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UN Says Civilian Death Rate in Afghanistan is Unacceptable
Larry Freund May 31, 2012
NEW YORK - The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) says civilian casualties from the Afghan conflict remain at "unacceptably high levels" despite a 21-percent drop in conflict-related deaths during the first four months of this year.
In a report released Thursday, UNAMA said 2011 marked the fifth year in a row in which civilian casualties increased in Afghanistan. The group said it documented more than 3,000 civilian deaths last year, three-quarters linked to violence by anti-government forces.
The continued violence has raised concerns about the ability of Afghan forces to handle security beyond 2014, when most NATO forces are planning to conclude their combat role.
Brookings Institution Foreign Policy Senior Fellow Michael O'Hanlon says he does not expect a significant decrease in the conflict-related deaths in the near future.
"I am just not persuaded that there is any realistic hope that the numbers are going to go down that much in the next two or three years," said O'Hanlon. "I think that unless the Taliban decides to be serious about peace talks, we are probably going to have to hope the numbers just don't get much worse as we carry out a transition to primary Afghan responsibility for security throughout the country."
UNAMA said improvised explosive devices (IED's), used by anti-government forces, were the single largest killer of civilians, accounting for one-third of the deaths.
On Wednesday, the group said it had documented 579 civilian deaths for the first four months of 2012, a one-fifth decrease compared to the same time last year. However, it said the region's harsh winter may have contributed to the decrease.
Meanwhile, Afghan officials say explosions killed at least seven police officers on Thursday.
A spokesman for the provincial governor in Kandahar province says a car bombing at a police checkpoint in Argistan killed at least five officers.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Kandahar is the birthplace of the Taliban, which earlier this month announced the start of a spring offensive.
Afghan officials say a second explosion at a checkpoint in Jalalabad killed two police officers.
Suicide Car Bomber Kills 5 Police in Afghanistan
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS May 31, 2012
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) — A suicide bomber detonated a vehicle full of explosives outside a district police headquarters in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, killing five policemen, a government official said.
The attack in Kandahar province's Argistan district also wounded six policemen, said Javid Faisal, the provincial governor's spokesman.
Kandahar is the spiritual heartland of the Taliban and has been one of the most heavily contested areas between the militants and Afghan and foreign forces. The U.S. poured tens of thousands of additional troops into Kandahar and other areas of the south in 2009 and 2010 to reverse the Taliban's momentum. While violence has fallen in some areas, attacks still occur frequently.
Also Thursday, a homemade bomb killed a member of the U.S.-led NATO force in southern Afghanistan, the coalition said, without providing further details.
The death raised the number of coalition troops who have died in Afghanistan this year to 176.
The persistent violence poses a challenge for the U.S. as it seeks to hand over responsibility for security to Afghan forces and withdraw most of its combat troops by 2014.
A pair of attacks killed five policemen Thursday in eastern Afghanistan, also a key base for the Taliban and their allies.
In one attack, in Kunduz province's Dashti Archi district, a roadside bomb struck a vehicle carrying the head of the district's anti-terrorism police force, killing him along with a colleague and a police bodyguard, said district chief Shaik Sadaruddin.
A grenade tossed at a police checkpoint in Jalalabad city, capital of Nangarhar province, killed two policemen, said provincial police chief Gen. Abdullah Azim Stanikzai.
Afghan militancy claims 13 lives in single day
by Abdul Haleem, Chen Xin
KABUL, May 31 (Xinhua) -- The militancy-plagued Afghanistan experienced a bloody day on Thursday as Taliban-linked attacks have claimed the lives of 13 people since sunrise elsewhere in the war-torn country, officials said.
The first attack which happened in the shape of roadside bombing, targeted a counter-terrorist official in Dasht-e-Archi district of northern Kunduz province, 250 km north of Afghan capital Kabul, leaving four people dead including the prey.
"A mine planted by insurgents struck the vehicle of anti-terror chief of Dasht-e-Archi district at around 08:00 a.m. local time today killing four people including the anti-terror chief and three of his bodyguards," district governor Shikh Sadudin told Xinhua.
Couple of hours later, a suicide car bomb rocked Kandahar the former stronghold of Taliban militants, 450 km south of Kabul leaving six people including the bomber dead.
A suicide car bomb targeted police department in Arghistan district of Kandahar province, 450 km south of capital Kabul, killing six people including the attacker and five police and wounding six others on Thursday, spokesman for provincial administration Jawed Faisal said.
"A terrorist riding an explosive-laden car blew it up next to the gate of police department in Arghistan district this morning killing five policemen on the spot and wounding six others," Faisal told Xinhua.
The bomber was also killed in his blast happened at around 10: 00 a.m. local time, he added.
In a separate incident which took place one hour later in the eastern Nangarhar province, two police constables were killed.
Two police constables were killed as a bomb exploded next to a police checkpoint in Jalalabad city the capital of Nangarhar province, 120 km east of Kabul on Thursday, an official confirmed.
"A bomb exploded next to a checkpoint in Jalalabad city at 11: 00 a.m. local time this morning killing two police constables," Ahmad Zia Abdulzai the spokesman for Nangarhar's governor told Xinhua.
Furthermore, a suicide bomber wearing police uniform attempting to target a meeting of elders with local officials in Nawa district of the southern Helmand province was identified and gunned down by police Thursday, Abdul Manaf Khan, the governor of Nawa district, told Xinhua.
Khan has blamed Taliban militants for organizing such attacks. However the outfit which is largely relying on suicide and roadside bombings has yet to make comment.
Taliban militants fighting Afghan and NATO-led troops have speed up activities since launching spring offensive dubbed "Al- Farooq" early this month and officials predict more violent incidents in spring and summer known as fighting season in Afghanistan.
System Tests Afghan Graduates' Resistance To Radicalism
By Frud Bezhan, Homayoon Shinwary May 30, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
The Afghan government has lauded its progress in restoring the country's education system as one of its preeminent achievements over the past decade.
But despite some visible inroads, there are warning signs.
At best, the effort to open opportunities through education has failed to meet expectations; at worst, the system has essentially become a breeding ground for extremists.
The Afghan government, from the onset, earmarked education as key to eliminating poverty and thwarting radicalism. It devised a plan to send all Afghan children to school, to construct universities and technical schools to address a skills shortage, and, above all, to create job opportunities.
Those who pass through the system find the going tough upon graduation, however, with jobs and university slots scarce.
Wadir Safi, an Afghan law professor, says this leaves young graduates with few options.
The Afghan National Army and National Police Force are expanding, but the work is low-paid and hazardous. Some choose instead to eke out a living on the streets, which can descend into a life of drug abuse. In the end, joining the ranks of militant groups can begin to look appealing for some.
Following 'Power'
Safi says it is unsurprising that disillusioned students would join the Taliban, insisting that in most cases the students feel safer, more empowered, are given a sense of purpose, and receive salaries that match or better those of the army. He adds that new Taliban recruits can receive several hundred dollars a month, as well as clothing, food, and shelter.
"Youths who become unemployed and fail to enter university have little choice," Safi says. "The government doesn't have any initiatives to create jobs. Angry as a result of this, they're purposely joining the insurgency. They see that the government is unable to help them and see the other side [insurgency] as where the power [and money] is."
Najib Mahmoud, a political science professor at Kabul University, says millions of children have enrolled in thousands of newly built schools in the last decade but that advancements were hindered by shortsightedness.
Mahmoud says that while the government has made progress in primary and secondary education, they have neglected the question of what those students will do once they complete school.
He adds that in the past decade, only a few universities and semi-higher education institutions, which provide technical and skills training, have been built. None have been built in underdeveloped and insurgent-hit regions -- where Mahmoud says they are particularly needed.
"In the last 10 years, the Afghan government should not only have worked on increasing the quality and quantity of education, but in every province they should have built universities, especially in underdeveloped areas," Mahmoud says. "If we had done this, we could have increased the number of professionals and prevented our kids and students from joining the Taliban."
No Rhyme Or Reason?
Within the education system, the perception of widespread government corruption has become a major factor for students deciding what direction they will take.
Locals in the country's volatile and conservative south, where insurgents exert significant influence, say many students feel the government has abandoned them. In some cases, that disillusionment has given way to anger amid claims of injustice and discrimination.
Abdul Wali, a high-school graduate from southeastern Zabul Province, says the result of this year's university entry exams, which were marred by widespread allegations of corruption, is a case in point.
Wali says many of his friends earned sufficient marks to enter university but were unjustly denied a place. Others, he claims, insist that their test scores were higher than some students in urban centers who were admitted -- leading to claims of fraud and favoritism.
"This time, many students participated in university entry exams. Only some got in and many others failed," Wali says. "Those that failed didn't have any other options so they joined the Taliban. They were my good friends and now they're standing alongside the Taliban and fighting against the government."
Daunting Obstacles
According to statistics from the Afghan Education Ministry, only around 40,000 of the 147,000 students who took part in the national exams were granted university slots, with only a handful of them hailing from the volatile south of the country.
Mohammad Omar, a student from southeastern Ghazni Province, says students in the region already face huge hurdles in receiving an education -- notably militants burning schools down, poisoning students, and assassinating teachers and education officials.
He says the controversy surrounding the exam results, for some, was the last straw, claiming scores of his male relatives and friends have joined the Taliban in the aftermath of the results.
"I have a lot of close friends that had to face this misfortune and went to support the Taliban," Omar says. "Some of them carry out ambushes on the roads, not looking whether it’s a civilian vehicle or one that’s carrying supplies to foreign forces. They're burning these valuable supplies with only matches."
Written and reported by Frud Bezhan, with additional reporting by RFE/RL Afghan Service correspondent Homayoon Shinwary
Pakistani Taliban vows to kill bin Laden doctor
By Reza Sayah, CNN May 31, 2012
Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) -- The Pakistani Taliban vowed on Thursday to kill Shakeel Afridi, the jailed Pakistani doctor accused of helping the CIA in the search for Osama bin Laden, a spokesman for the militant group told CNN.
"We will cut him into pieces when we find him," Pakistani Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told CNN by phone. "He spied for the U.S. to hunt down our hero Osama bin Laden."
Pakistani officials say Afridi is being held in a prison in the city of Peshawar in northwest Pakistan.
Last week a court in Pakistan's tribal region sentenced Afridi to 33 years in prison but a copy of the court order obtained by CNN shows Afridi was sentenced for alleged connections to the militant group Lashkar-e-Islam, not for helping Americans in the search for bin Laden.
Even so, the Pakistani Taliban says Afridi is the number-one target on its hit list.
On Wednesday the jailed doctor's brother told CNN he fears for Afridi's safety and called on the United States to help set him free.
"These allegations are false. They're baseless," said Jamil Afridi.
"My brother didn't do anything against Pakistan. If he helped the U.S., it was for the benefit of Pakistan. The American government should help us in any way it can."
Officials had told CNN Shekeel Afridi was charged with treason for spying for the United States. He was accused of helping the CIA locate bin Laden in his compound in Abbottabad through a fake vaccination campaign.
Bin Laden was killed in the subsequent U.S. raid on the compound in May last year.
At least one legal analyst said Afridi's sentence is a sham.
Islamabad-based lawyer Shahzad Akbar questioned the legitimacy of the court proceedings, since the punishment was handed down by a tribal court in Khyber even though the alleged offense occurred in Abbottabad.
The Afridi verdict sparked anger in the United States and further strained relations between Washington and Islamabad. The tensions surfaced as Congress debated aid to Pakistan in several bills.
In the National Defense Authorization Act, senators agreed last week to withhold Pakistan's part of a $1.75 billion aid package because of outrage over Afridi's case and the continued blockade of NATO supply routes into and out of Afghanistan.
Another bill in the Senate Appropriations Committee withheld $33 million in aid to Pakistan for similar reasons.
Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik has said cutting aid is a U.S. prerogative, but added: "I think the U.S. should not forget we are a victim in this war on terror and we're suffering for the international community, too."
Journalist Nasir Habib contributed to this report.
India fears for Afghanistan after NATO pullout
By Shaun Tandon | AFP – Wed, May 30, 2012
India called for greater coordination with the United States on Afghanistan, voicing fear that Islamic radicals would gain strength once Western forces pull out.
NATO leaders in a May 21 summit in Chicago committed to pulling combat troops out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014 as Western nations grow tired of more than a decade of war and pessimistic on the chances of further progress.
India is one of the most vocal supporters of continued engagement and has given Afghanistan more than $2 billion since the US-led invasion in 2001 overthrew the Taliban regime, which sheltered virulently anti-Indian militants.
Ahead of high-level annual talks between India and the United States on June 13, Nirupama Rao, New Delhi's ambassador to Washington, said the two nations have been holding talks on building "a stable, democratic and prosperous Afghanistan."
"These consultations must be strengthened," Rao said at the Atlantic Council, a think tank.
"We understand that after 10 long years of war there is a manifest and genuine desire to seek an end to conflict. But equally, we must ensure that the enormous sacrifices and efforts of the past decade have not been in vain," she said.
"Given the history of the last few decades in Afghanistan and the tide of extremism and radicalism that has swept across that country to the great detriment of its men, women and children, one cannot but help be concerned about what the future holds for that country" after the NATO pullout, she said.
India's involvement in Afghanistan has enraged neighboring Pakistan, which helped create the Taliban regime and accuses its historic rival of seeking to encircle it.
The United States partnered with Pakistan after the September 11, 2001 attacks. But relations have plummeted, with US concerns about Pakistan's orientation soaring after US forces found and killed Osama bin Laden near the country's main military academy last year.
The United States has welcomed India's contributions in Afghanistan but some US policymakers believe that Pakistani intelligence has maintained links to Islamic extremists due to a fixation on New Delhi's influence.
Yashwant Sinha, a lawmaker from India's main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, was blunter about fears on Afghanistan during a separate appearance in Washington at the Brookings Institution.
"I have great fears that Pakistan, for its own geopolitical reasons, might want to encourage Taliban to again take over Afghanistan," said Sinha, who served as foreign and finance minister when his right-leaning party was in power from 1998 to 2004.
Sinha said Afghanistan lacked a sufficient military -- or an anti-Taliban force, such as the Northern Alliance which enjoyed Indian, Iranian and Russian support before the war -- to withstand an assault.
"I don't see any local resistance building up immediately if the Taliban were to attempt to overrun Afghanistan," Sinha said.
"NATO has to stay the course in Afghanistan until we are absolutely confident that the Afghan army and the armed forces of Afghanistan are in a position to meet the Taliban threat," he said.
But opinion polls show that a majority of Americans want to end their country's longest war, with many US policymakers concluding that it is unrealistic to eliminate the Taliban through force.
US President Barack Obama and other Western leaders have vowed to support Afghanistan through military training and other assistance after the pullout of combat troops.
Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna will travel to Washington for the June 13 annual dialogue, which is part of efforts by the world's two largest democracies to build closer relations.
India and the United States recently had a rift as Washington urged the import-dependent emerging economy to cut oil imports from Iran as a way to pressure Tehran over its contested nuclear program.
Despite initial unease, India has reduced Iranian imports. The United States is expected to announce in the coming weeks that it will exempt New Delhi from sanctions under a new law that punishes countries that do business with Iran.
American Ally, American Adversary: Our Worsening Pakistan Problem
For the first time, there may be some hope for Afghanistan. But Pakistan is intent on crushing it, and U.S. officials are paralyzed in finding a solution.
The Atlantic By Michael Hirsh May 30 2012
Sometimes, the most telling facts are the ones your briefers don't want to mention. On a hot, sunny day in early May, I sat with other reporters at an International Security Assistance Force briefing in Afghanistan's violence-wracked Ghazni province, otherwise known as Regional Command East. The ISAF civilian-military team, using laser pointers on a map, highlighted a few peaceful districts colored green and many others colored red, where the Taliban was still fighting, although the briefers said that "progress" was evident. One district in the south called Nawa, a spit of Afghan land that descended close to Pakistan's tribal regions, was colored black, not green or red.
Why black? "That means we don't go there at all," one briefer explained. "It's totally under the sway of the Taliban." He moved on quickly, but the forbidding dark blot on the map sent a clear message: Even though this region is now as secure as it's ever likely to get--NATO forces are still near the height of President Obama's 33,000 troop "surge," before troops leave in 2014--the allies have already written off this part of the country bordering Pakistan as lost.
The next day, the dangers of this outcome were driven home to us in the nearby village of Zana Khan, when U.S. and Afghan officials presided over a huge hold-and-clear operation to proudly host a shura--a village meeting--demonstrating how the Afghan government is winning hearts and minds (Although ISAF described the operation as Afghan-led, Polish helicopters hovered, dropping flare-like countermeasures.) All went well, but sitting on the side of the dusty square, a 32-year-old farmer named Mohammed quietly warned us: "Two hours after you leave, the Taliban will be back." Mohammed then pointed to the crowd squinting into the sun and listening docilely. "They are all Taliban," he declared.
And sure enough, shortly after the meeting--less than a half hour later--mortar shells from the hills surrounding the village sent us scurrying for cover. The Taliban munitions almost certainly were ferreted in from Pakistani tribal regions.
Fast-forward two weeks to the NATO summit in Chicago, which ended on Monday. Lots of triumphal talk from attendees about a 2014 exit and a stable Afghanistan. Fifty--count 'em, 50--nations committed to Afghanistan's future. Also among the invitees, however, were Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari and other senior officials. Zardari was there even though he and his government had refused even to allow overland NATO travel in the wake of bitter tensions resulting from U.S. strikes at the border and from last May's raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad. More significantly, U.S. officials have begun to acknowledge, more bluntly than ever before, that Pakistan's senior military and intelligence apparatus is supporting and funding the same Taliban fighters who are killing NATO soldiers--not just Americans, but also Germans, French, Italians, and Canadians--and endangering the outcome of America's longest war. Even the U.S. Embassy in Kabul--"which is American soil," U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan C
rocker angrily noted in an interview--was twice attacked by what Crocker described as "Pakistan-based insurgents." Last fall, outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen called the terrorist Haqqani network in Pakistan's tribal regions, the suspect behind the embassy attack, a "veritable arm" of Pakistan's intelligence service.
Yet there it was in Chicago, the Pakistan delegation, welcomed because President Bush in 2004 had designated Pakistan a "major non-NATO ally," ushered around as if it was just another ISAF member in good standing. Pakistan, America's ally in the war on terrorism. Pakistan, supporter of terror, aider and abettor to the killing of Americans, and now an adversary of the greatest military alliance in history.
HIGHER STAKES
There is nothing very new, of course, about Pakistan's two-faced behavior. It is a problem that has dogged Washington since well before 9/11. Pakistan's military and intelligence services, which effectively run that nominally democratic country, have long seen radical Islamist groups, including the Taliban, as a strategic counterbalance to the influence of Pakistan's bitter rival, Hindu-dominated India, in Afghanistan and south-central Asia. The upshot is that despite fitful efforts to rein in the worst of the jihadists, Pakistan offers a safe haven to the rest of them--and permanent access to Afghanistan just across the border. "Any other country, we'd be calling them a state sponsor of terrorism," said a former senior U.S. diplomat who has served as ambassador to Islamabad. "It's inconceivable that we give $3 billion a year to a country that would harbor Osama bin Laden." Yet we do.
What is new about this moment in history is that, for Washington and other leading NATO members, the stakes are higher than they have ever been, and the Pakistan problem, which until now has been considered a mere complicating factor in Afghanistan, has become acute and central. So much so that failing to deal with it could very well lead to the biggest foreign-policy failure of the Obama administration. Why? Because even as NATO troops prepare to depart, Obama in recent weeks has committed the United States--and NATO--to remain there in a robust way, to "train, advise, and assist" for years, possibly decades, to come, as he said in Chicago on Monday. And there may even be some hope, for the first time, in Afghanistan, absent the Pakistan problem.
In a country traumatized in recent decades by U.S. abandonment, many Afghans say that the psychology has changed in recent weeks with the news of long-term U.S. and Western commitments. After Obama announced a 10-year strategic partnership agreement running to 2024, real-estate prices shot up in Kabul. On top of that, the U.S., NATO, and the Afghan government are expected to pool some $4 billion a year to fund the increasingly sturdy Afghan army and security forces. Finally, economic-development assistance programs are expected to come out of a Tokyo conference scheduled for July, when Afghanistan will present its "strategic vision," including a planned surge in mining revenues from gold and rare minerals. Even in some areas of the once-violent south, helped by a program to induce Taliban fighters to lay down their arms and to "reintegrate" them, ISAF Cmdr. John Allen argues that he is more focused now on economic progress than security. "In the south and southwest, it really is a post-conflict conversation,"
Allen, a four-star Marine general, told me and other visiting reporters in an interview in Uruzgan province on May 7.
With elections expected as early as next year, credible alternatives already are emerging to President Hamid Karzai, who is deeply mistrusted in Washington. Among them: popular provincial Gov. Gul Agha Shirzai, who has begun to open political offices in Kabul; Abdullah Abdullah, who finished second to Karzai in 2009 and is a former U.S. ally; and possibly even Zalmay Khalilzad, the Afghan-born, naturalized American who was once the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. (In an interview with National Journal this week, Khalilzad would not rule out a run, saying only, "I'm not planning it.")
In the wake of the Chicago summit, it seems much likelier that whoever is elected U.S. president in November, Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, the U.S., NATO, and some 22 non-NATO countries (from Australia to Macedonia) will remain engaged in Afghanistan in some fashion indefinitely. "There's going to be an international military presence here in Afghanistan for a long time, a long time after 2014," Allen said. As a result, he argued, many mid-level Taliban fighters are beginning to have second thoughts. "If your narrative is, 'Just wait us out,' [and] you're going to have to wait now for decades ... you're going to start to lose some enthusiasm."
Indeed, mounting evidence indicates that much of the enthusiasm for war is coming from the Taliban leadership safely harbored in Quetta, Pakistan, along with Islamabad's military-intelligence apparatus. They continue to provide an ever-flush resupply depot to the Taliban that could destroy the alliance's most ambitious project and condemn to near-certain failure the United States' 10-year-long, vastly expensive response to 9/11. In addition to attacks on U.S. and NATO troops, and the assassinations of Afghanistan's top peace negotiators--including former President Burhanuddin Rabbani and, last week, Maulvi Arsala Rahmani, a former Taliban leader who became a senior member of Afghanistan's High Peace Council--are plots thought to emanate from Pakistan.
Allen acknowledged that the U.S. isn't certain how many of the enemy it is still fighting because so many are supplied by Pakistan's tribal warlords. "Nobody knows for sure," Allen said. "I think most estimates would put [the insurgency] between 30 and 35 [thousand]. Some large number of them are in Pakistan. And the term 'enemy' has many different meanings here. A significant number of what might be considered enemy are in a support role; they're not fighters, necessarily."
A FAILURE OF U.S. DIPLOMACY
Rescuing Afghanistan under these circumstances is like trying to put out a fire in your house while your neighbor constantly reignites the building from the backyard. At least as important as talking with the Taliban, in other words, is negotiating with its overseers: the ISI. And yet some critics--who include prominent Pakistanis yearning to break the country's Faustian bargain with Islamist radicals--say that Washington is largely ignoring or shunting aside the Pakistan problem out of fear, inertia, and a lack of a U.S. and NATO strategic vision. "It is a failure of diplomacy of the highest order, where we have had the lives of our people at stake," Khalilzad, the former U.S. ambassador, told NJ. To keep the Pakistanis even marginally cooperative, Khalilzad said, "I think, frankly, we have been too cautious and willing to pay too high a price."
Before he was forced out of office last year, Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S., Husain Haqqani--perhaps the closest Pakistani friend the Obama administration had--urged U.S. officials to adopt a "holistic" approach to the region that would help wean Pakistan from its military support of Islamists. It never happened. And today, rather than coming up with a new overarching strategic policy for Pakistan and the region that is commensurate with the deep commitments that the U.S. has never before made, Washington and other capitals continue to watch, helplessly, as a middle-sized developing country defies a superpower and the West's dominant nations with virtual impunity.
Even the Europeans continue to describe the issue as a problem of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship, although their own blood and treasure are at stake. "The Americans are completely paralyzed by this situation," one European diplomat said, on condition of anonymity. Another senior NATO official also laid the problem on the Americans. "It's quite difficult at times to find a single U.S. policy on Pakistan, much less coordination with others."
The administration's paralysis has been evident in an intense, months-long internal debate over whether to issue an apology to Pakistan over the errant NATO strikes that killed at least 24 Pakistani soldiers last fall, even though five months have passed since the completion of an official Pentagon investigation that partially blamed U.S. forces for the incident. Obama, facing charges of appeasement from Romney, has repeatedly hesitated, and even Crocker bluntly opposed the move in an interview.
To be sure, the way out is not easy or clear, and some critics, such as the senior NATO official, are sympathetic about the muddle in Washington. "How would you deal with it, even if you decided you wanted to deal with it?" he asked. "The United States has tried being nice to Pakistan. It's tried being nasty to Pakistan. It's tried giving them money. It's tried taking money away. Once a country has got it into its head that it has a national policy which is in its national interests, you can exert huge amounts of pressure, but it becomes almost impossible to shift, partly for domestic political reasons. And let's face it: In Pakistan, there is a huge amount of support for the Taliban."
At his closing news conference in Chicago on Monday, Obama merely alluded to the problem--even though it was the first question put to him by reporters. "I don't want to paper over real challenges there," the president said. "There is no doubt that there have been tensions between ISAF and Pakistan, the United States and Pakistan, over the last several months.... But, ultimately, it is in our interest to see a successful, stable Pakistan, and it is in Pakistan's interest to work with us and the world community to ensure that they themselves are not consumed by extremism that is in their midst. And so we're going to keep on going at this. And I think every NATO member, every ISAF member, is committed to that."
The bottom line remains, however: Washington has no comprehensive approach to a region that hatched the worst-ever attack on the nation's home soil, a strategy that would wean the Pakistanis away from their retrograde, anti-Western policies. Even as they have become increasingly forthright about Pakistan's involvement in terrorism, U.S. and NATO officials remain wary of offending Islamabad because of a bedrock fear that if Pakistan becomes destabilized, its nuclear arsenal could fall into the wrong hands. That caution also ruled in Chicago, where all the talk was simply about NATO getting permission from the Pakistanis to use their overland routes to expedite the troop pullout.
Nor does Washington have a senior diplomat with enough authority, toughness, and vision to handle the problem, according to U.S. and European officials. Richard Holbrooke, the only one thought to have all those qualities, was named Obama's "special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan" in 2009. But the White House partially stymied him--lobbied by India, Obama denied Holbrooke's request to make Kashmir part of his portfolio even though Islamabad uses that disputed province, situated between Pakistan and India, to justify the army's strategic support of jihadist proxy groups. After Holbrooke died suddenly in December 2010, he was succeeded by career diplomat Marc Grossman, who is widely considered ineffective and has provoked backbiting from the State Department's South and Central Asian Bureau, where the assistant secretary, Robert Blake, has been largely cut out of deliberations. "It's all Holbrooke's broken china," one official said. The two leading figures in U.S. policy in the region, Ryan Crocker,
the ambassador to Afghanistan, and Gen. Allen, are already making plans to leave (in Crocker's case, back to retirement; Allen is expected to be named NATO commander in Europe). Ambassador Cameron Munter, described as increasingly agitated over the failure of U.S. policy, is also leaving his post early.
Although Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has been praised for her approach to the region, having recently proposed a "New Silk Road" to induce Pakistan and other countries to work with Afghanistan, she is involved in the issue only sporadically.
The Taliban leadership, on the eve of the NATO summit, issued a statement from its comfortable sanctuary in tribal Pakistan, where it pledged to "keep proceeding with ... ongoing jihad until it attains its goal."
THE WAY FORWARD
What should the strategic vision be? Based on interviews with a wide range of U.S., European, Afghan, and Pakistani officials, here are some suggestions. First, there should be a démarche of the kind the Pakistanis have not been given since just after 9/11, when then-President Pervez Musharraf was presented with a stark choice: Fully support the war against the Taliban, or you're through. Now, Pakistan should be confronted with a clear and harsh update of that choice: If you defy the international community, you will be turned into a sanctioned pariah, á la Iran, in which case your country will lose ground economically and militarily to archrival India. Alternatively, if you repudiate violent extremists, you will be rewarded with more economic assistance and a voice in the region's future, such as Clinton's New Silk Road, which seeks to turn central Asia into a commercial hub once again.
"We have to be willing to escalate the pressure, which, in my view, has to include Pakistan's very difficult economic circumstances," Khalilzad said. "Today, I think the Pakistanis can cover only about 10 weeks of imports. We also need to move diplomatically by engaging some key countries they rely on, like China and Saudi Arabia."
A former senior diplomat intimately familiar with the decline in U.S.-Pakistan discussions agrees. "The message needs to be: What kind of future does Pakistan want? Does it want to be Iran--or does it want to be South Korea--in other words, rich and respected?" he said. "No one has delivered that tough message recently. So the assumption in Pakistan is that the Americans need us more than we need them. We can hold the Americans to ransom. They can't get out of Afghanistan without our help."
Instead, this critique goes, the U.S. has been too nice and too polite, to the point where the Pakistanis have come to expect American acquiescence. That is one reason the most recent issue over shipping rights has dragged on so long. "The Pakistanis have totally miscalculated. They thought NATO would buckle under in a few weeks. And it's been six months," said the former senior diplomat, who would describe internal deliberations between the U.S. and Pakistan only on condition of anonymity.
To be sure, U.S. nonchalance and miscalculation over the past decade have contributed mightily to the Pakistanis' own strategic ambivalence. After 9/11, the Bush administration ignored its democracy agenda entirely when it came to Pakistan, refusing even to meet with exiled leader Benazir Bhutto; instead, the administration blindly supported the Pakistan coup leader, Gen. Musharraf, although the latter was fully vested in the military's traditional support of jihadist proxies. True, in the early days of the war on terrorism, Pakistan was in fact helpful against al-Qaida, taking part in the capture of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a Pakistani from Balochistan, in 2003. But Musharraf grew complacent, throwing up an assortment of "al-Qaida No. 3" leaders to appease the Americans while signing peace deals with Islamist parties to block the more-legitimate secular political parties that might present real opposition to him.
All the while, Washington looked the other way and hinted at its eventual departure from the region, thus robbing Pakistan of any motivation to reorient its army from India and toward pacifying its restive tribal regions. U.S. efforts have remained piecemeal and intermittent, at best, rather than focused on leveraging America's, and NATO's, expensive and long-term commitment into a diplomatic vision for the region that would have co-opted the Pakistanis: the kind of vision U.S. officials have developed vis-à-vis China, Russia, Iran, and even Latin America.
One example of what was missed was the tension between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. India has resisted any international mediation over the disputed province, which it claims, but New Delhi has also shown an eagerness to work with Washington, which proffered a generous strategic partnership to India beginning in the mid-2000s, much to the ire of the Pakistanis. Yet Washington did not demand a quid pro quo from Delhi, and the Kashmir issue continued to fester. Back in 1999, U.S. officials were rattled when the two countries--both of which tested nukes in 1998--fought deadly skirmishes along the so-called line of control that, since 1971, has divided Kashmir. Worried about a nuclear conflict, President Clinton in 2000 sounded a strong new U.S. diplomatic line, calling for "respect for the line of control."
Then inattention took over again. Only when war threatened to erupt in 2002 did Bush send Secretary of State Colin Powell's deputy, Richard Armitage, to negotiate a de-escalation. As part of that effort, a senior administration official said, the United States briefly sought to play mediator in discussions over Kashmir once again. But Bush, distracted by Iraq, dropped the issue.
CHANGING THE CALCULUS
One reason some U.S. policymakers have been somewhat fatalistic about Pakistan's behavior is that, until now, the typical view from Washington has been that Afghanistan will somehow always revert back to a state of war, and that its government is hopelessly corrupt. Certainly that was the view of Vice President Joe Biden, who argued in 2009 for a much earlier departure from Afghanistan. And the president seems to agree with him. Obama, sounding on Monday what has become a familiar note in the face of a tough reelection challenge, called for "a stable Afghanistan that won't be perfect" so that "we can start rebuilding America and making some of the massive investments we've been making in Afghanistan here back home."
But if Obama also believes his own rhetoric about an "Afghan good enough" state in which the center holds and the Taliban doesn't take over; and if he wants to avoid a foreign-policy disaster that will forever be associated with his presidency, then he needs to take one more important step: Appoint a high-level representative, or perhaps delegate Secretary of State Clinton to the task. And he needs to rethink the whole region.
As we've learned so many times over the years, the permanent presence of American power and influence, and that of the international community, can fundamentally alter the equation--it can overturn the iron law of history that seems to doom backward countries like Afghanistan to ever-more war and repression. We saw it in Bosnia, when everyone expected the 1995 Dayton Accord to fall apart and the ethnic killing to resume. It didn't, because NATO stayed. We saw it in Kosovo, which gained its independence under NATO monitoring. We saw it in the ultimate impact that the 1975 Helsinki Final Act had in undermining the illegitimate Communist regimes in the Soviet bloc.
In both Afghanistan and Pakistan, fear of U.S. abandonment has largely determined policy until now, causing both countries to revert to old habits. Now Washington has a chance to change those calculations--to alter the fundamental equation once again--because of its long-term commitment. But only if it deals in a whole new way with Pakistan.
President Romney's Foreign Policy
By Heather Maher May 30, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
WASHINGTON – The U.S. presidential campaign finally has an official challenger to President Barack Obama in the November election. Mitt Romney secured the Republican Party’s nomination on May 29 by winning the Texas primary, which gave him enough delegates to become the party’s official nominee.
Here's a look at how Romney – a businessman and former state governor -- has said he would handle some key U.S. foreign policy issues, if elected.
GENERAL PHILOSOPHY
Advising Romney is a team of more than two dozen national security and foreign policy experts (see list below), almost two-thirds of whom held defense, intelligence, or diplomatic posts in former President George W. Bush’s administration.
Romney compares his foreign policy philosophy to that of former President Ronald Reagan.
“The overall rubric of my foreign policy will be the same as Ronald Reagan’s: Namely, 'peace through strength,'" he once said.
He also said, “A strong America is the best deterrent to war that ever has been invented.”
So Romney would confront the threat from radical Islam by strengthening U.S. intelligence services, adding 100,000 new troops to the military, and “monitoring” incoming U.S. calls from Al-Qaeda.
Under President Romney, the U.S. foreign aid budget would shrink. He has said, “I will stop sending money to any country that can take care of itself. And no foreign aid will go to countries that oppose American interests.”
ON IRAN
Romney has called Obama’s policy toward Iran “a failure.” His statements on U.S. policy toward Iran almost always mention the military option, such as during a Republican Party debate in November, when he was asked if it was worth going to war with Iran to prevent Tehran from getting a nuclear weapon.
"Well, it’s worth putting in place crippling sanctions; it’s worth working with the insurgents in the country to encourage regime change in the country; and if all else fails -- if after all of the work we’ve done, there’s nothing else we could do besides take military action -- then, of course, you take military action,” he said.
Romney recently wrote in "The Washington Post” that he would press for harsh sanctions as well as “speak out on behalf of the cause of democracy in Iran and support Iranian dissidents.”
But, “most importantly,” he wrote, “I will buttress my diplomacy with a military option that will persuade the ayatollahs to abandon their nuclear ambitions.” That means keeping aircraft-carrier groups in both the eastern Mediterranean and Persian Gulf and increasing military aid to Israel.
ON AFGHANISTAN & PAKISTAN
The centerpiece of Romney’s position on Afghanistan is his criticism of Obama for setting a withdrawal date of 2014, which he says will allow the enemy to simply wait out the clock.
His own position on withdrawal is unclear. He recently told Fox News, “Before I take a stand on a particular course of action, I want to get the input from the people who are there,” meaning military commanders on the ground.
Romney’s stated "Af-Pak" policy includes the goal of getting a “buy-in” from Kabul and Islamabad. In that same Fox News interview, he suggested that would use more stick than carrot: “The United States enjoys significant leverage over both of these nations,” he said. “We should not be shy about using it.”
Romney also said he would make it clear to President Hamid Karzai about what the Afghan leader must do to help end the war.
“I would speak with President Karzai. I would speak with President Karzai regularly, day-to-day. We have troops in harm's way. We have almost 1,800 men and women who have been killed in Afghanistan," he said. "We have real interest in making sure that this ends well and that our mission is successful there, of having an Afghanistan that is able to maintain its sovereignty against the Taliban, against ultimately Al-Qaeda, as well.”
ON RUSSIA
Romney attracted a lot of attention earlier this year for saying in an interview with CNN that Russia is the United States' "No. 1 geopolitical foe."
"They fight every cause for the world’s worst actors,” he said.
His campaign’s official policy paper on Russia warns that the country is a “destabilizing force on the world stage” and lists reasons why: “The Kremlin’s leverage over the energy supplies of Central and Western Europe; its stockpile of nuclear weapons; its recent history of aggressive military action; and the power it wields in multilateral institutions like the United Nations.”
Romney says he would “reset the [Obama administration’s] reset,” with a strategy that seeks to “discourage aggressive or expansionist behavior.” That means reviewing the implementation of the New START treaty, for a start.
It also means that President Romney would try to reduce Russia’s influence in the former Soviet sphere by strengthening U.S. ties with Central Asian countries, through more military training and assistance and new trade pacts and education exchanges.
Last but not least, Romney says his administration would be “forthright in confronting the Russian government over its authoritarian practices” and encourage the flow of information promoting democratic values and economic opportunity.
ROMNEY'S ADVISERS
A few of the more prominent names among Romney's foreign policy and national security advisers include:
~ Cofer Black, former State Department coordinator for counterterrorism
~ Michael Hayden, the former CIA director and head of the National Security Agency
~ Eric Edelman, former undersecretary of defense for policy
~ Paula Dobriansky, former undersecretary of state for democracy and global affairs
~ Michael Chertoff, former homeland security secretary
~ And Robert Joseph, former undersecretary of state for arms control and international security
Detainees Are Handed Over to Afghans, but Not Out of Americans’ Reach
New York Times By ROD NORDLAND May 30, 2012
BAGRAM, Afghanistan - Gen. Ghulam Farouq is not exactly the master of his own house, the Parwan Detention Facility, at least not yet.
When he goes to work at the facility, on the sprawling American air base here, he has to surrender his cellphone to the American guards outside, he said. If he wants to bring in a visitor, he has to get American military permission — for a recent interview with him, that took four days to arrange after the Afghan government had approved it.
Then, when the general gave his first interview after taking over as the facility’s commander, American military officers insisted on sitting in and monitoring the session, with their own interpreter — who frequently elaborated greatly on the general’s answers.
Two months into the six-month-long transfer of thousands of detainees to the control of the Afghans, General Farouq struggles to present himself as the man in charge.
“You think because I have these two American advisers here with me, they are my friends — their presence does not influence what I say,” he said. “You may not believe me that I have that much control, but if you come after four months, you will see.”
Control of the Afghans detained at Bagram has been a priority for President Hamid Karzai, who demanded immediate custody but settled in March for a six-month-long transfer in negotiations that were often tense and difficult, according to Afghan and American officials.
Given that most of the detainees were originally held under American “administrative detention” — without charge or representation, ostensibly on suspicion of insurgent or terrorist links — it is perhaps not surprising that American officials are working to retain as much say as possible. One line of American argument during the negotiations in March was that even a six-month time frame was far too short for a complete transfer.
But at a time when more and more official announcements here center on Americans’ handing command over to Afghans, the operational details at the Parwan facility point out a gap between nominal Afghan control and the reality of lasting American authority.
General Farouq’s status is one of the lesser issues, although the detainee agreement does say that Parwan “is to come under the management of an Afghan commander” immediately upon his appointment.
More significant, the agreement says that no detainee can be released unless the Afghans consult with the Americans and consider their views favorably. While that is vague, a further clause provides for a committee, made up of the Afghan defense minister and the commander of the American military in Afghanistan, to decide jointly on releases.
In a background briefing for reporters just before the detainee deal was signed, a senior American official involved in the negotiations described that as a “dual key arrangement” that would remain in place past the six-month transition period. “It would have to be a consensus decision,” the official said.
When asked whether that structure basically gave the Americans veto power on detainee releases, the official said, “That’s your word, not mine.”
That de facto veto power will continue as long as American forces are in Afghanistan, officials said.
“Absolutely we have veto power,” said an American official who has worked on detainee issues, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the topic publicly. “The ambiguity is because the U.S. in Kabul is speaking to two audiences with contradictory interests: Congress, which does not want Afghanistan to release anybody they want, and the Afghans, who want sovereignty.”
General Farouq insisted that the relationship was more collaborative. “When you say veto power, that takes sovereignty away, and that is not the case,” he said. Any final review that goes to the American commander and the Afghan defense minister will truly be “a common decision, a consensus,” he said.
“It’s not that General Allen is vetoing. He is seeing the evidence; he has more intelligence means than we do,” General Farouq said, referring to Gen. John R. Allen of the Marines, the senior allied commander in Afghanistan. “In the final analysis the enemy is a common enemy, and we respect each other’s opinion.”
A vast majority of the people being held at Parwan are in administrative detention — without access to lawyers, public trials or other legal rights. As the transfer to Afghan control proceeds, some will go into the Afghan justice system, and others will become Afghan administrative detainees, according to the March agreement.
But many Afghan and international lawyers say that such administrative detention is unconstitutional under Afghan law and that it is being instituted in effect by decree.
Even Afghans who go into the usual criminal justice system at Parwan have little hope of being released quickly. According to an official at the Legal Aid Organization of Afghanistan, which provides most of the defense lawyers to the detainees, 217 prisoners have been tried in the internal court at the facility since July, and 80 were found innocent. Not one of those 80 has been released, as higher courts have undertaken reviews — also at the Parwan facility.
“It’s a sham,” said Tina Foster, an American lawyer with the advocacy group International Justice Network who has been seeking unsuccessfully to represent Parwan detainees. “Karzai has been talking the talk of Afghan national sovereignty, but in the course of doing so he capitulated and is doing exactly what the U.S. wanted him to do.”
“These are just kangaroo courts set up inside Bagram,” she said. “This is not a real Afghan criminal proceeding.”
Most troubling, she said, the creation of an Afghan system for administrative detention perpetuates one of the greatest injustices of the Afghan war period.
“The worst thing is the administrative detention regime the Afghans are adopting is exactly the same as what the U.S. government has been doing for the last 10 years,” Ms. Foster said. “The legacy left here by the U.S. is people disappeared into legal black holes.”
An American official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of his agency’s policy, disputed accusations that Afghan legal authority was a sham. The Afghan Supreme Court chooses judges at the detention facility, and the Afghan attorney general’s office chooses prosecutors, he said. Also, defense lawyers are not picked by the American military, whose only role with the lawyers is to arrange for their security clearances, the official said. He added that he was unaware of any case in which a defense lawyer had been refused an opportunity to represent clients at Parwan.
“I know there is still a perception that it is an American court, but we have nothing to do with who is a judge, who is a prosecutor, who is a defense lawyer,” the official said. “You can be pretty confident it’s not an American-style court; it’s very Afghan.”
The official also said that any Afghans who were acquitted and whose acquittals were upheld on appeal would be released and not subject to American review.
In his interview, General Farouq said that the transfer of prisoners to Afghan control was proceeding ahead of schedule, with 1,300 of the roughly 3,000 detainees moved over to the Afghan side of the facility.
Right now, though, the Afghan side is within the Americans’ outer perimeter and is in their overall control. “Then, after six months everything will be complete and I will be in charge,” General Farouq said. “No Americans will be in charge of the gate. We will be in charge.”
The facility, however, is within the vast expanse of the American-controlled Bagram Air Field. And its final status after the end of NATO operations in 2014 is still undetermined.
Khalili's Remains Buried at Kabul University After 25 Years
TOLOnews.com Wednesday, 30 May 2012
The remains of the renowned Afghan thinker and poet Ustad Khalilullah Khalili were buried at Kabul University on Tuesday according to his final wishes.
A special ceremony attended by a number of officials and members of the Khalili family took place to inter his coffin beside Sayed Jamaluddin Afghan, another Afghan poet and cultural figure.
Khalili died in 1987 and has been buried for the last 25 years in Peshawar, Pakistan.
High ranking government officials, including the Minister of Higher Education Obaidullah Obaid, Education Minister Farooq Wardak, and Culture and Information Minister Makhdom Rahin, attended the ceremony, as well a number of other scholars and poets.
Khalili made a name for himself through his broad writings contained in more than 62 cultural, philosophic, literature and politics books, most of which were published abroad.
He was born in Afghanistan's capital Kabul in 1907, and was an orphan by the age of 11.
Although he was prevented from going to school by the same king who executed his father, he continued his studies privately. By the age of 16, Khalili was educated enough to be a teacher himself, and he went to Mir Bacha Kot, a district near Kabul, to teach in a local school.
In his lifetime, he worked in a variety of positions, including as an accountant at the Ministry of Finance, vice chair of Kabul university, head of Afghanistan's independent media, media advisor for King Mohammad Zaher Shah, and finally as Afghanistan's Ambassador to Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
In 1978 he immigrated to the US and continued his cultural activities, but eventually moved to Islamabad, where he died in 1987.
Afghan Broadcaster Defies Expectations of Women
Nangarhar TV journalist Sanga Jabarkhil describes her battle against prejudice.
IWPR By Hijratullah Ekhtyar 30 May 12
Afghanistan - When Sanga Jabarkhil’s relatives first heard her speaking on local radio, they were so upset that they froze her out of family life for the next year.
Jabarkhil became interested in journalism when she listened to BBC and Voice of America radio programmes while she was still at school in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar.
By the age of 15, she had begun working for the state-owned Radio Television of Afghanistan, RTA, in Nangarhar, balancing this against her school studies. She told her family she was working on a magazine rather than in broadcasting.
When her first report – on arranged marriages – was aired, her relatives were mortified rather than proud.
“After hearing me on the radio, all my family members stopped talking to me. I stayed in my room, apart from them, and this lasted for a whole year,” Jabarkhil recalled.
Her relatives believed she was working alongside male colleagues, which they viewed as quite unacceptable.
For many conservative Afghans, simply working in a mixed-sex environment is immoral behaviour for a woman, and makes her an unattractive marriage prospect.
It took a long time to win the family over, although Jabarkhil’s mother Nuria was always quietly supportive.
Ultimately, only an elder brother remained opposed to her career choice.
“My brother didn’t talk to me, he didn’t look at me and even avoided coming face-to-face with me,” she said. “He told me, ‘Whenever I am sitting with friends and you appear on the TV screen, everyone looks at me and asks whether you are my sister. I feel ashamed; it’s like dying.’”
Jabarkhil even took her brother to work to assure him that women at RTA Nangarhar worked in a separate office from the men.
Today, aged just 21, Jabarkhil heads the women’s section of RTA’s Nangarhar office.
Through her reporting, Jabarkhil says she managed to bring the concerns of hundreds of disadvantaged women to the attention of the public and the authorities.
During a recent one-week journalism workshop which IWPR held in Nangarhar, Jabarkhil shared her personal experiences of reporting as a woman in a deeply traditional society with some 40 female students.
She was joined by Mina Habib, an IWPR-trained contributor from Kabul, and both encouraged the students, aged between 17 and 19, to pursue careers in journalism.
In recent weeks, Habib has been awarded a prize for her courage as a woman journalist by the Journalists’ Council of Afghanistan and given a special award by the South Asian Free Media Association, along with IWPR’s Afghan editor Hafizullah Gardesh. (See IWPR Journalists Recognised at Afghan Awards Ceremony.)
Jabarkhil’s on-screen appearances have inevitably attracted attention, since Nangahar resident have seen few women in such prominent roles. On television, she wears a headscarf, but she conceals her face when she goes out into the street.
“I still get phone calls from strangers. Some express admiration for my voice and beauty, while others are angry with me because I’m working in television,” she said. “I answer them all by just saying ‘thank you’ and hanging up. It’s a way of saying, ‘Please don’t bother me.’”
She has had to develop a thick skin. At one wedding, she heard women around her asking in hushed voices whether she was the newsreader they had seen on television.
One of them then stepped forward to offer words of advice and commiseration.
“Why are you so hard on yourself, my dear? You are such a beautiful girl yet you’re still working in television,” Jabarkhil recalled the woman saying. “‘Please have pity on yourself.”
She replied, “What’s wrong with working in television? I have studied and I need to work and serve other girls and women.”
The wedding guest sighed and told her that she would have made a good wife for her son if only she was not on TV.
Such experiences have left Jabarkhil with a good-humoured patience, which her colleagues said made her popular in the office.
“Sanga is our boss but she behaves like a sister and close friend around us. Believe me, it’s tough when she’s absent,” her colleague Nazifa Momand said.
Amrullah Rawan, programmes manager at the RTA office, described Jabarkhil as “the pride of Nangarhar television”.
“I can tell you that if she left, we wouldn’t be able to find anyone to replace her,” he said.
Jabarkhil now lives in the provincial capital Jalalabad, but she was born in Hesarak, a western district of Nangarhar province. In this area, just being allowed to go to school was a struggle. Her relatives believed girls should leave school around the age of 12 or 13.
“One day, my brother stopped me from going to school, saying that I was already grown up, an adult. I cried a great deal,” she said, adding that she was out of the house and on her way to school the moment her brother went out.
“My teacher asked me why I was late, and I told her my family wouldn’t let me attend school. After hearing the story, the teacher came to our house and persuaded my family to allow me to complete school,” she said.
Her ambitions were always supported by her mother Nuria, who had to leave school early and was keen to avoid the same thing happening to her daughter.
“I wasn’t able to fight for my legal rights at the time, but my daughter Sanga has succeeded in doing so, and I’m very proud of her,” Nuria said.
Nuria now deals with male relatives who come home angry after hearing people discussing Jabarkhil in public.
“I stand up to them all and tell my daughter to have patience,” she said.
At school, Jabarkhil was inspired by a teacher who had graduated in law and politics, and now she combines working with studying the same subjects at Ariana University, a private institution in Jalalabad. She plans to continue studying, to obtain a masters degree, study for a doctorate abroad, and eventually to enter politics. She dreams of becoming Afghanistan’s minister for women’s affairs.
“If I become women’s affairs minister, it won’t be a symbolic post for me. I will do my best, and take anyone in power, to ensure that women’s rights are respected, and I will make education for girls compulsory,” she said.
Hijratullah Ekhtyar. is an IWPR-trained reporter in Nangarhar.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
Larry Freund May 31, 2012
NEW YORK - The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) says civilian casualties from the Afghan conflict remain at "unacceptably high levels" despite a 21-percent drop in conflict-related deaths during the first four months of this year.
In a report released Thursday, UNAMA said 2011 marked the fifth year in a row in which civilian casualties increased in Afghanistan. The group said it documented more than 3,000 civilian deaths last year, three-quarters linked to violence by anti-government forces.
The continued violence has raised concerns about the ability of Afghan forces to handle security beyond 2014, when most NATO forces are planning to conclude their combat role.
Brookings Institution Foreign Policy Senior Fellow Michael O'Hanlon says he does not expect a significant decrease in the conflict-related deaths in the near future.
"I am just not persuaded that there is any realistic hope that the numbers are going to go down that much in the next two or three years," said O'Hanlon. "I think that unless the Taliban decides to be serious about peace talks, we are probably going to have to hope the numbers just don't get much worse as we carry out a transition to primary Afghan responsibility for security throughout the country."
UNAMA said improvised explosive devices (IED's), used by anti-government forces, were the single largest killer of civilians, accounting for one-third of the deaths.
On Wednesday, the group said it had documented 579 civilian deaths for the first four months of 2012, a one-fifth decrease compared to the same time last year. However, it said the region's harsh winter may have contributed to the decrease.
Meanwhile, Afghan officials say explosions killed at least seven police officers on Thursday.
A spokesman for the provincial governor in Kandahar province says a car bombing at a police checkpoint in Argistan killed at least five officers.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Kandahar is the birthplace of the Taliban, which earlier this month announced the start of a spring offensive.
Afghan officials say a second explosion at a checkpoint in Jalalabad killed two police officers.
Suicide Car Bomber Kills 5 Police in Afghanistan
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS May 31, 2012
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) — A suicide bomber detonated a vehicle full of explosives outside a district police headquarters in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, killing five policemen, a government official said.
The attack in Kandahar province's Argistan district also wounded six policemen, said Javid Faisal, the provincial governor's spokesman.
Kandahar is the spiritual heartland of the Taliban and has been one of the most heavily contested areas between the militants and Afghan and foreign forces. The U.S. poured tens of thousands of additional troops into Kandahar and other areas of the south in 2009 and 2010 to reverse the Taliban's momentum. While violence has fallen in some areas, attacks still occur frequently.
Also Thursday, a homemade bomb killed a member of the U.S.-led NATO force in southern Afghanistan, the coalition said, without providing further details.
The death raised the number of coalition troops who have died in Afghanistan this year to 176.
The persistent violence poses a challenge for the U.S. as it seeks to hand over responsibility for security to Afghan forces and withdraw most of its combat troops by 2014.
A pair of attacks killed five policemen Thursday in eastern Afghanistan, also a key base for the Taliban and their allies.
In one attack, in Kunduz province's Dashti Archi district, a roadside bomb struck a vehicle carrying the head of the district's anti-terrorism police force, killing him along with a colleague and a police bodyguard, said district chief Shaik Sadaruddin.
A grenade tossed at a police checkpoint in Jalalabad city, capital of Nangarhar province, killed two policemen, said provincial police chief Gen. Abdullah Azim Stanikzai.
Afghan militancy claims 13 lives in single day
by Abdul Haleem, Chen Xin
KABUL, May 31 (Xinhua) -- The militancy-plagued Afghanistan experienced a bloody day on Thursday as Taliban-linked attacks have claimed the lives of 13 people since sunrise elsewhere in the war-torn country, officials said.
The first attack which happened in the shape of roadside bombing, targeted a counter-terrorist official in Dasht-e-Archi district of northern Kunduz province, 250 km north of Afghan capital Kabul, leaving four people dead including the prey.
"A mine planted by insurgents struck the vehicle of anti-terror chief of Dasht-e-Archi district at around 08:00 a.m. local time today killing four people including the anti-terror chief and three of his bodyguards," district governor Shikh Sadudin told Xinhua.
Couple of hours later, a suicide car bomb rocked Kandahar the former stronghold of Taliban militants, 450 km south of Kabul leaving six people including the bomber dead.
A suicide car bomb targeted police department in Arghistan district of Kandahar province, 450 km south of capital Kabul, killing six people including the attacker and five police and wounding six others on Thursday, spokesman for provincial administration Jawed Faisal said.
"A terrorist riding an explosive-laden car blew it up next to the gate of police department in Arghistan district this morning killing five policemen on the spot and wounding six others," Faisal told Xinhua.
The bomber was also killed in his blast happened at around 10: 00 a.m. local time, he added.
In a separate incident which took place one hour later in the eastern Nangarhar province, two police constables were killed.
Two police constables were killed as a bomb exploded next to a police checkpoint in Jalalabad city the capital of Nangarhar province, 120 km east of Kabul on Thursday, an official confirmed.
"A bomb exploded next to a checkpoint in Jalalabad city at 11: 00 a.m. local time this morning killing two police constables," Ahmad Zia Abdulzai the spokesman for Nangarhar's governor told Xinhua.
Furthermore, a suicide bomber wearing police uniform attempting to target a meeting of elders with local officials in Nawa district of the southern Helmand province was identified and gunned down by police Thursday, Abdul Manaf Khan, the governor of Nawa district, told Xinhua.
Khan has blamed Taliban militants for organizing such attacks. However the outfit which is largely relying on suicide and roadside bombings has yet to make comment.
Taliban militants fighting Afghan and NATO-led troops have speed up activities since launching spring offensive dubbed "Al- Farooq" early this month and officials predict more violent incidents in spring and summer known as fighting season in Afghanistan.
System Tests Afghan Graduates' Resistance To Radicalism
By Frud Bezhan, Homayoon Shinwary May 30, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
The Afghan government has lauded its progress in restoring the country's education system as one of its preeminent achievements over the past decade.
But despite some visible inroads, there are warning signs.
At best, the effort to open opportunities through education has failed to meet expectations; at worst, the system has essentially become a breeding ground for extremists.
The Afghan government, from the onset, earmarked education as key to eliminating poverty and thwarting radicalism. It devised a plan to send all Afghan children to school, to construct universities and technical schools to address a skills shortage, and, above all, to create job opportunities.
Those who pass through the system find the going tough upon graduation, however, with jobs and university slots scarce.
Wadir Safi, an Afghan law professor, says this leaves young graduates with few options.
The Afghan National Army and National Police Force are expanding, but the work is low-paid and hazardous. Some choose instead to eke out a living on the streets, which can descend into a life of drug abuse. In the end, joining the ranks of militant groups can begin to look appealing for some.
Following 'Power'
Safi says it is unsurprising that disillusioned students would join the Taliban, insisting that in most cases the students feel safer, more empowered, are given a sense of purpose, and receive salaries that match or better those of the army. He adds that new Taliban recruits can receive several hundred dollars a month, as well as clothing, food, and shelter.
"Youths who become unemployed and fail to enter university have little choice," Safi says. "The government doesn't have any initiatives to create jobs. Angry as a result of this, they're purposely joining the insurgency. They see that the government is unable to help them and see the other side [insurgency] as where the power [and money] is."
Najib Mahmoud, a political science professor at Kabul University, says millions of children have enrolled in thousands of newly built schools in the last decade but that advancements were hindered by shortsightedness.
Mahmoud says that while the government has made progress in primary and secondary education, they have neglected the question of what those students will do once they complete school.
He adds that in the past decade, only a few universities and semi-higher education institutions, which provide technical and skills training, have been built. None have been built in underdeveloped and insurgent-hit regions -- where Mahmoud says they are particularly needed.
"In the last 10 years, the Afghan government should not only have worked on increasing the quality and quantity of education, but in every province they should have built universities, especially in underdeveloped areas," Mahmoud says. "If we had done this, we could have increased the number of professionals and prevented our kids and students from joining the Taliban."
No Rhyme Or Reason?
Within the education system, the perception of widespread government corruption has become a major factor for students deciding what direction they will take.
Locals in the country's volatile and conservative south, where insurgents exert significant influence, say many students feel the government has abandoned them. In some cases, that disillusionment has given way to anger amid claims of injustice and discrimination.
Abdul Wali, a high-school graduate from southeastern Zabul Province, says the result of this year's university entry exams, which were marred by widespread allegations of corruption, is a case in point.
Wali says many of his friends earned sufficient marks to enter university but were unjustly denied a place. Others, he claims, insist that their test scores were higher than some students in urban centers who were admitted -- leading to claims of fraud and favoritism.
"This time, many students participated in university entry exams. Only some got in and many others failed," Wali says. "Those that failed didn't have any other options so they joined the Taliban. They were my good friends and now they're standing alongside the Taliban and fighting against the government."
Daunting Obstacles
According to statistics from the Afghan Education Ministry, only around 40,000 of the 147,000 students who took part in the national exams were granted university slots, with only a handful of them hailing from the volatile south of the country.
Mohammad Omar, a student from southeastern Ghazni Province, says students in the region already face huge hurdles in receiving an education -- notably militants burning schools down, poisoning students, and assassinating teachers and education officials.
He says the controversy surrounding the exam results, for some, was the last straw, claiming scores of his male relatives and friends have joined the Taliban in the aftermath of the results.
"I have a lot of close friends that had to face this misfortune and went to support the Taliban," Omar says. "Some of them carry out ambushes on the roads, not looking whether it’s a civilian vehicle or one that’s carrying supplies to foreign forces. They're burning these valuable supplies with only matches."
Written and reported by Frud Bezhan, with additional reporting by RFE/RL Afghan Service correspondent Homayoon Shinwary
Pakistani Taliban vows to kill bin Laden doctor
By Reza Sayah, CNN May 31, 2012
Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) -- The Pakistani Taliban vowed on Thursday to kill Shakeel Afridi, the jailed Pakistani doctor accused of helping the CIA in the search for Osama bin Laden, a spokesman for the militant group told CNN.
"We will cut him into pieces when we find him," Pakistani Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told CNN by phone. "He spied for the U.S. to hunt down our hero Osama bin Laden."
Pakistani officials say Afridi is being held in a prison in the city of Peshawar in northwest Pakistan.
Last week a court in Pakistan's tribal region sentenced Afridi to 33 years in prison but a copy of the court order obtained by CNN shows Afridi was sentenced for alleged connections to the militant group Lashkar-e-Islam, not for helping Americans in the search for bin Laden.
Even so, the Pakistani Taliban says Afridi is the number-one target on its hit list.
On Wednesday the jailed doctor's brother told CNN he fears for Afridi's safety and called on the United States to help set him free.
"These allegations are false. They're baseless," said Jamil Afridi.
"My brother didn't do anything against Pakistan. If he helped the U.S., it was for the benefit of Pakistan. The American government should help us in any way it can."
Officials had told CNN Shekeel Afridi was charged with treason for spying for the United States. He was accused of helping the CIA locate bin Laden in his compound in Abbottabad through a fake vaccination campaign.
Bin Laden was killed in the subsequent U.S. raid on the compound in May last year.
At least one legal analyst said Afridi's sentence is a sham.
Islamabad-based lawyer Shahzad Akbar questioned the legitimacy of the court proceedings, since the punishment was handed down by a tribal court in Khyber even though the alleged offense occurred in Abbottabad.
The Afridi verdict sparked anger in the United States and further strained relations between Washington and Islamabad. The tensions surfaced as Congress debated aid to Pakistan in several bills.
In the National Defense Authorization Act, senators agreed last week to withhold Pakistan's part of a $1.75 billion aid package because of outrage over Afridi's case and the continued blockade of NATO supply routes into and out of Afghanistan.
Another bill in the Senate Appropriations Committee withheld $33 million in aid to Pakistan for similar reasons.
Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik has said cutting aid is a U.S. prerogative, but added: "I think the U.S. should not forget we are a victim in this war on terror and we're suffering for the international community, too."
Journalist Nasir Habib contributed to this report.
India fears for Afghanistan after NATO pullout
By Shaun Tandon | AFP – Wed, May 30, 2012
India called for greater coordination with the United States on Afghanistan, voicing fear that Islamic radicals would gain strength once Western forces pull out.
NATO leaders in a May 21 summit in Chicago committed to pulling combat troops out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014 as Western nations grow tired of more than a decade of war and pessimistic on the chances of further progress.
India is one of the most vocal supporters of continued engagement and has given Afghanistan more than $2 billion since the US-led invasion in 2001 overthrew the Taliban regime, which sheltered virulently anti-Indian militants.
Ahead of high-level annual talks between India and the United States on June 13, Nirupama Rao, New Delhi's ambassador to Washington, said the two nations have been holding talks on building "a stable, democratic and prosperous Afghanistan."
"These consultations must be strengthened," Rao said at the Atlantic Council, a think tank.
"We understand that after 10 long years of war there is a manifest and genuine desire to seek an end to conflict. But equally, we must ensure that the enormous sacrifices and efforts of the past decade have not been in vain," she said.
"Given the history of the last few decades in Afghanistan and the tide of extremism and radicalism that has swept across that country to the great detriment of its men, women and children, one cannot but help be concerned about what the future holds for that country" after the NATO pullout, she said.
India's involvement in Afghanistan has enraged neighboring Pakistan, which helped create the Taliban regime and accuses its historic rival of seeking to encircle it.
The United States partnered with Pakistan after the September 11, 2001 attacks. But relations have plummeted, with US concerns about Pakistan's orientation soaring after US forces found and killed Osama bin Laden near the country's main military academy last year.
The United States has welcomed India's contributions in Afghanistan but some US policymakers believe that Pakistani intelligence has maintained links to Islamic extremists due to a fixation on New Delhi's influence.
Yashwant Sinha, a lawmaker from India's main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, was blunter about fears on Afghanistan during a separate appearance in Washington at the Brookings Institution.
"I have great fears that Pakistan, for its own geopolitical reasons, might want to encourage Taliban to again take over Afghanistan," said Sinha, who served as foreign and finance minister when his right-leaning party was in power from 1998 to 2004.
Sinha said Afghanistan lacked a sufficient military -- or an anti-Taliban force, such as the Northern Alliance which enjoyed Indian, Iranian and Russian support before the war -- to withstand an assault.
"I don't see any local resistance building up immediately if the Taliban were to attempt to overrun Afghanistan," Sinha said.
"NATO has to stay the course in Afghanistan until we are absolutely confident that the Afghan army and the armed forces of Afghanistan are in a position to meet the Taliban threat," he said.
But opinion polls show that a majority of Americans want to end their country's longest war, with many US policymakers concluding that it is unrealistic to eliminate the Taliban through force.
US President Barack Obama and other Western leaders have vowed to support Afghanistan through military training and other assistance after the pullout of combat troops.
Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna will travel to Washington for the June 13 annual dialogue, which is part of efforts by the world's two largest democracies to build closer relations.
India and the United States recently had a rift as Washington urged the import-dependent emerging economy to cut oil imports from Iran as a way to pressure Tehran over its contested nuclear program.
Despite initial unease, India has reduced Iranian imports. The United States is expected to announce in the coming weeks that it will exempt New Delhi from sanctions under a new law that punishes countries that do business with Iran.
American Ally, American Adversary: Our Worsening Pakistan Problem
For the first time, there may be some hope for Afghanistan. But Pakistan is intent on crushing it, and U.S. officials are paralyzed in finding a solution.
The Atlantic By Michael Hirsh May 30 2012
Sometimes, the most telling facts are the ones your briefers don't want to mention. On a hot, sunny day in early May, I sat with other reporters at an International Security Assistance Force briefing in Afghanistan's violence-wracked Ghazni province, otherwise known as Regional Command East. The ISAF civilian-military team, using laser pointers on a map, highlighted a few peaceful districts colored green and many others colored red, where the Taliban was still fighting, although the briefers said that "progress" was evident. One district in the south called Nawa, a spit of Afghan land that descended close to Pakistan's tribal regions, was colored black, not green or red.
Why black? "That means we don't go there at all," one briefer explained. "It's totally under the sway of the Taliban." He moved on quickly, but the forbidding dark blot on the map sent a clear message: Even though this region is now as secure as it's ever likely to get--NATO forces are still near the height of President Obama's 33,000 troop "surge," before troops leave in 2014--the allies have already written off this part of the country bordering Pakistan as lost.
The next day, the dangers of this outcome were driven home to us in the nearby village of Zana Khan, when U.S. and Afghan officials presided over a huge hold-and-clear operation to proudly host a shura--a village meeting--demonstrating how the Afghan government is winning hearts and minds (Although ISAF described the operation as Afghan-led, Polish helicopters hovered, dropping flare-like countermeasures.) All went well, but sitting on the side of the dusty square, a 32-year-old farmer named Mohammed quietly warned us: "Two hours after you leave, the Taliban will be back." Mohammed then pointed to the crowd squinting into the sun and listening docilely. "They are all Taliban," he declared.
And sure enough, shortly after the meeting--less than a half hour later--mortar shells from the hills surrounding the village sent us scurrying for cover. The Taliban munitions almost certainly were ferreted in from Pakistani tribal regions.
Fast-forward two weeks to the NATO summit in Chicago, which ended on Monday. Lots of triumphal talk from attendees about a 2014 exit and a stable Afghanistan. Fifty--count 'em, 50--nations committed to Afghanistan's future. Also among the invitees, however, were Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari and other senior officials. Zardari was there even though he and his government had refused even to allow overland NATO travel in the wake of bitter tensions resulting from U.S. strikes at the border and from last May's raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad. More significantly, U.S. officials have begun to acknowledge, more bluntly than ever before, that Pakistan's senior military and intelligence apparatus is supporting and funding the same Taliban fighters who are killing NATO soldiers--not just Americans, but also Germans, French, Italians, and Canadians--and endangering the outcome of America's longest war. Even the U.S. Embassy in Kabul--"which is American soil," U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan C
rocker angrily noted in an interview--was twice attacked by what Crocker described as "Pakistan-based insurgents." Last fall, outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen called the terrorist Haqqani network in Pakistan's tribal regions, the suspect behind the embassy attack, a "veritable arm" of Pakistan's intelligence service.
Yet there it was in Chicago, the Pakistan delegation, welcomed because President Bush in 2004 had designated Pakistan a "major non-NATO ally," ushered around as if it was just another ISAF member in good standing. Pakistan, America's ally in the war on terrorism. Pakistan, supporter of terror, aider and abettor to the killing of Americans, and now an adversary of the greatest military alliance in history.
HIGHER STAKES
There is nothing very new, of course, about Pakistan's two-faced behavior. It is a problem that has dogged Washington since well before 9/11. Pakistan's military and intelligence services, which effectively run that nominally democratic country, have long seen radical Islamist groups, including the Taliban, as a strategic counterbalance to the influence of Pakistan's bitter rival, Hindu-dominated India, in Afghanistan and south-central Asia. The upshot is that despite fitful efforts to rein in the worst of the jihadists, Pakistan offers a safe haven to the rest of them--and permanent access to Afghanistan just across the border. "Any other country, we'd be calling them a state sponsor of terrorism," said a former senior U.S. diplomat who has served as ambassador to Islamabad. "It's inconceivable that we give $3 billion a year to a country that would harbor Osama bin Laden." Yet we do.
What is new about this moment in history is that, for Washington and other leading NATO members, the stakes are higher than they have ever been, and the Pakistan problem, which until now has been considered a mere complicating factor in Afghanistan, has become acute and central. So much so that failing to deal with it could very well lead to the biggest foreign-policy failure of the Obama administration. Why? Because even as NATO troops prepare to depart, Obama in recent weeks has committed the United States--and NATO--to remain there in a robust way, to "train, advise, and assist" for years, possibly decades, to come, as he said in Chicago on Monday. And there may even be some hope, for the first time, in Afghanistan, absent the Pakistan problem.
In a country traumatized in recent decades by U.S. abandonment, many Afghans say that the psychology has changed in recent weeks with the news of long-term U.S. and Western commitments. After Obama announced a 10-year strategic partnership agreement running to 2024, real-estate prices shot up in Kabul. On top of that, the U.S., NATO, and the Afghan government are expected to pool some $4 billion a year to fund the increasingly sturdy Afghan army and security forces. Finally, economic-development assistance programs are expected to come out of a Tokyo conference scheduled for July, when Afghanistan will present its "strategic vision," including a planned surge in mining revenues from gold and rare minerals. Even in some areas of the once-violent south, helped by a program to induce Taliban fighters to lay down their arms and to "reintegrate" them, ISAF Cmdr. John Allen argues that he is more focused now on economic progress than security. "In the south and southwest, it really is a post-conflict conversation,"
Allen, a four-star Marine general, told me and other visiting reporters in an interview in Uruzgan province on May 7.
With elections expected as early as next year, credible alternatives already are emerging to President Hamid Karzai, who is deeply mistrusted in Washington. Among them: popular provincial Gov. Gul Agha Shirzai, who has begun to open political offices in Kabul; Abdullah Abdullah, who finished second to Karzai in 2009 and is a former U.S. ally; and possibly even Zalmay Khalilzad, the Afghan-born, naturalized American who was once the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. (In an interview with National Journal this week, Khalilzad would not rule out a run, saying only, "I'm not planning it.")
In the wake of the Chicago summit, it seems much likelier that whoever is elected U.S. president in November, Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, the U.S., NATO, and some 22 non-NATO countries (from Australia to Macedonia) will remain engaged in Afghanistan in some fashion indefinitely. "There's going to be an international military presence here in Afghanistan for a long time, a long time after 2014," Allen said. As a result, he argued, many mid-level Taliban fighters are beginning to have second thoughts. "If your narrative is, 'Just wait us out,' [and] you're going to have to wait now for decades ... you're going to start to lose some enthusiasm."
Indeed, mounting evidence indicates that much of the enthusiasm for war is coming from the Taliban leadership safely harbored in Quetta, Pakistan, along with Islamabad's military-intelligence apparatus. They continue to provide an ever-flush resupply depot to the Taliban that could destroy the alliance's most ambitious project and condemn to near-certain failure the United States' 10-year-long, vastly expensive response to 9/11. In addition to attacks on U.S. and NATO troops, and the assassinations of Afghanistan's top peace negotiators--including former President Burhanuddin Rabbani and, last week, Maulvi Arsala Rahmani, a former Taliban leader who became a senior member of Afghanistan's High Peace Council--are plots thought to emanate from Pakistan.
Allen acknowledged that the U.S. isn't certain how many of the enemy it is still fighting because so many are supplied by Pakistan's tribal warlords. "Nobody knows for sure," Allen said. "I think most estimates would put [the insurgency] between 30 and 35 [thousand]. Some large number of them are in Pakistan. And the term 'enemy' has many different meanings here. A significant number of what might be considered enemy are in a support role; they're not fighters, necessarily."
A FAILURE OF U.S. DIPLOMACY
Rescuing Afghanistan under these circumstances is like trying to put out a fire in your house while your neighbor constantly reignites the building from the backyard. At least as important as talking with the Taliban, in other words, is negotiating with its overseers: the ISI. And yet some critics--who include prominent Pakistanis yearning to break the country's Faustian bargain with Islamist radicals--say that Washington is largely ignoring or shunting aside the Pakistan problem out of fear, inertia, and a lack of a U.S. and NATO strategic vision. "It is a failure of diplomacy of the highest order, where we have had the lives of our people at stake," Khalilzad, the former U.S. ambassador, told NJ. To keep the Pakistanis even marginally cooperative, Khalilzad said, "I think, frankly, we have been too cautious and willing to pay too high a price."
Before he was forced out of office last year, Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S., Husain Haqqani--perhaps the closest Pakistani friend the Obama administration had--urged U.S. officials to adopt a "holistic" approach to the region that would help wean Pakistan from its military support of Islamists. It never happened. And today, rather than coming up with a new overarching strategic policy for Pakistan and the region that is commensurate with the deep commitments that the U.S. has never before made, Washington and other capitals continue to watch, helplessly, as a middle-sized developing country defies a superpower and the West's dominant nations with virtual impunity.
Even the Europeans continue to describe the issue as a problem of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship, although their own blood and treasure are at stake. "The Americans are completely paralyzed by this situation," one European diplomat said, on condition of anonymity. Another senior NATO official also laid the problem on the Americans. "It's quite difficult at times to find a single U.S. policy on Pakistan, much less coordination with others."
The administration's paralysis has been evident in an intense, months-long internal debate over whether to issue an apology to Pakistan over the errant NATO strikes that killed at least 24 Pakistani soldiers last fall, even though five months have passed since the completion of an official Pentagon investigation that partially blamed U.S. forces for the incident. Obama, facing charges of appeasement from Romney, has repeatedly hesitated, and even Crocker bluntly opposed the move in an interview.
To be sure, the way out is not easy or clear, and some critics, such as the senior NATO official, are sympathetic about the muddle in Washington. "How would you deal with it, even if you decided you wanted to deal with it?" he asked. "The United States has tried being nice to Pakistan. It's tried being nasty to Pakistan. It's tried giving them money. It's tried taking money away. Once a country has got it into its head that it has a national policy which is in its national interests, you can exert huge amounts of pressure, but it becomes almost impossible to shift, partly for domestic political reasons. And let's face it: In Pakistan, there is a huge amount of support for the Taliban."
At his closing news conference in Chicago on Monday, Obama merely alluded to the problem--even though it was the first question put to him by reporters. "I don't want to paper over real challenges there," the president said. "There is no doubt that there have been tensions between ISAF and Pakistan, the United States and Pakistan, over the last several months.... But, ultimately, it is in our interest to see a successful, stable Pakistan, and it is in Pakistan's interest to work with us and the world community to ensure that they themselves are not consumed by extremism that is in their midst. And so we're going to keep on going at this. And I think every NATO member, every ISAF member, is committed to that."
The bottom line remains, however: Washington has no comprehensive approach to a region that hatched the worst-ever attack on the nation's home soil, a strategy that would wean the Pakistanis away from their retrograde, anti-Western policies. Even as they have become increasingly forthright about Pakistan's involvement in terrorism, U.S. and NATO officials remain wary of offending Islamabad because of a bedrock fear that if Pakistan becomes destabilized, its nuclear arsenal could fall into the wrong hands. That caution also ruled in Chicago, where all the talk was simply about NATO getting permission from the Pakistanis to use their overland routes to expedite the troop pullout.
Nor does Washington have a senior diplomat with enough authority, toughness, and vision to handle the problem, according to U.S. and European officials. Richard Holbrooke, the only one thought to have all those qualities, was named Obama's "special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan" in 2009. But the White House partially stymied him--lobbied by India, Obama denied Holbrooke's request to make Kashmir part of his portfolio even though Islamabad uses that disputed province, situated between Pakistan and India, to justify the army's strategic support of jihadist proxy groups. After Holbrooke died suddenly in December 2010, he was succeeded by career diplomat Marc Grossman, who is widely considered ineffective and has provoked backbiting from the State Department's South and Central Asian Bureau, where the assistant secretary, Robert Blake, has been largely cut out of deliberations. "It's all Holbrooke's broken china," one official said. The two leading figures in U.S. policy in the region, Ryan Crocker,
the ambassador to Afghanistan, and Gen. Allen, are already making plans to leave (in Crocker's case, back to retirement; Allen is expected to be named NATO commander in Europe). Ambassador Cameron Munter, described as increasingly agitated over the failure of U.S. policy, is also leaving his post early.
Although Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has been praised for her approach to the region, having recently proposed a "New Silk Road" to induce Pakistan and other countries to work with Afghanistan, she is involved in the issue only sporadically.
The Taliban leadership, on the eve of the NATO summit, issued a statement from its comfortable sanctuary in tribal Pakistan, where it pledged to "keep proceeding with ... ongoing jihad until it attains its goal."
THE WAY FORWARD
What should the strategic vision be? Based on interviews with a wide range of U.S., European, Afghan, and Pakistani officials, here are some suggestions. First, there should be a démarche of the kind the Pakistanis have not been given since just after 9/11, when then-President Pervez Musharraf was presented with a stark choice: Fully support the war against the Taliban, or you're through. Now, Pakistan should be confronted with a clear and harsh update of that choice: If you defy the international community, you will be turned into a sanctioned pariah, á la Iran, in which case your country will lose ground economically and militarily to archrival India. Alternatively, if you repudiate violent extremists, you will be rewarded with more economic assistance and a voice in the region's future, such as Clinton's New Silk Road, which seeks to turn central Asia into a commercial hub once again.
"We have to be willing to escalate the pressure, which, in my view, has to include Pakistan's very difficult economic circumstances," Khalilzad said. "Today, I think the Pakistanis can cover only about 10 weeks of imports. We also need to move diplomatically by engaging some key countries they rely on, like China and Saudi Arabia."
A former senior diplomat intimately familiar with the decline in U.S.-Pakistan discussions agrees. "The message needs to be: What kind of future does Pakistan want? Does it want to be Iran--or does it want to be South Korea--in other words, rich and respected?" he said. "No one has delivered that tough message recently. So the assumption in Pakistan is that the Americans need us more than we need them. We can hold the Americans to ransom. They can't get out of Afghanistan without our help."
Instead, this critique goes, the U.S. has been too nice and too polite, to the point where the Pakistanis have come to expect American acquiescence. That is one reason the most recent issue over shipping rights has dragged on so long. "The Pakistanis have totally miscalculated. They thought NATO would buckle under in a few weeks. And it's been six months," said the former senior diplomat, who would describe internal deliberations between the U.S. and Pakistan only on condition of anonymity.
To be sure, U.S. nonchalance and miscalculation over the past decade have contributed mightily to the Pakistanis' own strategic ambivalence. After 9/11, the Bush administration ignored its democracy agenda entirely when it came to Pakistan, refusing even to meet with exiled leader Benazir Bhutto; instead, the administration blindly supported the Pakistan coup leader, Gen. Musharraf, although the latter was fully vested in the military's traditional support of jihadist proxies. True, in the early days of the war on terrorism, Pakistan was in fact helpful against al-Qaida, taking part in the capture of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a Pakistani from Balochistan, in 2003. But Musharraf grew complacent, throwing up an assortment of "al-Qaida No. 3" leaders to appease the Americans while signing peace deals with Islamist parties to block the more-legitimate secular political parties that might present real opposition to him.
All the while, Washington looked the other way and hinted at its eventual departure from the region, thus robbing Pakistan of any motivation to reorient its army from India and toward pacifying its restive tribal regions. U.S. efforts have remained piecemeal and intermittent, at best, rather than focused on leveraging America's, and NATO's, expensive and long-term commitment into a diplomatic vision for the region that would have co-opted the Pakistanis: the kind of vision U.S. officials have developed vis-à-vis China, Russia, Iran, and even Latin America.
One example of what was missed was the tension between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. India has resisted any international mediation over the disputed province, which it claims, but New Delhi has also shown an eagerness to work with Washington, which proffered a generous strategic partnership to India beginning in the mid-2000s, much to the ire of the Pakistanis. Yet Washington did not demand a quid pro quo from Delhi, and the Kashmir issue continued to fester. Back in 1999, U.S. officials were rattled when the two countries--both of which tested nukes in 1998--fought deadly skirmishes along the so-called line of control that, since 1971, has divided Kashmir. Worried about a nuclear conflict, President Clinton in 2000 sounded a strong new U.S. diplomatic line, calling for "respect for the line of control."
Then inattention took over again. Only when war threatened to erupt in 2002 did Bush send Secretary of State Colin Powell's deputy, Richard Armitage, to negotiate a de-escalation. As part of that effort, a senior administration official said, the United States briefly sought to play mediator in discussions over Kashmir once again. But Bush, distracted by Iraq, dropped the issue.
CHANGING THE CALCULUS
One reason some U.S. policymakers have been somewhat fatalistic about Pakistan's behavior is that, until now, the typical view from Washington has been that Afghanistan will somehow always revert back to a state of war, and that its government is hopelessly corrupt. Certainly that was the view of Vice President Joe Biden, who argued in 2009 for a much earlier departure from Afghanistan. And the president seems to agree with him. Obama, sounding on Monday what has become a familiar note in the face of a tough reelection challenge, called for "a stable Afghanistan that won't be perfect" so that "we can start rebuilding America and making some of the massive investments we've been making in Afghanistan here back home."
But if Obama also believes his own rhetoric about an "Afghan good enough" state in which the center holds and the Taliban doesn't take over; and if he wants to avoid a foreign-policy disaster that will forever be associated with his presidency, then he needs to take one more important step: Appoint a high-level representative, or perhaps delegate Secretary of State Clinton to the task. And he needs to rethink the whole region.
As we've learned so many times over the years, the permanent presence of American power and influence, and that of the international community, can fundamentally alter the equation--it can overturn the iron law of history that seems to doom backward countries like Afghanistan to ever-more war and repression. We saw it in Bosnia, when everyone expected the 1995 Dayton Accord to fall apart and the ethnic killing to resume. It didn't, because NATO stayed. We saw it in Kosovo, which gained its independence under NATO monitoring. We saw it in the ultimate impact that the 1975 Helsinki Final Act had in undermining the illegitimate Communist regimes in the Soviet bloc.
In both Afghanistan and Pakistan, fear of U.S. abandonment has largely determined policy until now, causing both countries to revert to old habits. Now Washington has a chance to change those calculations--to alter the fundamental equation once again--because of its long-term commitment. But only if it deals in a whole new way with Pakistan.
President Romney's Foreign Policy
By Heather Maher May 30, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
WASHINGTON – The U.S. presidential campaign finally has an official challenger to President Barack Obama in the November election. Mitt Romney secured the Republican Party’s nomination on May 29 by winning the Texas primary, which gave him enough delegates to become the party’s official nominee.
Here's a look at how Romney – a businessman and former state governor -- has said he would handle some key U.S. foreign policy issues, if elected.
GENERAL PHILOSOPHY
Advising Romney is a team of more than two dozen national security and foreign policy experts (see list below), almost two-thirds of whom held defense, intelligence, or diplomatic posts in former President George W. Bush’s administration.
Romney compares his foreign policy philosophy to that of former President Ronald Reagan.
“The overall rubric of my foreign policy will be the same as Ronald Reagan’s: Namely, 'peace through strength,'" he once said.
He also said, “A strong America is the best deterrent to war that ever has been invented.”
So Romney would confront the threat from radical Islam by strengthening U.S. intelligence services, adding 100,000 new troops to the military, and “monitoring” incoming U.S. calls from Al-Qaeda.
Under President Romney, the U.S. foreign aid budget would shrink. He has said, “I will stop sending money to any country that can take care of itself. And no foreign aid will go to countries that oppose American interests.”
ON IRAN
Romney has called Obama’s policy toward Iran “a failure.” His statements on U.S. policy toward Iran almost always mention the military option, such as during a Republican Party debate in November, when he was asked if it was worth going to war with Iran to prevent Tehran from getting a nuclear weapon.
"Well, it’s worth putting in place crippling sanctions; it’s worth working with the insurgents in the country to encourage regime change in the country; and if all else fails -- if after all of the work we’ve done, there’s nothing else we could do besides take military action -- then, of course, you take military action,” he said.
Romney recently wrote in "The Washington Post” that he would press for harsh sanctions as well as “speak out on behalf of the cause of democracy in Iran and support Iranian dissidents.”
But, “most importantly,” he wrote, “I will buttress my diplomacy with a military option that will persuade the ayatollahs to abandon their nuclear ambitions.” That means keeping aircraft-carrier groups in both the eastern Mediterranean and Persian Gulf and increasing military aid to Israel.
ON AFGHANISTAN & PAKISTAN
The centerpiece of Romney’s position on Afghanistan is his criticism of Obama for setting a withdrawal date of 2014, which he says will allow the enemy to simply wait out the clock.
His own position on withdrawal is unclear. He recently told Fox News, “Before I take a stand on a particular course of action, I want to get the input from the people who are there,” meaning military commanders on the ground.
Romney’s stated "Af-Pak" policy includes the goal of getting a “buy-in” from Kabul and Islamabad. In that same Fox News interview, he suggested that would use more stick than carrot: “The United States enjoys significant leverage over both of these nations,” he said. “We should not be shy about using it.”
Romney also said he would make it clear to President Hamid Karzai about what the Afghan leader must do to help end the war.
“I would speak with President Karzai. I would speak with President Karzai regularly, day-to-day. We have troops in harm's way. We have almost 1,800 men and women who have been killed in Afghanistan," he said. "We have real interest in making sure that this ends well and that our mission is successful there, of having an Afghanistan that is able to maintain its sovereignty against the Taliban, against ultimately Al-Qaeda, as well.”
ON RUSSIA
Romney attracted a lot of attention earlier this year for saying in an interview with CNN that Russia is the United States' "No. 1 geopolitical foe."
"They fight every cause for the world’s worst actors,” he said.
His campaign’s official policy paper on Russia warns that the country is a “destabilizing force on the world stage” and lists reasons why: “The Kremlin’s leverage over the energy supplies of Central and Western Europe; its stockpile of nuclear weapons; its recent history of aggressive military action; and the power it wields in multilateral institutions like the United Nations.”
Romney says he would “reset the [Obama administration’s] reset,” with a strategy that seeks to “discourage aggressive or expansionist behavior.” That means reviewing the implementation of the New START treaty, for a start.
It also means that President Romney would try to reduce Russia’s influence in the former Soviet sphere by strengthening U.S. ties with Central Asian countries, through more military training and assistance and new trade pacts and education exchanges.
Last but not least, Romney says his administration would be “forthright in confronting the Russian government over its authoritarian practices” and encourage the flow of information promoting democratic values and economic opportunity.
ROMNEY'S ADVISERS
A few of the more prominent names among Romney's foreign policy and national security advisers include:
~ Cofer Black, former State Department coordinator for counterterrorism
~ Michael Hayden, the former CIA director and head of the National Security Agency
~ Eric Edelman, former undersecretary of defense for policy
~ Paula Dobriansky, former undersecretary of state for democracy and global affairs
~ Michael Chertoff, former homeland security secretary
~ And Robert Joseph, former undersecretary of state for arms control and international security
Detainees Are Handed Over to Afghans, but Not Out of Americans’ Reach
New York Times By ROD NORDLAND May 30, 2012
BAGRAM, Afghanistan - Gen. Ghulam Farouq is not exactly the master of his own house, the Parwan Detention Facility, at least not yet.
When he goes to work at the facility, on the sprawling American air base here, he has to surrender his cellphone to the American guards outside, he said. If he wants to bring in a visitor, he has to get American military permission — for a recent interview with him, that took four days to arrange after the Afghan government had approved it.
Then, when the general gave his first interview after taking over as the facility’s commander, American military officers insisted on sitting in and monitoring the session, with their own interpreter — who frequently elaborated greatly on the general’s answers.
Two months into the six-month-long transfer of thousands of detainees to the control of the Afghans, General Farouq struggles to present himself as the man in charge.
“You think because I have these two American advisers here with me, they are my friends — their presence does not influence what I say,” he said. “You may not believe me that I have that much control, but if you come after four months, you will see.”
Control of the Afghans detained at Bagram has been a priority for President Hamid Karzai, who demanded immediate custody but settled in March for a six-month-long transfer in negotiations that were often tense and difficult, according to Afghan and American officials.
Given that most of the detainees were originally held under American “administrative detention” — without charge or representation, ostensibly on suspicion of insurgent or terrorist links — it is perhaps not surprising that American officials are working to retain as much say as possible. One line of American argument during the negotiations in March was that even a six-month time frame was far too short for a complete transfer.
But at a time when more and more official announcements here center on Americans’ handing command over to Afghans, the operational details at the Parwan facility point out a gap between nominal Afghan control and the reality of lasting American authority.
General Farouq’s status is one of the lesser issues, although the detainee agreement does say that Parwan “is to come under the management of an Afghan commander” immediately upon his appointment.
More significant, the agreement says that no detainee can be released unless the Afghans consult with the Americans and consider their views favorably. While that is vague, a further clause provides for a committee, made up of the Afghan defense minister and the commander of the American military in Afghanistan, to decide jointly on releases.
In a background briefing for reporters just before the detainee deal was signed, a senior American official involved in the negotiations described that as a “dual key arrangement” that would remain in place past the six-month transition period. “It would have to be a consensus decision,” the official said.
When asked whether that structure basically gave the Americans veto power on detainee releases, the official said, “That’s your word, not mine.”
That de facto veto power will continue as long as American forces are in Afghanistan, officials said.
“Absolutely we have veto power,” said an American official who has worked on detainee issues, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the topic publicly. “The ambiguity is because the U.S. in Kabul is speaking to two audiences with contradictory interests: Congress, which does not want Afghanistan to release anybody they want, and the Afghans, who want sovereignty.”
General Farouq insisted that the relationship was more collaborative. “When you say veto power, that takes sovereignty away, and that is not the case,” he said. Any final review that goes to the American commander and the Afghan defense minister will truly be “a common decision, a consensus,” he said.
“It’s not that General Allen is vetoing. He is seeing the evidence; he has more intelligence means than we do,” General Farouq said, referring to Gen. John R. Allen of the Marines, the senior allied commander in Afghanistan. “In the final analysis the enemy is a common enemy, and we respect each other’s opinion.”
A vast majority of the people being held at Parwan are in administrative detention — without access to lawyers, public trials or other legal rights. As the transfer to Afghan control proceeds, some will go into the Afghan justice system, and others will become Afghan administrative detainees, according to the March agreement.
But many Afghan and international lawyers say that such administrative detention is unconstitutional under Afghan law and that it is being instituted in effect by decree.
Even Afghans who go into the usual criminal justice system at Parwan have little hope of being released quickly. According to an official at the Legal Aid Organization of Afghanistan, which provides most of the defense lawyers to the detainees, 217 prisoners have been tried in the internal court at the facility since July, and 80 were found innocent. Not one of those 80 has been released, as higher courts have undertaken reviews — also at the Parwan facility.
“It’s a sham,” said Tina Foster, an American lawyer with the advocacy group International Justice Network who has been seeking unsuccessfully to represent Parwan detainees. “Karzai has been talking the talk of Afghan national sovereignty, but in the course of doing so he capitulated and is doing exactly what the U.S. wanted him to do.”
“These are just kangaroo courts set up inside Bagram,” she said. “This is not a real Afghan criminal proceeding.”
Most troubling, she said, the creation of an Afghan system for administrative detention perpetuates one of the greatest injustices of the Afghan war period.
“The worst thing is the administrative detention regime the Afghans are adopting is exactly the same as what the U.S. government has been doing for the last 10 years,” Ms. Foster said. “The legacy left here by the U.S. is people disappeared into legal black holes.”
An American official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of his agency’s policy, disputed accusations that Afghan legal authority was a sham. The Afghan Supreme Court chooses judges at the detention facility, and the Afghan attorney general’s office chooses prosecutors, he said. Also, defense lawyers are not picked by the American military, whose only role with the lawyers is to arrange for their security clearances, the official said. He added that he was unaware of any case in which a defense lawyer had been refused an opportunity to represent clients at Parwan.
“I know there is still a perception that it is an American court, but we have nothing to do with who is a judge, who is a prosecutor, who is a defense lawyer,” the official said. “You can be pretty confident it’s not an American-style court; it’s very Afghan.”
The official also said that any Afghans who were acquitted and whose acquittals were upheld on appeal would be released and not subject to American review.
In his interview, General Farouq said that the transfer of prisoners to Afghan control was proceeding ahead of schedule, with 1,300 of the roughly 3,000 detainees moved over to the Afghan side of the facility.
Right now, though, the Afghan side is within the Americans’ outer perimeter and is in their overall control. “Then, after six months everything will be complete and I will be in charge,” General Farouq said. “No Americans will be in charge of the gate. We will be in charge.”
The facility, however, is within the vast expanse of the American-controlled Bagram Air Field. And its final status after the end of NATO operations in 2014 is still undetermined.
Khalili's Remains Buried at Kabul University After 25 Years
TOLOnews.com Wednesday, 30 May 2012
The remains of the renowned Afghan thinker and poet Ustad Khalilullah Khalili were buried at Kabul University on Tuesday according to his final wishes.
A special ceremony attended by a number of officials and members of the Khalili family took place to inter his coffin beside Sayed Jamaluddin Afghan, another Afghan poet and cultural figure.
Khalili died in 1987 and has been buried for the last 25 years in Peshawar, Pakistan.
High ranking government officials, including the Minister of Higher Education Obaidullah Obaid, Education Minister Farooq Wardak, and Culture and Information Minister Makhdom Rahin, attended the ceremony, as well a number of other scholars and poets.
Khalili made a name for himself through his broad writings contained in more than 62 cultural, philosophic, literature and politics books, most of which were published abroad.
He was born in Afghanistan's capital Kabul in 1907, and was an orphan by the age of 11.
Although he was prevented from going to school by the same king who executed his father, he continued his studies privately. By the age of 16, Khalili was educated enough to be a teacher himself, and he went to Mir Bacha Kot, a district near Kabul, to teach in a local school.
In his lifetime, he worked in a variety of positions, including as an accountant at the Ministry of Finance, vice chair of Kabul university, head of Afghanistan's independent media, media advisor for King Mohammad Zaher Shah, and finally as Afghanistan's Ambassador to Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
In 1978 he immigrated to the US and continued his cultural activities, but eventually moved to Islamabad, where he died in 1987.
Afghan Broadcaster Defies Expectations of Women
Nangarhar TV journalist Sanga Jabarkhil describes her battle against prejudice.
IWPR By Hijratullah Ekhtyar 30 May 12
Afghanistan - When Sanga Jabarkhil’s relatives first heard her speaking on local radio, they were so upset that they froze her out of family life for the next year.
Jabarkhil became interested in journalism when she listened to BBC and Voice of America radio programmes while she was still at school in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar.
By the age of 15, she had begun working for the state-owned Radio Television of Afghanistan, RTA, in Nangarhar, balancing this against her school studies. She told her family she was working on a magazine rather than in broadcasting.
When her first report – on arranged marriages – was aired, her relatives were mortified rather than proud.
“After hearing me on the radio, all my family members stopped talking to me. I stayed in my room, apart from them, and this lasted for a whole year,” Jabarkhil recalled.
Her relatives believed she was working alongside male colleagues, which they viewed as quite unacceptable.
For many conservative Afghans, simply working in a mixed-sex environment is immoral behaviour for a woman, and makes her an unattractive marriage prospect.
It took a long time to win the family over, although Jabarkhil’s mother Nuria was always quietly supportive.
Ultimately, only an elder brother remained opposed to her career choice.
“My brother didn’t talk to me, he didn’t look at me and even avoided coming face-to-face with me,” she said. “He told me, ‘Whenever I am sitting with friends and you appear on the TV screen, everyone looks at me and asks whether you are my sister. I feel ashamed; it’s like dying.’”
Jabarkhil even took her brother to work to assure him that women at RTA Nangarhar worked in a separate office from the men.
Today, aged just 21, Jabarkhil heads the women’s section of RTA’s Nangarhar office.
Through her reporting, Jabarkhil says she managed to bring the concerns of hundreds of disadvantaged women to the attention of the public and the authorities.
During a recent one-week journalism workshop which IWPR held in Nangarhar, Jabarkhil shared her personal experiences of reporting as a woman in a deeply traditional society with some 40 female students.
She was joined by Mina Habib, an IWPR-trained contributor from Kabul, and both encouraged the students, aged between 17 and 19, to pursue careers in journalism.
In recent weeks, Habib has been awarded a prize for her courage as a woman journalist by the Journalists’ Council of Afghanistan and given a special award by the South Asian Free Media Association, along with IWPR’s Afghan editor Hafizullah Gardesh. (See IWPR Journalists Recognised at Afghan Awards Ceremony.)
Jabarkhil’s on-screen appearances have inevitably attracted attention, since Nangahar resident have seen few women in such prominent roles. On television, she wears a headscarf, but she conceals her face when she goes out into the street.
“I still get phone calls from strangers. Some express admiration for my voice and beauty, while others are angry with me because I’m working in television,” she said. “I answer them all by just saying ‘thank you’ and hanging up. It’s a way of saying, ‘Please don’t bother me.’”
She has had to develop a thick skin. At one wedding, she heard women around her asking in hushed voices whether she was the newsreader they had seen on television.
One of them then stepped forward to offer words of advice and commiseration.
“Why are you so hard on yourself, my dear? You are such a beautiful girl yet you’re still working in television,” Jabarkhil recalled the woman saying. “‘Please have pity on yourself.”
She replied, “What’s wrong with working in television? I have studied and I need to work and serve other girls and women.”
The wedding guest sighed and told her that she would have made a good wife for her son if only she was not on TV.
Such experiences have left Jabarkhil with a good-humoured patience, which her colleagues said made her popular in the office.
“Sanga is our boss but she behaves like a sister and close friend around us. Believe me, it’s tough when she’s absent,” her colleague Nazifa Momand said.
Amrullah Rawan, programmes manager at the RTA office, described Jabarkhil as “the pride of Nangarhar television”.
“I can tell you that if she left, we wouldn’t be able to find anyone to replace her,” he said.
Jabarkhil now lives in the provincial capital Jalalabad, but she was born in Hesarak, a western district of Nangarhar province. In this area, just being allowed to go to school was a struggle. Her relatives believed girls should leave school around the age of 12 or 13.
“One day, my brother stopped me from going to school, saying that I was already grown up, an adult. I cried a great deal,” she said, adding that she was out of the house and on her way to school the moment her brother went out.
“My teacher asked me why I was late, and I told her my family wouldn’t let me attend school. After hearing the story, the teacher came to our house and persuaded my family to allow me to complete school,” she said.
Her ambitions were always supported by her mother Nuria, who had to leave school early and was keen to avoid the same thing happening to her daughter.
“I wasn’t able to fight for my legal rights at the time, but my daughter Sanga has succeeded in doing so, and I’m very proud of her,” Nuria said.
Nuria now deals with male relatives who come home angry after hearing people discussing Jabarkhil in public.
“I stand up to them all and tell my daughter to have patience,” she said.
At school, Jabarkhil was inspired by a teacher who had graduated in law and politics, and now she combines working with studying the same subjects at Ariana University, a private institution in Jalalabad. She plans to continue studying, to obtain a masters degree, study for a doctorate abroad, and eventually to enter politics. She dreams of becoming Afghanistan’s minister for women’s affairs.
“If I become women’s affairs minister, it won’t be a symbolic post for me. I will do my best, and take anyone in power, to ensure that women’s rights are respected, and I will make education for girls compulsory,” she said.
Hijratullah Ekhtyar. is an IWPR-trained reporter in Nangarhar.
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