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British troops arrested over Afghan 'child abuse'
AFP via Yahoo! News - Jan 18 08:35am
British military police have arrested two servicemen over allegations that they abused children in Afghanistan, the defence ministry said Wednesday, prompting a furious reaction from Kabul.
The Sun newspaper reported that a sergeant and a private from the Mercian Battle Group have been arrested over claims that they abused an Afghan boy and a girl, both aged about 10, and filmed the incidents.
A Ministry of Defence (MoD) spokesman confirmed two servicemen had been arrested and released after questioning as part of an investigation by the Royal Military Police's Special Investigations Branch.
"Two service personnel have been arrested, interviewed under caution and released," the spokesman said.
The MoD said earlier it took any allegations of child abuse "extremely seriously".
The Afghan government said it was "disgusted" by the allegations and demanded an immediate investigation.
The claims come less than a week after a video emerged showing US Marines urinating on the corpses of militants in Afghanistan.
"The government of Afghanistan is immensely disgusted by the rise in recent incidents of immoral nature among foreign soldiers," President Hamid Karzai's office said.
"(Such incidents) clearly undermine public confidence and the Afghan people?s cooperation with foreign troops."
The statement said the government was "deeply disturbed by reports that two British soldiers have encouraged two Afghan children to touch them through their clothes".
NATO forces in Afghanistan were also quick to react.
"We expect members of all ISAF troop-contributing nations to adhere to the highest standards of military service," said Brigadier General Carsten Jacobson, spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.
"An investigation has been launched, and if a service member is found to have committed an offence, or behaved in a manner not in keeping with the appropriate moral standards expected of them, they will be dealt with appropriately through the respective nation's military judicial system."
Britain has some 9,500 troops in Afghanistan, mainly based in Helmand where they are battling a Taliban insurgency. Britain intends to pull out all its combat troops by 2015.
Afghan gov't denounces alleged abuse of 2 children by British soldiers
KABUL, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- The Afghan government has denounced the alleged abuse of two children by two British soldiers, a statement released by the Afghan Presidential Palace said here on Wednesday.
"The government of Afghanistan strongly denounces the " immoral" act by the British soldiers calling it a child abuse," the statement said.
Without naming any media outlets and the exact place of the incident, the statement said, "Media reports say that two British soldiers allegedly encouraged a boy and a girl, aged around ten to touch them and then filmed the action to show to other soldiers."
"The government of Afghanistan has been deeply disturbed by reports that two British soldiers have encouraged two Afghan children to touch them through their clothes," the statement added.
"The government of Afghanistan is immensely disgusted by the rise in recent incidents of immoral nature among foreign soldiers that clearly undermine public confidence and the Afghan people's cooperation with foreign troops," the statement said.
In the statement the Afghan government asked the British government to launch an immediate probe into the report and apply necessary punishment to those involved in the act.
A0 couple of days ago the Afghan government condemned the reported desecration of three corpses of Taliban by a group of U.S. Marines and demanded punishment for the culprits.
Pakistan rejects U.S. envoy visit: official
Reuters By Qasim Nauman Wed Jan 18, 2012
ISLAMABAD - Pakistan has rejected U.S. special envoy Marc Grossman's request to visit the country, a senior official said on Wednesday, highlighting the increased tensions between the uneasy allies.
He did not elaborate on the reasons.
"Ambassador Grossman asked to visit Pakistan but we conveyed to him that it was not possible at the moment," a senior government official, who declined to be named, told Reuters.
Relations between Islamabad and Washington are at the lowest point in years, dragged down by a NATO cross-border air attack which killed 24 Pakistani soldiers on November 26.
The growing tension threatens to set back peace efforts in neighboring Afghanistan, where the United States is gradually withdrawing troops after a decade of war.
Pakistan's cooperation is regarded as crucial, because of its long history of association with militant groups, to efforts to persuade the Taliban to join negotiations.
Grossman, U.S. Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, is due to visit Afghanistan and Qatar this week, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said last Wednesday.
Pakistan said in early December it had decided to review cooperation with the United States and NATO. The review is currently before parliament with no firm timeline on when recommendations will be presented to the government.
U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said on Tuesday Pakistan had decided the review should be completed before Grossman's next visit.
Ties between Washington and Islamabad were severely hurt in January 2011 by the killing of two Pakistanis by a CIA contractor.
The United States further infuriated and embarrassed Pakistan's powerful military in May with a unilateral special forces raid that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Pakistan said the raid, of which it wasn't informed, was a violation of its sovereignty.
Relations between Pakistan's civilian leadership and military are also at their worst since a 1999 coup following reports of a disputed memo allegedly from President Asif Ali Zardari's government seeking U.S. help in reining in Pakistan's powerful generals.
(Additional reporting by Chris Allbritton; Writing by Serena Chaudhry; Editing by Chris Allbritton and Jonathan Thatcher)
UN Special Envoy Arrives in Kabul
TOLOnews.com Wednesday, 18 January 2012
The United Nation's special envoy, Jan Kubis, arrived in Kabul on Tuesday.
At a press conference to mark his arrival, Mr Kubis said he was "looking forward" to carrying out his new job and working with the Afghan government and people.
Mr Kubis, from Slovakia, replaces Sweden's Staffan de Mistura whose tenure expired in December.
"I am looking forward to be here in this period of transition, to be a good partner of the Government of Afghanistan, and a good partner of the people of Afghanistan," the new Special Representative told local journalists gathered at the airport.
Mr Kubis, 59, is a former Slovakian foreign minister and also recently held the post of chief of the UN Economic Commission for Europe.
Stefan De Mistura was appointed as UN representative in Afghanistan by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on January 2010 and held the position until December 2011. He replaced Kai Eide of Norway.
Afghan air force learns to fly _ and fix aircraft
By SLOBODAN LEKIC, AP Aviation Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Twenty years ago, Afghan Air Force pilot Maj. Abdul Aziz was streaking across the sky in the Soviet Union's deadliest fighter-bomber.
Now 45, his new task is less dramatic or flamboyant, yet perhaps even more important: Help build and train a new skilled air force that can keep the planes and helicopters in the air after Western mentors go home.
The challenge of forging a modern, technically proficient air force in a country at war is an immense but essential element in the West's exit strategy. The target date for having an Afghan Air Force able to operate fully independently, with about 8,000 trained personnel and 145 aircraft, is 2016.
The war against the resurgent Taliban has relied heavily on NATO aircraft to fly infantry units to remote outposts, keep them supplied in battle and provide close air support. Missiles fired from drones and exploding roadside bombs may get the media attention, but in a mountainous country with few paved roads, this has largely been a helicopter war.
Schooling a new cadre of pilots and air crews to fly is tough enough. But Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, who until last year headed NATO's training mission in Afghanistan, stressed that training the thousands of support and maintenance personnel is even more critical — if the force is to be sustainable in the long run.
If not, history will repeat itself. In the 1990s, the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance fighters battling the Taliban were flying Soviet-made helicopters left in Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989.
"The Northern Alliance chief of staff told me they had 70 helicopters, mostly Mil Mi-17s," Caldwell said. "Within a one-year period, none of them could fly anymore — not because they were shot out of the sky, but because the (Afghans) could not maintain and sustain them."
The NATO-led force is due to end its combat role in 2014, when it will hand over responsibility for security to the Afghan military and police. But thousands of troops and advisers will likely remain behind for at least several years to help train and mentor the government's security forces.
Allied nations have already supplied refurbished Italian-built C-27A tactical transports, Mi-35 helicopter gunships and Mi-17 transport choppers. Aside from the attack helicopters, the only dedicated close air support aircraft will be about two dozen A-29 Super Tucano counterinsurgency turboprops.
Afghanistan's air force dates to the 1920s, and reached its zenith during the 1980s Soviet occupation with nearly 500 fighter planes and bombers, transport aircraft and helicopter gunships. But it became little more than a scrap heap, left to decay by the Taliban during the civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal, then destroyed on the ground by U.S. bombing in 2001.
So when the corps was reformed in 2005, it had to start from scratch. Thousands of different specialists — including crew chiefs, engine and airframe technicians, avionics and communications experts, loadmasters and air base firefighters — had to be recruited and trained. The force currently has about 5,000 members and 86 aircraft.
"I loved being a pilot, but I chose to become an instructor because I wanted to serve my country," said Maj. Aziz, whose exchanged the cockpit of a Sukhoi Su-22 fighter jet for a classroom. "I am training the trainers who will in the future be able to train all the personnel that the air force needs, without the help of foreign advisers and supervisors."
And the search for the right personnel became the major challenge in developing the service.
In contrast to the effort to reconstitute the Iraqi Air Force in the 1990s, which retained a large cadre of trained and experienced pilots and engineers from before the 2003 U.S. invasion, the task in Afghanistan is much more complicated because it requires that the air force be created from the ground up — including basics such as teaching recruits how to read and write.
"About 85 percent of our current recruits are illiterate — and that's on a good day," said Col. Michael T. Needham, commander of the 738th Air Expeditionary Advisory Squadron. The unit's American, Canadian, Jordanian and Portuguese instructors are assisting, training and advising the 230 Afghan staff of the aviation college at Kabul airport to provide general, as well as military, education.
"The goal is really to get them to a point where the mentors are not necessary," Needham said. "We would like to work ourselves out of the job."
A potentially equally serious problem is the air force's annual attrition rate of nearly 20 percent. While not as bad as the rate at which troops are leaving the desertion-ravaged Afghan Army, this makes it difficult to retain a cadre of trained and experienced personnel.
Pilots are being trained in Shindand in western Herat province. The school at Kabul airport is in charge of developing the maintenance skills that the ground crews will need to keep the planes flying.
In a sign of the difficulties faced by the air force in finding reliable personnel, an Afghan military pilot opened fire after an argument last April at Kabul airport, killing eight U.S. trainers and advisers and an American civilian contractor.
U.S. military investigators found no conclusive evidence that the officer, Col. Ahmed Gul, had any ties to the insurgency. But the incident illustrated the dangers faced by military and civilian trainers and advisers who work daily with Afghan forces to prepare for the eventual departure of international troops.
Official: Iranian Products Constitute over 27% of Afghanistan's Imports
Fars News Agency January 18, 2012
TEHRAN (FNA)- A senior Iranian trade official announced that Afghanistan imports 27.6% of its multi-billion-dollar needs from Iran, and said the figure can still increase in future.
"At present 27.6% of Afghanistan's nearly $5bln imports from the world countries is from Iran, which is a considerable figure," Director-General of the Asia and Pacific Trade Office of Iran's Trade Promotion Organization Amir Talebi said on Wednesday, adding that the number can increase in future.
He underlined that Afghanistan enjoys good potentials for the expansion of trade ties with Iran, and called on Iranian officials and businessmen to exploit these potentials.
Iran and Afghanistan enjoy expanding ties and cooperation and observers believe that the good achievements gained in area of their mutual cooperation should be deemed as a result of the efforts made by the two countries' leaders.
In a meeting with an Afghan delegation, Iranian Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance Seyed Shamseddin Hosseini described the relations between Iran and Afghanistan as "exemplary", and stressed the two neighboring states' resolve to boost bilateral ties.
Speaking at a meeting with a customs delegation from Afghanistan in Iran's Northeastern city of Taybad in May, Hosseini stated that Iran and Afghanistan have exemplary relations and both countries are willing to expand their ties in the coming years.
"We believe that friendly ties with Afghanistan is based on human values rather than having a materialistic nature," the Iranian minister stressed.
He further noted that Iran's stable economy has created a favorable situation for its neighbors, including Afghanistan to engage in trade exchanges with Iran.
Pakistani Taliban Claims Responsibility for Killing VOA Reporter
Voice of America By Ayaz Gul January 17, 2012
Islamabad - The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibilty for the Tuesday killing of Pakistani reporter Mukarram Khan Aatif, who worked for the Voice of America.
Aatif was assassinated in Shabqadar, a small town located in the violence-hit Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, not far from Peshawar.
Witnesses and local police say that Aatif was attending evening prayers when two assailants on a motorbike arrived at the mosque. One of them entered the building, they say, and shot Aatif in the head and chest before escaping the scene.
The slain reporter, in his mid 40s and a native of the Mohman tribal agency bordering Afghanistan, was rushed in critical condition to a hospital, where he later died from his injuries.
Friends and relatives and that death threats from Taliban militants had forced the slain reporter and his family to abandon their hometown and move to Shabqadar. Soon after news of his death surfaced, local and international media groups condemned his killing as a act an terrorism. Imtiaz Alam, secretary-general of South Asia Free Media Association, a regional media watchdog, called for a probe.
“The government must investigate and find the culprits and also compensate the family," Alam said. "And I expect more killings in Pakistan, and journalists are now leaving country under threat from all kinds of actors, especially the extremists.”
Pakistani information minister Firdous Ashiq Awan said the government will conduct a “thorough and transparent” investigation into the incident and promised financial assistance to the victim’s family.
“It is really a very sad incident and I condemn it from the core of my heart." Awan said. "I assure his family and all the media that we have to really interrogate and go for a transparent inquiry, and I am sure that we will be able to find some facts related to this incident.”
The minister added that Pakistan’s ongoing war against Taliban-led extremists has exposed the entire society to revenge terrorist attacks.
In addition to filing reports for Deewa Radio, the Voice of America’s Pashto language service, Mukarram Khan Aatif also worked for Dunya TV, a privately-run local television station.
Critics insist that not only militants but Pakistani security agencies are also behind deadly attacks on journalists. The failure of the Pakistani authorities to bring elements involved in such attacks to justice, they say, has emboldened those fearful of increasingly independent media.
According to Reporters Without Borders, at least 10 reporters were killed in Pakistan in 2011, making it the deadliest nation in the world for journalists.
400 graduates join Afghan National Police
MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- A total of 400 newly-graduated officers joined the Afghan National Police (ANP) after completion of training in the country's northern province of Balkh, an official said on Wednesday.
"A total of 400 newly trained police officers were commissioned to ANP on Wednesday morning after completion of six-month training period in a police training center in Mazar-i-Sharif city," General Baba Jan, commander of 303 Pamir Zone in northern Afghanistan told audience in a graduation ceremony here.
The determined police officers were ready to be deployed to any province across the country to serve their nation, police commander Baba Jan said, adding "These policemen have been put through a curriculum, which is practical in nature and covers a police skill which has been very important in law enforcement mission in this critical period of time in Afghanistan."
The Afghan government and NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan (NTM-A) have stepped up efforts to train and equip Afghan police and army as NATO-led ISAF forces have handed over the security responsibilities of several areas across the country to Afghanistan.
In the second phase of the security transition process, the Afghan army and police will take full control of security of six Afghan provinces, including Balkh province, seven provincial capitals as well as more than 40 districts in the near future, parts of a process which will run to 2014 when Afghanistan takes over the full leadership of its own security duties from U.S. and NATO forces.
Talking to the Taliban
In their view, Obama has already run up the white flag by ordering the withdrawal of American forces to begin this summer.
Wall Street Journal By CON COUGHLIN JANUARY 18, 2012
The announcement by the Taliban that it is setting up an office in the Gulf state of Qatar to facilitate peace talks with Washington over the future of Afghanistan has inevitably raised hopes that a negotiated settlement of the decade-long conflict is possible.
Getting the Taliban to the negotiating table was, after all, one of President Obama's key objectives when he set out his comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy for Afghanistan in his speech at West Point in December 2009. Mr. Obama aimed to intensify the pressure on the Taliban by deploying an extra 30,000 U.S. troops. By undertaking extensive "kill or capture" missions against key Taliban leaders, U.S. military commanders believed they would force the Taliban to negotiate.
But even though thousands of Taliban fighters have been removed from the Afghan battlefield, serious doubts remain about whether the Taliban's leadership, which is mainly based in Pakistan, is really serious about engaging in meaningful peace talks with the U.S. and Afghan governments.
The Taliban claim that the new Qatar office is being established for precisely this purpose. During the latter part of 2011, however, they engaged in a campaign of violence whose sole purpose was to destroy any prospect of a negotiated peace deal with the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
By far their most effective action to date has been the murder last September of Burhanuddin Rabbani, Mr. Karzai's chief peace negotiator. He was killed by a Taliban suicide bomber who concealed an explosive device in his turban.
The assassination of Mr. Rabbani, the head of the Afghan government's High Peace Council, effectively ended the tentative talks that had been taking place between the Taliban and Mr. Karzai. When the U.S. hosted a peace conference in Bonn last month to address some of the Taliban's longstanding grievances, the Taliban leadership simply boycotted the event.
The other factor that stands in the way of an effective peace dialogue is the role of Pakistan in Afghanistan's turbulent political landscape. The official position of Pakistan's government is that it supports the U.S.-led NATO effort to defeat the Taliban and restore political stability to Afghanistan, but many senior Pakistani security officials continue to support radical elements of the Taliban, many of whom have a long-standing relationship with Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency.
Shortly before his retirement as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff last fall, Adm. Mike Mullen vented the frustration of many senior Pentagon officials by openly accusing the ISI of supporting the Haqqani network, the Taliban-linked Islamist group responsible for a string of terrorist attacks in Afghanistan—including the September attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.
Like the Taliban, Pakistan also boycotted December's Bonn conference, and many Western officials believe it would be virtually impossible to negotiate a lasting peace settlement for Afghanistan without Pakistan's involvement.
One reason the Taliban and Pakistan are unwilling to invest much political capital in peace talks is that, so far as they are concerned, Mr. Obama has already run up the white flag in Afghanistan by ordering the withdrawal of American forces to begin this summer—in good time for November's presidential election contest. By setting a 2014 deadline for the complete withdrawal of U.S. combat forces, Mr. Obama has completely undermined the effectiveness of the strategy he set out at West Point. Instead of intensifying the military pressure on the Taliban, the president has signaled that he is more interested in bringing the U.S. troops home.
Consequently, Taliban leaders know that, rather than being forced to negotiate, all they have to do is wait for the Americans to leave before they make their next move.
"Despite the opening of the Qatar office, we have received no indication that the Taliban are serious about engaging in serious peace talks," a senior Western intelligence official involved with NATO's Afghan mission recently told me. "So far as we can tell, the Taliban is simply playing a waiting game. Any conversations we do have with the Taliban are about their role in Afghanistan after NATO troops have left, rather about how they reconcile their differences with the Karzai government."
If that remains the case, and the decision to open the Qatar office is nothing more than a stalling tactic on the part of the Taliban, then Mr. Obama will have no one but himself to blame for failing to achieve a peace settlement in Afghanistan. If he were really serious about winning the war, then he would keep the troops deployed until their mission had been achieved.
Mr. Coughlin is the executive foreign editor of London's Daily Telegraph.
Death toll of Afghan avalanche rises to 26
FAIZABAD, Afghanistan, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- The death toll from a series of avalanches in northeastern Afghan province of Badakhshan has rise to 26, a local official said on Wednesday.
"The latest reports received from remote districts of Badakhshan province shows that at least 26 people, including some women and children, have lost their lives due to a series of avalanches that hit several places in the province on Monday and Tuesday," head of provincial council Zabiullah Hateeq told Xinhua on Wednesday morning.
Avalanches cut off parts of drought-hit northeast
KABUL, 17 January 2012 (IRIN) - Avalanches in northeastern Afghanistan have cut off tens - if not hundreds - of thousands of people already at risk of hunger due to drought, opening the door to a potential humanitarian crisis if aid cannot reach them, says a provincial official.
“If the snow continues to keep the roads to rural and remote districts closed and we don’t get any assistance, we would face a severe humanitarian crisis,” Abdul Maroof Rasekh, a government spokesperson from mountainous Badakhshan Province, told IRIN.
The snow has cut off 14 of the province’s 28 districts from the provincial capital Faizabad, preventing people from accessing markets to get food for themselves and their cattle, he said.
At least 70 families are trapped in their homes in Eshkashim District, where rescue teams are trying to help them, Rasekh added. Altogether, hundreds of families are trapped in different districts, he said.
The heavy snow and avalanches have led to the deaths of at least 20 people, with 11 injured, Rasekh said. The cold weather and lack of animal feed in these areas also killed around 600 cattle.
According to a report received by the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 150 people travelling in a convoy in Baghlan Province were found alive after surviving overnight in their cars, under two metres of snow.
Poor roads and snow in winter mean it can take days to travel from one village to another in this a mainly Tajik-speaking province with an estimated population of one million, where most people are reliant on agriculture and livestock.
Badakhshan was among the provinces hit by drought last year which, according to an assessment by the World Food Programme (WFP), led 2.8 million Afghans nationwide to require food assistance.
Rasekh said there was a lack of food for people and fodder for their animals. “The Ministry of Agriculture only sent food assistance for 10,000 families before winter. Other than that, we haven’t got any assistance from the government or aid community,” he added.
WFP aid
But Sediq Hassani, head of policy at the Afghanistan National disaster Management Authority, said the government and its international partners, including WFP, had sent more than 70,000 tons of food and some non-food items to these areas months ago to help farmers affected by drought and feed people in case of emergency during the winter.
The portion for drought was distributed upon arrival and provincial disaster management authorities are now deciding how to distribute the emergency rations, based on need, he said.
“In some provinces, they have already started distributing food, but in some other areas, due to heavy snowfall, they are not able to deliver food for the needy people and I think that is a bit of problem,” Hassani said. “But we are still trying.”
WFP began distributing emergency food across drought-hit areas in December, and had been distributing food to chronically hungry people before that as part of its regular programs.
Communities in these areas are accustomed to roads becoming impassable for six months every year, Mohammad Taher Shahim, who works with OCHA in neighbouring Kunduz Province, told IRIN. Government institutions, hospitals and food markets are present inside the districts, he said, and other needs are positioned there before the winter. These include equipment to keep roads open and help people if they get trapped, Hassani said. The districts cut off from Faizabad can also be accessed by aid agencies from Tajikistan, Shahim added.
Still, “the relevant government departments are working very hard right now to open the roads and rescue those people who have been trapped in places like Badakhshan,” Hassani told IRIN, adding that snow had also closed roads to mountainous areas of the central provinces of Daykundi and Bamyan.
The Aga Khan Foundation Network has already begun work clearing 6km of road on Palfill Slope in Baghlan Province, Shahim said. But there could be further problems ahead, he added, with a high probability of more avalanches this year.
Bigger UAE presence for News Corp
The National Ben Flanagan Jan 18, 2012
News Corp plans to pump funds into the Dubai media company Moby Group, which hopes to launch up to five TV stations over the next two years.
Rupert Murdoch's troubled media empire said this week that it had taken a minority stake in Moby, which plans to expand across the Arab world and beyond.
Moby runs several media brands in Afghanistan, including the television stations Tolo TV and Lemar TV, radio stations and a production company.
Capital from News Corp will help Moby to boost the number of TV channels it operates, said Saad Mohseni,Moby's chairman and chief executive. "We are looking to launch three to five channels - in Arabic amongst other languages - in the next 18 to 24 months." Moby currently runs media brands in the Dari, Farsi and Pashto languages. Mr Mohseni said there is "enormous opportunity in the Middle East and certain other countries". However, he declined to specify which specific markets Moby planned to target.
"We have some concrete plans moving forward. It's going to be predominantly broadcasting, but production of local content is very important to us. The idea for us is to diversify."
News Corp has an existing relationship with Moby through a 50 per cent shareholding in Broadcast Middle East (BME), a joint venture between the two companies. BME, which specialises in Farsi broadcasts, runs the Farsi1 and Zemzemeh channels. News Corp has now traded its shareholding in BME for a minority stake in Moby, the companies said in a joint statement.
"Under the terms of the agreement, News Corporation will contribute its 50 per cent shareholding in Broadcast Middle East, its Farsi-language TV joint venture with Moby, for a minority shareholding in Moby BME will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Moby following the investment," the statement said.
"News Corporation will provide strategic guidance and input via representation on the Moby board of directors," the statement added. "[It] will also provide growth capital to Moby for its expansion plans."
Mr Mohseni declined to disclose the percentage stake News Corp now holds in Moby or the total investment that Mr Murdoch's company plans to commit to fund expansion.
The company did not typically have lavish budgets for its TV-channel launches, Mr Mohseni said. "We are not known for launching channels with huge budgets. We are very nimble." Moby Group operates in Dubai and Afghanistan, and Mr Mohseni said it was considering a wider base in the UAE. "We will probably bolster our presence in the UAE. We are in talks with folks in Abu Dhabi as well."
James Murdoch, the deputy chief operating officer at News Corp, said the markets covered by Moby were "challenging, yet very promising". "Merging our Farsi joint venture into Moby allows us to expand our activities with what is surely one of the most dynamic and exciting media businesses in emerging markets anywhere," he said.
News Corp declined to disclose financial details of the deal with Moby when contacted by The National. Rupert Murdoch has been slowly building his business in the Middle East. An Arabic-language version of Sky News - which is part-owned by News Corp - is to be launched in the spring.
Fox International Channels, a unit of News Corp, already broadcasts 12 channels in the Middle East and North Africa. Pay-TV channels operated by Star, News Corp's Asian satellite-TV network, are also beamed across the region. News Corp also has a stake in the Saudi Arabian media company Rotana.
Despite its growth in the Middle East, News Corp has been rocked by the phone hacking scandal in the UK, in which some of its employees were accused of illegally intercepting voicemail messages.
Gains In Afghan Health: Too Good To Be True?
NPR By Quil Lawrence January 17, 2012
A U.S.-sponsored mortality survey released last year announced huge improvements in health across Afghanistan. But the gains are so great that experts are still arguing about whether it's correct.
During three decades of war, Afghanistan remained a black hole of health information. The few mortality studies looked at a small slice of the population and then extrapolated.
The numbers were horrific. Life expectancy in 2004 was measured at just 42 years; 25 percent of children did not survive until the age of 5. For every 100,000 deliveries, a staggering 1,600 women died in childbirth, the second-worst rate in the world.
Enter last year's $5 million Afghanistan Mortality Survey, which was funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development with a contribution from the U.N. Children's Fund. Officials say the new survey provides the most accurate snapshot ever of health in Afghanistan — and it delivered shockingly good news.
Afghan surveyors in all 34 provinces brought back data suggesting that life expectancy at birth is now 62 years. Child mortality under age 5 dropped to 10 percent. Of 100,000 live births, the maternal mortality number was down to 327.
"We were all surprised," says Susan Brock, health adviser with USAID in Kabul. "That's what led to additional review and much more analysis."
Brock says it was such an improvement compared with previous surveys that USAID delayed the release to crunch the numbers again. Last November, after months of re-examining results and meetings of technical experts in Dubai and in Washington, the agency confirmed the findings and released the survey with great fanfare.
But believing the new numbers are accurate probably means accepting that the old numbers were way off, which makes it impossible to say exactly how much health has really improved. It's unlikely that both the old life expectancy of 42 years and the new estimate of 62 years are correct.
'Huge Question Marks'
Some experts who worked on the survey still think it shows too much of a leap forward to be credible. Dr. Kenneth Hill, a Harvard University demographer and technical adviser on the survey, says there are too many anomalies.
"If the results had come out closer to expectations, they would have been hugely valuable, I think," Hill says. "But because there are still huge question marks hanging over the estimates, I'm not sure there is an enormous value in the data."
The survey divided Afghanistan into three regions: north, center and south. In many findings, the southern zone is excluded, because security made it impossible to conduct polling. Cultural taboos about discussing female family members meant that the birthrate of female children was underreported, and that's also likely true of infant mortality.
The survey clearly and honestly explains these facts, and USAID says that statisticians accounted for many such factors. But Hill says he suspects the raw data is off.
"Conditions for data collection are desperately difficult," he says. "Knocking on someone's door and asking them details about their children and their household is not something most people would want to do."
Three of the six experts on the survey's technical advisory group told NPR they still have doubts, even after the extra analysis. That includes Julia Hussein, of Aberdeen University.
"You've got to match what you know in terms of evidence with what you see with your eyes," says Hussein, who has worked on maternal mortality in Afghanistan since the 1990s.
"My instinctive reaction to figures reported in the survey — I just find them unbelievable, knowing what sort of care is available in Afghanistan," she says.
Undeniable Progress
But defenders of the study say people can't believe the numbers because they've become accustomed to thinking of Afghanistan as hopeless.
Dr. Mohammad Rasooly, with the Afghan Ministry of Public Health, was the lead technician from the Afghan side of the survey. He says health care in his country is improving dramatically, and in many different ways.
"If we consider only the example of midwives, 10 years back we had only 400 midwives at the national level. So, today we have more than 3,000. This is very important for maternal care," Rasooly says.
Now, new paved roads mean that a journey to one of the thousands of newly built clinics takes hours instead of days in rural areas, says Rasooly. Widespread mobile phones have helped save the lives of people who in the past had no way to call for help. And there is little doubt that women have much more access to health care.
Maternal mortality is notoriously hard to measure, and the new figure of 327 maternal deaths per 100,000 births has a margin of error that could make it much higher. It could be nearer 500, says Rasooly, but it's certainly not 1,600, which is progress.
Need For Aid Still Acute
It's not about knowing the exact number, says Ken Yama****a, USAID mission director in Afghanistan.
"We're quite confident of the numbers. In the end, it's a survey, so any survey has an error margin," he says.
Yama****a says the new mortality survey is the best ever done in Afghanistan.
"What it represents is a more representative survey on the one hand, and two, a very real improvement in health," he says.
The only way to know will be to conduct more surveys a few years down the road, at the same comprehensive standard, says Yama****a. He adds that even the new, more encouraging numbers show that Afghanistan is still desperately in need of international aid to help improve the health of its people.
After Years of Decline, Polio Cases in Afghanistan Triple in a Year
New York Times By ROD NORDLAND January 17, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - It has often been called the polio cease-fire.
In a country where insurgents have for years attacked and killed people working for the government or the international community, a small army of vaccination teams connected to both has, year after year, fanned out through some of Afghanistan’s most dangerous areas, quietly and mostly safely.
Appointed by the government, paid for by international agencies and given free passage by the Taliban in one of the last three countries in the world where polio is endemic, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative’s 65,000 volunteers and workers had seemed to have nearly wiped out the disease — until recently.
After years of steady decline, only 25 polio cases were reported in the country in 2010, prompting one international health care official to declare that “the Afghans are heroes.” Then last year, the number tripled to 76, the Afghan Ministry of Public Health said. While the total remains small, polio is highly contagious, and health experts say that each detected case is an indicator of hundreds of “silent” ones, mainly children with mild infections who become carriers.
Health workers are alarmed at the reversal of what has been a local and worldwide trend — particularly since some of the cases erupted far outside the disease’s traditional areas in Afghanistan.
“This is a national tragedy to end up with a major polio outbreak, especially with all the effort they have put into it,” said Dr. Bruce Aylward, the polio coordinator for the World Health Organization. “It increases the risk to neighboring countries and is both a local and national, and international, concern.”
President Hamid Karzai, in a statement, in effect blamed the Taliban. “Those who stand in the way of vaccination are the true enemies of our children’s future,” he said, calling on “the armed opposition to allow the vaccination teams to help save children against the lifetime paralysis.”
Health care officials said they had experienced no change in the militants’ tolerance for the vaccination efforts, and the Taliban reacted indignantly. “It is not for Karzai to ask us to attack or not to attack someone,” said the Taliban’s southern Afghanistan spokesman, Qari Yousaf Ahmadi.
Mr. Ahmadi said there had been no change in Taliban policy toward polio vaccination teams. “We have never attacked medical teams, as long as they coordinate with us when they enter areas under our control,” he said.
After decades of worldwide immunization efforts, polio is now considered endemic only to Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, where cases also increased drastically last year, and in northern Nigeria. India, long a center of the disease, last week celebrated its first full year with no new cases, the World Health Organization reported.
“It has been a huge achievement,” Vidhya Ganesh, Unicef’s deputy representative in Afghanistan, said of the worldwide effort. Unicef and the World Health Organization oversee the $32 million eradication campaign in Afghanistan. “If polio were to be eradicated, it would be only the second disease ever,” she said. The last case of smallpox, the first human disease believed to be successfully eradicated, was diagnosed in 1977.
Ahmad Azadi, a spokesman for the World Health Organization here, said, “At only 25 cases, you could almost smell the victory.”
Peter Crowley, Unicef’s country representative in Afghanistan, said security was a factor in the rising number of cases, “but it is not the only factor.”
In Afghanistan, polio has traditionally been concentrated in the Pashtun belt across southern Afghanistan — some of the most dangerous areas of conflict in the country. Last year, however, cases also emerged in northern, central and eastern parts of Afghanistan, apparently spread by travelers or refugees from endemic areas in Pakistan.
One of Pakistan’s major polio areas is the Pashtun tribal region contiguous with Afghanistan’s. Just as a porous, rugged border has allowed the infiltration of insurgents, it has also provided pathways for the spread of polio.
New polio cases in Pakistan rose to 192 in 2011 from 80 in 2010, said Muhammed Taufiq Mashal, the director general of preventive medicine in the Afghan Ministry of Public Health. He blames much of the polio increase on infiltration from Pakistan, which World Health Organization scientists say is confirmed by gene sequencing of the virus in victims.
While some extremist Muslim leaders in Pakistan and Nigeria have denounced vaccination programs as a Western conspiracy, that has not been the case with the Taliban. Many polio vaccination teams carry a letter bearing the signature of the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, approving of their work.
Those who saw Mr. Karzai’s statement as politicizing the issue were sharply critical.
“I was very shocked when I read the president’s statement,” said an international health official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of his agency’s rules about criticizing a host country’s government. “Politicizing this issue is alarming. Health is not a political thing.”
A Western official speaking anonymously said, “The reason polio vaccination teams have been able to operate is because they’re allowed to operate.”
Naqibullah Faieq, who leads the health committee in the Afghan Parliament, said, “This health issue is nonpolitical, nonmilitary.” He added, “We want both the government and the Taliban to not use the issue of vaccination in their speeches.”
The World Health Organization is expected this week to declare increases in polio cases a “global public health emergency,” Dr. Aylward said. He said that the eradication program in Afghanistan remained effective, and that authorities on all sides seemed determined to make it work.
Still, he said, “anytime you see a three-fold increase in an epidemic-prone disease, you’ve got to be concerned about it.”
Donald G. McNeil Jr. contributed reporting from New York, and Sharifullah Sahak from Kabul.
Air Pollution Reader to be Installed in Kabul
TOLOnews.com By Sharif Amiri Tuesday, 17 January 2012
The National Environmental Protection Agency is to install a new machine that will measure air pollution in Kabul, the agency's head, Mustafa Zahir, said on Tuesday.
The new machine will be able to measure pollution every hour and replaces older machines that are less modern and more complicated. Six air pollution measurement machines are needed for Kabul city. The machine costs $360,000 and money from the agency's budget will pay for it.
Air pollution in Kabul has become a major challenge for residents in the past few years and is believed to be causing numerous health issues.
The Afghan government has taken several steps to decrease air pollution levels but experts are skeptical that any of these measures have been effective.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
AFP via Yahoo! News - Jan 18 08:35am
British military police have arrested two servicemen over allegations that they abused children in Afghanistan, the defence ministry said Wednesday, prompting a furious reaction from Kabul.
The Sun newspaper reported that a sergeant and a private from the Mercian Battle Group have been arrested over claims that they abused an Afghan boy and a girl, both aged about 10, and filmed the incidents.
A Ministry of Defence (MoD) spokesman confirmed two servicemen had been arrested and released after questioning as part of an investigation by the Royal Military Police's Special Investigations Branch.
"Two service personnel have been arrested, interviewed under caution and released," the spokesman said.
The MoD said earlier it took any allegations of child abuse "extremely seriously".
The Afghan government said it was "disgusted" by the allegations and demanded an immediate investigation.
The claims come less than a week after a video emerged showing US Marines urinating on the corpses of militants in Afghanistan.
"The government of Afghanistan is immensely disgusted by the rise in recent incidents of immoral nature among foreign soldiers," President Hamid Karzai's office said.
"(Such incidents) clearly undermine public confidence and the Afghan people?s cooperation with foreign troops."
The statement said the government was "deeply disturbed by reports that two British soldiers have encouraged two Afghan children to touch them through their clothes".
NATO forces in Afghanistan were also quick to react.
"We expect members of all ISAF troop-contributing nations to adhere to the highest standards of military service," said Brigadier General Carsten Jacobson, spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.
"An investigation has been launched, and if a service member is found to have committed an offence, or behaved in a manner not in keeping with the appropriate moral standards expected of them, they will be dealt with appropriately through the respective nation's military judicial system."
Britain has some 9,500 troops in Afghanistan, mainly based in Helmand where they are battling a Taliban insurgency. Britain intends to pull out all its combat troops by 2015.
Afghan gov't denounces alleged abuse of 2 children by British soldiers
KABUL, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- The Afghan government has denounced the alleged abuse of two children by two British soldiers, a statement released by the Afghan Presidential Palace said here on Wednesday.
"The government of Afghanistan strongly denounces the " immoral" act by the British soldiers calling it a child abuse," the statement said.
Without naming any media outlets and the exact place of the incident, the statement said, "Media reports say that two British soldiers allegedly encouraged a boy and a girl, aged around ten to touch them and then filmed the action to show to other soldiers."
"The government of Afghanistan has been deeply disturbed by reports that two British soldiers have encouraged two Afghan children to touch them through their clothes," the statement added.
"The government of Afghanistan is immensely disgusted by the rise in recent incidents of immoral nature among foreign soldiers that clearly undermine public confidence and the Afghan people's cooperation with foreign troops," the statement said.
In the statement the Afghan government asked the British government to launch an immediate probe into the report and apply necessary punishment to those involved in the act.
A0 couple of days ago the Afghan government condemned the reported desecration of three corpses of Taliban by a group of U.S. Marines and demanded punishment for the culprits.
Pakistan rejects U.S. envoy visit: official
Reuters By Qasim Nauman Wed Jan 18, 2012
ISLAMABAD - Pakistan has rejected U.S. special envoy Marc Grossman's request to visit the country, a senior official said on Wednesday, highlighting the increased tensions between the uneasy allies.
He did not elaborate on the reasons.
"Ambassador Grossman asked to visit Pakistan but we conveyed to him that it was not possible at the moment," a senior government official, who declined to be named, told Reuters.
Relations between Islamabad and Washington are at the lowest point in years, dragged down by a NATO cross-border air attack which killed 24 Pakistani soldiers on November 26.
The growing tension threatens to set back peace efforts in neighboring Afghanistan, where the United States is gradually withdrawing troops after a decade of war.
Pakistan's cooperation is regarded as crucial, because of its long history of association with militant groups, to efforts to persuade the Taliban to join negotiations.
Grossman, U.S. Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, is due to visit Afghanistan and Qatar this week, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said last Wednesday.
Pakistan said in early December it had decided to review cooperation with the United States and NATO. The review is currently before parliament with no firm timeline on when recommendations will be presented to the government.
U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said on Tuesday Pakistan had decided the review should be completed before Grossman's next visit.
Ties between Washington and Islamabad were severely hurt in January 2011 by the killing of two Pakistanis by a CIA contractor.
The United States further infuriated and embarrassed Pakistan's powerful military in May with a unilateral special forces raid that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Pakistan said the raid, of which it wasn't informed, was a violation of its sovereignty.
Relations between Pakistan's civilian leadership and military are also at their worst since a 1999 coup following reports of a disputed memo allegedly from President Asif Ali Zardari's government seeking U.S. help in reining in Pakistan's powerful generals.
(Additional reporting by Chris Allbritton; Writing by Serena Chaudhry; Editing by Chris Allbritton and Jonathan Thatcher)
UN Special Envoy Arrives in Kabul
TOLOnews.com Wednesday, 18 January 2012
The United Nation's special envoy, Jan Kubis, arrived in Kabul on Tuesday.
At a press conference to mark his arrival, Mr Kubis said he was "looking forward" to carrying out his new job and working with the Afghan government and people.
Mr Kubis, from Slovakia, replaces Sweden's Staffan de Mistura whose tenure expired in December.
"I am looking forward to be here in this period of transition, to be a good partner of the Government of Afghanistan, and a good partner of the people of Afghanistan," the new Special Representative told local journalists gathered at the airport.
Mr Kubis, 59, is a former Slovakian foreign minister and also recently held the post of chief of the UN Economic Commission for Europe.
Stefan De Mistura was appointed as UN representative in Afghanistan by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on January 2010 and held the position until December 2011. He replaced Kai Eide of Norway.
Afghan air force learns to fly _ and fix aircraft
By SLOBODAN LEKIC, AP Aviation Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Twenty years ago, Afghan Air Force pilot Maj. Abdul Aziz was streaking across the sky in the Soviet Union's deadliest fighter-bomber.
Now 45, his new task is less dramatic or flamboyant, yet perhaps even more important: Help build and train a new skilled air force that can keep the planes and helicopters in the air after Western mentors go home.
The challenge of forging a modern, technically proficient air force in a country at war is an immense but essential element in the West's exit strategy. The target date for having an Afghan Air Force able to operate fully independently, with about 8,000 trained personnel and 145 aircraft, is 2016.
The war against the resurgent Taliban has relied heavily on NATO aircraft to fly infantry units to remote outposts, keep them supplied in battle and provide close air support. Missiles fired from drones and exploding roadside bombs may get the media attention, but in a mountainous country with few paved roads, this has largely been a helicopter war.
Schooling a new cadre of pilots and air crews to fly is tough enough. But Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, who until last year headed NATO's training mission in Afghanistan, stressed that training the thousands of support and maintenance personnel is even more critical — if the force is to be sustainable in the long run.
If not, history will repeat itself. In the 1990s, the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance fighters battling the Taliban were flying Soviet-made helicopters left in Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989.
"The Northern Alliance chief of staff told me they had 70 helicopters, mostly Mil Mi-17s," Caldwell said. "Within a one-year period, none of them could fly anymore — not because they were shot out of the sky, but because the (Afghans) could not maintain and sustain them."
The NATO-led force is due to end its combat role in 2014, when it will hand over responsibility for security to the Afghan military and police. But thousands of troops and advisers will likely remain behind for at least several years to help train and mentor the government's security forces.
Allied nations have already supplied refurbished Italian-built C-27A tactical transports, Mi-35 helicopter gunships and Mi-17 transport choppers. Aside from the attack helicopters, the only dedicated close air support aircraft will be about two dozen A-29 Super Tucano counterinsurgency turboprops.
Afghanistan's air force dates to the 1920s, and reached its zenith during the 1980s Soviet occupation with nearly 500 fighter planes and bombers, transport aircraft and helicopter gunships. But it became little more than a scrap heap, left to decay by the Taliban during the civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal, then destroyed on the ground by U.S. bombing in 2001.
So when the corps was reformed in 2005, it had to start from scratch. Thousands of different specialists — including crew chiefs, engine and airframe technicians, avionics and communications experts, loadmasters and air base firefighters — had to be recruited and trained. The force currently has about 5,000 members and 86 aircraft.
"I loved being a pilot, but I chose to become an instructor because I wanted to serve my country," said Maj. Aziz, whose exchanged the cockpit of a Sukhoi Su-22 fighter jet for a classroom. "I am training the trainers who will in the future be able to train all the personnel that the air force needs, without the help of foreign advisers and supervisors."
And the search for the right personnel became the major challenge in developing the service.
In contrast to the effort to reconstitute the Iraqi Air Force in the 1990s, which retained a large cadre of trained and experienced pilots and engineers from before the 2003 U.S. invasion, the task in Afghanistan is much more complicated because it requires that the air force be created from the ground up — including basics such as teaching recruits how to read and write.
"About 85 percent of our current recruits are illiterate — and that's on a good day," said Col. Michael T. Needham, commander of the 738th Air Expeditionary Advisory Squadron. The unit's American, Canadian, Jordanian and Portuguese instructors are assisting, training and advising the 230 Afghan staff of the aviation college at Kabul airport to provide general, as well as military, education.
"The goal is really to get them to a point where the mentors are not necessary," Needham said. "We would like to work ourselves out of the job."
A potentially equally serious problem is the air force's annual attrition rate of nearly 20 percent. While not as bad as the rate at which troops are leaving the desertion-ravaged Afghan Army, this makes it difficult to retain a cadre of trained and experienced personnel.
Pilots are being trained in Shindand in western Herat province. The school at Kabul airport is in charge of developing the maintenance skills that the ground crews will need to keep the planes flying.
In a sign of the difficulties faced by the air force in finding reliable personnel, an Afghan military pilot opened fire after an argument last April at Kabul airport, killing eight U.S. trainers and advisers and an American civilian contractor.
U.S. military investigators found no conclusive evidence that the officer, Col. Ahmed Gul, had any ties to the insurgency. But the incident illustrated the dangers faced by military and civilian trainers and advisers who work daily with Afghan forces to prepare for the eventual departure of international troops.
Official: Iranian Products Constitute over 27% of Afghanistan's Imports
Fars News Agency January 18, 2012
TEHRAN (FNA)- A senior Iranian trade official announced that Afghanistan imports 27.6% of its multi-billion-dollar needs from Iran, and said the figure can still increase in future.
"At present 27.6% of Afghanistan's nearly $5bln imports from the world countries is from Iran, which is a considerable figure," Director-General of the Asia and Pacific Trade Office of Iran's Trade Promotion Organization Amir Talebi said on Wednesday, adding that the number can increase in future.
He underlined that Afghanistan enjoys good potentials for the expansion of trade ties with Iran, and called on Iranian officials and businessmen to exploit these potentials.
Iran and Afghanistan enjoy expanding ties and cooperation and observers believe that the good achievements gained in area of their mutual cooperation should be deemed as a result of the efforts made by the two countries' leaders.
In a meeting with an Afghan delegation, Iranian Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance Seyed Shamseddin Hosseini described the relations between Iran and Afghanistan as "exemplary", and stressed the two neighboring states' resolve to boost bilateral ties.
Speaking at a meeting with a customs delegation from Afghanistan in Iran's Northeastern city of Taybad in May, Hosseini stated that Iran and Afghanistan have exemplary relations and both countries are willing to expand their ties in the coming years.
"We believe that friendly ties with Afghanistan is based on human values rather than having a materialistic nature," the Iranian minister stressed.
He further noted that Iran's stable economy has created a favorable situation for its neighbors, including Afghanistan to engage in trade exchanges with Iran.
Pakistani Taliban Claims Responsibility for Killing VOA Reporter
Voice of America By Ayaz Gul January 17, 2012
Islamabad - The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibilty for the Tuesday killing of Pakistani reporter Mukarram Khan Aatif, who worked for the Voice of America.
Aatif was assassinated in Shabqadar, a small town located in the violence-hit Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, not far from Peshawar.
Witnesses and local police say that Aatif was attending evening prayers when two assailants on a motorbike arrived at the mosque. One of them entered the building, they say, and shot Aatif in the head and chest before escaping the scene.
The slain reporter, in his mid 40s and a native of the Mohman tribal agency bordering Afghanistan, was rushed in critical condition to a hospital, where he later died from his injuries.
Friends and relatives and that death threats from Taliban militants had forced the slain reporter and his family to abandon their hometown and move to Shabqadar. Soon after news of his death surfaced, local and international media groups condemned his killing as a act an terrorism. Imtiaz Alam, secretary-general of South Asia Free Media Association, a regional media watchdog, called for a probe.
“The government must investigate and find the culprits and also compensate the family," Alam said. "And I expect more killings in Pakistan, and journalists are now leaving country under threat from all kinds of actors, especially the extremists.”
Pakistani information minister Firdous Ashiq Awan said the government will conduct a “thorough and transparent” investigation into the incident and promised financial assistance to the victim’s family.
“It is really a very sad incident and I condemn it from the core of my heart." Awan said. "I assure his family and all the media that we have to really interrogate and go for a transparent inquiry, and I am sure that we will be able to find some facts related to this incident.”
The minister added that Pakistan’s ongoing war against Taliban-led extremists has exposed the entire society to revenge terrorist attacks.
In addition to filing reports for Deewa Radio, the Voice of America’s Pashto language service, Mukarram Khan Aatif also worked for Dunya TV, a privately-run local television station.
Critics insist that not only militants but Pakistani security agencies are also behind deadly attacks on journalists. The failure of the Pakistani authorities to bring elements involved in such attacks to justice, they say, has emboldened those fearful of increasingly independent media.
According to Reporters Without Borders, at least 10 reporters were killed in Pakistan in 2011, making it the deadliest nation in the world for journalists.
400 graduates join Afghan National Police
MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- A total of 400 newly-graduated officers joined the Afghan National Police (ANP) after completion of training in the country's northern province of Balkh, an official said on Wednesday.
"A total of 400 newly trained police officers were commissioned to ANP on Wednesday morning after completion of six-month training period in a police training center in Mazar-i-Sharif city," General Baba Jan, commander of 303 Pamir Zone in northern Afghanistan told audience in a graduation ceremony here.
The determined police officers were ready to be deployed to any province across the country to serve their nation, police commander Baba Jan said, adding "These policemen have been put through a curriculum, which is practical in nature and covers a police skill which has been very important in law enforcement mission in this critical period of time in Afghanistan."
The Afghan government and NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan (NTM-A) have stepped up efforts to train and equip Afghan police and army as NATO-led ISAF forces have handed over the security responsibilities of several areas across the country to Afghanistan.
In the second phase of the security transition process, the Afghan army and police will take full control of security of six Afghan provinces, including Balkh province, seven provincial capitals as well as more than 40 districts in the near future, parts of a process which will run to 2014 when Afghanistan takes over the full leadership of its own security duties from U.S. and NATO forces.
Talking to the Taliban
In their view, Obama has already run up the white flag by ordering the withdrawal of American forces to begin this summer.
Wall Street Journal By CON COUGHLIN JANUARY 18, 2012
The announcement by the Taliban that it is setting up an office in the Gulf state of Qatar to facilitate peace talks with Washington over the future of Afghanistan has inevitably raised hopes that a negotiated settlement of the decade-long conflict is possible.
Getting the Taliban to the negotiating table was, after all, one of President Obama's key objectives when he set out his comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy for Afghanistan in his speech at West Point in December 2009. Mr. Obama aimed to intensify the pressure on the Taliban by deploying an extra 30,000 U.S. troops. By undertaking extensive "kill or capture" missions against key Taliban leaders, U.S. military commanders believed they would force the Taliban to negotiate.
But even though thousands of Taliban fighters have been removed from the Afghan battlefield, serious doubts remain about whether the Taliban's leadership, which is mainly based in Pakistan, is really serious about engaging in meaningful peace talks with the U.S. and Afghan governments.
The Taliban claim that the new Qatar office is being established for precisely this purpose. During the latter part of 2011, however, they engaged in a campaign of violence whose sole purpose was to destroy any prospect of a negotiated peace deal with the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
By far their most effective action to date has been the murder last September of Burhanuddin Rabbani, Mr. Karzai's chief peace negotiator. He was killed by a Taliban suicide bomber who concealed an explosive device in his turban.
The assassination of Mr. Rabbani, the head of the Afghan government's High Peace Council, effectively ended the tentative talks that had been taking place between the Taliban and Mr. Karzai. When the U.S. hosted a peace conference in Bonn last month to address some of the Taliban's longstanding grievances, the Taliban leadership simply boycotted the event.
The other factor that stands in the way of an effective peace dialogue is the role of Pakistan in Afghanistan's turbulent political landscape. The official position of Pakistan's government is that it supports the U.S.-led NATO effort to defeat the Taliban and restore political stability to Afghanistan, but many senior Pakistani security officials continue to support radical elements of the Taliban, many of whom have a long-standing relationship with Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency.
Shortly before his retirement as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff last fall, Adm. Mike Mullen vented the frustration of many senior Pentagon officials by openly accusing the ISI of supporting the Haqqani network, the Taliban-linked Islamist group responsible for a string of terrorist attacks in Afghanistan—including the September attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.
Like the Taliban, Pakistan also boycotted December's Bonn conference, and many Western officials believe it would be virtually impossible to negotiate a lasting peace settlement for Afghanistan without Pakistan's involvement.
One reason the Taliban and Pakistan are unwilling to invest much political capital in peace talks is that, so far as they are concerned, Mr. Obama has already run up the white flag in Afghanistan by ordering the withdrawal of American forces to begin this summer—in good time for November's presidential election contest. By setting a 2014 deadline for the complete withdrawal of U.S. combat forces, Mr. Obama has completely undermined the effectiveness of the strategy he set out at West Point. Instead of intensifying the military pressure on the Taliban, the president has signaled that he is more interested in bringing the U.S. troops home.
Consequently, Taliban leaders know that, rather than being forced to negotiate, all they have to do is wait for the Americans to leave before they make their next move.
"Despite the opening of the Qatar office, we have received no indication that the Taliban are serious about engaging in serious peace talks," a senior Western intelligence official involved with NATO's Afghan mission recently told me. "So far as we can tell, the Taliban is simply playing a waiting game. Any conversations we do have with the Taliban are about their role in Afghanistan after NATO troops have left, rather about how they reconcile their differences with the Karzai government."
If that remains the case, and the decision to open the Qatar office is nothing more than a stalling tactic on the part of the Taliban, then Mr. Obama will have no one but himself to blame for failing to achieve a peace settlement in Afghanistan. If he were really serious about winning the war, then he would keep the troops deployed until their mission had been achieved.
Mr. Coughlin is the executive foreign editor of London's Daily Telegraph.
Death toll of Afghan avalanche rises to 26
FAIZABAD, Afghanistan, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- The death toll from a series of avalanches in northeastern Afghan province of Badakhshan has rise to 26, a local official said on Wednesday.
"The latest reports received from remote districts of Badakhshan province shows that at least 26 people, including some women and children, have lost their lives due to a series of avalanches that hit several places in the province on Monday and Tuesday," head of provincial council Zabiullah Hateeq told Xinhua on Wednesday morning.
Avalanches cut off parts of drought-hit northeast
KABUL, 17 January 2012 (IRIN) - Avalanches in northeastern Afghanistan have cut off tens - if not hundreds - of thousands of people already at risk of hunger due to drought, opening the door to a potential humanitarian crisis if aid cannot reach them, says a provincial official.
“If the snow continues to keep the roads to rural and remote districts closed and we don’t get any assistance, we would face a severe humanitarian crisis,” Abdul Maroof Rasekh, a government spokesperson from mountainous Badakhshan Province, told IRIN.
The snow has cut off 14 of the province’s 28 districts from the provincial capital Faizabad, preventing people from accessing markets to get food for themselves and their cattle, he said.
At least 70 families are trapped in their homes in Eshkashim District, where rescue teams are trying to help them, Rasekh added. Altogether, hundreds of families are trapped in different districts, he said.
The heavy snow and avalanches have led to the deaths of at least 20 people, with 11 injured, Rasekh said. The cold weather and lack of animal feed in these areas also killed around 600 cattle.
According to a report received by the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 150 people travelling in a convoy in Baghlan Province were found alive after surviving overnight in their cars, under two metres of snow.
Poor roads and snow in winter mean it can take days to travel from one village to another in this a mainly Tajik-speaking province with an estimated population of one million, where most people are reliant on agriculture and livestock.
Badakhshan was among the provinces hit by drought last year which, according to an assessment by the World Food Programme (WFP), led 2.8 million Afghans nationwide to require food assistance.
Rasekh said there was a lack of food for people and fodder for their animals. “The Ministry of Agriculture only sent food assistance for 10,000 families before winter. Other than that, we haven’t got any assistance from the government or aid community,” he added.
WFP aid
But Sediq Hassani, head of policy at the Afghanistan National disaster Management Authority, said the government and its international partners, including WFP, had sent more than 70,000 tons of food and some non-food items to these areas months ago to help farmers affected by drought and feed people in case of emergency during the winter.
The portion for drought was distributed upon arrival and provincial disaster management authorities are now deciding how to distribute the emergency rations, based on need, he said.
“In some provinces, they have already started distributing food, but in some other areas, due to heavy snowfall, they are not able to deliver food for the needy people and I think that is a bit of problem,” Hassani said. “But we are still trying.”
WFP began distributing emergency food across drought-hit areas in December, and had been distributing food to chronically hungry people before that as part of its regular programs.
Communities in these areas are accustomed to roads becoming impassable for six months every year, Mohammad Taher Shahim, who works with OCHA in neighbouring Kunduz Province, told IRIN. Government institutions, hospitals and food markets are present inside the districts, he said, and other needs are positioned there before the winter. These include equipment to keep roads open and help people if they get trapped, Hassani said. The districts cut off from Faizabad can also be accessed by aid agencies from Tajikistan, Shahim added.
Still, “the relevant government departments are working very hard right now to open the roads and rescue those people who have been trapped in places like Badakhshan,” Hassani told IRIN, adding that snow had also closed roads to mountainous areas of the central provinces of Daykundi and Bamyan.
The Aga Khan Foundation Network has already begun work clearing 6km of road on Palfill Slope in Baghlan Province, Shahim said. But there could be further problems ahead, he added, with a high probability of more avalanches this year.
Bigger UAE presence for News Corp
The National Ben Flanagan Jan 18, 2012
News Corp plans to pump funds into the Dubai media company Moby Group, which hopes to launch up to five TV stations over the next two years.
Rupert Murdoch's troubled media empire said this week that it had taken a minority stake in Moby, which plans to expand across the Arab world and beyond.
Moby runs several media brands in Afghanistan, including the television stations Tolo TV and Lemar TV, radio stations and a production company.
Capital from News Corp will help Moby to boost the number of TV channels it operates, said Saad Mohseni,Moby's chairman and chief executive. "We are looking to launch three to five channels - in Arabic amongst other languages - in the next 18 to 24 months." Moby currently runs media brands in the Dari, Farsi and Pashto languages. Mr Mohseni said there is "enormous opportunity in the Middle East and certain other countries". However, he declined to specify which specific markets Moby planned to target.
"We have some concrete plans moving forward. It's going to be predominantly broadcasting, but production of local content is very important to us. The idea for us is to diversify."
News Corp has an existing relationship with Moby through a 50 per cent shareholding in Broadcast Middle East (BME), a joint venture between the two companies. BME, which specialises in Farsi broadcasts, runs the Farsi1 and Zemzemeh channels. News Corp has now traded its shareholding in BME for a minority stake in Moby, the companies said in a joint statement.
"Under the terms of the agreement, News Corporation will contribute its 50 per cent shareholding in Broadcast Middle East, its Farsi-language TV joint venture with Moby, for a minority shareholding in Moby BME will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Moby following the investment," the statement said.
"News Corporation will provide strategic guidance and input via representation on the Moby board of directors," the statement added. "[It] will also provide growth capital to Moby for its expansion plans."
Mr Mohseni declined to disclose the percentage stake News Corp now holds in Moby or the total investment that Mr Murdoch's company plans to commit to fund expansion.
The company did not typically have lavish budgets for its TV-channel launches, Mr Mohseni said. "We are not known for launching channels with huge budgets. We are very nimble." Moby Group operates in Dubai and Afghanistan, and Mr Mohseni said it was considering a wider base in the UAE. "We will probably bolster our presence in the UAE. We are in talks with folks in Abu Dhabi as well."
James Murdoch, the deputy chief operating officer at News Corp, said the markets covered by Moby were "challenging, yet very promising". "Merging our Farsi joint venture into Moby allows us to expand our activities with what is surely one of the most dynamic and exciting media businesses in emerging markets anywhere," he said.
News Corp declined to disclose financial details of the deal with Moby when contacted by The National. Rupert Murdoch has been slowly building his business in the Middle East. An Arabic-language version of Sky News - which is part-owned by News Corp - is to be launched in the spring.
Fox International Channels, a unit of News Corp, already broadcasts 12 channels in the Middle East and North Africa. Pay-TV channels operated by Star, News Corp's Asian satellite-TV network, are also beamed across the region. News Corp also has a stake in the Saudi Arabian media company Rotana.
Despite its growth in the Middle East, News Corp has been rocked by the phone hacking scandal in the UK, in which some of its employees were accused of illegally intercepting voicemail messages.
Gains In Afghan Health: Too Good To Be True?
NPR By Quil Lawrence January 17, 2012
A U.S.-sponsored mortality survey released last year announced huge improvements in health across Afghanistan. But the gains are so great that experts are still arguing about whether it's correct.
During three decades of war, Afghanistan remained a black hole of health information. The few mortality studies looked at a small slice of the population and then extrapolated.
The numbers were horrific. Life expectancy in 2004 was measured at just 42 years; 25 percent of children did not survive until the age of 5. For every 100,000 deliveries, a staggering 1,600 women died in childbirth, the second-worst rate in the world.
Enter last year's $5 million Afghanistan Mortality Survey, which was funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development with a contribution from the U.N. Children's Fund. Officials say the new survey provides the most accurate snapshot ever of health in Afghanistan — and it delivered shockingly good news.
Afghan surveyors in all 34 provinces brought back data suggesting that life expectancy at birth is now 62 years. Child mortality under age 5 dropped to 10 percent. Of 100,000 live births, the maternal mortality number was down to 327.
"We were all surprised," says Susan Brock, health adviser with USAID in Kabul. "That's what led to additional review and much more analysis."
Brock says it was such an improvement compared with previous surveys that USAID delayed the release to crunch the numbers again. Last November, after months of re-examining results and meetings of technical experts in Dubai and in Washington, the agency confirmed the findings and released the survey with great fanfare.
But believing the new numbers are accurate probably means accepting that the old numbers were way off, which makes it impossible to say exactly how much health has really improved. It's unlikely that both the old life expectancy of 42 years and the new estimate of 62 years are correct.
'Huge Question Marks'
Some experts who worked on the survey still think it shows too much of a leap forward to be credible. Dr. Kenneth Hill, a Harvard University demographer and technical adviser on the survey, says there are too many anomalies.
"If the results had come out closer to expectations, they would have been hugely valuable, I think," Hill says. "But because there are still huge question marks hanging over the estimates, I'm not sure there is an enormous value in the data."
The survey divided Afghanistan into three regions: north, center and south. In many findings, the southern zone is excluded, because security made it impossible to conduct polling. Cultural taboos about discussing female family members meant that the birthrate of female children was underreported, and that's also likely true of infant mortality.
The survey clearly and honestly explains these facts, and USAID says that statisticians accounted for many such factors. But Hill says he suspects the raw data is off.
"Conditions for data collection are desperately difficult," he says. "Knocking on someone's door and asking them details about their children and their household is not something most people would want to do."
Three of the six experts on the survey's technical advisory group told NPR they still have doubts, even after the extra analysis. That includes Julia Hussein, of Aberdeen University.
"You've got to match what you know in terms of evidence with what you see with your eyes," says Hussein, who has worked on maternal mortality in Afghanistan since the 1990s.
"My instinctive reaction to figures reported in the survey — I just find them unbelievable, knowing what sort of care is available in Afghanistan," she says.
Undeniable Progress
But defenders of the study say people can't believe the numbers because they've become accustomed to thinking of Afghanistan as hopeless.
Dr. Mohammad Rasooly, with the Afghan Ministry of Public Health, was the lead technician from the Afghan side of the survey. He says health care in his country is improving dramatically, and in many different ways.
"If we consider only the example of midwives, 10 years back we had only 400 midwives at the national level. So, today we have more than 3,000. This is very important for maternal care," Rasooly says.
Now, new paved roads mean that a journey to one of the thousands of newly built clinics takes hours instead of days in rural areas, says Rasooly. Widespread mobile phones have helped save the lives of people who in the past had no way to call for help. And there is little doubt that women have much more access to health care.
Maternal mortality is notoriously hard to measure, and the new figure of 327 maternal deaths per 100,000 births has a margin of error that could make it much higher. It could be nearer 500, says Rasooly, but it's certainly not 1,600, which is progress.
Need For Aid Still Acute
It's not about knowing the exact number, says Ken Yama****a, USAID mission director in Afghanistan.
"We're quite confident of the numbers. In the end, it's a survey, so any survey has an error margin," he says.
Yama****a says the new mortality survey is the best ever done in Afghanistan.
"What it represents is a more representative survey on the one hand, and two, a very real improvement in health," he says.
The only way to know will be to conduct more surveys a few years down the road, at the same comprehensive standard, says Yama****a. He adds that even the new, more encouraging numbers show that Afghanistan is still desperately in need of international aid to help improve the health of its people.
After Years of Decline, Polio Cases in Afghanistan Triple in a Year
New York Times By ROD NORDLAND January 17, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - It has often been called the polio cease-fire.
In a country where insurgents have for years attacked and killed people working for the government or the international community, a small army of vaccination teams connected to both has, year after year, fanned out through some of Afghanistan’s most dangerous areas, quietly and mostly safely.
Appointed by the government, paid for by international agencies and given free passage by the Taliban in one of the last three countries in the world where polio is endemic, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative’s 65,000 volunteers and workers had seemed to have nearly wiped out the disease — until recently.
After years of steady decline, only 25 polio cases were reported in the country in 2010, prompting one international health care official to declare that “the Afghans are heroes.” Then last year, the number tripled to 76, the Afghan Ministry of Public Health said. While the total remains small, polio is highly contagious, and health experts say that each detected case is an indicator of hundreds of “silent” ones, mainly children with mild infections who become carriers.
Health workers are alarmed at the reversal of what has been a local and worldwide trend — particularly since some of the cases erupted far outside the disease’s traditional areas in Afghanistan.
“This is a national tragedy to end up with a major polio outbreak, especially with all the effort they have put into it,” said Dr. Bruce Aylward, the polio coordinator for the World Health Organization. “It increases the risk to neighboring countries and is both a local and national, and international, concern.”
President Hamid Karzai, in a statement, in effect blamed the Taliban. “Those who stand in the way of vaccination are the true enemies of our children’s future,” he said, calling on “the armed opposition to allow the vaccination teams to help save children against the lifetime paralysis.”
Health care officials said they had experienced no change in the militants’ tolerance for the vaccination efforts, and the Taliban reacted indignantly. “It is not for Karzai to ask us to attack or not to attack someone,” said the Taliban’s southern Afghanistan spokesman, Qari Yousaf Ahmadi.
Mr. Ahmadi said there had been no change in Taliban policy toward polio vaccination teams. “We have never attacked medical teams, as long as they coordinate with us when they enter areas under our control,” he said.
After decades of worldwide immunization efforts, polio is now considered endemic only to Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, where cases also increased drastically last year, and in northern Nigeria. India, long a center of the disease, last week celebrated its first full year with no new cases, the World Health Organization reported.
“It has been a huge achievement,” Vidhya Ganesh, Unicef’s deputy representative in Afghanistan, said of the worldwide effort. Unicef and the World Health Organization oversee the $32 million eradication campaign in Afghanistan. “If polio were to be eradicated, it would be only the second disease ever,” she said. The last case of smallpox, the first human disease believed to be successfully eradicated, was diagnosed in 1977.
Ahmad Azadi, a spokesman for the World Health Organization here, said, “At only 25 cases, you could almost smell the victory.”
Peter Crowley, Unicef’s country representative in Afghanistan, said security was a factor in the rising number of cases, “but it is not the only factor.”
In Afghanistan, polio has traditionally been concentrated in the Pashtun belt across southern Afghanistan — some of the most dangerous areas of conflict in the country. Last year, however, cases also emerged in northern, central and eastern parts of Afghanistan, apparently spread by travelers or refugees from endemic areas in Pakistan.
One of Pakistan’s major polio areas is the Pashtun tribal region contiguous with Afghanistan’s. Just as a porous, rugged border has allowed the infiltration of insurgents, it has also provided pathways for the spread of polio.
New polio cases in Pakistan rose to 192 in 2011 from 80 in 2010, said Muhammed Taufiq Mashal, the director general of preventive medicine in the Afghan Ministry of Public Health. He blames much of the polio increase on infiltration from Pakistan, which World Health Organization scientists say is confirmed by gene sequencing of the virus in victims.
While some extremist Muslim leaders in Pakistan and Nigeria have denounced vaccination programs as a Western conspiracy, that has not been the case with the Taliban. Many polio vaccination teams carry a letter bearing the signature of the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, approving of their work.
Those who saw Mr. Karzai’s statement as politicizing the issue were sharply critical.
“I was very shocked when I read the president’s statement,” said an international health official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of his agency’s rules about criticizing a host country’s government. “Politicizing this issue is alarming. Health is not a political thing.”
A Western official speaking anonymously said, “The reason polio vaccination teams have been able to operate is because they’re allowed to operate.”
Naqibullah Faieq, who leads the health committee in the Afghan Parliament, said, “This health issue is nonpolitical, nonmilitary.” He added, “We want both the government and the Taliban to not use the issue of vaccination in their speeches.”
The World Health Organization is expected this week to declare increases in polio cases a “global public health emergency,” Dr. Aylward said. He said that the eradication program in Afghanistan remained effective, and that authorities on all sides seemed determined to make it work.
Still, he said, “anytime you see a three-fold increase in an epidemic-prone disease, you’ve got to be concerned about it.”
Donald G. McNeil Jr. contributed reporting from New York, and Sharifullah Sahak from Kabul.
Air Pollution Reader to be Installed in Kabul
TOLOnews.com By Sharif Amiri Tuesday, 17 January 2012
The National Environmental Protection Agency is to install a new machine that will measure air pollution in Kabul, the agency's head, Mustafa Zahir, said on Tuesday.
The new machine will be able to measure pollution every hour and replaces older machines that are less modern and more complicated. Six air pollution measurement machines are needed for Kabul city. The machine costs $360,000 and money from the agency's budget will pay for it.
Air pollution in Kabul has become a major challenge for residents in the past few years and is believed to be causing numerous health issues.
The Afghan government has taken several steps to decrease air pollution levels but experts are skeptical that any of these measures have been effective.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com