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Afghan Upper House Approves U.S. Strategic Pact
By RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan June 3, 2012
KABUL -- Afghanistan's upper house has approved a strategic partnership agreement between Kabul and Washington, clearing the way for a U.S. presence in the country after the withdrawal of most foreign combat troops in 2014.
Afghan officials said that out of the 80 members of the Council of Elders who voted, only 13 voted against.
The Afghan lower house of parliament ratified the agreement on May 26.
The agreement will now go into effect in Afghanistan.
The document was signed by U.S. President Barack Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul on May 2.
Although the pact does not commit the United States to specific troop levels, it does allow Washington to potentially keep a number of troops to train Afghan soldiers and pursue Al-Qaeda militants.
Kabul Bank fraud suspects to face trial
AFP via Yahoo! UK & Ireland Finance - Sun Jun 3, 10:04 am ET
Dozens of people accused of fraud in the Kabul Bank scandal have been referred to a special tribunal for trial and arrest warrants have been issued, Afghanistan's attorney general's office said.
Deputy attorney general Rahmatullah Nazari said his investigations showed that 35 people, including former executives, were involved in the fraud that pushed the institution to the point of collapse in 2010.
The investigations were over and the suspects had been referred to a special tribunal set up by President Hamid Karzai's order to deal with the case, he said at the weekend.
The attorney general's office was demanding that the alleged culprits -- including a former central bank governor now living in the United States -- be punished and fined.
He did not name all the suspects, but said about 14 were now living abroad.
Renamed "New Kabul Bank", the country's largest private lender was bailed out by Karzai's administration after its former bosses failed to return $900 million they had secretly taken in off-book loans.
Nazari said that if assets seized from the bank's former bosses and shareholders -- including properties in Dubai -- fetched good prices they could raise more than $600 million.
Among the shareholders is a brother of Karzai, Mahmood Karzai, and the brother of his vice president Marshal Mohammad Qasim Fahim.
Nazari said the president's brother had paid back his debts but a dispute over his shares in the bank had yet to be cleared by a government-run anti-corruption body. He refused to give details.
In April, the central bank announced plans to sell the Kabul Bank in June.
"The plan is to sell it back to the private sector in June," central bank governor Noorullah Delawari told AFP.
Delawari said another option was for half the shares to be sold to turn the bank into a joint-venture between the government and the private sector. The sale would take place through a tender process, the central bank chief added.
The Kabul Bank scandal prompted the International Monetary Fund to temporarily suspend hundreds of millions of dollars of international aid to Afghanistan.
Afghanistan: Aid workers saved after death threat
By RAHIM FAIEZ | Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — NATO and Afghan forces launched a daring operation to rescue two female foreign aid workers and their two Afghan colleagues after learning the Taliban planned to kill one of the hostages, an intelligence official said.
The troops carried out the successful mission before dawn Saturday, swooping in on helicopters to pluck the aid workers from a cave in a mountainous area of northern Badakhshan province. They killed the eight militants holding them captive as well, Afghan intelligence spokesman Shafiqullah Tahiri said Sunday.
The militants hoped killing one of the hostages would pressure negotiators to accept their demands of a $1 million ransom and the release of five of their colleagues imprisoned in Kabul, said Tahiri. The insurgents initially asked for at least $4 million before reducing their demand, he said.
Helen Johnston, 28, from Britain, and Moragwa Oirere, 26, from Kenya, and their two Afghan colleagues were kidnapped on May 22 while traveling on horseback in Badakhshan. The four work for Medair, a humanitarian non-governmental organization based near Lausanne, Switzerland.
British Prime Minister David Cameron said Saturday that he approved the operation after becoming increasingly concerned about the safety of the hostages. He said militants should know that Britain does not pay ransoms or trade prisoners, and anyone who kidnaps British citizens "can expect a swift and brutal end."
Troops were able to launch the rescue operation after receiving precise information from Afghan intelligence agents about the hostages' location in Shahri Buzurg district, said Tahiri. The kidnappers were planning to move the hostages to another remote, mountainous location in neighboring Tajikistan, he said.
The militants were armed with heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47 assault rifles, but were overwhelmed by British troops operating alongside other NATO and Afghan forces. The hostages were safely rescued, and none of the NATO or Afghan forces were harmed, said the coalition.
Past rescue attempts in Afghanistan have not always gone so well.
In 2009, Sultan Munadi, an Afghan translator kidnapped alongside New York Times reporter Stephen Farrell, was killed in a hail of bullets during a rescue attempt by British commandos. In 2010, the U.S. Navy's SEAL Team 6 tried to rescue Linda Norgrove, a Scottish aid worker, from her Taliban captors in Afghanistan. She was killed by a grenade thrown in haste by one of the American commandos.
In southern Afghanistan on Sunday, a NATO service member was killed in an insurgent attack, the coalition said, without providing further details.
The death raised the number of coalition troops who have died in Afghanistan this year to 179.
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Associated Press writer Sebastian Abbot contributed to this report.
Afghan forces kill 8 Taliban fighters including commander
FAIZABAD, Afghanistan, June 3 (Xinhua) -- Afghan security forces raided a Taliban hideout in Badakhshan province 315 km northeast of capital Kabul killing eight militants including their commander on Sunday, spokesman for provincial administration Abdul Marouf Rasikh said.
"The security forces stormed a Taliban hideout in Akhal village of Argo district early Sunday morning killing eight rebels including their commander Mawlawi Saifudin on the spot," Rasikh told Xinhua.
With the elimination of Mawlawi Saifudin and his group, the security will be further improved in Argo district and adjoining areas, he added without giving more details.
Meantime, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in a statement released here confirmed the operation in Badakhshan province, saying Afghan and coalition security forces conducted an operation to detain an Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) militant in Argo district, Badakhshan province, today.
"During the operation, the security force was attacked by two groups of insurgents. The security force returned fire and requested a precision airstrike. After the airstrike, the Afghan and coalition security force conducted a follow-on assessment of the area and determined no civilians had been harmed and multiple insurgents had been killed," the ISAF statement stated.
Taliban militants fighting Afghan and NATO-led forces have yet to make comment.
U.S.-Pakistan Freeze Chokes Fallback Route in Afghanistan
New York Times By ROD NORDLAND June 2, 2012
SALANG PASS, Afghanistan - Nowhere is the impact of Pakistan’s ban on NATO truck traffic more visible than here at the top of the Hindu Kush, on one of the only alternative overland routes for supply convoys to reach Kabul and the rest of the country.
For 20 miles north and south of the old Soviet-built tunnel at Salang Pass, thousands of trucks are idled beside the road, waiting for a turn to get through its perilous, one-and-a-half-mile length.
This is the only passable route for heavy truck traffic bringing NATO supplies in from the Central Asian republics to the north, as they now must come.
There are other roads, but they are often single-lane dirt tracks through even higher mountain passes, or they are frequently subject to ambushes by insurgents and bandits. So a tunnel built to handle 1,000 vehicles a day, and until the Pakistani boycott against NATO in November handling 2,000, now tries — and often fails — to let 10,000 vehicles through, alternating northbound and southbound truck traffic every other day.
“It’s only a matter of time until there’s a catastrophe,” said Lt. Gen. Mohammad Rajab, the head of maintenance for the Salang Pass. “One hundred percent certain, there will be a disaster, and when there is, it’s not a disaster for Afghanistan alone, but for the whole international community that uses this road.” He said 90 percent of the traffic now was trailer and tanker trucks carrying NATO supplies.
The tunnel near the top of this 12,000-foot pass is so narrow — no more than 20 feet across at the base, and less toward the top — that the heavily laden trucks often jam as they try to pass one another, lodging in tightly against the sloping, rough-hewn walls. The trucks have to be winched apart and dragged out by heavy equipment.
Other trucks get stuck when their drivers deliberately underestimate their overhead clearance — the tunnel is 16 feet high, but only in the very center.
“It’s a nightmare,” one tank truck driver said.
The tunnel lighting does not work, nor do closed-circuit television cameras installed to warn of problems. The tunnel’s roof leaks water, rendering the savagely potholed road surface a mixture of mud, chopped-up asphalt and broken concrete. Ventilator fans in most of the tunnel are out of order, leading to such high levels of carbon monoxide that officials are talking about a system to pump emergency oxygen in, General Rajab said.
The roadway, with only patches of paving, has ruts so deep that trucks sometimes just tip over on their sides, as happened last week with a tanker truck carrying fuel for NATO. It flipped over just south of the main tunnel, cracking the tank and spawning a small stream flowing down the steep switchbacks, which enterprising Afghans quickly diverted into makeshift canals and impoundments so they could carry out the dangerous work of filling containers from the flow.
That was the second day in a row that a truck tipped over near the top of the pass, blocking all daytime traffic for most of those two days. In between, the road opened at night, but then a NATO military convoy came along, forcing all civilian truck traffic to cease for 12 hours, General Rajab said.
With the increased traffic and the deterioration of the roads it has caused, a journey that used to take a day, from Kabul to Hairatan, a fuel and freight depot town on the northern border with Uzbekistan, now requires 8 to 10 days for trucks, according to interviews with many drivers. For cars it takes two days.
“Yesterday I slept over there,” said Sayid Ali, a tractor-trailer driver who was hauling cement, pointing at the next switchback down, less than a mile away. “Tonight I’ll probably sleep here.” He had so far spent five days just in a 25-mile-long climb to the tunnel, and was still two miles away, stuck by the fuel spill.
A tanker driver named Mohammadullah, hauling fuel for a NATO contractor, was eight days out of Kabul and still climbing. He said the drivers often ran out of food and were forced to pay exorbitant prices to vendors who drove up with supplies. He expected the round trip would take him most of a month.
“I’d rather be driving to Kandahar,” he said. Trucks need to have armed guards because of insurgents on that route, he said, “but I’d rather do that than all this waiting.”
The much-shorter Pakistani routes, from seaports like Karachi on better roads, were closed to protest the deaths of 24 Pakistani soldiers in an American airstrike. But Pakistan has expressed willingness to reopen the frontier: for a fee of thousands of dollars per truck, compared with $250 previously. “We’re not about to get gouged in the price,” Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said on ABC’s “This Week.”
The Salang Pass tunnel, built in 1964 by the Soviets and never completely finished (it lacks amenities like interior surfacing of the walls and an escape tunnel), has a tragic history. Nine hundred Russians and Afghans reportedly died of asphyxiation in the tunnel in 1982 when a military convoy was trapped inside by an accident or an explosion.
Two years ago, huge avalanches at the southern mouth of the tunnel killed at least 64 people, buried alive in cars and buses.
General Rajab says he worries that the tunnel could even collapse — no thorough overhaul has ever been done, he said, because the route is too vital to close long enough for major repairs.
“It’s crazy to use this road; there are just too many problems,” he said. “They should open an alternative or we will never solve this.”
A spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings, said the military had no comment. “We do not discuss the particular road routes that we use for movements of logistics,” he said.
The only remotely viable alternative route, General Rajab said, is over the Shibar Pass, farther west. It involves a three-day detour, which could be an improvement over Salang these days. However, the military would have to work at improving security on that route, he said — when he recently detoured trucks that way, they were looted before reaching the pass.
As United States and Western nations pull out, China seeks role in Afghanistan
Reuters via MSNBC - Sun Jun 3, 5:13 am ET
Chinese President Hu Jintao and his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai will hold talks during a global summit in Beijing this week.
BEIJING — China and Afghanistan will sign an agreement in the coming days that strategically deepens their ties, Afghan officials say, the strongest signal yet that Beijing wants a role beyond economic partnership as Western forces prepare to leave the country.
China has kept a low political profile through much of the decade-long international effort to stabilise Afghanistan, choosing instead to pursue an economic agenda, including locking in future supply from Afghanistan's untapped mineral resources.
As the U.S.-led coalition winds up military engagement and hands over security to local forces, Beijing, along with regional powers, is gradually stepping up involvement in an area that remains at risk from being overrun by Islamist insurgents.
Chinese President Hu Jintao and his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai will hold talks on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Beijing this week, where they will seal a wide-ranging pact governing their ties, including security cooperation.
Afghanistan has signed a series of strategic partnership agreements including with the United States, India and Britain among others in recent months, described by one Afghan official as taking out "insurance cover" for the period after the end of 2014 when foreign troops leave.
"The president of Afghanistan will be meeting the president of China in Beijing and what will happen is the elevation of our existing, solid relationship to a new level, to a strategic level," Janan Musazai, a spokesman for the Afghan foreign ministry, told Reuters.
"It would certainly cover a broad spectrum which includes cooperation in the security sector, a very significant involvement in the economic sector, and the cultural field."
He declined to give details about security cooperation, but Andrew Small, an expert on China at the European Marshall Fund who has tracked its ties with South Asia, said the training of security forces was one possibility.
China has signalled it will not contribute to a multilateral fund to sustain the Afghan national security forces - estimated to cost $4.1 billion per year after 2014 - but it could directly train Afghan soldiers, Small said.
"They're concerned that there is going to be a security vacuum and they're concerned about how the neighbours will behave," he said.
Beijing has been running a small progamme with Afghan law enforcement officials, focused on counter-narcotics and involving visits to China's restive Xinjiang province, whose western tip touches the Afghan border.
Training of Afghan forces is expected to be modest, and nowhere near the scale of the Western effort to bring them up to speed, or even India's role in which small groups of officers are trained at military institutions in India.
China wants to play a more active role, but it will weigh the sensitivities of neighbouring nations in a troubled corner of the world, said Zhang Li, a professor of South Asian studies at Sichuan University who has been studying the future of Sino-Afghan ties.
"I don't think that the U.S. withdrawal also means a Chinese withdrawal, but especially in security affairs in Afghanistan, China will remain low-key and cautious," he said. "China wants to play more of a role there, but each option in doing that will be assessed carefully before any steps are taken."
Afghanistan's immediate neighbours Iran and Pakistan, but also nearby India and Russia, have all jostled for influence in the country at the crossroads of Central and South Asia, and many expect the competition to heat up after 2014.
India has poured aid into Afghanistan and like China has invested in its mineral sector, committing billions of dollars to develop iron ore deposits, as well as build a steel plant and other infrastructure.
It worries about a Taliban resurgence and the threat to its own security from Pakistan-based militants operating from the region.
Pakistan, which is accused of having close ties with the Taliban, has repeatedly complained about India's expanding role in Afghanistan, seeing Indian moves as a plot to encircle it.
"India-Pakistan proxy fighting is one of the main worries," said Small.
In February, China hosted a trilateral dialogue involving officials from Pakistan and Afghanistan to discuss efforts to seek reconciliation with the Taliban.
It was first time Beijing involved itself directly and openly in efforts to stabilise Afghanistan.
Afghan foreign ministry spokesman Musazai said Kabul supported any effort to bring peace in the country. "China has close ties with Afghanistan. It also has very close ties with Pakistan and if it can help advance the vision of peace and stability in Afghanistan we welcome it."
We Prefer to Hold Talks with US: Taliban Leader
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 02 June 2012
Taliban are pro-peace negotiations and prefer to hold talks with the United States at the first stages, Member of Taliban's Leadership Council, Agha Jan Motasem told BBC.
In an exclusive interview with BBC, Mr Motasem said that currently the war has been imposed on Taliban and they are ready to have talks with the Afghan government and other foreign nations at the second phase of peace negotiations.
He also said that Taliban is led by a single leader and the Haqqani network is an inseparable part of Taliban.
"Taliban are pro-peace negotiations and currently the war has been imposed on them, foreigners have occupied the country," Motasem told the BBC.
"Peace Negotiations can't be a one phase process, it should have many phases. We prefer to negotiate with the US at the first phase, then with the Afghan government and other foreigners."
Meanwhile, Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs welcomed the statements and said it's a positive sign, but it stressed that those groups who don't respect democracy and Afghan constitution will not be included in peace talks.
"Ministry of foreign affairs welcomes talks with Taliban who accept Afghan constitution and democracy, we call on Taliban to join the peace process, currently talks with Taliban are underway," Janan Musazai, a spokesman for the Afghan Ministry Foreign Affairs said today.
"Afghan government will continue fighting those who don't believe in the achievements of Afghan people and never believe in peace," Musazai added.
This comes as Agha Jan Motasem has said that the only demand of the Taliban is a strong Islamic state and stressed that those who claim to be supporting the Afghan constitution are violating it most of the time.
Foreign relations advisor of the Afghan High Peace Council, Mohammad Ismail Qasimyar says that a government which respects the rights of men and women and democracy in Afghanistan is acceptable.
"We want an Islamic and people-owned government which pays respect to human rights, rights of men and women in the country, protects the past achievements and brings stability in Afghanistan," Qasimyar said.
EU Suspends $37 Million Aid to Afghan Police
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 02 June 2012
The European Union blocked the release of $37 million to a UN-run fund that financed Afghan Police, a Western Official in Kabul told Wall Street Journal.
The European Union, US and Japan are the key donors of the Law and Order Trust Fund for Afghanistan (LOTFA), while EU has pledged to spend about $175 million for the current phase of the programme covering January 2011 to March 2013.
LOTFA personnel told the Afghan and international monitoring committee that UN officials had abused the $2.2 million fund for paying salaries to nonexistent police officers and creating high payment positions for the personnel with links to Afghan government leaders.
Officials at the UN Development Programme, which administers LOTFA, have denied allegations of mismanagement and corruption at the fund
This comes as the Afghan Ministry of Interior said that if the aid gets suspended, it will definitely have negative impacts.
"EU, US and Japan were the main donors of the training and public awareness, LOTFA should be accountable for it, because Ministry of Interior has no role in it," Deputy MOI spokesman, Dr Najeeb told TOLOnews today.
"If the aid is suspended, it will definitely have negative impacts."
LOTFA is a multi-lateral Trust Fund set up in 2002 as a mechanism for coordinating contributions from partners, as part of the international community's support to build the Afghan national police force.
Canada criticizes UN report accusing its troops of complicity in torture in Afghanistan
Associated Press June 2, 2012
TORONTO - The Canadian government on Saturday criticized a United Nations agency for issuing a report condemning Canada for complicity in torture and human rights violations in Afghanistan and Syria.
A report from the U.N. Committee Against Torture issued Friday said Canadian military commanders didn’t do enough to ensure the safety of detainees handed over to Afghan security forces during the Afghan combat mission, which ended last year, despite a substantial risk that they would be tortured.
The report also said the Ottawa government shared inaccurate information with Syrian authorities linking three Arab Canadians to al-Qaida, resulting in them being tortured in Syria. Officials shared the information before Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad Abou Elmaati and Muayyed Nureddin traveled separately to Syria on personal business between 2001 and 2003.
The U.N. agency also faulted changes to Canada’s immigration laws which it said may increase the risk of human rights violations including a legal provision that allows the Canadian government to detain and deport permanent residents or foreign nationals considered to be a security threat based on secret evidence that the accused is not allowed to see.
Julie Carmichael, a spokeswoman for Canada’s Public Safety Minister, said Saturday that it’s disappointing the U.N. agency spent time condemning Canada “when there are serious concerns regarding human rights violations across the world.”
She added that “Canada is a nation of laws and the actions of our Government uphold the highest standards in the protection of human rights.”
The U.N. Committee Against Torture is dedicated to reviewing the record of compliance and implementation of U.N. treaties by member states. The committee reviewed Canada’s record with respect to human rights and torture prevention going back to 2005.
During its review, the panel also found that Canadian officials were complicit in human rights violations of a Canadian detainee held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Omar Khadr is being held at the U.S. prison for allegedly throwing a grenade in Afghanistan when he was just 15 that killed a U.S. soldier.
Documents surfaced in 2009 showing Khadr’s U.S. captors mistreated him through sleep deprivation and isolation ahead of an interview with an official from Canada’s Foreign Ministry in 2004. The Canadian government later said it was aware of media allegations of mistreatment of Guantanamo detainees, but it had no reliable proof that Khadr had been mistreated before interviewing him.
The agency recommended that Canada promptly approve the transfer of Khadr, who is now 25 and the only remaining Western detainee in Guantanamo, to Canadian custody.
It also urged the Ottawa government to pay compensation to the three Arab Canadians for their mistreatment in Syria.
Among its other recommendations, the agency also said Canada should adopt a policy for future military operations that clearly prohibits prisoner transfers to another country when there are substantial grounds for believing that the detainee would be in danger of being subjected to torture.
Afghan MPs Express Concern Over Corruption in Supreme Court
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 02 June 2012
Members of the Afghan House of Representatives Saturday expressed concern over existence of corruption in Supreme Court.
After giving vote of confidence to Abdul Malek Kamawi, as a member of the Supreme Court who won 127 votes, the MPs said that some cases are decided in the absence of the sides and not in accordance with the rules of the Koran and the Afghan constitution.
"Today, the Justice sectors have taken distance from the Koran, they don't decide about cases in accordance with enforced laws in the country, this is a major challenge," Kabul MP Erfanullah Erfan said today.
"We call upon the Justice sector not to ignore the laws in their court verdicts," he added.
"You should promise to fight corruption, corruption exists in justice sectors," Panjshir MP Zaheer Sa'adat told Kamawi.
Abdul Malek Kamawi promised to fight corruption and said that the Supreme Court has always been the main organ to fight corruption.
"There is undoubtedly corruption in the government institutions, but I promise to fight against corruption as always," Mr Kamawi stressed.
"The Supreme Court has always been the leading organ fighting against corruption."
However, Kabul MP, Ramazan Bashardost said he did not believe that such promised are made honestly.
"They promise to fight corruption, but their faces clearly show they are corrupt themselves," he said.
Meanwhile, Sarwar Danish, another candidate introduced for the membership of the Supreme Court, failed to win the required number of confidence votes.
Afghan MPs have approved the amount of 391 million Afghanis which was given to the Interior and Defence ministries by international donors.
They also approved the new Transit Tariff Law.
Thank Goats For Pakistan's Best Hashish
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty By Abubakar Siddique June 2, 2012
Although hashish is illegal in Pakistan, it is easily available and widely consumed in the country's largely lawless northern tribal region.
For Noor Muhammad Afridi, dealing in "Awal Namber Garda" is more than just his life's work.
By providing the black, sticky hashish that keeps his customers very happy, he's keeping up a long, family tradition.
Just like his forefathers in the Afridi clan, the 32-year-old from Pakistan's tribal areas along the Pakistan-Afghan border has become a connoisseur of the local delicacy, aged to perfection with a centuries-old technique.
"If you put [freshly prepared] hash resin into a goatskin or a sheepskin, it matures into something very good," he says. "It is well-preserved inside the skin, which also adds oil to it."
The technique is believed to greatly enhance the hashish's quality and, more importantly for its users, its effect.
If the end product makes the cut, it earns the right to join the prize sheep skins hanging from the rafters of Afridi's hash shop in Jamrud, gateway to the Khyber Pass.
'Top-Grade Dust'
To obtain Awal Namber Garda, Pashto for "top-grade dust," Afridi must travel from the plains of Jamrud to his clan's ancestral lands in the nearby mountains of Tirah Maidan.
There, a moderate climate, red soil, and locals skilled in the craft of cannabis combine to produce what is renowned as the region's best hashish.
It is an arduous journey made by way of rides in open pickup trucks and steep hikes, but it is well worth it.
Every gram guarantees profit -- Afridi can fetch up to $500 a kilogram for Awal Namber Garda -- and, if all goes well, Afridi has plenty to stock his shop.
The process begins once carefully cultivated marijuana plants have been cut and hung upside down.
After they have dried, a thin cloth is used to carefully thresh the plants to collect the glistening, hair-like resin glands protruding from the buds and upper leaves.
The residue is crushed into a fine, malleable powder -- the main ingredient for making what, for Afridi, is black gold.
The next step involves goats and sheep that locals slaughter in celebration of a good cannabis harvest.
The longer the hashish is kept inside the skin of a freshly-slaughtered animal, the better -- three months at least, says Afridi. The process works best during the hot summer months, but direct sunlight must be avoided.
Shah Mahmud, 55, is the type of farmer that Afridi has watched since childhood tending to cannabis on the tiny terraced fields of the Tirah Maidan.
Mahmud says the resin powder is stitched into the skins, which each hold six to 10 kilograms of hashish.
'Not A Bad Addiction'
Drawing on his experience of decades of hash use, Mahmud claims that, when the process is completed, Awal Namber Garda is beyond compare.
"Its outstanding quality is that the oil has enhanced its effect," he says. "If it's dry, it loses its effect and smoking it even causes headaches. The [summer] heat is like an enemy of 'Garda'. If you protect it from the heat properly, nothing can harm it."
While hashish available outside Khyber is often adulterated with henna, chewing gum, or even chemicals, Mahmud maintains that the hashish prepared in the Tirah Maidan is the real deal.
"Hashish is not a bad addiction even if you smoke it for 50 or 60 years," he says. "Cigarettes are more dangerous because each one you smoke reduces your age by a minute.'Garda' doesn't dry out your mind. A Charsi [hashish smoker] is always straightforward."
Afridi seconds the notion, and says that locals credit hashish with treating many diseases.
He insists that few of his regular customers ever get sick.
"Awal Namber Garda is very good," he says. "The second and third rate hashish is considered very bad because its effect is similar to your brain being squeezed very hard."
Bowling for Peace: Why an Afghan Woman Risked Her Life to Bring Bowling to Afghanistan
By MUHAMMAD LILA ABC News June 3, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan, — It's Stark Contrast to the World Outside, Filled with Barbed Wire, Soldiers
Behind a blastproof door and through a cordon of armed guards searching for hidden weapons, Meena Rahmani is planning her day.
"I'm responsible for taking part in rebuilding the country," she says, walking through her establishment with a sense of purpose that lets everyone know -- she's in charge.
Rahmani, whose family fled the country when the Taliban took power, is one of many Afghans who have since returned. But unlike the vast array of health workers, diplomats, government officials, and aid workers who've come back, Rahmani is doing something no one else has ever done.
And she's doing it one strike at a time.
Welcome to Strikers -- Afghanistan's first and only bowling alley. It's a stark contrast to the world outside, which is filled with barbed wire, armed soldiers, and concrete blast-proof barriers. Inside, it's a different world: Strobe lights, a menu with nachos and pizzas, and families enjoying a night out together.
It's so authentic, so western, you'll even hear the latest Rihanna tunes blaring from the alley's many speakers.
"They should feel like they're not in Afghanistan, a war torn country," Rahmani says. "They should feel like they could spend hours here in total peace of mind."
See Afghanistan's First and Only Bowling Alley
That, in a nutshell, is Rahmani's goal. Using the alley as an escape, a chance for ordinary Afghans to forget there's a war outside, and just have fun.
It's a simple concept: In a country plagued by 30 years of war, giving ordinary Afghans the chance to relax and feel safe while enjoying a night out with friends, can make all the difference in the world.
"I came here with my wife and my friend," says Hadi Safdari, who works in IT.
Before Strikers, the closest Safdari ever came to bowling was on an app on his mobile phone. Now, he's convinced the new bowling alley can be a ray of hope in what otherwise appears to be a dark future for Afghanistan. With NATO troops scheduled to pull out of combat duty in 2014, many fear the Taliban will become emboldened, targeting western business -- like Rahmani's -- with more frequency.
"When we see people of different ethnicities or tribes coming together, with their family, it shows something," Safdari says. "It shows they want to experience a sort of normal life.
"Having this attitude in the back of their minds to have a normal life... that's a ray of hope in Afghanistan," he says.
Rahmani's journey to becoming a female Afghan entrepreneur came almost by accident. Although she was just a child when her family fled the country, she always remembered its natural beauty -- and longed to return.
Four years ago, she moved to Toronto, where during the cold Canadian winters, she learned how to bowl. When she moved back to Afghanistan last year, she convinced her parents to sell their ancestral land, and invest a million dollars into her business. She imported brand new bowling lanes from China, and brought in trainers from Brunswick Bowling to help get the business off the ground..
With a price tag of more than $30 an hour, in a country where the average per capita income is less than $500 dollars per year, she knows she's taking a big risk. But she's convinced the business will take off.
Through it all, she sometimes works 20 hour days, has faced taunts from conservative Afghans who say a woman has no place running a business like this, and has fought off officials from the Olympic committee who've threatened to close down her business unless she pays a hefty "registration" fee -- what many consider a bribe.
Despite the struggles, she's persevered. From humble beginnings -- the bowling alley used to be a vacant parking lot -- the place is now packed on Thursday and Friday nights, and Sunday afternoons, when -- in a nod to Islamic culture that encourages segregation -- the lanes are reserved for women and children.
Rahmani, herself a devout Muslim who wears a hijab, also doesn't allow smoking on the premises, and refuses to admit anyone who appears drunk.
For Hadi Safdari, it's proof that bowling can exist, perhaps even flourish, in a country as conservative as Afghanistan.
"Who knows," he jokes. "Maybe one day, the people who are fighting outside will put down their guns, and come in here instead."
www.afghanistannewscente.com
By RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan June 3, 2012
KABUL -- Afghanistan's upper house has approved a strategic partnership agreement between Kabul and Washington, clearing the way for a U.S. presence in the country after the withdrawal of most foreign combat troops in 2014.
Afghan officials said that out of the 80 members of the Council of Elders who voted, only 13 voted against.
The Afghan lower house of parliament ratified the agreement on May 26.
The agreement will now go into effect in Afghanistan.
The document was signed by U.S. President Barack Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul on May 2.
Although the pact does not commit the United States to specific troop levels, it does allow Washington to potentially keep a number of troops to train Afghan soldiers and pursue Al-Qaeda militants.
Kabul Bank fraud suspects to face trial
AFP via Yahoo! UK & Ireland Finance - Sun Jun 3, 10:04 am ET
Dozens of people accused of fraud in the Kabul Bank scandal have been referred to a special tribunal for trial and arrest warrants have been issued, Afghanistan's attorney general's office said.
Deputy attorney general Rahmatullah Nazari said his investigations showed that 35 people, including former executives, were involved in the fraud that pushed the institution to the point of collapse in 2010.
The investigations were over and the suspects had been referred to a special tribunal set up by President Hamid Karzai's order to deal with the case, he said at the weekend.
The attorney general's office was demanding that the alleged culprits -- including a former central bank governor now living in the United States -- be punished and fined.
He did not name all the suspects, but said about 14 were now living abroad.
Renamed "New Kabul Bank", the country's largest private lender was bailed out by Karzai's administration after its former bosses failed to return $900 million they had secretly taken in off-book loans.
Nazari said that if assets seized from the bank's former bosses and shareholders -- including properties in Dubai -- fetched good prices they could raise more than $600 million.
Among the shareholders is a brother of Karzai, Mahmood Karzai, and the brother of his vice president Marshal Mohammad Qasim Fahim.
Nazari said the president's brother had paid back his debts but a dispute over his shares in the bank had yet to be cleared by a government-run anti-corruption body. He refused to give details.
In April, the central bank announced plans to sell the Kabul Bank in June.
"The plan is to sell it back to the private sector in June," central bank governor Noorullah Delawari told AFP.
Delawari said another option was for half the shares to be sold to turn the bank into a joint-venture between the government and the private sector. The sale would take place through a tender process, the central bank chief added.
The Kabul Bank scandal prompted the International Monetary Fund to temporarily suspend hundreds of millions of dollars of international aid to Afghanistan.
Afghanistan: Aid workers saved after death threat
By RAHIM FAIEZ | Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — NATO and Afghan forces launched a daring operation to rescue two female foreign aid workers and their two Afghan colleagues after learning the Taliban planned to kill one of the hostages, an intelligence official said.
The troops carried out the successful mission before dawn Saturday, swooping in on helicopters to pluck the aid workers from a cave in a mountainous area of northern Badakhshan province. They killed the eight militants holding them captive as well, Afghan intelligence spokesman Shafiqullah Tahiri said Sunday.
The militants hoped killing one of the hostages would pressure negotiators to accept their demands of a $1 million ransom and the release of five of their colleagues imprisoned in Kabul, said Tahiri. The insurgents initially asked for at least $4 million before reducing their demand, he said.
Helen Johnston, 28, from Britain, and Moragwa Oirere, 26, from Kenya, and their two Afghan colleagues were kidnapped on May 22 while traveling on horseback in Badakhshan. The four work for Medair, a humanitarian non-governmental organization based near Lausanne, Switzerland.
British Prime Minister David Cameron said Saturday that he approved the operation after becoming increasingly concerned about the safety of the hostages. He said militants should know that Britain does not pay ransoms or trade prisoners, and anyone who kidnaps British citizens "can expect a swift and brutal end."
Troops were able to launch the rescue operation after receiving precise information from Afghan intelligence agents about the hostages' location in Shahri Buzurg district, said Tahiri. The kidnappers were planning to move the hostages to another remote, mountainous location in neighboring Tajikistan, he said.
The militants were armed with heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47 assault rifles, but were overwhelmed by British troops operating alongside other NATO and Afghan forces. The hostages were safely rescued, and none of the NATO or Afghan forces were harmed, said the coalition.
Past rescue attempts in Afghanistan have not always gone so well.
In 2009, Sultan Munadi, an Afghan translator kidnapped alongside New York Times reporter Stephen Farrell, was killed in a hail of bullets during a rescue attempt by British commandos. In 2010, the U.S. Navy's SEAL Team 6 tried to rescue Linda Norgrove, a Scottish aid worker, from her Taliban captors in Afghanistan. She was killed by a grenade thrown in haste by one of the American commandos.
In southern Afghanistan on Sunday, a NATO service member was killed in an insurgent attack, the coalition said, without providing further details.
The death raised the number of coalition troops who have died in Afghanistan this year to 179.
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Associated Press writer Sebastian Abbot contributed to this report.
Afghan forces kill 8 Taliban fighters including commander
FAIZABAD, Afghanistan, June 3 (Xinhua) -- Afghan security forces raided a Taliban hideout in Badakhshan province 315 km northeast of capital Kabul killing eight militants including their commander on Sunday, spokesman for provincial administration Abdul Marouf Rasikh said.
"The security forces stormed a Taliban hideout in Akhal village of Argo district early Sunday morning killing eight rebels including their commander Mawlawi Saifudin on the spot," Rasikh told Xinhua.
With the elimination of Mawlawi Saifudin and his group, the security will be further improved in Argo district and adjoining areas, he added without giving more details.
Meantime, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in a statement released here confirmed the operation in Badakhshan province, saying Afghan and coalition security forces conducted an operation to detain an Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) militant in Argo district, Badakhshan province, today.
"During the operation, the security force was attacked by two groups of insurgents. The security force returned fire and requested a precision airstrike. After the airstrike, the Afghan and coalition security force conducted a follow-on assessment of the area and determined no civilians had been harmed and multiple insurgents had been killed," the ISAF statement stated.
Taliban militants fighting Afghan and NATO-led forces have yet to make comment.
U.S.-Pakistan Freeze Chokes Fallback Route in Afghanistan
New York Times By ROD NORDLAND June 2, 2012
SALANG PASS, Afghanistan - Nowhere is the impact of Pakistan’s ban on NATO truck traffic more visible than here at the top of the Hindu Kush, on one of the only alternative overland routes for supply convoys to reach Kabul and the rest of the country.
For 20 miles north and south of the old Soviet-built tunnel at Salang Pass, thousands of trucks are idled beside the road, waiting for a turn to get through its perilous, one-and-a-half-mile length.
This is the only passable route for heavy truck traffic bringing NATO supplies in from the Central Asian republics to the north, as they now must come.
There are other roads, but they are often single-lane dirt tracks through even higher mountain passes, or they are frequently subject to ambushes by insurgents and bandits. So a tunnel built to handle 1,000 vehicles a day, and until the Pakistani boycott against NATO in November handling 2,000, now tries — and often fails — to let 10,000 vehicles through, alternating northbound and southbound truck traffic every other day.
“It’s only a matter of time until there’s a catastrophe,” said Lt. Gen. Mohammad Rajab, the head of maintenance for the Salang Pass. “One hundred percent certain, there will be a disaster, and when there is, it’s not a disaster for Afghanistan alone, but for the whole international community that uses this road.” He said 90 percent of the traffic now was trailer and tanker trucks carrying NATO supplies.
The tunnel near the top of this 12,000-foot pass is so narrow — no more than 20 feet across at the base, and less toward the top — that the heavily laden trucks often jam as they try to pass one another, lodging in tightly against the sloping, rough-hewn walls. The trucks have to be winched apart and dragged out by heavy equipment.
Other trucks get stuck when their drivers deliberately underestimate their overhead clearance — the tunnel is 16 feet high, but only in the very center.
“It’s a nightmare,” one tank truck driver said.
The tunnel lighting does not work, nor do closed-circuit television cameras installed to warn of problems. The tunnel’s roof leaks water, rendering the savagely potholed road surface a mixture of mud, chopped-up asphalt and broken concrete. Ventilator fans in most of the tunnel are out of order, leading to such high levels of carbon monoxide that officials are talking about a system to pump emergency oxygen in, General Rajab said.
The roadway, with only patches of paving, has ruts so deep that trucks sometimes just tip over on their sides, as happened last week with a tanker truck carrying fuel for NATO. It flipped over just south of the main tunnel, cracking the tank and spawning a small stream flowing down the steep switchbacks, which enterprising Afghans quickly diverted into makeshift canals and impoundments so they could carry out the dangerous work of filling containers from the flow.
That was the second day in a row that a truck tipped over near the top of the pass, blocking all daytime traffic for most of those two days. In between, the road opened at night, but then a NATO military convoy came along, forcing all civilian truck traffic to cease for 12 hours, General Rajab said.
With the increased traffic and the deterioration of the roads it has caused, a journey that used to take a day, from Kabul to Hairatan, a fuel and freight depot town on the northern border with Uzbekistan, now requires 8 to 10 days for trucks, according to interviews with many drivers. For cars it takes two days.
“Yesterday I slept over there,” said Sayid Ali, a tractor-trailer driver who was hauling cement, pointing at the next switchback down, less than a mile away. “Tonight I’ll probably sleep here.” He had so far spent five days just in a 25-mile-long climb to the tunnel, and was still two miles away, stuck by the fuel spill.
A tanker driver named Mohammadullah, hauling fuel for a NATO contractor, was eight days out of Kabul and still climbing. He said the drivers often ran out of food and were forced to pay exorbitant prices to vendors who drove up with supplies. He expected the round trip would take him most of a month.
“I’d rather be driving to Kandahar,” he said. Trucks need to have armed guards because of insurgents on that route, he said, “but I’d rather do that than all this waiting.”
The much-shorter Pakistani routes, from seaports like Karachi on better roads, were closed to protest the deaths of 24 Pakistani soldiers in an American airstrike. But Pakistan has expressed willingness to reopen the frontier: for a fee of thousands of dollars per truck, compared with $250 previously. “We’re not about to get gouged in the price,” Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said on ABC’s “This Week.”
The Salang Pass tunnel, built in 1964 by the Soviets and never completely finished (it lacks amenities like interior surfacing of the walls and an escape tunnel), has a tragic history. Nine hundred Russians and Afghans reportedly died of asphyxiation in the tunnel in 1982 when a military convoy was trapped inside by an accident or an explosion.
Two years ago, huge avalanches at the southern mouth of the tunnel killed at least 64 people, buried alive in cars and buses.
General Rajab says he worries that the tunnel could even collapse — no thorough overhaul has ever been done, he said, because the route is too vital to close long enough for major repairs.
“It’s crazy to use this road; there are just too many problems,” he said. “They should open an alternative or we will never solve this.”
A spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, Lt. Col. Jimmie Cummings, said the military had no comment. “We do not discuss the particular road routes that we use for movements of logistics,” he said.
The only remotely viable alternative route, General Rajab said, is over the Shibar Pass, farther west. It involves a three-day detour, which could be an improvement over Salang these days. However, the military would have to work at improving security on that route, he said — when he recently detoured trucks that way, they were looted before reaching the pass.
As United States and Western nations pull out, China seeks role in Afghanistan
Reuters via MSNBC - Sun Jun 3, 5:13 am ET
Chinese President Hu Jintao and his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai will hold talks during a global summit in Beijing this week.
BEIJING — China and Afghanistan will sign an agreement in the coming days that strategically deepens their ties, Afghan officials say, the strongest signal yet that Beijing wants a role beyond economic partnership as Western forces prepare to leave the country.
China has kept a low political profile through much of the decade-long international effort to stabilise Afghanistan, choosing instead to pursue an economic agenda, including locking in future supply from Afghanistan's untapped mineral resources.
As the U.S.-led coalition winds up military engagement and hands over security to local forces, Beijing, along with regional powers, is gradually stepping up involvement in an area that remains at risk from being overrun by Islamist insurgents.
Chinese President Hu Jintao and his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai will hold talks on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Beijing this week, where they will seal a wide-ranging pact governing their ties, including security cooperation.
Afghanistan has signed a series of strategic partnership agreements including with the United States, India and Britain among others in recent months, described by one Afghan official as taking out "insurance cover" for the period after the end of 2014 when foreign troops leave.
"The president of Afghanistan will be meeting the president of China in Beijing and what will happen is the elevation of our existing, solid relationship to a new level, to a strategic level," Janan Musazai, a spokesman for the Afghan foreign ministry, told Reuters.
"It would certainly cover a broad spectrum which includes cooperation in the security sector, a very significant involvement in the economic sector, and the cultural field."
He declined to give details about security cooperation, but Andrew Small, an expert on China at the European Marshall Fund who has tracked its ties with South Asia, said the training of security forces was one possibility.
China has signalled it will not contribute to a multilateral fund to sustain the Afghan national security forces - estimated to cost $4.1 billion per year after 2014 - but it could directly train Afghan soldiers, Small said.
"They're concerned that there is going to be a security vacuum and they're concerned about how the neighbours will behave," he said.
Beijing has been running a small progamme with Afghan law enforcement officials, focused on counter-narcotics and involving visits to China's restive Xinjiang province, whose western tip touches the Afghan border.
Training of Afghan forces is expected to be modest, and nowhere near the scale of the Western effort to bring them up to speed, or even India's role in which small groups of officers are trained at military institutions in India.
China wants to play a more active role, but it will weigh the sensitivities of neighbouring nations in a troubled corner of the world, said Zhang Li, a professor of South Asian studies at Sichuan University who has been studying the future of Sino-Afghan ties.
"I don't think that the U.S. withdrawal also means a Chinese withdrawal, but especially in security affairs in Afghanistan, China will remain low-key and cautious," he said. "China wants to play more of a role there, but each option in doing that will be assessed carefully before any steps are taken."
Afghanistan's immediate neighbours Iran and Pakistan, but also nearby India and Russia, have all jostled for influence in the country at the crossroads of Central and South Asia, and many expect the competition to heat up after 2014.
India has poured aid into Afghanistan and like China has invested in its mineral sector, committing billions of dollars to develop iron ore deposits, as well as build a steel plant and other infrastructure.
It worries about a Taliban resurgence and the threat to its own security from Pakistan-based militants operating from the region.
Pakistan, which is accused of having close ties with the Taliban, has repeatedly complained about India's expanding role in Afghanistan, seeing Indian moves as a plot to encircle it.
"India-Pakistan proxy fighting is one of the main worries," said Small.
In February, China hosted a trilateral dialogue involving officials from Pakistan and Afghanistan to discuss efforts to seek reconciliation with the Taliban.
It was first time Beijing involved itself directly and openly in efforts to stabilise Afghanistan.
Afghan foreign ministry spokesman Musazai said Kabul supported any effort to bring peace in the country. "China has close ties with Afghanistan. It also has very close ties with Pakistan and if it can help advance the vision of peace and stability in Afghanistan we welcome it."
We Prefer to Hold Talks with US: Taliban Leader
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 02 June 2012
Taliban are pro-peace negotiations and prefer to hold talks with the United States at the first stages, Member of Taliban's Leadership Council, Agha Jan Motasem told BBC.
In an exclusive interview with BBC, Mr Motasem said that currently the war has been imposed on Taliban and they are ready to have talks with the Afghan government and other foreign nations at the second phase of peace negotiations.
He also said that Taliban is led by a single leader and the Haqqani network is an inseparable part of Taliban.
"Taliban are pro-peace negotiations and currently the war has been imposed on them, foreigners have occupied the country," Motasem told the BBC.
"Peace Negotiations can't be a one phase process, it should have many phases. We prefer to negotiate with the US at the first phase, then with the Afghan government and other foreigners."
Meanwhile, Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs welcomed the statements and said it's a positive sign, but it stressed that those groups who don't respect democracy and Afghan constitution will not be included in peace talks.
"Ministry of foreign affairs welcomes talks with Taliban who accept Afghan constitution and democracy, we call on Taliban to join the peace process, currently talks with Taliban are underway," Janan Musazai, a spokesman for the Afghan Ministry Foreign Affairs said today.
"Afghan government will continue fighting those who don't believe in the achievements of Afghan people and never believe in peace," Musazai added.
This comes as Agha Jan Motasem has said that the only demand of the Taliban is a strong Islamic state and stressed that those who claim to be supporting the Afghan constitution are violating it most of the time.
Foreign relations advisor of the Afghan High Peace Council, Mohammad Ismail Qasimyar says that a government which respects the rights of men and women and democracy in Afghanistan is acceptable.
"We want an Islamic and people-owned government which pays respect to human rights, rights of men and women in the country, protects the past achievements and brings stability in Afghanistan," Qasimyar said.
EU Suspends $37 Million Aid to Afghan Police
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 02 June 2012
The European Union blocked the release of $37 million to a UN-run fund that financed Afghan Police, a Western Official in Kabul told Wall Street Journal.
The European Union, US and Japan are the key donors of the Law and Order Trust Fund for Afghanistan (LOTFA), while EU has pledged to spend about $175 million for the current phase of the programme covering January 2011 to March 2013.
LOTFA personnel told the Afghan and international monitoring committee that UN officials had abused the $2.2 million fund for paying salaries to nonexistent police officers and creating high payment positions for the personnel with links to Afghan government leaders.
Officials at the UN Development Programme, which administers LOTFA, have denied allegations of mismanagement and corruption at the fund
This comes as the Afghan Ministry of Interior said that if the aid gets suspended, it will definitely have negative impacts.
"EU, US and Japan were the main donors of the training and public awareness, LOTFA should be accountable for it, because Ministry of Interior has no role in it," Deputy MOI spokesman, Dr Najeeb told TOLOnews today.
"If the aid is suspended, it will definitely have negative impacts."
LOTFA is a multi-lateral Trust Fund set up in 2002 as a mechanism for coordinating contributions from partners, as part of the international community's support to build the Afghan national police force.
Canada criticizes UN report accusing its troops of complicity in torture in Afghanistan
Associated Press June 2, 2012
TORONTO - The Canadian government on Saturday criticized a United Nations agency for issuing a report condemning Canada for complicity in torture and human rights violations in Afghanistan and Syria.
A report from the U.N. Committee Against Torture issued Friday said Canadian military commanders didn’t do enough to ensure the safety of detainees handed over to Afghan security forces during the Afghan combat mission, which ended last year, despite a substantial risk that they would be tortured.
The report also said the Ottawa government shared inaccurate information with Syrian authorities linking three Arab Canadians to al-Qaida, resulting in them being tortured in Syria. Officials shared the information before Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad Abou Elmaati and Muayyed Nureddin traveled separately to Syria on personal business between 2001 and 2003.
The U.N. agency also faulted changes to Canada’s immigration laws which it said may increase the risk of human rights violations including a legal provision that allows the Canadian government to detain and deport permanent residents or foreign nationals considered to be a security threat based on secret evidence that the accused is not allowed to see.
Julie Carmichael, a spokeswoman for Canada’s Public Safety Minister, said Saturday that it’s disappointing the U.N. agency spent time condemning Canada “when there are serious concerns regarding human rights violations across the world.”
She added that “Canada is a nation of laws and the actions of our Government uphold the highest standards in the protection of human rights.”
The U.N. Committee Against Torture is dedicated to reviewing the record of compliance and implementation of U.N. treaties by member states. The committee reviewed Canada’s record with respect to human rights and torture prevention going back to 2005.
During its review, the panel also found that Canadian officials were complicit in human rights violations of a Canadian detainee held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Omar Khadr is being held at the U.S. prison for allegedly throwing a grenade in Afghanistan when he was just 15 that killed a U.S. soldier.
Documents surfaced in 2009 showing Khadr’s U.S. captors mistreated him through sleep deprivation and isolation ahead of an interview with an official from Canada’s Foreign Ministry in 2004. The Canadian government later said it was aware of media allegations of mistreatment of Guantanamo detainees, but it had no reliable proof that Khadr had been mistreated before interviewing him.
The agency recommended that Canada promptly approve the transfer of Khadr, who is now 25 and the only remaining Western detainee in Guantanamo, to Canadian custody.
It also urged the Ottawa government to pay compensation to the three Arab Canadians for their mistreatment in Syria.
Among its other recommendations, the agency also said Canada should adopt a policy for future military operations that clearly prohibits prisoner transfers to another country when there are substantial grounds for believing that the detainee would be in danger of being subjected to torture.
Afghan MPs Express Concern Over Corruption in Supreme Court
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 02 June 2012
Members of the Afghan House of Representatives Saturday expressed concern over existence of corruption in Supreme Court.
After giving vote of confidence to Abdul Malek Kamawi, as a member of the Supreme Court who won 127 votes, the MPs said that some cases are decided in the absence of the sides and not in accordance with the rules of the Koran and the Afghan constitution.
"Today, the Justice sectors have taken distance from the Koran, they don't decide about cases in accordance with enforced laws in the country, this is a major challenge," Kabul MP Erfanullah Erfan said today.
"We call upon the Justice sector not to ignore the laws in their court verdicts," he added.
"You should promise to fight corruption, corruption exists in justice sectors," Panjshir MP Zaheer Sa'adat told Kamawi.
Abdul Malek Kamawi promised to fight corruption and said that the Supreme Court has always been the main organ to fight corruption.
"There is undoubtedly corruption in the government institutions, but I promise to fight against corruption as always," Mr Kamawi stressed.
"The Supreme Court has always been the leading organ fighting against corruption."
However, Kabul MP, Ramazan Bashardost said he did not believe that such promised are made honestly.
"They promise to fight corruption, but their faces clearly show they are corrupt themselves," he said.
Meanwhile, Sarwar Danish, another candidate introduced for the membership of the Supreme Court, failed to win the required number of confidence votes.
Afghan MPs have approved the amount of 391 million Afghanis which was given to the Interior and Defence ministries by international donors.
They also approved the new Transit Tariff Law.
Thank Goats For Pakistan's Best Hashish
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty By Abubakar Siddique June 2, 2012
Although hashish is illegal in Pakistan, it is easily available and widely consumed in the country's largely lawless northern tribal region.
For Noor Muhammad Afridi, dealing in "Awal Namber Garda" is more than just his life's work.
By providing the black, sticky hashish that keeps his customers very happy, he's keeping up a long, family tradition.
Just like his forefathers in the Afridi clan, the 32-year-old from Pakistan's tribal areas along the Pakistan-Afghan border has become a connoisseur of the local delicacy, aged to perfection with a centuries-old technique.
"If you put [freshly prepared] hash resin into a goatskin or a sheepskin, it matures into something very good," he says. "It is well-preserved inside the skin, which also adds oil to it."
The technique is believed to greatly enhance the hashish's quality and, more importantly for its users, its effect.
If the end product makes the cut, it earns the right to join the prize sheep skins hanging from the rafters of Afridi's hash shop in Jamrud, gateway to the Khyber Pass.
'Top-Grade Dust'
To obtain Awal Namber Garda, Pashto for "top-grade dust," Afridi must travel from the plains of Jamrud to his clan's ancestral lands in the nearby mountains of Tirah Maidan.
There, a moderate climate, red soil, and locals skilled in the craft of cannabis combine to produce what is renowned as the region's best hashish.
It is an arduous journey made by way of rides in open pickup trucks and steep hikes, but it is well worth it.
Every gram guarantees profit -- Afridi can fetch up to $500 a kilogram for Awal Namber Garda -- and, if all goes well, Afridi has plenty to stock his shop.
The process begins once carefully cultivated marijuana plants have been cut and hung upside down.
After they have dried, a thin cloth is used to carefully thresh the plants to collect the glistening, hair-like resin glands protruding from the buds and upper leaves.
The residue is crushed into a fine, malleable powder -- the main ingredient for making what, for Afridi, is black gold.
The next step involves goats and sheep that locals slaughter in celebration of a good cannabis harvest.
The longer the hashish is kept inside the skin of a freshly-slaughtered animal, the better -- three months at least, says Afridi. The process works best during the hot summer months, but direct sunlight must be avoided.
Shah Mahmud, 55, is the type of farmer that Afridi has watched since childhood tending to cannabis on the tiny terraced fields of the Tirah Maidan.
Mahmud says the resin powder is stitched into the skins, which each hold six to 10 kilograms of hashish.
'Not A Bad Addiction'
Drawing on his experience of decades of hash use, Mahmud claims that, when the process is completed, Awal Namber Garda is beyond compare.
"Its outstanding quality is that the oil has enhanced its effect," he says. "If it's dry, it loses its effect and smoking it even causes headaches. The [summer] heat is like an enemy of 'Garda'. If you protect it from the heat properly, nothing can harm it."
While hashish available outside Khyber is often adulterated with henna, chewing gum, or even chemicals, Mahmud maintains that the hashish prepared in the Tirah Maidan is the real deal.
"Hashish is not a bad addiction even if you smoke it for 50 or 60 years," he says. "Cigarettes are more dangerous because each one you smoke reduces your age by a minute.'Garda' doesn't dry out your mind. A Charsi [hashish smoker] is always straightforward."
Afridi seconds the notion, and says that locals credit hashish with treating many diseases.
He insists that few of his regular customers ever get sick.
"Awal Namber Garda is very good," he says. "The second and third rate hashish is considered very bad because its effect is similar to your brain being squeezed very hard."
Bowling for Peace: Why an Afghan Woman Risked Her Life to Bring Bowling to Afghanistan
By MUHAMMAD LILA ABC News June 3, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan, — It's Stark Contrast to the World Outside, Filled with Barbed Wire, Soldiers
Behind a blastproof door and through a cordon of armed guards searching for hidden weapons, Meena Rahmani is planning her day.
"I'm responsible for taking part in rebuilding the country," she says, walking through her establishment with a sense of purpose that lets everyone know -- she's in charge.
Rahmani, whose family fled the country when the Taliban took power, is one of many Afghans who have since returned. But unlike the vast array of health workers, diplomats, government officials, and aid workers who've come back, Rahmani is doing something no one else has ever done.
And she's doing it one strike at a time.
Welcome to Strikers -- Afghanistan's first and only bowling alley. It's a stark contrast to the world outside, which is filled with barbed wire, armed soldiers, and concrete blast-proof barriers. Inside, it's a different world: Strobe lights, a menu with nachos and pizzas, and families enjoying a night out together.
It's so authentic, so western, you'll even hear the latest Rihanna tunes blaring from the alley's many speakers.
"They should feel like they're not in Afghanistan, a war torn country," Rahmani says. "They should feel like they could spend hours here in total peace of mind."
See Afghanistan's First and Only Bowling Alley
That, in a nutshell, is Rahmani's goal. Using the alley as an escape, a chance for ordinary Afghans to forget there's a war outside, and just have fun.
It's a simple concept: In a country plagued by 30 years of war, giving ordinary Afghans the chance to relax and feel safe while enjoying a night out with friends, can make all the difference in the world.
"I came here with my wife and my friend," says Hadi Safdari, who works in IT.
Before Strikers, the closest Safdari ever came to bowling was on an app on his mobile phone. Now, he's convinced the new bowling alley can be a ray of hope in what otherwise appears to be a dark future for Afghanistan. With NATO troops scheduled to pull out of combat duty in 2014, many fear the Taliban will become emboldened, targeting western business -- like Rahmani's -- with more frequency.
"When we see people of different ethnicities or tribes coming together, with their family, it shows something," Safdari says. "It shows they want to experience a sort of normal life.
"Having this attitude in the back of their minds to have a normal life... that's a ray of hope in Afghanistan," he says.
Rahmani's journey to becoming a female Afghan entrepreneur came almost by accident. Although she was just a child when her family fled the country, she always remembered its natural beauty -- and longed to return.
Four years ago, she moved to Toronto, where during the cold Canadian winters, she learned how to bowl. When she moved back to Afghanistan last year, she convinced her parents to sell their ancestral land, and invest a million dollars into her business. She imported brand new bowling lanes from China, and brought in trainers from Brunswick Bowling to help get the business off the ground..
With a price tag of more than $30 an hour, in a country where the average per capita income is less than $500 dollars per year, she knows she's taking a big risk. But she's convinced the business will take off.
Through it all, she sometimes works 20 hour days, has faced taunts from conservative Afghans who say a woman has no place running a business like this, and has fought off officials from the Olympic committee who've threatened to close down her business unless she pays a hefty "registration" fee -- what many consider a bribe.
Despite the struggles, she's persevered. From humble beginnings -- the bowling alley used to be a vacant parking lot -- the place is now packed on Thursday and Friday nights, and Sunday afternoons, when -- in a nod to Islamic culture that encourages segregation -- the lanes are reserved for women and children.
Rahmani, herself a devout Muslim who wears a hijab, also doesn't allow smoking on the premises, and refuses to admit anyone who appears drunk.
For Hadi Safdari, it's proof that bowling can exist, perhaps even flourish, in a country as conservative as Afghanistan.
"Who knows," he jokes. "Maybe one day, the people who are fighting outside will put down their guns, and come in here instead."
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