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Obama apologizes for Koran burning in Afghanistan
By Matt Spetalnick and Laura MacInnis
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama apologized on Thursday for the burning of copies of the Koran on a U.S. base in Afghanistan as the White House sought to quell spiraling furor among Afghans while also staving off Republican criticism at home.
In a letter to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Obama apologized over the incident in which Afghan workers found charred copies of the Muslim holy book on a military base near Kabul, White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters aboard Air Force One.
Carney said the incident, which has sparked angry protests against U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan and underscored the divide between many Afghans and the foreign forces who have been battling the Taliban for a decade, was not intentional.
While Carney said the apology was "wholly appropriate given the sensitivities" about treatment of the Koran, he said Obama's primary concern was "the safety of American men and women in Afghanistan, of our military and civilian personnel there."
The burnings could make it even more difficult for U.S.-led NATO forces to win the hearts and minds of Afghans and bring the Taliban and Afghan government to the negotiating table ahead of the withdrawal of most foreign combat troops by the end of 2014.
Only last month, U.S. officials rushed to respond to fallout from a video showing U.S. forces urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
A spokesman for the NATO-led force said on Wednesday troops involved in the Koran-burning incident should have known to check with cultural advisers to determine how to dispose of religious material properly.
Some of the material had been removed from a military detention center, a U.S. official said, because of concerns that some of it was extremist in nature and being used to pass messages among prisoners.
Afghan anger has mounted this week. Muslims consider the Koran the literal word of God and treat each copy with deep reverence.
COMPLICATES PEACE PROCESS
The Taliban has urged Afghans to target foreign military bases and kill Westerners in retaliation for the Koran burning at Bagram airfield near Kabul.
On Thursday, a man in an Afghan army uniform killed two American troops in the east, but it was unclear if the shooting was connected to the protests.
Tommy Vietor, another White House spokesman, said U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker had delivered the letter from Obama, which was a follow-up to a phone call he had with Karzai earlier in the week to discuss the future of U.S.-Afghan ties.
"In the letter ... the president also expressed our regret and apologies over the incident in which religious materials were unintentionally mishandled at Bagram Airbase," Vietor said.
While the Obama administration has ordered an investigation, Afghanistan is demanding NATO put the troops who burned the Koran on public trial.
Such demands could complicate U.S. diplomats' efforts to nudge a nascent peace process ahead as they try to broker political talks between the Taliban and Afghan government.
As the November U.S. presidential elections approach, in which Obama will seek a second term, Carney also attempted to head off criticism from Republicans, who have repeatedly accused Obama of apologizing unnecessarily for U.S. actions abroad.
He said those accusations were "wholly false, fallacious and ridiculous," and pointed out that the administration of Obama's Republican predecessor, President George W. Bush, had apologized when a U.S. soldier shot a Koran in Iraq.
Newt Gingrich, the Republican presidential candidate and former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, said Obama had failed to hold Afghanistan and other allies responsible for violence within their own countries.
"It is an outrage that President Obama is the one apologizing to Afghan President Karzai on the same day two American troops were murdered and four others injured by an Afghan soldier. It is Hamid Karzai who owes the American people an apology, not the other way around," he said in a statement.
(Editing by Missy Ryan and Todd Eastham)
Afghanistan demands NATO put Koran-burners on trial
By Mirwais Harooni and Amie Ferris-Rotman
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan wants NATO to put on public trial those who burned copies of the Koran at a NATO base, President Hamid Karzai's office said on Thursday, after a third day of bloody protests over the incident.
It said NATO had agreed to a trial, but that could not be immediately confirmed.
Karzai had earlier accused a U.S. officer of "ignorantly" burning copies of the Koran, in an incident that has deepened anti-Western sentiment in a country NATO is trying to stabilize before foreign combat troops leave by the end of 2014.
Demonstrations have drawn thousands of angry Afghans to the streets, chanting "Death to America!" amid violence that has killed 11 people including two U.S. service personnel.
"NATO officials, in response to a request for the trial and punishment of the perpetrators ... promised this crime will brought to court as soon as possible," Karzai's office said in a statement.
President Barack Obama sent a letter to Karzai apologizing for the burning of the Korans, after Afghan laborers found charred copies while collecting rubbish at the sprawling Bagram air base.
Obama told Karzai the incident was not intentional.
The letter, which the White House said was a follow-up to a phone call earlier this week between the two leaders to discuss a "long-term partnership" between Washington and Kabul, was delivered to Karzai by U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker.
Karzai's office said in a statement Obama had promised to investigate those involved in the incident.
Karzai said the American officer had acted "out of ignorance and with poor understanding" of the Koran's importance, a presidential statement said.
TALIBAN CALL
The Taliban urged Afghan security forces to "turn their guns on the foreign infidel invaders," it said on its site shahamat-english.com.
A U.S. official in Washington said two NATO soldiers killed by a man in Afghan army uniform were Americans.
NATO confirmed a man in Afghan army uniform had killed two of its troops in the east, but declined to say if the shooting was connected to the protests.
Muslims consider the Koran the literal word of God and treat each copy with deep reverence. Desecration is considered one of the worst forms of blasphemy.
A protest of around 500 people turned violent in the capital Kabul, with police and plain-clothes intelligence officers charging demonstrators wearing bandanas and hurling rocks and sticks, firing low above their heads and sending them fleeing.
A wounded youth lay on a road, blood pouring from his side. Crouched over and cradling him, a relative appealed to the Afghan government.
"Ministry of the Interior! Don't you see we are fighting NATO?" said the man.
Masked men sped by on a motorcycle blasting a battle song played by the Taliban insurgency, while police in machinegun-mounted pick-up trucks picked up the wounded.
"Our brave people must target the military bases of the invaders, their military convoys and their invader forces," read an e-mailed Taliban statement released by the insurgency's spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.
"They have to kill them (Westerners), beat them and capture them to give them a lesson to never dare desecrate the holy Koran again."
FOREIGN BASES ATTACKED
Most Westerners were confined to their heavily fortified compounds, including the sprawling U.S. embassy complex and other embassies in central Kabul.
Around 400 protesters hurled rocks and set fire to cars at a Norwegian-led military base in Faryab province on the Turkmen border, which is centre for around 500 soldiers and civilians from Norway, Latvia, Macedonia, Iceland and the United States.
Twelve protesters were wounded in the attack, the head of the regional hospital Abdul Alim said, but Norway's ambassador to Kabul, Tore Hattrem, told Reuters no one was hurt and there was minimal damage.
A small number protested at a French military base in the eastern Kapisa province but police deterred them successfully, its police chief Abdul Hamid said.
The uproar could complicate efforts by U.S. and NATO forces to reach agreement with the Afghan government on a strategic pact that would allow a sharply reduced number of Western troops to stay in the country, well beyond their combat exit deadline, to oversee Afghan forces.
Hundreds of protesting students in Jalalabad rejected any strategic pact with the United States, saying they would "take up jihad" if one were sealed.
(Additional reporting by Mohammad Hamid in Kunduz, Rafiq Shirzad in Jalalabad, Akram Walizada and Omar Sobhani in Kabul and Elyas Wahdat and Obaidullah in Logar; Writing by Amie Ferris-Rotman and Rob Taylor; Editing by Michael Georgy, Ed Lane and Andrew Roche)
NATO: Gunman in Afghan Army Uniform Kills 2 Coalition Soldiers
VOA News February 23, 2012
NATO officials say someone wearing an Afghan army uniform has shot dead two coalition service members in eastern Afghanistan, while protests over the burning of Qurans at a NATO facility continued for a third day.
It was not immediately clear if the NATO deaths Thursday were related to the demonstrations that have erupted across the country. But the Taliban issued a statement earlier calling on Afghans to launch attacks on foreign targets in retaliation for the desecration of the Muslim holy book.
Hundreds of protesters attacked a U.S.-run base in eastern Laghman province, where they stormed the walls and threw rocks. In northern Baghlan province, officials said gunfire killed one protester and wounded at least two police officers.
Meanwhile, Afghan President Hamid Karzai's office said it has received a letter from U.S. President Barack Obama formally apologizing for the incident.
In the letter, Obama expresses his “deep regret” and offers his “sincere apologies.” He writes that “the error was inadvertent” and that officials will take the “appropriate steps” to avoid any recurrence and hold those accountable responsible.
On Wednesday, President Karzai appealed for calm, saying citizens have the right to protest, but should not resort to violence. Since the demonstrations erupted Tuesday, clashes between Afghan security forces and protesters have left at least 11 people dead.
Nazif Shahrani, an Afghan native who is a South Asia analyst at Indiana University, told VOA the protests are about more than this one incident.
“What people seem to perceive is that the U.S. has essentially not kept its promises and that all the promises have been false. And these are really symptoms of that anger and that disappointment toward the United States. And it's hoped that the United States government looks at this issue more broadly than just apologizing for what has happened in Bagram.”
U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter met Wednesday in Kabul with Afghan leaders, including President Karzai, to again apologize for the incident.
The commander of the international coalition, U.S. General John Allen, had issued an apology Tuesday, saying the improper disposal of Islamic religious texts was “not intentional in any way.” He has ordered an investigation.
Protesters told VOA Wednesday that they want the Americans out of their country and that words alone cannot change the disrespect that Muslims have suffered.
Media reports quote unnamed Western officials with knowledge of the incident as saying it appeared that the copies of the Quran in question and other Islamic readings in the library at Bagram were being used to fuel extremism, and that detainees were writing on the documents to exchange extremist messages.
Afghan protests against the destruction of the Muslim holy book have turned deadly in recent years. In April 2011, about 20 people were killed during several days of protests across Afghanistan after little-known U.S. pastor Terry Jones burned a Quran at his small Florida church.
Koran Burning in Afghanistan Fuels Bloody New Attacks on U.S. Forces
By Yochi J. Dreazen | National Journal
The deaths of a pair of American soldiers in Afghanistan Thursday highlights the bloody intersection of two dangerous aspects of the long war there: the growing Afghan fury over the burning of Korans and the continued killings of Western troops by their Afghan counterparts.
An Afghan soldier shot and killed the U.S. soldiers at an outpost in eastern Afghanistan’s Nangarhar Province and then, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter, fled into the large crowd of demonstrators outside the base. They were protesting reports that American troops had burned copies of the Koran, the holiest text in Islam. Elsewhere, a large crowd of protesters also threw stones at a U.S. base in eastern Afghanistan’s Laghman Province, while Afghan police fired on protesters in northern Afghanistan’s Baghlan Province, killing at least one person.
The increasingly large and violent protests began Tuesday, when the U.S.-led military alliance confirmed that “religious materials” were accidentally burned at a sprawling American base in eastern Afghanistan.
President Obama sent a letter to Afghan President Hamid Karzai apologizing for the incident, echoing similar expressions of regret from top administration and military officials. But the apologies have done nothing to assuage public fury in Afghanistan. At least 13 Afghans have died this week, and the riots – and their resulting death tolls – seem certain to escalate in the days ahead.
Fury in Afghanistan and other parts of the Muslim world over reports of U.S. troops descerating the Koran is not new. A Newsweek article in 2005 reported that an American interrogator at Guantanamo Bay flushed a copy of the Koran down a toilet. The article was later retracted, but not before sparking violent protests in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Indonesia. At least 16 people were killed.
There was more violence last March in response to a Florida pastor publicly burning copies of the Koran. Those riots left roughly 24 people dead, including seven United Nations employees killed in what remains the world body’s largest one-day death toll in Afghanistan.
The Koran-related anger may now threaten more Afghan troops to turn their weapons on their American counterparts, a growing trend concerning American policymakers here and in Afghanistan. Taliban officials are already exploiting the widespread fury towards the U.S. In a statement cited by the Associated Press, a Taliban spokesman said destroying the Korans was an “unforgivable crime” and explicitly encouraged Afghan soldiers and police officers to “become real sons of the nation” by killing U.S. and NATO troops.
It’s not clear that extremists within the ranks of the Afghan military need much encouragement to target their American counterparts. Indeed, the two U.S. soldiers killed during the protests in Nangarhar Thursday were the latest additions to a grim tally of so-called “green on green” violence (the phrase is a reference to the color of the uniforms historically worn by military personnel) throughout Afghanistan.
This year alone, an Afghan soldier opened fire at U.S. soldiers playing volleyball at a base, killing one and wounding several others. Another Afghan soldier killed four French soldiers less than a week later, prompting Paris to suspend its training mission in Afghanistan and threaten to accelerate its withdrawal from the country.
U.S. officials had consistently argued that such attacks were motivated by financial problems, personal stress and other prosaic concerns, not ideological affinity with the Taliban. But that case is increasingly difficult to make as more and more Western troops die at the hands of their Afghan counterparts.
A leaked report prepared last year for the American military command in Kabul found that Afghan soldiers and police officers attacked Western troops at least 26 times between May 2007 and May 2011, killing approximately 58 U.S. and NATO troops. The pace of such attacks has been steadily increasing since 2009, the report found. The worst single incident occurred in April 2009, when an Afghan officer killed eight American troops and one U.S. contractor.
“Lethal altercations are clearly not rare or isolated; they reflect a rapidly growing systemic homicide threat (a magnitude of which may be unprecedented between ‘allies’ in modern military history),” the report said, according to The New York Times, which obtained a copy. U.S and NATO declarations that the attackers were motivated by factors other than ideology “seem disingenuous, if not profoundly intellectually dishonest,” the report said.
All of those attacks took place before the fury unleashed by the Koran burnings, suggesting that there is already a pool of Afghan troops pre-disposed to committing acts of violence against Western troops. The Taliban are calling for more such attacks. Barring something unforeseen, extremist Afghan troops seem likely to listen.
Will direct talks lead to durable peace in Afghanistan?
by Abdul Haleem, Yangtze Yan
KABUL, Feb. 23 (Xinhua) -- Amid reported U.S.-Taliban peace talks in Qatar and continued Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has once again offered talks to the Taliban outfit and urged Pakistan to support the peace process.
"In order to realize the objectives of the peace process, I invite the leadership of the Taliban to engage in direct talks with the Afghan government," Karzai said in a statement released by his office Wednesday.
The Afghan leader in the statement described Pakistan's role in Afghan peace process as significantly crucial and called upon the neighboring state to support and facilitate the direct negotiations.
For the first time ever, Karzai officially announced the offer, days after a trilateral summit attended by himself and his Pakistani and Iranian counterparts in Islamabad. In the summit concluded on Feb. 17, the trio issued a join communique reiterating their full support for an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned inclusive process of peace and reconciliation.
However, Afghan analysts who believe the invitation has opened the door for the peace talks are also skeptical about the government's initiative to bring the Taliban outfit to dialogue table.
"Inviting Taliban for direct talks is an initiative to encourage the outfit to act independently in peace interaction without Pakistan influence," said Ahmad Zia Rafat, a Kabul University professor.
The analyst was of the view that Pakistan has enough influence on the anti-government armed groups and thus its support is crucial to any peace efforts.
"Since Pakistan has influence over the insurgent groups, its role in making the proposed peace talks successful is very important. No peace efforts will deliver unless the Pakistani government supports," Rafat told Xinhua.
The Afghan government believes that Taliban leadership has been living in Pakistan, a claim often rejected by Islamabad as baseless. Karzai during his recent visit to Pakistan has reportedly asked the latter to facilitate direct talks with the elusive Taliban chief, Mullah Mohammad Omar.
However, Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar has utterly rejected the presence of Taliban leadership in her country, saying "any expectation that Pakistan can deliver the Taliban's chief for talks is not only unrealistic, but preposterous."
The Afghan president during his Islamabad tour had also held meetings with several political and religious leaders including Mawlana Samiul Haq -- a religious leader believed to have close relations with Taliban, and sought his support for encouraging Taliban to join peace negotiation.
"This is a positive step to encourage Taliban for direct interaction but the roadmap to reach destination is very complicated," said Saifudin Saihoon, a political observer and also Kabul University professor.
The ambiguity shrouds over the address of Taliban leadership. Afghans believe the Taliban leadership council known as "Quetta Shura" has been operating in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta, a claim also rejected by Pakistan as groundless.
Taliban militants, who had in the past rejected any Afghan government's offer for talks, conditioning any dialogue with the pullout of NATO-led foreign forces from the country, have yet to comment on the latest offer.
"In the absence of a comprehensive roadmap for peace talks it is difficult to achieve the goal," said Saihoon, arguing that the proposed peace dialogue avenue in Qatar, Saudi Arabia or Turkey will not lay out the desired outcome unless the address of Taliban is known.
Afghan Female Senator Allegedly Linked To Kidnapping
By RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan February 23, 2012
KABUL -- The office of Afghanistan's Attorney General alleges that female Senator Fawzia Sadaat has links with a criminal group involved in kidnapping.
Deputy Attorney General Rahmatullo Nazari said the office had sent a letter to the senate on February 23 asking it to strip Sadaat of her immunity to pave the way for launching a criminal probe against her.
According to Nazari, prosecutors have obtained documents indicating Sadaat's association with a criminal group allegedly led by her brother, who is currently under arrest.
Sadaat denies the allegation.
Officials: Afghanistan, US looking at removing detention, night raids from partnership talks
Associated Press 22/02/2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - The U.S. and the Afghan governments are considering pushing through a long-delayed partnership agreement by moving the contentious issues of night raids and control over detainees to separate negotiations, officials from both countries said.
The two governments have been working for about a year to nail down the terms of a strategic partnership document that would govern U.S. operations in Afghanistan after 2014, when the Afghan government is expected to take charge of security countrywide.
The pact is expected to provide for several thousand U.S. troops to stay in the country to train Afghan forces and help with counterterrorism operations. It will outline the legal status of those forces in Afghanistan, their operating rules and where they will be based.
The agreement is seen as key to assuring the Afghan people that the U.S. does not plan to abandon the country, even as its draws down troops and cuts aid funding.
Both sides also hope it will settle several divisive issues over how American troops will operate in Afghanistan.
A major stumbling point arose when Afghan President Hamid Karzai demanded control over detainees and an end to unpopular night raids by U.S. troops as a condition of the pact. The U.S. has said that night raids are a key part of its strategy in Afghanistan. The Obama administration also has said that the Afghan judicial system is not yet capable of taking over responsibility for dangerous battlefield detainees.
The impasse has threatened to derail the accord, which both sides say they want to sign before a NATO summit in Chicago in May.
To break the stalemate, the two governments have agreed in principle that “the transfer of detention facilities and night operations to Afghan lead and control will be dealt with separately as short-term issues,” said an Afghan official familiar with the talks.
A U.S. official confirmed that the two sides have discussed splitting the negotiations along the same lines and that U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta would agree to the split if necessary.
However, Panetta still prefers one comprehensive package and is pushing to find a way to settle everything together in one document, the official said.
Both the Afghan and U.S. officials spoke anonymously to discuss ongoing negotiations.
To split the negotiations would be a change of stance for Karzai, who has taken a strong position on issues which his government says are linked to Afghanistan’s national sovereignty.
“The two obstacles which are in front of this document are the night raids and the issue of the prison,” said Emal Faizi, a spokesman for Karzai. “We want to have an agreement on these issues before signing the document.”
Karzai’s deputy national security adviser also said that he cannot see an acceptable way of separating the issues.
“Ensuring Afghan sovereignty is on the top of our objectives ... Addressing night raids and detentions are the core issues of this document,” Shaida Mohammad Abdali said.
Karzai is standing firm publicly. On detainees, he has set a deadline of March 9 for the Americans to transfer control of their main prison in the country — the Parwan Detention Facility, which adjoins Bagram Air Field in eastern Afghanistan.
A spokesman for the U.S. detention operation said such dates are targets.
The date for handing over the Parwan facility “has always been ‘conditions based,’” said Capt. Kevin Aandahl, a spokesman for the task force overseeing U.S. detention operations in Afghanistan. He said that the U.S. will hand over the Parwan prison once it has decided that the Afghan government has the “capacity to effectively handle the operations conducted at the facility.”
Meanwhile, the Americans have stood strong on the need for night raids, saying that the operations are one of its most effective tools for finding and capturing insurgents, especially with fewer traditional forces.
Karzai has said that Afghans should be the only ones doing night raids because the invasion of privacy from troops entering a families’ home is compounded when the soldiers are Westerners. He has also said that too many of these night raids have resulted in civilian deaths.
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Associated Press writers Anne Gearan in Washington and Deb Riechmann in Kabul contributed to this report.
War Leaves Half Million Homeless in Afghanistan
February 23, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Amnesty International says war has left half a million people homeless in Afghanistan.
In a fresh report, the international rights group says around 400 people seek shelter in makeshift camps around the country every day.
Their plight is made worse, according to Amnesty International, by government and international neglect.
The report calls on the government to remove conditions placed on humanitarian assistance and on international donors to "ensure that their humanitarian assistance addresses the needs of internally displaced people."
Kabul alone houses up to 35,000 displaced persons in 30 slum areas around the city, according to the report.
Many said they had fled to the capital to escape the worsening conflict elsewhere in the country.
Based on AFP reporting
No Refuge From Misery For Afghanistan's Displaced
February 23, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty By Ali Erfan, Frud Bezhan
To the casual observer the thousands of caves that dot the sandstone cliffs of the ancient Afghan city of Bamiyan hearken to another era, when monks visiting the region's famous Buddha statues took residence there.
But for hundreds of Afghans, the caves represent their current reality.
The new residents have been forced to seek refuge in the caves, unable to return to areas they originally fled due to insecurity and the destruction of their former homes and villages.
Upon their return to their native lands they have found it a struggle to survive, with basic essentials such as food, shelter, and healthcare in short supply.
One is Gulsom, a 34-year-old mother of seven who has lived in the Bamiyan caves for over five years.
Gulsom, who only has one name, returned to Bamiyan after she and her children were deported from Iran.
After travelling to her former village and finding it deserted and completely destroyed, Gulsom followed the footsteps of hundreds of other returnees and displaced families in the region and moved into a cave.
Abandoned By The Authorities
She claims that she has received little help from local authorities or aid agencies and, with her children having been taken away and her husband deceased, she has been left to fend for herself.
To get by, Gulsom scavenges for firewood and food and travels to a stream kilometers from her home to collect water for drinking and bathing.
That cave that Gulsom calls home is approximately 2 meters wide, with only a slanted wooden door to protect it from the elements.
The only light in the room comes from a hole in a wall that has been sealed by plastic. There is no toilet, she says.
Gulsom lists few possessions. She owns an old rug that she sleeps on along with some clothes and a few rusted utensils she uses to cook and eat with.
"I have no work here," she says. "I stay hungry a lot of times and cry during the night. I beg to earn some money and work for other people to get something to live off. If there is something, I eat. Otherwise I just stay in this cave."
Struggling To Survive
Upon her return from Iran, Gulsom says she struggled to feed her seven young children and delivered them to a local NGO that promised her they would be taken to an orphanage.
That was five yeas ago, she says. She has not heard from them since and does not know where they are.
The local branch of Afghanistan's Department of Refugees and Repatriation says with help from several foreign NGOs it has been able to provide temporary shelter to over 100 cave dwellers.
But they admit that more than 300 are still living without support in the caves.
Gulsom says many living in the caves are struggling to survive.
Although aid agencies drop food supplies during the harsh winters, she insists that local authorities and international aid agencies have failed them -- and she is not alone.
In its latest report on the internally displaced in Afghanistan, Amnesty International documents that this problem spreads far beyond Bamiyan.
The rights organization calls on the Afghan government to do more to protect the community of internally displaced persons (IDPs) throughout the country, which it numbers at about 500,000.
IDP Numbers Rising Sharply
Despite efforts to address the issue, the number of displaced Afghans is sharply rising, according to the report, with 400 new people displaced every day.
This failure, in turn, appears to be having a negative effect on efforts to repatriate the millions of Afghan refugees living abroad.
The UNCHR has listed the Afghan government's failure in providing basic services to returning refugees and internally displaced persons as a major contributing factor to a sharp drop in the number of Afghans refugees returning home.
Amnesty International researcher Horia Mosadiq attributes such failures to a lack of political will and strategy on the part of the Afghan government.
"The evidence that Amnesty International collected is showing that the Afghan government is, unfortunately, stopping the aid agencies from delivering aid to the [IDP] community around the country," she said
[They do this because they] fear that [otherwise] it may create permanency, encourage more people to join the IDP community and at the same time, politically it doesn't look bright."
Even with its limited resources, Musadiq says in Amnesty International's latest report that Afghanistan should be able to provide aid to its displaced citizens.
But this, she says, would require that the authorities use the international aid available to them and remove conditions on humanitarian assistance.
For people like Gulsom, it appears that any form of help would go a long way toward alleviating their plight.
"I only wish to have a home, good enough so that I can live in peace," she says.
"So that when I die I will be buried in peace like other Muslims. That is all I ask for. God, please save me from this life."
RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan's Mustafa Sarwar contributed to this report
Afghanistan: Khost Residents Armed to the Teeth
Most households have at least one unlicensed weapon, despite government efforts to call them in and curb deadly feuds.
IWPR By Helal Ershad 22 Feb 12
Afghanistan - A six-month investigation conducted by IWPR suggests that 50,000 firearms are held in private hands in the Khost province of southern Afghanistan. With a total population estimated at 480,000 in a 2006 survey, that is one weapon for nearly every family in the province.
When people are involved in personal or tribal conflicts, they reach for their weapons without any fear of the law. As a result, scores of people are killed or wounded every year.
Afghan law requires a license for any firearm that is not for hunting, and the penalty for unlawful possession is a prison sentence. In reality, all kinds of unlicensed weapons are readily available at local bazaars.
Although neither the police nor human rights agencies have exact numbers on gun-related casualties, the provincial public hospital in Khost saw more than 100 people killed or wounded by guns as a result of personal or tribal feuds in 2010, according to Dr Hedayatullah Hamidi, head of the provincial health department in Khost.
Khost men claim they keep unlicensed weapons to protect themselves and their families.
They can easily buy them at a market in Miranshah, the capital of North Waziristan located on the Pakistani side of the border. Kalashnikov assault rifles, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, old bolt-action rifles and handguns manufactured in China and Russia are displayed at the market alongside Pakistani-made weapons.
Khost province shares a 196-kilometre border with the Kurram tribal agency of Pakistan. Dozens of trucks are used each day to smuggle goods, including arms and ammunition, between the two countries, according to Naqibullah Motunwal, a political analyst in Khost.
An IWPR reporter conducted 120 interviews in 60 villages in Khost’s Gurbez, Tanai, Nader Shah Kot and Mandozai (Ismail Khel) districts. A total of 98 out of the 120 people interviewed said they owned a weapon. In more than 80 per cent of the 60 villages IWPR visited, at least one person admitted owning a weapon. Interviewees estimated that two-thirds of all households possessed between one and five weapons.
“There are 500 households in our village, and two out of three households have ready access to weapons,” said Talib Jan, 41, a high school teacher in Ismail Khel district.
“I have two AK-47 assault rifles made in Russia at my house,” he said. “I clean them once a month with diesel and gun oil. I bought them at the Zadran arms market four years ago. One cost 65,000 Pakistani rupees [about 720 US dollars] and the other 75,000 rupees [830 dollars].”
Mohammad Nur, a villager from Matun, near the town of Khost, says he and his three brothers keep four AK-47s at their house.
“My brothers and I bought rifles to protect ourselves from being harmed by others. Most of the time we go about armed,” he said.
It is normal for village men to show off a weapon. They say life without a gun is impossible these days.
Hesmatullah, a 25-year-old from the village of Dab in the Tanai district, has no job but owns a Kalashnikov that cost him about 1,000 dollars, which took him several years to save up.
“I have got used to having a gun on my shoulder. If I don’t have it for a short while, I feel as if I have lost something,” he said.
While the arms markets are somewhat hidden from view from government agencies in Khost, access to them is not so difficult.
Sayed Rauf, a 23-year-old from the village of Chini village in Lakan district who last month completed his undergraduate programme in Khost University’s department of literature, said he asked one of his close friends to help him buy a Kalashnikov. Rauf finally managed to buy one for 1,052 dollars at a weapons shop near a jewellery market in Khost city.
“Living in Khost without a Kalashnikov is impossible,” Raouf said.
It is not just ordinary people who buy guns. Tanai district government chief Sayed Ahmad Wafa admits he has an illegal weapon at his home, even though the government supplies him with four bodyguards.
“I bought a Russian-made Kalashnikov, which doesn’t belong to the government, for my house,” Wafa said. He estimated that 70 per cent of the residents of Tanai district’s 124 villages own between one and three guns.
“In the villages of Tanai district alone, there are about 10,000 Kalashnikovs,” he said.
As well as young men, older tribesmen feel that having a weapon on their shoulder is a symbol of manhood and bravery.
Tur Haji, a 63-year-old tribal elder from Kondi Ister Matun, wears a leather belt across his chest that holds bullets for his Russian-made Makarov pistol. A tall man with a heavy beard, he strides around Khost city like an American cowboy.
“All of our tribes men carry weapons,” Tur Haji said. “I carry a pistol to protect myself. I am head of my tribe. Dozens of tribal heads have been killed in this city. Carrying a weapon is essential for me.”
But this access to illegal weapons contributes to the security problems in the region, according to Khost provincial governor Abdul Jabar Naimi. He says the government is trying to find new ways to collect these weapons.
He said officials managed to convince elders from four tribes – Gurbez, Shamal, Moqbel, and Mangal – members of which are often killed and wounded in disputes – to turn in their guns before the end of 2011 under the Afghan government’s Disbandment of Illegal Armed Groups (DIAG) program.
“We set a condition that anybody who violates the agreement will be fined two million afghani [40,000 dollars],” Naimi said.
He did not say whether the government had collected any fines, or how it would use the money. But he said men from the four tribes had turned in more than 100 weapons, including AK-47s, heavy machine guns and handguns.
“People in Khost have one or two Kalashnikovs to protect themselves and their houses, so collecting all of these weapons will be impossible for the government in the short term,” the governor said.
Khost provincial police chief commander Sadr Mohammad Haji agrees that the biggest challenge to security and rule of law is the availability of illegally-held guns, which encourages fighting among tribes in mountainous areas.
He said the police had stopped many inter-tribal tribal conflicts in the one year he had been in the job, by disarming what he called “irresponsible men”. He said that during four separate sweeps of the area, police confiscated between 40 and 60 weapons.
“We collected Kalashnikovs, machine guns, even Russian-made RPG launchers,” the police chief said.
Ten years ago, people in Khost had little or no access to the weapons and bullets that now hang on their walls. These days, it is as if Khost’s men believe that if life without oxygen is possible, life without a weapon is not.
Helal Ershad is an IWPR-trained reporter in Afghanistan.
Water Pollution Silent Killer in North Afghan District
Investigation suggests fatalities from drinking stagnant or polluted water are much higher than officials admit.
IWPR By Najibullah Danish 22 Feb 12
Afghanistan - In June 2011, Najibullah, a farmer from the village of Larghan, a collection of mud-walled compounds on the edge of the city of Aybak, brought his uncle and five cousins to the Samangan provincial hospital in northern Afghanistan.
All of them had been violently sick after drinking from the river that provides the village’s only source of potable water, Najibullah told an IWPR reporter at the hospital.
Illness caused by contaminated drinking water was not uncommon, the farmer said, and the problem was worsening year by year. Since 2001, increasing numbers of villagers had been struck down after drinking from the local water source, despite an influx in development aid that he and other villagers said hardly addressed the need for clean drinking water.
At the hospital, an aging facility with few beds, Dr Ahmad Shah Samie, who treated the men, confirmed that the water source was the cause of this most recent outbreak of illness.
“They were all suffering from dehydration after getting sick from drinking dirty water,” he said. “In this instance, all six were treated and survived,” he added.
Many others have not been so lucky.
Walking through the cemeteries of the villages around Aybak, a city of 170,000 not far from the border with Uzbekistan, one can see hundreds of graves of men, women and children who died prematurely. They are not victims of war. If local medical personnel and family members are to be believed, drinking water is the hidden killer, causing hundreds of deaths from dehydration, diarrhoea, typhus fever and kidney disease.
The issue came to light most recently when Dr Yusef Faez, then head of the Samangan provincial hospital, told the local Ariana TV station that only two per cent of Aybak’s residents had access to clean drinking water – a claim that is disputed by other provincial officials – and questioned why provincial officials were not addressing the problem.
The day after the interview aired, Faiez was fired from his post by Samangan governor Khairullah Anush, who was, according to officials from his office, incensed at the doctor’s temerity.
Faez’s abrupt dismissal is symptomatic of broader attitudes of official indifference toward Aybak’s water crisis, according to villagers and some officials interviewed by the IWPR reporter.
In an investigation conducted over several months, the reporter discovered that the number of deaths caused by contaminated water in villages around Aybak appears to be vastly under-reported by provincial health officials.
A handful of senior health officials admit that the issue of water-related deaths has been downplayed, saying that to reveal the true scope of the problem would expose them to severe criticism from central government.
Others, however, dismissed the claim outright, with one saying the deaths were “not the media’s business”, and another – a senior health official – refusing to allow his subordinates to talk to IWPR.
The reporter spent June and July documenting 744 deaths – 219 men, 225 women, 300 children – that occurred between 2009 and 2010 in the villages of Hasan Khil, Quch Nehal-e Bala, Quch Nehal-e Payin, Dalkhahi and Larghan. He created a basic questionnaire which he used in interviews with heads of households in the five villages, asking whether deaths had occurred in the family, what caused them, whether officials had been notified, and whether the death was linked to drinking water.
The reporter then surveyed the village cemeteries, looking for new grave sites.
Interviews conducted with village representatives confirmed that a large number of deaths had been caused by contaminated water.
Aybak, located on the banks of the river Khulm, is well-known for the melons grown in the area. Villages located some distance from the river receive irrigation water every 20 days or so. Some of this water runs into underground cisterns and the rest is stored in open-air reservoirs.
A visit to one such reservoir about seven kilometres from Aybak found about 25 women and children by the water, along with four donkeys which had walked down a series of steps cut into the earthen walls and were standing in the muddy pool at the bottom of the catchment area.
The women and children were gathering water in plastic gallon jugs. One woman filled a bowl and gave it to a donkey to drink. When the donkey finished, the woman poured the rest of the water into her plastic jug. Asked why she did this, she replied, “The water is clean, because donkeys just suck up the water like sheep. If it was a dog, it would make the water dirty, because they drink differently from donkeys.”
Nearby, a donkey urinated along the edge of the reservoir, and this ran down into the water. Half the surface of the water was choked by plants and grasses. Stirring the plants with a stick turned the water a muddy black.
After the jugs were filled, the villagers loaded them on the donkeys to take back to their homes. In front of one house belonging to a man called Shir Ali in Hasan Khil village, several one-gallon jugs sat in the open under the hot sun. One had no lid, and the water was hot to the touch.
Shir Ali, a 50-year-old who has lived in the village his entire life, described how he gets drinking water for his family. He walked over to a group of clay pots and lifting the plastic sheet covering them. The water was grey and worms could be seen in it. Ali described pouring the water through a piece of cloth to filter out the worms, saying that this prevented his family from becoming sick.
He acknowledged that these primitive measures were not enough to keep everyone healthy, and that those who did fall ill frequently had little recourse other than to wait for their sickness to end and hope they survived.
“We are poor and don’t have good water sources or [medical] facilities. When we get sick we just wait to see if we die,” he said.
While regional health officials were generally unwilling to release certificates giving cause of death, the IWPR reporter was able to review hundreds of the documents that sick villagers have to fill out before they are admitted to hospital. Village administrators have to collect these documents, which include symptoms suffered by the sick, before the patient is registered at the government hospital in Aybak, a 70-year-old facility with 30 beds and approximately 25 doctors.
The documentation revealed a haphazard registration process that frequently failed to record patients’ symptoms accurately and led to excessively broad diagnoses and vague causes of death.
Hospital administrators say they see 250 to 300 patients a month who are ill because of poor drinking water.
Dr Shafiullah, head of the provincial epidemic diseases department, acknowledged that in the past five years, dehydration, diarrhoea and typhoid fever – all caused by dirty water – topped the list of illnesses, including those with fatal outcomes.
Other hospital officials, however, estimated the number of drinking water-related deaths in 2009-10 at only around 300. Most refused to comment when shown the list of 744 deaths compiled by IWPR after a month spent interviewing family members and neighbours in villages and photographing grave markers.
Dr Abdul Hamid, director of health services for Samangan province, disputed both the number of patients and the causes of death claimed by those hospital staff who spoke to the reporter.
While visiting the Samangan hospital, IWPR’s reporter witnessed Dr Abdul Hamid accusing Dr Shafiullah of revealing “our secret information” on the number of water-related deaths.
Dr Abdul Hamid later asked the reporter not to publish the findings of the investigation, saying that to do so would lay the provincial health administration open to criticism.
“There have been too many cases involving deaths during that period if this list of deaths is published, the Ministry of Health will order an investigation into the [provincial] health department about this,” he said.
In Kabul, a spokesman for the health ministry dismissed claims that a large number of deaths can be attributed to poor quality drinking water.
“In Afghanistan, 27 per cent of people do not have access to clean drinking water, but this is not the cause of any of the deaths that you mention,” said the spokesman, Ghulam Sakhi.
In Aybak, the official response to difficult questions about water quality and the link to rising numbers of deaths has been to refer the matter further up the administrative ladder.
“If people want to have clean water, they should put pressure on the governor, the mayor and other representatives,” Ahmad Ali Tamsake, a member of Samangan’s provincial council, said. “If they don’t, this [officials] unresponsiveness will not stop.”
Governor Anush refused IWPR’s repeated requests for an interview, directing him instead to his spokesman, Sediq Azizi.
“These people are not neglected. Every year we present our problems to the ministries in Kabul, but they have not taken any action yet,” Azizi said. “But basically, these deaths are the will of Allah. They are not the media’s business at all. It isn’t the governor’s fault that wells cannot be dug in Aybak.”
Other officials in the provincial government – the mayor if Aybak, the head of reconstruction programmes in Aybak, Mohammad Aman Amin, and water department head Mohammad Rasul, claimed to know nothing about deaths from contaminated water.
None would comment on the situation, though Mohammad Aman Amin claimed the government had spent four million US dollars in the past four years on improving drinking water across the province. He said dozens of 300-cubic-metre covered reservoirs had been built in and around Aybak.
Villagers say the illnesses continue, and that the reservoirs are uncovered and the water unfiltered.
In Kabul, health ministry spokesman Sakhi said his ministry was not responsible for providing clean drinking water. “Distribution is not our responsibility. We only provide medical services,” he said.
Villagers in Hasan Khil say they expect one or two relatives to die every summer, the period when good-quality drinking water is least available. But they say they have recently carried so many family members to their graves that they do not cry any more.
Shir Ali told the reporter that two years ago, his 12 year-old daughter fell ill after drinking water.
“Moment by moment her condition worsened and she was in great pain,” he said. “The following morning, I took her to a doctor who told me, ‘Your daughter has cholera and she’ll probably die in one or two days.’ She actually died five hours after arriving home later that day.”
Najibullah Danish is an IWPR-trained reporter in Afghanistan.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
By Matt Spetalnick and Laura MacInnis
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama apologized on Thursday for the burning of copies of the Koran on a U.S. base in Afghanistan as the White House sought to quell spiraling furor among Afghans while also staving off Republican criticism at home.
In a letter to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Obama apologized over the incident in which Afghan workers found charred copies of the Muslim holy book on a military base near Kabul, White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters aboard Air Force One.
Carney said the incident, which has sparked angry protests against U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan and underscored the divide between many Afghans and the foreign forces who have been battling the Taliban for a decade, was not intentional.
While Carney said the apology was "wholly appropriate given the sensitivities" about treatment of the Koran, he said Obama's primary concern was "the safety of American men and women in Afghanistan, of our military and civilian personnel there."
The burnings could make it even more difficult for U.S.-led NATO forces to win the hearts and minds of Afghans and bring the Taliban and Afghan government to the negotiating table ahead of the withdrawal of most foreign combat troops by the end of 2014.
Only last month, U.S. officials rushed to respond to fallout from a video showing U.S. forces urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
A spokesman for the NATO-led force said on Wednesday troops involved in the Koran-burning incident should have known to check with cultural advisers to determine how to dispose of religious material properly.
Some of the material had been removed from a military detention center, a U.S. official said, because of concerns that some of it was extremist in nature and being used to pass messages among prisoners.
Afghan anger has mounted this week. Muslims consider the Koran the literal word of God and treat each copy with deep reverence.
COMPLICATES PEACE PROCESS
The Taliban has urged Afghans to target foreign military bases and kill Westerners in retaliation for the Koran burning at Bagram airfield near Kabul.
On Thursday, a man in an Afghan army uniform killed two American troops in the east, but it was unclear if the shooting was connected to the protests.
Tommy Vietor, another White House spokesman, said U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker had delivered the letter from Obama, which was a follow-up to a phone call he had with Karzai earlier in the week to discuss the future of U.S.-Afghan ties.
"In the letter ... the president also expressed our regret and apologies over the incident in which religious materials were unintentionally mishandled at Bagram Airbase," Vietor said.
While the Obama administration has ordered an investigation, Afghanistan is demanding NATO put the troops who burned the Koran on public trial.
Such demands could complicate U.S. diplomats' efforts to nudge a nascent peace process ahead as they try to broker political talks between the Taliban and Afghan government.
As the November U.S. presidential elections approach, in which Obama will seek a second term, Carney also attempted to head off criticism from Republicans, who have repeatedly accused Obama of apologizing unnecessarily for U.S. actions abroad.
He said those accusations were "wholly false, fallacious and ridiculous," and pointed out that the administration of Obama's Republican predecessor, President George W. Bush, had apologized when a U.S. soldier shot a Koran in Iraq.
Newt Gingrich, the Republican presidential candidate and former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, said Obama had failed to hold Afghanistan and other allies responsible for violence within their own countries.
"It is an outrage that President Obama is the one apologizing to Afghan President Karzai on the same day two American troops were murdered and four others injured by an Afghan soldier. It is Hamid Karzai who owes the American people an apology, not the other way around," he said in a statement.
(Editing by Missy Ryan and Todd Eastham)
Afghanistan demands NATO put Koran-burners on trial
By Mirwais Harooni and Amie Ferris-Rotman
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan wants NATO to put on public trial those who burned copies of the Koran at a NATO base, President Hamid Karzai's office said on Thursday, after a third day of bloody protests over the incident.
It said NATO had agreed to a trial, but that could not be immediately confirmed.
Karzai had earlier accused a U.S. officer of "ignorantly" burning copies of the Koran, in an incident that has deepened anti-Western sentiment in a country NATO is trying to stabilize before foreign combat troops leave by the end of 2014.
Demonstrations have drawn thousands of angry Afghans to the streets, chanting "Death to America!" amid violence that has killed 11 people including two U.S. service personnel.
"NATO officials, in response to a request for the trial and punishment of the perpetrators ... promised this crime will brought to court as soon as possible," Karzai's office said in a statement.
President Barack Obama sent a letter to Karzai apologizing for the burning of the Korans, after Afghan laborers found charred copies while collecting rubbish at the sprawling Bagram air base.
Obama told Karzai the incident was not intentional.
The letter, which the White House said was a follow-up to a phone call earlier this week between the two leaders to discuss a "long-term partnership" between Washington and Kabul, was delivered to Karzai by U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker.
Karzai's office said in a statement Obama had promised to investigate those involved in the incident.
Karzai said the American officer had acted "out of ignorance and with poor understanding" of the Koran's importance, a presidential statement said.
TALIBAN CALL
The Taliban urged Afghan security forces to "turn their guns on the foreign infidel invaders," it said on its site shahamat-english.com.
A U.S. official in Washington said two NATO soldiers killed by a man in Afghan army uniform were Americans.
NATO confirmed a man in Afghan army uniform had killed two of its troops in the east, but declined to say if the shooting was connected to the protests.
Muslims consider the Koran the literal word of God and treat each copy with deep reverence. Desecration is considered one of the worst forms of blasphemy.
A protest of around 500 people turned violent in the capital Kabul, with police and plain-clothes intelligence officers charging demonstrators wearing bandanas and hurling rocks and sticks, firing low above their heads and sending them fleeing.
A wounded youth lay on a road, blood pouring from his side. Crouched over and cradling him, a relative appealed to the Afghan government.
"Ministry of the Interior! Don't you see we are fighting NATO?" said the man.
Masked men sped by on a motorcycle blasting a battle song played by the Taliban insurgency, while police in machinegun-mounted pick-up trucks picked up the wounded.
"Our brave people must target the military bases of the invaders, their military convoys and their invader forces," read an e-mailed Taliban statement released by the insurgency's spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.
"They have to kill them (Westerners), beat them and capture them to give them a lesson to never dare desecrate the holy Koran again."
FOREIGN BASES ATTACKED
Most Westerners were confined to their heavily fortified compounds, including the sprawling U.S. embassy complex and other embassies in central Kabul.
Around 400 protesters hurled rocks and set fire to cars at a Norwegian-led military base in Faryab province on the Turkmen border, which is centre for around 500 soldiers and civilians from Norway, Latvia, Macedonia, Iceland and the United States.
Twelve protesters were wounded in the attack, the head of the regional hospital Abdul Alim said, but Norway's ambassador to Kabul, Tore Hattrem, told Reuters no one was hurt and there was minimal damage.
A small number protested at a French military base in the eastern Kapisa province but police deterred them successfully, its police chief Abdul Hamid said.
The uproar could complicate efforts by U.S. and NATO forces to reach agreement with the Afghan government on a strategic pact that would allow a sharply reduced number of Western troops to stay in the country, well beyond their combat exit deadline, to oversee Afghan forces.
Hundreds of protesting students in Jalalabad rejected any strategic pact with the United States, saying they would "take up jihad" if one were sealed.
(Additional reporting by Mohammad Hamid in Kunduz, Rafiq Shirzad in Jalalabad, Akram Walizada and Omar Sobhani in Kabul and Elyas Wahdat and Obaidullah in Logar; Writing by Amie Ferris-Rotman and Rob Taylor; Editing by Michael Georgy, Ed Lane and Andrew Roche)
NATO: Gunman in Afghan Army Uniform Kills 2 Coalition Soldiers
VOA News February 23, 2012
NATO officials say someone wearing an Afghan army uniform has shot dead two coalition service members in eastern Afghanistan, while protests over the burning of Qurans at a NATO facility continued for a third day.
It was not immediately clear if the NATO deaths Thursday were related to the demonstrations that have erupted across the country. But the Taliban issued a statement earlier calling on Afghans to launch attacks on foreign targets in retaliation for the desecration of the Muslim holy book.
Hundreds of protesters attacked a U.S.-run base in eastern Laghman province, where they stormed the walls and threw rocks. In northern Baghlan province, officials said gunfire killed one protester and wounded at least two police officers.
Meanwhile, Afghan President Hamid Karzai's office said it has received a letter from U.S. President Barack Obama formally apologizing for the incident.
In the letter, Obama expresses his “deep regret” and offers his “sincere apologies.” He writes that “the error was inadvertent” and that officials will take the “appropriate steps” to avoid any recurrence and hold those accountable responsible.
On Wednesday, President Karzai appealed for calm, saying citizens have the right to protest, but should not resort to violence. Since the demonstrations erupted Tuesday, clashes between Afghan security forces and protesters have left at least 11 people dead.
Nazif Shahrani, an Afghan native who is a South Asia analyst at Indiana University, told VOA the protests are about more than this one incident.
“What people seem to perceive is that the U.S. has essentially not kept its promises and that all the promises have been false. And these are really symptoms of that anger and that disappointment toward the United States. And it's hoped that the United States government looks at this issue more broadly than just apologizing for what has happened in Bagram.”
U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter met Wednesday in Kabul with Afghan leaders, including President Karzai, to again apologize for the incident.
The commander of the international coalition, U.S. General John Allen, had issued an apology Tuesday, saying the improper disposal of Islamic religious texts was “not intentional in any way.” He has ordered an investigation.
Protesters told VOA Wednesday that they want the Americans out of their country and that words alone cannot change the disrespect that Muslims have suffered.
Media reports quote unnamed Western officials with knowledge of the incident as saying it appeared that the copies of the Quran in question and other Islamic readings in the library at Bagram were being used to fuel extremism, and that detainees were writing on the documents to exchange extremist messages.
Afghan protests against the destruction of the Muslim holy book have turned deadly in recent years. In April 2011, about 20 people were killed during several days of protests across Afghanistan after little-known U.S. pastor Terry Jones burned a Quran at his small Florida church.
Koran Burning in Afghanistan Fuels Bloody New Attacks on U.S. Forces
By Yochi J. Dreazen | National Journal
The deaths of a pair of American soldiers in Afghanistan Thursday highlights the bloody intersection of two dangerous aspects of the long war there: the growing Afghan fury over the burning of Korans and the continued killings of Western troops by their Afghan counterparts.
An Afghan soldier shot and killed the U.S. soldiers at an outpost in eastern Afghanistan’s Nangarhar Province and then, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter, fled into the large crowd of demonstrators outside the base. They were protesting reports that American troops had burned copies of the Koran, the holiest text in Islam. Elsewhere, a large crowd of protesters also threw stones at a U.S. base in eastern Afghanistan’s Laghman Province, while Afghan police fired on protesters in northern Afghanistan’s Baghlan Province, killing at least one person.
The increasingly large and violent protests began Tuesday, when the U.S.-led military alliance confirmed that “religious materials” were accidentally burned at a sprawling American base in eastern Afghanistan.
President Obama sent a letter to Afghan President Hamid Karzai apologizing for the incident, echoing similar expressions of regret from top administration and military officials. But the apologies have done nothing to assuage public fury in Afghanistan. At least 13 Afghans have died this week, and the riots – and their resulting death tolls – seem certain to escalate in the days ahead.
Fury in Afghanistan and other parts of the Muslim world over reports of U.S. troops descerating the Koran is not new. A Newsweek article in 2005 reported that an American interrogator at Guantanamo Bay flushed a copy of the Koran down a toilet. The article was later retracted, but not before sparking violent protests in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Indonesia. At least 16 people were killed.
There was more violence last March in response to a Florida pastor publicly burning copies of the Koran. Those riots left roughly 24 people dead, including seven United Nations employees killed in what remains the world body’s largest one-day death toll in Afghanistan.
The Koran-related anger may now threaten more Afghan troops to turn their weapons on their American counterparts, a growing trend concerning American policymakers here and in Afghanistan. Taliban officials are already exploiting the widespread fury towards the U.S. In a statement cited by the Associated Press, a Taliban spokesman said destroying the Korans was an “unforgivable crime” and explicitly encouraged Afghan soldiers and police officers to “become real sons of the nation” by killing U.S. and NATO troops.
It’s not clear that extremists within the ranks of the Afghan military need much encouragement to target their American counterparts. Indeed, the two U.S. soldiers killed during the protests in Nangarhar Thursday were the latest additions to a grim tally of so-called “green on green” violence (the phrase is a reference to the color of the uniforms historically worn by military personnel) throughout Afghanistan.
This year alone, an Afghan soldier opened fire at U.S. soldiers playing volleyball at a base, killing one and wounding several others. Another Afghan soldier killed four French soldiers less than a week later, prompting Paris to suspend its training mission in Afghanistan and threaten to accelerate its withdrawal from the country.
U.S. officials had consistently argued that such attacks were motivated by financial problems, personal stress and other prosaic concerns, not ideological affinity with the Taliban. But that case is increasingly difficult to make as more and more Western troops die at the hands of their Afghan counterparts.
A leaked report prepared last year for the American military command in Kabul found that Afghan soldiers and police officers attacked Western troops at least 26 times between May 2007 and May 2011, killing approximately 58 U.S. and NATO troops. The pace of such attacks has been steadily increasing since 2009, the report found. The worst single incident occurred in April 2009, when an Afghan officer killed eight American troops and one U.S. contractor.
“Lethal altercations are clearly not rare or isolated; they reflect a rapidly growing systemic homicide threat (a magnitude of which may be unprecedented between ‘allies’ in modern military history),” the report said, according to The New York Times, which obtained a copy. U.S and NATO declarations that the attackers were motivated by factors other than ideology “seem disingenuous, if not profoundly intellectually dishonest,” the report said.
All of those attacks took place before the fury unleashed by the Koran burnings, suggesting that there is already a pool of Afghan troops pre-disposed to committing acts of violence against Western troops. The Taliban are calling for more such attacks. Barring something unforeseen, extremist Afghan troops seem likely to listen.
Will direct talks lead to durable peace in Afghanistan?
by Abdul Haleem, Yangtze Yan
KABUL, Feb. 23 (Xinhua) -- Amid reported U.S.-Taliban peace talks in Qatar and continued Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has once again offered talks to the Taliban outfit and urged Pakistan to support the peace process.
"In order to realize the objectives of the peace process, I invite the leadership of the Taliban to engage in direct talks with the Afghan government," Karzai said in a statement released by his office Wednesday.
The Afghan leader in the statement described Pakistan's role in Afghan peace process as significantly crucial and called upon the neighboring state to support and facilitate the direct negotiations.
For the first time ever, Karzai officially announced the offer, days after a trilateral summit attended by himself and his Pakistani and Iranian counterparts in Islamabad. In the summit concluded on Feb. 17, the trio issued a join communique reiterating their full support for an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned inclusive process of peace and reconciliation.
However, Afghan analysts who believe the invitation has opened the door for the peace talks are also skeptical about the government's initiative to bring the Taliban outfit to dialogue table.
"Inviting Taliban for direct talks is an initiative to encourage the outfit to act independently in peace interaction without Pakistan influence," said Ahmad Zia Rafat, a Kabul University professor.
The analyst was of the view that Pakistan has enough influence on the anti-government armed groups and thus its support is crucial to any peace efforts.
"Since Pakistan has influence over the insurgent groups, its role in making the proposed peace talks successful is very important. No peace efforts will deliver unless the Pakistani government supports," Rafat told Xinhua.
The Afghan government believes that Taliban leadership has been living in Pakistan, a claim often rejected by Islamabad as baseless. Karzai during his recent visit to Pakistan has reportedly asked the latter to facilitate direct talks with the elusive Taliban chief, Mullah Mohammad Omar.
However, Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar has utterly rejected the presence of Taliban leadership in her country, saying "any expectation that Pakistan can deliver the Taliban's chief for talks is not only unrealistic, but preposterous."
The Afghan president during his Islamabad tour had also held meetings with several political and religious leaders including Mawlana Samiul Haq -- a religious leader believed to have close relations with Taliban, and sought his support for encouraging Taliban to join peace negotiation.
"This is a positive step to encourage Taliban for direct interaction but the roadmap to reach destination is very complicated," said Saifudin Saihoon, a political observer and also Kabul University professor.
The ambiguity shrouds over the address of Taliban leadership. Afghans believe the Taliban leadership council known as "Quetta Shura" has been operating in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta, a claim also rejected by Pakistan as groundless.
Taliban militants, who had in the past rejected any Afghan government's offer for talks, conditioning any dialogue with the pullout of NATO-led foreign forces from the country, have yet to comment on the latest offer.
"In the absence of a comprehensive roadmap for peace talks it is difficult to achieve the goal," said Saihoon, arguing that the proposed peace dialogue avenue in Qatar, Saudi Arabia or Turkey will not lay out the desired outcome unless the address of Taliban is known.
Afghan Female Senator Allegedly Linked To Kidnapping
By RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan February 23, 2012
KABUL -- The office of Afghanistan's Attorney General alleges that female Senator Fawzia Sadaat has links with a criminal group involved in kidnapping.
Deputy Attorney General Rahmatullo Nazari said the office had sent a letter to the senate on February 23 asking it to strip Sadaat of her immunity to pave the way for launching a criminal probe against her.
According to Nazari, prosecutors have obtained documents indicating Sadaat's association with a criminal group allegedly led by her brother, who is currently under arrest.
Sadaat denies the allegation.
Officials: Afghanistan, US looking at removing detention, night raids from partnership talks
Associated Press 22/02/2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - The U.S. and the Afghan governments are considering pushing through a long-delayed partnership agreement by moving the contentious issues of night raids and control over detainees to separate negotiations, officials from both countries said.
The two governments have been working for about a year to nail down the terms of a strategic partnership document that would govern U.S. operations in Afghanistan after 2014, when the Afghan government is expected to take charge of security countrywide.
The pact is expected to provide for several thousand U.S. troops to stay in the country to train Afghan forces and help with counterterrorism operations. It will outline the legal status of those forces in Afghanistan, their operating rules and where they will be based.
The agreement is seen as key to assuring the Afghan people that the U.S. does not plan to abandon the country, even as its draws down troops and cuts aid funding.
Both sides also hope it will settle several divisive issues over how American troops will operate in Afghanistan.
A major stumbling point arose when Afghan President Hamid Karzai demanded control over detainees and an end to unpopular night raids by U.S. troops as a condition of the pact. The U.S. has said that night raids are a key part of its strategy in Afghanistan. The Obama administration also has said that the Afghan judicial system is not yet capable of taking over responsibility for dangerous battlefield detainees.
The impasse has threatened to derail the accord, which both sides say they want to sign before a NATO summit in Chicago in May.
To break the stalemate, the two governments have agreed in principle that “the transfer of detention facilities and night operations to Afghan lead and control will be dealt with separately as short-term issues,” said an Afghan official familiar with the talks.
A U.S. official confirmed that the two sides have discussed splitting the negotiations along the same lines and that U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta would agree to the split if necessary.
However, Panetta still prefers one comprehensive package and is pushing to find a way to settle everything together in one document, the official said.
Both the Afghan and U.S. officials spoke anonymously to discuss ongoing negotiations.
To split the negotiations would be a change of stance for Karzai, who has taken a strong position on issues which his government says are linked to Afghanistan’s national sovereignty.
“The two obstacles which are in front of this document are the night raids and the issue of the prison,” said Emal Faizi, a spokesman for Karzai. “We want to have an agreement on these issues before signing the document.”
Karzai’s deputy national security adviser also said that he cannot see an acceptable way of separating the issues.
“Ensuring Afghan sovereignty is on the top of our objectives ... Addressing night raids and detentions are the core issues of this document,” Shaida Mohammad Abdali said.
Karzai is standing firm publicly. On detainees, he has set a deadline of March 9 for the Americans to transfer control of their main prison in the country — the Parwan Detention Facility, which adjoins Bagram Air Field in eastern Afghanistan.
A spokesman for the U.S. detention operation said such dates are targets.
The date for handing over the Parwan facility “has always been ‘conditions based,’” said Capt. Kevin Aandahl, a spokesman for the task force overseeing U.S. detention operations in Afghanistan. He said that the U.S. will hand over the Parwan prison once it has decided that the Afghan government has the “capacity to effectively handle the operations conducted at the facility.”
Meanwhile, the Americans have stood strong on the need for night raids, saying that the operations are one of its most effective tools for finding and capturing insurgents, especially with fewer traditional forces.
Karzai has said that Afghans should be the only ones doing night raids because the invasion of privacy from troops entering a families’ home is compounded when the soldiers are Westerners. He has also said that too many of these night raids have resulted in civilian deaths.
___
Associated Press writers Anne Gearan in Washington and Deb Riechmann in Kabul contributed to this report.
War Leaves Half Million Homeless in Afghanistan
February 23, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Amnesty International says war has left half a million people homeless in Afghanistan.
In a fresh report, the international rights group says around 400 people seek shelter in makeshift camps around the country every day.
Their plight is made worse, according to Amnesty International, by government and international neglect.
The report calls on the government to remove conditions placed on humanitarian assistance and on international donors to "ensure that their humanitarian assistance addresses the needs of internally displaced people."
Kabul alone houses up to 35,000 displaced persons in 30 slum areas around the city, according to the report.
Many said they had fled to the capital to escape the worsening conflict elsewhere in the country.
Based on AFP reporting
No Refuge From Misery For Afghanistan's Displaced
February 23, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty By Ali Erfan, Frud Bezhan
To the casual observer the thousands of caves that dot the sandstone cliffs of the ancient Afghan city of Bamiyan hearken to another era, when monks visiting the region's famous Buddha statues took residence there.
But for hundreds of Afghans, the caves represent their current reality.
The new residents have been forced to seek refuge in the caves, unable to return to areas they originally fled due to insecurity and the destruction of their former homes and villages.
Upon their return to their native lands they have found it a struggle to survive, with basic essentials such as food, shelter, and healthcare in short supply.
One is Gulsom, a 34-year-old mother of seven who has lived in the Bamiyan caves for over five years.
Gulsom, who only has one name, returned to Bamiyan after she and her children were deported from Iran.
After travelling to her former village and finding it deserted and completely destroyed, Gulsom followed the footsteps of hundreds of other returnees and displaced families in the region and moved into a cave.
Abandoned By The Authorities
She claims that she has received little help from local authorities or aid agencies and, with her children having been taken away and her husband deceased, she has been left to fend for herself.
To get by, Gulsom scavenges for firewood and food and travels to a stream kilometers from her home to collect water for drinking and bathing.
That cave that Gulsom calls home is approximately 2 meters wide, with only a slanted wooden door to protect it from the elements.
The only light in the room comes from a hole in a wall that has been sealed by plastic. There is no toilet, she says.
Gulsom lists few possessions. She owns an old rug that she sleeps on along with some clothes and a few rusted utensils she uses to cook and eat with.
"I have no work here," she says. "I stay hungry a lot of times and cry during the night. I beg to earn some money and work for other people to get something to live off. If there is something, I eat. Otherwise I just stay in this cave."
Struggling To Survive
Upon her return from Iran, Gulsom says she struggled to feed her seven young children and delivered them to a local NGO that promised her they would be taken to an orphanage.
That was five yeas ago, she says. She has not heard from them since and does not know where they are.
The local branch of Afghanistan's Department of Refugees and Repatriation says with help from several foreign NGOs it has been able to provide temporary shelter to over 100 cave dwellers.
But they admit that more than 300 are still living without support in the caves.
Gulsom says many living in the caves are struggling to survive.
Although aid agencies drop food supplies during the harsh winters, she insists that local authorities and international aid agencies have failed them -- and she is not alone.
In its latest report on the internally displaced in Afghanistan, Amnesty International documents that this problem spreads far beyond Bamiyan.
The rights organization calls on the Afghan government to do more to protect the community of internally displaced persons (IDPs) throughout the country, which it numbers at about 500,000.
IDP Numbers Rising Sharply
Despite efforts to address the issue, the number of displaced Afghans is sharply rising, according to the report, with 400 new people displaced every day.
This failure, in turn, appears to be having a negative effect on efforts to repatriate the millions of Afghan refugees living abroad.
The UNCHR has listed the Afghan government's failure in providing basic services to returning refugees and internally displaced persons as a major contributing factor to a sharp drop in the number of Afghans refugees returning home.
Amnesty International researcher Horia Mosadiq attributes such failures to a lack of political will and strategy on the part of the Afghan government.
"The evidence that Amnesty International collected is showing that the Afghan government is, unfortunately, stopping the aid agencies from delivering aid to the [IDP] community around the country," she said
[They do this because they] fear that [otherwise] it may create permanency, encourage more people to join the IDP community and at the same time, politically it doesn't look bright."
Even with its limited resources, Musadiq says in Amnesty International's latest report that Afghanistan should be able to provide aid to its displaced citizens.
But this, she says, would require that the authorities use the international aid available to them and remove conditions on humanitarian assistance.
For people like Gulsom, it appears that any form of help would go a long way toward alleviating their plight.
"I only wish to have a home, good enough so that I can live in peace," she says.
"So that when I die I will be buried in peace like other Muslims. That is all I ask for. God, please save me from this life."
RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan's Mustafa Sarwar contributed to this report
Afghanistan: Khost Residents Armed to the Teeth
Most households have at least one unlicensed weapon, despite government efforts to call them in and curb deadly feuds.
IWPR By Helal Ershad 22 Feb 12
Afghanistan - A six-month investigation conducted by IWPR suggests that 50,000 firearms are held in private hands in the Khost province of southern Afghanistan. With a total population estimated at 480,000 in a 2006 survey, that is one weapon for nearly every family in the province.
When people are involved in personal or tribal conflicts, they reach for their weapons without any fear of the law. As a result, scores of people are killed or wounded every year.
Afghan law requires a license for any firearm that is not for hunting, and the penalty for unlawful possession is a prison sentence. In reality, all kinds of unlicensed weapons are readily available at local bazaars.
Although neither the police nor human rights agencies have exact numbers on gun-related casualties, the provincial public hospital in Khost saw more than 100 people killed or wounded by guns as a result of personal or tribal feuds in 2010, according to Dr Hedayatullah Hamidi, head of the provincial health department in Khost.
Khost men claim they keep unlicensed weapons to protect themselves and their families.
They can easily buy them at a market in Miranshah, the capital of North Waziristan located on the Pakistani side of the border. Kalashnikov assault rifles, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, old bolt-action rifles and handguns manufactured in China and Russia are displayed at the market alongside Pakistani-made weapons.
Khost province shares a 196-kilometre border with the Kurram tribal agency of Pakistan. Dozens of trucks are used each day to smuggle goods, including arms and ammunition, between the two countries, according to Naqibullah Motunwal, a political analyst in Khost.
An IWPR reporter conducted 120 interviews in 60 villages in Khost’s Gurbez, Tanai, Nader Shah Kot and Mandozai (Ismail Khel) districts. A total of 98 out of the 120 people interviewed said they owned a weapon. In more than 80 per cent of the 60 villages IWPR visited, at least one person admitted owning a weapon. Interviewees estimated that two-thirds of all households possessed between one and five weapons.
“There are 500 households in our village, and two out of three households have ready access to weapons,” said Talib Jan, 41, a high school teacher in Ismail Khel district.
“I have two AK-47 assault rifles made in Russia at my house,” he said. “I clean them once a month with diesel and gun oil. I bought them at the Zadran arms market four years ago. One cost 65,000 Pakistani rupees [about 720 US dollars] and the other 75,000 rupees [830 dollars].”
Mohammad Nur, a villager from Matun, near the town of Khost, says he and his three brothers keep four AK-47s at their house.
“My brothers and I bought rifles to protect ourselves from being harmed by others. Most of the time we go about armed,” he said.
It is normal for village men to show off a weapon. They say life without a gun is impossible these days.
Hesmatullah, a 25-year-old from the village of Dab in the Tanai district, has no job but owns a Kalashnikov that cost him about 1,000 dollars, which took him several years to save up.
“I have got used to having a gun on my shoulder. If I don’t have it for a short while, I feel as if I have lost something,” he said.
While the arms markets are somewhat hidden from view from government agencies in Khost, access to them is not so difficult.
Sayed Rauf, a 23-year-old from the village of Chini village in Lakan district who last month completed his undergraduate programme in Khost University’s department of literature, said he asked one of his close friends to help him buy a Kalashnikov. Rauf finally managed to buy one for 1,052 dollars at a weapons shop near a jewellery market in Khost city.
“Living in Khost without a Kalashnikov is impossible,” Raouf said.
It is not just ordinary people who buy guns. Tanai district government chief Sayed Ahmad Wafa admits he has an illegal weapon at his home, even though the government supplies him with four bodyguards.
“I bought a Russian-made Kalashnikov, which doesn’t belong to the government, for my house,” Wafa said. He estimated that 70 per cent of the residents of Tanai district’s 124 villages own between one and three guns.
“In the villages of Tanai district alone, there are about 10,000 Kalashnikovs,” he said.
As well as young men, older tribesmen feel that having a weapon on their shoulder is a symbol of manhood and bravery.
Tur Haji, a 63-year-old tribal elder from Kondi Ister Matun, wears a leather belt across his chest that holds bullets for his Russian-made Makarov pistol. A tall man with a heavy beard, he strides around Khost city like an American cowboy.
“All of our tribes men carry weapons,” Tur Haji said. “I carry a pistol to protect myself. I am head of my tribe. Dozens of tribal heads have been killed in this city. Carrying a weapon is essential for me.”
But this access to illegal weapons contributes to the security problems in the region, according to Khost provincial governor Abdul Jabar Naimi. He says the government is trying to find new ways to collect these weapons.
He said officials managed to convince elders from four tribes – Gurbez, Shamal, Moqbel, and Mangal – members of which are often killed and wounded in disputes – to turn in their guns before the end of 2011 under the Afghan government’s Disbandment of Illegal Armed Groups (DIAG) program.
“We set a condition that anybody who violates the agreement will be fined two million afghani [40,000 dollars],” Naimi said.
He did not say whether the government had collected any fines, or how it would use the money. But he said men from the four tribes had turned in more than 100 weapons, including AK-47s, heavy machine guns and handguns.
“People in Khost have one or two Kalashnikovs to protect themselves and their houses, so collecting all of these weapons will be impossible for the government in the short term,” the governor said.
Khost provincial police chief commander Sadr Mohammad Haji agrees that the biggest challenge to security and rule of law is the availability of illegally-held guns, which encourages fighting among tribes in mountainous areas.
He said the police had stopped many inter-tribal tribal conflicts in the one year he had been in the job, by disarming what he called “irresponsible men”. He said that during four separate sweeps of the area, police confiscated between 40 and 60 weapons.
“We collected Kalashnikovs, machine guns, even Russian-made RPG launchers,” the police chief said.
Ten years ago, people in Khost had little or no access to the weapons and bullets that now hang on their walls. These days, it is as if Khost’s men believe that if life without oxygen is possible, life without a weapon is not.
Helal Ershad is an IWPR-trained reporter in Afghanistan.
Water Pollution Silent Killer in North Afghan District
Investigation suggests fatalities from drinking stagnant or polluted water are much higher than officials admit.
IWPR By Najibullah Danish 22 Feb 12
Afghanistan - In June 2011, Najibullah, a farmer from the village of Larghan, a collection of mud-walled compounds on the edge of the city of Aybak, brought his uncle and five cousins to the Samangan provincial hospital in northern Afghanistan.
All of them had been violently sick after drinking from the river that provides the village’s only source of potable water, Najibullah told an IWPR reporter at the hospital.
Illness caused by contaminated drinking water was not uncommon, the farmer said, and the problem was worsening year by year. Since 2001, increasing numbers of villagers had been struck down after drinking from the local water source, despite an influx in development aid that he and other villagers said hardly addressed the need for clean drinking water.
At the hospital, an aging facility with few beds, Dr Ahmad Shah Samie, who treated the men, confirmed that the water source was the cause of this most recent outbreak of illness.
“They were all suffering from dehydration after getting sick from drinking dirty water,” he said. “In this instance, all six were treated and survived,” he added.
Many others have not been so lucky.
Walking through the cemeteries of the villages around Aybak, a city of 170,000 not far from the border with Uzbekistan, one can see hundreds of graves of men, women and children who died prematurely. They are not victims of war. If local medical personnel and family members are to be believed, drinking water is the hidden killer, causing hundreds of deaths from dehydration, diarrhoea, typhus fever and kidney disease.
The issue came to light most recently when Dr Yusef Faez, then head of the Samangan provincial hospital, told the local Ariana TV station that only two per cent of Aybak’s residents had access to clean drinking water – a claim that is disputed by other provincial officials – and questioned why provincial officials were not addressing the problem.
The day after the interview aired, Faiez was fired from his post by Samangan governor Khairullah Anush, who was, according to officials from his office, incensed at the doctor’s temerity.
Faez’s abrupt dismissal is symptomatic of broader attitudes of official indifference toward Aybak’s water crisis, according to villagers and some officials interviewed by the IWPR reporter.
In an investigation conducted over several months, the reporter discovered that the number of deaths caused by contaminated water in villages around Aybak appears to be vastly under-reported by provincial health officials.
A handful of senior health officials admit that the issue of water-related deaths has been downplayed, saying that to reveal the true scope of the problem would expose them to severe criticism from central government.
Others, however, dismissed the claim outright, with one saying the deaths were “not the media’s business”, and another – a senior health official – refusing to allow his subordinates to talk to IWPR.
The reporter spent June and July documenting 744 deaths – 219 men, 225 women, 300 children – that occurred between 2009 and 2010 in the villages of Hasan Khil, Quch Nehal-e Bala, Quch Nehal-e Payin, Dalkhahi and Larghan. He created a basic questionnaire which he used in interviews with heads of households in the five villages, asking whether deaths had occurred in the family, what caused them, whether officials had been notified, and whether the death was linked to drinking water.
The reporter then surveyed the village cemeteries, looking for new grave sites.
Interviews conducted with village representatives confirmed that a large number of deaths had been caused by contaminated water.
Aybak, located on the banks of the river Khulm, is well-known for the melons grown in the area. Villages located some distance from the river receive irrigation water every 20 days or so. Some of this water runs into underground cisterns and the rest is stored in open-air reservoirs.
A visit to one such reservoir about seven kilometres from Aybak found about 25 women and children by the water, along with four donkeys which had walked down a series of steps cut into the earthen walls and were standing in the muddy pool at the bottom of the catchment area.
The women and children were gathering water in plastic gallon jugs. One woman filled a bowl and gave it to a donkey to drink. When the donkey finished, the woman poured the rest of the water into her plastic jug. Asked why she did this, she replied, “The water is clean, because donkeys just suck up the water like sheep. If it was a dog, it would make the water dirty, because they drink differently from donkeys.”
Nearby, a donkey urinated along the edge of the reservoir, and this ran down into the water. Half the surface of the water was choked by plants and grasses. Stirring the plants with a stick turned the water a muddy black.
After the jugs were filled, the villagers loaded them on the donkeys to take back to their homes. In front of one house belonging to a man called Shir Ali in Hasan Khil village, several one-gallon jugs sat in the open under the hot sun. One had no lid, and the water was hot to the touch.
Shir Ali, a 50-year-old who has lived in the village his entire life, described how he gets drinking water for his family. He walked over to a group of clay pots and lifting the plastic sheet covering them. The water was grey and worms could be seen in it. Ali described pouring the water through a piece of cloth to filter out the worms, saying that this prevented his family from becoming sick.
He acknowledged that these primitive measures were not enough to keep everyone healthy, and that those who did fall ill frequently had little recourse other than to wait for their sickness to end and hope they survived.
“We are poor and don’t have good water sources or [medical] facilities. When we get sick we just wait to see if we die,” he said.
While regional health officials were generally unwilling to release certificates giving cause of death, the IWPR reporter was able to review hundreds of the documents that sick villagers have to fill out before they are admitted to hospital. Village administrators have to collect these documents, which include symptoms suffered by the sick, before the patient is registered at the government hospital in Aybak, a 70-year-old facility with 30 beds and approximately 25 doctors.
The documentation revealed a haphazard registration process that frequently failed to record patients’ symptoms accurately and led to excessively broad diagnoses and vague causes of death.
Hospital administrators say they see 250 to 300 patients a month who are ill because of poor drinking water.
Dr Shafiullah, head of the provincial epidemic diseases department, acknowledged that in the past five years, dehydration, diarrhoea and typhoid fever – all caused by dirty water – topped the list of illnesses, including those with fatal outcomes.
Other hospital officials, however, estimated the number of drinking water-related deaths in 2009-10 at only around 300. Most refused to comment when shown the list of 744 deaths compiled by IWPR after a month spent interviewing family members and neighbours in villages and photographing grave markers.
Dr Abdul Hamid, director of health services for Samangan province, disputed both the number of patients and the causes of death claimed by those hospital staff who spoke to the reporter.
While visiting the Samangan hospital, IWPR’s reporter witnessed Dr Abdul Hamid accusing Dr Shafiullah of revealing “our secret information” on the number of water-related deaths.
Dr Abdul Hamid later asked the reporter not to publish the findings of the investigation, saying that to do so would lay the provincial health administration open to criticism.
“There have been too many cases involving deaths during that period if this list of deaths is published, the Ministry of Health will order an investigation into the [provincial] health department about this,” he said.
In Kabul, a spokesman for the health ministry dismissed claims that a large number of deaths can be attributed to poor quality drinking water.
“In Afghanistan, 27 per cent of people do not have access to clean drinking water, but this is not the cause of any of the deaths that you mention,” said the spokesman, Ghulam Sakhi.
In Aybak, the official response to difficult questions about water quality and the link to rising numbers of deaths has been to refer the matter further up the administrative ladder.
“If people want to have clean water, they should put pressure on the governor, the mayor and other representatives,” Ahmad Ali Tamsake, a member of Samangan’s provincial council, said. “If they don’t, this [officials] unresponsiveness will not stop.”
Governor Anush refused IWPR’s repeated requests for an interview, directing him instead to his spokesman, Sediq Azizi.
“These people are not neglected. Every year we present our problems to the ministries in Kabul, but they have not taken any action yet,” Azizi said. “But basically, these deaths are the will of Allah. They are not the media’s business at all. It isn’t the governor’s fault that wells cannot be dug in Aybak.”
Other officials in the provincial government – the mayor if Aybak, the head of reconstruction programmes in Aybak, Mohammad Aman Amin, and water department head Mohammad Rasul, claimed to know nothing about deaths from contaminated water.
None would comment on the situation, though Mohammad Aman Amin claimed the government had spent four million US dollars in the past four years on improving drinking water across the province. He said dozens of 300-cubic-metre covered reservoirs had been built in and around Aybak.
Villagers say the illnesses continue, and that the reservoirs are uncovered and the water unfiltered.
In Kabul, health ministry spokesman Sakhi said his ministry was not responsible for providing clean drinking water. “Distribution is not our responsibility. We only provide medical services,” he said.
Villagers in Hasan Khil say they expect one or two relatives to die every summer, the period when good-quality drinking water is least available. But they say they have recently carried so many family members to their graves that they do not cry any more.
Shir Ali told the reporter that two years ago, his 12 year-old daughter fell ill after drinking water.
“Moment by moment her condition worsened and she was in great pain,” he said. “The following morning, I took her to a doctor who told me, ‘Your daughter has cholera and she’ll probably die in one or two days.’ She actually died five hours after arriving home later that day.”
Najibullah Danish is an IWPR-trained reporter in Afghanistan.
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