Tweet
Karzai calls on Afghans to fight corruption
By Joshua Partlow, The Washington Post Thursday, June 21, 5:51 PM
KABUL — Ahead of an international conference aimed at collecting billions more in foreign aid for Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai on Thursday called on his government to step up the fight against the rampant corruption that has badly eroded his administration’s credibility over the years.
“Corruption has reached its peak in this country,” Karzai told assembled lawmakers at the parliament building in Kabul. “It is our responsibility to improve. If we heal this pain, then Afghanistan will be independent and progressive.”
Karzai’s address appeared to be an attempt to begin changing the narrative about his government’s ability to handle the flood of dollars that United States and other NATO countries intend to keep sending to Afghanistan, even after the bulk of American troops withdraw by the end of 2014. Donor nations have grown more determined to link future funding to improvements in Afghan governance, a subject likely to be discussed at next month’s conference on Afghanistan in Tokyo.
NATO officials were anticipating Karzai’s speech Thursday as an important marker for whether he intends to pursue a legacy of reform in the two years he has remaining in office.
So far, his government has done little to address years of allegations of graft and cronyism and has often deflected the criticism onto American companies operating in Afghanistan. Skepticism among the international community here remains high. “He’ll sing a pretty song on Thursday,” one NATO official said before the speech.
Karzai offered few specifics about what new measures might be taken to address corruption. But he did ask “the foreigners, America and other countries, to not award their construction, building and commercial contracts to the government authorities and their relatives.” Afghans linked to government officials have profited handsomely over the years from U.S. contracts.
“This is a debate that I have had with them for the past four years. This causes corruption in the Afghan administration. ... If America wants corruption to stop, then stop this,” he said.
Among the Afghans who have profited from the gusher of U.S. aid and close government connections have been Karzai’s relatives. Watan Oil and Gas, a company owned by two of the president’s cousins, Rashed and Rateb Popal, was recently awarded a $3 billion contract in a joint venture with a Chinese firm to develop oil fields in northern Afghanistan, Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper reported Thursday.
Karzai also called on the United States to send the former head of Afghanistan’s central bank back to Kabul for trial. Abdul Qadir Fitrat fled to the United States last year after he said his life was in danger for pushing the government to resolve the scandal at Kabul Bank, where nearly $1 billion was stolen and distributed to prominent businessmen. U.S. officials tend to support Fitrat and have said in the past it’s unlikely he’ll return.
Karzai asked the lawmakers for their cooperation on starting a new phase for the Afghan government, and he said he would lead by example.
“You should cooperate with me on these reforms. You have accused me of making deals. Yes, I have done so, but I had reasons. And now I am changing this. I am bringing reform from the inside,” Karzai said.
Special correspondent Sayed Salahuddin contributed to this report.
Hamid Karzai government under fire for oil deal with company run by cousin
Anti-corruption campaigners and diplomats have challenged Hamid Karzai's government for awarding a $3bn oil deal to a company run by a cousin who was jailed in the United States for drug trafficking.
By Ben Farmer, Kabul and Dean Nelson in New Delhi 20 Jun 2012 Telegraph (UK)
Watan Oil and Gas, controlled by President Karzai's notorious cousins Rashid and Rateb Popal, won the oil extraction contract in a joint venture with a Chinese state-owned firm despite accusations another of their companies used US funds to pay protection money to Taliban commanders.
The 25-year deal gives Watan and the China National Petroleum Company access to an estimated 160 million barrels of oil from three fields in northern Afghanistan.
Up to £2 trillion of minerals, oil and gas are estimated to be beneath Afghanistan and its mineral riches are key to Western hopes the country can one day wean itself from foreign aid and pay its own way.
The oil deal in the Amu Darya Basin had been seen as a model for further fossil fuel contracts, but diplomats and activists are now concerned it heralds the carving up of Afghanistan's resources.
The selection of a group controlled by President Karzai's cousins Rashid and Rateb Popal, who served nearly nine years in jail in New York in the 1990s on drugs charges, has caused particular alarm.
"I think we all desperately hoped that British soldiers were dying for something more noble than helping Karzai's drug dealing cousin to sell gas from northern Afghanistan to the Chinese," one former senior diplomat to Kabul told The Daily Telegraph.
Another of their companies, Watan Risk Management, provides security to supply convoys and was at the heart of a US Congressional investigation into protection companies paying the Taliban millions of dollars for safe passage.
The investigation found the brothers used a warlord to provide security and he allegedly paid millions to the Taliban in what became one of the insurgent's biggest income streams.
The brothers denied paying off the Taliban, but officials attempted to block them from further US contracts.
"The fact that Watan continues to receive contracts despite the allegations against it is a concern," said Juman Jubba, Afghanistan researcher for Global Witness, which campaigns against corruption in mining deals.
"It is crucial that company histories are considered during the bidding process and that reasoning and justifications for awarding each contract are made public."
The contract was awarded in December, but has seen renewed scrutiny in recent weeks as a potential source of violence in northern Afghanistan.
Competition over the benefits from the oil deal is thought to have triggered a confrontation between Mr Karzai's government and General Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Uzbek strongman who controls the area.
The Afghan National Security Council accused Gen Dostum earlier this month of treason for holding up the work and said he was trying to extort money from the Chinese.
His spokesman said he had just complained that security guards and workers should be from the local area, rather than being brought in by Watan.
Watan and the Chinese have pledged to produce 150,000 barrels by the end of this year.
They won the contract against three other firms and offered far better terms than their competitors, observers said.
Javed Noorani, a researcher for Integrity Watch Afghanistan, said the bidding had been tightly overseen by US advisers and the Chinese had offered an "excellent deal", by paying 15 per cent royalties and promising Kabul 50 to 70 per cent of the profits.
By securing the deal with such favourable terms to the government, the Chinese are now well placed to win the far larger Afghan Tajik fields, which hold up to 1.6 billion barrels of oil and gas, he said.
Afghanistan expects $4 billion in aid pledges at July conference
Thursday, June 21, 2012
KABUL (Reuters) - Donor nations are likely to pledge a total of $4 billion in civilian assistance for Afghanistan at an aid conference in Japan next month, President Hamid Karzai said on Thursday in a national speech aimed at curbing corruption in his country.
"Such an amount, more or less, will be pledged for the Afghan economy at the Tokyo conference," Karzai said during a specially convened session of parliament, indicating the support would come after most foreign combat troops left in 2014.
Donors will gather in Tokyo to decide on future foreign support for reconstruction and development in desperately poor Afghanistan, which is still heavily reliant on aid, and suffers from widespread graft more than ten years into the NATO-led war.
The head of Afghanistan's central bank said this week his country would need $6-7 billion a year in aid over the next decade to help the economy grow.
But the government is under pressure from Western backers to do more to fight corruption, and reassure donors that their money will not be squandered through contract fraud and theft.
Karzai called for the United States to send former central bank governor Abdul Qadir Fitrat back to Afghanistan for trial, a move that would improve the credibility of his anti-corruption efforts.
Fitrat announced his resignation a year ago during a visit to the U.S., saying he feared for his life as a result of his role in investigating a scandal surrounding Kabulbank, which collapsed in 2010 with outstanding loans of almost $1 billion.
Karzai's government has yet to prosecute a single high-level corruption case, despite being ranked one of the world's most graft-affected countries by the Berlin-based anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International.
Highlighting the worries among Karzai's backers, Britain's aid watchdog earlier this year called on the government in London to tighten its oversight of the aid programme in Afghanistan.
Karzai last year blamed foreigners for the massive scale of corruption in his country after a scandal involving the near-collapse of the biggest private financial institution, Kabul Bank, which swept up powerful figures close to the presidency.
In Thursday's speech to the fractious parliament, for which large parts of central Kabul were locked down to guard against insurgents, a sombre Karzai said the influence of warlords was strengthening in some parts of central Afghanistan ahead of NATO's exit, and national elections also slated for 2014.
He also said militant attacks were mounting on Afghan security forces and told MPs that Afghans would have only themselves to blame if security worsened in the future.
Afghanistan would require help in keeping its growing police and army equipped and ready to battle the Taliban and its allies, with donor nations also expected to provide $4.1 billion a year post-2014 to finance local security forces, he said.
Taliban attacks on US bases in Afghanistan: enabled by Pakistani forces?
The volume of explosives used in attacks on US military bases in Afghanistan in recent days fuels concern that Pakistani security services are taking a stronger hand in backing insurgent groups.
By Anna Mulrine | Christian Science Monitor
A recent spate of attacks on US military bases in Afghanistan points to a resilient Taliban with a steady supply of arms. It is a supply stream flowing from Pakistan – one that US troops, try as they might, are proving unable to interrupt.
Equally troubling for the Pentagon, analysts warn that these attacks serve as growing evidence that Pakistani security services (ISI) is stepping up its support of insurgent groups to jockey for position ahead of the scheduled 2014 departure of US combat troops from the country.
On Wednesday, two attacks in eastern Afghanistan killed three US troops and at least 25 Afghans, prompting the US Embassy to condemn the Taliban’s “murderous campaign.”
These attacks come on the heels of one of the most troubling insurgent offensives in some time, according to analysts. It occurred earlier this month, when a suicide-bomber in a car filled with explosives was able to breach perimeter security at a large US base near the eastern Afghanistan city of Khost.
The bomber detonated the explosives near the base dining hall at Camp Salerno, allowing other enemy fighters to stream into the base on foot – and open fire. A spokesman for the Taliban boasted that the insurgents had “suicide vests, rocket-propelled grenades, heavy machine guns, and hand grenades.” The attack injured dozens of troops.
The US military did not disclose the breadth of the breach in base security for some time. When the details emerged, it was clear that, “It was a pretty significant attack in terms of the amount of explosives used – and the ability to get that close and detonate them,” says Jeffrey Dressler, a senior analyst at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington.
The sheer volume of explosives involved in the attack points to ISI links with an insurgency “that’s proving to be a continuous challenge” for US forces in eastern Afghanistan, Mr. Dressler says.
In eastern Afghan provinces such as Khost, Taliban-affiliated insurgent groups, such as the Haqqani network, maintain safe haven and logistical lines that run all the way to Pakistan – and use these places to project their power into neighboring provinces even closer to Kabul.
“The fact that these guys can move trucks full of explosives across the border” is troubling, Dressler adds. “By not taking action, Pakistani forces “are signaling their tacit approval of this stuff.”
These sorts of behaviors – including “increased collusion” between the ISI and Pakistani-based insurgent groups – “are likely to increase” with the drawdown of US forces, Dressler warns, “unless you can get into these places [in eastern Afghanistan] and go on the offensive like we did in Helmand and Kandahar [provinces of southern Afghanistan]."
Yet US troop levels required for such operations are unlikely to materialize, as the drawdown of forces in Afghanistan continues apace. What’s more, US commanders have pointed out that offensive operations in the harsh mountainous regions of the east have been little more than “lawn-mowing” operations and that once US forces leave after fighting tough, casualty-heavy battles, the insurgency returns.
Because Afghan forces have been unable and in some cases unwilling to battle Pakistan-based insurgents, these operations have had little effect connecting the Afghan central government to remote outlying regions – a key component of counterinsurgency warfare.
In the midst of this uncertainty, Pakistan’s security forces continue to jockey for position, using insurgent groups in order to “control as much of the south and the east as it can,” Dressler adds. “All of the stuff we’re seeing now tracks with that ultimate objective.”
Without stepped-up US forces in the east, “I guess I’m just wondering where the red lines are,” he says. “How much are we willing to put up with when it comes to these sorts of attacks?"
Militant attacks on Afghan forces on rise: Karzai
Press TV June 21, 2012
Afghan President Hamid Karzai says militant attacks on the security forces have been increased in the war-torn country in recent months.
Hamid Karzai made the remarks on Thursday, a day after killing of 21 people by a bomb attack in Afghanistan’s eastern city of Khost.
"I have noticed that these days, in the past one, two or three months, attacks on our soldiers, police and intelligence officers have increased," Karzai said.
"Every day we have at least 20 to 25 casualties, every day at least 20 to 25 of our youths are making the sacrifice for this country and are being killed."
The 21 people were killed on Wednesday after a bomber riding a motorbike attacked a joint Afghan-NATO convey passing through the town.
Another bomb explosion on Wednesday left at least eight Afghan women and children dead in Afghanistan’s Eastern Logar Province.
Foreign and Afghan forces are being killed by Taliban militants on a nearly daily basis in Afghanistan.
Insecurity continues to rise across Afghanistan despite the presence of about 130,000 US-led forces in the war-ravaged country.
The US-led war in Afghanistan, with civilian and military casualties at record high, has become the longest military conflict in American history.
The United Nations announced on February 4 that 2011 was the deadliest year on record for Afghan civilians. The death toll rose eight percent compared to the year before and was roughly double the figure for 2007.
Afghan civilians have paid a high price since the US-led invasion of the country in 2001.
Afghanistan Based MTN Company Receives ‘3G' License
TOLOnews.com Wednesday, 20 June 2012
Afghanistan based MTN company received ‘3G' License from Afghan Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (MoCIT) Wednesday.
MTN is the second GSM provider in Afghanistan to receive 3G license after paying $25 million to the Ministry of Information and Technology.
In a ceremony held in Kabul, Amirzai Sangin, Afghan Information Technology Minister said that more than 50% of the country's population will use high speed internet with lower prices in two years as the 3G services grow.
"I am pretty sure that 50% of the country's population will use internet because all the towers are installed. The only thing the companies should do is to install the 3G compatible devices." Mr Sangin said adding that almost 70 percent of overall equipments have been installed.
As most Afghan worry about an economic shortfall after 2014, Finance Minister Hazrat Omar Zakhilwal believes that providing 3G services is a good sign to attract investment in Afghanistan as he doubts any economical shortfall after that period.
"We hope that such investments attract other investments and remove any economical concerns. Any improvement in the economics depends on such investments." Mr Zakhilwal said.
"Investment is the engine of our economic growth."
Etisalat was the first GSM mobile Company in Afghanistan which received 3G license three months ago.
Defense officials say summer poses toughest test for Afghan forces
Associated Press Thursday, June 21, 2012
WASHINGTON - This summer’s fighting in Afghanistan will be the toughest test for the country’s evolving security forces as they try to root out insurgents in the more heavily populated regions, senior defense officials told skeptical lawmakers on Wednesday.
The officials said that while the next few months will be a significant challenge, it also comes before the United States withdraws its surge force of 23,000 American troops in a war that has lasted more than a decade and left the public war-weary.
“The time to test them is now, when we have the forces in theater to ensure their success,” David Sedney, deputy assistant secretary of defense for Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia, told a House Armed Services subcommittee.
Members of the panel voiced concerns about the capabilities of the Afghan National Security Forces, questioning the attrition rate and the operations in which Afghans are assuming the lead. The hearing came against the backdrop of fresh violence in the country. A suicide bomber killed 21 people including three U.S. soldiers at a checkpoint in a crowded market in eastern Afghanistan. It was the third assault targeting Americans in as many days and raised questions about the U.S.-led coalition’s plan to handover security to Afghan forces at the end of 2014.
There was no question about the latest violence at the hearing. But lawmakers sought an assessment of the Afghan force, whether goals on the number in the force can be met and the size of the enemy. Pressed on the number of Taliban, Sedney said they number 15,000 to 20,000, based on the latest intelligence estimate, though some only fight for a day while others battle every day.
Army Maj. Gen. Stephen Townsend, director of the Pakistan-Afghanistan coordination cell, told the panel that the percentage of attrition has dropped though it still remains a problem. He said the Afghan National Army is still on track to meet its goal of 195,000 by the end of the summer, the national police 157,000 before October and the security forces 352,000.
Townsend said the forces are taking on greater responsibilities.
“The percentage of Afghan-led partnered operations increase from 33 percent in January 2012 to 59 percent in April. In some regions of the country Afghan forces conduct independent operations at a higher rate than their partnered operations,” he said.
This summer, operations will focus on more heavily populated regions. Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., chairman of the subcommittee and a recent visitor to Afghanistan, asked what would happen if the security forces were less than successful this summer.
Sedney said the next few months will give Marine Gen. John Allen, the top commander in Afghanistan, a chance to evaluate the Afghan forces and determine future requirements, which inevitably would involve how many U.S. troops to keep in the country.
The United States currently has 88,000 American troops there. President Barack Obama envisions a final withdrawal of U.S. combat troops in 2014 though no timetable has been set.
Members of the committee have challenged Obama’s planned withdrawal. The defense bill that the House approved earlier this year calls for keeping a sizable number of U.S. combat troops in the country. The bill cites significant uncertainty in Afghanistan about U.S. military support and says that to reduce the uncertainty and promote stability the president should “maintain a force of at least 68,000 troops through Dec. 31, 2014, unless fewer forces can achieve United States objectives.”
The hearing was part of the Republican-led committee’s work on a report on Afghanistan that likely will be released in the weeks before the November elections, according to lawmakers and staff. Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Afghan refugees forced to return home
The Washington Post By Kevin Sieff Thursday, June 21, 2012
Kabul - During the last stretch of his family’s journey home, Esmatullah perched atop a truckload of kitchenware, firewood and furniture, hurtling toward Kabul while the evidence of three decades in exile shifted beneath him.
On either side of the truck, the bazaars grew denser. The buildings became taller and more fortified. American convoys snaked through traffic, heading downtown.
Nearly two days after leaving their home in Pakistan, Esmatullah and his 22 relatives had made it to Afghanistan’s capital, after 30 years as refugees. They looked out at their country. They tried not to panic.
The uncertainty shrouding Afghanistan’s future has prompted thousands of Afghans to seek an escape route — foreign visa applications, asylum pleas, long journeys across the border. But every day, families swim against that current, returning to Afghanistan after years abroad, finding a country that has been transformed by all the development and war wrought by a decade-long U.S. intervention and a persistent insurgency.
Some of the returnees are here by choice — nostalgic for the country of their youth, drawn back by word of renewed security and opportunity. Most, like Esmatullah’s family, have returned involuntarily — compelled by the Pakistani government’s unwillingness to extend their refugee status.
Nearly 3 million Afghans will be expelled from Pakistan by the end of the year if an extension isn’t granted, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Such a mass deportation could further destabilize Afghanistan, straining its economy and challenging its fledgling security forces. Although UNHCR officials are optimistic that the issue will be resolved, many Afghans in Pakistan have responded to the looming deadline by heading home after years in exile.
Esmatullah’s father, Haji Bismillah, fled Afghanistan in 1979, at the beginning of the Soviet occupation. He was 35 when he left the country on horseback, with a wife and three young children. When he returned this month, he looked brittle, worn by hard decades. With him were his nearly two-dozen sons, daughters and grandchildren, most of whom had never been to Afghanistan.
As the family’s truck sped closer to downtown Kabul, Bismillah marveled at how the city had grown — shops and military bases and government buildings fanning out for miles. “I’m finally home,” he said.
But as Bismillah rejoiced, his sons, who spoke Pashto with thick Pakistani accents, grew worried. They had heard stories about terrorism and a bleak economy.
“I cannot stay here” thought Mohammed Ullah, 19. “I will run away.”
“There is no value for human life here,” thought his brother, Rahmatullah, 33.
What were they expecting? It is hard to say exactly. They didn’t know which stories were true, how bad the violence would be, whether their neighbors would assume that they were spies.
More than 8 million Afghans fled to Pakistan between 1979 and 2002. At least half of them have returned since 2001, attracted by the promise of a post-Taliban Afghanistan. When that transition proved rocky, many fled once again, the allure of home dimmed by protracted conflict.
Bismillah and his family watched those waves of migration just as they watched the war itself: from 500 miles away, on television, through stories from relatives and friends — a distance that imbued the unrest with a kind of unreality.
Then the war came to them. Last year, on a warm night in May, the brothers awoke to a large blast and the buzz of helicopters hovering above their adopted home town of Abbottabad, Pakistan. When the family awoke, they learned that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had been killed a mile from where they slept. The next day, they walked over to take photos of bin Laden’s littered compound.
The war knocked again when mounting tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan — exacerbated by the bin Laden raid — meant that their visas would not be renewed, that they would have no choice but to return.
Rahmatullah had been sent to Kabul several weeks before the rest of the family to look for a home big enough for 23 people but cheap enough for the poor refugee family. He arrived on the same day that the Taliban executed a coordinated attack in seven locations across the country.
He called his father while the assault continued and pleaded, “Let’s not move. Let’s never move here.”
But Bismillah said they must. The Pakistani government had made life hard for Afghan refugees, he said. He was getting old. He wanted to die on his own soil.
So the family hired a driver with an open-roof truck and piled in their belongings: electric fans, carpets, bicycles, anything that would fit. Then the brothers each stuffed their bags and pockets with more sentimental items. Mohammed Ullah took photos of his classmates. Rahmatullah took a poster of his favorite park in Islamabad. Esmatullah took a shirt that said “Karachi.”
They drove through the night in early June, arriving as the sun rose at a UNHCR center on the outskirts of Kabul, where dozens of other families had lined up to be processed. An employee went from truck to truck asking families why they had decided to return. Most had come from refugee camps outside Peshawar, the largest city in Pakistan’s northwest. They accepted about $150 per person from the U.N. agency and disappeared to the surrounding districts or provinces, often to land doled out by the government.
When his turn came, Bismillah told the U.N. employee, “We’re here because we’re tired of being harassed in Pakistan. We are ready to come home.” He handed over a nearly expired refugee identification card.
Three days later, the 23 relatives had squeezed into a two-bedroom apartment with no electricity or running water. Most of the brothers slept on the floor.
Even Bismillah, first wowed by the city’s growth, was becoming frustrated. He got lost on his way to an old mosque, confused by a flurry of new activity on a familiar street. Still, the city seemed secure, he said: “We can walk around here. It is safe.”
His sons were not convinced. A week before they arrived, an American airstrike killed a family of five in their ancestral province of Paktia. A week after, more than 20 civilians were killed in a mix of Taliban attacks and NATO airstrikes in a single day. On local television stations, experts railed against what they called an insidious Pakistani influence.
Rahmatullah worried that his neighbors would accuse him of being a Pakistani spy and threaten the family. Someone pointed to his thick mustache — a fashion common in Pakistan but unusual in beard-loving Afghanistan — and asked him whether he was a foreigner. He considered shaving the mustache off.
“We stand out here,” he said. “It’s like we don’t belong.”
Mohammed Ullah dropped out of school to work at a construction site with a few of his brothers. He keeps his Abbottabad friends’ class portraits in his pocket while he mixes cement. He tells people that he’s Afghan, but he feels Pakistani.
Still, Bismillah was hopeful. His sons will come around, he said, and security in Afghanistan will improve.
Mohammed Ullah doesn’t pretend to believe his father.
“When I leave,” he said, “I will never come back.”
Pentagon probing alleged abuse at Afghan military hospital
Reuters Thu Jun 21, 2012
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon is investigating a U.S.-funded Afghan military hospital where there have been allegations of corruption and abuse of patients, a Defense Department official said on Wednesday.
David Sedney told a House of Representatives subcommittee that "investigations and corrective action" were under way at Dawood National Military Hospital in Kabul.
"The things that happened at that hospital are the kind of things that should never happen to any human being anywhere," said Sedney, deputy assistant secretary of defense for Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia. "We are working with the Afghans to correct them."
U.S. lawmakers began asking questions about the hospital last year after incidents of Afghan service members dying there of neglect and starvation were reported by The Wall Street Journal in September.
Last week, Republican Representative Jason Chaffetz sent Pentagon chief Leon Panetta a letter about the hospital on behalf of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Chaffetz asked the Pentagon to investigate whether senior U.S. military officials sought to cover up reports of abuse at the facility back in 2010.
Sedney was not asked about any cover-up allegations on Wednesday during his testimony before a subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee. The topic of the hearing was the Afghan national security forces.
The U.S.-led NATO force in Afghanistan is preparing to hand control of Afghanistan to that country's security forces by the middle of next year, putting the Western alliance on a path out of the unpopular, decade-long war.
Republican Representative Mike Coffman told Sedney that $42 million in U.S. aid was "missing, unaccounted for" at the Kabul military hospital. The lawmaker said he was concerned about U.S. taxpayer dollars that had been spent at the facility and to train Afghan security forces.
"Afghan police and Afghan soldiers were dying in the hospital from malnutrition, and from a lack of medical care, because the families couldn't come up with the necessary bribes," Coffman said.
Coffman questioned what the alleged corruption at the hospital meant for the U.S. strategy of preparing Afghan forces to take over the fight against the Taliban, wondering how "capable" those forces were when they allowed such events to occur.
Sedney responded that "corruption has been part of the fabric of life" in Afghanistan, but he did not believe the majority of Afghans wanted that to continue.
"While recognizing corruption is a problem, I would not agree it's endemic to the point where our investments (in Afghanistan) are not going to pay off," Sedney said.
(Reporting By Susan Cornwell; Editing by Peter Cooney)
US probes Afghan tax on companies doing rebuilding
AP By By Pauline Jelinek June 20, 2012
WASHINGTON - A government watchdog is looking into Afghanistan's practice of taxing U.S. companies involved in America's multibillion-dollar effort to rebuild the war-torn nation.
The office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction will audit fees charged contractors by Kabul for supplies, materials and other items imported into Afghanistan or bought there, according to an inspector general memo obtained by The Associated Press.
The fees include tariffs, customs duties and other taxes that eventually come out of U.S. taxpayer dollars because they're charged to reconstruction projects run by the Pentagon, State Department or the U.S. Agency for International Development.
"This is a step in the right direction," said a statement from Democratic Rep. Peter Welch of Vermont and GOP Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina. "We're hopeful this audit will and bring to an end the absurd practice by the Afghan government of taxing America's effort to rebuild their country.
"While such behavior may make sense in (Afghan President) Hamid Karzai's world, it makes no sense to the American taxpayer," they said.
The U.S. has appropriated roughly $89.42 billion for Afghanistan reconstruction since 2002. But President Barack Obama is winding down the effort, having requested $9.7 billion for reconstruction for the budget year beginning in October — a 34 percent reduction from the $14.8 billion Congress provided for 2012.
It's unclear how much money has been collected by Kabul from contractors doing the work — building highways, schools, facilities for Afghanistan's growing security forces and so on. But a number of American contractors complained last year that they had received bills for overdue taxes and were threatened with arrest and revocation of their licenses to operate there.
Taxation of U.S. government assistance is prohibited by American law and bilateral accords between the United States and Afghanistan, officials say. But there has been disagreement from Afghans over what tax-exempt status means and who gets it.
According to a letter to the Pentagon, State Department and USAID notifying them of the audit, the special inspector general's office will begin work this month to determine:
--What Afghan fees are levied on contractors and sub-contractors supporting U.S. reconstruction programs and the amounts collected.
--Whether Afghan fees levied on contractors and sub-contractors violate international agreements.
--What the impact will be on Afghanistan's operating budget from declining activity by the international coalition there and after the 2014 withdrawal of forces.
There was no date given for when the audit might be completed.
Welch and Jones also have been working to address the issue. In December, they introduced legislation to bar future assistance to Afghanistan unless U.S. contractors and subcontractors delivering aid are exempt from taxation by the government of Afghanistan. Welch and Jones successfully amended the National Defense Authorization Act - which passed the House last month - to include a similar provision.
Karzai also has gone head-to-head with Americans on other contractor issues, ordering that all new foreign development projects employ government security guards rather than those from private Afghan and foreign companies. Private development companies complained that the move would threatened billions in U.S. aid to the country because companies would delay projects or leave altogether out of fear they wouldn't be safe using strictly local security.
The Afghan government in late March gave companies extensions of varying lengths to make the change.
FEATURE-Afghans slow to warm to their stable currency
Reuters By Sanjeev Miglani and Mirwais Harooni June 20, 2012
KABUL - Abdullah Kakar, an employee in the agriculture department in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, converts most of his wages into Pakistani rupees each month except for a small amount to pay his electric bill, school fees and top up his phone card.
Everything else he pays for in the Pakistani currency, from tomatoes to the rent for his house, like millions of people in a swathe of provinces stretching from Nangarhar in the east down to Zabul and Kandahar in the south.
Most of the provinces share a border with Pakistan, but there are others, such as Ghazni in central Afghanistan, where the Afghan currency, the afghani, is competing with the rupee.
In the west, it is the Iranian rial that is freely used.
Ten years after the central bank withdrew three different types of bank notes and coins issued by warlords and relaunched the afghani, the administration is still struggling to enforce its use as the medium of exchange.
Part of the reason people prefer to hold foreign currencies is a nagging lack of confidence in Afghan money, fostered over decades of turmoil, even though the afghani has been remarkably stable against the U.S. dollar.
But that stability could be in question with the withdrawal of foreign combat forces by 2014. As the troops leave, taking with them some of the dollars and euros with which the country is flush, the afghani could come under downward pressure.
That could spell trouble if all civil servants and members of the security forces see the purchasing power of their afghani pay-packets wither compared with the cost of imports, including many staples.
Kakar, 32, said he had been using the kaldar, as the Pakistani currency is known in Afghanistan, his whole life and for many years he had known it to be the only currency.
"It is the currency that everyone uses. When I lend money to someone, it's in kaldar. If I pay a bribe it's in kaldar."
The fact that he's breaking the law is immaterial to Kakar, and everyone else, to the frustration of the governor of the central bank, Noorullah Delawari.
"The law requires people settle their daily business in the Afghan currency," Delawari, who launched the afghani during his first term, told Reuters in an interview at his Kabul headquarters.
"But we have a limited number of people vis-a-vis the population to enforce that. It is a serious problem."
The central bank has run a campaign to tell people that just as they salute the national flag, they must have respect for the currency.
When that failed, the bank ordered fines of up to 100,000 afghanis ($1,960) for anyone caught refusing to accept the currency, but like much else, its writ does not easily run across the nation that is battling a Taliban insurgency.
The afghani was trading at around 51.7 to the dollar this week while Pakistan's beleaguered rupee closed on Tuesday at 93.88/94 and the Iranian rial was at 12,250.
"POLITICAL ISSUE"
Throughout the last decade the artificially pegged afghani has been far more stable than its peers to the east and the west, staying around 50 to the dollar while the rupee has lost slightly more than half its value in that period.
The rial is also down.
Yet people are sticking to the rupee, which under Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001 was the most prevalent currency, although in many parts of the country, including Kabul, the afghani has become the first choice.
But if you don't have afghanis, shopkeepers - whether the man at a used-bicycle stall in a bazaar near the central bank, or the teenager selling Samsung television sets at his dad's store - all accept the rupee without batting an eyelid.
"Dollar, kaldar anything is acceptable," said Henayatullah, who sells state-of the art Japanese music systems trucked in from Pakistan in his shop by the side of an open sewage drain.
One reason for the prevalence of foreign currencies is that Afghanistan hardly produces anything, importing everything from cars to staples like eggs. When shopkeepers buy goods from Pakistan with rupees they want rupees back.
The value of Afghanistan's annual trade is about $5 billion with barely 250 million of that from exports. The rest is imports, 68 percent of which come from Pakistan with which Afghanistan shares a largely open 2,430 km (1,500- mile) border, culture and religion.
Delawari says ultimately the solution for Afghanistan is to produce more of the goods it consumes, at least the daily staples which will bring down the use of foreign currency.
The other main reason Afghans prefer rupees and rials is worry about instability and the kind of currency upheavals that have sapped savings in the past.
"It's not an economic issue, more of a political issue," said another central bank official, who declined to be identified as he did not have permission to speak to media.
"We have gone through a time when say, you had 1,000 afghanis in your bank account, and overnight a decree is issued to remove three zeroes. You are only left with one afghani. It is psychological, it erodes confidence," he said.
Central bank officials say new sources of income have to be found if the currency is to remain stable. The government has pinned its hopes on revenue from mining and transit fees from electricity running from Central Asia to Pakistan and India
"The best way to stop this is to have our own production and not depend on our neighbours for basic things," said Delawari. (Editing by Robert Birsel)
Afghanistan still world's main source of asylum seekers
KABUL, June 21 (Xinhua) -- Afghanistan is still the leading source of asylum seekers in the world, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), now known simply as the United Nations Refugee Agency.
A press statement released by the UNHCR office here on World Refugee Day Wednesday says that "although some 5.7 million Afghan refugees have returned home since 2002, Afghanistan is still the main origin of asylum seekers."
The UNHCR said that a quarter of the refugees that it is now assisting originate from Afghanistan, adding that Pakistan and Iran continue to be the two main refugee hosting countries for 95 percent of Afghan refugees.
This means some 1.7 million Afghan refugees are in Pakistan and nearly one million in Iran.
In addition to this, it is estimated that there are more than 2 million unregistered Afghan refugees now living in Pakistan and Iran.
The rate of refugees returns from Iran and Pakistan has declined remarkably in the past two years. So far in 2012, according to the UNHCR, only 34,000 refugees have returned home.
The war-weary Afghans, especially the teenagers who live at home or in neighboring countries, are eager to leave for industrialized nations, particularly European countries, United States, Canada and Australia.
More than 30,000 Afghans, according to reports, applied for asylum in developed nations in 2011.
Many of these youngsters prefer to migrate to peaceful and developed countries by paying huge bribes to human traffickers and risking long and perilous journeys.
Mohammad Taqi, 38, was one of those asylum seekers, who according to Afghan media reports lost his life in Indonesia on the way to Australia a couple of days ago.
Other Afghans who returned home are now complaining because of lack of jobs and difficult living conditions in their own country.
"I have returned home from Pakistan and have been living under a tent for the past eight years with the hope to have shelter, job and proper income to feed my children," Habib, 40, told Xinhua.
He also complained that his 20-day-old infant passed away due to cold weather last winter.
Habib's neighbor Samad Khan, 60, had also complained of the poor living condition in the makeshift camp. He said the government has failed to provide them with shelter and job since they returned home.
"After living in Pakistan for 17 years as refugee I returned home in 2011 hoping for a better life in my country but unfortunately I have not received any assistance from my government," said 62-year-old Bahadur. He added that he has been renting a house with the help of a relative in Canada.
"The continued hardship has forced me to consider re-migration to Pakistan or if possible to Canada," Bahadur said.
The Afghan government said that it is doing its best to provide returnees with assistance that they need.
"Our focus today is to enhance development and support sustainable reintegration of Afghan returnees in communities by providing them with livelihood, basic services and shelter. We want to encourage returnees to remain in Afghanistan while we are increasing our support for the return of refugees from host countries," said Dr. Jamaher Anwary, minister of refugees and repatriation in his message to mark the World Refugee Day.
But Anwary also called on the international community "to contribute more for the reintegration of large groups of returnees to Afghanistan."
US to Donate 146 Warplanes to Afghan Army: MOD
TOLOnews.com By Mahboba Pardis Wednesday, 20 June 2012
The United States government has decided to give 146 planes to Afghanistan's National Army air force by 2016, a spokesman for Afghan Ministry of Defence (MOD) said Wednesday.
The ministry praised the decision adding that more warplanes should be given to Afghanistan in order to protect the country from any kind of threat.
"There is an agreement that US would give us 146 warplanes but we are not satisfied with this, the number should increase. The planes would be used in any kind of situation." General Mohammad Zaher Azimi, MOD spokesman said.
Strengthening the abilities of Afghanistan's Air Force could play a vital role in combating insurgency through the country and protecting the nation from any outside threat.
According to Mr Azimi, a clearing offensive named ‘Omid' will be launched by Afghan National Army aimed to clear insurgents throughout the country. The operation will focus on southern and eastern provinces which have witnessed insurgency throughout the year.
He also added that more than 85 percent of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) are being brought to Afghanistan from the neighbouring countries.
'Kite Runner' Author Urges More Support For Afghan Refugees
June 21, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Novelist Khaled Hosseini came to the United States as a 15-year-old Afghan asylum seeker who knew only a few words of English. Today he is a doctor, a United Nations goodwill ambassador, and author of two internationally acclaimed books, “The Kite Runner” and “A Thousand Splendid Suns.” Hosseini told RFE/RL that when he left Afghanistan in 1976, Kabul was a "growing, thriving, cosmopolitan city." By the end of his father’s four-year post at the Afghan Embassy in Paris, his country had been invaded by the Soviet Union. Hosseini and his family sought asylum in the United States and ended up in California, where he became a doctor and eventually wrote “The Kite Runner,” which was an overnight literary sensation. RFE/RL correspondent Courtney Brooks caught up with Hosseini at the United Nations on World Refugee Day, where he spoke about the plight millions of Afghans face, both inside and outside the beleaguered country.
RFE/RL: Can you describe the impact that 30 years of war has had on your country’s culture, and on the daily life of Afghans?
Khaled Hosseini: It’s been incalculable. We’re still suffering the legacy of all the different wars in Afghanistan. You know, this is a country that today finds itself as one of the poorest non-African nations in the world, that has a GDP that ranks 218 in the world, [and] where, on average, 30 percent of people live below the poverty level. The country faces rising insecurity in different regions of the country. Millions of people have returned to Afghanistan from Iran and Pakistan -- about 5.7 million since 2002 -- most of them with assistance from the UN refugee agency [UNHCR]. And those people who returned to Afghanistan, those refugees, have had a really hard time adjusting to life in Afghanistan, have had a [really hard] time reintegrating and restarting their lives.
And so Afghanistan is in need of long term economic development, of developmental projects that will trickle down to the village level [and] affect people at the local level -- and we are by now, more or less agreed, everybody is at the same page, that there is no military solution in Afghanistan. And so my hope is that the international community will continue to support the country economically even if NATO and the U.S. forces are no longer in charge of military operations. But I think for most Afghans, this is a period of anxiety, this transition period. The jury is sort of out on how well the Afghan state is prepared, equipped, [and] trained to protect its people from the insurgent groups, and I think the next few years will be very telling years.
RFE/RL: Ahead of NATO's planned 2014 pullout, violence in Afghanistan does not seem to be abating. Taliban and Taliban-associated groups often attack NATO checkpoints and soldiers -- such as the June 20 bombing, which killed at least 21 people. Can you describe the prevailing national sentiment toward Americans?
Hosseini: I think the last few years -- although generally there is support for the foreign troops because people fear that in the absence of the foreign troops the country may slide back into the chaos of the 1990’s and military warfare may break out -- that support has dropped to some level. [This is due to] the perception that promises that were made by the West haven’t necessarily been kept because of the civilian casualties caused by air strikes, and night raids, and so on, and also because of fairly effective propaganda on the part of the Taliban. So although on balance that support is not as strong as it was, my sense is that in general people still have a fairly supportive stance toward the foreign presence -- not because they enjoy having foreign troops on their lands, quite the opposite. But mainly because the alternative -- the fear that Afghanistan will slide back toward all out militia warfare and the chaos of the 1990s -- is just too grisly a scenario to be considered.
RFE/RL: What would be the best scenario for the 10 years of support the United States has promised afterward?
Hosseini: We have millions of Afghans who have returned to Afghanistan, and we have 2.7 million refugees who are still living in Iran and Pakistan and appear to be reluctant to return home. The main reason -- certainly security cannot be discounted and is part of the reason -- but also, people are aware that basic resources, basic services and resources, are lacking in Afghanistan. [Of] the 5.7 million [people] who returned to Afghanistan, anywhere from 40 to 60 percent of them have not successfully reintegrated, and they end up either returning to Iran [or] Pakistan or being secondarily displaced because they don’t have access to jobs, to water, to schools -- basic services that we need for day-to-day survival. So I think the solution strategy that [was] arrived at in Geneva in May of this year with the governments of Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and UNHCR (High Commission on Refugees) , was that we need economic development at the local level, at the rural village level, [and] the community level in order to build viable communities in Afghanistan so that those millions of refugees who have returned can be anchored and can have a chance at a successful long term reintegration.
RFE/RL: What kind of hope do you have for Afghanistan? Is there a ‘best case’ scenario that you see in the next 18 months or two years?
Hosseini: In this next year and a half [or] two years, I still see that there will be insecurity marked by spikes in violence. I think there will be political tension and a sort of a shrinking humanitarian space where aid organizations will have increasing difficulty delivering assistance to the people who need it in Afghanistan. But it’s my hope, and that of every Afghan, that eventually the war will end, that a peace process will come about, and that the parties will sit at a table where the best case scenario would be that legitimate representatives from all corners of society are represented at the table and present, that the peace process represents the will and aspirations of the people of Afghanistan, and is one that is inclusive, particularly with regards to women and their rights. So that’s sort of the hope for all of us, that’s the best case scenario; that Afghanistan, after 32 years of war and upheaval, will finally be a nation that is once again at peace, within and without.
U.S. Treasury Sanctions Members Of Afghan Narcotics Network
June 20, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Treasury Department has sanctioned four members of Afghanistan's Barakzai narcotics trafficking network, prohibiting U.S. citizens from conducting transactions with them and freezing any U.S. assets they may have.
A Treasury statement said Shah Mohammad Barakzai is the head of a drug-trafficking ring based in Gereshk, Afghanistan.
He was arrested last year by Afghan counternarcotics authorities.
Also sanctioned are Haji Baz Mohammad, who Washington says controls opium cultivation and transportation for the network; Abdul "Doctor" Hadi, who allegedly processed opium for the network; and Mohammad Wali, who is said to have served as the network's main financial conduit in Kandahar.
The sanctions also name two exchange houses used by the organization.
Afghanistan remains the world's top supplier of opium despite years of U.S. and international eradication and counternarcotics efforts.
U.S. recommends no criminal charges for Afghan Koran burning
Reuters By Mirwais Harooni and Missy Ryan Reuters June 20, 2012
KABUL - U.S. soldiers involved in burning copies of the Koran in Afghanistan may face only administrative discipline, a U.S. official said, a move that could deepen frustration among Afghans seeking more serious punishment for a series of public American missteps there this year.
A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Wednesday that an investigation into the February incident on a NATO military base near Kabul concluded with recommendations for administrative action for the military personnel involved.Such action might include a written reprimand or docked pay, but not job loss or criminal charges, the official said. U.S. military officials have not announced a final decision.
Another U.S. official said the administrative action was recommended for "most of the service members involved" in the incident in which Afghan laborers found charred copies of the Koran among trash on the Bagram base north of Kabul. But the official declined to say exactly how many U.S. troops.
The Pentagon said General John Allen, the U.S. head of international forces in Afghanistan, had reviewed the recommended punishments and passed them up the chain of command. Final decision on punishment will rest with commanders in the U.S. Army and Navy who are responsible for the service members.
The Pentagon declined to say how many service members could face punishment or give their ranks.
Eleven soldiers were sent out of Afghanistan over the Koran desecration, which U.S. officials said was unintentional but which exposed deep divisions between foreign troops and Afghans wearied by more than 10 years of war.
The office of Afghan President Hamid Karzai declined to comment on the possible move by the Pentagon.
Nazir Ahmad Hanafi, an influential member of Afghanistan's parliament and deputy head of its judicial committee, said relatively light punishment for the soldiers involved would have "dangerous consequences."
Hanafi, a member of Afghanistan's Ulema Council of clerics who also took part in an initial joint Afghan-U.S. probe into the incident, said he favored a more severe punishment, possibly even life in prison.
"Otherwise, it will inflame public opinion," he said.
The Korans were burned after they were removed from a prison library at NATO's largest base in Afghanistan, triggering protests and violence across the country that killed at least 30 people. Shortly afterward, two American officers were shot dead in a secure area of the Afghan Interior Ministry.
Afghanistan initially demanded a public trial for the soldiers involved, while the Taliban urged Afghan forces to turn against their foreign counterparts.
Nazifa Zaki, a former police official who is now a lawmaker from Kabul, said foreigners who "insulted" Islam should receive harsh punishment as a lesson to others.
SERIES OF MISSTEPS
The Koran incident was among a recent series of public missteps for the United States in Afghanistan, which also included the massacre of more than a dozen villagers allegedly by a U.S. soldier and photographs showing U.S. soldiers urinating on Afghan corpses.
U.S. President Barack Obama apologized to Karzai over the Koran burnings, which fuelled widespread demonstrations for more than a week.
Pentagon spokesman George Little rejected suggestions that the spate of incidents was indicative of a larger problem about the way members of the U.S. military view Islam.
"I would be very hesitant to suggest that this in any way points to a broader trend inside the U.S. military," he said. "The vast majority of our troops have profound respect for Islam."
Afzal Aman, head of the operations division at the Afghan Defense Ministry, said he did not expect the decision on punishment of U.S. troops to have an impact on Afghan and NATO soldiers' fight against the Taliban and its allies.
As the financial and human cost of the war mounts, NATO countries are planning to pull most of their soldiers from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
Aman said lenient punishment might fuel militant propaganda, but he said Afghan troops would be ready. "We will wait to see what people say about it," he said.
(Reporting by Rob Taylor, Missy Ryan and Mirwais Harooni in Kabul; David Alexander in Washington; Phil Stewart in Jeddah; Editing by Warren Strobel and Doina Chiacu)
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
By Joshua Partlow, The Washington Post Thursday, June 21, 5:51 PM
KABUL — Ahead of an international conference aimed at collecting billions more in foreign aid for Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai on Thursday called on his government to step up the fight against the rampant corruption that has badly eroded his administration’s credibility over the years.
“Corruption has reached its peak in this country,” Karzai told assembled lawmakers at the parliament building in Kabul. “It is our responsibility to improve. If we heal this pain, then Afghanistan will be independent and progressive.”
Karzai’s address appeared to be an attempt to begin changing the narrative about his government’s ability to handle the flood of dollars that United States and other NATO countries intend to keep sending to Afghanistan, even after the bulk of American troops withdraw by the end of 2014. Donor nations have grown more determined to link future funding to improvements in Afghan governance, a subject likely to be discussed at next month’s conference on Afghanistan in Tokyo.
NATO officials were anticipating Karzai’s speech Thursday as an important marker for whether he intends to pursue a legacy of reform in the two years he has remaining in office.
So far, his government has done little to address years of allegations of graft and cronyism and has often deflected the criticism onto American companies operating in Afghanistan. Skepticism among the international community here remains high. “He’ll sing a pretty song on Thursday,” one NATO official said before the speech.
Karzai offered few specifics about what new measures might be taken to address corruption. But he did ask “the foreigners, America and other countries, to not award their construction, building and commercial contracts to the government authorities and their relatives.” Afghans linked to government officials have profited handsomely over the years from U.S. contracts.
“This is a debate that I have had with them for the past four years. This causes corruption in the Afghan administration. ... If America wants corruption to stop, then stop this,” he said.
Among the Afghans who have profited from the gusher of U.S. aid and close government connections have been Karzai’s relatives. Watan Oil and Gas, a company owned by two of the president’s cousins, Rashed and Rateb Popal, was recently awarded a $3 billion contract in a joint venture with a Chinese firm to develop oil fields in northern Afghanistan, Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper reported Thursday.
Karzai also called on the United States to send the former head of Afghanistan’s central bank back to Kabul for trial. Abdul Qadir Fitrat fled to the United States last year after he said his life was in danger for pushing the government to resolve the scandal at Kabul Bank, where nearly $1 billion was stolen and distributed to prominent businessmen. U.S. officials tend to support Fitrat and have said in the past it’s unlikely he’ll return.
Karzai asked the lawmakers for their cooperation on starting a new phase for the Afghan government, and he said he would lead by example.
“You should cooperate with me on these reforms. You have accused me of making deals. Yes, I have done so, but I had reasons. And now I am changing this. I am bringing reform from the inside,” Karzai said.
Special correspondent Sayed Salahuddin contributed to this report.
Hamid Karzai government under fire for oil deal with company run by cousin
Anti-corruption campaigners and diplomats have challenged Hamid Karzai's government for awarding a $3bn oil deal to a company run by a cousin who was jailed in the United States for drug trafficking.
By Ben Farmer, Kabul and Dean Nelson in New Delhi 20 Jun 2012 Telegraph (UK)
Watan Oil and Gas, controlled by President Karzai's notorious cousins Rashid and Rateb Popal, won the oil extraction contract in a joint venture with a Chinese state-owned firm despite accusations another of their companies used US funds to pay protection money to Taliban commanders.
The 25-year deal gives Watan and the China National Petroleum Company access to an estimated 160 million barrels of oil from three fields in northern Afghanistan.
Up to £2 trillion of minerals, oil and gas are estimated to be beneath Afghanistan and its mineral riches are key to Western hopes the country can one day wean itself from foreign aid and pay its own way.
The oil deal in the Amu Darya Basin had been seen as a model for further fossil fuel contracts, but diplomats and activists are now concerned it heralds the carving up of Afghanistan's resources.
The selection of a group controlled by President Karzai's cousins Rashid and Rateb Popal, who served nearly nine years in jail in New York in the 1990s on drugs charges, has caused particular alarm.
"I think we all desperately hoped that British soldiers were dying for something more noble than helping Karzai's drug dealing cousin to sell gas from northern Afghanistan to the Chinese," one former senior diplomat to Kabul told The Daily Telegraph.
Another of their companies, Watan Risk Management, provides security to supply convoys and was at the heart of a US Congressional investigation into protection companies paying the Taliban millions of dollars for safe passage.
The investigation found the brothers used a warlord to provide security and he allegedly paid millions to the Taliban in what became one of the insurgent's biggest income streams.
The brothers denied paying off the Taliban, but officials attempted to block them from further US contracts.
"The fact that Watan continues to receive contracts despite the allegations against it is a concern," said Juman Jubba, Afghanistan researcher for Global Witness, which campaigns against corruption in mining deals.
"It is crucial that company histories are considered during the bidding process and that reasoning and justifications for awarding each contract are made public."
The contract was awarded in December, but has seen renewed scrutiny in recent weeks as a potential source of violence in northern Afghanistan.
Competition over the benefits from the oil deal is thought to have triggered a confrontation between Mr Karzai's government and General Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Uzbek strongman who controls the area.
The Afghan National Security Council accused Gen Dostum earlier this month of treason for holding up the work and said he was trying to extort money from the Chinese.
His spokesman said he had just complained that security guards and workers should be from the local area, rather than being brought in by Watan.
Watan and the Chinese have pledged to produce 150,000 barrels by the end of this year.
They won the contract against three other firms and offered far better terms than their competitors, observers said.
Javed Noorani, a researcher for Integrity Watch Afghanistan, said the bidding had been tightly overseen by US advisers and the Chinese had offered an "excellent deal", by paying 15 per cent royalties and promising Kabul 50 to 70 per cent of the profits.
By securing the deal with such favourable terms to the government, the Chinese are now well placed to win the far larger Afghan Tajik fields, which hold up to 1.6 billion barrels of oil and gas, he said.
Afghanistan expects $4 billion in aid pledges at July conference
Thursday, June 21, 2012
KABUL (Reuters) - Donor nations are likely to pledge a total of $4 billion in civilian assistance for Afghanistan at an aid conference in Japan next month, President Hamid Karzai said on Thursday in a national speech aimed at curbing corruption in his country.
"Such an amount, more or less, will be pledged for the Afghan economy at the Tokyo conference," Karzai said during a specially convened session of parliament, indicating the support would come after most foreign combat troops left in 2014.
Donors will gather in Tokyo to decide on future foreign support for reconstruction and development in desperately poor Afghanistan, which is still heavily reliant on aid, and suffers from widespread graft more than ten years into the NATO-led war.
The head of Afghanistan's central bank said this week his country would need $6-7 billion a year in aid over the next decade to help the economy grow.
But the government is under pressure from Western backers to do more to fight corruption, and reassure donors that their money will not be squandered through contract fraud and theft.
Karzai called for the United States to send former central bank governor Abdul Qadir Fitrat back to Afghanistan for trial, a move that would improve the credibility of his anti-corruption efforts.
Fitrat announced his resignation a year ago during a visit to the U.S., saying he feared for his life as a result of his role in investigating a scandal surrounding Kabulbank, which collapsed in 2010 with outstanding loans of almost $1 billion.
Karzai's government has yet to prosecute a single high-level corruption case, despite being ranked one of the world's most graft-affected countries by the Berlin-based anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International.
Highlighting the worries among Karzai's backers, Britain's aid watchdog earlier this year called on the government in London to tighten its oversight of the aid programme in Afghanistan.
Karzai last year blamed foreigners for the massive scale of corruption in his country after a scandal involving the near-collapse of the biggest private financial institution, Kabul Bank, which swept up powerful figures close to the presidency.
In Thursday's speech to the fractious parliament, for which large parts of central Kabul were locked down to guard against insurgents, a sombre Karzai said the influence of warlords was strengthening in some parts of central Afghanistan ahead of NATO's exit, and national elections also slated for 2014.
He also said militant attacks were mounting on Afghan security forces and told MPs that Afghans would have only themselves to blame if security worsened in the future.
Afghanistan would require help in keeping its growing police and army equipped and ready to battle the Taliban and its allies, with donor nations also expected to provide $4.1 billion a year post-2014 to finance local security forces, he said.
Taliban attacks on US bases in Afghanistan: enabled by Pakistani forces?
The volume of explosives used in attacks on US military bases in Afghanistan in recent days fuels concern that Pakistani security services are taking a stronger hand in backing insurgent groups.
By Anna Mulrine | Christian Science Monitor
A recent spate of attacks on US military bases in Afghanistan points to a resilient Taliban with a steady supply of arms. It is a supply stream flowing from Pakistan – one that US troops, try as they might, are proving unable to interrupt.
Equally troubling for the Pentagon, analysts warn that these attacks serve as growing evidence that Pakistani security services (ISI) is stepping up its support of insurgent groups to jockey for position ahead of the scheduled 2014 departure of US combat troops from the country.
On Wednesday, two attacks in eastern Afghanistan killed three US troops and at least 25 Afghans, prompting the US Embassy to condemn the Taliban’s “murderous campaign.”
These attacks come on the heels of one of the most troubling insurgent offensives in some time, according to analysts. It occurred earlier this month, when a suicide-bomber in a car filled with explosives was able to breach perimeter security at a large US base near the eastern Afghanistan city of Khost.
The bomber detonated the explosives near the base dining hall at Camp Salerno, allowing other enemy fighters to stream into the base on foot – and open fire. A spokesman for the Taliban boasted that the insurgents had “suicide vests, rocket-propelled grenades, heavy machine guns, and hand grenades.” The attack injured dozens of troops.
The US military did not disclose the breadth of the breach in base security for some time. When the details emerged, it was clear that, “It was a pretty significant attack in terms of the amount of explosives used – and the ability to get that close and detonate them,” says Jeffrey Dressler, a senior analyst at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington.
The sheer volume of explosives involved in the attack points to ISI links with an insurgency “that’s proving to be a continuous challenge” for US forces in eastern Afghanistan, Mr. Dressler says.
In eastern Afghan provinces such as Khost, Taliban-affiliated insurgent groups, such as the Haqqani network, maintain safe haven and logistical lines that run all the way to Pakistan – and use these places to project their power into neighboring provinces even closer to Kabul.
“The fact that these guys can move trucks full of explosives across the border” is troubling, Dressler adds. “By not taking action, Pakistani forces “are signaling their tacit approval of this stuff.”
These sorts of behaviors – including “increased collusion” between the ISI and Pakistani-based insurgent groups – “are likely to increase” with the drawdown of US forces, Dressler warns, “unless you can get into these places [in eastern Afghanistan] and go on the offensive like we did in Helmand and Kandahar [provinces of southern Afghanistan]."
Yet US troop levels required for such operations are unlikely to materialize, as the drawdown of forces in Afghanistan continues apace. What’s more, US commanders have pointed out that offensive operations in the harsh mountainous regions of the east have been little more than “lawn-mowing” operations and that once US forces leave after fighting tough, casualty-heavy battles, the insurgency returns.
Because Afghan forces have been unable and in some cases unwilling to battle Pakistan-based insurgents, these operations have had little effect connecting the Afghan central government to remote outlying regions – a key component of counterinsurgency warfare.
In the midst of this uncertainty, Pakistan’s security forces continue to jockey for position, using insurgent groups in order to “control as much of the south and the east as it can,” Dressler adds. “All of the stuff we’re seeing now tracks with that ultimate objective.”
Without stepped-up US forces in the east, “I guess I’m just wondering where the red lines are,” he says. “How much are we willing to put up with when it comes to these sorts of attacks?"
Militant attacks on Afghan forces on rise: Karzai
Press TV June 21, 2012
Afghan President Hamid Karzai says militant attacks on the security forces have been increased in the war-torn country in recent months.
Hamid Karzai made the remarks on Thursday, a day after killing of 21 people by a bomb attack in Afghanistan’s eastern city of Khost.
"I have noticed that these days, in the past one, two or three months, attacks on our soldiers, police and intelligence officers have increased," Karzai said.
"Every day we have at least 20 to 25 casualties, every day at least 20 to 25 of our youths are making the sacrifice for this country and are being killed."
The 21 people were killed on Wednesday after a bomber riding a motorbike attacked a joint Afghan-NATO convey passing through the town.
Another bomb explosion on Wednesday left at least eight Afghan women and children dead in Afghanistan’s Eastern Logar Province.
Foreign and Afghan forces are being killed by Taliban militants on a nearly daily basis in Afghanistan.
Insecurity continues to rise across Afghanistan despite the presence of about 130,000 US-led forces in the war-ravaged country.
The US-led war in Afghanistan, with civilian and military casualties at record high, has become the longest military conflict in American history.
The United Nations announced on February 4 that 2011 was the deadliest year on record for Afghan civilians. The death toll rose eight percent compared to the year before and was roughly double the figure for 2007.
Afghan civilians have paid a high price since the US-led invasion of the country in 2001.
Afghanistan Based MTN Company Receives ‘3G' License
TOLOnews.com Wednesday, 20 June 2012
Afghanistan based MTN company received ‘3G' License from Afghan Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (MoCIT) Wednesday.
MTN is the second GSM provider in Afghanistan to receive 3G license after paying $25 million to the Ministry of Information and Technology.
In a ceremony held in Kabul, Amirzai Sangin, Afghan Information Technology Minister said that more than 50% of the country's population will use high speed internet with lower prices in two years as the 3G services grow.
"I am pretty sure that 50% of the country's population will use internet because all the towers are installed. The only thing the companies should do is to install the 3G compatible devices." Mr Sangin said adding that almost 70 percent of overall equipments have been installed.
As most Afghan worry about an economic shortfall after 2014, Finance Minister Hazrat Omar Zakhilwal believes that providing 3G services is a good sign to attract investment in Afghanistan as he doubts any economical shortfall after that period.
"We hope that such investments attract other investments and remove any economical concerns. Any improvement in the economics depends on such investments." Mr Zakhilwal said.
"Investment is the engine of our economic growth."
Etisalat was the first GSM mobile Company in Afghanistan which received 3G license three months ago.
Defense officials say summer poses toughest test for Afghan forces
Associated Press Thursday, June 21, 2012
WASHINGTON - This summer’s fighting in Afghanistan will be the toughest test for the country’s evolving security forces as they try to root out insurgents in the more heavily populated regions, senior defense officials told skeptical lawmakers on Wednesday.
The officials said that while the next few months will be a significant challenge, it also comes before the United States withdraws its surge force of 23,000 American troops in a war that has lasted more than a decade and left the public war-weary.
“The time to test them is now, when we have the forces in theater to ensure their success,” David Sedney, deputy assistant secretary of defense for Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia, told a House Armed Services subcommittee.
Members of the panel voiced concerns about the capabilities of the Afghan National Security Forces, questioning the attrition rate and the operations in which Afghans are assuming the lead. The hearing came against the backdrop of fresh violence in the country. A suicide bomber killed 21 people including three U.S. soldiers at a checkpoint in a crowded market in eastern Afghanistan. It was the third assault targeting Americans in as many days and raised questions about the U.S.-led coalition’s plan to handover security to Afghan forces at the end of 2014.
There was no question about the latest violence at the hearing. But lawmakers sought an assessment of the Afghan force, whether goals on the number in the force can be met and the size of the enemy. Pressed on the number of Taliban, Sedney said they number 15,000 to 20,000, based on the latest intelligence estimate, though some only fight for a day while others battle every day.
Army Maj. Gen. Stephen Townsend, director of the Pakistan-Afghanistan coordination cell, told the panel that the percentage of attrition has dropped though it still remains a problem. He said the Afghan National Army is still on track to meet its goal of 195,000 by the end of the summer, the national police 157,000 before October and the security forces 352,000.
Townsend said the forces are taking on greater responsibilities.
“The percentage of Afghan-led partnered operations increase from 33 percent in January 2012 to 59 percent in April. In some regions of the country Afghan forces conduct independent operations at a higher rate than their partnered operations,” he said.
This summer, operations will focus on more heavily populated regions. Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., chairman of the subcommittee and a recent visitor to Afghanistan, asked what would happen if the security forces were less than successful this summer.
Sedney said the next few months will give Marine Gen. John Allen, the top commander in Afghanistan, a chance to evaluate the Afghan forces and determine future requirements, which inevitably would involve how many U.S. troops to keep in the country.
The United States currently has 88,000 American troops there. President Barack Obama envisions a final withdrawal of U.S. combat troops in 2014 though no timetable has been set.
Members of the committee have challenged Obama’s planned withdrawal. The defense bill that the House approved earlier this year calls for keeping a sizable number of U.S. combat troops in the country. The bill cites significant uncertainty in Afghanistan about U.S. military support and says that to reduce the uncertainty and promote stability the president should “maintain a force of at least 68,000 troops through Dec. 31, 2014, unless fewer forces can achieve United States objectives.”
The hearing was part of the Republican-led committee’s work on a report on Afghanistan that likely will be released in the weeks before the November elections, according to lawmakers and staff. Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Afghan refugees forced to return home
The Washington Post By Kevin Sieff Thursday, June 21, 2012
Kabul - During the last stretch of his family’s journey home, Esmatullah perched atop a truckload of kitchenware, firewood and furniture, hurtling toward Kabul while the evidence of three decades in exile shifted beneath him.
On either side of the truck, the bazaars grew denser. The buildings became taller and more fortified. American convoys snaked through traffic, heading downtown.
Nearly two days after leaving their home in Pakistan, Esmatullah and his 22 relatives had made it to Afghanistan’s capital, after 30 years as refugees. They looked out at their country. They tried not to panic.
The uncertainty shrouding Afghanistan’s future has prompted thousands of Afghans to seek an escape route — foreign visa applications, asylum pleas, long journeys across the border. But every day, families swim against that current, returning to Afghanistan after years abroad, finding a country that has been transformed by all the development and war wrought by a decade-long U.S. intervention and a persistent insurgency.
Some of the returnees are here by choice — nostalgic for the country of their youth, drawn back by word of renewed security and opportunity. Most, like Esmatullah’s family, have returned involuntarily — compelled by the Pakistani government’s unwillingness to extend their refugee status.
Nearly 3 million Afghans will be expelled from Pakistan by the end of the year if an extension isn’t granted, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Such a mass deportation could further destabilize Afghanistan, straining its economy and challenging its fledgling security forces. Although UNHCR officials are optimistic that the issue will be resolved, many Afghans in Pakistan have responded to the looming deadline by heading home after years in exile.
Esmatullah’s father, Haji Bismillah, fled Afghanistan in 1979, at the beginning of the Soviet occupation. He was 35 when he left the country on horseback, with a wife and three young children. When he returned this month, he looked brittle, worn by hard decades. With him were his nearly two-dozen sons, daughters and grandchildren, most of whom had never been to Afghanistan.
As the family’s truck sped closer to downtown Kabul, Bismillah marveled at how the city had grown — shops and military bases and government buildings fanning out for miles. “I’m finally home,” he said.
But as Bismillah rejoiced, his sons, who spoke Pashto with thick Pakistani accents, grew worried. They had heard stories about terrorism and a bleak economy.
“I cannot stay here” thought Mohammed Ullah, 19. “I will run away.”
“There is no value for human life here,” thought his brother, Rahmatullah, 33.
What were they expecting? It is hard to say exactly. They didn’t know which stories were true, how bad the violence would be, whether their neighbors would assume that they were spies.
More than 8 million Afghans fled to Pakistan between 1979 and 2002. At least half of them have returned since 2001, attracted by the promise of a post-Taliban Afghanistan. When that transition proved rocky, many fled once again, the allure of home dimmed by protracted conflict.
Bismillah and his family watched those waves of migration just as they watched the war itself: from 500 miles away, on television, through stories from relatives and friends — a distance that imbued the unrest with a kind of unreality.
Then the war came to them. Last year, on a warm night in May, the brothers awoke to a large blast and the buzz of helicopters hovering above their adopted home town of Abbottabad, Pakistan. When the family awoke, they learned that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had been killed a mile from where they slept. The next day, they walked over to take photos of bin Laden’s littered compound.
The war knocked again when mounting tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan — exacerbated by the bin Laden raid — meant that their visas would not be renewed, that they would have no choice but to return.
Rahmatullah had been sent to Kabul several weeks before the rest of the family to look for a home big enough for 23 people but cheap enough for the poor refugee family. He arrived on the same day that the Taliban executed a coordinated attack in seven locations across the country.
He called his father while the assault continued and pleaded, “Let’s not move. Let’s never move here.”
But Bismillah said they must. The Pakistani government had made life hard for Afghan refugees, he said. He was getting old. He wanted to die on his own soil.
So the family hired a driver with an open-roof truck and piled in their belongings: electric fans, carpets, bicycles, anything that would fit. Then the brothers each stuffed their bags and pockets with more sentimental items. Mohammed Ullah took photos of his classmates. Rahmatullah took a poster of his favorite park in Islamabad. Esmatullah took a shirt that said “Karachi.”
They drove through the night in early June, arriving as the sun rose at a UNHCR center on the outskirts of Kabul, where dozens of other families had lined up to be processed. An employee went from truck to truck asking families why they had decided to return. Most had come from refugee camps outside Peshawar, the largest city in Pakistan’s northwest. They accepted about $150 per person from the U.N. agency and disappeared to the surrounding districts or provinces, often to land doled out by the government.
When his turn came, Bismillah told the U.N. employee, “We’re here because we’re tired of being harassed in Pakistan. We are ready to come home.” He handed over a nearly expired refugee identification card.
Three days later, the 23 relatives had squeezed into a two-bedroom apartment with no electricity or running water. Most of the brothers slept on the floor.
Even Bismillah, first wowed by the city’s growth, was becoming frustrated. He got lost on his way to an old mosque, confused by a flurry of new activity on a familiar street. Still, the city seemed secure, he said: “We can walk around here. It is safe.”
His sons were not convinced. A week before they arrived, an American airstrike killed a family of five in their ancestral province of Paktia. A week after, more than 20 civilians were killed in a mix of Taliban attacks and NATO airstrikes in a single day. On local television stations, experts railed against what they called an insidious Pakistani influence.
Rahmatullah worried that his neighbors would accuse him of being a Pakistani spy and threaten the family. Someone pointed to his thick mustache — a fashion common in Pakistan but unusual in beard-loving Afghanistan — and asked him whether he was a foreigner. He considered shaving the mustache off.
“We stand out here,” he said. “It’s like we don’t belong.”
Mohammed Ullah dropped out of school to work at a construction site with a few of his brothers. He keeps his Abbottabad friends’ class portraits in his pocket while he mixes cement. He tells people that he’s Afghan, but he feels Pakistani.
Still, Bismillah was hopeful. His sons will come around, he said, and security in Afghanistan will improve.
Mohammed Ullah doesn’t pretend to believe his father.
“When I leave,” he said, “I will never come back.”
Pentagon probing alleged abuse at Afghan military hospital
Reuters Thu Jun 21, 2012
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon is investigating a U.S.-funded Afghan military hospital where there have been allegations of corruption and abuse of patients, a Defense Department official said on Wednesday.
David Sedney told a House of Representatives subcommittee that "investigations and corrective action" were under way at Dawood National Military Hospital in Kabul.
"The things that happened at that hospital are the kind of things that should never happen to any human being anywhere," said Sedney, deputy assistant secretary of defense for Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia. "We are working with the Afghans to correct them."
U.S. lawmakers began asking questions about the hospital last year after incidents of Afghan service members dying there of neglect and starvation were reported by The Wall Street Journal in September.
Last week, Republican Representative Jason Chaffetz sent Pentagon chief Leon Panetta a letter about the hospital on behalf of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Chaffetz asked the Pentagon to investigate whether senior U.S. military officials sought to cover up reports of abuse at the facility back in 2010.
Sedney was not asked about any cover-up allegations on Wednesday during his testimony before a subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee. The topic of the hearing was the Afghan national security forces.
The U.S.-led NATO force in Afghanistan is preparing to hand control of Afghanistan to that country's security forces by the middle of next year, putting the Western alliance on a path out of the unpopular, decade-long war.
Republican Representative Mike Coffman told Sedney that $42 million in U.S. aid was "missing, unaccounted for" at the Kabul military hospital. The lawmaker said he was concerned about U.S. taxpayer dollars that had been spent at the facility and to train Afghan security forces.
"Afghan police and Afghan soldiers were dying in the hospital from malnutrition, and from a lack of medical care, because the families couldn't come up with the necessary bribes," Coffman said.
Coffman questioned what the alleged corruption at the hospital meant for the U.S. strategy of preparing Afghan forces to take over the fight against the Taliban, wondering how "capable" those forces were when they allowed such events to occur.
Sedney responded that "corruption has been part of the fabric of life" in Afghanistan, but he did not believe the majority of Afghans wanted that to continue.
"While recognizing corruption is a problem, I would not agree it's endemic to the point where our investments (in Afghanistan) are not going to pay off," Sedney said.
(Reporting By Susan Cornwell; Editing by Peter Cooney)
US probes Afghan tax on companies doing rebuilding
AP By By Pauline Jelinek June 20, 2012
WASHINGTON - A government watchdog is looking into Afghanistan's practice of taxing U.S. companies involved in America's multibillion-dollar effort to rebuild the war-torn nation.
The office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction will audit fees charged contractors by Kabul for supplies, materials and other items imported into Afghanistan or bought there, according to an inspector general memo obtained by The Associated Press.
The fees include tariffs, customs duties and other taxes that eventually come out of U.S. taxpayer dollars because they're charged to reconstruction projects run by the Pentagon, State Department or the U.S. Agency for International Development.
"This is a step in the right direction," said a statement from Democratic Rep. Peter Welch of Vermont and GOP Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina. "We're hopeful this audit will and bring to an end the absurd practice by the Afghan government of taxing America's effort to rebuild their country.
"While such behavior may make sense in (Afghan President) Hamid Karzai's world, it makes no sense to the American taxpayer," they said.
The U.S. has appropriated roughly $89.42 billion for Afghanistan reconstruction since 2002. But President Barack Obama is winding down the effort, having requested $9.7 billion for reconstruction for the budget year beginning in October — a 34 percent reduction from the $14.8 billion Congress provided for 2012.
It's unclear how much money has been collected by Kabul from contractors doing the work — building highways, schools, facilities for Afghanistan's growing security forces and so on. But a number of American contractors complained last year that they had received bills for overdue taxes and were threatened with arrest and revocation of their licenses to operate there.
Taxation of U.S. government assistance is prohibited by American law and bilateral accords between the United States and Afghanistan, officials say. But there has been disagreement from Afghans over what tax-exempt status means and who gets it.
According to a letter to the Pentagon, State Department and USAID notifying them of the audit, the special inspector general's office will begin work this month to determine:
--What Afghan fees are levied on contractors and sub-contractors supporting U.S. reconstruction programs and the amounts collected.
--Whether Afghan fees levied on contractors and sub-contractors violate international agreements.
--What the impact will be on Afghanistan's operating budget from declining activity by the international coalition there and after the 2014 withdrawal of forces.
There was no date given for when the audit might be completed.
Welch and Jones also have been working to address the issue. In December, they introduced legislation to bar future assistance to Afghanistan unless U.S. contractors and subcontractors delivering aid are exempt from taxation by the government of Afghanistan. Welch and Jones successfully amended the National Defense Authorization Act - which passed the House last month - to include a similar provision.
Karzai also has gone head-to-head with Americans on other contractor issues, ordering that all new foreign development projects employ government security guards rather than those from private Afghan and foreign companies. Private development companies complained that the move would threatened billions in U.S. aid to the country because companies would delay projects or leave altogether out of fear they wouldn't be safe using strictly local security.
The Afghan government in late March gave companies extensions of varying lengths to make the change.
FEATURE-Afghans slow to warm to their stable currency
Reuters By Sanjeev Miglani and Mirwais Harooni June 20, 2012
KABUL - Abdullah Kakar, an employee in the agriculture department in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, converts most of his wages into Pakistani rupees each month except for a small amount to pay his electric bill, school fees and top up his phone card.
Everything else he pays for in the Pakistani currency, from tomatoes to the rent for his house, like millions of people in a swathe of provinces stretching from Nangarhar in the east down to Zabul and Kandahar in the south.
Most of the provinces share a border with Pakistan, but there are others, such as Ghazni in central Afghanistan, where the Afghan currency, the afghani, is competing with the rupee.
In the west, it is the Iranian rial that is freely used.
Ten years after the central bank withdrew three different types of bank notes and coins issued by warlords and relaunched the afghani, the administration is still struggling to enforce its use as the medium of exchange.
Part of the reason people prefer to hold foreign currencies is a nagging lack of confidence in Afghan money, fostered over decades of turmoil, even though the afghani has been remarkably stable against the U.S. dollar.
But that stability could be in question with the withdrawal of foreign combat forces by 2014. As the troops leave, taking with them some of the dollars and euros with which the country is flush, the afghani could come under downward pressure.
That could spell trouble if all civil servants and members of the security forces see the purchasing power of their afghani pay-packets wither compared with the cost of imports, including many staples.
Kakar, 32, said he had been using the kaldar, as the Pakistani currency is known in Afghanistan, his whole life and for many years he had known it to be the only currency.
"It is the currency that everyone uses. When I lend money to someone, it's in kaldar. If I pay a bribe it's in kaldar."
The fact that he's breaking the law is immaterial to Kakar, and everyone else, to the frustration of the governor of the central bank, Noorullah Delawari.
"The law requires people settle their daily business in the Afghan currency," Delawari, who launched the afghani during his first term, told Reuters in an interview at his Kabul headquarters.
"But we have a limited number of people vis-a-vis the population to enforce that. It is a serious problem."
The central bank has run a campaign to tell people that just as they salute the national flag, they must have respect for the currency.
When that failed, the bank ordered fines of up to 100,000 afghanis ($1,960) for anyone caught refusing to accept the currency, but like much else, its writ does not easily run across the nation that is battling a Taliban insurgency.
The afghani was trading at around 51.7 to the dollar this week while Pakistan's beleaguered rupee closed on Tuesday at 93.88/94 and the Iranian rial was at 12,250.
"POLITICAL ISSUE"
Throughout the last decade the artificially pegged afghani has been far more stable than its peers to the east and the west, staying around 50 to the dollar while the rupee has lost slightly more than half its value in that period.
The rial is also down.
Yet people are sticking to the rupee, which under Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001 was the most prevalent currency, although in many parts of the country, including Kabul, the afghani has become the first choice.
But if you don't have afghanis, shopkeepers - whether the man at a used-bicycle stall in a bazaar near the central bank, or the teenager selling Samsung television sets at his dad's store - all accept the rupee without batting an eyelid.
"Dollar, kaldar anything is acceptable," said Henayatullah, who sells state-of the art Japanese music systems trucked in from Pakistan in his shop by the side of an open sewage drain.
One reason for the prevalence of foreign currencies is that Afghanistan hardly produces anything, importing everything from cars to staples like eggs. When shopkeepers buy goods from Pakistan with rupees they want rupees back.
The value of Afghanistan's annual trade is about $5 billion with barely 250 million of that from exports. The rest is imports, 68 percent of which come from Pakistan with which Afghanistan shares a largely open 2,430 km (1,500- mile) border, culture and religion.
Delawari says ultimately the solution for Afghanistan is to produce more of the goods it consumes, at least the daily staples which will bring down the use of foreign currency.
The other main reason Afghans prefer rupees and rials is worry about instability and the kind of currency upheavals that have sapped savings in the past.
"It's not an economic issue, more of a political issue," said another central bank official, who declined to be identified as he did not have permission to speak to media.
"We have gone through a time when say, you had 1,000 afghanis in your bank account, and overnight a decree is issued to remove three zeroes. You are only left with one afghani. It is psychological, it erodes confidence," he said.
Central bank officials say new sources of income have to be found if the currency is to remain stable. The government has pinned its hopes on revenue from mining and transit fees from electricity running from Central Asia to Pakistan and India
"The best way to stop this is to have our own production and not depend on our neighbours for basic things," said Delawari. (Editing by Robert Birsel)
Afghanistan still world's main source of asylum seekers
KABUL, June 21 (Xinhua) -- Afghanistan is still the leading source of asylum seekers in the world, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), now known simply as the United Nations Refugee Agency.
A press statement released by the UNHCR office here on World Refugee Day Wednesday says that "although some 5.7 million Afghan refugees have returned home since 2002, Afghanistan is still the main origin of asylum seekers."
The UNHCR said that a quarter of the refugees that it is now assisting originate from Afghanistan, adding that Pakistan and Iran continue to be the two main refugee hosting countries for 95 percent of Afghan refugees.
This means some 1.7 million Afghan refugees are in Pakistan and nearly one million in Iran.
In addition to this, it is estimated that there are more than 2 million unregistered Afghan refugees now living in Pakistan and Iran.
The rate of refugees returns from Iran and Pakistan has declined remarkably in the past two years. So far in 2012, according to the UNHCR, only 34,000 refugees have returned home.
The war-weary Afghans, especially the teenagers who live at home or in neighboring countries, are eager to leave for industrialized nations, particularly European countries, United States, Canada and Australia.
More than 30,000 Afghans, according to reports, applied for asylum in developed nations in 2011.
Many of these youngsters prefer to migrate to peaceful and developed countries by paying huge bribes to human traffickers and risking long and perilous journeys.
Mohammad Taqi, 38, was one of those asylum seekers, who according to Afghan media reports lost his life in Indonesia on the way to Australia a couple of days ago.
Other Afghans who returned home are now complaining because of lack of jobs and difficult living conditions in their own country.
"I have returned home from Pakistan and have been living under a tent for the past eight years with the hope to have shelter, job and proper income to feed my children," Habib, 40, told Xinhua.
He also complained that his 20-day-old infant passed away due to cold weather last winter.
Habib's neighbor Samad Khan, 60, had also complained of the poor living condition in the makeshift camp. He said the government has failed to provide them with shelter and job since they returned home.
"After living in Pakistan for 17 years as refugee I returned home in 2011 hoping for a better life in my country but unfortunately I have not received any assistance from my government," said 62-year-old Bahadur. He added that he has been renting a house with the help of a relative in Canada.
"The continued hardship has forced me to consider re-migration to Pakistan or if possible to Canada," Bahadur said.
The Afghan government said that it is doing its best to provide returnees with assistance that they need.
"Our focus today is to enhance development and support sustainable reintegration of Afghan returnees in communities by providing them with livelihood, basic services and shelter. We want to encourage returnees to remain in Afghanistan while we are increasing our support for the return of refugees from host countries," said Dr. Jamaher Anwary, minister of refugees and repatriation in his message to mark the World Refugee Day.
But Anwary also called on the international community "to contribute more for the reintegration of large groups of returnees to Afghanistan."
US to Donate 146 Warplanes to Afghan Army: MOD
TOLOnews.com By Mahboba Pardis Wednesday, 20 June 2012
The United States government has decided to give 146 planes to Afghanistan's National Army air force by 2016, a spokesman for Afghan Ministry of Defence (MOD) said Wednesday.
The ministry praised the decision adding that more warplanes should be given to Afghanistan in order to protect the country from any kind of threat.
"There is an agreement that US would give us 146 warplanes but we are not satisfied with this, the number should increase. The planes would be used in any kind of situation." General Mohammad Zaher Azimi, MOD spokesman said.
Strengthening the abilities of Afghanistan's Air Force could play a vital role in combating insurgency through the country and protecting the nation from any outside threat.
According to Mr Azimi, a clearing offensive named ‘Omid' will be launched by Afghan National Army aimed to clear insurgents throughout the country. The operation will focus on southern and eastern provinces which have witnessed insurgency throughout the year.
He also added that more than 85 percent of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) are being brought to Afghanistan from the neighbouring countries.
'Kite Runner' Author Urges More Support For Afghan Refugees
June 21, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Novelist Khaled Hosseini came to the United States as a 15-year-old Afghan asylum seeker who knew only a few words of English. Today he is a doctor, a United Nations goodwill ambassador, and author of two internationally acclaimed books, “The Kite Runner” and “A Thousand Splendid Suns.” Hosseini told RFE/RL that when he left Afghanistan in 1976, Kabul was a "growing, thriving, cosmopolitan city." By the end of his father’s four-year post at the Afghan Embassy in Paris, his country had been invaded by the Soviet Union. Hosseini and his family sought asylum in the United States and ended up in California, where he became a doctor and eventually wrote “The Kite Runner,” which was an overnight literary sensation. RFE/RL correspondent Courtney Brooks caught up with Hosseini at the United Nations on World Refugee Day, where he spoke about the plight millions of Afghans face, both inside and outside the beleaguered country.
RFE/RL: Can you describe the impact that 30 years of war has had on your country’s culture, and on the daily life of Afghans?
Khaled Hosseini: It’s been incalculable. We’re still suffering the legacy of all the different wars in Afghanistan. You know, this is a country that today finds itself as one of the poorest non-African nations in the world, that has a GDP that ranks 218 in the world, [and] where, on average, 30 percent of people live below the poverty level. The country faces rising insecurity in different regions of the country. Millions of people have returned to Afghanistan from Iran and Pakistan -- about 5.7 million since 2002 -- most of them with assistance from the UN refugee agency [UNHCR]. And those people who returned to Afghanistan, those refugees, have had a really hard time adjusting to life in Afghanistan, have had a [really hard] time reintegrating and restarting their lives.
And so Afghanistan is in need of long term economic development, of developmental projects that will trickle down to the village level [and] affect people at the local level -- and we are by now, more or less agreed, everybody is at the same page, that there is no military solution in Afghanistan. And so my hope is that the international community will continue to support the country economically even if NATO and the U.S. forces are no longer in charge of military operations. But I think for most Afghans, this is a period of anxiety, this transition period. The jury is sort of out on how well the Afghan state is prepared, equipped, [and] trained to protect its people from the insurgent groups, and I think the next few years will be very telling years.
RFE/RL: Ahead of NATO's planned 2014 pullout, violence in Afghanistan does not seem to be abating. Taliban and Taliban-associated groups often attack NATO checkpoints and soldiers -- such as the June 20 bombing, which killed at least 21 people. Can you describe the prevailing national sentiment toward Americans?
Hosseini: I think the last few years -- although generally there is support for the foreign troops because people fear that in the absence of the foreign troops the country may slide back into the chaos of the 1990’s and military warfare may break out -- that support has dropped to some level. [This is due to] the perception that promises that were made by the West haven’t necessarily been kept because of the civilian casualties caused by air strikes, and night raids, and so on, and also because of fairly effective propaganda on the part of the Taliban. So although on balance that support is not as strong as it was, my sense is that in general people still have a fairly supportive stance toward the foreign presence -- not because they enjoy having foreign troops on their lands, quite the opposite. But mainly because the alternative -- the fear that Afghanistan will slide back toward all out militia warfare and the chaos of the 1990s -- is just too grisly a scenario to be considered.
RFE/RL: What would be the best scenario for the 10 years of support the United States has promised afterward?
Hosseini: We have millions of Afghans who have returned to Afghanistan, and we have 2.7 million refugees who are still living in Iran and Pakistan and appear to be reluctant to return home. The main reason -- certainly security cannot be discounted and is part of the reason -- but also, people are aware that basic resources, basic services and resources, are lacking in Afghanistan. [Of] the 5.7 million [people] who returned to Afghanistan, anywhere from 40 to 60 percent of them have not successfully reintegrated, and they end up either returning to Iran [or] Pakistan or being secondarily displaced because they don’t have access to jobs, to water, to schools -- basic services that we need for day-to-day survival. So I think the solution strategy that [was] arrived at in Geneva in May of this year with the governments of Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and UNHCR (High Commission on Refugees) , was that we need economic development at the local level, at the rural village level, [and] the community level in order to build viable communities in Afghanistan so that those millions of refugees who have returned can be anchored and can have a chance at a successful long term reintegration.
RFE/RL: What kind of hope do you have for Afghanistan? Is there a ‘best case’ scenario that you see in the next 18 months or two years?
Hosseini: In this next year and a half [or] two years, I still see that there will be insecurity marked by spikes in violence. I think there will be political tension and a sort of a shrinking humanitarian space where aid organizations will have increasing difficulty delivering assistance to the people who need it in Afghanistan. But it’s my hope, and that of every Afghan, that eventually the war will end, that a peace process will come about, and that the parties will sit at a table where the best case scenario would be that legitimate representatives from all corners of society are represented at the table and present, that the peace process represents the will and aspirations of the people of Afghanistan, and is one that is inclusive, particularly with regards to women and their rights. So that’s sort of the hope for all of us, that’s the best case scenario; that Afghanistan, after 32 years of war and upheaval, will finally be a nation that is once again at peace, within and without.
U.S. Treasury Sanctions Members Of Afghan Narcotics Network
June 20, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Treasury Department has sanctioned four members of Afghanistan's Barakzai narcotics trafficking network, prohibiting U.S. citizens from conducting transactions with them and freezing any U.S. assets they may have.
A Treasury statement said Shah Mohammad Barakzai is the head of a drug-trafficking ring based in Gereshk, Afghanistan.
He was arrested last year by Afghan counternarcotics authorities.
Also sanctioned are Haji Baz Mohammad, who Washington says controls opium cultivation and transportation for the network; Abdul "Doctor" Hadi, who allegedly processed opium for the network; and Mohammad Wali, who is said to have served as the network's main financial conduit in Kandahar.
The sanctions also name two exchange houses used by the organization.
Afghanistan remains the world's top supplier of opium despite years of U.S. and international eradication and counternarcotics efforts.
U.S. recommends no criminal charges for Afghan Koran burning
Reuters By Mirwais Harooni and Missy Ryan Reuters June 20, 2012
KABUL - U.S. soldiers involved in burning copies of the Koran in Afghanistan may face only administrative discipline, a U.S. official said, a move that could deepen frustration among Afghans seeking more serious punishment for a series of public American missteps there this year.
A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Wednesday that an investigation into the February incident on a NATO military base near Kabul concluded with recommendations for administrative action for the military personnel involved.Such action might include a written reprimand or docked pay, but not job loss or criminal charges, the official said. U.S. military officials have not announced a final decision.
Another U.S. official said the administrative action was recommended for "most of the service members involved" in the incident in which Afghan laborers found charred copies of the Koran among trash on the Bagram base north of Kabul. But the official declined to say exactly how many U.S. troops.
The Pentagon said General John Allen, the U.S. head of international forces in Afghanistan, had reviewed the recommended punishments and passed them up the chain of command. Final decision on punishment will rest with commanders in the U.S. Army and Navy who are responsible for the service members.
The Pentagon declined to say how many service members could face punishment or give their ranks.
Eleven soldiers were sent out of Afghanistan over the Koran desecration, which U.S. officials said was unintentional but which exposed deep divisions between foreign troops and Afghans wearied by more than 10 years of war.
The office of Afghan President Hamid Karzai declined to comment on the possible move by the Pentagon.
Nazir Ahmad Hanafi, an influential member of Afghanistan's parliament and deputy head of its judicial committee, said relatively light punishment for the soldiers involved would have "dangerous consequences."
Hanafi, a member of Afghanistan's Ulema Council of clerics who also took part in an initial joint Afghan-U.S. probe into the incident, said he favored a more severe punishment, possibly even life in prison.
"Otherwise, it will inflame public opinion," he said.
The Korans were burned after they were removed from a prison library at NATO's largest base in Afghanistan, triggering protests and violence across the country that killed at least 30 people. Shortly afterward, two American officers were shot dead in a secure area of the Afghan Interior Ministry.
Afghanistan initially demanded a public trial for the soldiers involved, while the Taliban urged Afghan forces to turn against their foreign counterparts.
Nazifa Zaki, a former police official who is now a lawmaker from Kabul, said foreigners who "insulted" Islam should receive harsh punishment as a lesson to others.
SERIES OF MISSTEPS
The Koran incident was among a recent series of public missteps for the United States in Afghanistan, which also included the massacre of more than a dozen villagers allegedly by a U.S. soldier and photographs showing U.S. soldiers urinating on Afghan corpses.
U.S. President Barack Obama apologized to Karzai over the Koran burnings, which fuelled widespread demonstrations for more than a week.
Pentagon spokesman George Little rejected suggestions that the spate of incidents was indicative of a larger problem about the way members of the U.S. military view Islam.
"I would be very hesitant to suggest that this in any way points to a broader trend inside the U.S. military," he said. "The vast majority of our troops have profound respect for Islam."
Afzal Aman, head of the operations division at the Afghan Defense Ministry, said he did not expect the decision on punishment of U.S. troops to have an impact on Afghan and NATO soldiers' fight against the Taliban and its allies.
As the financial and human cost of the war mounts, NATO countries are planning to pull most of their soldiers from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
Aman said lenient punishment might fuel militant propaganda, but he said Afghan troops would be ready. "We will wait to see what people say about it," he said.
(Reporting by Rob Taylor, Missy Ryan and Mirwais Harooni in Kabul; David Alexander in Washington; Phil Stewart in Jeddah; Editing by Warren Strobel and Doina Chiacu)
www.afghanistannewscenter.com