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Chain of Avoidable Errors Cited in Koran Burning
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN March 2, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - American and Afghan officials investigating the Koran-burning episode that has brought relations between the countries to a new low say that the destruction could have been headed off at several points along a chain of mishaps, poor judgments and ignored procedures, according to interviews over the past week.
Even as Americans have raced to ease Afghan outrage over the burning, releasing information on Friday that American service members could face disciplinary action, accounts from more than a dozen Americans and Afghans involved in investigating the incineration laid out a complex string of events that will do little to assuage an Afghan public that in some quarters has called for deaths to avenge the sacrilege.
The crisis over the burning, carried out by American soldiers near the detention center in Parwan on Feb. 20, brought a short-term halt to cooperation between the Americans and Afghans and has complicated almost every aspect of planning and negotiation for a military withdrawal. The burning touched off nationwide rioting and the increased targeting of American troops, leaving at least 29 Afghans and 6 American soldiers dead in the past week.
On Friday, an American official close to a joint Afghan-American investigation into the episode noted that the final report would call for disciplinary review for at least six people involved in the Koran burning, including American military “leaders” and an American interpreter. Afghans familiar with the case described the interpreter as an Afghan-American.
The same day, the pre-eminent body of Afghan religious leaders, the Ulema Council, which conducted its own inquiry, demanded that the United States immediately hand over prison operations to the Afghan government and publicly punish those involved in the Koran burning. There is also a formal United States military inquiry.
The responses highlighted continuing and deep differences between American and Afghan concepts of justice: American officials insist that no deliberate insult was intended and that the military justice system and apologies should suffice, while the Afghan religious leaders demand that public identification and punishment of the offenders is the only path to soothe the outrage of Afghans over what they see as an unforgivable desecration of God’s words.
“There are some crimes that cannot be forgiven, but that need to be punished,” said Maulavi Khaliq Dad, a member of the Ulema Council. “This is not any book; this is the book of the whole Muslim nation, and if a few people are punished, America will not be destroyed. But if that doesn’t happen, it will create animosity and enmity between America and the Muslim world.”
Some officials found the current case particularly troubling because it followed more than 10 years at war in the Muslim world, in which outrage over even the rumor of American defacement of Korans has caused previous crises in Afghanistan and Iraq. Several of the officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details of the investigations.
An American military official familiar with the joint investigation somberly described the burning as a “tragedy,” but rejected any suggestion that it was intentional. He said that the joint commission of three senior Afghan security officials and an American military officer was convinced that the military personnel involved in making the decision to get rid of the Korans and those who carried out the order did not set out to defile the Muslim holy book.
“There was no maliciousness, there was no deliberateness, there was not an intentional disrespect of Islam,” he said.
At the very least, the accounts of the Americans and the Afghans involved in the investigation offer a parable of the dire consequences of carelessness about Afghan values, despite the cultural training required for most American service members serving in Afghanistan.
The account begins about a week before the burning, when officers at the detention center in Parwan became worried that detainees were secretly communicating through notes scribbled in library books, possibly to plot an attack.
“There was a suspicion that this was being used as a means to communicate, internal and external,” said the American military official familiar with the investigation, adding that the fear was that the detainees might “organize.”
Two Afghan-American interpreters were assigned to sift through the library’s books and set aside those that had writing that might constitute a security risk, said Maulavi Dad and other members of the Ulema Council team who visited the detention center and were briefed by the military.
By the time the interpreters were finished, 1,652 books were stacked on the floor and tables for removal, including some Korans, many other religious or scholarly texts, and a number of secular works, including novels and poetry.
Whether the inscriptions were a security risk is a matter of debate. Members of the Ulema Council doubted that the writings were anything other than personal notations, and American military officials and Afghan security officials were unsure because so many books were involved that they had not been able to review them all.
“We saw some notes on the margins of the books in which some of the detainees had written memories of their imprisonment, their name, their father’s name, location and the place where they were arrested,” said Qazi Nazir Ahmad Hanifi, a member of Parliament from Herat who is a mullah and was on the Ulema’s investigating team.
He and others said that in some of the books, including Korans, words were occasionally written in the margins, translations of difficult Arabic words into Pashto or Dari. “These had nothing to do with terrorism or criminal activities,” he said.
The American military official did not go into details, but said only that “we overly rely around here on linguists,” the military term for interpreters and translators. “None of the U.S. soldiers can read this.”
But the linguists were responsible only for the sorting of the books, not for the decision to burn them. It was in asking why the books were not simply stored that one of several faulty decisions became apparent, the official said.
“You have separated a huge number of books — it will come out 1,652,” he said, “and those that are in charge say, ‘We don’t have the storage capacity; this is sensitive material.’ ”
“So the decision is ‘We are going to burn these books,’ ” he continued. “It is part of their procedures to do that, but there’s a process in place that that is the last thing. Things should be retained for a while, but in this case they don’t.”
Sometime on Monday, Feb. 20, the books were transported by a work detail of several soldiers to the truck that would ultimately take them to the incinerator. That posed another missed opportunity.
As the books lay in boxes waiting to be piled in the truck, some Afghan Army soldiers saw them and recognized them as religious books, and they became worried, Maulavi Dad said. They asked where the books were being taken and were told by soldiers that the books were destined for storage. Worried that Korans might be among the books and that something wrong might happen to them, the Afghan soldiers reported to their commanding officer, Lt. Col. Safiullah, who, like many Afghans, uses only one name.
The American military official corroborated that account and said the problem was that by the time the Afghan officer relayed the concerns to his American counterpart, who came to check the truck, the vehicle and its cargo were already on the way to the incinerator.
Both Afghan and American officials believed that the three soldiers driving the holy books to their destination had little or no understanding of what they were carrying. “For those three soldiers, this was nothing more than a work detail,” one military official said.
Just minutes later, when the work detail began to heave the books into the flames, an Afghan laborer standing nearby offered to help. But when he drew close, he realized what was happening and began to scream.
For him and others it was a nightmare come to life. “One of my friends called to me, ‘The Americans are burning our holy books,’ and we rushed over there,” said Mohammed Zafar, 24, who has worked for five years as a laborer near the gate.
As the Afghan laborers tried to extinguish the flames with their water bottles, at least one laborer plunged into the smoldering ashes to retrieve the books, Mr. Zafar said.
The Americans immediately stopped, but not before at least four books had been badly burned, according to a notice from the presidential palace shortly afterward.
What should have happened was far different, Maulavi Dad said. He gently lifted up his Koran, a beautifully bound one with dark blue ornamentation, and described the religiously approved way one would dispose of it if it were damaged or too old to use.
“We have two suggestions: You can cover it with a clean cloth and bury it on holy ground, a shrine or a graveyard, a place where people don’t walk,” he said.
“Or you can wrap it and place it in the sea, the river, in flowing water.”
He added, “You see, we believe the earth and the water are the two cleanest elements on the planet, and since we give great value to holy books and papers, this is where we bury them.”
Graham Bowley and an employee of The New York Times contributed reporting.
Is Afghanistan worth it? US doubts rise after Quran burning violence.
An Afghan soldier killed two Americans in retaliation for the US Quran burning – and the Afghanistan government offered no apology. It suggests that the relationship is fraying after 10 years of war, some say.
Christian Science Monitor By Anna Mulrine, Staff writer March 2, 2012
Washington - The violent riots and cold-blooded killing of two US military advisers Thursday by an Afghan soldier upset over the US military’s burning of Qurans are raising increasingly urgent questions among troops about whether mission in Afghanistan is worth it – both in the cost of nearly 2,000 American lives and the billions of dollars that the cash-strapped US has poured into the country.
For many, the question is one of gratitude. Though the Pentagon says the burning may have been a mistaken attempt to destroy books in which prisoners were passing extremist messages, rioting Afghan crowds are still chanting "Death to America." Does the act of burning Qurans really overshadow all the "blood and treasure" America has spent in Afghanistan?
Even for others, who are inclined to be more sensitive to the deep offense created by burning Qurans, the past two weeks have been troubling. When Afghan President Hamid Karzai feels no need to apologize for a member of the Afghan Army killing two Americans, it is a sign of a perhaps irrevocably broken partnership, says retired Col. Peter Mansoor, former executive officer to Gen. David Petraeus during the height of the insurgency in Iraq.
“If it’s not a true partnership, then why should we sacrifice American blood and treasure?” says Colonel Mansoor, who is now a professor of military history at Ohio State in Columbus. "Americans have cultural sensitivities, too. Maybe we’re so sensitive to Afghan culture that we’re forgetting our own.”
On both sides, the signs of strain from 10 years of war are growing. Afghans see the Quran burnings as merely the latest sign that the foreign soldiers in their land do not share or care for their culture or beliefs. Americans wonder why they are not lauded for risking their lives for the security of another country.
Lost in the sense of ill-usage, however, is the idea that troops are sent to war not to collect plaudits, but rather to defend some vital US national security interest, says Kimberly Kagan, president of the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, and an adviser to US commanders in Afghanistan.
“It would be wonderful if out of this experience, the soldiers come to love the Afghan people, and the Afghan people come to love us,” she says. But “we’re not in Afghanistan in order for the Afghans to say thanks to us. We’re there because we have core interests in Afghanistan.”
Asking for thanks, she suggests, can reek of imperialism or even racism, with the foreign force seeing itself as beneficently saving a people from itself.
For Mansoor, however, the issue is not one of gratitude, but mutual respect.
“We can understand the protests – Karzai doesn’t have to apologize for that,” Mansoor says. He says he can also understand resentments of everyday Afghans who sometimes see American forces as occupiers.
“But when Afghan soldiers take guns out and shoot Americans in the back of the head? These people are in the employ of the Afghan government,” he adds. “President Karzai should give Americans a loud and public apology.”
“Yes, we inadvertently burned Qurans, but it was a mistake. It wasn’t intentional. We weren’t saying, ‘Screw Islam,’ ” he says.
Such an apology comes with political risks – as President Obama learned when he issued one of his own in the wake of the Quran burnings. Republican presidential candidates rushed to be the first to condemn it.
“I think for a lot of people, that sticks in their throat,” Mitt Romney told Fox News. “We’ve made an enormous contribution to help the people there achieve freedom, and for us to be apologizing at a time like this is something which is very difficult for the American people to countenance.”
Newt Gingrich likened the apology to a surrender. If Mr. Karzai “doesn’t feel like apologizing” for the killing of US soldiers by Afghans, “then we should say, 'Goodbye and good luck, and we don’t need to be here risking our lives and wasting our money on somebody who doesn’t care.' ”
Those same political risks echo in Afghanistan, too. For an Afghan public weary of war and, increasingly, of the American presence, a Karzai apology could seem intolerably weak. Moreover, in a society that doesn't shy away from violence to settle perceived injustices – and where the burning of the Quran is a grievous blasphemy – an apology could run starkly against the public mood.
The reaction by the Afghan government in the wake of violence toward US troops, however, has made officials like Mansoor question America’s war there.
In 2010, Mansoor traveled to Afghanistan and “I was pretty high on what we were doing,” he says. But today, regardless of current US troop levels in the country, among Afghans “the feeling of ingratitude runs pretty deep. I mean, Karzai is a disappointment. He’s pandering to his base. And, as a result, he might lose the war.”
5 US Troops Responsible for Burning Korans
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 03 March 2012
A US military investigation found five soldiers responsible for burning Korans at Bagram Air Base which set off a spate of anti-American protests and violence across the country.
Two US military officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the findings hadn't been released publicly did not further identify the soldiers. There was no indication that the investigation found that they violated military laws.However, they could face disciplinary action.
More than 30 Afghans were killed and dozens others were wounded during the Koran burning protests. Six Isaf soldiers have also been killed since the incident, apparently in revenge for the burning of the Korans.
The US officials said that enlisted soldiers were ordered last month to remove religious materials from a prison library at Bagram, north of Kabul, in part because detainees were believed to be leaving messages to one another in them.
At first the materials were placed in storage, but soldiers later took the materials, including Korans, to a fire pit and started to burn them on February 21. Local labourers discovered the Korans in the pit and removed them.
The officials said that the soldiers had misunderstood orders when they placed the Korans in the fire pit to be destroyed. They had just been ordered to remove them from the library, not burn them, they said.
US President Barack Obama apologised to Karzai, and top US military commanders met with local leaders in an effort to quell the tensions.
But many Afghans weren't appeased, saying that they couldn't believe the US military could make such mistakes more than a decade into the war.
The UN Special Representative for Afghanistan, Ján Kubi on Thursday called or the US military to take disciplinary action against those who burned Korans.
Anti-U.S. emotions run high at Afghan dogfighting ring
Reuters By Michael Georgy Fri Mar 2, 2012
KABUL - Protests over the burning of Korans at a NATO base may have faded but some Afghans are still venting their rage over the incident -- at a bloody Kabul dogfighting ring.
If emotions here are any indication, desecration of copies of the Muslim holy book did lasting damage to the image of the United States, which is struggling to pacify the country before NATO combat troops leave at the end of 2014.
"We call the dogs who lose Americans. We are furious about the Korans," said Mirwais Haji, 28, as a defeated canine limped off the snow-covered dirt ring on the edge of the capital.
"We want the Afghan government to bring the people who did this to us. We will kill them ourselves."
The burning of the Korans last month triggered widespread protests and a string of fatal attacks by Afghan security forces on NATO soldiers.
The killing of two U.S. officers by an Afghan policeman in the Interior Ministry stunned NATO and cast doubt on its strategy of replacing large combat units with advisers as the alliance tries to wind down the war, now in its eleventh year.
An apology by U.S. President Barack Obama has failed to ease the anger over an incident that has hurt a U.S. campaign to win hearts and minds to gain an edge over the Taliban and force them to negotiate peace.
The Koran burning incident underscored how U.S.-led NATO troops still fail to grasp Afghanistan's religious and cultural sensitivities despite their long presence in the country.
That insensitivity could have far-reaching consequences for U.S. policy.
ANGER
Thousands of people gather in a circle each Friday to watch large Afghan fighting dogs, known as Kuchis, attack each other in 30-second contests below mountains on the edge of Kabul.
Some do it for entertainment, betting up to $4,000 on a single fight, as vendors sell peanuts, tangerines and potatoes.
For others, it's an escape from frustrations over everything from unemployment, to the war to rampant government corruption.
This Friday, several people were still riveted by the Koran burnings, which NATO called a tragic blunder. Gripped by anti-American sentiment, they cheered on dogs who growled, stood on their hind legs and tore at each other's throats.
"We are tired of the Americans and what they do with the Korans and other incidents," said Akmal Bahadoor, 18, an airport employee, as some of the dogs were held down by two men because they are so powerful and edgy.
"When we watch these dogs it's a way of expressing our anger against the Americans. We think the Americans are being attacked."
NATO is investigating the Koran burnings.
Western officials are hoping the outcry will soon pass so they can focus on other huge challenges before 2014. But there are no signs of that happening any time soon.
As young boys ran to get out of the way of a crazed dog that ran through the crowd, a few Afghan soldiers watched other canines charge each other.
"Even if the people who did this are prosecuted. The anger will never, ever go away. It will always be stuck in my heart," said one of them, 30-year-old Khalil Bazar.
(Editing by Robert Birsel)
Koran-burning crisis exposes flawed U.S. strategy as extremism runs amok
Examiner.com By Michael Hughes Afghanistan Headlines Examiner March 2, 2012
The degreee of anti-American animosity evident during the recent Koran-burning protests in Afghanistan provides yet another illustration of the abject failure of the U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine, the sine qua non of which is the unconditional support of the local population.
The crisis also highlights the growing influence of the Taliban's extreme Saudi-inspired religious ideology, a value system that is an affront to traditional Afghan sensibilities. Although the Western presence seems to be fueling the extremism, alternatives bandied about in the press over the past few days represent formulas for perpetual instability.
Afghanistan’s demographic trends bode ill for the future considering most Afghans who do remember what life was like before the onset of Islamic fundamentalism in the 1970s and its progressive expansion during the 1980s, have either migrated or are dead.
With an average life expectancy of 45 in a country with the 8th highest death rate in the world, it isn’t too shocking that not many Afghans remain who can recall when the tribe prevailed over the mosque – when the word of the khan, not the clerics, reigned supreme and a secular-minded monarch sat on the throne.
Just decades ago the khan appointed the village mullah, a decision, of course, that had to be blessed by a local jirga, a sacred gathering of tribal elders. Afghans perceive decisions emanating from the jirga as the most legitimate expression of the people’s will.
This egalitarian structure stands in sharp contrast to the decision-making processes of the authoritarian Taliban, where judgments are handed down by half-literate clerics, many of whom can barely read the Koran let alone effectively interpret it.
Traditional Muslims have indicated to me that the proper way to dispose of a Koran is to actually burn it. Hence, although the intentions of the American troops are still in question, the level of outrage over the incineration of the holy book defies common sense. Not to mention the fact violence as a response to this type of transgression is un-Islamic by any measure.
America’s strategy now hinges upon building an Afghan central army that can prevent the country from being overrun by the Taliban once the U.S. exits. Such an approach is faulty for many reasons not the least of which is that it violates the basic laws of mathematics, as Fareed Zakaria pointed out in The Washington Post earlier this week.
The U.S. is building an Afghan security force to a scale that will require $12 billion a year to maintain – which is 8 times the amount of revenue the Afghan government takes in every year.
But the U.S. strategy is defective not only because it will keep the Afghans mired in debt and forever reliant on foreign donors. It also relies much too heavily on one of the most corrupt government’s in the world – one perceived as illegitimate by a vast majority of Afghans.
And the national army poorly represents the country’s ethnic profile as it is sorely lacking in members from Afghanistan’s largest ethnic group, the Pashtuns. The central army and police primarily consist of Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras – the same minority groups that led the Northern Alliance in battling the Pashtuns throughout the 1990s.
Hence, as a result, more Pashtuns have been pushed into the arms of the Taliban. Yet, given this fact, Mr. Zakaria puts forth a recommendation that would have tragic consequences:
The north and east — populated by Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras — will stay staunchly opposed to the Taliban. We should support those groups and, more crucially, ally with the neighboring countries that support them. The natural, and historic, allies of the Northern Alliance are India, Iran and Russia; they have permanent interests that will keep them involved in the region.
It must be made clear that the Northern Alliance warlords are just as malicious and have just as much blood on their hands as the Taliban. The U.S. has miscalculated by assuming the enemy of our enemy is our friend. Zakaria also must realize Afghanistan will never see peace until it is beholden to no foreign power and free from external entanglements. Afghanistan must seek neutrality or it risks further exacerbating regional tensions.
The northern warlords killed tens of thousands and committed atrocious human rights violations when they had their day in the sun in the 1990s, a regime so reprehensible it paved the way for the kinder, gentler Taliban to take control of Kabul.
The U.S. also makes the wildly inaccurate assumption that all Pashtuns are loyal to the Taliban, which couldn’t be further from the truth. The Taliban have more in common with Arab and Pakistani extremists than they do with Pashtun tribal society.
In fact, Taliban dominance of the region will be based on the efficacy of their program to de-Pashtunize the Pashtuns, as native Afghan tribal expert Khalil Nouri brilliantly explains in a recent Veterans Today piece.
Both the current American game plan and that prescribed by Zakaria would contribute to the process of de-Pashtunization and would enable Pakistan’s extended expeditionary force, the Taliban, to rise to power once again.
A more reasonable antidote to what ails Afghanistan would be to support a legitimate political solution driven by traditional, moderate and less violent elements within Afghan society before the majority of the population is radicalized.
==
Michael Hughes is a Washington D.C.-based journalist, a Baloch human rights advocate and a policy analyst for the New World Strategies Coalition - a native Afghan think tank.
4 civilians killed in E. Afghanistan roadside bombing
JALALABAD, Afghanistan, March 3 (Xinhua) -- Four civilians were killed Saturday when a roadside bomb went off in eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar, the provincial government said in a statement.
"A civilian car touched off a roadside bomb at around 7:30 a.m. Saturday triggering a powerful blast killing all four people aboard on the spot," the provincial government said in the statement.
It said the four men including a teenage boy killed in the blast were members of the same family.
Taliban militants have often attacked Afghan and NATO-led forces with Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and roadside bombs but the lethal weapons also inflict casualties on civilians.
A total of 3,021 Afghan civilians were killed in 2011, an 8 percent rise over the same period of 2010, according to the United Nations annual report released in Kabul on Feb. 4.
The IEDs and roadside bombs were the single largest killer of Afghan civilians in 2011, leaving 967 people dead, according to the UN report.
Winter adventure on Afghanistan's ski slopes
BBC News By Ramin Anwari 2 March 2012
Bamiyan was once renowned for the famous Buddha statues, destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. But now this central Afghan province is working hard to attract tourists to its snowy slopes with a ski festival, writes BBC Afghan's Ramin Anwari.
"Forget about war, forget about terrorism. For now, this is all about having fun," declares one participant at Bamiyan's international ski competition held in the mountains of Khoshkak, a 30-minute drive from the capital of Bamiyan province.
Although the ski competition is in its second year, this is the first time that foreigners have taken part. There are about 20 skiers from outside Afghanistan, alongside 10 local competitors who have been newly-trained.
This is part of an ambitious plan to promote adventurous activities in different parts of Afghanistan, a country exhausted by more than three decades of war and destruction.
"Bamiyan certainly has the potential, as it has had throughout its long and rich history, to become a favourite tourist destination," says Amir Foladi, who works with the Aga Khan Foundation to promote tourism in the country.
"Bamiyan is a good place to visit in spring and summer, but we are trying to make it an enjoyable place for all four seasons, by introducing winter sports such as skiing," he adds. 'Up in the air'
The initiative by the Aga Khan Foundation and other partners, including the Bamiyan Ski Club and the Rah-e-Abrisham Company, has attracted tens of locals, including a number of women in Bamiyan who are relishing the opportunity of becoming the first ever ski guides in their country.
"We are surely having lots of fun" says one who is training to become a ski guide. "Besides that, we are learning a very exciting sport. It's amazing to learn to ski, it's like flying up in the air and with the beautiful landscape of Bamiyan, it's even more exciting."
Although Bamiyan has the perfect climate for ski lovers and mountains as high as 5000m (16,404 ft) covered by snow throughout the winter, there are poor facilities on the ground.
There is no mountain rescue service or avalanche warning system in place and local medical facilities are described as very basic.
Skiers have to rely on the knowledge of local guides who have been trained on how to escape from sudden avalanches and the only local hospital in the town, which can provide emergency assistance.
"There are challenges, no doubt about it" says Amir Foladi. "But we are working to solve it. Security is anther big challenge for our future plans, but there is no point in losing hope and and not doing anything."
The tough route
While there have been huge security problems throughout the country, Bamiyan has been untouched by war since 2001.
But the security situation elsewhere remains a concern and this has had its impact on the number of tourists visiting Bamiyan.
Before the civil war in Afghanistan, Bamiyan welcomed tens of thousands of foreign tourists in a year. There were none during the war years.
Although Bamiyan has begun to lure tourists back over the last decade one of the main problems lies in the route from Kabul to Bamiyan.
Currently no commercial airline operates between the two and those who wish to fly to the province have to rely on UN or Isaf flights, which are expensive and cannot accommodate large numbers of passengers.
And security problems on the road route, from Taliban ambushes to land mines, prevent tourists taking the eight hour drive from Kabul to Bamiyan.
"There are hopes for the future of Bamiyan if we have a better security in Afghanistan," one local shopkeeper in central Bamiyan says.
"Lots of things rely on security. We definitely would love to be a tourist-friendly province. It will help our economy, but for the time being, security is the most important need."
US-Afghanistan deal in danger as Hamid Karzai holds firm on demands
Afghan president not prepared to compromise over control of jails and American night-time raids as Nato conference nears
Guardian.co.uk By Emma Graham-Harrison Friday 2 March 2012
Kabul - Hopes that the US can fix conditions for a long-term military presence in Afghanistan before an unofficial May deadline are fading because Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, is not prepared to compromise on two demands that have stalled negotiations for months.
Washington and its allies want to have the US-Afghan strategic partnership agreed before May, when a Nato conference in Chicago is expected to pledge long-term help to Kabul with finances and military training.
But negotiations have dragged on for over a year and Karzai is adamant he will not give ground on his two main demands – for Afghan control of jails and an end to night-time raids on Afghan homes.
Western officials say the first is not practical and the second would compromise the military effort.
"If they don't change their position there will be no strategic partnership before Chicago," said a senior Afghan official familiar with the negotiations. "We are not willing to compromise when it comes to sovereignty."
The strategic partnership deal would allow US forces to stay in some current large bases in Afghanistan, to help train Afghan soldiers and police. The bases could also be used for drone strikes on militant areas in Pakistan.
The deal would give western leaders a security rationale for spending money in Afghanistan after combat troops are withdrawn in 2014, and also aims to reassure Afghans the west will not cut and run.
A string of top diplomats and politicians have urged Karzai to sign.
"The Afghan government, especially the Afghan president, is under a lot of pressure from all sides – there are some indirect threats being made as well," said the Afghan official, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.
But Karzai has long said that for a deal to go ahead the US must hand over all jails on Afghan soil to his government's control and end controversial night-time hunts for insurgents and their supporters.
He repeated that position in a phone call earlier this week with the Nato secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who was urging Karzai to sign the deal ahead of the Chicago summit, according to the presidential palace.
"Before the US-Afghan strategic partnership document can be signed, the foreigners have to respect the national sovereignty of Afghanistan," a palace statement, released late on Wednesday, quoted Karzai telling Rasmussen.
"No Afghan [prisoners] should be in the hands of foreigners, and foreign troops should hand over all the jails they have now to the Afghan government, and stop the night raids."
US officials had suggested resolving the impasse by hiving off the two most controversial points into a separate document and agreeing to hash them out later, but Karzai has rejected that as a compromise of Afghan sovereignty.
"The US idea is not accepted at all, we have to reach an agreement on these two points before signing any strategic partnership document," the official said.
The US is reluctant to hand over jails in part because Afghanistan's judicial system does not currently have the capacity to run them.
Night raids are contentious because western military commanders consider them perhaps the most effective tool in their arsenal, saying they take out senior leaders with minimal risk to innocent civilians.
Afghan leaders say they are dangerous and intrusive, cause too many deaths of non-combatants and turn Afghans against the war.
Diplomatic manoeuvres that put Afghans officially in charge of prisons while leaving US forces organising day-to-day management, or gave US troops a role providing intelligence and support to Afghan-led night raids, could resolve some of the difficulties.
But western diplomats warn that Karzai may be badly misjudging the mood in an economically battered America, whose diplomats are also distracted by security concerns in other volatile areas from Syria and Yemen to Somalia.
"The Afghans still really believe that the Americans need to be here," said one senior Kabul diplomat who asked not to be named.
"I think they are underestimating how much things have changed, and US concerns are focused elsewhere – and they cannot manage without this support."
The World Bank forecasts Kabul will have a $7bn (£4.4bn) hole in its annual budget after 2014.
Mining projects may one day allow it to be self-sufficient, but they are in the very early stages of development, so foreign cash will be needed for years to pay the army.
While several other nations have signed their own long-term strategic deals – Britain has promised an officer training academy modelled on Sandhurst – all of them are unofficially contingent on a US deal; without an American lead, no one wants to stay.
The US embassy insists that there is no timeline for a deal, although repeated unofficial deadlines have passed without anything being pinned down.
"We are not going to comment on ongoing negotiations," said Gavin Sundwall, spokesman for the US embassy in Kabul.
"We want to get the right agreement, not necessarily a quick agreement, so there are no timelines."
Taliban seek constitutional role for Mullah Omar
The Hindu By Praveen Swami March 1, 2012
WASHINGTON, DC - Negotiators for insurgent group say head of former Islamic Emirate should be guardian of future Afghan state
Taliban negotiators involved in ongoing talks in Doha are seeking dramatic constitutional changes which would make Mullah Muhammad Omar Afghanistan's supreme religious and political leader, western and Indian diplomatic sources have told The Hindu.
“In essence,” a European diplomat familiar with the talks told The Hindu, “the Taliban want that Mullah Omar become a kind of guardian-figure for the Afghan state, not dissimilar to Iran's maghame rahbari, or supreme leader.”
Mullah Omar took the title of amir al-mu'mimin, or “commander of the faithful,” in April 1996, donning a cloak purported to belong to the Prophet Muhammad. Local legend has it that whoever retrieved the cloak, locked inside a series of locked chests in a Kandahar mosque, would become a great leader.
He remains on a list of fugitives sought by the United States for their role in the 9/11 attacks, and is alleged to be hiding out in Karachi under the protection of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate.
Political negotiations
Few details have become available on the political content of the Doha talks, but both Marc Grossman, the United States' special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan and his special advisor, scholar Barnett Rubin, have been visiting the region regularly. Dr. Nasiruddin Haqqani, the elder brother of jihadist warlord Sirajuddin Haqqani, also travelled to the United Arab Emirates recently to meet with top Taliban negotiator Tayyeb Agha, to be briefed on the discussions.
Pakistan's Army chief, Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, has also submitted several proposals to the White House for future power-sharing in Afghanistan. The plans, the informed sources said, advocate a federal arrangement which would devolve political power on armed groups based on their regional presence — an arrangement which would give the Taliban control of nine southern provinces.
The Taliban has, however, said substantive political discussions and progress on putting a ceasefire into place can only begin after confidence-building measures are implemented — central among them, the release of prisoners held in Guantanamo bay. The list of prisoners they have sought includes Mullah Muhammad Fazl, a top Taliban military commander who, the United Nations alleges, was involved in war crimes, including the massacre of Shi'a prisoners.
Last month, the U.S. administration briefed key senators on their plans to release the prisoners — but there has been no forward movement since then. Mr. Grossmansaid in January that the release was not imminent.
In the interim, the Taliban has made clear it will not accept a power-sharing arrangement based on Afghanistan's existing constitution. In a statement released in January, the Taliban insisted its acceptance of the talks in Doha was not “a surrender from jihad and neither is it connected to an acceptance of the Constitution of the stooge Kabul administration.” Instead, it said, “the Islamic Emirate is utilising its political wing alongside its military presence and jihad in order to realise the national and Islamic aspirations of the nation.”
Red lines
The Taliban's political demands run against the grain of United States policy. In October, 2011, testimony to the House Foreign Relations committee, secretary of state Hillary Clinton said the Taliban would have to “renounce violence, abandon al-Qaida, and abide by the laws and constitution of Afghanistan, including its protections for women and minorities.” “If insurgents cannot or will not meet those red lines,” Ms. Clinton said, “they will face continued and unrelenting assault”.
However, with a cash-strapped administration pushing forward its plans to scale down troops in Afghanistan, there is growing fear in India that those red lines might be breached — handing the Taliban a state which could harbour Islamist groups hostile to India. “For us”, a senior Indian official said, “this is a real concern, and what we're hearing isn't reassuring”.
These concerns, a senior administration official in Washington, DC, told The Hindu, were misplaced. “The United States is not going to cut and run, period,” he said. It remains unclear, though, how large the long-term presence the United States presence will eventually be.
Events on the ground could add to the pressure on the Doha dialogue. The sources said there had also been discussions, but little progress, on working out a ceasefire — a key precondition for a sustainable peace process. Taliban units have begun a steady series of insurgent attacks on military targets, as well as terrorist strikes, ahead of the traditional period of most-intense fighting in the summer.
Figures released by the United Nations earlier this year show more than 2,000 Afghan civilians were killed by insurgent and terrorist in 2011 — the fifth successive year-on-year increase. The escalation in civilian killings came despite a code of conduct released by the Taliban in 2010, promising measures to protect “common people.”
Local Taliban leader captured in N. Afghanistan operation: ISAF
KABUL, March 3 (Xinhua) -- A local Taliban leader was captured Saturday during a joint Afghan forces and NATO-led coalition troops operation in northern Afghan province of Kunduz, NATO-led forces said.
"An Afghan and coalition security force captured a Taliban leader during an operation in Chahar Darah district, Kunduz province, today," the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) forces said in a press release.
Without disclosing details, the ISAF release added that "the leader directed the emplacement of roadside bombs and provided weapons and funds to the insurgents in the area,"
The joint forces, separately, discovered a drug cache during an operation in Marjah district of southern Helmand province on Thursday. "The cache consisted of approximately 4,732 pounds (2, 151 kg) of opium and some 53 pounds (24 kg) of heroin," according to the release.
The joint forces detained several suspects and destroyed a majority of the drugs on site without incident. The remaining drugs were confiscated to be used as evidence, the ISAF release added.
U.S. Puts Sanctions On Afghan Who Makes IEDs For Taliban
March 2, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
The U.S. government has slapped sanctions on an Afghan national it says has helped manufacture improvised explosive devices for the Taliban.
A statement from the U.S. Treasury said Abdul Samad Achekzai "was responsible for and tasked with IED component procurement and storage, detonator construction, and IED training in support of Taliban fighters in western and southern Afghanistan."
Adam Szubin, the director of the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, called Achekzai "a key official in the Taliban's IED supply network" and said he was "responsible for untold death and suffering."
The sanctions freeze all of Achekzai's U.S. assets and forbids Americans from doing business with him.
The Treasury statement said Achekzai currently lived in Pakistan's Balochistan Province.
The Taliban is having second thoughts
For Philip Hammond, taking on the position of Defence Secretary has been a baptism of fire. One minute he was the Transport Secretary, immersed in planning the new high-speed rail route between London and the Midlands; the next he found himself parachuted into one of the most challenging ministries Whitehall has to offer.
Telegraph.co.uk By Con Coughlin 02 Mar 2012
Prior to his appointment - after Dr Liam Fox’s resignation last October - Mr Hammond was hardly renowned for his interest in national security issues. A successful businessman before entering politics, he was better known as one of the more bean-counterish figures in Westminster.
“I would regard myself as a very strong, pro-defence politician who believes that defence should be the number one priority of government,” he says. “If a threat comes along, the public rightly expects the Government to have the ability to defend itself.”
Until his appointment, Mr Hammond’s involvement in defence issues had been confined largely to his role as shadow chief secretary to the Treasury where, together with Oliver Letwin, he had worked on the Conservative’s master plan for reducing the budget deficit. “I had a pretty clear view of our defence needs because Liam had a very good idea on how we should project our power through the military in an age of austerity.”
But once he took up the post, Mr Hammond came face to face with the challenge of running one of the most testing – some would say dysfunctional – of government departments. Apart from having to eradicate the £38billion black hole from the Ministry of Defence budget, Mr Hammond suddenly had to immerse himself in a variety of highly complex issues, from the replacement of the Trident nuclear deterrent to the future of Britain’s military involvement in Afghanistan.
“I was on a very steep learning curve and spent the first two months with my heart in my mouth hoping that I did not make some terrible blunder,” he admits. But Mr Hammond is clearly a fast learner, and little more than four months after taking up his post he speaks with the confidence of a man who has mastered his brief.
Earlier this week I joined him in the Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, where he had the delicate job of seeking the assistance of two of the region’s more autocratic regimes in aiding with the removal of the vast military infrastructure Britain has assembled in neighbouring Afghanistan.
The highly challenging task of removing billions of pounds worth of British kit from Afghanistan means the MoD needs to explore all the available exit routes, particularly as the Pakistanis have closed the main border crossings into Afghanistan, through which most of the equipment arrived.
Mr Hammond estimates that, apart from removing 3,000 armoured vehicles, there are around 11,000 shipping containers of equipment that need removing as Britain begins scaling down its military commitment to Afghanistan, with combat operations due to cease at the end of 2014.
With other Nato nations undertaking similar operations - the Americans have 49,000 vehicles and 100,000 containers to bring home - Mr Hammond fears massive bottlenecks could develop as the main exit routes out of Afghanistan become clogged up with retreating soldiers.
“The pressure on the existing lines of communication is going to be very significant,” he explains. “That is why it is important for us to open a new line of communication through the north. Nothing would be worse than a disorderly withdrawal.” One possibility he is exploring is to transport much of the equipment by rail from northern Afghanistan on a 4,000-mile journey through Central Asia and Russia to the Baltic ports, from whence it will then be shipped back to England.
But he is clear in his mind that withdrawing British forces from Afghanistan is indisputably the right course of action.
“We are not some kind of 21st century missionary force,” he says. “You cannot win an insurgency by inserting foreign troops and expecting them to do the job to completion. Nato troops do the heavy lift while at the same time turning the Afghan army from an
ill-disciplined rag bag into a disciplined force. It was always our intention to hand over to the Afghans.”
But what about the Taliban? Surely, unless there is some form of political reconciliation, we risk seeing the Taliban regain power, and we’ll be back to square one, with al-Qaeda rebuilding its terror camps in southern Afghanistan?
“When the British leave there will be a continued insurgency which the Afghans will have to deal with themselves. But I also hope there will be a political reconciliation process in place.”
Mr Hammond believes that many Taliban fighters are having second thoughts about continuing with the insurgency, as Afghan security forces increasingly take the lead role in combat operations. “There is some evidence that, at the level of the ordinary Afghan fighters that signed up to fight the “foreign infidel”, they are now fighting against Afghan troops, which is not what they expected and has persuaded them to enter the reconciliation process.”
More encouraging is the suggestion that the Taliban might be prepared to ditch its long-standing alliance with al-Qaeda. “The Taliban are talking about issuing a public statement that would distance them from al-Qaeda,” he says.
Mr Hammond’s keen business sense is also excited by the potential peace dividend the Government will receive once the last combat troops have returned home.
“We will have a large peace dividend when we leave Afghanistan worth £3.5billion a year, which is what we are currently spending in Afghanistan.” Apart from supervising Britain’s military withdrawal from Afghanistan, Mr Hammond’s main priority is to instil a culture of financial discipline at the MoD while ensuring that Britain retains the military capabilities to maintain its status as a major world power.
“The big problem we have had in the past is what I call the conspiracy of optimism between the military, the MoD and the defence contractors,” he said. This meant that Dr Fox had to make some difficult decisions when he became defence secretary in 2010, including the cancellation of a number of key projects, such as the new Nimrod maritime surveillance aircraft, in order to balance the MoD’s books.
But Mr Hammond is confident that the worst is behind him, and that the MoD will soon be able to announce that it has dealt with the £38billion black hole in its budget and can start spending money again on new projects.
“I have no doubt that we are punching above our weight and that we are establishing ourselves as an important world power,” he insists, pointing to the Government’s energetic pursuit of new diplomatic ties, from Central Asia to Latin America. “Of course our Armed Forces are going to be smaller in the future, but you do not need large armies to project power. Sending a frigate is important, but doing so without intensive diplomatic engagement is a pretty hollow gesture.”
He is also grateful to Dr Fox for the ground work he did laying the foundations for the future structure of the Armed Forces. While Dr Fox concentrated on the “what”, Mr Hammond says his job is to do the “how”. “Liam will not have detected any sense of me changing the direction he had determined,” he says. “I stay in touch with Liam and he was very helpful in briefing me and bringing me up to date on the political issues relating to various projects.”
And what about his own political prospects? He is, after all, the sixth Defence Secretary during the past six years. “Fingers’ crossed,” he replies with a smile.
Taliban in Turmoil Over 'Mullah Omar' Letter
EXCLUSIVE: Afghan insurgents denounce 'fake' call for restraint during peace talks. Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau on new dissent in the ranks.
The Daily Beast By Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau Mar 1, 2012
Mullah Mohammad Omar can hardly be blamed if he has second thoughts about having entered into peace discussions with his sworn enemy, the United States. As word of the talks first began circulating among the Afghan insurgents several weeks ago, a significant number of field commanders and fighters immediately recoiled at the notion of talking peace with the American occupiers. Now another dispute has broken out over what some of the Taliban leader’s top lieutenants are calling a sophisticated black propaganda campaign, designed to undermine the insurgency’s fighting spirit.
In recent weeks, the group’s ranks have been deluged with copies of a letter apparently signed by Omar himself, calling on the insurgents to “slow down” their military operations and to refrain from injuring civilians while talks continue in the Gulf state of Qatar. Written in Pashto under the letterhead of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (the official name of his defunct Islamic regime) and purporting to be from “The Special Office of the Amir-ul-Momineen”—the Leader of the Faithful, as Omar’s followers call him—the copies have been distributed among fighters on both sides of the Pakistani border and have been delivered to media outlets in Kabul. “All mujahedin of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan should restrain and slow down their operations until the end of the negotiating process in Qatar and never attack in places where civilians may be harmed,” the letter instructs. It ends on a hopeful note: “Our main goal is the withdrawal of foreign troops and the restoration of the Islamic system. If our goal c
an be achieved, we think that the peace talks are worthy, and that anyone obstructing them is not our friend.”
This isn’t the first time Omar (or someone using his name) has told his followers to avoid causing civilian casualties. (They mostly ignore the order, judging by the number of Afghan women and children who have been killed or injured by insurgent attacks.) Nevertheless, many Taliban say the letter’s appeal for restraint and a slowdown proves it’s a fake and an effort to hurt their morale. “This sounds like nonsense to me,” says Mullah Zabihullah, a senior Taliban political operative who has seen the letter. “He is asking our mujahedin to slow down attacks while the Americans are fighting us and killing innocents. This has no meaning at all.” The Taliban’s media office quickly denounced the letter as a “fabrication” and blamed it on the CIA. “This action is clearly the work of the intelligence agency of America to deceive the people,” the group said in an official statement. It added that the insurgency would not reduce its attacks on U.S. and NATO forces, regardless of the peace discussions. “The Americans mu
st unequivocally understand that the ongoing jihad and struggle against them are the Islamic and religious obligations of our nation,” the statement said. “It will continue as long as there is an illegal foreign presence on this soil.”
Genuine or not, the letter’s call for a reduction in violent actions seems to be falling on deaf ears.
Despite the official denial, at least some of the letter’s recipients are convinced it’s genuine. One of them, a former senior Taliban government official, says the letter he received bore Omar’s signature and seemed to be written in his style. A ranking Afghan government intelligence official agrees that the language and tone of the letter certainly sound like Omar. “The language is very similar to Mullah Omar’s simple Pashto style,” he says. The former senior official says the letter makes sense to him. “I totally agree with Mullah Omar’s stance in talking to the U.S.,” he says, declining to be named for security reasons. “What’s wrong in halting the game of death for a while during negotiations?” He argues that the letter reflects a serious split in strategy between the Taliban leader and some of his recalcitrant military lieutenants. “I think there is something wrong between Mullah Omar and his top commanders,” he says. “Mullah Omar is trying to impose his view that the talks are necessary.”
In any case, the internal dispute over the letter’s authenticity is making the insurgents more worried than ever about the threat of disinformation campaigns. “The letter could indeed be counterfeit,” says a senior Taliban logistics officer who has seen it. “But what is important is how vulnerable the Taliban are to such conspiracies.” Mullah Omar hasn’t issued a single verifiable communication—video, audio statement, or letter—since he was driven from power in late 2001. As a result, just about any document can be circulated in the Taliban leader’s name with little risk that he might deny it. In other words, as long as Omar remains silent, no one can be entirely sure what the Taliban leader thinks. That’s why his followers wish he would make some kind of verifiable statement—and do it quickly, before rumors and disinformation get any further out of hand. “Mullah Omar has to send us his real voice to eliminate the confusion that may be caused by this letter,” says the logistics officer.
There’s not much disagreement among the insurgents on that point. But after a decade of total silence, it seems unlikely that the reclusive Taliban leader is suddenly about to release a verifiable statement or show himself in public. And genuine or not, the letter’s call for a reduction in violent actions seems to be falling on deaf ears. Two more U.S. soldiers were gunned down in cold blood today by supposedly friendly Afghans. One Afghan soldier and one literacy trainer shot and killed the two Americans at an Afghan National Army training base in southern Afghanistan before being cut down themselves. That makes a total of six U.S. soldiers who have been killed by presumed Afghan allies since anti-U.S. protests erupted nearly two weeks ago, after the discovery of discarded Qurans in a burn pit at Bagram Airfield. Those deaths are in addition to the 70 NATO troops who lost their lives in 42 deliberate attacks by “friendly” Afghan personnel between May 2007 and this past January.
Sami Yousafzai is Newsweek's correspondent in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where he has covered militancy, al Qaeda, and the Taliban for the magazine since 9/11. He was born in Afghanistan but moved to Pakistan with his family after the Russian invasion in 1979. He began his career as a sports journalist but switched to war reporting in 1997.
Ron Moreau is Newsweek’s Afghanistan and Pakistan correspondent and has been covering the region for the magazine the past 10 years. Since he first joined Newsweek during the Vietnam War, he has reported extensively from Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.
The day the US military burned the Bible in Afghanistan
FoxNews.com By Todd Starnes March 02, 2012
They burned the Bible.
In 2008 American troops confiscated, threw away, and burned God’s Word at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. The Bibles were written in the Pashto and Dari languages, and the Defense Department was concerned the books might somehow be used to convert Afghans.
The incident became public in 2009. Lt. Col. Mark Wright told CNN such religious outreach could endanger American troops and civilians because Afghanistan is a “devoutly Muslim country.”
But there was another reason the Bibles were confiscated. Military rules forbid troops from proselytizing in the country.
“The decision was made that it was a ‘force protection’ measure to throw them away because, if they did get out, it could be perceived by Afghans that the U.S. government or the U.S. military was trying to convert Muslims,” Wright said in the interview.
So that might explain why the Bibles were confiscated and thrown away, but why burn the Holy Scriptures?
Lt. Col. Wright explained to the news network that troops at posts in war zones are required to “burn their trash.”
Trash.
Trash.
I can only imagine the anguished Christian soldiers who were forced to toss the Pashto and Dari Bibles into the roaring fire. I can only imagine what they were thinking as the blaze consumed verses like John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
I can only imagine the heartache of the American church that collected the Bibles and sent them overseas to share the good news of Jesus.
So why not just collect the Bibles and send them back to the same church that sent them here in the United States?
The military admitted in an interview that they considered doing that. But they worried the church would send them to another organization in Afghanistan, and that would give the impression the Bibles were distributed by the U.S. government.
In other words, the only way to guarantee that no Bibles in Pasto and Dari would be found on Afghan soil was to destroy the books.
So how did the Obama administration respond to the 2009 revelation of such a horrific act?
They were silent.
There were no apologies, no condemnations from either the Bush administration in 2008 or the Obama administration in 2009. There was no condemnation from the State Department. There was no condemnation from the Pentagon.
Perhaps that’s to be expected from a president who once declared, "whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian nation – at least, not just. We are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, and a Hindu nation, and a nation of non-believers."
“Certainly the armed forces should be sensitive to people’s religious symbols or their text,” Lt. Col. Bob Maginnis (USA-Ret.) told One News Now. “Instead of burning the Bibles, there is no reason that they shouldn’t have returned them to those who purchased the Bibles. But we recognize that in a Muslim country, Christians are just not welcome. The hypocrisy is pretty well established. It is disconcerting.”
Even more disconcerting is the Obama administration’s blatant attacks on religious liberty -- leaving many to wonder if this president considers Christians to be second-class citizens.
If you burn a Bible – silence. But if you burn a Koran, the Obama administration will send private letters of apology – and public condemnations.
When I was a small child, I developed a love for the Bible. I memorized dozens of passages of Scripture, tucking away treasured words from God in my heart. That’s why I’m so troubled by what happened recently in Afghanistan.
And that’s why I feel compelled to summarize this sad chapter of American history by sharing a passage from the New Testament --- “Jesus wept.”
Todd Starnes is host of Fox News & Commentary. The following column has been excerpted from his latest book, “Dispatches From Bitter America.”
Afghans Alarmed at Spread of Fake Banknotes
Latest versions are so sophisticated and hard to spot that some Afghans suspect a plot to undermine their monetary system.
IWPR By Abdol Wahed Faramarz 2 Mar 12
Afghanistan - A new wave of counterfeit Afghan banknotes has arrived in Afghanistan, undermining confidence in the local currency and disrupting the money market, officials say.
President Hamid Karzai wants to reduce the use of foreign currency, but Afghans interviewed by IWPR say they are reluctant to use afghani banknotes as long as convincing forgeries are around. Economists warn that the volume of extra money in circulation could lead to inflation.
Although counterfeit afghanis are nothing new, the new notes are of higher denominations before, and so well made that even experienced currency traders have trouble spotting them.
Previous forgeries tended to be 50 and 100 afghani notes, worth about one and two US dollars, respectively, but newer counterfeits circulating for the last four months have face values of 500 and 1,000 afghani.
“Although money changers have machines that can identify forged banknotes, they are still sometimes deceived. They therefore have to check each and every banknote, which takes time,” Amin Jan Khosti, head of the Independent Union of Currency Traders at the Shahzada money market in Kabul, told IWPR.
At the Shahzada market, 55-year-old Mohammad Naim was angry after losing 600 dollars by exchanging them for counterfeit afghanis. A friend abroad sent the cash to the impoverished labourer to help him pay off his debts.
But when he tried to repay the money in afghanis, the notes proved to be worthless.
“The lenders wouldn’t take the money, as they said it was forged. Now I can’t find the person who changed the money for me,” he said. “The government should compensate me for my loss. The central bank should exchange these banknotes for me. How am I at fault? Why can’t the government prevent this kind of corruption?”
In a bid to strengthen the afghani, President Karzai issued a decree in late 2011 urging government agencies and officials to avoid using foreign currency. Pakistani rupees and Iranian rials have been in common use since the early 1990s, and the American dollar has been used for almost all major transactions since 2001.
Kabul residents said they were wary of local banknotes due to the proliferation of forgeries.
Maria, who works for a private company, said she no longer wanted to use afghanis.
“When there were no forged afghanis on the market, I used to change my salary [from foreign currency] into afghanis and deposit them in my bank account. Now I want to open a US dollar account because afghanis aren’t reliable,” she said.
Officials say the forgeries are made outside Afghanistan, and some believe neighbouring Pakistan may be deliberately using them to undermine the economy.
Afghan central bank governor Nurullah Delawari were coming in from neighbouring states, although he declined to say which ones.
“These banknotes have been made by a very skilled group using advanced technology. They are trying to bring the banknotes into the Afghan banking system,” he said.
According to Sayed Masud, an economist who lectures at Kabul University, “This has been done to destabilise the economy and decrease people’s trust in the afghani so that it loses value against foreign currencies, particularly the Pakistani currency.”
Pakistan’s embassy in Kabul declined IWPR’s request for a comment on the forgeries.
The head of the central bank’s media office, Emal Hashor, said the institution had written to the interior ministry, provincial governors and police chief, and border officials asking them to take action against the influx.
At the Kabul money market, Khosti said people should use established currency exchanges rather than people in the street.
Experts say people can avoid the forged notes if they are alert to the warning signs. Delawari said the key was the gold-coloured foil strip, which on a bogus note fails to reflect seven colours.
Currency trader Daud said the fakes were also darker in colour and smoother than genuine afghanis, particularly around the central bank seal.
Restaurant owner Mojahed said the reverse of the fake 500 afghani note lacked a thin line, while the fraudulent 1,000 afghani bill is missing a “1,000” in the left-hand corner,
“I have been presented with such banknotes several times,” he said.
Abdol Wahed Faramarz is an IWPR-trained reporter in Kabul.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN March 2, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - American and Afghan officials investigating the Koran-burning episode that has brought relations between the countries to a new low say that the destruction could have been headed off at several points along a chain of mishaps, poor judgments and ignored procedures, according to interviews over the past week.
Even as Americans have raced to ease Afghan outrage over the burning, releasing information on Friday that American service members could face disciplinary action, accounts from more than a dozen Americans and Afghans involved in investigating the incineration laid out a complex string of events that will do little to assuage an Afghan public that in some quarters has called for deaths to avenge the sacrilege.
The crisis over the burning, carried out by American soldiers near the detention center in Parwan on Feb. 20, brought a short-term halt to cooperation between the Americans and Afghans and has complicated almost every aspect of planning and negotiation for a military withdrawal. The burning touched off nationwide rioting and the increased targeting of American troops, leaving at least 29 Afghans and 6 American soldiers dead in the past week.
On Friday, an American official close to a joint Afghan-American investigation into the episode noted that the final report would call for disciplinary review for at least six people involved in the Koran burning, including American military “leaders” and an American interpreter. Afghans familiar with the case described the interpreter as an Afghan-American.
The same day, the pre-eminent body of Afghan religious leaders, the Ulema Council, which conducted its own inquiry, demanded that the United States immediately hand over prison operations to the Afghan government and publicly punish those involved in the Koran burning. There is also a formal United States military inquiry.
The responses highlighted continuing and deep differences between American and Afghan concepts of justice: American officials insist that no deliberate insult was intended and that the military justice system and apologies should suffice, while the Afghan religious leaders demand that public identification and punishment of the offenders is the only path to soothe the outrage of Afghans over what they see as an unforgivable desecration of God’s words.
“There are some crimes that cannot be forgiven, but that need to be punished,” said Maulavi Khaliq Dad, a member of the Ulema Council. “This is not any book; this is the book of the whole Muslim nation, and if a few people are punished, America will not be destroyed. But if that doesn’t happen, it will create animosity and enmity between America and the Muslim world.”
Some officials found the current case particularly troubling because it followed more than 10 years at war in the Muslim world, in which outrage over even the rumor of American defacement of Korans has caused previous crises in Afghanistan and Iraq. Several of the officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details of the investigations.
An American military official familiar with the joint investigation somberly described the burning as a “tragedy,” but rejected any suggestion that it was intentional. He said that the joint commission of three senior Afghan security officials and an American military officer was convinced that the military personnel involved in making the decision to get rid of the Korans and those who carried out the order did not set out to defile the Muslim holy book.
“There was no maliciousness, there was no deliberateness, there was not an intentional disrespect of Islam,” he said.
At the very least, the accounts of the Americans and the Afghans involved in the investigation offer a parable of the dire consequences of carelessness about Afghan values, despite the cultural training required for most American service members serving in Afghanistan.
The account begins about a week before the burning, when officers at the detention center in Parwan became worried that detainees were secretly communicating through notes scribbled in library books, possibly to plot an attack.
“There was a suspicion that this was being used as a means to communicate, internal and external,” said the American military official familiar with the investigation, adding that the fear was that the detainees might “organize.”
Two Afghan-American interpreters were assigned to sift through the library’s books and set aside those that had writing that might constitute a security risk, said Maulavi Dad and other members of the Ulema Council team who visited the detention center and were briefed by the military.
By the time the interpreters were finished, 1,652 books were stacked on the floor and tables for removal, including some Korans, many other religious or scholarly texts, and a number of secular works, including novels and poetry.
Whether the inscriptions were a security risk is a matter of debate. Members of the Ulema Council doubted that the writings were anything other than personal notations, and American military officials and Afghan security officials were unsure because so many books were involved that they had not been able to review them all.
“We saw some notes on the margins of the books in which some of the detainees had written memories of their imprisonment, their name, their father’s name, location and the place where they were arrested,” said Qazi Nazir Ahmad Hanifi, a member of Parliament from Herat who is a mullah and was on the Ulema’s investigating team.
He and others said that in some of the books, including Korans, words were occasionally written in the margins, translations of difficult Arabic words into Pashto or Dari. “These had nothing to do with terrorism or criminal activities,” he said.
The American military official did not go into details, but said only that “we overly rely around here on linguists,” the military term for interpreters and translators. “None of the U.S. soldiers can read this.”
But the linguists were responsible only for the sorting of the books, not for the decision to burn them. It was in asking why the books were not simply stored that one of several faulty decisions became apparent, the official said.
“You have separated a huge number of books — it will come out 1,652,” he said, “and those that are in charge say, ‘We don’t have the storage capacity; this is sensitive material.’ ”
“So the decision is ‘We are going to burn these books,’ ” he continued. “It is part of their procedures to do that, but there’s a process in place that that is the last thing. Things should be retained for a while, but in this case they don’t.”
Sometime on Monday, Feb. 20, the books were transported by a work detail of several soldiers to the truck that would ultimately take them to the incinerator. That posed another missed opportunity.
As the books lay in boxes waiting to be piled in the truck, some Afghan Army soldiers saw them and recognized them as religious books, and they became worried, Maulavi Dad said. They asked where the books were being taken and were told by soldiers that the books were destined for storage. Worried that Korans might be among the books and that something wrong might happen to them, the Afghan soldiers reported to their commanding officer, Lt. Col. Safiullah, who, like many Afghans, uses only one name.
The American military official corroborated that account and said the problem was that by the time the Afghan officer relayed the concerns to his American counterpart, who came to check the truck, the vehicle and its cargo were already on the way to the incinerator.
Both Afghan and American officials believed that the three soldiers driving the holy books to their destination had little or no understanding of what they were carrying. “For those three soldiers, this was nothing more than a work detail,” one military official said.
Just minutes later, when the work detail began to heave the books into the flames, an Afghan laborer standing nearby offered to help. But when he drew close, he realized what was happening and began to scream.
For him and others it was a nightmare come to life. “One of my friends called to me, ‘The Americans are burning our holy books,’ and we rushed over there,” said Mohammed Zafar, 24, who has worked for five years as a laborer near the gate.
As the Afghan laborers tried to extinguish the flames with their water bottles, at least one laborer plunged into the smoldering ashes to retrieve the books, Mr. Zafar said.
The Americans immediately stopped, but not before at least four books had been badly burned, according to a notice from the presidential palace shortly afterward.
What should have happened was far different, Maulavi Dad said. He gently lifted up his Koran, a beautifully bound one with dark blue ornamentation, and described the religiously approved way one would dispose of it if it were damaged or too old to use.
“We have two suggestions: You can cover it with a clean cloth and bury it on holy ground, a shrine or a graveyard, a place where people don’t walk,” he said.
“Or you can wrap it and place it in the sea, the river, in flowing water.”
He added, “You see, we believe the earth and the water are the two cleanest elements on the planet, and since we give great value to holy books and papers, this is where we bury them.”
Graham Bowley and an employee of The New York Times contributed reporting.
Is Afghanistan worth it? US doubts rise after Quran burning violence.
An Afghan soldier killed two Americans in retaliation for the US Quran burning – and the Afghanistan government offered no apology. It suggests that the relationship is fraying after 10 years of war, some say.
Christian Science Monitor By Anna Mulrine, Staff writer March 2, 2012
Washington - The violent riots and cold-blooded killing of two US military advisers Thursday by an Afghan soldier upset over the US military’s burning of Qurans are raising increasingly urgent questions among troops about whether mission in Afghanistan is worth it – both in the cost of nearly 2,000 American lives and the billions of dollars that the cash-strapped US has poured into the country.
For many, the question is one of gratitude. Though the Pentagon says the burning may have been a mistaken attempt to destroy books in which prisoners were passing extremist messages, rioting Afghan crowds are still chanting "Death to America." Does the act of burning Qurans really overshadow all the "blood and treasure" America has spent in Afghanistan?
Even for others, who are inclined to be more sensitive to the deep offense created by burning Qurans, the past two weeks have been troubling. When Afghan President Hamid Karzai feels no need to apologize for a member of the Afghan Army killing two Americans, it is a sign of a perhaps irrevocably broken partnership, says retired Col. Peter Mansoor, former executive officer to Gen. David Petraeus during the height of the insurgency in Iraq.
“If it’s not a true partnership, then why should we sacrifice American blood and treasure?” says Colonel Mansoor, who is now a professor of military history at Ohio State in Columbus. "Americans have cultural sensitivities, too. Maybe we’re so sensitive to Afghan culture that we’re forgetting our own.”
On both sides, the signs of strain from 10 years of war are growing. Afghans see the Quran burnings as merely the latest sign that the foreign soldiers in their land do not share or care for their culture or beliefs. Americans wonder why they are not lauded for risking their lives for the security of another country.
Lost in the sense of ill-usage, however, is the idea that troops are sent to war not to collect plaudits, but rather to defend some vital US national security interest, says Kimberly Kagan, president of the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, and an adviser to US commanders in Afghanistan.
“It would be wonderful if out of this experience, the soldiers come to love the Afghan people, and the Afghan people come to love us,” she says. But “we’re not in Afghanistan in order for the Afghans to say thanks to us. We’re there because we have core interests in Afghanistan.”
Asking for thanks, she suggests, can reek of imperialism or even racism, with the foreign force seeing itself as beneficently saving a people from itself.
For Mansoor, however, the issue is not one of gratitude, but mutual respect.
“We can understand the protests – Karzai doesn’t have to apologize for that,” Mansoor says. He says he can also understand resentments of everyday Afghans who sometimes see American forces as occupiers.
“But when Afghan soldiers take guns out and shoot Americans in the back of the head? These people are in the employ of the Afghan government,” he adds. “President Karzai should give Americans a loud and public apology.”
“Yes, we inadvertently burned Qurans, but it was a mistake. It wasn’t intentional. We weren’t saying, ‘Screw Islam,’ ” he says.
Such an apology comes with political risks – as President Obama learned when he issued one of his own in the wake of the Quran burnings. Republican presidential candidates rushed to be the first to condemn it.
“I think for a lot of people, that sticks in their throat,” Mitt Romney told Fox News. “We’ve made an enormous contribution to help the people there achieve freedom, and for us to be apologizing at a time like this is something which is very difficult for the American people to countenance.”
Newt Gingrich likened the apology to a surrender. If Mr. Karzai “doesn’t feel like apologizing” for the killing of US soldiers by Afghans, “then we should say, 'Goodbye and good luck, and we don’t need to be here risking our lives and wasting our money on somebody who doesn’t care.' ”
Those same political risks echo in Afghanistan, too. For an Afghan public weary of war and, increasingly, of the American presence, a Karzai apology could seem intolerably weak. Moreover, in a society that doesn't shy away from violence to settle perceived injustices – and where the burning of the Quran is a grievous blasphemy – an apology could run starkly against the public mood.
The reaction by the Afghan government in the wake of violence toward US troops, however, has made officials like Mansoor question America’s war there.
In 2010, Mansoor traveled to Afghanistan and “I was pretty high on what we were doing,” he says. But today, regardless of current US troop levels in the country, among Afghans “the feeling of ingratitude runs pretty deep. I mean, Karzai is a disappointment. He’s pandering to his base. And, as a result, he might lose the war.”
5 US Troops Responsible for Burning Korans
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 03 March 2012
A US military investigation found five soldiers responsible for burning Korans at Bagram Air Base which set off a spate of anti-American protests and violence across the country.
Two US military officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the findings hadn't been released publicly did not further identify the soldiers. There was no indication that the investigation found that they violated military laws.However, they could face disciplinary action.
More than 30 Afghans were killed and dozens others were wounded during the Koran burning protests. Six Isaf soldiers have also been killed since the incident, apparently in revenge for the burning of the Korans.
The US officials said that enlisted soldiers were ordered last month to remove religious materials from a prison library at Bagram, north of Kabul, in part because detainees were believed to be leaving messages to one another in them.
At first the materials were placed in storage, but soldiers later took the materials, including Korans, to a fire pit and started to burn them on February 21. Local labourers discovered the Korans in the pit and removed them.
The officials said that the soldiers had misunderstood orders when they placed the Korans in the fire pit to be destroyed. They had just been ordered to remove them from the library, not burn them, they said.
US President Barack Obama apologised to Karzai, and top US military commanders met with local leaders in an effort to quell the tensions.
But many Afghans weren't appeased, saying that they couldn't believe the US military could make such mistakes more than a decade into the war.
The UN Special Representative for Afghanistan, Ján Kubi on Thursday called or the US military to take disciplinary action against those who burned Korans.
Anti-U.S. emotions run high at Afghan dogfighting ring
Reuters By Michael Georgy Fri Mar 2, 2012
KABUL - Protests over the burning of Korans at a NATO base may have faded but some Afghans are still venting their rage over the incident -- at a bloody Kabul dogfighting ring.
If emotions here are any indication, desecration of copies of the Muslim holy book did lasting damage to the image of the United States, which is struggling to pacify the country before NATO combat troops leave at the end of 2014.
"We call the dogs who lose Americans. We are furious about the Korans," said Mirwais Haji, 28, as a defeated canine limped off the snow-covered dirt ring on the edge of the capital.
"We want the Afghan government to bring the people who did this to us. We will kill them ourselves."
The burning of the Korans last month triggered widespread protests and a string of fatal attacks by Afghan security forces on NATO soldiers.
The killing of two U.S. officers by an Afghan policeman in the Interior Ministry stunned NATO and cast doubt on its strategy of replacing large combat units with advisers as the alliance tries to wind down the war, now in its eleventh year.
An apology by U.S. President Barack Obama has failed to ease the anger over an incident that has hurt a U.S. campaign to win hearts and minds to gain an edge over the Taliban and force them to negotiate peace.
The Koran burning incident underscored how U.S.-led NATO troops still fail to grasp Afghanistan's religious and cultural sensitivities despite their long presence in the country.
That insensitivity could have far-reaching consequences for U.S. policy.
ANGER
Thousands of people gather in a circle each Friday to watch large Afghan fighting dogs, known as Kuchis, attack each other in 30-second contests below mountains on the edge of Kabul.
Some do it for entertainment, betting up to $4,000 on a single fight, as vendors sell peanuts, tangerines and potatoes.
For others, it's an escape from frustrations over everything from unemployment, to the war to rampant government corruption.
This Friday, several people were still riveted by the Koran burnings, which NATO called a tragic blunder. Gripped by anti-American sentiment, they cheered on dogs who growled, stood on their hind legs and tore at each other's throats.
"We are tired of the Americans and what they do with the Korans and other incidents," said Akmal Bahadoor, 18, an airport employee, as some of the dogs were held down by two men because they are so powerful and edgy.
"When we watch these dogs it's a way of expressing our anger against the Americans. We think the Americans are being attacked."
NATO is investigating the Koran burnings.
Western officials are hoping the outcry will soon pass so they can focus on other huge challenges before 2014. But there are no signs of that happening any time soon.
As young boys ran to get out of the way of a crazed dog that ran through the crowd, a few Afghan soldiers watched other canines charge each other.
"Even if the people who did this are prosecuted. The anger will never, ever go away. It will always be stuck in my heart," said one of them, 30-year-old Khalil Bazar.
(Editing by Robert Birsel)
Koran-burning crisis exposes flawed U.S. strategy as extremism runs amok
Examiner.com By Michael Hughes Afghanistan Headlines Examiner March 2, 2012
The degreee of anti-American animosity evident during the recent Koran-burning protests in Afghanistan provides yet another illustration of the abject failure of the U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine, the sine qua non of which is the unconditional support of the local population.
The crisis also highlights the growing influence of the Taliban's extreme Saudi-inspired religious ideology, a value system that is an affront to traditional Afghan sensibilities. Although the Western presence seems to be fueling the extremism, alternatives bandied about in the press over the past few days represent formulas for perpetual instability.
Afghanistan’s demographic trends bode ill for the future considering most Afghans who do remember what life was like before the onset of Islamic fundamentalism in the 1970s and its progressive expansion during the 1980s, have either migrated or are dead.
With an average life expectancy of 45 in a country with the 8th highest death rate in the world, it isn’t too shocking that not many Afghans remain who can recall when the tribe prevailed over the mosque – when the word of the khan, not the clerics, reigned supreme and a secular-minded monarch sat on the throne.
Just decades ago the khan appointed the village mullah, a decision, of course, that had to be blessed by a local jirga, a sacred gathering of tribal elders. Afghans perceive decisions emanating from the jirga as the most legitimate expression of the people’s will.
This egalitarian structure stands in sharp contrast to the decision-making processes of the authoritarian Taliban, where judgments are handed down by half-literate clerics, many of whom can barely read the Koran let alone effectively interpret it.
Traditional Muslims have indicated to me that the proper way to dispose of a Koran is to actually burn it. Hence, although the intentions of the American troops are still in question, the level of outrage over the incineration of the holy book defies common sense. Not to mention the fact violence as a response to this type of transgression is un-Islamic by any measure.
America’s strategy now hinges upon building an Afghan central army that can prevent the country from being overrun by the Taliban once the U.S. exits. Such an approach is faulty for many reasons not the least of which is that it violates the basic laws of mathematics, as Fareed Zakaria pointed out in The Washington Post earlier this week.
The U.S. is building an Afghan security force to a scale that will require $12 billion a year to maintain – which is 8 times the amount of revenue the Afghan government takes in every year.
But the U.S. strategy is defective not only because it will keep the Afghans mired in debt and forever reliant on foreign donors. It also relies much too heavily on one of the most corrupt government’s in the world – one perceived as illegitimate by a vast majority of Afghans.
And the national army poorly represents the country’s ethnic profile as it is sorely lacking in members from Afghanistan’s largest ethnic group, the Pashtuns. The central army and police primarily consist of Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras – the same minority groups that led the Northern Alliance in battling the Pashtuns throughout the 1990s.
Hence, as a result, more Pashtuns have been pushed into the arms of the Taliban. Yet, given this fact, Mr. Zakaria puts forth a recommendation that would have tragic consequences:
The north and east — populated by Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras — will stay staunchly opposed to the Taliban. We should support those groups and, more crucially, ally with the neighboring countries that support them. The natural, and historic, allies of the Northern Alliance are India, Iran and Russia; they have permanent interests that will keep them involved in the region.
It must be made clear that the Northern Alliance warlords are just as malicious and have just as much blood on their hands as the Taliban. The U.S. has miscalculated by assuming the enemy of our enemy is our friend. Zakaria also must realize Afghanistan will never see peace until it is beholden to no foreign power and free from external entanglements. Afghanistan must seek neutrality or it risks further exacerbating regional tensions.
The northern warlords killed tens of thousands and committed atrocious human rights violations when they had their day in the sun in the 1990s, a regime so reprehensible it paved the way for the kinder, gentler Taliban to take control of Kabul.
The U.S. also makes the wildly inaccurate assumption that all Pashtuns are loyal to the Taliban, which couldn’t be further from the truth. The Taliban have more in common with Arab and Pakistani extremists than they do with Pashtun tribal society.
In fact, Taliban dominance of the region will be based on the efficacy of their program to de-Pashtunize the Pashtuns, as native Afghan tribal expert Khalil Nouri brilliantly explains in a recent Veterans Today piece.
Both the current American game plan and that prescribed by Zakaria would contribute to the process of de-Pashtunization and would enable Pakistan’s extended expeditionary force, the Taliban, to rise to power once again.
A more reasonable antidote to what ails Afghanistan would be to support a legitimate political solution driven by traditional, moderate and less violent elements within Afghan society before the majority of the population is radicalized.
==
Michael Hughes is a Washington D.C.-based journalist, a Baloch human rights advocate and a policy analyst for the New World Strategies Coalition - a native Afghan think tank.
4 civilians killed in E. Afghanistan roadside bombing
JALALABAD, Afghanistan, March 3 (Xinhua) -- Four civilians were killed Saturday when a roadside bomb went off in eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar, the provincial government said in a statement.
"A civilian car touched off a roadside bomb at around 7:30 a.m. Saturday triggering a powerful blast killing all four people aboard on the spot," the provincial government said in the statement.
It said the four men including a teenage boy killed in the blast were members of the same family.
Taliban militants have often attacked Afghan and NATO-led forces with Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and roadside bombs but the lethal weapons also inflict casualties on civilians.
A total of 3,021 Afghan civilians were killed in 2011, an 8 percent rise over the same period of 2010, according to the United Nations annual report released in Kabul on Feb. 4.
The IEDs and roadside bombs were the single largest killer of Afghan civilians in 2011, leaving 967 people dead, according to the UN report.
Winter adventure on Afghanistan's ski slopes
BBC News By Ramin Anwari 2 March 2012
Bamiyan was once renowned for the famous Buddha statues, destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. But now this central Afghan province is working hard to attract tourists to its snowy slopes with a ski festival, writes BBC Afghan's Ramin Anwari.
"Forget about war, forget about terrorism. For now, this is all about having fun," declares one participant at Bamiyan's international ski competition held in the mountains of Khoshkak, a 30-minute drive from the capital of Bamiyan province.
Although the ski competition is in its second year, this is the first time that foreigners have taken part. There are about 20 skiers from outside Afghanistan, alongside 10 local competitors who have been newly-trained.
This is part of an ambitious plan to promote adventurous activities in different parts of Afghanistan, a country exhausted by more than three decades of war and destruction.
"Bamiyan certainly has the potential, as it has had throughout its long and rich history, to become a favourite tourist destination," says Amir Foladi, who works with the Aga Khan Foundation to promote tourism in the country.
"Bamiyan is a good place to visit in spring and summer, but we are trying to make it an enjoyable place for all four seasons, by introducing winter sports such as skiing," he adds. 'Up in the air'
The initiative by the Aga Khan Foundation and other partners, including the Bamiyan Ski Club and the Rah-e-Abrisham Company, has attracted tens of locals, including a number of women in Bamiyan who are relishing the opportunity of becoming the first ever ski guides in their country.
"We are surely having lots of fun" says one who is training to become a ski guide. "Besides that, we are learning a very exciting sport. It's amazing to learn to ski, it's like flying up in the air and with the beautiful landscape of Bamiyan, it's even more exciting."
Although Bamiyan has the perfect climate for ski lovers and mountains as high as 5000m (16,404 ft) covered by snow throughout the winter, there are poor facilities on the ground.
There is no mountain rescue service or avalanche warning system in place and local medical facilities are described as very basic.
Skiers have to rely on the knowledge of local guides who have been trained on how to escape from sudden avalanches and the only local hospital in the town, which can provide emergency assistance.
"There are challenges, no doubt about it" says Amir Foladi. "But we are working to solve it. Security is anther big challenge for our future plans, but there is no point in losing hope and and not doing anything."
The tough route
While there have been huge security problems throughout the country, Bamiyan has been untouched by war since 2001.
But the security situation elsewhere remains a concern and this has had its impact on the number of tourists visiting Bamiyan.
Before the civil war in Afghanistan, Bamiyan welcomed tens of thousands of foreign tourists in a year. There were none during the war years.
Although Bamiyan has begun to lure tourists back over the last decade one of the main problems lies in the route from Kabul to Bamiyan.
Currently no commercial airline operates between the two and those who wish to fly to the province have to rely on UN or Isaf flights, which are expensive and cannot accommodate large numbers of passengers.
And security problems on the road route, from Taliban ambushes to land mines, prevent tourists taking the eight hour drive from Kabul to Bamiyan.
"There are hopes for the future of Bamiyan if we have a better security in Afghanistan," one local shopkeeper in central Bamiyan says.
"Lots of things rely on security. We definitely would love to be a tourist-friendly province. It will help our economy, but for the time being, security is the most important need."
US-Afghanistan deal in danger as Hamid Karzai holds firm on demands
Afghan president not prepared to compromise over control of jails and American night-time raids as Nato conference nears
Guardian.co.uk By Emma Graham-Harrison Friday 2 March 2012
Kabul - Hopes that the US can fix conditions for a long-term military presence in Afghanistan before an unofficial May deadline are fading because Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, is not prepared to compromise on two demands that have stalled negotiations for months.
Washington and its allies want to have the US-Afghan strategic partnership agreed before May, when a Nato conference in Chicago is expected to pledge long-term help to Kabul with finances and military training.
But negotiations have dragged on for over a year and Karzai is adamant he will not give ground on his two main demands – for Afghan control of jails and an end to night-time raids on Afghan homes.
Western officials say the first is not practical and the second would compromise the military effort.
"If they don't change their position there will be no strategic partnership before Chicago," said a senior Afghan official familiar with the negotiations. "We are not willing to compromise when it comes to sovereignty."
The strategic partnership deal would allow US forces to stay in some current large bases in Afghanistan, to help train Afghan soldiers and police. The bases could also be used for drone strikes on militant areas in Pakistan.
The deal would give western leaders a security rationale for spending money in Afghanistan after combat troops are withdrawn in 2014, and also aims to reassure Afghans the west will not cut and run.
A string of top diplomats and politicians have urged Karzai to sign.
"The Afghan government, especially the Afghan president, is under a lot of pressure from all sides – there are some indirect threats being made as well," said the Afghan official, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.
But Karzai has long said that for a deal to go ahead the US must hand over all jails on Afghan soil to his government's control and end controversial night-time hunts for insurgents and their supporters.
He repeated that position in a phone call earlier this week with the Nato secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who was urging Karzai to sign the deal ahead of the Chicago summit, according to the presidential palace.
"Before the US-Afghan strategic partnership document can be signed, the foreigners have to respect the national sovereignty of Afghanistan," a palace statement, released late on Wednesday, quoted Karzai telling Rasmussen.
"No Afghan [prisoners] should be in the hands of foreigners, and foreign troops should hand over all the jails they have now to the Afghan government, and stop the night raids."
US officials had suggested resolving the impasse by hiving off the two most controversial points into a separate document and agreeing to hash them out later, but Karzai has rejected that as a compromise of Afghan sovereignty.
"The US idea is not accepted at all, we have to reach an agreement on these two points before signing any strategic partnership document," the official said.
The US is reluctant to hand over jails in part because Afghanistan's judicial system does not currently have the capacity to run them.
Night raids are contentious because western military commanders consider them perhaps the most effective tool in their arsenal, saying they take out senior leaders with minimal risk to innocent civilians.
Afghan leaders say they are dangerous and intrusive, cause too many deaths of non-combatants and turn Afghans against the war.
Diplomatic manoeuvres that put Afghans officially in charge of prisons while leaving US forces organising day-to-day management, or gave US troops a role providing intelligence and support to Afghan-led night raids, could resolve some of the difficulties.
But western diplomats warn that Karzai may be badly misjudging the mood in an economically battered America, whose diplomats are also distracted by security concerns in other volatile areas from Syria and Yemen to Somalia.
"The Afghans still really believe that the Americans need to be here," said one senior Kabul diplomat who asked not to be named.
"I think they are underestimating how much things have changed, and US concerns are focused elsewhere – and they cannot manage without this support."
The World Bank forecasts Kabul will have a $7bn (£4.4bn) hole in its annual budget after 2014.
Mining projects may one day allow it to be self-sufficient, but they are in the very early stages of development, so foreign cash will be needed for years to pay the army.
While several other nations have signed their own long-term strategic deals – Britain has promised an officer training academy modelled on Sandhurst – all of them are unofficially contingent on a US deal; without an American lead, no one wants to stay.
The US embassy insists that there is no timeline for a deal, although repeated unofficial deadlines have passed without anything being pinned down.
"We are not going to comment on ongoing negotiations," said Gavin Sundwall, spokesman for the US embassy in Kabul.
"We want to get the right agreement, not necessarily a quick agreement, so there are no timelines."
Taliban seek constitutional role for Mullah Omar
The Hindu By Praveen Swami March 1, 2012
WASHINGTON, DC - Negotiators for insurgent group say head of former Islamic Emirate should be guardian of future Afghan state
Taliban negotiators involved in ongoing talks in Doha are seeking dramatic constitutional changes which would make Mullah Muhammad Omar Afghanistan's supreme religious and political leader, western and Indian diplomatic sources have told The Hindu.
“In essence,” a European diplomat familiar with the talks told The Hindu, “the Taliban want that Mullah Omar become a kind of guardian-figure for the Afghan state, not dissimilar to Iran's maghame rahbari, or supreme leader.”
Mullah Omar took the title of amir al-mu'mimin, or “commander of the faithful,” in April 1996, donning a cloak purported to belong to the Prophet Muhammad. Local legend has it that whoever retrieved the cloak, locked inside a series of locked chests in a Kandahar mosque, would become a great leader.
He remains on a list of fugitives sought by the United States for their role in the 9/11 attacks, and is alleged to be hiding out in Karachi under the protection of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate.
Political negotiations
Few details have become available on the political content of the Doha talks, but both Marc Grossman, the United States' special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan and his special advisor, scholar Barnett Rubin, have been visiting the region regularly. Dr. Nasiruddin Haqqani, the elder brother of jihadist warlord Sirajuddin Haqqani, also travelled to the United Arab Emirates recently to meet with top Taliban negotiator Tayyeb Agha, to be briefed on the discussions.
Pakistan's Army chief, Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, has also submitted several proposals to the White House for future power-sharing in Afghanistan. The plans, the informed sources said, advocate a federal arrangement which would devolve political power on armed groups based on their regional presence — an arrangement which would give the Taliban control of nine southern provinces.
The Taliban has, however, said substantive political discussions and progress on putting a ceasefire into place can only begin after confidence-building measures are implemented — central among them, the release of prisoners held in Guantanamo bay. The list of prisoners they have sought includes Mullah Muhammad Fazl, a top Taliban military commander who, the United Nations alleges, was involved in war crimes, including the massacre of Shi'a prisoners.
Last month, the U.S. administration briefed key senators on their plans to release the prisoners — but there has been no forward movement since then. Mr. Grossmansaid in January that the release was not imminent.
In the interim, the Taliban has made clear it will not accept a power-sharing arrangement based on Afghanistan's existing constitution. In a statement released in January, the Taliban insisted its acceptance of the talks in Doha was not “a surrender from jihad and neither is it connected to an acceptance of the Constitution of the stooge Kabul administration.” Instead, it said, “the Islamic Emirate is utilising its political wing alongside its military presence and jihad in order to realise the national and Islamic aspirations of the nation.”
Red lines
The Taliban's political demands run against the grain of United States policy. In October, 2011, testimony to the House Foreign Relations committee, secretary of state Hillary Clinton said the Taliban would have to “renounce violence, abandon al-Qaida, and abide by the laws and constitution of Afghanistan, including its protections for women and minorities.” “If insurgents cannot or will not meet those red lines,” Ms. Clinton said, “they will face continued and unrelenting assault”.
However, with a cash-strapped administration pushing forward its plans to scale down troops in Afghanistan, there is growing fear in India that those red lines might be breached — handing the Taliban a state which could harbour Islamist groups hostile to India. “For us”, a senior Indian official said, “this is a real concern, and what we're hearing isn't reassuring”.
These concerns, a senior administration official in Washington, DC, told The Hindu, were misplaced. “The United States is not going to cut and run, period,” he said. It remains unclear, though, how large the long-term presence the United States presence will eventually be.
Events on the ground could add to the pressure on the Doha dialogue. The sources said there had also been discussions, but little progress, on working out a ceasefire — a key precondition for a sustainable peace process. Taliban units have begun a steady series of insurgent attacks on military targets, as well as terrorist strikes, ahead of the traditional period of most-intense fighting in the summer.
Figures released by the United Nations earlier this year show more than 2,000 Afghan civilians were killed by insurgent and terrorist in 2011 — the fifth successive year-on-year increase. The escalation in civilian killings came despite a code of conduct released by the Taliban in 2010, promising measures to protect “common people.”
Local Taliban leader captured in N. Afghanistan operation: ISAF
KABUL, March 3 (Xinhua) -- A local Taliban leader was captured Saturday during a joint Afghan forces and NATO-led coalition troops operation in northern Afghan province of Kunduz, NATO-led forces said.
"An Afghan and coalition security force captured a Taliban leader during an operation in Chahar Darah district, Kunduz province, today," the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) forces said in a press release.
Without disclosing details, the ISAF release added that "the leader directed the emplacement of roadside bombs and provided weapons and funds to the insurgents in the area,"
The joint forces, separately, discovered a drug cache during an operation in Marjah district of southern Helmand province on Thursday. "The cache consisted of approximately 4,732 pounds (2, 151 kg) of opium and some 53 pounds (24 kg) of heroin," according to the release.
The joint forces detained several suspects and destroyed a majority of the drugs on site without incident. The remaining drugs were confiscated to be used as evidence, the ISAF release added.
U.S. Puts Sanctions On Afghan Who Makes IEDs For Taliban
March 2, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
The U.S. government has slapped sanctions on an Afghan national it says has helped manufacture improvised explosive devices for the Taliban.
A statement from the U.S. Treasury said Abdul Samad Achekzai "was responsible for and tasked with IED component procurement and storage, detonator construction, and IED training in support of Taliban fighters in western and southern Afghanistan."
Adam Szubin, the director of the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, called Achekzai "a key official in the Taliban's IED supply network" and said he was "responsible for untold death and suffering."
The sanctions freeze all of Achekzai's U.S. assets and forbids Americans from doing business with him.
The Treasury statement said Achekzai currently lived in Pakistan's Balochistan Province.
The Taliban is having second thoughts
For Philip Hammond, taking on the position of Defence Secretary has been a baptism of fire. One minute he was the Transport Secretary, immersed in planning the new high-speed rail route between London and the Midlands; the next he found himself parachuted into one of the most challenging ministries Whitehall has to offer.
Telegraph.co.uk By Con Coughlin 02 Mar 2012
Prior to his appointment - after Dr Liam Fox’s resignation last October - Mr Hammond was hardly renowned for his interest in national security issues. A successful businessman before entering politics, he was better known as one of the more bean-counterish figures in Westminster.
“I would regard myself as a very strong, pro-defence politician who believes that defence should be the number one priority of government,” he says. “If a threat comes along, the public rightly expects the Government to have the ability to defend itself.”
Until his appointment, Mr Hammond’s involvement in defence issues had been confined largely to his role as shadow chief secretary to the Treasury where, together with Oliver Letwin, he had worked on the Conservative’s master plan for reducing the budget deficit. “I had a pretty clear view of our defence needs because Liam had a very good idea on how we should project our power through the military in an age of austerity.”
But once he took up the post, Mr Hammond came face to face with the challenge of running one of the most testing – some would say dysfunctional – of government departments. Apart from having to eradicate the £38billion black hole from the Ministry of Defence budget, Mr Hammond suddenly had to immerse himself in a variety of highly complex issues, from the replacement of the Trident nuclear deterrent to the future of Britain’s military involvement in Afghanistan.
“I was on a very steep learning curve and spent the first two months with my heart in my mouth hoping that I did not make some terrible blunder,” he admits. But Mr Hammond is clearly a fast learner, and little more than four months after taking up his post he speaks with the confidence of a man who has mastered his brief.
Earlier this week I joined him in the Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, where he had the delicate job of seeking the assistance of two of the region’s more autocratic regimes in aiding with the removal of the vast military infrastructure Britain has assembled in neighbouring Afghanistan.
The highly challenging task of removing billions of pounds worth of British kit from Afghanistan means the MoD needs to explore all the available exit routes, particularly as the Pakistanis have closed the main border crossings into Afghanistan, through which most of the equipment arrived.
Mr Hammond estimates that, apart from removing 3,000 armoured vehicles, there are around 11,000 shipping containers of equipment that need removing as Britain begins scaling down its military commitment to Afghanistan, with combat operations due to cease at the end of 2014.
With other Nato nations undertaking similar operations - the Americans have 49,000 vehicles and 100,000 containers to bring home - Mr Hammond fears massive bottlenecks could develop as the main exit routes out of Afghanistan become clogged up with retreating soldiers.
“The pressure on the existing lines of communication is going to be very significant,” he explains. “That is why it is important for us to open a new line of communication through the north. Nothing would be worse than a disorderly withdrawal.” One possibility he is exploring is to transport much of the equipment by rail from northern Afghanistan on a 4,000-mile journey through Central Asia and Russia to the Baltic ports, from whence it will then be shipped back to England.
But he is clear in his mind that withdrawing British forces from Afghanistan is indisputably the right course of action.
“We are not some kind of 21st century missionary force,” he says. “You cannot win an insurgency by inserting foreign troops and expecting them to do the job to completion. Nato troops do the heavy lift while at the same time turning the Afghan army from an
ill-disciplined rag bag into a disciplined force. It was always our intention to hand over to the Afghans.”
But what about the Taliban? Surely, unless there is some form of political reconciliation, we risk seeing the Taliban regain power, and we’ll be back to square one, with al-Qaeda rebuilding its terror camps in southern Afghanistan?
“When the British leave there will be a continued insurgency which the Afghans will have to deal with themselves. But I also hope there will be a political reconciliation process in place.”
Mr Hammond believes that many Taliban fighters are having second thoughts about continuing with the insurgency, as Afghan security forces increasingly take the lead role in combat operations. “There is some evidence that, at the level of the ordinary Afghan fighters that signed up to fight the “foreign infidel”, they are now fighting against Afghan troops, which is not what they expected and has persuaded them to enter the reconciliation process.”
More encouraging is the suggestion that the Taliban might be prepared to ditch its long-standing alliance with al-Qaeda. “The Taliban are talking about issuing a public statement that would distance them from al-Qaeda,” he says.
Mr Hammond’s keen business sense is also excited by the potential peace dividend the Government will receive once the last combat troops have returned home.
“We will have a large peace dividend when we leave Afghanistan worth £3.5billion a year, which is what we are currently spending in Afghanistan.” Apart from supervising Britain’s military withdrawal from Afghanistan, Mr Hammond’s main priority is to instil a culture of financial discipline at the MoD while ensuring that Britain retains the military capabilities to maintain its status as a major world power.
“The big problem we have had in the past is what I call the conspiracy of optimism between the military, the MoD and the defence contractors,” he said. This meant that Dr Fox had to make some difficult decisions when he became defence secretary in 2010, including the cancellation of a number of key projects, such as the new Nimrod maritime surveillance aircraft, in order to balance the MoD’s books.
But Mr Hammond is confident that the worst is behind him, and that the MoD will soon be able to announce that it has dealt with the £38billion black hole in its budget and can start spending money again on new projects.
“I have no doubt that we are punching above our weight and that we are establishing ourselves as an important world power,” he insists, pointing to the Government’s energetic pursuit of new diplomatic ties, from Central Asia to Latin America. “Of course our Armed Forces are going to be smaller in the future, but you do not need large armies to project power. Sending a frigate is important, but doing so without intensive diplomatic engagement is a pretty hollow gesture.”
He is also grateful to Dr Fox for the ground work he did laying the foundations for the future structure of the Armed Forces. While Dr Fox concentrated on the “what”, Mr Hammond says his job is to do the “how”. “Liam will not have detected any sense of me changing the direction he had determined,” he says. “I stay in touch with Liam and he was very helpful in briefing me and bringing me up to date on the political issues relating to various projects.”
And what about his own political prospects? He is, after all, the sixth Defence Secretary during the past six years. “Fingers’ crossed,” he replies with a smile.
Taliban in Turmoil Over 'Mullah Omar' Letter
EXCLUSIVE: Afghan insurgents denounce 'fake' call for restraint during peace talks. Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau on new dissent in the ranks.
The Daily Beast By Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau Mar 1, 2012
Mullah Mohammad Omar can hardly be blamed if he has second thoughts about having entered into peace discussions with his sworn enemy, the United States. As word of the talks first began circulating among the Afghan insurgents several weeks ago, a significant number of field commanders and fighters immediately recoiled at the notion of talking peace with the American occupiers. Now another dispute has broken out over what some of the Taliban leader’s top lieutenants are calling a sophisticated black propaganda campaign, designed to undermine the insurgency’s fighting spirit.
In recent weeks, the group’s ranks have been deluged with copies of a letter apparently signed by Omar himself, calling on the insurgents to “slow down” their military operations and to refrain from injuring civilians while talks continue in the Gulf state of Qatar. Written in Pashto under the letterhead of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (the official name of his defunct Islamic regime) and purporting to be from “The Special Office of the Amir-ul-Momineen”—the Leader of the Faithful, as Omar’s followers call him—the copies have been distributed among fighters on both sides of the Pakistani border and have been delivered to media outlets in Kabul. “All mujahedin of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan should restrain and slow down their operations until the end of the negotiating process in Qatar and never attack in places where civilians may be harmed,” the letter instructs. It ends on a hopeful note: “Our main goal is the withdrawal of foreign troops and the restoration of the Islamic system. If our goal c
an be achieved, we think that the peace talks are worthy, and that anyone obstructing them is not our friend.”
This isn’t the first time Omar (or someone using his name) has told his followers to avoid causing civilian casualties. (They mostly ignore the order, judging by the number of Afghan women and children who have been killed or injured by insurgent attacks.) Nevertheless, many Taliban say the letter’s appeal for restraint and a slowdown proves it’s a fake and an effort to hurt their morale. “This sounds like nonsense to me,” says Mullah Zabihullah, a senior Taliban political operative who has seen the letter. “He is asking our mujahedin to slow down attacks while the Americans are fighting us and killing innocents. This has no meaning at all.” The Taliban’s media office quickly denounced the letter as a “fabrication” and blamed it on the CIA. “This action is clearly the work of the intelligence agency of America to deceive the people,” the group said in an official statement. It added that the insurgency would not reduce its attacks on U.S. and NATO forces, regardless of the peace discussions. “The Americans mu
st unequivocally understand that the ongoing jihad and struggle against them are the Islamic and religious obligations of our nation,” the statement said. “It will continue as long as there is an illegal foreign presence on this soil.”
Genuine or not, the letter’s call for a reduction in violent actions seems to be falling on deaf ears.
Despite the official denial, at least some of the letter’s recipients are convinced it’s genuine. One of them, a former senior Taliban government official, says the letter he received bore Omar’s signature and seemed to be written in his style. A ranking Afghan government intelligence official agrees that the language and tone of the letter certainly sound like Omar. “The language is very similar to Mullah Omar’s simple Pashto style,” he says. The former senior official says the letter makes sense to him. “I totally agree with Mullah Omar’s stance in talking to the U.S.,” he says, declining to be named for security reasons. “What’s wrong in halting the game of death for a while during negotiations?” He argues that the letter reflects a serious split in strategy between the Taliban leader and some of his recalcitrant military lieutenants. “I think there is something wrong between Mullah Omar and his top commanders,” he says. “Mullah Omar is trying to impose his view that the talks are necessary.”
In any case, the internal dispute over the letter’s authenticity is making the insurgents more worried than ever about the threat of disinformation campaigns. “The letter could indeed be counterfeit,” says a senior Taliban logistics officer who has seen it. “But what is important is how vulnerable the Taliban are to such conspiracies.” Mullah Omar hasn’t issued a single verifiable communication—video, audio statement, or letter—since he was driven from power in late 2001. As a result, just about any document can be circulated in the Taliban leader’s name with little risk that he might deny it. In other words, as long as Omar remains silent, no one can be entirely sure what the Taliban leader thinks. That’s why his followers wish he would make some kind of verifiable statement—and do it quickly, before rumors and disinformation get any further out of hand. “Mullah Omar has to send us his real voice to eliminate the confusion that may be caused by this letter,” says the logistics officer.
There’s not much disagreement among the insurgents on that point. But after a decade of total silence, it seems unlikely that the reclusive Taliban leader is suddenly about to release a verifiable statement or show himself in public. And genuine or not, the letter’s call for a reduction in violent actions seems to be falling on deaf ears. Two more U.S. soldiers were gunned down in cold blood today by supposedly friendly Afghans. One Afghan soldier and one literacy trainer shot and killed the two Americans at an Afghan National Army training base in southern Afghanistan before being cut down themselves. That makes a total of six U.S. soldiers who have been killed by presumed Afghan allies since anti-U.S. protests erupted nearly two weeks ago, after the discovery of discarded Qurans in a burn pit at Bagram Airfield. Those deaths are in addition to the 70 NATO troops who lost their lives in 42 deliberate attacks by “friendly” Afghan personnel between May 2007 and this past January.
Sami Yousafzai is Newsweek's correspondent in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where he has covered militancy, al Qaeda, and the Taliban for the magazine since 9/11. He was born in Afghanistan but moved to Pakistan with his family after the Russian invasion in 1979. He began his career as a sports journalist but switched to war reporting in 1997.
Ron Moreau is Newsweek’s Afghanistan and Pakistan correspondent and has been covering the region for the magazine the past 10 years. Since he first joined Newsweek during the Vietnam War, he has reported extensively from Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.
The day the US military burned the Bible in Afghanistan
FoxNews.com By Todd Starnes March 02, 2012
They burned the Bible.
In 2008 American troops confiscated, threw away, and burned God’s Word at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. The Bibles were written in the Pashto and Dari languages, and the Defense Department was concerned the books might somehow be used to convert Afghans.
The incident became public in 2009. Lt. Col. Mark Wright told CNN such religious outreach could endanger American troops and civilians because Afghanistan is a “devoutly Muslim country.”
But there was another reason the Bibles were confiscated. Military rules forbid troops from proselytizing in the country.
“The decision was made that it was a ‘force protection’ measure to throw them away because, if they did get out, it could be perceived by Afghans that the U.S. government or the U.S. military was trying to convert Muslims,” Wright said in the interview.
So that might explain why the Bibles were confiscated and thrown away, but why burn the Holy Scriptures?
Lt. Col. Wright explained to the news network that troops at posts in war zones are required to “burn their trash.”
Trash.
Trash.
I can only imagine the anguished Christian soldiers who were forced to toss the Pashto and Dari Bibles into the roaring fire. I can only imagine what they were thinking as the blaze consumed verses like John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
I can only imagine the heartache of the American church that collected the Bibles and sent them overseas to share the good news of Jesus.
So why not just collect the Bibles and send them back to the same church that sent them here in the United States?
The military admitted in an interview that they considered doing that. But they worried the church would send them to another organization in Afghanistan, and that would give the impression the Bibles were distributed by the U.S. government.
In other words, the only way to guarantee that no Bibles in Pasto and Dari would be found on Afghan soil was to destroy the books.
So how did the Obama administration respond to the 2009 revelation of such a horrific act?
They were silent.
There were no apologies, no condemnations from either the Bush administration in 2008 or the Obama administration in 2009. There was no condemnation from the State Department. There was no condemnation from the Pentagon.
Perhaps that’s to be expected from a president who once declared, "whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian nation – at least, not just. We are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, and a Hindu nation, and a nation of non-believers."
“Certainly the armed forces should be sensitive to people’s religious symbols or their text,” Lt. Col. Bob Maginnis (USA-Ret.) told One News Now. “Instead of burning the Bibles, there is no reason that they shouldn’t have returned them to those who purchased the Bibles. But we recognize that in a Muslim country, Christians are just not welcome. The hypocrisy is pretty well established. It is disconcerting.”
Even more disconcerting is the Obama administration’s blatant attacks on religious liberty -- leaving many to wonder if this president considers Christians to be second-class citizens.
If you burn a Bible – silence. But if you burn a Koran, the Obama administration will send private letters of apology – and public condemnations.
When I was a small child, I developed a love for the Bible. I memorized dozens of passages of Scripture, tucking away treasured words from God in my heart. That’s why I’m so troubled by what happened recently in Afghanistan.
And that’s why I feel compelled to summarize this sad chapter of American history by sharing a passage from the New Testament --- “Jesus wept.”
Todd Starnes is host of Fox News & Commentary. The following column has been excerpted from his latest book, “Dispatches From Bitter America.”
Afghans Alarmed at Spread of Fake Banknotes
Latest versions are so sophisticated and hard to spot that some Afghans suspect a plot to undermine their monetary system.
IWPR By Abdol Wahed Faramarz 2 Mar 12
Afghanistan - A new wave of counterfeit Afghan banknotes has arrived in Afghanistan, undermining confidence in the local currency and disrupting the money market, officials say.
President Hamid Karzai wants to reduce the use of foreign currency, but Afghans interviewed by IWPR say they are reluctant to use afghani banknotes as long as convincing forgeries are around. Economists warn that the volume of extra money in circulation could lead to inflation.
Although counterfeit afghanis are nothing new, the new notes are of higher denominations before, and so well made that even experienced currency traders have trouble spotting them.
Previous forgeries tended to be 50 and 100 afghani notes, worth about one and two US dollars, respectively, but newer counterfeits circulating for the last four months have face values of 500 and 1,000 afghani.
“Although money changers have machines that can identify forged banknotes, they are still sometimes deceived. They therefore have to check each and every banknote, which takes time,” Amin Jan Khosti, head of the Independent Union of Currency Traders at the Shahzada money market in Kabul, told IWPR.
At the Shahzada market, 55-year-old Mohammad Naim was angry after losing 600 dollars by exchanging them for counterfeit afghanis. A friend abroad sent the cash to the impoverished labourer to help him pay off his debts.
But when he tried to repay the money in afghanis, the notes proved to be worthless.
“The lenders wouldn’t take the money, as they said it was forged. Now I can’t find the person who changed the money for me,” he said. “The government should compensate me for my loss. The central bank should exchange these banknotes for me. How am I at fault? Why can’t the government prevent this kind of corruption?”
In a bid to strengthen the afghani, President Karzai issued a decree in late 2011 urging government agencies and officials to avoid using foreign currency. Pakistani rupees and Iranian rials have been in common use since the early 1990s, and the American dollar has been used for almost all major transactions since 2001.
Kabul residents said they were wary of local banknotes due to the proliferation of forgeries.
Maria, who works for a private company, said she no longer wanted to use afghanis.
“When there were no forged afghanis on the market, I used to change my salary [from foreign currency] into afghanis and deposit them in my bank account. Now I want to open a US dollar account because afghanis aren’t reliable,” she said.
Officials say the forgeries are made outside Afghanistan, and some believe neighbouring Pakistan may be deliberately using them to undermine the economy.
Afghan central bank governor Nurullah Delawari were coming in from neighbouring states, although he declined to say which ones.
“These banknotes have been made by a very skilled group using advanced technology. They are trying to bring the banknotes into the Afghan banking system,” he said.
According to Sayed Masud, an economist who lectures at Kabul University, “This has been done to destabilise the economy and decrease people’s trust in the afghani so that it loses value against foreign currencies, particularly the Pakistani currency.”
Pakistan’s embassy in Kabul declined IWPR’s request for a comment on the forgeries.
The head of the central bank’s media office, Emal Hashor, said the institution had written to the interior ministry, provincial governors and police chief, and border officials asking them to take action against the influx.
At the Kabul money market, Khosti said people should use established currency exchanges rather than people in the street.
Experts say people can avoid the forged notes if they are alert to the warning signs. Delawari said the key was the gold-coloured foil strip, which on a bogus note fails to reflect seven colours.
Currency trader Daud said the fakes were also darker in colour and smoother than genuine afghanis, particularly around the central bank seal.
Restaurant owner Mojahed said the reverse of the fake 500 afghani note lacked a thin line, while the fraudulent 1,000 afghani bill is missing a “1,000” in the left-hand corner,
“I have been presented with such banknotes several times,” he said.
Abdol Wahed Faramarz is an IWPR-trained reporter in Kabul.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com