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U.S. senators in Afghanistan take hard line with Karzai on night raids, detention operations
February 20, 2012 The Washington Post via denverpost.com
KABUL — Five visiting U.S. senators took a hard line with Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Sunday, outlining the issues that could endanger a long-term partnership between the two nations and emphasizing the importance of American-led night raids as U.S. forces withdraw from the conflict.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said he was encouraged by "significant military advances on the ground" but was unsympathetic to Karzai's demand that the United States curb its use of night operations, which Karzai says result in dozens of civilian casualties each year.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., another member of the delegation, said handing over detention operations to Afghans — another key Karzai demand — would "put American lives in danger."
American officials have struggled for more than a year to craft a partnership agreement that would include a role for U.S. soldiers and diplomats beyond 2014, after NATO forces are due to leave Afghanistan. Karzai has said repeatedly that without an end to night raids and a handover of U.S.- run detention facilities, he won't sign such an agreement.
McCain emphasized the importance of finalizing an agreement before a NATO summit in May, when the alliance is due to discuss its future involvement in Afghanistan.
"Absent that, I could see the possibility of real fissures developing amongst the alliance," McCain said.
Graham said he would like the U.S. military to maintain a footprint in Afghanistan beyond 2014 "that would allow us to have a couple of bases with Special Forces units that would always provide the edge to the Afghan security forces against future insurgent attacks."
Other members of the delegation were Sens. John Hoeven, R-N.D., Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. They met with Karzai and Lt. Gen. John Allen, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, as well as members of the country's opposition parties.
McCain raised doubts about the viability of a political settlement with the Taliban, saying that President Barack Obama's announcement of a military drawdown has diminished the insurgency's willingness to negotiate.
"When they think you're leaving, obviously they're not going to be serious about negotiations," McCain said.
McCain also said he opposes the release of five Taliban prisoners as a part of those negotiations, a concession U.S. officials had discussed in early peace talks. A decision to release the men, now held at Guantanamo Bay, would have to be approved by Congress.
U.S. senators, Afghan leaders discuss parameters for long-term partnership
Washington Post By Kevin Sieff February 19 , 2012
KABUL - Five visiting U.S. senators took a hard line with Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Sunday, outlining the issues precluding a long-term partnership between the two nations and emphasizing the importance of American-led night raids as U.S. forces withdraw from the conflict.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said he was encouraged by “significant military advances on the ground” but was unsympathetic to Karzai’s demand that the United States curb its use of night operations, which Karzai says result in dozens of civilian casualties each year. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), another member of the delegation, said that handing over detention operations to Afghans — another key Karzai demand — would “put American lives in danger.”
American officials have struggled for well over a year to craft a partnership agreement that would include a role for U.S. soldiers and diplomats beyond 2014, after NATO forces are due to leave Afghanistan. Karzai has said repeatedly that without an end to night raids and a handover of U.S.-run detention facilities, he won’t sign such an agreement.
McCain emphasized the importance of finalizing an agreement before a NATO summit in May, when the alliance is due to discuss the future of its involvement in Afghanistan.
“Absent that, I could see the possibility of real fissures developing amongst the alliance,” McCain said.
Graham said he would like the U.S. military to maintain a footprint in Afghanistan beyond 2014 “that would allow us to have a couple of bases with special forces units that would always provide the edge to the Afghan security forces against future insurgent attacks.”
Members of the delegation, which also included Sens. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), met with both Karzai and Lt. Gen. John R. Allen, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, as well as members of the country’s opposition parties.
McCain raised doubts about the viability of a political settlement with the Taliban, saying that President Obama’s announcement of a military drawdown has diminished the insurgency’s willingness to negotiate.
“When they think you’re leaving, obviously they’re not going to be serious about negotiations,” McCain said.
McCain also said he opposes the release of five Taliban prisoners as a part of those negotiations, a concession U.S. officials had discussed in early peace talks. A decision to release the men, now held at Guantanamo Bay, would have to be approved by Congress.
'Karzai says Pak can never achieve dream of setting up puppet govt. after US leaves Afghanistan'
New Kerala
Islamabad, Feb 20 : Afghan Prsident Hamid Karzai feels Pakistan wants to set up a puppet government after the US leaves Afghanistan, a senior Pakistani official has said.
The official aware of last week's meeting between Karzai and the Pakistani civil and military leadership, said Karzai believed that Islamabad was playing a "wait and see game" on Afghanistan.
"He (Karzai) thinks we are not forthcoming on the peace talks with the Taliban. He believes we are waiting to see the Americans leave the region before we play our cards," The Express Tribune quoted the official, as saying.
The official also said Karzai suspected that the Pakistan's security establishment would want to install a government of its 'own choice' in Kabul like it did during the '80s.
"If this is your ambition then forget about it. Let me tell you that neither would the Americans leave this region nor would you be able to manipulate the situation as you did in the past," the official quoted Karzai as having said.
However, the official rejected the Afghan president's assessment, saying Islamabad does not harbour any 'hidden agenda' for Afghanistan.
"Karzai's remarks reflect his own failure and frustration to succeed and lead his country to peace and prosperity," he added.
Earlier, in the meeting in Islamabad, Karzai had bluntly demanded that Pakistan produce Taliban leaders to negotiate with him.
A source said that the Pakistani side was shocked by the Afghan leader's aggression.
Karzai has long demanded that Pakistan bring the leadership of the Taliban to the negotiating table, including its chief, Mullah Mohammad Omar.
Pakistan Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar described the discussions with the Afghan delegation as "hard" and "serious", and clarified that Islamabad was unaware of Mullah Omar's whereabouts.
"We don't have Mullah Omar to bring. That's the crazy perception about Pakistan. It's ridiculous," she added. (ANI)
Suspected police kill 2 Albanians in Afghanistan
By HEIDI VOGT and LLAZAR SEMINI | Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Gunmen in Afghan police uniforms opened fire on NATO troops on Monday in southern Afghanistan, killing two Albanian soldiers and wounding another international service member, officials said.
The attack by suspected Afghan policemen appears to be the latest in a growing number of turncoat attacks that have raised questions about the vetting of Afghan recruits and threatened the international military commitment to Afghanistan.
Last month, France suspended its training program and threatened to withdraw its forces a year ahead of schedule after an Afghan soldier shot and killed four French soldiers on a base in eastern Afghanistan.
Monday's shooting occurred in the village of Robat, in Kandahar province's Spin Boldak district which borders Pakistan, said Kandahar police chief Abdul Raziq. The troops had gone there for a meeting about opening two schools and a health center, the Albanian defense ministry said.
The soldiers "found themselves attacked by a group of persons wearing uniforms of the Afghan police," Brig. Gen. Viktor Berdo, the head of Albanian land forces, told reporters in the country's capital Tirana.
The attackers opened fire with five assault rifles and one light automatic machine gun, the Albanian Defense Ministry said. The two Albanians, a captain and a corporal, died later in a hospital in the provincial capital of Kandahar city. Another international soldier was wounded, the ministry said, without providing a nationality.
Albanian President Bamir Topi denounced the attack as a "grave terrorist act" and called for the punishment of those responsible.
It was the first time any of Albania's soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan. The country has 265 troops in the country.
Eleven Afghan policemen were arrested after the shooting, the ministry said.
There have been more than 45 of these insider attacks in Afghanistan since 2007, more than 75 percent of those in the last two years, according to Pentagon data.
Monday's attack on NATO forces came after a suicide car bomber struck a police station in the provincial capital of Kandahar city.
The attacker drove a Toyota Corolla up to the checkpoint outside of the Kandahar police station and detonated his explosives, Raziq said. One police officer was killed and four people were wounded in the explosion — two police officers and two civilians, he added.
A civilian compound nearby was also destroyed, according to a statement from the Kandahar government's media office.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but it fit the pattern of Taliban assaults, which usually focus on government installations or security forces.
Also Monday, three Italian soldiers were killed in a vehicle accident in the west of the country.
Italian President Giorgio Napolitano issued a condolence message expressing his "deep emotion" over the news of the deaths in Herat province.
The Italian soldiers were in a convoy going to survey a canal project in Herat's Shindand district when their vehicle crashed into a canal, said provincial police spokesman Rauf Ahmadi. The Italian news agency ANSA said that the soldiers' armored vehicle overturned while crossing a stream.
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Semini reported from Tirana, Albania. Associated Press writer Mirwais Khan also contributed to this report.
Kandahar Suicide Bomber Attacks Police Station
VOA News February 20, 2012
Afghan police say a suicide bomber has attacked a police station in the southern city of Kandahar, killing at least one police officer.
Kandahar police chief Abdul Raziq says the attacker detonated a bomb-laden car outside the station on Monday, injuring at least four other people, both police and civilians. The blast also badly damaged a nearby civilian compound.
There was no immediate claim or responsibility for the attack, but similar bombings in the past have been blamed on the Taliban.
Kandahar is the birthplace of the Taliban, and despite a massive campaign by coalition and Afghan forces to increase security in the city, insurgents continue to launch attacks on government targets.
Meanwhile, three Italian soldiers died when their armored vehicle crashed into a canal in western Afghanistan, overturning as they were crossing a stream. Officials say the accident occurred in Herat province's Shindand district.
14 Afghan civilians killed within week: gov't
KABUL, Feb. 20 (Xinhua) -- A total of 14 Afghan civilians were killed in Afghanistan in the past week, the country's Interior Ministry said on Monday.
"Fourteen civilians had been killed in militant's attacks and subversive activities over the past one week in the country," the ministry said in a statement.
According to the statement, 20 more civilians had been injured over the mentioned period of time.
The statement also said that 54 terrorist attacks including 28 Improvised Explosive Device (IED) blasts had been registered across the country over the past week.
Twenty policemen had been killed and 44 other police personnel got injured over the same period of time, the statement added.
The statement also said that some 39 Taliban insurgents have been killed and 138 other suspected insurgents were detained by Afghan police over the past week.
The civilian casualties has increased for a fifth successive year as a total of 3,021 Afghan civilians were killed in 2011, an 8 percent rise over the same period of 2010, according to a United Nations annual report released in Kabul on Feb. 4.
The U.N. report attributed 77 percent of the civilian deaths last year to the attacks of Taliban insurgents and other armed groups opposing the Afghan government. Another 14 percent of the deaths were attributed to Afghan and NATO-led forces and 9 percent were unattributed.
Over 480 insurgents killed in Afghan border police operations in 11 month: official
KABUL, Feb. 20 (Xinhua) -- A total of 481 insurgents had been killed during operations launched by Afghan Border Police (ABP) in provinces bordering neighboring countries over the past 11 months, the spokesman for Interior Ministry said on Monday.
"The Afghan Border Police (ABP) have eliminated 481 insurgents during operations and law enforcement missions in 19 bordering provinces over the past 11 months ended on Feb. 19,"spokesman Seddiq Seddiqi told reporters in a weekly press briefing.
He said some 147 enemies were injured and 183 other suspected insurgents were detained by the ABP over the same period of time counted from 21 of March 2011 to Feb. 19 this year.
The ABP also found and seized 644 rounds of mines and roadside bombs, 10 suicide vests, 405 pieces of different kind of weapons besides confiscating 3,465 kg of narcotics including opium, heroin and hashish, Seddiqi added.
"Afghan Border Police also captured 112 drug traffickers besides arresting 396 suspected people who have been involved in forgery and making fake passports over the same period of time," the official added.
However, Seddiqi also confirmed that 177 personnel of border police have also been killed and 412 others injured in the same timetable. Afghan officials often use the word "insurgents" referring to Taliban. However, the insurgent group, who launched in May 2011 a rebel offensive against Afghan and NATO forces, has not to make comments yet.
US Senators Hold Talks with Afghan President Karzai
VOA News February 20, 2012
U.S. Senator John McCain said he hopes a strategic partnership agreement with Afghanistan can be finalized before a NATO meeting in May, but that the United States will not resolve sensitive issues in a way that might put American service members at risk.
McCain made the comments after holding talks Sunday with Afghan President Hamid Karzai along with a team of U.S. senators.
The president's office said Mr. Karzai pushed for the transfer of Bagram prison to Afghan control, and stressed the need for an end to night raids by international troops. He said the issues are of "grave importance" to the Afghan people.
Carrying out the raids at night is important for troop safety, said McCain.
"So we emphasized to President Karzai that we believe that this issue can be resolved, but we are strongly opposed to any termination of night raids because of the added risk it would put on the men and women in our military, which obviously is not something that we would ever agree to.''
McCain also said successful peace talks with the Taliban will be more difficult because of the planned pullout of international troops by the end of 2014.
Meanwhile, despite a massive campaign by coalition and Afghan forces to increase security in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, Afghan police reported a suicide bomber attacked a police station there on Monday, killing at least one police officer.
Kandahar police chief Abdul Raziq said the attacker detonated a bomb-laden car outside the station, injuring at least four other people, both police and civilians. The blast also badly damaged a nearby civilian compound.
There was no immediate claim or responsibility for the attack, but similar bombings in the past have been blamed on the Taliban.
Also Monday, three Italian soldiers died when their armored vehicle crashed into a canal in western Afghanistan, overturning as they were crossing a stream in Herat province's Shindand district, officials said.
Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.
Leading Female Politician, Activist Eyes Afghan Presidency
February 20, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
A prominent female lawmaker has repeated her intention to run for Afghanistan's presidency when current President Hamid Karzai's term runs out in two years' time, suggesting she sees signs that gender bias is easing among some Afghans.
In an interview with RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan, parliamentarian Fawzia Koofi said she believes certain intellectual groups in deeply religiously conservative Afghanistan are increasingly ready to accept a woman as president.
Afghan women launched unsuccessful bids for president in that country's 2004 and 2009 elections, which were won by President Hamid Karzai, the only leader the country has had since the UN-backed Bonn agreement in late 2001 ushered him into power.
Karzai is constitutionally barred from seeking another term in the next vote, due in 2014.
The 36-year-old Koofi currently chairs the Afghan parliament's women's affairs commission.
Koofi began her political career after the fall of the Taliban in late 2001, promoting women's rights to education in a "Back To School" campaign.
She was elected to the Afghan National Assembly in 2005, when she also became a deputy speaker.
She recently came out with her autobiography in English, titled "The Favored Daughter: One Woman's Fight To Lead Afghanistan Into The Future."
She previously expressed her intention to run for the presidency in early January.
NATO speedup of transfer to Afghan forces highlights problems
As allied commanders call Afghan forces capable of taking over most fighting by the end of 2013, the problems of the police and army come into sharper focus.
Los Angeles Times By Laura King February 20, 2012
Kabul, Afghanistan - At the gate of the capital's army recruitment headquarters, a young Afghan sergeant in crisp camouflage and a jaunty beret demanded a letter of introduction from arriving visitors. But when one was produced, written in Dari, the dominant language in Kabul, he asked one of the visitors to read it to him.
These days, Afghanistan's armed forces are under pressure as never before to dramatically step up their performance in everything from literacy to logistics. NATO is speeding up its transfer of fighting duties to the national police and army, and at the same time, the cash-pinched coalition intends to cut back substantially on plans for funding a long-term Afghan force strength of more than 350,000.
Even as senior allied commanders proclaim that a leaner, better-trained Afghan force will be capable of taking over most fighting duties from Western troops by the end of next year, the problems that have long plagued the Afghan police and army — repeated turncoat shootings aimed at Western mentors, drug use, high attrition rates, inadequate vetting of recruits, persistent logistical weakness and vulnerability to insurgent infiltration — are coming into sharper focus.
Recently leaked classified military reports, together with an unusually candid public assessment from an experienced U.S. military officer, have served to spotlight the degree of mistrust, mutual distaste and sometimes outright enmity between Afghan forces and their ostensible North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies at joint bases across Afghanistan.
Army Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis, who served two tours in Afghanistan, published his scathing assessment of the Afghan police and army in an essay in the Armed Forces Journal this month. In a vividly recalled anecdote from Kunar province, in Afghanistan's east, he recounted a conversation last year with a police captain whose position had been attacked by the Taliban.
When Davis asked whether he and his men, knowing the insurgents' position, intended to counterattack, "the captain's head wheeled around, looking first at the interpreter and turning to me with an incredulous expression.... 'No! We don't go after them,' he said. 'That would be dangerous!'"
The combination of close proximity and cultural differences sometimes produces a volatile atmosphere between Afghan and Western troops who live and work together on joint bases, according to more than a dozen current and former junior officers in the NATO force and their Afghan counterparts who were interviewed about training practices.
Western military public-affairs officers may constantly highlight success stories arising from the training program, particularly the measurable improvement in the abilities of elite Afghan forces. Afghan troops are also beginning to take the lead in major military operations, and thousands of recruits are learning to read and write.
But day-to-day encounters between Western and Afghan foot soldiers are often fraught with anger and misunderstanding, these officers said.
Often, the Afghans describe their Western mentors as crass, patronizing and overbearing, while the NATO forces struggle to combat what they describe as a sometimes shocking lack of motivation and discipline on the Afghan side.
Afghan men are traditionally sensitive to any perceived insult, and with weapons readily at hand, what might otherwise be a small altercation can swiftly flare into a tragedy. An Afghan soldier from Balkh province in the north, who spoke on condition of anonymity after having deserted his unit last year, bitterly described being belittled by his German trainers for what he considered a minor infraction, though he considered himself a superior fighter.
"I was ready to confront my enemies, while they only want to hide in their bases," he scoffed. "I could have done something to them they would always remember."
Ominously, the Taliban and other insurgent groups have come to understand that so-called green-on-blue shootings — Afghan police or soldiers opening fire on Western troops — can have a dramatic effect on the willingness of NATO countries and their allies to meet previously agreed-to training commitments. That was illustrated last month when France announced a speeded-up end to its combat role, days after an Afghan soldier killed four French soldiers and wounded more than a dozen others, some seriously.
Australia, another troop-contributing nation, was roiled early this month by a video on a Taliban-affiliated website that purported to show a fugitive Afghan soldier who had shot and seriously injured three Australian troops in southern Afghanistan in November boasting of his deed, and saying others in his unit had often spoken of their wish to carry out similar attacks.
"I had one mission on my mind: to kill foreigners and teach them a lesson," he said. "We are Muslims. We cannot accept foreigners."
Afghanistan's largest ethnic group — the Pashtuns, from which the Taliban movement is largely drawn — is underrepresented in the police and army, leading to simmering ethnic resentments within the ranks, as well as a tense relationship between Afghan troops and villagers in the mainly Pashtun south and east. Those are the regions where fighting has been most intense, and where Afghan soldiers from the north of Afghanistan — mainly ethnic Tajiks or Uzbeks — are considered almost as foreign as the NATO troops.
Potential Pashtun enlistees are more often turned away, recruiters said, a practice that may serve as something of a safeguard against inappropriate loyalties, but also breeds a sense of grievance.
"From the 'safe' parts of the country, we can take almost anyone," said Col. Mohammad Akbar Stanikzai of the Afghan national recruitment command. "But from the places where there are security problems, we would maybe take five or six out of 20 who applied."
Also worrisome to some local Afghan officials are plans to turn a number of particularly dangerous areas over to Afghan control sooner than initially planned. Several district leaders in areas to be handed over in coming months expressed strong misgivings about whether police and army units could confront the insurgents without Western help.
The No. 2 commander of the NATO force, U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, acknowledged to reporters at the Pentagon this month that among American troops, there is a widespread negative view of the Afghans whom they serve alongside.
"Let's take an American soldier or a private. At times this private will tell me that they [Afghan forces], they're not that good," he said. "But a private is looking at it from the perspective of how he's trained, or the Marines are trained, and the standards are very different."
The ultimate size and role of Afghan forces are to be a prime topic at a NATO summit in May in Chicago. In advance, the allies — mindful of burgeoning costs in a difficult economic climate — are seeking consensus on a "sustainable" target size for Afghan forces, perhaps around 230,000.
With both the police and army still undergoing a rapid buildup that has doubled the security forces' size over the last 18 months, the notion of reining in that growth raises the specter of a large bloc of "armed unemployed" who might bear a grudge against the Afghan government if what they had believed would be a steady long-term job came to a premature end.
A report this month by Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies contends that the Western military command "sharply downplays" structural problems, including a shortfall of trainers, rushed development, corrupt leadership and fealty to warlord figures.
Although Afghan army recruiters accumulate a voluminous paper file on each applicant, they appear to make little meaningful effort to assess the likelihood that a given man might eventually prove a danger to Western troops.
Col. Stanikzai, the recruiting official, acknowledged that basic questions go unasked, such as how potential recruits feel about the insurgency, or whether they consider themselves loyal to the Afghan government.
"Why would we ask them that?" he said. "Who would tell the truth?"
New Afghan Textbooks Sidestep History
February 20, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty By Frud Bezhan
Afghanistan's recent history is comparable to a war epic -- a story encompassing four decades of foreign invasions, civil war, and political turmoil.
How that story is told, however, has proved highly controversial, with the country's rival ethnic and political groups writing their own accounts of history, shaped by their own ideologies, and with their own villains and heroes.
Now Afghan officials think they have found a way to teach the country's contentious history that is acceptable to all Afghans regardless of their politics, ethnicity, or religion.
The answer, they say, is to omit the past four decades from the history books.
As of the next school year, which begins this spring, the Afghan government plans to distribute textbooks to high school students that do not mention the Soviet invasion, the country's devastating civil war, the reign of the extremist Taliban regime, the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, and the international presence that continues today.
The Afghan Education Ministry says the textbook, the only one to be officially approved by the government, is part of a new nonpolitical curriculum.
It is part of an initiative launched three years ago that has seen the government distribute books which avoid contentious recent history to some elementary and secondary schools around the country.
Unifying National Identity
Education officials say the new textbook was funded by the Afghan government and various foreign donors. The U.S. military's foreign aid arm, the Commander's Emergency Response Program, is reportedly among the donors, although RFE/RL was unable to independently verify the information despite numerous attempts.
The textbooks will be printed mainly in India and Afghanistan.
Mohammad Asef Nang, the Afghan deputy minister of education, is hopeful that the new textbooks will help create a single national identity, particularly among younger generations.
"History should build and heal a generation, not destroy one," he said. "History should reflect the truth and the honor of the country. Those parts of history that provoke old rivalries and enmities and destroy national unity shouldn't be included. Empty pages are better than pages that are full of animosities."
Although the move has received some support within the government, it has been vehemently opposed by the public.
'Shirking Educational Responsibilities'
Those who are against the move accuse the government of attempting to hide the crimes of warlords and militia leaders who were active in the country's civil war and some of whom today hold government positions.
Meanwhile, others accuse the Education Ministry of failing to fulfill its educational responsibilities.
Elay Ershad, a female member of parliament, believes the country needs to acknowledge its past and learn from it so it does not make the same mistakes again.
"The Education Ministry shouldn't think in such a short-sighted and pessimistic way about recording this history," she says. "The source of history should be based on the events that happened and the realities. Knowing history will enable us to control what happens in the future. We know that yesterday is what makes today and today is what makes tomorrow."
Ershad adds that Afghanistan's youths have a right to know their history and denying them that right is a disservice.
"Our children and young people should have full knowledge of what happened," she said. "The Education Ministry has no authority to brainwash people and keep them in the dark. Thank god we have the media and our history books so that people will know their history."
The move has also angered some of the country's educators. Schoolteachers like Abdullah, who only gave his first name, maintain that the younger generation has the right to make its own evaluations of the country's recent history.
"Documenting what has happened in the past is a positive thing," he said. "Future generations, when they study history, will know who served the country and who betrayed it."
Battleground For Competing Propaganda
Over the past four decades, Afghanistan's educational system has gone through dramatic changes, many of which accompanied the evolving political climate.
Afghan officials say that Afghan classrooms have at times been a battleground for competing propaganda.
During the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, textbooks preaching communism were printed and taught in schools.
That was countered by U.S.-sponsored books which promoted resistance to the Soviet Union and communism. During Taliban rule, schoolbooks endorsed ideas of jihad, or holy war.
The decision to create and distribute the new history textbook to high-school students comes after almost a decade of debate among politicians, historians, and educators.
Officials concluded that the only way to resolve the stalemate would be to have the text's take on history stop in the early 1970s, before the monarchy in Afghanistan was overthrown.
The sticking point was always how to address the country's subsequent civil war and various groups that fought in it, with officials unable to agree or compromise as to how they should be represented in educational material.
Officials say, for example, that a reference to former Uzbek warlord and current military chief of staff Abdul Rashid Dostum, or former Tajik and Northern Alliance leader Barhanuddin Rabbani, would draw equal measures of fierce anger and allegiance in a single classroom.
Dozens of Afghan education officials are now in the difficult process of persuading students, parents, and teachers to accept the new textbook.
RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan contributed to this report.
3 Italian soldiers die in road accident in Afghanistan
HERAT, Afghanistan, Feb. 20 (Xinhua) -- Three Italian soldiers lost their lives in a road accident in Afghanistan on Monday, police spokesman in the western region said.
"Three soldiers of Italian troops died as their vehicle plunged into a ravine in Shindand district of Herat province 640 km west of Afghan capital Kabul on Monday," Abdul Raouf Ahmadi, the spokesman of police in Afghanistan's western region, told Xinhua.
More than 3,800 Italian troops have been serving in Afghanistan within the framework of NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to help stabilize security in the militancy-plagued nation.
Cold Winter Kills at Least 40 in Afghanistan
By RAHIM FAIEZ Associated Press February 20, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - More than 40 people, most of them children, have frozen to death in what has been Afghanistan's coldest winter in years, an Afghan health official said Monday.
The government has recorded 41 deaths from freezing in three provinces — Kabul, Ghor and Badakhshan, said Health Ministry spokesman Ghulam Sakhi Kargar.
All but three or four of those deaths were children, he said. Twenty-four of the deaths were in the capital of Kabul, mostly in camps for people who have fled fighting elsewhere in the country.
Kabul has been experiencing its worst cold snap and heaviest snowfall in 15 years, according to the National Weather Center. It said the weather was to improve by the end of the week.
Heavy snowfall in Day Kundi province caused an avalanche late Sunday in the Sang-i-Takht district that damaged three dozen homes and shops. The avalanche caused no injuries, said Nasrullah Sadiqizada, a member of parliament from the central province.
The hardest-hit have been people living in tents in a number of camps around the capital. The deaths in these camps, so close to the offices of international organizations overseeing billions of dollars in aid to the country, have shocked many in Kabul.
The U.N. and the U.S. aid agency have started distributing extra blankets, tarps and fuel to people living in 40 camps throughout the city, the U.S. Embassy said in a statement last week. Most of those in the camps have fled from Helmand and Kunduz provinces, though some are Afghans who have returned from years living in Iran and Pakistan to find themselves homeless, the statement said.
NATO also delivered an estimated 1,000 blankets, coats, socks, mittens and hats to a refugee camp in Kabul. The coalition said it was planning additional delivers within the next week.
Kargar says the ministry is establishing mobile clinics to try to get help out to people suffering in the cold.
The cold has also caused a spike in the price of gas and wood — the main fuel used by the city's five million or so residents to heat their homes. Heavy snows also damaged high tension wires coming into the capital, causing sporadic blackouts in large swaths of Kabul. About 75 percent of the city has electricity.
Kabul city hall said the capital's markets have supplies to last out the bad weather and there was no shortage of fire wood or food. Kabul Kahid Mohammad, director of Kabul markets, said main highways leading into the city were clear.
Kabul airport was also operating, officials said, although there were delays at times due to poor visibility because of the snowfall.
Afghan refugees caught between Iran and a hard place
AFP 20/02/2012
HERAT - Abdullah was left catatonic and almost mute by the electric shocks meted out to him by Iranian police before they bussed him to the border and sent him back to Afghanistan.
His arms marked with slashes of red paint to identify him as a deportee, the 18-year-old lies on a bed of cushions in an otherwise bare hut that has become his temporary home, uttering only his name and that of his home province Tahir.
“He was deported from Iran, we don’t know what’s wrong. Sometimes he speaks,” says one UN worker tasked with giving him board until aid workers can find his family to send him home. “We have a lot of cases like this.”
Up to three million Afghan refugees settled in Iran during the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, making Tehran responsible for one of the largest refugee populations in the world.
At first Afghans were permitted to live in their neighbouring country with ease, with women in particular enjoying a higher social status as well as better education, work opportunities and security.
But since the 1990s Tehran has clamped down on the refugees, tightening rules that allow Afghans to pursue education and work, and in 2007 launching a massive deportation programme that sent home up to half a million.
Some say that the size of the exodus was politically orchestrated — used as a tool to exert pressure on the Western-backed government in Kabul to take a more anti-Western stance.
“Whenever Afghanistan’s policies displease Tehran, the Iranian government threatens to expel all Afghans living in Iran,” wrote Ahmad Majidyar and Ali Alfoneh in a 2010 report on the issue for American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, a right-wing US think tank.
“Tehran understands that the fragile Afghan government lacks the capacity to absorb a large number of returnees under current security and economic conditions.”
One million Afghan refugees now officially live in Iran, with estimates of up to another one million living there illegally, more than 10 years after US troops invaded Afghanistan and brought down the Taliban regime.
According to figures compiled by the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), a total of 18,152 Afghan refugees returned from Iran in 2011, well over double the number in the previous year.
Iran recently lent its approval, along with Afghanistan and Pakistan, to a new UN strategy designed to help Afghans who return, trying to focus on more sustainable reintegration to stop them becoming destitute.
But in western Afghanistan, tales of mistreatment of Afghan refugees by Iranian authorities abound — as do reports of deportees being forced to pay bribes to escape an apparently brutally run detention centre across the border.
Hamidullah Hatibi, who runs the provincial refugee agency in Herat, says that last year one man beaten by Iranian authorities succumbed to his wounds once he had crossed the border, while another had a mental breakdown.
“Broken hands, arms, beaten bodies — there are a lot. The Iranian government treats the refugees badly and these people cannot go back,” he said, adding that the government relies on UN aid to help the refugees return home.
Several calls to the Iranian embassy in Kabul for comment went unanswered.
The ebb and flow of Afghans across their western border in search of work and an escape from their restive homeland continues — the refugees caught between an expensive and insecure life in Iran, or continued war at home.
Many are deported, but the majority are forced to return by increased economic hardship and restricted living conditions in Iran.
Refugees, often in families with six or seven children, must pay annual school fees of up to $75 per child, despite earning a subsistence wage of $10 per day.
“It pays for just one chicken,” said father-of-five Yusuf Zeyiey, 48, who decided to return to Afghanistan after nine years living in Iran.
He cannot go to his home province of Jowzjan where there is no work and the threat of the Taliban insurgency — instead he will go to northern Mazar city and try to pick up construction work that pays $20 per day.
“It was just too expensive. We had problems with rent, food, school. All these problems caused us to come back,” he said.
Stringent economic conditions are only likely to get worse for refugees living in Iran as the US and EU tighten sanctions to try to force Tehran to abandon its nuclear programme.
And Afghanistan’s western lands have long-been considered an extension of Iranian territory by the authoritarian neighbouring regime.
But despite the difficulties, there is still high demand for a permit to live and work in Iran: lines snake outside the Iranian consulate in Herat and crowds jostle for passports outside the provincial refugee ministry.
Some say they seek refuge from war — others claim there are no jobs to be found in Afghanistan. All of those waiting outside the ministry earlier this month claimed they were being forced to pay officials bribes for a passport.
Afghan talks to fail without all groups-Hizb-i-Islami
Reuters By Qasim Nauman Sun Feb 19, 2012
ISLAMABAD - Peace efforts in Afghanistan are likely to fail if they do not include all militant groups, a senior member of one of the country's most notorious insurgent factions said on Sunday.
"If any group is isolated or ignored, that group then becomes the centre of the resistance, and can cause problems," Ghairat Baheer, of Hizb-i-Islami, told Reuters in Islamabad.
"To bring instability or disturb the situation of Afghanistan is not difficult. It is very easy."
Hizb-i-Islami, which means Islamic Party, is a radical militant group with widespread national support in Afghanistan, shares some of the Afghan Taliban's anti-foreigner, anti-government aims, and wants to oust international forces.
The group, led by Afghan warlord and former prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, claims to have thousands of fighters in its ranks, based mainly in Afghanistan's restive east, bordering Pakistan, and in the north.
The U.S. State Department lists Hekmatyar as a "terrorist" for supporting Taliban and al Qaeda attacks, but U.S. and Afghan officials have met with Hizb-i-Islami representatives in the last two months to help end the war, now in its eleventh year.
"There is communication, and there is negotiation going on between Hizb-i-Islami and the American and Afghan governments," Baheer, Hekmatyar's son-in-law.
Hekmatyar is a fierce rival of Taliban leader Mullah Omar, and became a hero to many Afghans while leading mujahideen fighters against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
In the early 1990s, forces led by Hekmatyar opposed to the government of then-president Burhanuddin Rabbani took part in fighting in Kabul which is thought to have killed tens of thousands.
Hekmatyar left Afghanistan in the mid-1990s and his whereabouts have been unclear since then.
The Afghan Taliban announced last month it would open a political office in Qatar, suggesting the group may be willing to engage in negotiations that could give it government positions or official control over much of its historical southern heartland.
While the Taliban are the focus of media attention, there are a number of other militant organizations that want a say in Afghanistan's future.
They include the al-Qaeda linked Haqqani network, one of the most feared Afghan insurgent groups blamed for many high-profile bombings.
While the Haqqani group has pledged allegiance to the Taliban leadership, it also exercises significant operational independence.
Failure to appease these groups could bring prolonged instability, or even civil war, once NATO combat forces withdraw in 2014.
"There should be a comprehensive solution involving all parties and groups," said Baheer, a doctor by training.
Baheer, who was held in U.S. detention at Bagram Air Field, north of Kabul, for six years until his 2008 release, said he had not seen enough progress in U.S.-Taliban talks to suggest they were any closer to formal negotiations.
"So far they have not been able to agree on even minor issues that could be taken as goodwill gestures. There's no official inauguration of the (Taliban) office, there is no release of prisoners and no one has been removed from the blacklist," he said.
"Things are stuck. We are also in a wait and see situation."
(Editing by Michael Georgy and Sanjeev Miglani)
In war-ravaged Afghanistan, combat sports reign
Reuters By Amie Ferris-Rotman and Sayed Hassib Monday, February 20, 2012
KABUL - The sounds produced by the three Afghan athletes going to the London summer Olympics are fierce: elongated wails ricochet off the chipped and dilapidated walls of the taekwondo centre, while leather smacks and slaps at the boxing gym.
In a country wrenched by decades of war, perhaps it is no surprise that all three, a taekwondo male duo including Beijing bronze medallist Rohullah Nikpai, and teenage female boxer Sadaf Rahimi, followed fighting sports.
They were born into conflict that still rages, and chronic insecurity and poverty mean they train in spartan spaces with little financial support, and currently freezing cold in the country's worst winter for 30 years.
"The difference between me and others is I want to show other countries that an Afghan girl can fight," 17-year-old Rahimi told Reuters, squinting from a protective facemask that pinches her cheeks and black kohl-lined eyes.
Like Nikpai, Rahimi and her family fled to neighbouring Iran to escape the violence and brutal oppression of the Taliban, who were toppled just over a decade ago.
The austere Islamist group had publicly stoned women to death for charges of adultery at the Ghazi stadium, where Rahimi, her two sisters and the rest of the country's first team of female boxers, set up in 2007, practice today.
Her muscular shoulders rippling as she readies to throw punches at her coach, Rahimi said she feared the Taliban, who banned women from education, sports and most work, would regain a share in power through early talks with Afghan and U.S. officials aimed at ending the NATO-led war.
"I hope the Taliban don't come back and take over," she said, wincing and starting to untie pink shoelaces over her knuckles, used instead of hard-to-get strapping. "But if they do, I urge them to let women engage in sports and go to school".
Coach Mohammad Saber Sharifi, a former professional boxer and advocate of Afghan women's rights, especially through sport, said Rahimi had been granted a wild card to compete at the Olympics, meaning she can sidestep further qualifying rounds.
She will soon leave Kabul's rutted and snowbound streets for London to train for the Olympics, where women's boxing is debuting as a sport, he said.
"NO PROPER ELECTRICITY"
On the other side of Kabul from Ghazi stadium, in an equally barren practice space, 24-year-old Nikpai and fellow taekwondo Olympic contender Nesar Ahmad Bahawi kick and punch in preparation for competition at London's ExCel centre in August.
Wearing red chest and back guards made from the material used in bullet-proof vests, the pair, who both recently qualified for the Games in Bangkok, make high-pitched screeches as they take aim, typical of the sport.
But despite officially qualifying and winning Afghanistan's first Olympic medal at Beijing four years ago, Nikpai bemoaned the lack of support given to sport in his country.
"Nesar and I don't have a good place to train, facilities, or even a regular transport system and proper electricity," he said, his breath steaming in the frigid air of the centre, whose small heater did little to combat the frozen white landscape outside.
Poor conditions are not limited to taekwondo, whose national team members receive a miserly monthly stipend of between $10-$14. Boxing coach Sharifi, whose team have never trained in a ring, said tiny sporting budgets severely limit their success.
"We can't really compare ourselves to the world," said Nikpai, who was lured to taekwondo after watching hours of action films as a refugee in Iran. He returned to Kabul in 2004.
Nikpai received a hero's welcome upon his return from Beijing and was summoned to meet Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who presented him with a brand new flat, money and a car.
The head of the Afghan Olympic Committee, General Mohammad Zahir Akhbar, said he hopes more athletes in wrestling, judo and athletics will qualify for the Games in London.
"We are war-torn, our athletes face economic and security problems, but we are aiming for medals," Akhbar told Reuters.
First-time Olympian Bahawi, who took up taekwondo at the behest of his family because he kept kicking his friends, said triumph at international competitions could be a way to lift security at home.
"Sport brings a message of peace and stability in the country," said the tall 25-year-old from the country's eastern Kapisa province before knocking flat a team mate with two quick kicks on his side.
Afghan coach Bashir Taraki, who trains them alongside Korea's Min Sin-hak, downplayed the attraction to the fighting aspect of the Korean martial art, saying: "I think they are more into taekwondo's discipline than its fighting side".
(Reporting by Amie Ferris-Rotman, Editing by Rob Taylor)
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
February 20, 2012 The Washington Post via denverpost.com
KABUL — Five visiting U.S. senators took a hard line with Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Sunday, outlining the issues that could endanger a long-term partnership between the two nations and emphasizing the importance of American-led night raids as U.S. forces withdraw from the conflict.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said he was encouraged by "significant military advances on the ground" but was unsympathetic to Karzai's demand that the United States curb its use of night operations, which Karzai says result in dozens of civilian casualties each year.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., another member of the delegation, said handing over detention operations to Afghans — another key Karzai demand — would "put American lives in danger."
American officials have struggled for more than a year to craft a partnership agreement that would include a role for U.S. soldiers and diplomats beyond 2014, after NATO forces are due to leave Afghanistan. Karzai has said repeatedly that without an end to night raids and a handover of U.S.- run detention facilities, he won't sign such an agreement.
McCain emphasized the importance of finalizing an agreement before a NATO summit in May, when the alliance is due to discuss its future involvement in Afghanistan.
"Absent that, I could see the possibility of real fissures developing amongst the alliance," McCain said.
Graham said he would like the U.S. military to maintain a footprint in Afghanistan beyond 2014 "that would allow us to have a couple of bases with Special Forces units that would always provide the edge to the Afghan security forces against future insurgent attacks."
Other members of the delegation were Sens. John Hoeven, R-N.D., Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. They met with Karzai and Lt. Gen. John Allen, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, as well as members of the country's opposition parties.
McCain raised doubts about the viability of a political settlement with the Taliban, saying that President Barack Obama's announcement of a military drawdown has diminished the insurgency's willingness to negotiate.
"When they think you're leaving, obviously they're not going to be serious about negotiations," McCain said.
McCain also said he opposes the release of five Taliban prisoners as a part of those negotiations, a concession U.S. officials had discussed in early peace talks. A decision to release the men, now held at Guantanamo Bay, would have to be approved by Congress.
U.S. senators, Afghan leaders discuss parameters for long-term partnership
Washington Post By Kevin Sieff February 19 , 2012
KABUL - Five visiting U.S. senators took a hard line with Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Sunday, outlining the issues precluding a long-term partnership between the two nations and emphasizing the importance of American-led night raids as U.S. forces withdraw from the conflict.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said he was encouraged by “significant military advances on the ground” but was unsympathetic to Karzai’s demand that the United States curb its use of night operations, which Karzai says result in dozens of civilian casualties each year. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), another member of the delegation, said that handing over detention operations to Afghans — another key Karzai demand — would “put American lives in danger.”
American officials have struggled for well over a year to craft a partnership agreement that would include a role for U.S. soldiers and diplomats beyond 2014, after NATO forces are due to leave Afghanistan. Karzai has said repeatedly that without an end to night raids and a handover of U.S.-run detention facilities, he won’t sign such an agreement.
McCain emphasized the importance of finalizing an agreement before a NATO summit in May, when the alliance is due to discuss the future of its involvement in Afghanistan.
“Absent that, I could see the possibility of real fissures developing amongst the alliance,” McCain said.
Graham said he would like the U.S. military to maintain a footprint in Afghanistan beyond 2014 “that would allow us to have a couple of bases with special forces units that would always provide the edge to the Afghan security forces against future insurgent attacks.”
Members of the delegation, which also included Sens. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), met with both Karzai and Lt. Gen. John R. Allen, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, as well as members of the country’s opposition parties.
McCain raised doubts about the viability of a political settlement with the Taliban, saying that President Obama’s announcement of a military drawdown has diminished the insurgency’s willingness to negotiate.
“When they think you’re leaving, obviously they’re not going to be serious about negotiations,” McCain said.
McCain also said he opposes the release of five Taliban prisoners as a part of those negotiations, a concession U.S. officials had discussed in early peace talks. A decision to release the men, now held at Guantanamo Bay, would have to be approved by Congress.
'Karzai says Pak can never achieve dream of setting up puppet govt. after US leaves Afghanistan'
New Kerala
Islamabad, Feb 20 : Afghan Prsident Hamid Karzai feels Pakistan wants to set up a puppet government after the US leaves Afghanistan, a senior Pakistani official has said.
The official aware of last week's meeting between Karzai and the Pakistani civil and military leadership, said Karzai believed that Islamabad was playing a "wait and see game" on Afghanistan.
"He (Karzai) thinks we are not forthcoming on the peace talks with the Taliban. He believes we are waiting to see the Americans leave the region before we play our cards," The Express Tribune quoted the official, as saying.
The official also said Karzai suspected that the Pakistan's security establishment would want to install a government of its 'own choice' in Kabul like it did during the '80s.
"If this is your ambition then forget about it. Let me tell you that neither would the Americans leave this region nor would you be able to manipulate the situation as you did in the past," the official quoted Karzai as having said.
However, the official rejected the Afghan president's assessment, saying Islamabad does not harbour any 'hidden agenda' for Afghanistan.
"Karzai's remarks reflect his own failure and frustration to succeed and lead his country to peace and prosperity," he added.
Earlier, in the meeting in Islamabad, Karzai had bluntly demanded that Pakistan produce Taliban leaders to negotiate with him.
A source said that the Pakistani side was shocked by the Afghan leader's aggression.
Karzai has long demanded that Pakistan bring the leadership of the Taliban to the negotiating table, including its chief, Mullah Mohammad Omar.
Pakistan Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar described the discussions with the Afghan delegation as "hard" and "serious", and clarified that Islamabad was unaware of Mullah Omar's whereabouts.
"We don't have Mullah Omar to bring. That's the crazy perception about Pakistan. It's ridiculous," she added. (ANI)
Suspected police kill 2 Albanians in Afghanistan
By HEIDI VOGT and LLAZAR SEMINI | Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Gunmen in Afghan police uniforms opened fire on NATO troops on Monday in southern Afghanistan, killing two Albanian soldiers and wounding another international service member, officials said.
The attack by suspected Afghan policemen appears to be the latest in a growing number of turncoat attacks that have raised questions about the vetting of Afghan recruits and threatened the international military commitment to Afghanistan.
Last month, France suspended its training program and threatened to withdraw its forces a year ahead of schedule after an Afghan soldier shot and killed four French soldiers on a base in eastern Afghanistan.
Monday's shooting occurred in the village of Robat, in Kandahar province's Spin Boldak district which borders Pakistan, said Kandahar police chief Abdul Raziq. The troops had gone there for a meeting about opening two schools and a health center, the Albanian defense ministry said.
The soldiers "found themselves attacked by a group of persons wearing uniforms of the Afghan police," Brig. Gen. Viktor Berdo, the head of Albanian land forces, told reporters in the country's capital Tirana.
The attackers opened fire with five assault rifles and one light automatic machine gun, the Albanian Defense Ministry said. The two Albanians, a captain and a corporal, died later in a hospital in the provincial capital of Kandahar city. Another international soldier was wounded, the ministry said, without providing a nationality.
Albanian President Bamir Topi denounced the attack as a "grave terrorist act" and called for the punishment of those responsible.
It was the first time any of Albania's soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan. The country has 265 troops in the country.
Eleven Afghan policemen were arrested after the shooting, the ministry said.
There have been more than 45 of these insider attacks in Afghanistan since 2007, more than 75 percent of those in the last two years, according to Pentagon data.
Monday's attack on NATO forces came after a suicide car bomber struck a police station in the provincial capital of Kandahar city.
The attacker drove a Toyota Corolla up to the checkpoint outside of the Kandahar police station and detonated his explosives, Raziq said. One police officer was killed and four people were wounded in the explosion — two police officers and two civilians, he added.
A civilian compound nearby was also destroyed, according to a statement from the Kandahar government's media office.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but it fit the pattern of Taliban assaults, which usually focus on government installations or security forces.
Also Monday, three Italian soldiers were killed in a vehicle accident in the west of the country.
Italian President Giorgio Napolitano issued a condolence message expressing his "deep emotion" over the news of the deaths in Herat province.
The Italian soldiers were in a convoy going to survey a canal project in Herat's Shindand district when their vehicle crashed into a canal, said provincial police spokesman Rauf Ahmadi. The Italian news agency ANSA said that the soldiers' armored vehicle overturned while crossing a stream.
____
Semini reported from Tirana, Albania. Associated Press writer Mirwais Khan also contributed to this report.
Kandahar Suicide Bomber Attacks Police Station
VOA News February 20, 2012
Afghan police say a suicide bomber has attacked a police station in the southern city of Kandahar, killing at least one police officer.
Kandahar police chief Abdul Raziq says the attacker detonated a bomb-laden car outside the station on Monday, injuring at least four other people, both police and civilians. The blast also badly damaged a nearby civilian compound.
There was no immediate claim or responsibility for the attack, but similar bombings in the past have been blamed on the Taliban.
Kandahar is the birthplace of the Taliban, and despite a massive campaign by coalition and Afghan forces to increase security in the city, insurgents continue to launch attacks on government targets.
Meanwhile, three Italian soldiers died when their armored vehicle crashed into a canal in western Afghanistan, overturning as they were crossing a stream. Officials say the accident occurred in Herat province's Shindand district.
14 Afghan civilians killed within week: gov't
KABUL, Feb. 20 (Xinhua) -- A total of 14 Afghan civilians were killed in Afghanistan in the past week, the country's Interior Ministry said on Monday.
"Fourteen civilians had been killed in militant's attacks and subversive activities over the past one week in the country," the ministry said in a statement.
According to the statement, 20 more civilians had been injured over the mentioned period of time.
The statement also said that 54 terrorist attacks including 28 Improvised Explosive Device (IED) blasts had been registered across the country over the past week.
Twenty policemen had been killed and 44 other police personnel got injured over the same period of time, the statement added.
The statement also said that some 39 Taliban insurgents have been killed and 138 other suspected insurgents were detained by Afghan police over the past week.
The civilian casualties has increased for a fifth successive year as a total of 3,021 Afghan civilians were killed in 2011, an 8 percent rise over the same period of 2010, according to a United Nations annual report released in Kabul on Feb. 4.
The U.N. report attributed 77 percent of the civilian deaths last year to the attacks of Taliban insurgents and other armed groups opposing the Afghan government. Another 14 percent of the deaths were attributed to Afghan and NATO-led forces and 9 percent were unattributed.
Over 480 insurgents killed in Afghan border police operations in 11 month: official
KABUL, Feb. 20 (Xinhua) -- A total of 481 insurgents had been killed during operations launched by Afghan Border Police (ABP) in provinces bordering neighboring countries over the past 11 months, the spokesman for Interior Ministry said on Monday.
"The Afghan Border Police (ABP) have eliminated 481 insurgents during operations and law enforcement missions in 19 bordering provinces over the past 11 months ended on Feb. 19,"spokesman Seddiq Seddiqi told reporters in a weekly press briefing.
He said some 147 enemies were injured and 183 other suspected insurgents were detained by the ABP over the same period of time counted from 21 of March 2011 to Feb. 19 this year.
The ABP also found and seized 644 rounds of mines and roadside bombs, 10 suicide vests, 405 pieces of different kind of weapons besides confiscating 3,465 kg of narcotics including opium, heroin and hashish, Seddiqi added.
"Afghan Border Police also captured 112 drug traffickers besides arresting 396 suspected people who have been involved in forgery and making fake passports over the same period of time," the official added.
However, Seddiqi also confirmed that 177 personnel of border police have also been killed and 412 others injured in the same timetable. Afghan officials often use the word "insurgents" referring to Taliban. However, the insurgent group, who launched in May 2011 a rebel offensive against Afghan and NATO forces, has not to make comments yet.
US Senators Hold Talks with Afghan President Karzai
VOA News February 20, 2012
U.S. Senator John McCain said he hopes a strategic partnership agreement with Afghanistan can be finalized before a NATO meeting in May, but that the United States will not resolve sensitive issues in a way that might put American service members at risk.
McCain made the comments after holding talks Sunday with Afghan President Hamid Karzai along with a team of U.S. senators.
The president's office said Mr. Karzai pushed for the transfer of Bagram prison to Afghan control, and stressed the need for an end to night raids by international troops. He said the issues are of "grave importance" to the Afghan people.
Carrying out the raids at night is important for troop safety, said McCain.
"So we emphasized to President Karzai that we believe that this issue can be resolved, but we are strongly opposed to any termination of night raids because of the added risk it would put on the men and women in our military, which obviously is not something that we would ever agree to.''
McCain also said successful peace talks with the Taliban will be more difficult because of the planned pullout of international troops by the end of 2014.
Meanwhile, despite a massive campaign by coalition and Afghan forces to increase security in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, Afghan police reported a suicide bomber attacked a police station there on Monday, killing at least one police officer.
Kandahar police chief Abdul Raziq said the attacker detonated a bomb-laden car outside the station, injuring at least four other people, both police and civilians. The blast also badly damaged a nearby civilian compound.
There was no immediate claim or responsibility for the attack, but similar bombings in the past have been blamed on the Taliban.
Also Monday, three Italian soldiers died when their armored vehicle crashed into a canal in western Afghanistan, overturning as they were crossing a stream in Herat province's Shindand district, officials said.
Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.
Leading Female Politician, Activist Eyes Afghan Presidency
February 20, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
A prominent female lawmaker has repeated her intention to run for Afghanistan's presidency when current President Hamid Karzai's term runs out in two years' time, suggesting she sees signs that gender bias is easing among some Afghans.
In an interview with RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan, parliamentarian Fawzia Koofi said she believes certain intellectual groups in deeply religiously conservative Afghanistan are increasingly ready to accept a woman as president.
Afghan women launched unsuccessful bids for president in that country's 2004 and 2009 elections, which were won by President Hamid Karzai, the only leader the country has had since the UN-backed Bonn agreement in late 2001 ushered him into power.
Karzai is constitutionally barred from seeking another term in the next vote, due in 2014.
The 36-year-old Koofi currently chairs the Afghan parliament's women's affairs commission.
Koofi began her political career after the fall of the Taliban in late 2001, promoting women's rights to education in a "Back To School" campaign.
She was elected to the Afghan National Assembly in 2005, when she also became a deputy speaker.
She recently came out with her autobiography in English, titled "The Favored Daughter: One Woman's Fight To Lead Afghanistan Into The Future."
She previously expressed her intention to run for the presidency in early January.
NATO speedup of transfer to Afghan forces highlights problems
As allied commanders call Afghan forces capable of taking over most fighting by the end of 2013, the problems of the police and army come into sharper focus.
Los Angeles Times By Laura King February 20, 2012
Kabul, Afghanistan - At the gate of the capital's army recruitment headquarters, a young Afghan sergeant in crisp camouflage and a jaunty beret demanded a letter of introduction from arriving visitors. But when one was produced, written in Dari, the dominant language in Kabul, he asked one of the visitors to read it to him.
These days, Afghanistan's armed forces are under pressure as never before to dramatically step up their performance in everything from literacy to logistics. NATO is speeding up its transfer of fighting duties to the national police and army, and at the same time, the cash-pinched coalition intends to cut back substantially on plans for funding a long-term Afghan force strength of more than 350,000.
Even as senior allied commanders proclaim that a leaner, better-trained Afghan force will be capable of taking over most fighting duties from Western troops by the end of next year, the problems that have long plagued the Afghan police and army — repeated turncoat shootings aimed at Western mentors, drug use, high attrition rates, inadequate vetting of recruits, persistent logistical weakness and vulnerability to insurgent infiltration — are coming into sharper focus.
Recently leaked classified military reports, together with an unusually candid public assessment from an experienced U.S. military officer, have served to spotlight the degree of mistrust, mutual distaste and sometimes outright enmity between Afghan forces and their ostensible North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies at joint bases across Afghanistan.
Army Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis, who served two tours in Afghanistan, published his scathing assessment of the Afghan police and army in an essay in the Armed Forces Journal this month. In a vividly recalled anecdote from Kunar province, in Afghanistan's east, he recounted a conversation last year with a police captain whose position had been attacked by the Taliban.
When Davis asked whether he and his men, knowing the insurgents' position, intended to counterattack, "the captain's head wheeled around, looking first at the interpreter and turning to me with an incredulous expression.... 'No! We don't go after them,' he said. 'That would be dangerous!'"
The combination of close proximity and cultural differences sometimes produces a volatile atmosphere between Afghan and Western troops who live and work together on joint bases, according to more than a dozen current and former junior officers in the NATO force and their Afghan counterparts who were interviewed about training practices.
Western military public-affairs officers may constantly highlight success stories arising from the training program, particularly the measurable improvement in the abilities of elite Afghan forces. Afghan troops are also beginning to take the lead in major military operations, and thousands of recruits are learning to read and write.
But day-to-day encounters between Western and Afghan foot soldiers are often fraught with anger and misunderstanding, these officers said.
Often, the Afghans describe their Western mentors as crass, patronizing and overbearing, while the NATO forces struggle to combat what they describe as a sometimes shocking lack of motivation and discipline on the Afghan side.
Afghan men are traditionally sensitive to any perceived insult, and with weapons readily at hand, what might otherwise be a small altercation can swiftly flare into a tragedy. An Afghan soldier from Balkh province in the north, who spoke on condition of anonymity after having deserted his unit last year, bitterly described being belittled by his German trainers for what he considered a minor infraction, though he considered himself a superior fighter.
"I was ready to confront my enemies, while they only want to hide in their bases," he scoffed. "I could have done something to them they would always remember."
Ominously, the Taliban and other insurgent groups have come to understand that so-called green-on-blue shootings — Afghan police or soldiers opening fire on Western troops — can have a dramatic effect on the willingness of NATO countries and their allies to meet previously agreed-to training commitments. That was illustrated last month when France announced a speeded-up end to its combat role, days after an Afghan soldier killed four French soldiers and wounded more than a dozen others, some seriously.
Australia, another troop-contributing nation, was roiled early this month by a video on a Taliban-affiliated website that purported to show a fugitive Afghan soldier who had shot and seriously injured three Australian troops in southern Afghanistan in November boasting of his deed, and saying others in his unit had often spoken of their wish to carry out similar attacks.
"I had one mission on my mind: to kill foreigners and teach them a lesson," he said. "We are Muslims. We cannot accept foreigners."
Afghanistan's largest ethnic group — the Pashtuns, from which the Taliban movement is largely drawn — is underrepresented in the police and army, leading to simmering ethnic resentments within the ranks, as well as a tense relationship between Afghan troops and villagers in the mainly Pashtun south and east. Those are the regions where fighting has been most intense, and where Afghan soldiers from the north of Afghanistan — mainly ethnic Tajiks or Uzbeks — are considered almost as foreign as the NATO troops.
Potential Pashtun enlistees are more often turned away, recruiters said, a practice that may serve as something of a safeguard against inappropriate loyalties, but also breeds a sense of grievance.
"From the 'safe' parts of the country, we can take almost anyone," said Col. Mohammad Akbar Stanikzai of the Afghan national recruitment command. "But from the places where there are security problems, we would maybe take five or six out of 20 who applied."
Also worrisome to some local Afghan officials are plans to turn a number of particularly dangerous areas over to Afghan control sooner than initially planned. Several district leaders in areas to be handed over in coming months expressed strong misgivings about whether police and army units could confront the insurgents without Western help.
The No. 2 commander of the NATO force, U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, acknowledged to reporters at the Pentagon this month that among American troops, there is a widespread negative view of the Afghans whom they serve alongside.
"Let's take an American soldier or a private. At times this private will tell me that they [Afghan forces], they're not that good," he said. "But a private is looking at it from the perspective of how he's trained, or the Marines are trained, and the standards are very different."
The ultimate size and role of Afghan forces are to be a prime topic at a NATO summit in May in Chicago. In advance, the allies — mindful of burgeoning costs in a difficult economic climate — are seeking consensus on a "sustainable" target size for Afghan forces, perhaps around 230,000.
With both the police and army still undergoing a rapid buildup that has doubled the security forces' size over the last 18 months, the notion of reining in that growth raises the specter of a large bloc of "armed unemployed" who might bear a grudge against the Afghan government if what they had believed would be a steady long-term job came to a premature end.
A report this month by Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies contends that the Western military command "sharply downplays" structural problems, including a shortfall of trainers, rushed development, corrupt leadership and fealty to warlord figures.
Although Afghan army recruiters accumulate a voluminous paper file on each applicant, they appear to make little meaningful effort to assess the likelihood that a given man might eventually prove a danger to Western troops.
Col. Stanikzai, the recruiting official, acknowledged that basic questions go unasked, such as how potential recruits feel about the insurgency, or whether they consider themselves loyal to the Afghan government.
"Why would we ask them that?" he said. "Who would tell the truth?"
New Afghan Textbooks Sidestep History
February 20, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty By Frud Bezhan
Afghanistan's recent history is comparable to a war epic -- a story encompassing four decades of foreign invasions, civil war, and political turmoil.
How that story is told, however, has proved highly controversial, with the country's rival ethnic and political groups writing their own accounts of history, shaped by their own ideologies, and with their own villains and heroes.
Now Afghan officials think they have found a way to teach the country's contentious history that is acceptable to all Afghans regardless of their politics, ethnicity, or religion.
The answer, they say, is to omit the past four decades from the history books.
As of the next school year, which begins this spring, the Afghan government plans to distribute textbooks to high school students that do not mention the Soviet invasion, the country's devastating civil war, the reign of the extremist Taliban regime, the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, and the international presence that continues today.
The Afghan Education Ministry says the textbook, the only one to be officially approved by the government, is part of a new nonpolitical curriculum.
It is part of an initiative launched three years ago that has seen the government distribute books which avoid contentious recent history to some elementary and secondary schools around the country.
Unifying National Identity
Education officials say the new textbook was funded by the Afghan government and various foreign donors. The U.S. military's foreign aid arm, the Commander's Emergency Response Program, is reportedly among the donors, although RFE/RL was unable to independently verify the information despite numerous attempts.
The textbooks will be printed mainly in India and Afghanistan.
Mohammad Asef Nang, the Afghan deputy minister of education, is hopeful that the new textbooks will help create a single national identity, particularly among younger generations.
"History should build and heal a generation, not destroy one," he said. "History should reflect the truth and the honor of the country. Those parts of history that provoke old rivalries and enmities and destroy national unity shouldn't be included. Empty pages are better than pages that are full of animosities."
Although the move has received some support within the government, it has been vehemently opposed by the public.
'Shirking Educational Responsibilities'
Those who are against the move accuse the government of attempting to hide the crimes of warlords and militia leaders who were active in the country's civil war and some of whom today hold government positions.
Meanwhile, others accuse the Education Ministry of failing to fulfill its educational responsibilities.
Elay Ershad, a female member of parliament, believes the country needs to acknowledge its past and learn from it so it does not make the same mistakes again.
"The Education Ministry shouldn't think in such a short-sighted and pessimistic way about recording this history," she says. "The source of history should be based on the events that happened and the realities. Knowing history will enable us to control what happens in the future. We know that yesterday is what makes today and today is what makes tomorrow."
Ershad adds that Afghanistan's youths have a right to know their history and denying them that right is a disservice.
"Our children and young people should have full knowledge of what happened," she said. "The Education Ministry has no authority to brainwash people and keep them in the dark. Thank god we have the media and our history books so that people will know their history."
The move has also angered some of the country's educators. Schoolteachers like Abdullah, who only gave his first name, maintain that the younger generation has the right to make its own evaluations of the country's recent history.
"Documenting what has happened in the past is a positive thing," he said. "Future generations, when they study history, will know who served the country and who betrayed it."
Battleground For Competing Propaganda
Over the past four decades, Afghanistan's educational system has gone through dramatic changes, many of which accompanied the evolving political climate.
Afghan officials say that Afghan classrooms have at times been a battleground for competing propaganda.
During the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, textbooks preaching communism were printed and taught in schools.
That was countered by U.S.-sponsored books which promoted resistance to the Soviet Union and communism. During Taliban rule, schoolbooks endorsed ideas of jihad, or holy war.
The decision to create and distribute the new history textbook to high-school students comes after almost a decade of debate among politicians, historians, and educators.
Officials concluded that the only way to resolve the stalemate would be to have the text's take on history stop in the early 1970s, before the monarchy in Afghanistan was overthrown.
The sticking point was always how to address the country's subsequent civil war and various groups that fought in it, with officials unable to agree or compromise as to how they should be represented in educational material.
Officials say, for example, that a reference to former Uzbek warlord and current military chief of staff Abdul Rashid Dostum, or former Tajik and Northern Alliance leader Barhanuddin Rabbani, would draw equal measures of fierce anger and allegiance in a single classroom.
Dozens of Afghan education officials are now in the difficult process of persuading students, parents, and teachers to accept the new textbook.
RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan contributed to this report.
3 Italian soldiers die in road accident in Afghanistan
HERAT, Afghanistan, Feb. 20 (Xinhua) -- Three Italian soldiers lost their lives in a road accident in Afghanistan on Monday, police spokesman in the western region said.
"Three soldiers of Italian troops died as their vehicle plunged into a ravine in Shindand district of Herat province 640 km west of Afghan capital Kabul on Monday," Abdul Raouf Ahmadi, the spokesman of police in Afghanistan's western region, told Xinhua.
More than 3,800 Italian troops have been serving in Afghanistan within the framework of NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to help stabilize security in the militancy-plagued nation.
Cold Winter Kills at Least 40 in Afghanistan
By RAHIM FAIEZ Associated Press February 20, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - More than 40 people, most of them children, have frozen to death in what has been Afghanistan's coldest winter in years, an Afghan health official said Monday.
The government has recorded 41 deaths from freezing in three provinces — Kabul, Ghor and Badakhshan, said Health Ministry spokesman Ghulam Sakhi Kargar.
All but three or four of those deaths were children, he said. Twenty-four of the deaths were in the capital of Kabul, mostly in camps for people who have fled fighting elsewhere in the country.
Kabul has been experiencing its worst cold snap and heaviest snowfall in 15 years, according to the National Weather Center. It said the weather was to improve by the end of the week.
Heavy snowfall in Day Kundi province caused an avalanche late Sunday in the Sang-i-Takht district that damaged three dozen homes and shops. The avalanche caused no injuries, said Nasrullah Sadiqizada, a member of parliament from the central province.
The hardest-hit have been people living in tents in a number of camps around the capital. The deaths in these camps, so close to the offices of international organizations overseeing billions of dollars in aid to the country, have shocked many in Kabul.
The U.N. and the U.S. aid agency have started distributing extra blankets, tarps and fuel to people living in 40 camps throughout the city, the U.S. Embassy said in a statement last week. Most of those in the camps have fled from Helmand and Kunduz provinces, though some are Afghans who have returned from years living in Iran and Pakistan to find themselves homeless, the statement said.
NATO also delivered an estimated 1,000 blankets, coats, socks, mittens and hats to a refugee camp in Kabul. The coalition said it was planning additional delivers within the next week.
Kargar says the ministry is establishing mobile clinics to try to get help out to people suffering in the cold.
The cold has also caused a spike in the price of gas and wood — the main fuel used by the city's five million or so residents to heat their homes. Heavy snows also damaged high tension wires coming into the capital, causing sporadic blackouts in large swaths of Kabul. About 75 percent of the city has electricity.
Kabul city hall said the capital's markets have supplies to last out the bad weather and there was no shortage of fire wood or food. Kabul Kahid Mohammad, director of Kabul markets, said main highways leading into the city were clear.
Kabul airport was also operating, officials said, although there were delays at times due to poor visibility because of the snowfall.
Afghan refugees caught between Iran and a hard place
AFP 20/02/2012
HERAT - Abdullah was left catatonic and almost mute by the electric shocks meted out to him by Iranian police before they bussed him to the border and sent him back to Afghanistan.
His arms marked with slashes of red paint to identify him as a deportee, the 18-year-old lies on a bed of cushions in an otherwise bare hut that has become his temporary home, uttering only his name and that of his home province Tahir.
“He was deported from Iran, we don’t know what’s wrong. Sometimes he speaks,” says one UN worker tasked with giving him board until aid workers can find his family to send him home. “We have a lot of cases like this.”
Up to three million Afghan refugees settled in Iran during the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, making Tehran responsible for one of the largest refugee populations in the world.
At first Afghans were permitted to live in their neighbouring country with ease, with women in particular enjoying a higher social status as well as better education, work opportunities and security.
But since the 1990s Tehran has clamped down on the refugees, tightening rules that allow Afghans to pursue education and work, and in 2007 launching a massive deportation programme that sent home up to half a million.
Some say that the size of the exodus was politically orchestrated — used as a tool to exert pressure on the Western-backed government in Kabul to take a more anti-Western stance.
“Whenever Afghanistan’s policies displease Tehran, the Iranian government threatens to expel all Afghans living in Iran,” wrote Ahmad Majidyar and Ali Alfoneh in a 2010 report on the issue for American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, a right-wing US think tank.
“Tehran understands that the fragile Afghan government lacks the capacity to absorb a large number of returnees under current security and economic conditions.”
One million Afghan refugees now officially live in Iran, with estimates of up to another one million living there illegally, more than 10 years after US troops invaded Afghanistan and brought down the Taliban regime.
According to figures compiled by the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), a total of 18,152 Afghan refugees returned from Iran in 2011, well over double the number in the previous year.
Iran recently lent its approval, along with Afghanistan and Pakistan, to a new UN strategy designed to help Afghans who return, trying to focus on more sustainable reintegration to stop them becoming destitute.
But in western Afghanistan, tales of mistreatment of Afghan refugees by Iranian authorities abound — as do reports of deportees being forced to pay bribes to escape an apparently brutally run detention centre across the border.
Hamidullah Hatibi, who runs the provincial refugee agency in Herat, says that last year one man beaten by Iranian authorities succumbed to his wounds once he had crossed the border, while another had a mental breakdown.
“Broken hands, arms, beaten bodies — there are a lot. The Iranian government treats the refugees badly and these people cannot go back,” he said, adding that the government relies on UN aid to help the refugees return home.
Several calls to the Iranian embassy in Kabul for comment went unanswered.
The ebb and flow of Afghans across their western border in search of work and an escape from their restive homeland continues — the refugees caught between an expensive and insecure life in Iran, or continued war at home.
Many are deported, but the majority are forced to return by increased economic hardship and restricted living conditions in Iran.
Refugees, often in families with six or seven children, must pay annual school fees of up to $75 per child, despite earning a subsistence wage of $10 per day.
“It pays for just one chicken,” said father-of-five Yusuf Zeyiey, 48, who decided to return to Afghanistan after nine years living in Iran.
He cannot go to his home province of Jowzjan where there is no work and the threat of the Taliban insurgency — instead he will go to northern Mazar city and try to pick up construction work that pays $20 per day.
“It was just too expensive. We had problems with rent, food, school. All these problems caused us to come back,” he said.
Stringent economic conditions are only likely to get worse for refugees living in Iran as the US and EU tighten sanctions to try to force Tehran to abandon its nuclear programme.
And Afghanistan’s western lands have long-been considered an extension of Iranian territory by the authoritarian neighbouring regime.
But despite the difficulties, there is still high demand for a permit to live and work in Iran: lines snake outside the Iranian consulate in Herat and crowds jostle for passports outside the provincial refugee ministry.
Some say they seek refuge from war — others claim there are no jobs to be found in Afghanistan. All of those waiting outside the ministry earlier this month claimed they were being forced to pay officials bribes for a passport.
Afghan talks to fail without all groups-Hizb-i-Islami
Reuters By Qasim Nauman Sun Feb 19, 2012
ISLAMABAD - Peace efforts in Afghanistan are likely to fail if they do not include all militant groups, a senior member of one of the country's most notorious insurgent factions said on Sunday.
"If any group is isolated or ignored, that group then becomes the centre of the resistance, and can cause problems," Ghairat Baheer, of Hizb-i-Islami, told Reuters in Islamabad.
"To bring instability or disturb the situation of Afghanistan is not difficult. It is very easy."
Hizb-i-Islami, which means Islamic Party, is a radical militant group with widespread national support in Afghanistan, shares some of the Afghan Taliban's anti-foreigner, anti-government aims, and wants to oust international forces.
The group, led by Afghan warlord and former prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, claims to have thousands of fighters in its ranks, based mainly in Afghanistan's restive east, bordering Pakistan, and in the north.
The U.S. State Department lists Hekmatyar as a "terrorist" for supporting Taliban and al Qaeda attacks, but U.S. and Afghan officials have met with Hizb-i-Islami representatives in the last two months to help end the war, now in its eleventh year.
"There is communication, and there is negotiation going on between Hizb-i-Islami and the American and Afghan governments," Baheer, Hekmatyar's son-in-law.
Hekmatyar is a fierce rival of Taliban leader Mullah Omar, and became a hero to many Afghans while leading mujahideen fighters against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
In the early 1990s, forces led by Hekmatyar opposed to the government of then-president Burhanuddin Rabbani took part in fighting in Kabul which is thought to have killed tens of thousands.
Hekmatyar left Afghanistan in the mid-1990s and his whereabouts have been unclear since then.
The Afghan Taliban announced last month it would open a political office in Qatar, suggesting the group may be willing to engage in negotiations that could give it government positions or official control over much of its historical southern heartland.
While the Taliban are the focus of media attention, there are a number of other militant organizations that want a say in Afghanistan's future.
They include the al-Qaeda linked Haqqani network, one of the most feared Afghan insurgent groups blamed for many high-profile bombings.
While the Haqqani group has pledged allegiance to the Taliban leadership, it also exercises significant operational independence.
Failure to appease these groups could bring prolonged instability, or even civil war, once NATO combat forces withdraw in 2014.
"There should be a comprehensive solution involving all parties and groups," said Baheer, a doctor by training.
Baheer, who was held in U.S. detention at Bagram Air Field, north of Kabul, for six years until his 2008 release, said he had not seen enough progress in U.S.-Taliban talks to suggest they were any closer to formal negotiations.
"So far they have not been able to agree on even minor issues that could be taken as goodwill gestures. There's no official inauguration of the (Taliban) office, there is no release of prisoners and no one has been removed from the blacklist," he said.
"Things are stuck. We are also in a wait and see situation."
(Editing by Michael Georgy and Sanjeev Miglani)
In war-ravaged Afghanistan, combat sports reign
Reuters By Amie Ferris-Rotman and Sayed Hassib Monday, February 20, 2012
KABUL - The sounds produced by the three Afghan athletes going to the London summer Olympics are fierce: elongated wails ricochet off the chipped and dilapidated walls of the taekwondo centre, while leather smacks and slaps at the boxing gym.
In a country wrenched by decades of war, perhaps it is no surprise that all three, a taekwondo male duo including Beijing bronze medallist Rohullah Nikpai, and teenage female boxer Sadaf Rahimi, followed fighting sports.
They were born into conflict that still rages, and chronic insecurity and poverty mean they train in spartan spaces with little financial support, and currently freezing cold in the country's worst winter for 30 years.
"The difference between me and others is I want to show other countries that an Afghan girl can fight," 17-year-old Rahimi told Reuters, squinting from a protective facemask that pinches her cheeks and black kohl-lined eyes.
Like Nikpai, Rahimi and her family fled to neighbouring Iran to escape the violence and brutal oppression of the Taliban, who were toppled just over a decade ago.
The austere Islamist group had publicly stoned women to death for charges of adultery at the Ghazi stadium, where Rahimi, her two sisters and the rest of the country's first team of female boxers, set up in 2007, practice today.
Her muscular shoulders rippling as she readies to throw punches at her coach, Rahimi said she feared the Taliban, who banned women from education, sports and most work, would regain a share in power through early talks with Afghan and U.S. officials aimed at ending the NATO-led war.
"I hope the Taliban don't come back and take over," she said, wincing and starting to untie pink shoelaces over her knuckles, used instead of hard-to-get strapping. "But if they do, I urge them to let women engage in sports and go to school".
Coach Mohammad Saber Sharifi, a former professional boxer and advocate of Afghan women's rights, especially through sport, said Rahimi had been granted a wild card to compete at the Olympics, meaning she can sidestep further qualifying rounds.
She will soon leave Kabul's rutted and snowbound streets for London to train for the Olympics, where women's boxing is debuting as a sport, he said.
"NO PROPER ELECTRICITY"
On the other side of Kabul from Ghazi stadium, in an equally barren practice space, 24-year-old Nikpai and fellow taekwondo Olympic contender Nesar Ahmad Bahawi kick and punch in preparation for competition at London's ExCel centre in August.
Wearing red chest and back guards made from the material used in bullet-proof vests, the pair, who both recently qualified for the Games in Bangkok, make high-pitched screeches as they take aim, typical of the sport.
But despite officially qualifying and winning Afghanistan's first Olympic medal at Beijing four years ago, Nikpai bemoaned the lack of support given to sport in his country.
"Nesar and I don't have a good place to train, facilities, or even a regular transport system and proper electricity," he said, his breath steaming in the frigid air of the centre, whose small heater did little to combat the frozen white landscape outside.
Poor conditions are not limited to taekwondo, whose national team members receive a miserly monthly stipend of between $10-$14. Boxing coach Sharifi, whose team have never trained in a ring, said tiny sporting budgets severely limit their success.
"We can't really compare ourselves to the world," said Nikpai, who was lured to taekwondo after watching hours of action films as a refugee in Iran. He returned to Kabul in 2004.
Nikpai received a hero's welcome upon his return from Beijing and was summoned to meet Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who presented him with a brand new flat, money and a car.
The head of the Afghan Olympic Committee, General Mohammad Zahir Akhbar, said he hopes more athletes in wrestling, judo and athletics will qualify for the Games in London.
"We are war-torn, our athletes face economic and security problems, but we are aiming for medals," Akhbar told Reuters.
First-time Olympian Bahawi, who took up taekwondo at the behest of his family because he kept kicking his friends, said triumph at international competitions could be a way to lift security at home.
"Sport brings a message of peace and stability in the country," said the tall 25-year-old from the country's eastern Kapisa province before knocking flat a team mate with two quick kicks on his side.
Afghan coach Bashir Taraki, who trains them alongside Korea's Min Sin-hak, downplayed the attraction to the fighting aspect of the Korean martial art, saying: "I think they are more into taekwondo's discipline than its fighting side".
(Reporting by Amie Ferris-Rotman, Editing by Rob Taylor)
www.afghanistannewscenter.com