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Insight: Iran's "Great Game" in Afghanistan
By Amie Ferris-Rotman | Reuters – Thu, May 24, 2012
KABUL (Reuters) - With most foreign combat troops set to withdraw from Afghanistan by 2014, Iran is using the media in the war-ravaged nation to gain influence, a worrying issue for Washington.
Nearly a third of Afghanistan's media is backed by Iran, either financially or through providing content, Afghan officials and media groups say.
"What Iran wants, what they are striving at, is a power base in Afghanistan that can counter American influence," said a senior government official, who like others for this report, spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity.
"They are without a doubt doing this through supporting and funding our media."
Iran spends $100 million a year in Afghanistan, much of it on the media, civil society projects and religious schools, says Daud Moradian, a former foreign ministry advisor who now teaches at the American University in Kabul.
"It is using Afghanistan to send a message to America that it can't be messed with. Afghanistan becomes a managed battlefield as a result."
Officials in Tehran could not be reached for comment despite repeated attempts and the Iranian embassy in Kabul said it was not prepared to talk about the issues raised in this report.
NEW STRATEGIC PACT
The landmark agreement NATO leaders sealed this week in Chicago, handing control of Afghanistan over to its own security forces by the middle of next year, puts the Western alliance on an "irreversible" path out of the unpopular, decade-long war.
Some security analysts say the withdrawal could lead to increasing instability and then to civil war -- and an opportunity for Iran and others to move into the resulting power vacuum.
When the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989 following a decade-long occupation and the pro-Moscow government in Kabul collapsed, Afghanistan's neighbors moved in to arm and fund proxies to gain regional influence as the country plunged into civil war.
Although Kabul's ties with Tehran have seen sporadic improvement after the 2001 ouster of the Taliban, which had emerged triumphant after the civil war, the relationship is combustible.
The latest flashpoint is the recent signing of a long-term strategic agreement between the United States and Afghanistan. Though vague on details, the pact was meant to signal U.S. financial and security commitments to Afghanistan through 2024 - particularly for funding the large Afghan National Army.
Iran, whose frayed ties with the United States have worsened over its disputed nuclear programme, sees the pact as a threat. Iranian-backed media in Afghanistan responded by churning out reports critical of the agreement, and Tehran's ambassador to Afghanistan Abu Fazel Zohrawand threatened to expel Iran's one million Afghan refugees if the pact was not rejected.
IRAN'S TALKING HEADS
Afghanistan's intelligence department, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), had earlier gone public with Iran's alleged meddling in the media, saying that weekly newspaper Ensaf and TV channels Tamadon and Noor had received financial support from Iran.
A journalist who recently left Tamadon TV, owned by Afghanistan's most prominent Shi'ite cleric Ayatollah Mohammed Asef Mohseni, told Reuters that while the station never confirmed it was getting support from Tehran "it was obvious".
"My salary of $600 a month would fluctuate dramatically, as it was pegged to Iran's rial," said the 23-year-old, one of 200 employees at Tamadon, where he worked for four years before resigning over fears his employment would land him in trouble with Afghan authorities.
"Our office is full of posters calling for protests against the strategic pact with America. We'd invite pro-Iran analysts onto our shows saying Iran was the only one who could help Afghanistan with food and supplies," said the recent graduate, dressed in a tight black long-sleeved t-shirt and jeans.
Tamadon TV dismissed the claims of Iranian backing as an "insult". Editor in chief Mohammad Rahmati said the station was targeted "because we show core Islamic values; we don't show half-naked dancing women".
GREAT GAME
Afghanistan has been so much a focus of big power rivalry over the past 200 years -- a failed British occupation in the mid-19th century, the failed Russian one in the 1980s, for example -- it has its own historical sobriquet, "The Great Game".
As the United States prepares for its own dispirited withdrawal from Afghanistan, it is worried about Iran gaining a strategic advantage in Afghanistan, after seeing Tehran win influence in Iraq following the 2003 U.S. invasion.
More than half of the 171 TV, satellite channels and radio stations licensed to broadcast in Iraq today are funded by Iran, with others backed by the United States and Arabic Gulf countries, government communications officials say.
Iran's media strategy is but one strand in a multi-pronged projection of "soft power" into Afghanistan. The two countries share cultural, language and historical links -- for centuries they were part of the ancient Persian empire -- as well as a long and porous border.
Iran said in 2010 it has provided some $500 million in official assistance for reconstruction projects. Tehran has built religious schools for Afghan Shi'ites, who comprise a fifth of Sunni-majority Afghanistan's 30 million people.
Iran may even have MPs on its payroll. An Afghan official who declined to be identified told Reuters that up to 44 of the 249 members of the Afghan parliament are suspected of receiving money from Iran. Iran has not responded to those allegations, which have also been aired in the Afghan media.
EFFORTS INTENSIFIED
Iran's vehement opposition to the new strategic pact with the United States appears to have intensified efforts to influence public opinion about it.
Ensaf newspaper, one of the three media outlets the government has said receives funding from Iran, and whose parent company Avapress has offices in Tehran, has published six critical articles on the pact since it was signed by President Barack Obama on a whistle-stop visit to Kabul on May 2.
The three media outlets feature news reports that hold little interest for Afghans, but are important to Iran, using the same messages and wordage carried by Iranian state media.
The state of Israel, for instance, is called "the Zionist regime", a term Afghan officials generally avoid using.
"The fact is the stories broadcast have been made available by Iranian sources for propaganda purposes", Loftullah Mashal, a spokesman for the intelligence agency NDS, said last month. The NDS later retracted that claim.
Iran first started attempting to influence Afghan affairs through the media in 2006, said Abdul Mujeeb Khalvatgar, executive director of the Afghan media development group Nai.
"The pace has been quickening since 2011, which is when Iran began to actually inject its viewpoint into Afghan media," he said.
Last year, Afghans were shocked when Tamadon TV broadcast a live speech by Iran's parliament speaker Ali Larijani criticizing the presence of Western troops in Afghanistan.
Kabul is countering with its own pressure.
The Kabul-based reporter of Iran's semi-official Fars News Agency, Abdul Hakimi, was arrested two weeks ago on charges of spying, Afghan officials said. The NDS declined to comment.
The relatively large, often Western-backed press corps can also face intimidation, abduction or even death for reporting on issues such as corruption and other government failings. Afghanistan ranks seventh on the Committee to Protect Journalists' "Impunity Index", a listing of countries where journalists are killed regularly and governments fail to solve the crimes.
One man who says he is painfully familiar with Iranian interference is author and journalist Razaq Mamoon. He says a masked man who threw acid in his face in January of last year was working for Tehran. The Iranian embassy in Kabul has not commented on his allegations.
Though media reports at the time said his assailant staged the attack over a soured love affair, Mamoon says his 2010 book which accuses Iran of sabotage and espionage in Afghanistan, motivated Iranian intelligence agencies to attack him.
"Those individuals who planned the attack on me are still in power and their Iranian spy agencies are still very active in Kabul," Mamoon, who now lives in New Delhi out of fear for his safety, told Reuters in e-mailed comments.
(This story has been refiled to change last sub-head)
(Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi, Mirwais Harooni and Abdul Aziz Ibrahimi in KABUL, Yeganeh Torbati in LONDON and Patrick Markey in BAGHDAD; Editing by Michael Georgy and Bill Tarrant)
NATO-led force to leave Afghanistan but Taliban risk remains
by Abdul Haleem and Yangtze Yan
KABUL, May 24 (Xinhua) -- After a decade of a costly and deadly war, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has decided to leave Afghanistan amid increasing Taliban-led terrorist activities.
In a two-day NATO summit concluded in Chicago on Monday, the 28- member military alliance and troops-contributing nations agreed to hand over Afghanistan's security charge to Afghan security forces by mid-2013 and pull back their troops by the end of 2014.
The U.S.-led coalition invaded Afghanistan in the pretext of the war on terror in late 2001 and drove Taliban regime out of power within weeks for harboring Osama Bin Laden in the wake of surprising attacks in New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001.
NATO's decision for exit from Afghanistan came at a critical stage since Taliban militants have regrouped and have openly challenged both the brand-new but poorly-equipped Afghan and the well-equipped NATO-led forces.
"It is a matter of concern to hand over the security charge to Afghan security forces and leave Afghanistan by 2014 while Afghan security forces are poor-equipped and Taliban fighters are active almost everywhere in the country,"Afghan defense analyst Amrullah Aman told Xinhua.
"How can the fledgling Afghan army hope to cope with the security threats from the Taliban and control the porous borders ( with Pakistan)?" Aman said.
A retired army general said that Afghanistan does not have the necessary weaponry, particularly warplanes, adding that an army without airpower is useless.
Afghanistan, according to a NATO plan, will have a security force with strength of 352,000 by October 2012 and would keep this size for the next two years.
However, with improving security situation, the strength of Afghan security force will be reduced to 228,500 and will have an estimated annual budget of 4.1 billion U.S. dollars provided by U. S. and allied nations.
Although renewing commitment to Afghanistan at the Chicago conference has once again raised the ray of hope among Afghans, Taliban militants have lashed at the decisions as they called for the early pullout of all foreign forces from the country.
In a statement released to media on the eve of the NATO summit in Chicago, the Taliban described the war on terror as an excuse for colonizing Afghanistan. The Taliban called on the troop- contributing nations to follow France and withdraw troops from Afghanistan instead of fighting for the interest of Americans.
Since launching operations against Taliban in October 2001, according iCasualties, a website tracking the U.S.-led coalition casualties on the war in terror, 3,007 soldiers with 1,979 of them Americans have been killed.
There are no statistics on the casualties of Afghan forces in the war against the Taliban.
But the post-Taliban Afghanistan has made tangible progress in several fields.Today the country has an elected president and a parliament with government institutions, schools and universities in place.
Afghanistan is also developing local products and improving its human rights record while investing in projects that would make it more self-reliance, including in security.
Hurdles Remain For TAPI Gas Project
May 23, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty By Abubakar Siddique
The signing of a gas sale-purchase agreement brings the construction of the TAPI natural-gas pipeline project closer to reality. But while the deal has revived hopes for the much-delayed project that would supply Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan with Turkmen gas, many obstacles remain.
Insecurity
Regional instability has long haunted the Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India (TAPI) project, first conceived 18 years ago, and that remains the main obstacle to the pipeline becoming a reality.
The planned route of the 1,800-kilometer pipeline would wind through 735 kilometers of southern and western Afghanistan -- hotbeds of the Taliban insurgency in the country.
Now, with NATO leaders this week describing the transition of security oversight to Afghanistan as "irreversible," questions over the country's ability to maintain peace on its own loom large. This casts a pall over the prospects of building a multibillion-dollar pipeline in some of the county's most volatile regions.
The pipeline will also pass through Pakistan's southwestern Balochistan Province, where thousands have died in separatist and sectarian violence during the past nine years.
Officials in Islamabad say the government has wisely diverted the pipeline through the province's relatively stable northern Pashtun regions, but the pipeline could still be vulnerable to sabotage. Poorly guarded gas pipelines have been a favorite target of ethnic Baluch separatists fighting against the Pakistani military.
Regional Rivalry
Saqib Sherani, a former adviser to Pakistan's Finance Ministry, says the construction of the pipeline could also be hampered by regional and global rivalries.
Washington, which has backed the TAPI initiative since the mid-1990s, has recently pushed Islamabad and New Delhi to withdraw from discussions with Tehran over a suggested Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline that would serve as a rival to TAPI.
In March, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Pakistan could face "damaging" consequences from the United States over the project.
Nevertheless, Sherani suggests that Pakistani policymakers might still prefer an Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline over TAPI.
The "feasibility of the [TAPI] project is something that a lot of Pakistani officials are skeptical about," he notes. "And secondly, we find in our interest the Iran-Pakistan pipeline, especially if India is involved. It is much more feasible and can be done much quicker."
While India and Pakistan are now looking to boost trade ties, the two have fought several wars and are still involved in simmering border conflicts. An unexpected rupture in their relations could easily put TAPI on the back burner once again.
Where's The Money?
The Asian Development Bank has dubbed TAPI the "peace pipeline," and has provided a few million dollars in technical assistance, but more -- much more -- is needed.
Sherani says that none of the four TAPI partners has pledged solid funding to build the pipeline. As costs rise, the financing problem grows -- estimated in 2008 to cost $7.6 billion, the project is now estimated to cost up to $12 billion.
Some U.S. officials have hinted that major energy companies might be interested in financing the project, but Sherani is doubtful. He says few investors will be eager to finance a pipeline going through an unstable Afghanistan.
"I think it is going to be a big challenge because no consortium is really going to start work or put their money where their mouth is until the Afghan situation settles down," he says. "It is a huge commitment and no [financier] is going to tie down their financial resources in an open-ended manner."
Loose Ends
The bottom line for TAPI, according to Sherani, is whether Pakistan and India determine that the price benefits outweigh their investment.
And finally, while Afghanistan has signed a memorandum of understanding on future gas cooperation with Turkmenistan, it is still not technically on board. When the two countries finalize a gas sales and purchase agreement, that will clear yet another hurdle.
Afghan war is not over yet
CNN By Stephen Tankel, Special to CNN May 23, 2012
Editor's note: Stephen Tankel is an assistant professor at American University and a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His book "Storming the World Stage: The Story of Lashkar-e-Taiba" was recently published by Columbia University Press.
At the NATO summit in Chicago, President Obama and leaders of America's NATO allies agreed on an "irreversible" plan to withdraw from Afghanistan. But challenges remain.
Despite the deliberately unambiguous word choice used to describe the withdrawal, uncertainty about how the West will confront the obstacles ahead remains. Issues specifically related to Afghanistan are yet to be resolved, and plenty of others are tied to the volatile politics of the area.
The Afghan National Army is already taking the lead in regions with roughly 75% of the population, with U.S. and other NATO troops acting as support. However, this does not include the most contested areas in the south and east, where Afghan forces are slated to assume responsibility by next summer. Serious doubts persist about their readiness to do so.
Despite significant training efforts, the army's level of competence remains in question. It lacks many of the support functions needed for war fighting. The army will remain dependent on international forces for these capabilities and on the international community for financial assistance, expected to cost at least $4 billion a year.
The strategic partnership agreement signed by the United States and Afghanistan in early May addressed both issues. Washington pledged a residual force of U.S. troops that will stay in Afghanistan and promised financial assistance. Still unclear, however, is how many soldiers will make up the residual force, how long they will stay, what their main objectives will be and where they will be based.
Complicating matters even more, the Afghan army is overwhelmingly non-Pashtun, which makes operating in the overwhelmingly Pashtun south and east, where the Taliban-led insurgency is strongest, all the more challenging. The army's ethnic composition and that of the Karzai government are also among Pakistan's chief concerns. Which brings us to the wider regional concerns.
During the 1990s, Pakistan's rival India supported the non-Pashtun Northern Alliance against the Pakistan-sponsored Taliban. Today, Pakistan views the non-Pashtun army in Afghanistan as essentially the Northern Alliance on steroids: a 300,000-plus force equipped by the United States and, like the government in Kabul, partial to India.
If the Afghan army holds together, then Pakistan faces an unfriendly army loyal to an unfriendly government on its western border.
If the army splinters as a result of its unbalanced ethnic composition -- Pashtuns represent the majority of the population but a small minority in the army -- this probably would result in inter- and intra-ethnic violence that could rend the nation. A civil war in Afghanistan would have disastrous consequences for the region, particularly neighboring Pakistan.
Yet Pakistan's fears have led it to pursue a myopic policy that could contribute to this very outcome. It supports the Taliban, the Haqqani network and other assorted proxies in Afghanistan both as a hedging strategy and with the aim of positioning itself as the ultimate arbiter of any resolution. This has encouraged hedging among other regional actors and led to Pakistan's isolation.
Though the Pakistani security establishment supports an Afghan-led reconciliation with the Taliban, it seeks significant control over that process. This is unacceptable to Kabul, Washington and, ironically, the Taliban. They all want to minimize Pakistan's role.
These thorny issues have been extant for quite some time, but no clear path to resolving them has been proposed, and it doesn't appear any significant progress was made in Chicago.
The main focus on Pakistan during the NATO summit concerned its willingness to reopen NATO supply lines into Afghanistan that have been closed since November after a U.S. air raid accidentally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. Since then, supplies have been shipped via the longer and more expensive Northern Distribution Network running through Russia and Central Asia.
Although reopening Pakistani supply lines is not essential for maintaining NATO forces on the ground, they constitute an important logistical link for any large-scale withdrawal.
When Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari received a last-minute invite to Chicago, it was well understood that this was intended to ease Pakistan's resistance to reopening these supply lines. But they remain closed, subject to a disagreement over the transit fee Pakistan will receive for each truck and Washington's unwillingness to issue a formal apology for the air raid.
Most experts anticipate that the issue will be resolved sooner rather than later. More troubling, Pakistan's presence in Chicago was tied mainly to its control of supply lines, not to the vital role it could play in tipping the balance in Afghanistan toward either a political resolution or a possible civil war.
Meanwhile, the Pakistan military appears to be increasing support for its own proxies in anticipation of the NATO drawdown, heightening the possibility of civil war in Afghanistan. That other regional powers, chiefly India and Iran, are readying their own proxies for this eventuality only risks making it more likely.
Questions remain about whether any residual American force will be sufficient to provide enough support to the Afghan army to avoid such an outcome. It's also unknown whether this objective will take priority over strategically defeating al Qaeda or at least denying it the ability to reclaim its safe haven in Afghanistan.
The summit in Chicago was an important turning point. U.S. forces cannot remain in Afghanistan at present levels indefinitely, not least because there is no purely military solution to these problems. But it's clear that a timeline for the transition to a new role for the U.S. and NATO allies in Afghanistan does not mean the war is over.
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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Stephen Tankel.
Investigators want explanation of alleged overbilling in Afghanistan
By Karen DeYoung,
Congressional investigators have given the Defense Logistics Agency and the contractor that provides virtually all food supplies to U.S. troops in Afghanistan 10 days to explain why the military paid more than $750 million in what it now alleges were double-billed and excessive charges.
The House subcommittee in charge of national security oversight has called on DLA and the contractor, Swiss-based Supreme Foodservice, to produce all documents and calculations regarding the alleged overpayments under a contract to deliver “subsistence” supplies to U.S. military bases in Afghanistan since 2005.
In making public letters they sent late Wednesday to the DLA and Supreme Foodservice, subcommittee Chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and ranking Democrat Rep. John F. Tierney (Mass.) criticized the contractor and the Pentagon’s contract management.
“It is outrageous that DLA could ever be in the position of possibly overpaying any vendor by three-quarters of a billion dollars — especially at a time when troop levels are being scaled back because funding is tight,” Chaffetz said.
In December, based on audits it conducted in 2008 and 2011 that found bloated billing, excessive profit margins and missing company documents, DLA calculated that it had overpaid Supreme by $756,908,587 and demanded full reimbursement within 30 days. After a Pentagon board rejected the company’s request to defer payment until an appeal could be heard, DLA in March began subtracting $21.7 million from an estimated $150 million in monthly payments to the contractor.
In a statement Thursday, Supreme’s Washington office said that such contract disputes were “not uncommon” and that the Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals would determine “the amount of refund due to DLA or payment due to Supreme.” Subcommittee aides said Supreme Foodservice has said it is owed about $1 billion in military underpayments.
“In the meantime,” the Supreme Foodservice statement said, “we continue to work well with DLA, performing the contract to extremely high standards. We remain focused on provision of support to the war fighters in some very challenging environments.”
DLA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Despite the military’s allegations about Supreme Foodservice, investigators said the company has been short-listed for a new, $10 billion, five-year food delivery contract to take effect in January. U.S. combat troops in Afghanistan, now totalling about 90,000, are due to be withdrawn by the end of 2014, with a follow-on training and counterterrorism force of undetermined size to remain.
Tierney said the subcommittee intended to examine how problems with the current contract, which has paid Supreme Foodservice about $5 billion over the past seven years, “will affect the impending award of the new contract.”
Discrepancies in the food service contract, one of the largest in Afghanistan, were first publicly revealed in a Defense Department Inspector General’s audit in March 2011. It said DLA “did not provide sufficient oversight of contract costs and performance,” failed to adhere to Pentagon and other government contracting rules and made significant overpayments.
DLA, Supreme Foodservice and the subcommittee agree that work under the initial contract rapidly expanded as the U.S. military presence grew in Afghanistan.
“When it was first awarded on June 3, 2005, the contract required Supreme to deliver food to four locations in Afghanistan,” Chaffetz and Tierney wrote to DLA Director Vice Admiral Mark D. Harnitchek. “Within three months, DLA radically expanded the contract to include an additional 64 forward operating bases in isolated and hard-to-reach locations. Today, the number of sites has swelled to 265.”
But “DLA and Supreme apparently never agreed on pricing terms for delivering food and supplies to the additional sites despite having agreed to expand the contract,” the letter said.
Instead, the two sides have been in dispute ever since over everything from the price of apples to the distance between Afghan locations by helicopter. When DLA came to the conclusion in 2006 that Supreme Foodservice’s charges were unjustified, it began paying only 75 percent of the billed amount, and subsequently reduced its payment to 50 percent. In December, DLA calculated it had still overpaid by more than $750 million.
Despite the findings of its own audits, however, DLA twice approved one-year extensions of the original contract, which was supposed to run for five years.
At a subcommittee hearing in December, Pentagon Inspector General Gordon Heddell called the Pentagon’s contract management failures and lost funds on the Supreme Foodservice contract “an example of just about as bad as it can get.”
With Crocker's exit, a chance for a new approach to Afghanistan
Ambassador Ryan Crocker announced he is stepping down as the US ambassador to Afghanistan.
Christian Science Monitor By Scott Baldauf, Staff Writer May 23, 2012
This July, when Ryan Crocker steps down as US ambassador to Afghanistan – a year earlier than planned, because of health reasons – the baton of American foreign policy will be passed along to a new envoy charged with what must easily be the most difficult diplomatic job in the foreign service.
Mr. Crocker’s successor will have to manage both the personal and institutional relationships between two countries who will slowly part ways, as the US military begins to withdraw 90,000 troops from bases in Afghanistan, and as the Afghan government rises up to take on the responsibilities of its own security, development, and governance.
Crocker’s past year as ambassador was not an easy one. Afghan soldiers have begun killing their US, French, and British trainers. NATO airstrikes on civilians, NATO burnings of Qurans, and the deliberate burning of Qurans by a Florida preacher have all strained the US-Afghan relationship, leading to protests on Afghan streets, and heated meetings between governments.
Crocker brought to the table a familiarity with Muslim culture. He speaks Arabic and served as ambassador in Iraq, Kuwait, Syria, and Lebanon, as well as previous stints as ambassador to Pakistan and to Afghanistan, immediately after the US embassy was reopened in early 2002. Crocker's most important calling card was helping to pacify Iraq, but this success carries its own challenges. Like many members of the US diplomatic corps, Crocker's approach to US diplomacy in Afghanistan is marked by one single event – the September 11 attacks – and an obsession with security. Time for a shift?
Crocker's departure might be a good time for a shift in the US's diplomatic approach, away from a single-minded focus on 9/11.
One thing about the decade after September 11 is that it has clarified for an entire generation of US diplomats what their job is about. Before 9/11, there was a lot of talk about America’s soft power abroad, about the myriad ways in which American culture and economic power was unifying men and nations. Destruction of the Twin Towers changed all that. Post 9/11, US diplomats pared down their job description to three essential functions, to report, influence, and defend: that is, to report on events in foreign lands, to influence foreign leaders to make decisions in line with US interests, and to defend US interests (rhetorically at least) abroad.
Traumatic events have a way of shaping a diplomat's world view. In the lead-up to Britain's 1956 intervention in the Suez Canal, which Egypt had nationalized, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden admitted that he was prompted to take firm action by the haunting memory of Europe's failed diplomacy in the leadup to World War I, and its weak response to Adolf Hitler's aggressions in the 1930s.
"We are all marked to some extent by the stamp of our generation, mine is that of the assassination in Sarajevo and all that flowed from it," Eden wrote. "It is impossible to read the record now and not feel that we had a responsibility for always being a lap behind.... Always a lap behind, a fatal lap."
But having a World War II mindset didn't prevent Eden and his French and Israeli allies from making a colossal error. The British-French intervention, which aimed to keep the canal open for oil shipments, under British and French ownership, ended in a ceasefire, with Egypt's President Gamel Abdel Nasser still in charge. And global suspicion against Britain and France mounted. A 9/11 mindset in Afghanistan
In his swearing-in ceremony in Kabul on July 25, 2011, Crocker recognized that he would be taking over at a crucial time for Afghanistan, a time to ensure that another 9/11 could never happen again.
“We are at a time of transition in Afghanistan. It is a time for us to step back and for the Afghans to step forward, as they are doing,” Ambassador Crocker said then. “Frankly, we left the wrong way in the early 1990’s, and we all know the history of those decisions: the civil war, the rise of the Taliban, sanctuary for Al Qaida, and 9/11. So how we proceed as partners in support of Afghanistan is critical.”
The early days following 9/11 were not pretty ones for American foreign policy. As a reporter in Kabul, I watched the US embassy fill up with seasoned Afghan hands in 2002. These men and women were driven by a commitment to developing Afghanistan, based on their experiences in the 1960s and '70s as Peace Corps workers, engineers, and agronomists with USAID.
Then as the Iraq war approached, I watched this older generation get replaced by a fresh-scrubbed generation of first-assignment true-believers, who brought along copies of Ahmed Rashid’s “Taliban,” but otherwise, precious little knowledge of Central Asia with them. And I watched the key functions of diplomacy shoved aside, as the Bush administration put the Defense Department in charge of driving US foreign policy.
Crucial mistakes were made at that time – a preference for military solutions over diplomacy, for unilateralism over patient consensus-building, for quick-fix construction projects over long-term development – mistakes the US continues to pay for in the distrust of its allies and the disappointment of the Afghan people.
Under the Obama administration, more effort has been made to build consensus among allies, but there is still the smell of cordite in the air when foreign policy decisions are made. Dreamy-eyed college kids hoping to spread the gospel of US-style democracy and free-markets have now either become converted to real-politik, or they have become experts in counter-terrorism at Washington think tanks.
The State Department is back in charge of foreign policy, but it is a State Department with rock-hard abs and high-resolution satellite imagery, and an obsession with security that gives them few experiences of meeting ordinary Afghans without the presence of a few armed men in camouflage. How diplomats can report, influence, and defend US interests in these conditions – and gain enough knowledge about Afghanistan to tell the difference between truth and self-serving lies – is beyond me.
Crocker’s successor, whomever he or she is, will have that very task.
NATO summit's forgotten people: Afghan civilians
By Staff Writers Kabul AFP May 23, 2012
Far from the bright lights of Chicago where world leaders met to shape NATO's exit from Afghanistan, one of the war's victims, 12-year-old Aleema, sums up her life in three words: "It's the worst."
Aleema, who has lived in a mud hovel in a refugee camp on the outskirts of Kabul for four years since her family fled fighting in southern Afghanistan, is one of the forgotten people of the NATO summit, which ended on Monday.
There the focus was on the soldiers who fight the war: getting 130,000 NATO combat troops out by a fixed deadline of 2014 and finding funds to pay Afghan forces to continue the decade-long battle against Taliban insurgents.
But civilians have borne the brunt of the war. More died in 2011 alone than the total number of NATO troops killed in 10 years.
Last year's 3,021 civilian deaths marked the fifth straight year that the toll has risen, UN figures show, while 3,007 NATO soldiers have died since the 2001 US-led invasion, according to icasualties.org.
Meanwhile the number of internal refugees last year hit nearly half a million, the highest for about a decade, part of what Amnesty International has called "a largely hidden but horrific humanitarian and human rights crisis".
And more than 30,000 Afghans sought asylum abroad last year -- another 10-year high. Thousands of others make their way abroad illegally.
Aleema, a sad-eyed girl in ragged clothes, is one of the 447,547 "internally displaced persons" who have fled their homes, mainly in the war-torn south.
Explaining why her life is "the worst", she says simply: "We don't have proper food and we don't have a proper house."
She wants to go home to Helmand province, but knows that won't happen while the fighting continues.
The Taliban are far from defeated on the battleground, a tentative peace process is in tatters and the fighting is expected to persist, if not intensify, once the foreign troops leave.
Ask Aleema's neighbours in the Charahi Qambar refugee camp, a maze of narrow dirt alleys and open drains on the western outskirts of Kabul, whom they blame for driving them from their homes and they tend to spread the net wide.
"All of them, they are all killing innocent people -- the Taliban, the foreign forces and the government forces," said Said Gul, 35, also from Helmand.
He has lived with his extended family of 18 in Charahi Qambar for four years and has lost hope of returning home, putting his future "in the hands of God".
As children play in the dirt and garbage, he sits stoically beside bowls of potatoes and onions for sale, trying to supplement what he calls "a little bit" of aid from charities.
Nigel Jenkins, country director for the US-based International Rescue Committee, said many in the aid community in Afghanistan felt the NATO withdrawal was being "rushed".
"NATO is portraying a situation in Afghanistan that is suitable for transition," he told AFP.
"That does not really stand up to scrutiny with the facts on the ground. The figures -- on internally displaced persons, asylum seekers, the civilian casualties -- speak for themselves."
Acknowledging that NATO is determined to stick to its deadline, Jenkins added: "We can't change it now. The train has left the station. But what we can do is better provide for Afghans in the most need."
Funding for aid projects is already drying up, he said, looking to a development conference on Afghanistan in Tokyo in July to help fund education and other services for Afghans when NATO troops have gone.
"There have been gains over the past 10 years and we would love to see those gains continue, but I think there is a danger they could be lost if there is a big drop in funding."
In Tokyo, governments and international organisations will discuss financial commitments for a 10-year period after 2014.
Billions of dollars of Western aid have already poured into Afghanistan since 2001. Donor nations and the UN have pledged some $500,000 dollars this year for purely humanitarian assistance, Jenkins said.
The UN refugee agency is overhauling its approach to Afghanistan after Peter Nicolaus, UNHCR's representative in Afghanistan, in December described the strategy as the "biggest mistake UNHCR ever made".
He said the international community had failed to help returnees find a means of earning a living and so reintegrating into society.
In Aleema's squalid camp, they are not holding their breath for a dramatic change in their fortunes. None of those interviewed by AFP had heard of the NATO summit, and the Tokyo conference is likely to go equally unnoticed.
Music School Looks To 'Heal' War-Weary Afghans
By Frud Bezhan May 23, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Music in Afghanistan is perhaps best known, particularly in the West, for falling silent.
The Taliban infamously beat musicians, destroyed instruments, and publicly burned recordings in the name of that regime's extreme version of Islam.
Nearly as soon as the Taliban fell, in late 2001, disquieted musicians within and outside the country took steps to revive Afghanistan's unique musical tradition.
One was Ahmad Sarmast, a musicologist who returned to his native Afghanistan to open an academy at the very site where his own musical education began as a boy.
"Establishing and promoting music education is part of returning the musical right of Afghans back to them," Sarmast says. "Every Afghan should have the ability to listen to music, practice and learn music, and to express themselves through music."
State-Of-The-Art
Two years after opening its doors, the Afghanistan National Institute of Music in Kabul instructs some 150 students from their first note through their graduation as seasoned musicians.
Students get a well-rounded education: Half the day is spent on math, science, literature, and other subjects, while the other half is dedicated to music.
The students choose their own path -- either Western classical or Afghan traditional. And there is a decided effort to develop pupils from all walks of life. Former street children, orphans, and girls -- who face particular obstacles in Afghanistan's patriarchal and culturally conservative society -- make up half of the student body.
All receive full scholarships to attend the institute, which functions under the Afghan Education Ministry and receives international funding, particularly from Australia, Germany, and Denmark. After completing their studies, graduates are awarded internationally recognized music diplomas.
With widespread backing, the institute has been able to hire Western music teachers and provide state-of-the-art facilities, including soundproof classrooms and a modern library. There is also a 300-seat auditorium being planned.
Sarmast, 49, says the institute's orchestra plans to visit the United States in February, where they will perform a series of concerts, including at the prestigious John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington and Carnegie Hall in New York.
Dark Days
That is a far cry from the state the institute was in when Sarmast, who has studied in Russia and Australia, returned to Afghanistan in 2008. Sarmast studied at the site when it was known as the School of Fine Arts in the 1970s.
Before the school's revival, its caretakers say, it did not have any windows, its hallways were littered with rubble, and its classrooms walls pocked with bullet holes.
During the civil war in the 1990s, the campus was repeatedly shelled and looted by warring groups who -- according to its caretakers -- stripped the building of its electrical wiring and plumbing. Instruments, they say, were used for kindling and even to store and carry ammunition.
Sarmast says the civil war and the repressive policies against music during the Taliban period had a lasting effect on people's attitudes toward music and musicians -- some Afghan musicians, even today, complain they are looked down upon and even harassed.
Sarmast says that many things that Western musicians take for granted, such as copyright protection and payment for original material, do not exist.
"Right now, Afghanistan is lacking laws and regulations which can protect musicians' rights," Sarmast says. "I hope that very soon the Afghan government and the appropriate authorities will take necessary steps to ensure the musical rights of Afghan people and also to protect the musicians and their rights legally."
Despite the challenges, Sarmast says Afghan musicians are full of optimism and awareness of the important role they can play.
"Music can greatly contribute to the rehabilitation or healing process of the nation, which is badly traumatized because of 30 years of war," he says. "Music has a very strong power for social change. Music has the ability and the force to overcome social, economic, ethnic, and religious barriers and to unite the Afghan people."
Sarmast is now looking to export the positive vibes of music to other Afghan cities and planning to build music institutes in Herat, Mazar-e Sharif, and Jalalabad within the next decade.
Afghanistan: "I Was Not Born a Slave"
IWPR investigation reveals children trapped in unending bonded labour to pay off loans.
IWPR By Sayed Samiullah Sayidi Investigative Report 23 May 12
Afghanistan - “I was not born a slave,” Mirwali said. “I’ve been held hostage with two of my older brothers at the Hazrat-e Belal brick factory for the past two years.”
Just 14 years old, Mirwali is one of around 6,000 minors forced into servitude at the brick factories of Sorkhrod district in the Nangarhar region of eastern Afghanistan.
An IWPR investigation has uncovered a consistent pattern where underage as well as adult workers are forced into bondage after their families borrow money from brick plant owners.
Mirwali’s story is typical of these modern slaves, most of whom are aged from eight to 17. He and his brothers have been forced to work at the brick plant in the village of Sultanpur to pay off 3,000 US dollars which the family borrowed two years ago from the factory owner, Ustad Mohammad Akram, to pay for their father’s heart surgery.
They have more than repaid the money with their hard labour, but there is no end in sight to their serfdom.
It is hard work – 250 times a day, Mirwali carries a ten-kilogram mould full of clay 20 metres to lay the brick out for drying. Working in 30-degree temperatures, his skin is scorched the same colour as the bricks, and his frame is hard and bony.
Their accommodation is basic, in clay-built rooms beside the brick plant, with snakes and scorpions a constant danger, as the heat of the kilns attracts them.
Ustad (“Master”) Akram pays the three brothers a rate of five dollars each for a ten-hour day, for which they make 1,000 unbaked bricks.
Hiring a labourer would cost him eight dollars a day, for eight rather than ten hours of work – a rate twice the amount he now pays. By that reckoning, he has recouped the original loan sum several times over simply by underpaying the brothers.
Ustad Akram told IWPR that the brothers each get paid 150 dollars a month, but he retains half of it to offset the loan. He says they are allowed to keep the remaining 75 dollars and use it to support their families.
To settle the loan in full, he said, “Mirwali and his brothers may work for me for another eight months.”
Mirwali described how the family, living in the village of Trili village in the neighbouring Chaparhar district, first got into difficulties.
“My father farmed the land of [other] villagers in return for 50 per cent of the profits. We didn’t have a good life, and I couldn’t go to school,” he said.
When his father Lal Mohammad fell ill, there was no money for treatment. Doctors in the main provincial city Jalalabad diagnosed a cardiac valve blockage and said the patient must travel to Pakistan as soon as possible to have an operation, or else he would die.
Doctors at the Al-Rahman hospital in Peshawar, Pakistan, required the 3,000-dollar fee to be deposited in the hospital’s bank account they would carry out before the operation.
With no chance of a loan from friends or relatives, Mirwali’s uncle Mohammad Yaqub secured the funds from Ustad Akram, an acquaintance . The condition was that the three brothers would work for the factory-owner until the money was paid off.
The family had no choice but to accept the deal. Lal Mohammad had the operation, but is still not well enough to resume working and contributing to the household.
Adults, too, are pressed into service at the brick factories when they take out loans they cannot repay. Often they work together with their entire families.
Lal Agha, 36, originally from the village of Niazi in the Laghman province, has spent the last eight months at the Chaharbagh Safa factory, trying to work off the 600,000 Pakistani rupees – equivalent to 6,500 dollars – he borrowed to buy treatment for one of his children.
“My nine year old daughter was suffering from cancer, so I borrowed money from friends and enemies alike to get her treatment. I took her to hospitals in Peshawar, Islamabad and even Karachi, but she did not recover and finally she died,” “When my daughter died, I owed people 600,000 rupees. The creditors would knock on my door morning and evening to ask for their money. I had no option but to accept 600,000 rupees from [factory owner] Shoaib Agha and enter into enslavement.”
Working together with his three young sons and two daughters, Lal Agha produces 2,000 bricks a day. He believes he might remain in servitude until the end of his life, trying to pay off the debt.
An IWPR reporter visited 59 of the 85 brick factories in Sorkhrod district in April and May 2012, and gathered numerous testimonies confirming the presence of underage workers held as security for loans and made to perform heavy labour. He spoke to 25 workers aged between eight and 17, and 49 of the owners.
His research resulted in a list of names and addresses of 6,000 children in bonded labour, plus 2,400 families living at brick plants because the adult breadwinner is working to pay off a loan.
The Afghan government is aware of the situation, although officials say they only have records of 1,300 families in Sorkhrod district with members working to pay off loans given by brick factor owners.
Wasel Nur Mohmand, Afghanistan’s deputy minister of labohr and social affairs, told IWPR that the “labour-for-loans” practice was customary everywhere in Afghanistan, and amounted to a personal contract between the factory owner and the family concerned.
Mohmand said that while the government did not view child labour at the factories as a form of slavery, it was a matter of concern.
“It is an obvious case of cruelty against children,” he said.
Article 13, point four of Afghanistan’s labour law prohibits the recruitment of under-18s for work that is hazardous or liable to lead to disability or underdevelopment. But there are no mechanisms for ensuring that the law is observed.
Hajji Gol Pacha, the head of the brick manufacturer’s association in Sorkhrod, told IWPR that there were 15,000 labourers including 6,000 children at the factories in the district. He said the local brick industry had taken off in the last ten years and had employed thousands of workers from various parts of Afghanistan as well as from Nangarhar itself. He added that hundreds of dormitory rooms had been built to house child workers so that they could get to the brick factories by dawn each day.
Factory owners deny that child labour constitutes a form of enslavement or a breach of children’s rights.
Ustad Akram, for example, said it was ethical and humane to give loans to the poor and vulnerable.
“What we do is both reward and profit,” he said.
Loans of between 1,000 to 5,000 dollars made all the difference to these families, he said.
“We have managed to get operations for dozens of patients with the loans we’ve given people. We have helped them mark dozens of events – both joyous and mournful – with dignity. We have also freed hundreds of Afghan labourers from Pakistani and Punjabi masters who held them hostage for years,” he said. “Now tell us whether we serve people or enslave them.”
Mirwali has now spent two years in effective slavery, even though he is still a beardless boy.
What upsets him more than all the hardship and misery of his life, he says, is seeing Samir, a boy of his own age, when they both attend evening prayers at the mosque in Sultanpur. Samir’s father, a wealthy car dealer in Jalalabad city, has enrolled him at the prestigious Afghan-Turkish High School – something Mirwali can only dream of.
“When Samir enters the mosque, I say to myself, ‘God – what would happen if You made us rich too, so that I could go to school and study in style as others do?” he said.
Sayed Samiullah Sayidi is an IWPR-trained journalist in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.
This report was produced as part of the Afghan Critical Mass Media Reporting in Uruzgan and Nangarhar project, and is also published on the Afghan Centre for Investigative Journalism website which IWPR has set up locally.
Lean Times for Afghan Journalism
Media sector sees job losses as donor funding shrinks.
IWPR By Khan Mohammad Danishju 22 May 12
Afghanistan - Afghan journalists say cuts in international funding for the media are threatening one of the past decade’s success stories as well as many of their jobs.
More than 50 television channels have emerged since the Taleban administration was ousted in late 2001, and Afghanistan also has more than 100 radio stations and some 700 newspapers and magazines.
However, journalists say international assistance to the media has been in decline since 2008, and jobs are now being axed in large numbers.
Some warn that if western donor support tails off, it will be replaced by covert funding from neighbouring Iran and Pakistan – with all the influence that will buy those countries.
Pajhwok Afghan News, which describes itself as Afghanistan’s largest independent news agency and was established by IWPR, has laid off 70 of its 130 journalists because of financial difficulties, according to its director Danesh Karokhel.
Pajhwok is trying to cover the salaries of its remaining staff by charging for stories, but Karokhel says he is uncertain how long this can continue.
The same cuts are taking place elsewhere. In May alone, around 300 journalists working for free and unbiased media outlets across Afghanistan lost their jobs, according to information gathered by Pajhwok.
In the eastern province of Logar, journalist Maqsud Azizi has lost his job with Pajhwok and is concerned about his future.
Over the past decade, he has seen other colleagues reluctantly take jobs with partisan media outlets because they needed the money. Now, with a family to support, he says he may also have to take work from “anyone who pays me”.
Nai, a non-government group that works to promote independent media and freedom of expression, believes that both are now at risk.
“Unbiased media are on the verge of collapse, and attention must be paid this,” Nai’s director Sediqullah Tauhidi said.
Tauhidi said the impressive achievements of Afghan journalism over the past decade could be undermined if western donors pulled out and backers from neighbouring states filled the space.
“Media outlets which have bowed to Iran and Pakistan may intensify their activities against western interests, as well as against freedom of speech and democracy in Afghanistan,” he warned.
In Kabul, there is already talk of Pakistan and Iran recruiting Afghan journalists. In April, Lutfullah Mashal, a spokesman for the National Directorate of Security, NDS, the domestic intelligence agency, accused certain media outlets of working for Iran or Pakistan.
The NDS announced on May 6 that it had detained a reporter working for the Fars News Agency. He was accused of revealing confidential government documents to Tehran.
Abdul Satar Sadat, a political analyst and director of the Afghan Lawyers’ Network, believes both countries have already got their own media outlets in Afghanistan.
Rahimullah Samandar, director of RFE/RL radio in Kabul, warned that if international aid decreases further after 2014, when NATO-led forces withdraw, neighbouring states will be well placed to increase their influence.
“Certain media outlets supported by neighbouring countries and by spiteful political parties working against Afghanistan’s interests will be strengthened,” he said. “There is a concern that these media outlets will be used as a tool against democracy.”
Iranian diplomats declined to talk to IWPR about these claims of interference, while Ghulam Mohammad from the Pakistani embassy’s press office said his country had neither established nor supported any media organisations in Afghanistan. He said the embassy’s relationship with Afghan journalists was confined to answering their questions.
Afghanistan’s deputy information minister, Mobarez Rashedi, was optimistic that donor funding would hold up after 2014, and said his ministry was trying to “encourage new donors” while pressing for “greater transparency in their work”
Member of parliament Shinkai Karokhail says aid transparency has been a problem in the past, and alleges that large sums have gone to media outlets controlled by warlords and other powerful figures.
Nevertheless, she said, “Afghanistan’s media are still young and need to become more professional, so it’s essential for the international community to continue its support.”
Journalist Rahim Malekzai believes many Afghan media outlets are already compromised, with many established by political parties or linked to particular factions, or else backed by Pakistan and Iran.
Without further support from international donors, he warns, the situation can only get worse.
“Unless the international community supports them, journalists who have so far maintained their impartiality to some extent will not be able to hold out against media outlets that are supported by neighbouring countries or by different factions and parties,” he said.
The United States government has been a major funding source for media development since 2001. Its Kabul embassy sent IWPR a statement saying that at the international conference on future support for Afghanistan held in Germany in December 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton noted that donor countries faced fiscal constraints themselves.
“But what everyone in Bonn agreed to was that there would be no precipitous cut-off of assistance,” the statement said.
The statement said the US Agency for International Developments had spent over 56 million US dollars on media development in Afghanistan since 2002. In the fiscal year 2010-11, the embassy’s Public Affairs Section spent about 27 million dollars to support programming and operations at Afghan media outlets and to provide training and capacity building; and another 17.5 million dollars to support university journalism departments.
Not all media outlets depend on donor support, and some have developed successful business models by selling airtime for commercials.
Mujahid Kakar is head of news and political programming at the Tolo TV, Tolo News and Lemar stations, and insists the three channels will be immune to cuts in foreign aid cuts as they make their money advertising. The Arman FM and Arakozia FM radio stations, which are part of the same Moby Group, will also be unaffected, he said.
At the same time, Kakar acknowledged that some staff employed by the media group had been laid off as declining private investment led to falling advertising revenues.
Khan Mohammad Danishju is an IWPR-trained reporter in Kabul.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
By Amie Ferris-Rotman | Reuters – Thu, May 24, 2012
KABUL (Reuters) - With most foreign combat troops set to withdraw from Afghanistan by 2014, Iran is using the media in the war-ravaged nation to gain influence, a worrying issue for Washington.
Nearly a third of Afghanistan's media is backed by Iran, either financially or through providing content, Afghan officials and media groups say.
"What Iran wants, what they are striving at, is a power base in Afghanistan that can counter American influence," said a senior government official, who like others for this report, spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity.
"They are without a doubt doing this through supporting and funding our media."
Iran spends $100 million a year in Afghanistan, much of it on the media, civil society projects and religious schools, says Daud Moradian, a former foreign ministry advisor who now teaches at the American University in Kabul.
"It is using Afghanistan to send a message to America that it can't be messed with. Afghanistan becomes a managed battlefield as a result."
Officials in Tehran could not be reached for comment despite repeated attempts and the Iranian embassy in Kabul said it was not prepared to talk about the issues raised in this report.
NEW STRATEGIC PACT
The landmark agreement NATO leaders sealed this week in Chicago, handing control of Afghanistan over to its own security forces by the middle of next year, puts the Western alliance on an "irreversible" path out of the unpopular, decade-long war.
Some security analysts say the withdrawal could lead to increasing instability and then to civil war -- and an opportunity for Iran and others to move into the resulting power vacuum.
When the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989 following a decade-long occupation and the pro-Moscow government in Kabul collapsed, Afghanistan's neighbors moved in to arm and fund proxies to gain regional influence as the country plunged into civil war.
Although Kabul's ties with Tehran have seen sporadic improvement after the 2001 ouster of the Taliban, which had emerged triumphant after the civil war, the relationship is combustible.
The latest flashpoint is the recent signing of a long-term strategic agreement between the United States and Afghanistan. Though vague on details, the pact was meant to signal U.S. financial and security commitments to Afghanistan through 2024 - particularly for funding the large Afghan National Army.
Iran, whose frayed ties with the United States have worsened over its disputed nuclear programme, sees the pact as a threat. Iranian-backed media in Afghanistan responded by churning out reports critical of the agreement, and Tehran's ambassador to Afghanistan Abu Fazel Zohrawand threatened to expel Iran's one million Afghan refugees if the pact was not rejected.
IRAN'S TALKING HEADS
Afghanistan's intelligence department, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), had earlier gone public with Iran's alleged meddling in the media, saying that weekly newspaper Ensaf and TV channels Tamadon and Noor had received financial support from Iran.
A journalist who recently left Tamadon TV, owned by Afghanistan's most prominent Shi'ite cleric Ayatollah Mohammed Asef Mohseni, told Reuters that while the station never confirmed it was getting support from Tehran "it was obvious".
"My salary of $600 a month would fluctuate dramatically, as it was pegged to Iran's rial," said the 23-year-old, one of 200 employees at Tamadon, where he worked for four years before resigning over fears his employment would land him in trouble with Afghan authorities.
"Our office is full of posters calling for protests against the strategic pact with America. We'd invite pro-Iran analysts onto our shows saying Iran was the only one who could help Afghanistan with food and supplies," said the recent graduate, dressed in a tight black long-sleeved t-shirt and jeans.
Tamadon TV dismissed the claims of Iranian backing as an "insult". Editor in chief Mohammad Rahmati said the station was targeted "because we show core Islamic values; we don't show half-naked dancing women".
GREAT GAME
Afghanistan has been so much a focus of big power rivalry over the past 200 years -- a failed British occupation in the mid-19th century, the failed Russian one in the 1980s, for example -- it has its own historical sobriquet, "The Great Game".
As the United States prepares for its own dispirited withdrawal from Afghanistan, it is worried about Iran gaining a strategic advantage in Afghanistan, after seeing Tehran win influence in Iraq following the 2003 U.S. invasion.
More than half of the 171 TV, satellite channels and radio stations licensed to broadcast in Iraq today are funded by Iran, with others backed by the United States and Arabic Gulf countries, government communications officials say.
Iran's media strategy is but one strand in a multi-pronged projection of "soft power" into Afghanistan. The two countries share cultural, language and historical links -- for centuries they were part of the ancient Persian empire -- as well as a long and porous border.
Iran said in 2010 it has provided some $500 million in official assistance for reconstruction projects. Tehran has built religious schools for Afghan Shi'ites, who comprise a fifth of Sunni-majority Afghanistan's 30 million people.
Iran may even have MPs on its payroll. An Afghan official who declined to be identified told Reuters that up to 44 of the 249 members of the Afghan parliament are suspected of receiving money from Iran. Iran has not responded to those allegations, which have also been aired in the Afghan media.
EFFORTS INTENSIFIED
Iran's vehement opposition to the new strategic pact with the United States appears to have intensified efforts to influence public opinion about it.
Ensaf newspaper, one of the three media outlets the government has said receives funding from Iran, and whose parent company Avapress has offices in Tehran, has published six critical articles on the pact since it was signed by President Barack Obama on a whistle-stop visit to Kabul on May 2.
The three media outlets feature news reports that hold little interest for Afghans, but are important to Iran, using the same messages and wordage carried by Iranian state media.
The state of Israel, for instance, is called "the Zionist regime", a term Afghan officials generally avoid using.
"The fact is the stories broadcast have been made available by Iranian sources for propaganda purposes", Loftullah Mashal, a spokesman for the intelligence agency NDS, said last month. The NDS later retracted that claim.
Iran first started attempting to influence Afghan affairs through the media in 2006, said Abdul Mujeeb Khalvatgar, executive director of the Afghan media development group Nai.
"The pace has been quickening since 2011, which is when Iran began to actually inject its viewpoint into Afghan media," he said.
Last year, Afghans were shocked when Tamadon TV broadcast a live speech by Iran's parliament speaker Ali Larijani criticizing the presence of Western troops in Afghanistan.
Kabul is countering with its own pressure.
The Kabul-based reporter of Iran's semi-official Fars News Agency, Abdul Hakimi, was arrested two weeks ago on charges of spying, Afghan officials said. The NDS declined to comment.
The relatively large, often Western-backed press corps can also face intimidation, abduction or even death for reporting on issues such as corruption and other government failings. Afghanistan ranks seventh on the Committee to Protect Journalists' "Impunity Index", a listing of countries where journalists are killed regularly and governments fail to solve the crimes.
One man who says he is painfully familiar with Iranian interference is author and journalist Razaq Mamoon. He says a masked man who threw acid in his face in January of last year was working for Tehran. The Iranian embassy in Kabul has not commented on his allegations.
Though media reports at the time said his assailant staged the attack over a soured love affair, Mamoon says his 2010 book which accuses Iran of sabotage and espionage in Afghanistan, motivated Iranian intelligence agencies to attack him.
"Those individuals who planned the attack on me are still in power and their Iranian spy agencies are still very active in Kabul," Mamoon, who now lives in New Delhi out of fear for his safety, told Reuters in e-mailed comments.
(This story has been refiled to change last sub-head)
(Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi, Mirwais Harooni and Abdul Aziz Ibrahimi in KABUL, Yeganeh Torbati in LONDON and Patrick Markey in BAGHDAD; Editing by Michael Georgy and Bill Tarrant)
NATO-led force to leave Afghanistan but Taliban risk remains
by Abdul Haleem and Yangtze Yan
KABUL, May 24 (Xinhua) -- After a decade of a costly and deadly war, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has decided to leave Afghanistan amid increasing Taliban-led terrorist activities.
In a two-day NATO summit concluded in Chicago on Monday, the 28- member military alliance and troops-contributing nations agreed to hand over Afghanistan's security charge to Afghan security forces by mid-2013 and pull back their troops by the end of 2014.
The U.S.-led coalition invaded Afghanistan in the pretext of the war on terror in late 2001 and drove Taliban regime out of power within weeks for harboring Osama Bin Laden in the wake of surprising attacks in New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001.
NATO's decision for exit from Afghanistan came at a critical stage since Taliban militants have regrouped and have openly challenged both the brand-new but poorly-equipped Afghan and the well-equipped NATO-led forces.
"It is a matter of concern to hand over the security charge to Afghan security forces and leave Afghanistan by 2014 while Afghan security forces are poor-equipped and Taliban fighters are active almost everywhere in the country,"Afghan defense analyst Amrullah Aman told Xinhua.
"How can the fledgling Afghan army hope to cope with the security threats from the Taliban and control the porous borders ( with Pakistan)?" Aman said.
A retired army general said that Afghanistan does not have the necessary weaponry, particularly warplanes, adding that an army without airpower is useless.
Afghanistan, according to a NATO plan, will have a security force with strength of 352,000 by October 2012 and would keep this size for the next two years.
However, with improving security situation, the strength of Afghan security force will be reduced to 228,500 and will have an estimated annual budget of 4.1 billion U.S. dollars provided by U. S. and allied nations.
Although renewing commitment to Afghanistan at the Chicago conference has once again raised the ray of hope among Afghans, Taliban militants have lashed at the decisions as they called for the early pullout of all foreign forces from the country.
In a statement released to media on the eve of the NATO summit in Chicago, the Taliban described the war on terror as an excuse for colonizing Afghanistan. The Taliban called on the troop- contributing nations to follow France and withdraw troops from Afghanistan instead of fighting for the interest of Americans.
Since launching operations against Taliban in October 2001, according iCasualties, a website tracking the U.S.-led coalition casualties on the war in terror, 3,007 soldiers with 1,979 of them Americans have been killed.
There are no statistics on the casualties of Afghan forces in the war against the Taliban.
But the post-Taliban Afghanistan has made tangible progress in several fields.Today the country has an elected president and a parliament with government institutions, schools and universities in place.
Afghanistan is also developing local products and improving its human rights record while investing in projects that would make it more self-reliance, including in security.
Hurdles Remain For TAPI Gas Project
May 23, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty By Abubakar Siddique
The signing of a gas sale-purchase agreement brings the construction of the TAPI natural-gas pipeline project closer to reality. But while the deal has revived hopes for the much-delayed project that would supply Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan with Turkmen gas, many obstacles remain.
Insecurity
Regional instability has long haunted the Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India (TAPI) project, first conceived 18 years ago, and that remains the main obstacle to the pipeline becoming a reality.
The planned route of the 1,800-kilometer pipeline would wind through 735 kilometers of southern and western Afghanistan -- hotbeds of the Taliban insurgency in the country.
Now, with NATO leaders this week describing the transition of security oversight to Afghanistan as "irreversible," questions over the country's ability to maintain peace on its own loom large. This casts a pall over the prospects of building a multibillion-dollar pipeline in some of the county's most volatile regions.
The pipeline will also pass through Pakistan's southwestern Balochistan Province, where thousands have died in separatist and sectarian violence during the past nine years.
Officials in Islamabad say the government has wisely diverted the pipeline through the province's relatively stable northern Pashtun regions, but the pipeline could still be vulnerable to sabotage. Poorly guarded gas pipelines have been a favorite target of ethnic Baluch separatists fighting against the Pakistani military.
Regional Rivalry
Saqib Sherani, a former adviser to Pakistan's Finance Ministry, says the construction of the pipeline could also be hampered by regional and global rivalries.
Washington, which has backed the TAPI initiative since the mid-1990s, has recently pushed Islamabad and New Delhi to withdraw from discussions with Tehran over a suggested Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline that would serve as a rival to TAPI.
In March, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Pakistan could face "damaging" consequences from the United States over the project.
Nevertheless, Sherani suggests that Pakistani policymakers might still prefer an Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline over TAPI.
The "feasibility of the [TAPI] project is something that a lot of Pakistani officials are skeptical about," he notes. "And secondly, we find in our interest the Iran-Pakistan pipeline, especially if India is involved. It is much more feasible and can be done much quicker."
While India and Pakistan are now looking to boost trade ties, the two have fought several wars and are still involved in simmering border conflicts. An unexpected rupture in their relations could easily put TAPI on the back burner once again.
Where's The Money?
The Asian Development Bank has dubbed TAPI the "peace pipeline," and has provided a few million dollars in technical assistance, but more -- much more -- is needed.
Sherani says that none of the four TAPI partners has pledged solid funding to build the pipeline. As costs rise, the financing problem grows -- estimated in 2008 to cost $7.6 billion, the project is now estimated to cost up to $12 billion.
Some U.S. officials have hinted that major energy companies might be interested in financing the project, but Sherani is doubtful. He says few investors will be eager to finance a pipeline going through an unstable Afghanistan.
"I think it is going to be a big challenge because no consortium is really going to start work or put their money where their mouth is until the Afghan situation settles down," he says. "It is a huge commitment and no [financier] is going to tie down their financial resources in an open-ended manner."
Loose Ends
The bottom line for TAPI, according to Sherani, is whether Pakistan and India determine that the price benefits outweigh their investment.
And finally, while Afghanistan has signed a memorandum of understanding on future gas cooperation with Turkmenistan, it is still not technically on board. When the two countries finalize a gas sales and purchase agreement, that will clear yet another hurdle.
Afghan war is not over yet
CNN By Stephen Tankel, Special to CNN May 23, 2012
Editor's note: Stephen Tankel is an assistant professor at American University and a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His book "Storming the World Stage: The Story of Lashkar-e-Taiba" was recently published by Columbia University Press.
At the NATO summit in Chicago, President Obama and leaders of America's NATO allies agreed on an "irreversible" plan to withdraw from Afghanistan. But challenges remain.
Despite the deliberately unambiguous word choice used to describe the withdrawal, uncertainty about how the West will confront the obstacles ahead remains. Issues specifically related to Afghanistan are yet to be resolved, and plenty of others are tied to the volatile politics of the area.
The Afghan National Army is already taking the lead in regions with roughly 75% of the population, with U.S. and other NATO troops acting as support. However, this does not include the most contested areas in the south and east, where Afghan forces are slated to assume responsibility by next summer. Serious doubts persist about their readiness to do so.
Despite significant training efforts, the army's level of competence remains in question. It lacks many of the support functions needed for war fighting. The army will remain dependent on international forces for these capabilities and on the international community for financial assistance, expected to cost at least $4 billion a year.
The strategic partnership agreement signed by the United States and Afghanistan in early May addressed both issues. Washington pledged a residual force of U.S. troops that will stay in Afghanistan and promised financial assistance. Still unclear, however, is how many soldiers will make up the residual force, how long they will stay, what their main objectives will be and where they will be based.
Complicating matters even more, the Afghan army is overwhelmingly non-Pashtun, which makes operating in the overwhelmingly Pashtun south and east, where the Taliban-led insurgency is strongest, all the more challenging. The army's ethnic composition and that of the Karzai government are also among Pakistan's chief concerns. Which brings us to the wider regional concerns.
During the 1990s, Pakistan's rival India supported the non-Pashtun Northern Alliance against the Pakistan-sponsored Taliban. Today, Pakistan views the non-Pashtun army in Afghanistan as essentially the Northern Alliance on steroids: a 300,000-plus force equipped by the United States and, like the government in Kabul, partial to India.
If the Afghan army holds together, then Pakistan faces an unfriendly army loyal to an unfriendly government on its western border.
If the army splinters as a result of its unbalanced ethnic composition -- Pashtuns represent the majority of the population but a small minority in the army -- this probably would result in inter- and intra-ethnic violence that could rend the nation. A civil war in Afghanistan would have disastrous consequences for the region, particularly neighboring Pakistan.
Yet Pakistan's fears have led it to pursue a myopic policy that could contribute to this very outcome. It supports the Taliban, the Haqqani network and other assorted proxies in Afghanistan both as a hedging strategy and with the aim of positioning itself as the ultimate arbiter of any resolution. This has encouraged hedging among other regional actors and led to Pakistan's isolation.
Though the Pakistani security establishment supports an Afghan-led reconciliation with the Taliban, it seeks significant control over that process. This is unacceptable to Kabul, Washington and, ironically, the Taliban. They all want to minimize Pakistan's role.
These thorny issues have been extant for quite some time, but no clear path to resolving them has been proposed, and it doesn't appear any significant progress was made in Chicago.
The main focus on Pakistan during the NATO summit concerned its willingness to reopen NATO supply lines into Afghanistan that have been closed since November after a U.S. air raid accidentally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. Since then, supplies have been shipped via the longer and more expensive Northern Distribution Network running through Russia and Central Asia.
Although reopening Pakistani supply lines is not essential for maintaining NATO forces on the ground, they constitute an important logistical link for any large-scale withdrawal.
When Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari received a last-minute invite to Chicago, it was well understood that this was intended to ease Pakistan's resistance to reopening these supply lines. But they remain closed, subject to a disagreement over the transit fee Pakistan will receive for each truck and Washington's unwillingness to issue a formal apology for the air raid.
Most experts anticipate that the issue will be resolved sooner rather than later. More troubling, Pakistan's presence in Chicago was tied mainly to its control of supply lines, not to the vital role it could play in tipping the balance in Afghanistan toward either a political resolution or a possible civil war.
Meanwhile, the Pakistan military appears to be increasing support for its own proxies in anticipation of the NATO drawdown, heightening the possibility of civil war in Afghanistan. That other regional powers, chiefly India and Iran, are readying their own proxies for this eventuality only risks making it more likely.
Questions remain about whether any residual American force will be sufficient to provide enough support to the Afghan army to avoid such an outcome. It's also unknown whether this objective will take priority over strategically defeating al Qaeda or at least denying it the ability to reclaim its safe haven in Afghanistan.
The summit in Chicago was an important turning point. U.S. forces cannot remain in Afghanistan at present levels indefinitely, not least because there is no purely military solution to these problems. But it's clear that a timeline for the transition to a new role for the U.S. and NATO allies in Afghanistan does not mean the war is over.
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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Stephen Tankel.
Investigators want explanation of alleged overbilling in Afghanistan
By Karen DeYoung,
Congressional investigators have given the Defense Logistics Agency and the contractor that provides virtually all food supplies to U.S. troops in Afghanistan 10 days to explain why the military paid more than $750 million in what it now alleges were double-billed and excessive charges.
The House subcommittee in charge of national security oversight has called on DLA and the contractor, Swiss-based Supreme Foodservice, to produce all documents and calculations regarding the alleged overpayments under a contract to deliver “subsistence” supplies to U.S. military bases in Afghanistan since 2005.
In making public letters they sent late Wednesday to the DLA and Supreme Foodservice, subcommittee Chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and ranking Democrat Rep. John F. Tierney (Mass.) criticized the contractor and the Pentagon’s contract management.
“It is outrageous that DLA could ever be in the position of possibly overpaying any vendor by three-quarters of a billion dollars — especially at a time when troop levels are being scaled back because funding is tight,” Chaffetz said.
In December, based on audits it conducted in 2008 and 2011 that found bloated billing, excessive profit margins and missing company documents, DLA calculated that it had overpaid Supreme by $756,908,587 and demanded full reimbursement within 30 days. After a Pentagon board rejected the company’s request to defer payment until an appeal could be heard, DLA in March began subtracting $21.7 million from an estimated $150 million in monthly payments to the contractor.
In a statement Thursday, Supreme’s Washington office said that such contract disputes were “not uncommon” and that the Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals would determine “the amount of refund due to DLA or payment due to Supreme.” Subcommittee aides said Supreme Foodservice has said it is owed about $1 billion in military underpayments.
“In the meantime,” the Supreme Foodservice statement said, “we continue to work well with DLA, performing the contract to extremely high standards. We remain focused on provision of support to the war fighters in some very challenging environments.”
DLA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Despite the military’s allegations about Supreme Foodservice, investigators said the company has been short-listed for a new, $10 billion, five-year food delivery contract to take effect in January. U.S. combat troops in Afghanistan, now totalling about 90,000, are due to be withdrawn by the end of 2014, with a follow-on training and counterterrorism force of undetermined size to remain.
Tierney said the subcommittee intended to examine how problems with the current contract, which has paid Supreme Foodservice about $5 billion over the past seven years, “will affect the impending award of the new contract.”
Discrepancies in the food service contract, one of the largest in Afghanistan, were first publicly revealed in a Defense Department Inspector General’s audit in March 2011. It said DLA “did not provide sufficient oversight of contract costs and performance,” failed to adhere to Pentagon and other government contracting rules and made significant overpayments.
DLA, Supreme Foodservice and the subcommittee agree that work under the initial contract rapidly expanded as the U.S. military presence grew in Afghanistan.
“When it was first awarded on June 3, 2005, the contract required Supreme to deliver food to four locations in Afghanistan,” Chaffetz and Tierney wrote to DLA Director Vice Admiral Mark D. Harnitchek. “Within three months, DLA radically expanded the contract to include an additional 64 forward operating bases in isolated and hard-to-reach locations. Today, the number of sites has swelled to 265.”
But “DLA and Supreme apparently never agreed on pricing terms for delivering food and supplies to the additional sites despite having agreed to expand the contract,” the letter said.
Instead, the two sides have been in dispute ever since over everything from the price of apples to the distance between Afghan locations by helicopter. When DLA came to the conclusion in 2006 that Supreme Foodservice’s charges were unjustified, it began paying only 75 percent of the billed amount, and subsequently reduced its payment to 50 percent. In December, DLA calculated it had still overpaid by more than $750 million.
Despite the findings of its own audits, however, DLA twice approved one-year extensions of the original contract, which was supposed to run for five years.
At a subcommittee hearing in December, Pentagon Inspector General Gordon Heddell called the Pentagon’s contract management failures and lost funds on the Supreme Foodservice contract “an example of just about as bad as it can get.”
With Crocker's exit, a chance for a new approach to Afghanistan
Ambassador Ryan Crocker announced he is stepping down as the US ambassador to Afghanistan.
Christian Science Monitor By Scott Baldauf, Staff Writer May 23, 2012
This July, when Ryan Crocker steps down as US ambassador to Afghanistan – a year earlier than planned, because of health reasons – the baton of American foreign policy will be passed along to a new envoy charged with what must easily be the most difficult diplomatic job in the foreign service.
Mr. Crocker’s successor will have to manage both the personal and institutional relationships between two countries who will slowly part ways, as the US military begins to withdraw 90,000 troops from bases in Afghanistan, and as the Afghan government rises up to take on the responsibilities of its own security, development, and governance.
Crocker’s past year as ambassador was not an easy one. Afghan soldiers have begun killing their US, French, and British trainers. NATO airstrikes on civilians, NATO burnings of Qurans, and the deliberate burning of Qurans by a Florida preacher have all strained the US-Afghan relationship, leading to protests on Afghan streets, and heated meetings between governments.
Crocker brought to the table a familiarity with Muslim culture. He speaks Arabic and served as ambassador in Iraq, Kuwait, Syria, and Lebanon, as well as previous stints as ambassador to Pakistan and to Afghanistan, immediately after the US embassy was reopened in early 2002. Crocker's most important calling card was helping to pacify Iraq, but this success carries its own challenges. Like many members of the US diplomatic corps, Crocker's approach to US diplomacy in Afghanistan is marked by one single event – the September 11 attacks – and an obsession with security. Time for a shift?
Crocker's departure might be a good time for a shift in the US's diplomatic approach, away from a single-minded focus on 9/11.
One thing about the decade after September 11 is that it has clarified for an entire generation of US diplomats what their job is about. Before 9/11, there was a lot of talk about America’s soft power abroad, about the myriad ways in which American culture and economic power was unifying men and nations. Destruction of the Twin Towers changed all that. Post 9/11, US diplomats pared down their job description to three essential functions, to report, influence, and defend: that is, to report on events in foreign lands, to influence foreign leaders to make decisions in line with US interests, and to defend US interests (rhetorically at least) abroad.
Traumatic events have a way of shaping a diplomat's world view. In the lead-up to Britain's 1956 intervention in the Suez Canal, which Egypt had nationalized, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden admitted that he was prompted to take firm action by the haunting memory of Europe's failed diplomacy in the leadup to World War I, and its weak response to Adolf Hitler's aggressions in the 1930s.
"We are all marked to some extent by the stamp of our generation, mine is that of the assassination in Sarajevo and all that flowed from it," Eden wrote. "It is impossible to read the record now and not feel that we had a responsibility for always being a lap behind.... Always a lap behind, a fatal lap."
But having a World War II mindset didn't prevent Eden and his French and Israeli allies from making a colossal error. The British-French intervention, which aimed to keep the canal open for oil shipments, under British and French ownership, ended in a ceasefire, with Egypt's President Gamel Abdel Nasser still in charge. And global suspicion against Britain and France mounted. A 9/11 mindset in Afghanistan
In his swearing-in ceremony in Kabul on July 25, 2011, Crocker recognized that he would be taking over at a crucial time for Afghanistan, a time to ensure that another 9/11 could never happen again.
“We are at a time of transition in Afghanistan. It is a time for us to step back and for the Afghans to step forward, as they are doing,” Ambassador Crocker said then. “Frankly, we left the wrong way in the early 1990’s, and we all know the history of those decisions: the civil war, the rise of the Taliban, sanctuary for Al Qaida, and 9/11. So how we proceed as partners in support of Afghanistan is critical.”
The early days following 9/11 were not pretty ones for American foreign policy. As a reporter in Kabul, I watched the US embassy fill up with seasoned Afghan hands in 2002. These men and women were driven by a commitment to developing Afghanistan, based on their experiences in the 1960s and '70s as Peace Corps workers, engineers, and agronomists with USAID.
Then as the Iraq war approached, I watched this older generation get replaced by a fresh-scrubbed generation of first-assignment true-believers, who brought along copies of Ahmed Rashid’s “Taliban,” but otherwise, precious little knowledge of Central Asia with them. And I watched the key functions of diplomacy shoved aside, as the Bush administration put the Defense Department in charge of driving US foreign policy.
Crucial mistakes were made at that time – a preference for military solutions over diplomacy, for unilateralism over patient consensus-building, for quick-fix construction projects over long-term development – mistakes the US continues to pay for in the distrust of its allies and the disappointment of the Afghan people.
Under the Obama administration, more effort has been made to build consensus among allies, but there is still the smell of cordite in the air when foreign policy decisions are made. Dreamy-eyed college kids hoping to spread the gospel of US-style democracy and free-markets have now either become converted to real-politik, or they have become experts in counter-terrorism at Washington think tanks.
The State Department is back in charge of foreign policy, but it is a State Department with rock-hard abs and high-resolution satellite imagery, and an obsession with security that gives them few experiences of meeting ordinary Afghans without the presence of a few armed men in camouflage. How diplomats can report, influence, and defend US interests in these conditions – and gain enough knowledge about Afghanistan to tell the difference between truth and self-serving lies – is beyond me.
Crocker’s successor, whomever he or she is, will have that very task.
NATO summit's forgotten people: Afghan civilians
By Staff Writers Kabul AFP May 23, 2012
Far from the bright lights of Chicago where world leaders met to shape NATO's exit from Afghanistan, one of the war's victims, 12-year-old Aleema, sums up her life in three words: "It's the worst."
Aleema, who has lived in a mud hovel in a refugee camp on the outskirts of Kabul for four years since her family fled fighting in southern Afghanistan, is one of the forgotten people of the NATO summit, which ended on Monday.
There the focus was on the soldiers who fight the war: getting 130,000 NATO combat troops out by a fixed deadline of 2014 and finding funds to pay Afghan forces to continue the decade-long battle against Taliban insurgents.
But civilians have borne the brunt of the war. More died in 2011 alone than the total number of NATO troops killed in 10 years.
Last year's 3,021 civilian deaths marked the fifth straight year that the toll has risen, UN figures show, while 3,007 NATO soldiers have died since the 2001 US-led invasion, according to icasualties.org.
Meanwhile the number of internal refugees last year hit nearly half a million, the highest for about a decade, part of what Amnesty International has called "a largely hidden but horrific humanitarian and human rights crisis".
And more than 30,000 Afghans sought asylum abroad last year -- another 10-year high. Thousands of others make their way abroad illegally.
Aleema, a sad-eyed girl in ragged clothes, is one of the 447,547 "internally displaced persons" who have fled their homes, mainly in the war-torn south.
Explaining why her life is "the worst", she says simply: "We don't have proper food and we don't have a proper house."
She wants to go home to Helmand province, but knows that won't happen while the fighting continues.
The Taliban are far from defeated on the battleground, a tentative peace process is in tatters and the fighting is expected to persist, if not intensify, once the foreign troops leave.
Ask Aleema's neighbours in the Charahi Qambar refugee camp, a maze of narrow dirt alleys and open drains on the western outskirts of Kabul, whom they blame for driving them from their homes and they tend to spread the net wide.
"All of them, they are all killing innocent people -- the Taliban, the foreign forces and the government forces," said Said Gul, 35, also from Helmand.
He has lived with his extended family of 18 in Charahi Qambar for four years and has lost hope of returning home, putting his future "in the hands of God".
As children play in the dirt and garbage, he sits stoically beside bowls of potatoes and onions for sale, trying to supplement what he calls "a little bit" of aid from charities.
Nigel Jenkins, country director for the US-based International Rescue Committee, said many in the aid community in Afghanistan felt the NATO withdrawal was being "rushed".
"NATO is portraying a situation in Afghanistan that is suitable for transition," he told AFP.
"That does not really stand up to scrutiny with the facts on the ground. The figures -- on internally displaced persons, asylum seekers, the civilian casualties -- speak for themselves."
Acknowledging that NATO is determined to stick to its deadline, Jenkins added: "We can't change it now. The train has left the station. But what we can do is better provide for Afghans in the most need."
Funding for aid projects is already drying up, he said, looking to a development conference on Afghanistan in Tokyo in July to help fund education and other services for Afghans when NATO troops have gone.
"There have been gains over the past 10 years and we would love to see those gains continue, but I think there is a danger they could be lost if there is a big drop in funding."
In Tokyo, governments and international organisations will discuss financial commitments for a 10-year period after 2014.
Billions of dollars of Western aid have already poured into Afghanistan since 2001. Donor nations and the UN have pledged some $500,000 dollars this year for purely humanitarian assistance, Jenkins said.
The UN refugee agency is overhauling its approach to Afghanistan after Peter Nicolaus, UNHCR's representative in Afghanistan, in December described the strategy as the "biggest mistake UNHCR ever made".
He said the international community had failed to help returnees find a means of earning a living and so reintegrating into society.
In Aleema's squalid camp, they are not holding their breath for a dramatic change in their fortunes. None of those interviewed by AFP had heard of the NATO summit, and the Tokyo conference is likely to go equally unnoticed.
Music School Looks To 'Heal' War-Weary Afghans
By Frud Bezhan May 23, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Music in Afghanistan is perhaps best known, particularly in the West, for falling silent.
The Taliban infamously beat musicians, destroyed instruments, and publicly burned recordings in the name of that regime's extreme version of Islam.
Nearly as soon as the Taliban fell, in late 2001, disquieted musicians within and outside the country took steps to revive Afghanistan's unique musical tradition.
One was Ahmad Sarmast, a musicologist who returned to his native Afghanistan to open an academy at the very site where his own musical education began as a boy.
"Establishing and promoting music education is part of returning the musical right of Afghans back to them," Sarmast says. "Every Afghan should have the ability to listen to music, practice and learn music, and to express themselves through music."
State-Of-The-Art
Two years after opening its doors, the Afghanistan National Institute of Music in Kabul instructs some 150 students from their first note through their graduation as seasoned musicians.
Students get a well-rounded education: Half the day is spent on math, science, literature, and other subjects, while the other half is dedicated to music.
The students choose their own path -- either Western classical or Afghan traditional. And there is a decided effort to develop pupils from all walks of life. Former street children, orphans, and girls -- who face particular obstacles in Afghanistan's patriarchal and culturally conservative society -- make up half of the student body.
All receive full scholarships to attend the institute, which functions under the Afghan Education Ministry and receives international funding, particularly from Australia, Germany, and Denmark. After completing their studies, graduates are awarded internationally recognized music diplomas.
With widespread backing, the institute has been able to hire Western music teachers and provide state-of-the-art facilities, including soundproof classrooms and a modern library. There is also a 300-seat auditorium being planned.
Sarmast, 49, says the institute's orchestra plans to visit the United States in February, where they will perform a series of concerts, including at the prestigious John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington and Carnegie Hall in New York.
Dark Days
That is a far cry from the state the institute was in when Sarmast, who has studied in Russia and Australia, returned to Afghanistan in 2008. Sarmast studied at the site when it was known as the School of Fine Arts in the 1970s.
Before the school's revival, its caretakers say, it did not have any windows, its hallways were littered with rubble, and its classrooms walls pocked with bullet holes.
During the civil war in the 1990s, the campus was repeatedly shelled and looted by warring groups who -- according to its caretakers -- stripped the building of its electrical wiring and plumbing. Instruments, they say, were used for kindling and even to store and carry ammunition.
Sarmast says the civil war and the repressive policies against music during the Taliban period had a lasting effect on people's attitudes toward music and musicians -- some Afghan musicians, even today, complain they are looked down upon and even harassed.
Sarmast says that many things that Western musicians take for granted, such as copyright protection and payment for original material, do not exist.
"Right now, Afghanistan is lacking laws and regulations which can protect musicians' rights," Sarmast says. "I hope that very soon the Afghan government and the appropriate authorities will take necessary steps to ensure the musical rights of Afghan people and also to protect the musicians and their rights legally."
Despite the challenges, Sarmast says Afghan musicians are full of optimism and awareness of the important role they can play.
"Music can greatly contribute to the rehabilitation or healing process of the nation, which is badly traumatized because of 30 years of war," he says. "Music has a very strong power for social change. Music has the ability and the force to overcome social, economic, ethnic, and religious barriers and to unite the Afghan people."
Sarmast is now looking to export the positive vibes of music to other Afghan cities and planning to build music institutes in Herat, Mazar-e Sharif, and Jalalabad within the next decade.
Afghanistan: "I Was Not Born a Slave"
IWPR investigation reveals children trapped in unending bonded labour to pay off loans.
IWPR By Sayed Samiullah Sayidi Investigative Report 23 May 12
Afghanistan - “I was not born a slave,” Mirwali said. “I’ve been held hostage with two of my older brothers at the Hazrat-e Belal brick factory for the past two years.”
Just 14 years old, Mirwali is one of around 6,000 minors forced into servitude at the brick factories of Sorkhrod district in the Nangarhar region of eastern Afghanistan.
An IWPR investigation has uncovered a consistent pattern where underage as well as adult workers are forced into bondage after their families borrow money from brick plant owners.
Mirwali’s story is typical of these modern slaves, most of whom are aged from eight to 17. He and his brothers have been forced to work at the brick plant in the village of Sultanpur to pay off 3,000 US dollars which the family borrowed two years ago from the factory owner, Ustad Mohammad Akram, to pay for their father’s heart surgery.
They have more than repaid the money with their hard labour, but there is no end in sight to their serfdom.
It is hard work – 250 times a day, Mirwali carries a ten-kilogram mould full of clay 20 metres to lay the brick out for drying. Working in 30-degree temperatures, his skin is scorched the same colour as the bricks, and his frame is hard and bony.
Their accommodation is basic, in clay-built rooms beside the brick plant, with snakes and scorpions a constant danger, as the heat of the kilns attracts them.
Ustad (“Master”) Akram pays the three brothers a rate of five dollars each for a ten-hour day, for which they make 1,000 unbaked bricks.
Hiring a labourer would cost him eight dollars a day, for eight rather than ten hours of work – a rate twice the amount he now pays. By that reckoning, he has recouped the original loan sum several times over simply by underpaying the brothers.
Ustad Akram told IWPR that the brothers each get paid 150 dollars a month, but he retains half of it to offset the loan. He says they are allowed to keep the remaining 75 dollars and use it to support their families.
To settle the loan in full, he said, “Mirwali and his brothers may work for me for another eight months.”
Mirwali described how the family, living in the village of Trili village in the neighbouring Chaparhar district, first got into difficulties.
“My father farmed the land of [other] villagers in return for 50 per cent of the profits. We didn’t have a good life, and I couldn’t go to school,” he said.
When his father Lal Mohammad fell ill, there was no money for treatment. Doctors in the main provincial city Jalalabad diagnosed a cardiac valve blockage and said the patient must travel to Pakistan as soon as possible to have an operation, or else he would die.
Doctors at the Al-Rahman hospital in Peshawar, Pakistan, required the 3,000-dollar fee to be deposited in the hospital’s bank account they would carry out before the operation.
With no chance of a loan from friends or relatives, Mirwali’s uncle Mohammad Yaqub secured the funds from Ustad Akram, an acquaintance . The condition was that the three brothers would work for the factory-owner until the money was paid off.
The family had no choice but to accept the deal. Lal Mohammad had the operation, but is still not well enough to resume working and contributing to the household.
Adults, too, are pressed into service at the brick factories when they take out loans they cannot repay. Often they work together with their entire families.
Lal Agha, 36, originally from the village of Niazi in the Laghman province, has spent the last eight months at the Chaharbagh Safa factory, trying to work off the 600,000 Pakistani rupees – equivalent to 6,500 dollars – he borrowed to buy treatment for one of his children.
“My nine year old daughter was suffering from cancer, so I borrowed money from friends and enemies alike to get her treatment. I took her to hospitals in Peshawar, Islamabad and even Karachi, but she did not recover and finally she died,” “When my daughter died, I owed people 600,000 rupees. The creditors would knock on my door morning and evening to ask for their money. I had no option but to accept 600,000 rupees from [factory owner] Shoaib Agha and enter into enslavement.”
Working together with his three young sons and two daughters, Lal Agha produces 2,000 bricks a day. He believes he might remain in servitude until the end of his life, trying to pay off the debt.
An IWPR reporter visited 59 of the 85 brick factories in Sorkhrod district in April and May 2012, and gathered numerous testimonies confirming the presence of underage workers held as security for loans and made to perform heavy labour. He spoke to 25 workers aged between eight and 17, and 49 of the owners.
His research resulted in a list of names and addresses of 6,000 children in bonded labour, plus 2,400 families living at brick plants because the adult breadwinner is working to pay off a loan.
The Afghan government is aware of the situation, although officials say they only have records of 1,300 families in Sorkhrod district with members working to pay off loans given by brick factor owners.
Wasel Nur Mohmand, Afghanistan’s deputy minister of labohr and social affairs, told IWPR that the “labour-for-loans” practice was customary everywhere in Afghanistan, and amounted to a personal contract between the factory owner and the family concerned.
Mohmand said that while the government did not view child labour at the factories as a form of slavery, it was a matter of concern.
“It is an obvious case of cruelty against children,” he said.
Article 13, point four of Afghanistan’s labour law prohibits the recruitment of under-18s for work that is hazardous or liable to lead to disability or underdevelopment. But there are no mechanisms for ensuring that the law is observed.
Hajji Gol Pacha, the head of the brick manufacturer’s association in Sorkhrod, told IWPR that there were 15,000 labourers including 6,000 children at the factories in the district. He said the local brick industry had taken off in the last ten years and had employed thousands of workers from various parts of Afghanistan as well as from Nangarhar itself. He added that hundreds of dormitory rooms had been built to house child workers so that they could get to the brick factories by dawn each day.
Factory owners deny that child labour constitutes a form of enslavement or a breach of children’s rights.
Ustad Akram, for example, said it was ethical and humane to give loans to the poor and vulnerable.
“What we do is both reward and profit,” he said.
Loans of between 1,000 to 5,000 dollars made all the difference to these families, he said.
“We have managed to get operations for dozens of patients with the loans we’ve given people. We have helped them mark dozens of events – both joyous and mournful – with dignity. We have also freed hundreds of Afghan labourers from Pakistani and Punjabi masters who held them hostage for years,” he said. “Now tell us whether we serve people or enslave them.”
Mirwali has now spent two years in effective slavery, even though he is still a beardless boy.
What upsets him more than all the hardship and misery of his life, he says, is seeing Samir, a boy of his own age, when they both attend evening prayers at the mosque in Sultanpur. Samir’s father, a wealthy car dealer in Jalalabad city, has enrolled him at the prestigious Afghan-Turkish High School – something Mirwali can only dream of.
“When Samir enters the mosque, I say to myself, ‘God – what would happen if You made us rich too, so that I could go to school and study in style as others do?” he said.
Sayed Samiullah Sayidi is an IWPR-trained journalist in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.
This report was produced as part of the Afghan Critical Mass Media Reporting in Uruzgan and Nangarhar project, and is also published on the Afghan Centre for Investigative Journalism website which IWPR has set up locally.
Lean Times for Afghan Journalism
Media sector sees job losses as donor funding shrinks.
IWPR By Khan Mohammad Danishju 22 May 12
Afghanistan - Afghan journalists say cuts in international funding for the media are threatening one of the past decade’s success stories as well as many of their jobs.
More than 50 television channels have emerged since the Taleban administration was ousted in late 2001, and Afghanistan also has more than 100 radio stations and some 700 newspapers and magazines.
However, journalists say international assistance to the media has been in decline since 2008, and jobs are now being axed in large numbers.
Some warn that if western donor support tails off, it will be replaced by covert funding from neighbouring Iran and Pakistan – with all the influence that will buy those countries.
Pajhwok Afghan News, which describes itself as Afghanistan’s largest independent news agency and was established by IWPR, has laid off 70 of its 130 journalists because of financial difficulties, according to its director Danesh Karokhel.
Pajhwok is trying to cover the salaries of its remaining staff by charging for stories, but Karokhel says he is uncertain how long this can continue.
The same cuts are taking place elsewhere. In May alone, around 300 journalists working for free and unbiased media outlets across Afghanistan lost their jobs, according to information gathered by Pajhwok.
In the eastern province of Logar, journalist Maqsud Azizi has lost his job with Pajhwok and is concerned about his future.
Over the past decade, he has seen other colleagues reluctantly take jobs with partisan media outlets because they needed the money. Now, with a family to support, he says he may also have to take work from “anyone who pays me”.
Nai, a non-government group that works to promote independent media and freedom of expression, believes that both are now at risk.
“Unbiased media are on the verge of collapse, and attention must be paid this,” Nai’s director Sediqullah Tauhidi said.
Tauhidi said the impressive achievements of Afghan journalism over the past decade could be undermined if western donors pulled out and backers from neighbouring states filled the space.
“Media outlets which have bowed to Iran and Pakistan may intensify their activities against western interests, as well as against freedom of speech and democracy in Afghanistan,” he warned.
In Kabul, there is already talk of Pakistan and Iran recruiting Afghan journalists. In April, Lutfullah Mashal, a spokesman for the National Directorate of Security, NDS, the domestic intelligence agency, accused certain media outlets of working for Iran or Pakistan.
The NDS announced on May 6 that it had detained a reporter working for the Fars News Agency. He was accused of revealing confidential government documents to Tehran.
Abdul Satar Sadat, a political analyst and director of the Afghan Lawyers’ Network, believes both countries have already got their own media outlets in Afghanistan.
Rahimullah Samandar, director of RFE/RL radio in Kabul, warned that if international aid decreases further after 2014, when NATO-led forces withdraw, neighbouring states will be well placed to increase their influence.
“Certain media outlets supported by neighbouring countries and by spiteful political parties working against Afghanistan’s interests will be strengthened,” he said. “There is a concern that these media outlets will be used as a tool against democracy.”
Iranian diplomats declined to talk to IWPR about these claims of interference, while Ghulam Mohammad from the Pakistani embassy’s press office said his country had neither established nor supported any media organisations in Afghanistan. He said the embassy’s relationship with Afghan journalists was confined to answering their questions.
Afghanistan’s deputy information minister, Mobarez Rashedi, was optimistic that donor funding would hold up after 2014, and said his ministry was trying to “encourage new donors” while pressing for “greater transparency in their work”
Member of parliament Shinkai Karokhail says aid transparency has been a problem in the past, and alleges that large sums have gone to media outlets controlled by warlords and other powerful figures.
Nevertheless, she said, “Afghanistan’s media are still young and need to become more professional, so it’s essential for the international community to continue its support.”
Journalist Rahim Malekzai believes many Afghan media outlets are already compromised, with many established by political parties or linked to particular factions, or else backed by Pakistan and Iran.
Without further support from international donors, he warns, the situation can only get worse.
“Unless the international community supports them, journalists who have so far maintained their impartiality to some extent will not be able to hold out against media outlets that are supported by neighbouring countries or by different factions and parties,” he said.
The United States government has been a major funding source for media development since 2001. Its Kabul embassy sent IWPR a statement saying that at the international conference on future support for Afghanistan held in Germany in December 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton noted that donor countries faced fiscal constraints themselves.
“But what everyone in Bonn agreed to was that there would be no precipitous cut-off of assistance,” the statement said.
The statement said the US Agency for International Developments had spent over 56 million US dollars on media development in Afghanistan since 2002. In the fiscal year 2010-11, the embassy’s Public Affairs Section spent about 27 million dollars to support programming and operations at Afghan media outlets and to provide training and capacity building; and another 17.5 million dollars to support university journalism departments.
Not all media outlets depend on donor support, and some have developed successful business models by selling airtime for commercials.
Mujahid Kakar is head of news and political programming at the Tolo TV, Tolo News and Lemar stations, and insists the three channels will be immune to cuts in foreign aid cuts as they make their money advertising. The Arman FM and Arakozia FM radio stations, which are part of the same Moby Group, will also be unaffected, he said.
At the same time, Kakar acknowledged that some staff employed by the media group had been laid off as declining private investment led to falling advertising revenues.
Khan Mohammad Danishju is an IWPR-trained reporter in Kabul.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com