away from urban centres.
However, the case of Gul was not in the remote countryside but in Puli Khumri, an important, mid-sized town which boasts one of the country's few factories. Kufi also claimed that local sources told her that Sakhi, despite having a warrant out for his arrest, returned briefly to his home on Sunday night and that locals did not inform the police.
The claim is strongly denied by community leaders who say they were appalled by the crimes of the family and never attempted a low-key, traditional mediation between the parties.
Abdullah Fahim, a senior adviser to the minister of public health, said the case was part of the "bitter reality" of Afghanistan.
"We have several cases like this, especially in remote parts of the country where there is not a strong attitude to women's rights," he said.
He added that the ministry had dedicated a team of psychiatrists to the girl: "Her physical wounds are getting better day by day, but we are very concerned about her mental condition because she has been tortured for a long period of time."
The law on the elimination of violence against women was passed more than two years ago and criminalised many abuses for the first time, including domestic violence and child marriage.
But a recent UN report found only a small percentage of reported crimes against women are pursued by the Afghan government.
Between March 2010 and March 2011, prosecutors opened 594 investigations involving crimes under the law – just 26% of the incidents registered by the Afghan human rights commission.
Taliban vow to stop fighting Pak military to focus energy against U.S. forces
Examiner.com By Michael Hughes , Afghanistan Headlines Examiner January 2, 2012
Based on the directive of their supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban on Sunday pledged to stop fighting Pakistan’s armed forces in order to focus their attention and attacks on the US-led coalition in Afghanistan according to The Nation.
A high-level delegation of the Afghan Taliban finally succeeded in bringing together disparate Pakistan militant groups on a single platform in a joint shura to agree to forego not only fighting Pakistani security forces but to end suicide attacks, kidnappings and killing of innocent people within Pakistan, particularly in the militancy-hit tribal areas.
Mullah Omar was worried the increasing number of Pakistani Taliban diverting their attention from Afghanistan to Pakistan was making it difficult for the Afghan Taliban to continue its resistance against NATO and ISAF forces. Any individual or group found guilty of defying the shura’s decree would be dealt with according to the Islamic Sharia. A Taliban leader quoted Omar as saying:
"Convey my message to the Pakistani Taliban that you have forgotten the real purpose, which is to fight the invading forces in Afghanistan and liberate it from their occupation”.
Agreeing to the pledge were three Pakistani Taliban groups operating in South Waziristan led by Maulvi Nazeer, Hakimullah Mahsud and Maulana Waliur Rahman, Hafiz Gul Bahadur’s group in North Waziristan and the powerful Haqqani Network. Nazeer and Bahadur reportedly had already signed a peace deal with the Pakistan army.
Mullah Omar has not surfaced since the flight of the Taliban from Kabul in 2001 and according to reports is sheltering in and around Quetta, the capital of Pakistan's restive southwestern Balochistan province.
The timing of the move to unite comes in the wake of increased tensions between the U.S. and Pakistan governments after a NATO airstrike killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at the end of November.
2011 was a year that saw relations between the U.S. and Pakistan sink to an all-time low while NATO made little progress against the insurgency despite the Obama "surge", in what is now the longest running war in U.S. history.
Reports: Afghan, Pakistani Militants Unite to Fight US-led Troops in Afghanistan
VOA News January 2, 2012
Reports from Pakistan say al-Qaida and Afghan Taliban leaders have asked Pakistani militants to stop targeting Pakistani security forces and instead concentrate on battling U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan.
The reports quoted unnamed sources as saying that following the intervention of Afghan Taliban supreme commander Mullah Omar, the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban formed a joint five-member committee with other Pakistani militant groups.
A pamphlet issued in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal region Sunday called on Pakistani militant groups to unite and "avoid unwarranted killings and kidnappings for ransom." The pamphlet said those found guilty would be subject to punishment under Islamic law.
According to the reports, the five groups that pledged to unite and work with the Afghan Taliban include the powerful Haqqani network, the Maulvi Nazeer group, the Hakimullah Mehsud group, and the Maulana Waliur Rahman group, all operating from South Waziristan, as well as the Hafiz Gul Bahadur group based in North Waziristan.
Weary of bloodshed, a Taliban leader in Afghanistan weighs reintegration
Stars and Stripes By Martin Kuz January 2, 2012
NISHIGAM, Afghanistan - The Taliban leader hid his face beneath a black ski mask as he rode in the back seat of an Afghan army pickup truck. He knew to avoid needless risk.
If the wrong person saw him, his life might end before he could convert from insurgent to peacemaker.
The truck rattled into the parking lot of the Nishigam government center in the Ghaziabad district of northern Kunar province. The walled compound sits five miles from Pakistan in one of Afghanistan’s most violent regions.
The man had agreed to meet here with Lt. Col. Dan Wilson, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment.
Wilson wanted to persuade the commander to “reintegrate.” The term refers to enemy fighters who receive amnesty in exchange for aiding coalition forces and publicly renouncing the Taliban.
The nationwide program has lured few insurgents in Kunar. There is a powerful deterrent: Repudiating the Taliban carries the threat of death for an ex-militant and his family.
Recent events had magnified the urgency of the covert meeting.
Five days earlier, on Dec. 9, a suicide bomber killed six people outside a mosque a quarter-mile from the government center.
The victims included the Ghaziabad police chief and an Afghan intelligence officer.
The assailant, a 12-year-old boy, had crossed the border from Pakistan and found sanctuary in Nishigam.
The attack cut deep for Wilson, 48, of San Diego.
He worried that the bombing imperiled the fragile progress his unit had made against the Taliban-led insurgency in Kunar’s borderlands.
The battalion, stationed at Forward Operating Base Bostick, about 15 miles north of Nishigam, patrols a 40-mile stretch of the Kunar River Valley, a winding seam in the Hindu Kush mountains.
Coaxing an adversary to switch sides could reduce the unrest in Ghaziabad and, he hoped, nurture a wider perception of an enemy in decline.
“A guy like him is important,” Wilson said.
“If he reintegrates, other [militants] could do the same, and then people in the villages start to feel like they can stand up to the Taliban.”
Afghan soldiers guided the insurgent from the truck into an unlit room. He pulled off his mask.
His thick black hair, swept to one side, nested above small, almond-colored eyes. Deep lines rutted the cheeks of his narrow face and disappeared into an ample beard.
He had the coarsened skin and sinewy build of a man who had devoted years to roaming the Hindu Kush, hunting soldiers.
Wilson entered. At 6 feet 2, he stood several inches taller than his rival commander, who wore a white shalwar kameez under a green camouflage jacket that swaddled him like a blanket.
The two shook hands not far from where their men have often sought to kill each other.
“I am glad we can talk,” Wilson said. He patted his chest with his right hand, a gesture of sincerity in Afghan culture.
“It is important for us to find a way not to fight.”
The insurgent tapped his chest in turn. “Thank you for this meeting,” he said. He spoke Pashto and had a high, grating voice, as if he were being gently choked.
“It is good to talk with the Americans.”
They sat on the floor as twilight’s shadows blackened the room.
Wilson asked him to recount his path to war.
He recalled fighting against the Taliban before the U.S. invasion in 2001. He laid down his gun after the Islamic regime fell, only to wind up in jail years later when Afghan officials accused him of working with the Taliban, an allegation he denied.
His family paid a fine for his release. He pursued his revenge on the government by engaging in the activity for which he had been arrested. He joined the insurgency, leaving behind his village to move into the mountains.
His fighters targeted U.S. and Afghan troops with mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, small-arms fire and improvised explosive devices. He claimed to operate on orders from Pakistan’s intelligence agency.
At 45, he has tired of bloodshed. Night raids by coalition forces have killed six members of his family, he told Wilson.
“Everything in the mountains has been destroyed,” he said. He spat into a clay goblet he had lifted to his lips. “We are coming back to the villages. We want to have our lives again.”
The insurgent said he controlled upward of 100 fighters in Ghaziabad, a number confirmed by U.S. and Afghan sources.
“I am the commander of this area,” he said. “No one will fire on you if I tell them not to.”
Wilson nodded. “I want to bring good things to your people,” he said. “If we can build a trust, I think it is possible.”
He discussed details of reintegration, explaining that funding exists to create jobs for former insurgents to provide village security and build roads, bridges and other civic works. He emphasized one caveat. “I can’t bring projects and good things to your district without you going public,” Wilson said. “Are you aware of that?”
The fighter understood. But he was not ready. He needed to ensure his family’s safety.
Wilson replied that he would wait. “I will never lie to you,” he said. “I promise you that.”
The men agreed to talk again. They shook hands once more, and the Taliban commander offered a promise of his own.
“I guarantee you I will bring you 1,000 people to be on the side of government,” he said.
Wilson patted his heart. “Thank you for coming,” he said. “If we can work this out, you and I will fight together.”
The lieutenant colonel left the room. The insurgent stayed a few more minutes. When it was time to go, he put on his mask.
WFP launches food voucher projects in Kabul to support poor families
KABUL, Jan. 3 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) inked an agreement with the Afghan Ministry of Labor, Social Affairs, Martyrs and Disabled (MoLSAMD) here on Tuesday to support the vulnerable people in the war-torn Afghan capital, a statement of the WFP released here said.
In line with the agreement, the WFP would provide 3 million U.S. dollars over a six-month period, which will enable food assistance through monthly cash vouchers to extremely vulnerable households in Kabul, the statement added.
The project, the statement said, is designed to help the urban poor cope with high food prices and the voucher distribution will start in mid January 2012.
"We are very happy to be working in partnership with the MoLSAMD to help contain the impact of high food prices on the Afghan urban poor," WFP deputy country director Bradley Guerrant said in the statement.
Some 18,900 households (about 113,000 individuals) consisting mainly of poor women and households headed by disabled persons will benefit from the project, the statement said, adding each monthly voucher is worth 1,250 Afghanis or about 25 U.S. dollars and can be exchanged for food items in selected local shops.
The United Nations World Food Program is currently implementing voucher projects in three more Afghan cities of Mazar-e-Sharif, Herat and Jalalabad to assist vulnerable families.
NATO reports 'incredible' Afghan drugs seizures
AFP 02/01/2012
The NATO-led force in Afghanistan said Monday it had made "incredible" seizures of drugs in Afghanistan last year and dealt a blow to the finances of the Taliban-led insurgents.
"Narcotics trafficking has been a key generator of funding for the insurgency, but that source of revenue is diminishing," Brigadier General Carsten Jacobson, spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force, told a news conference.
"Afghan security forces, together with ISAF partners, seized an incredible amount of illicit drugs and related material in 2011 versus 2010."
Opium seizures rose 13 percent and those of hashish climbed 59 percent, while the amount of marijuana and morphine confiscated soared 1,208 percent and 10,113 percent respectively, according to the figures from ISAF, which did not give the amounts of drugs seized.
"Counter-narcotics operations are successfully disrupting the insurgents' ability to process opium into heroin. We will continue to choke off revenue generated by the sale of illicit drugs in 2012," Jacobson said.
ISAF's optimism is in stark contrast to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), which in October said opium production in Afghanistan rose 61 percent in 2011 from the previous year, when the harvest was hit by disease.
The UNODC estimates this year's output at 5,800 tonnes against 3,600 tonnes last year, with a slight increase in area under poppy cultivation to about 13,1000 hectares (324,000 acres) in 2011.
After a slight decrease in 2010, Afghanistan will again be responsible for 90 percent of the global opium production, with 78 percent of the total coming from the troubled south, the UNODC said.
According to UNODC country head Jean-Luc Lemahieu, this year opium will generate about $700 million for the Taliban, who have been fighting a decade-long insurgency against the Afghan government and its NATO-led ISAF allies, and several billion dollars for criminal syndicates while also fuelling corruption in the country.
"We will continue to defeat them on the battlefield and we will continue to take their revenue away wherever we can," Jacobson told AFP.
"An insurgency is never defeated in one field alone. An insurgency can only be defeated by efforts all across the board, that is their fighters in the field, the money that they finance themselves with, the political process that brings stability and governance to the regions of Afghanistan."
"Once this process becomes so overwhelming that the insurgents cannot to anything against it anymore, the insurgency will dry out."
In December, Afghanistan and its seven neighbours launched a programme to cooperate in the fight against drug trafficking.
Afghans Complain About Uruzgan Projects
No meeting of minds as traders grumble about market facilities put in place for them by foreign aid agency.
IWPR By Ahmad Shah Jawad 2 Jan 2012
Afghanistan - Residents of Afghanistan’s Uruzgan province say poor coordination between foreign NGOs and local government is reducing the effectiveness of aid projects.
One project that has caused particular disquiet is a new market for dried fruit and nuts in the Chora district, constructed this year by the German aid agency GIZ, formerly GTZ.
Traders say the covered market, known as the Karvan Sarai (Caravanserai), is made of low-quality raw materials, largely clay and wood, with plastic sheeting used for roofing. They say a building like this will not stand up to the harsh climate.
“The Karwan Sarai is on the verge of collapse even before construction is complete,” almond trader Mohammad Daud said. “All the poles used in the building have become warped and the roofs are falling down. We don’t want to put our businesses at risk by using this building.”
Abdol Qayum, a tribal elder in Chora district, claimed the original agreement was that the Karwan Sarai market would be made of concrete, but it ended up being constructed with clay bricks.
The head of GIZ in Uruzgan, Marcus Lange, rejected claims that the materials used were inferior or unsuitable.
“The market is built with materials like clay, based on engineering principles that mean it will last 20 years,” he said. “It’s very well built.”
Lange said GIZ consulted local people before the work began building began, but they could not agree on the best way to proceed.
“The building I use as my office is made of clay and I like it a lot,” he continued. “I built the Karwan Sarai out of clay for this reason. It isn’t just my personal preference – most of the houses in Chora district are made out of clay. We also considered the effect of the seasons. If we’d built it out of concrete, it would have been cold in winter and warm in summer.”
More generally, the arguments about the pros and cons of the market appear to reflect an uneasy relationship between local government and international NGOs operating in Uruzgan.
The head of the provincial department for economic affairs, Khodai Rahim, said GIZ had never submitted reports about its activities or budget.
“Every NGO should report to us on its activities every six months, but they [GIZ] have not done so,” he said.
Lange declined to discuss GIZ’s financial affairs.
“I can’t give information about the budget,” he said. “But I can say that our activities in Chora district are for the benefit of residents. Karwan Sarai was completed within a year, and 100 labourers worked on it on a daily basis. It was a good employment opportunity for residents of the district.”
The local government chief in Chora district, Mohammad Azim, expressed open hostility towards GIZ, saying its construction projects there, which have included roadbuilding as well as the Karvan Sarai market, were “merely symbolic, and not of benefit to people in the district”.
Locals went to Uruzgan governor Mohammad Omar Sherzad with their complaints about the market, and he promised to investigate. He claimed that foreign aid organisations often left him in the dark about projects they were implementing.
“When the people came to me, I set up a committee which I ordered to obtain the plans for Karwan Sarai and check them to see whether the contract says the building should be made of concrete or clay,” he said. “I will make every effort to ascertain whether the work was done according to plan. We will definitely take legal action if it wasn’t.”
A resident of Chora district, Fazel Karim, said that when Sherzad came to inaugurate the completed market, they told him he should not give it his blessing¸but he ignored them.
“We are confident that the project budget was over two or three million dollars,” Karim said. “If all that money had been spent on the market and all the buildings had been made of concrete, everything would be fine now.”
Mohammadollah, an economic expert in Uruzgan, said the Afghan government needed to be fully aware of what foreign aid organisations were doing.
“It is surprising that money is brought into Afghanistan in the name of reconstruction, yet the government isn’t aware who had that money, where it went and what happened to it,” he said.
Ahmad Shah Jawad is an IWPR trainee journalist in Uruzgan province.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com