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Taliban insurgents attack popular Kabul resort; at least 20 killed
By Joshua Partlow, The Washington Post
KABUL — On a warm summer evening, with peacocks strutting amid the patio chairs and moonlight reflecting off the lake, the Spugmay Restaurant is one of the most elegant sanctuaries in Kabul, a place where the war feels almost far enough away.
Seven young men changed that with sickening speed Thursday night. Armed with guns and grenades and explosives strapped over their baggy clothes, a minivan-load of Taliban fighters stormed through the ivy-draped restaurant’s arched gateway, transforming a relaxed evening on the water into another scene of smoke, blood and broken glass. Over the course of Thursday night and Friday morning, the insurgents executed diners and staff and fought a prolonged gun battle with security forces.
By the end, at least 20 people lay dead, including restaurant patrons, cooks, guards, police and all seven of the attackers, according to Kabul police chief Ayoub Salangi. But the insurgents proved once again that few places, even in the heavily policed capital, lie beyond their reach.
The choice of targets — a restaurant frequented primarily by Afghan families — was somewhat unusual for the Taliban, which has tended to marshal its limited resources to assault symbols of government or U.S. military power, such as armored convoys, ministries or Western embassies. But the insurgents have also attacked hotels, shopping centers and supermarkets in recent years.
In claiming responsibility for the attack, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid characterized the restaurant and nearby Spozhmai Hotel as a den of booze, prostitution, dancing and “wild parties” that catered to foreigners and was an affront to Islam. But Afghan police strongly disputed the description, saying the resort on Qargha Lake outside Kabul was frequented by Afghans relaxing with their families.
The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John R. Allen, said the attack bore the signature of the Haqqani network, a Taliban-allied insurgent group based in the tribal areas of Pakistan. The Haqqani group, which U.S. officials believe has links to Pakistan’s intelligence service, has organized many of the most dramatic and deadly assaults in Kabul. Its ruthlessness and effectiveness have made it one of the most important enemies of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
“There is no doubt that innocent Afghan civilians were the intended targets of this unspeakably brutal attack,” Allen said in a statement.
“This is a crime against humanity because they targeted children, women and civilians picnicking at the lake,” said Gen. Mohammad Zahir, chief of the Kabul police investigation unit. “There wasn’t even a single soldier around there.”
The insurgents arrived at the Spugmay in a minivan at around 11:30 p.m. Thursday — the start of the Afghan weekend — while the restaurant was full of guests, some smoking hookahs under pine trees on the lawn, others eating lamb kebabs on the rooftop terrace. In the parking lot, the gunmen shot the manager’s brother and security guards, then charged through the front door, past a sign that read “No guns allowed.”
Sharif Aloko and 11 of his friends were sitting on the patio when the gunmen entered. One of them shot a father and his daughter while family members pleaded, “Please don’t kill us.”
A gunman then killed another guest, grabbed his cellphone and made a call, Aloko recalled in an interview. “He said, ‘Hafiz, I am here. Pray for me to succeed. So far the security forces have not arrived.’ ” After ending the call, Aloko said, the attacker shouted at his men to preserve their bullets.
One of the cooks said he jumped out the kitchen window and cowered behind a hedge the entire night. Other guests leapt into the lake, and one drowned as he tried to escape, according to Afghan officials. One man was fatally shot while smoking a cigarette, which was still in his fingers as he lay dead.
Afghan police stationed down the street ran into the parking lot but were repulsed. Eventually, Afghan reinforcements, backed by NATO helicopters and Norwegian special forces, arrived at the restaurant and battled the attackers.
“What we did for two hours was just protect the surrounding areas,” said Salim, one of the Afghan policemen who responded to the attack. “Nobody could dare come close to the gate. They were on the roof, and it was well lit, so whoever tried to come in they would shoot. Even if we lit a lighter they would shoot at us.”
Police said the Taliban released women and children in the morning. By mid-morning, when Afghan troops killed the last insurgents, the restaurant was pocked with bullet holes and littered with shell casings. Dead insurgents lay slumped on stairways and inside toilet stalls.
“When these attacks happen, the people definitely start hating the Taliban,” said Omid Sherzada, a 20-year-old former waiter at the restaurant, who came by to survey the wreckage. “I saw one guy sitting on the grass crying, saying, ‘Imagine, these are Muslims, and they’re doing this kind of killing.’ ”
The slaughter seemed less shocking to others.
“We were thinking one day this restaurant would come under attack,” said Mohammed Latif, a 35-year-old policeman who is stationed near the Spugmay. “There were foreigners coming and drinking alcohol here. We are Muslims, and our law and path is the holy Koran.”
Special correspondent Javed Hamdard contributed to this report.
NATO commander links Haqqani network to Kabul attack
KABUL (Reuters) - The commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan said on Friday that a deadly attack on a hotel on the outskirts of Kabul bore the signature of the Taliban-linked Haqqani group which he said continued to operate from Pakistan.
Elite Afghan police backed by NATO forces ended a 12-hour siege at the popular hotel, leaving at least 20 dead after Taliban gunmen stormed the lakeside building, bursting into a party and seizing dozens of hostages.
"Afghan National Security Forces and coalition military sources acknowledge that this attack bears the signature of the Haqqani network, which continues to target and kill innocent Afghans and blatantly violate Afghan sovereignty from the safety of Pakistan," General John Allen said in a statement.
(Reporting by Sanjeev Miglani; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)
Kabul birthday party reduced to bloody destruction
By Usman Sharifi AFP via Yahoo! News - Jun 22 04:25am
A carefree birthday party and night out to celebrate the start of the Afghan weekend were reduced to destruction and butchery when Taliban gunmen stormed a lakeside hotel, opening fire indiscriminately on wealthy revellers.
Pools of blood, broken glass and hundreds of bullet casings littered the floor in the main dining room, where three young Afghan men were shot dead as they sat at a table sipping energy drinks, cut down in the prime of life. Their blood-drenched bodies lay slumped out of their chairs on the floor.
A middle-aged man stood sobbing over the body of his nephew.
"Yesterday he told me they were coming to this place for a nice evening, now he's lying there dead," he cried.
The weeping of the bereaved and shouts of security officials alone broke the silence Friday at the Spozhmai Hotel, after the 12-hour siege finally ended. Sixteen people were killed.
On a balcony overlooking the glistening lake, a 22nd birthday cake lay half eaten on a table surrounded by a dozen empty chairs. Nearby sprawled the bloodied body of a young man shot repeatedly in the chest.
Like many of the victims, he was dressed in Western clothes -- jeans, T-shirt and sports shoes -- a sign of the wealthy clientele that frequented the upmarket hotel, now battered and bloodied.
For some, the attack prompted a desperate bid for survival.
Police said they had recovered the bodies of three people who jumped into the lake in an effort to save themselves from the Kalashnikov-wielding attackers.
Sharifullah, 30, searched desperately through the wreckage of the Spozhmai for his friend who he lost in the chaos and bloodshed.
"I saw three armed men entering the area where people, families had gathered. Moments later the shooting broke out, people panicked and started screaming," he told AFP.
"I threw myself in a ditch but saw bullets hitting a father, his son and wife who were sitting around a table near me.
"I am not sure if they survived, security forces arrived 20 minutes later, but the shooting continued."
Outside in the car park, flashy new four-wheel-drive vehicles were pockmarked with bullet holes.
One bloodied body of an attacker, who looked like a teenager, lay on the roof wearing traditional shalwa khamis. A second lay twisted in a dining room and a third among the trees down by the lake.
Backgrounder: Major attacks in Afghanistan since May 3 Taliban spring offensive
by Farid Behbud, Chen Xin
KABUL, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Taliban insurgents, who have been waging more than a decade-long insurgency, announced on May 2 that they would launch a spring offensive against Afghan-NATO security forces from May 3, warning they would also attack people who support the government.
Taliban militants launched a hostage-taking attack against Spozhmai Hotel in Qargha Lake, a picnic spot in the western outskirts of Kabul overnight, triggering an 11-hour gun fight and blasts till Friday noon.
Four civilians, three hotel guards and a policemen were killed and 40 guests were rescued by security forces, the number of the injured is not released at the moment.
The following is the major attacks across the country since early May.
June 20 -- Twenty people including three U.S. soldiers, two policemen and 15 civilians were killed and 37 others injured when a Taliban suicide bomber set off his explosive in eastern Khost province.
June 20 -- Eight civilians were killed and five others injured when their vehicle ran over a roadside bomb in eastern Logar province.
June 19 -- Three policemen, one NATO soldier and 11 Taliban were killed when militants launched two attacks on Afghan-NATO outposts in southern Kandahar province.
June 18 -- Eight civilians were killed and five others injured in a roadside bombing in southern Helmand province.
June 18 -- Three men in Afghan police uniform killed a NATO soldier in Kandahar.
June 18 -- Five people, including four local police force servicemen were killed and 20 civilians injured when a bomb went off in eastern Kapisa province.
June 15 -- A civilian was killed and 10 others were injured when a motorcycle bomb went off in Kandahar.
June 14 -- Four policemen were killed in a roadside bombing in eastern Nangarhar province.
June 14 -- At least one civilian was killed and 11 others were injured when a bomb was detonated in Shbirghan, provincial capital of northern Jawzjan province.
June 12 -- Two civilians were killed and six policemen injured when a suicide bomber blew himself up in northern Balkh province.
June 11 -- An ambulance carrying a pregnant woman to a hospital touched off a bomb in Sari Pul province, killing five people and injuring two others including the woman.
June 8 -- A suicide bombing left two civilians dead and 10 others injured in northern Faryab province.
June 7 -- Four French NATO soldiers were killed and eight others, including five French soldiers and three civilians, injured when a Taliban suicide attacker set off his explosive vest in Kapisa province.
June 6 -- A Taliban double suicide bombing against a marketplace, frequented by contractors of local companies which provide services to foreign troops, left 22 people dead and 50 others injured.
June 1 -- Five civilians were killed and 20 others injured when a Taliban truck bomb hit a U.S. military camp in eastern Khost province, in an raid that also left 14 suicide attackers dead. However, some media outlets reported that two U.S. soldiers were also killed and more than 100 U.S. soldiers were injured in the attack.
May 31 -- A suicide car bomb killed five Afghan border policemen in Kandahar.
May 28 -- Four policemen and three civilians were killed in roadside bomb attack in northern Baghlan province.
May 20 -- Two NATO soldiers and two children were killed and six children injured in a suicide bombing in Tirin Kot town, capital of southern Uruzgan province.
May 19 -- Ten civilians and three policemen were killed and three others injured in a suicide bombing in Ali Sher district of Khost province.
May 17 -- Taliban lunched a coordinated attack against the governor office building in western Farah province, leaving six policemen, one civilian and four attackers dead and over a dozen others injured.
May 14 -- Nine people, including a member of provincial council named Amanullah Shahab were killed and eight others injured in a bomb attack against a bazaar in northern Faryab province.
May 13 -- A roadside bombing left five Afghan army soldiers dead in eastern Laghman province.
May 13 -- A member of Afghan Peace Council and former Taliban official named Arsallah Rahmani was shot and killed in Kabul.
May 12 -- Four policemen were killed in a roadside bomb attack in northwestern Badghis province.
May 12 -- Two British soldiers with the NATO were killed by two men in Afghan police uniform in southern Helmand province.
May 11 -- Two men in police uniform shot and killed a U.S. solider and injured two others in eastern Kunar province.
May 10 -- Two back to back bomb blasts killed eight policemen and injured three others in Helmand.
May 10 -- Six suicide attackers were killed and three policemen and two civilians injured in a Taliban attack in eastern Paktika province.
May 8 -- Militants attack a convoy of education ministry, killing five staff members in Paktika.
May 6 -- Three civilians were injured and 32 others rescued after Taliban launched an attack against a building in Paktika's capital Sharan, four suicide attackers were also killed.
May 6 -- Man in army uniform shot dead a NATO soldier in southern Afghanistan.
May 4 -- Five border policemen were killed in a roadside bombing in Nangarhar.
May 4 -- Two British soldiers and 11 Taliban were killed in a massive attack against check posts in Helmand.
May 2 -- Eight civilians were killed and 17 others, including 10 school children, were injured when Taliban suicide bombers stormed a NATO civilian-military camp named green village in eastern Kabul. Four attackers were also killed.
Afghan forces need reading lessons before security transfer
By Sanjeev Miglani
KABUL (Reuters) - A third of Afghan national security forces are taking basic lessons in reading and counting as NATO commanders accelerate their training ahead of the withdrawal of most foreign troops in 2014, the coalition has said.
More than 95 percent of recruits in the Afghan national army and police are functionally illiterate, having never been to school, so are sent on a beginner's course to teach them how to write their name and count to 1,000 in their mother tongue.
Afghan forces, which hit a strength of 343,000 men in April as part of a rapid build-up, are set to take over security responsibilities by the middle of next year as a deadly Taliban insurgency rages.
The widespread absence of elementary reading and counting skills in a nation torn by three decades of war has slowed their training and their ability to do the job, underscoring the challenges facing Afghanistan after the bulk of Western military support is withdrawn.
"For many in Afghanistan, because of 30 years of war they have had little access to information, education. They know a lot but they don't know how to read or write," said Barbara Goodno, chief of the literacy and language division at NATO's training mission in Afghanistan.
"What we are trying to do is to jump-start the process," she said.
On Friday, Afghan forces battled Taliban gunmen who were holding hostages overnight in a popular lakeside hotel on the outskirts of Kabul.
About 119,000 Afghan soldiers and police are undergoing a three-stage literacy program which aims to teach them writing, reading and counting skills equivalent to students aged eight in the third grade of the Afghan school system.
NATO said a 2009 survey found that the Afghan national army, which is considered the most professional of all the country's forces and the spearhead of the fight against the Taliban, had a literacy rate of 13 percent. The police were assumed to be little better, on the basis of the army survey.
The coalition said it was not aware of a follow-up study, but its assumption was the figure would have risen since then, though there was no hard statistical data.
The soldiers can neither read nor write at the start of the literacy course, so instructors have to explain everything in pictures. All training is manual and every skill has to be demonstrated, commanders say.
Troops are unable to read instructions on how to maintain a vehicle, fill out a form for the issue of equipment, or read a serial number to distinguish their weapon from another - all basic soldiering duties anywhere in the world.
"If you have someone who is injured and they are unable to read a map and to provide their location to get picked up, it's a serious problem. That is a matter of life and death," said Goodno.
"If you have an individual, a police officer who is responsible for enforcing laws that they are unable to read, and they are unable to write a report, that is a matter of life and death."
Afghanistan's overall literacy rate is 37 percent, ranking 117 out of 123 nations.
Some 3,000 Afghan teachers have been hired as part of a $200 million program for basic literacy funded by Japan, Britain, Finland and the United Arab Emirates until 2014.
"Training is difficult, it does not happen quickly or easily," Goodno said.
(Editing by Daniel Magnowski)
Afghan academics fired for 'offensive' ethnic book
AFP via Yahoo! News - Jun 20 09:58am
Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Wednesday sacked four academics from a leading research centre over a book that sparked fury for reportedly insulting the Hazara ethnic group.
The head of the Afghanistan Academy of Science and three other scholars were dismissed and referred to the attorney general's office for questioning, Karzai's office said in a statement.
The "Ethnographic Atlas of the Tribes of Afghanistan", published recently, reportedly described Hazaras as liars, stubborn, violent and anti-Islamic, prompting outrage from Hazara politicians.
"The content of the book is grossly offensive and considered an insult to all the resident ethnicities and thus the entire Afghan population," the statement quoted Karzai as saying.
Hazaras make up an estimated 15 to 20 percent of the war-torn nation's ethnically diverse population, and Hazara Shiite Muslims suffered brutal persecution under Taliban rule in the 1990s.
Karzai's government is a delicate mix of the three main ethnic groups -- Pashtun, Tajik and Hazara -- and has ordered the book withdrawn from circulation.
The publication led to fierce debates on television chat shows, and was condemned by Hazara lawmakers in parliament.
Haji Mohammad Mohaqiq, leader of the Afghanistan People's Unity Party, one of the main Hazara political factions, condemned the book and called for the authors to be punished.
Asadullah Sahdati, an MP from the Hazara-majority central province of Deh Kondi, condemned the book.
"The book contains non-scientific contents, and in some parts is childish. We welcome the move by the president sacking those behind it," he told AFP.
However, he said he did not want to see the book banned.
"I want this book to be circulated, distributed to all Afghans, especially to every Hazara, so they understand the situation and the (hostile) feeling towards them," he said.
"We're proud of our ethnic group and welcome any academic research into it."
Ethnic divisions have led to some of the most brutal conflicts in Afghanistan's bloody history.
The mountainous country's total population is estimated to be between 24 to 35 million, but no census has been held since the 1970s due to three decades of war.
Book Talk: Antigone in a remote Afghan military post
By Elaine Lies – Thu, Jun 21, 2012
TOKYO (Reuters) - A legless Afghan woman pushing herself in a cart appears outside a remote U.S. military outpost after a desperate, dusty firefight, demanding the body of her brother - one of the attackers - to take home for burial.
Her presence sparks fierce debate in "The Watch," a novel by Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya, as the soldiers take turns telling the story as they try to determine if she herself is a terrorist, someone come to destroy them, or exactly what she says.
The Indian-born Roy-Bhattacharya spoke with Reuters about writing, the current state of literary fiction, and his novel, which was inspired by the Greek myth of Antigone, who tried to recover her brother's body in the face of laws forbidding even mourning him since he was considered a traitor.
Q: What got this book going?
A: "What got it going was my own frustration with the fact that literary fiction appears to have stopped dealing with the real world. So you have book after book coming out where it essentially deals with, I don't know, family issues this, that and the other ... I come from India, so in terms of what is known as collateral damage, we get little to nothing about what is actually happening on the ground in Afghanistan, much less than what is happening on the ground in Iraq. And I began this book with the intention of lending a face and a voice to those statistics.
"It was only after I'd written the first draft and started talking to American soldiers who had been there, that I realized that they themselves felt they were fighting this forgotten war. Everyone paid lip service - and I've been told this repeatedly - no one wanted to listen to them. So it became equally important to me to tell their side of the story. One of the reasons I framed the book as I have is that I wanted to get out of the way entirely as an author and give agency to each one of the characters in the book and have them tell the story in the first person, passing it along like a baton.
"More than anything else, I wanted to write a book that would squarely involve the civilian reader in the kind of decision making and moral quandaries that are the soldiers' fate. Once you've read the book and you come to the penultimate page, you've really gone the whole emotional arc of identifying with the Pashtun girl to apprehending what's going to happen to the soldiers that you now know so well."
Q: Were some of the points of view more difficult for you to write than others? Did some resonate more?
A: "Well, certainly the medic's point of view resonated because I think he was the one who was the most sensitive and made it a point to read up on Afghan culture. The medic is representative of somebody who actually steps out of the shell of his training and tries to see the other point of view.
"The captain was a difficult feat to pull off because I had to be someone who was completely middle of the road, completely strait-laced, completely resistant to breaking what in the military is called the chain of command."
Q: You said you started talking to service members after you wrote the first draft. Why at that point?
A: "I had become very impatient with the fact that literary fiction just seems to have settled into this very comfortable groove. You have your sinecured job teaching writing, which I believe is a complete racket, and it's very parochial and you never go out of your comfort zone. I think of the writers of the 19th century and the real impact they had on the society - Dickens's novels leading to real changes in child labor laws, and so on. I don't have a background in literature, I've been an inveterate reader from the time I was a child; my background is in the social sciences. And if I'm to write fiction there's absolutely no reason why I can't imagine something based on my own research ... When Stefenie Mayer writes vampire novels, is she a vampire? It's just this kind of self-imposed limitations on the part of contemporary writers that I don't understand."
Q: So what should fiction be doing?
A: "I think fiction should be addressing the real world and imaginatively bringing people out of their despair, in a way. Fiction should be to a certain extent activist, but it should certainly be engaging, in the sense of the French word "engagement," with the world we live in today. Trying to bring about changes. The pen being mightier than the sword - doesn't that sound like such an anachronism today when you look at literary fiction? It's like a parlor game. I believe in the pen being mightier than the sword and I think we need to go back to doing that, because the alternative is just pure entertainment.
"It depends on the writer. It can be entertaining, but at the same time, it must address issues. It must address moral issues. Dickens isn't exactly a difficult read, but you can feel the urgency of the issues he addresses."
(Reporting by Elaine Lies; editing by Paul Casciato)
Pentagon: Afghan forces face challenges but ‘on track’ to take charge
The Washington Times By Kristina Wong Thursday, June 21, 2012
Training Afghan forces to fend for themselves in the defense of their nation is continually hampered by illiteracy, attrition and a shortage of non-commissioned officers, Pentagon officials said.
But the overall U.S.-led effort to enable the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) to take charge of Afghanistan’s security by 2014 is “on track,” defense officials told a House Armed Services subcommittee on Wednesday.
David Sedney, deputy assistant secretary of defense for Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia, said the ANSF now participates in more than 90 percent of all security operations in Afghanistan, and helps plan more than 40 percent of those missions.
“They are more in the lead than ever before,” Mr. Sedney said.
About half of the 40 percent of missions that Afghan forces helped plan were led by an Afghan commander, said Army Maj. Gen. Stephen Townsend, director of the Afghanistan/Pakistan coordination cell for the Joint Staff.
Yet challenges remain for the ANSF’s long-term development, the defense officials said.
Gen. Townsend noted that the Afghan army lacks 17,000 non-commissioned officers and the police lack 11,000.
Despite the challenges, Afghanistan’s army and police force are on track to meet their end-strength goal of 352,000 members by the end of September, the officials testified.
Those numbers should fall to 230,000 by 2017, depending on the security situation, which will be reviewed every six months, the officials said.
While $4.1 billion a year is the estimated cost to sustain the Afghan security forces after 2014, the cost would depend on the reductions in end-strength, Mr. Sedney said. He added that the goal is for Afghanistan to fund the forces by 2024.
US considers launching joint US-Afghan raids in Pakistan to hunt down militant groups
Associated Press June 22, 2012
WASHINGTON - U.S. military and intelligence officials are so frustrated with Pakistan's failure to stop local militant groups from attacking Americans in neighboring Afghanistan that they have considered launching secret joint U.S.-Afghan commando raids into Pakistan to hunt them down, officials told The Associated Press.
But the idea, which U.S. officials say comes up every couple of months, has been consistently rejected because the White House believes the chance of successfully rooting out the deadly Haqqani network would not be worth the intense diplomatic blowback from Pakistan that inevitably would ensue.
Members of the Haqqani tribe have been targeted by pilotless U.S. drone aircraft, but sending American and Afghan troops into Pakistan would be a serious escalation of the hunt for terrorists and potentially the final straw for Pakistan, already angered over what it sees as U.S. violations of its sovereignty.
The Al Qaeda-allied Haqqani tribe runs a mafia-like smuggling operation and occasionally turns to terrorism with the aim of controlling its territory in eastern Afghanistan. The Haqqanis use Pakistani towns to plan, train and arm themselves with guns and explosives, cross into Afghanistan to attack NATO and Afghan forces, then retreat back across the border to safety.
The latest round of debate over whether to launch clandestine special operations raids into Pakistan against the Haqqanis came after the June 1 car bombing of Forward Operating Base Salerno in eastern Afghanistan that injured up to 100 U.S. and Afghan soldiers, according to three current and two former U.S. officials who were briefed on the discussions. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the still-evolving debates.
The officials told the AP that recent discussions of clandestine ground attacks have included Gen. John Allen, the senior U.S. commander in Afghanistan, as well as top CIA and special operations officials.
Allen's spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Brook DeWalt, said Allen "has not and does not intend to push for a cross-border operation."
The White House and the CIA declined to comment for this story.
Pentagon spokesman George Little said the U.S. was still focused on U.S.-Pakistan cooperation.
"The key is to work together with Pakistan to find ways of fighting terrorists who threaten both the United States and Pakistan, including along the Afghan-Pakistan border, where extremists continue to plot attacks against coalition forces and innocent civilians," he said.
The U.S. relationship with Pakistan is arguably at its lowest point over the continuation of drone strikes to hit terror targets in Pakistan, the successful Navy SEAL raid in Pakistan to kill Usama bin Laden that was carried out without a heads-up to the country's leaders and the U.S. refusal to apologize for a border skirmish in which the U.S. mistakenly killed 24 Pakistani troops. On Thursday, the State Department's inspector general accused the Pakistani government of harassing U.S. Embassy personnel.
Pakistan has done little in response to repeated U.S. requests for a crackdown on the Haqqanis, and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta surprisingly voiced that frustration in a visit to Kabul this month.
He said the U.S. was "reaching the limits" of its patience with Pakistan's failure to tackle the tribe's safe havens. He added that the U.S. was "extraordinarily dissatisfied with the effect that Pakistan has had on the Haqqanis." He also made fun of Pakistan's ignorance over the bin Laden raid at a speech in India, Pakistan's archrival.
Pakistan's army has attacked militant strongholds across the tribal areas, except for North Waziristan, where the Haqqanis hold sway and shelter both Al Qaeda and Taliban militants. Pakistani officials say that they intend to hit North Waziristan but that their army is too overstretched to move as fast as the U.S. demands.
Pakistani officials have conceded privately, however, that they have been reluctant to take on the powerful tribe for fear of retaliatory strikes.
To make up for Pakistan's inaction, the CIA's covert drone program has targeted Haqqani leaders, safe houses, bomb factories and training camps inside Pakistan, and special operations raids have hit Haqqani targets on the Afghan side of the border, but that has failed to stop Haqqani attacks on U.S. and Afghan troops and civilian targets.
The officials say Allen expressed frustration that militants would attack and then flee across the border in Pakistan, immediately taking shelter in urban areas where attacking them by missile fire could kill civilians.
The officials say options that have been prepared for President Barack Obama's review included raids that could be carried out by U.S. special operations forces together with Afghan commandos, ranging from air assaults that drop raiders deep inside the tribal areas to hit top leaders to shorter dashes only a few miles into Pakistan territory.
The shorter raids would not necessarily be covert, as they could be carried out following the U.S. military principle known as "hot pursuit" that military officials say entitles their forces to pursue a target that attacks them in Afghanistan up to 6.2 miles inside a neighboring country's territory.
The U.S. has staged two major raids and other minor forays into Pakistan's tribal territory before during the George W. Bush administration; the most contentious was in September 2008 when Navy SEALs raided an Al Qaeda compound. The operators killed their target, but the ensuing firefight triggered a diplomatic storm with Pakistan.
Rather than fly in, which U.S. military planners at the time feared would alert the Pakistanis, the SEALs marched across the mountainous border, arriving later than planned because of the harsh terrain and just as the fighters were waking for morning prayers, according to one current and one former U.S. official. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the clandestine operation.
Everyone inside the targeted compound opened fire on the SEALs, including the women, one of whom lightly wounded one of the American operators. The firefight also woke the entire village, which joined in the battle, so the SEALs had to call for strafing runs by Black Hawk helicopters to beat them back.
At least one woman and one child were among the many dead.
US Should Help to Extradite Fetrat Back to Kabul
TOLOnews.com Thursday, 21 June 2012
We should put pressure on the US to extradite former Central Bank Governor Abdul Qadir Fitrat back to Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai said in a meeting with Afghan lawmakers Thursday.
He also called on Afghan parliamentarians and the international community to do more to stump out corruption.
Addressing to both houses of parliament and the judiciary, Mr Karzai added that unity was needed to tackle the current challenges Afghanistan is facing.
He cited corruption as a major challenged despite ten years of efforts.
Mr Fetrat quit in June 2011 claiming he was under threat for investigating fraud at the privately-owned Kabul Bank.
The government condemned his decision, adding that he himself was under investigation for fraud.
Mr Fetrat claimed the government had interfered in his efforts to pursue those responsible for corruption at the Kabul Bank, which almost collapsed in 2010 after evidence of large-scale embezzlement emerged.
Australian revises survivors of capsized asylum seeker boat down to 109
CANBERRA, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Australian Home Affairs Minister said Friday the official number of survivors from the capsized asylum seeker boat has been revised down to 109.
"I've just been briefed by the commander of Border Protection Command, the number of survivors has now been revised down from 110 to 109," Minister Jason Clare told reporters on Friday.
Clare said a plane had also just flown over the area and there were more bodies in the water. "This is looking increasingly grim by the hour." But Clare said it wasn't yet clear if the boat had really sunk.
"Some (of life jackets) are floating on their own, some of them that have people wearing them, and they have identified more bodies in the water," Clare said.
"It's pretty rough water out there. We are still in that critical window." The minister said it appeared that all of the people were from Afghanistan.
A Border Protection spokeswoman said it was not clear why the number of survivors had been revised down but that details would change as more information became available.
Local reports said that there had been confusion from Indonesia surrounding Australia's handling of the incident. Clare said " there's been a number of inquiries about different boats over the last 24 hours," but there was no other boats in trouble so far.
Real security in Afghanistan depends on people's basic needs being met
For Afghans, particularly women, security is not only about protection from external threats and insurgents
Guardian.co.uk By Michael Keating Thursday 21 June 2012
The message from May's Nato summit in Chicago was that the Afghans would not again be abandoned by the international community, as they were in the early 1990s.
It resulted in financial pledges for Afghan security forces beyond 2014, whose cost is estimated at over $4bn a year, by which point most foreign troops will have left. This was no small achievement in today's global economic climate, given growing disenchantment with Afghanistan.
But it is not enough. Unless funding for Afghanistan's security forces is matched by investment in meeting people's basic needs, and by robust efforts to protect civilians and human rights, the money being spent on security could be wasted.
For Afghans, particularly women, security is not only about protection from external threats and insurgents, critical as these are. It is also about protection from unaccountable officials and security forces in the course of daily life.
It is about knowing that that jobs and opportunities are not just for the well-off, that property rights are respected, injustices addressed, abuse of authority checked. Afghans are no different from the rest of us.
The imperative now is to ensure that the blood spilled, money spent and gains made over the last decade are not reversed, that they yield a sustainable security dividend. What is needed is a partnership that focuses on meeting Afghans' practical needs.
The Tokyo Conference on Afghanistan in early July is an opportunity to set the right course, to substantiate the grand ambitions set out in many previous conferences, including in Bonn in December.
As foreign troops go, economic activity, revenues for the state and foreign aid budgets will drop. A virtue must be made of this necessity – to rationalise international support in a way that protects people, supports them to manage their own affairs, and rewards enterprise.
Aid and development alone cannot deliver peace, any more than security forces. An inclusive intra-Afghan political process is a must, supported by neighbouring countries, both to bring the country's long nightmare to a close, and to reduce the need for costly security.
Equally important is to ensure that presidential elections, slated for 2014, do not become the catalyst of violence, but are accepted as credible by the population, ideally contributing to reconciliation. Not easy, given ongoing insurgency, but it can be done.
But the bedrock of longer-term security and stability is sustained improvement in the quality of life, authorities that are accountable, institutions that function, and jobs.
Despite the decade of progress in areas as diverse as freedom of expression and political participation, infrastructure and mine clearance, healthcare and girls' education, Afghans are increasingly anxious about the future, and frustrated.
Five million still live as refugees or undocumented migrants. Conflict-induced displacement has risen steadily over the last five years and now amounts to over 500,000 people. Women and children suffer disproportionately from the conflict.
In 2011, a quarter of the population received food support, and over a million people got emergency drinking water. 55% of Afghan children under five are stunted, and their chances later in life of being self-reliant and contributing to economic growth are impaired. Female illiteracy and maternal mortality rates are among the highest in the world.
Land, soil, forests, water resources, and mineral deposits are degraded by over three decades of conflict, prey to illicit exploitation. The incidence of disasters, including floods, earthquakes, avalanches and droughts, is increasing. Drug production is responding to international demand, as farmers seek incomes to survive. About half the population is under 18, with few prospects, particularly in rapidly growing cities.
These are not the ingredients of stability. A long-term partnership is needed to tackle problems that are now inter-generational.
First, protection of civilians, accountability and the rule of law must be hardwired into plans for the transition, training and support of security forces. Strengthening a police force that is professional, answerable and responsive to civilians is essential.
Second, funding for security must be matched by funding of a practical, needs-based development agenda that focuses on what Afghans want, especially jobs, functioning institutions and basic services. They also need help to deal with urgent and extensive humanitarian needs.
This must go hand in hand with support for public-private partnerships to generate revenues that will increase the country's self sufficiency – infrastructure, services, and responsible management and exploitation of the country's vast natural resources.
Third, Tokyo should clarify the respective roles and responsibilities of the Afghan government and international community and agree a mutual accountability mechanism. Stronger and more accountable governance must be at the heart of the deal. That is what local people want, entrepreneurs need, and what western politicians must have if they are to vote the funds.
The price tag of continued support will be significant. But this will be modest compared to the vast sums now spent by the west on security – currently over $2bn a week - and the cost both to Afghans, the region and the international community if social tensions and a sense of injustice go unchecked.
Getting it right will pay enormous dividends – for Afghans, the region and the world.
Afghan women in shelters are prostitutes, says justice minister
Afghanistan's justice minister Habibullah Ghaleb has claimed women in shelters for domestic violence victims are prostitutes.
Telegraph.co.uk By Dean Nelson, South Asia Editor 21 Jun 2012
His comments at a conference organised by the Afghan parliament's Women's Affairs Committee provoked outrage among human rights campaigners and demands for President Hamid Karzai to sack him.
Mr Ghaleb told delegates that 250 women living in 12 foreign-funded shelters were being encouraged to disobey their parents.
"Mostly they were encouraging girls, saying, 'If your father says anything bad to you don't listen to him, if your mother says anything to you don't listen to them. There are safe houses for you where you can stay.' What safe houses? What sort of immorality and prostitution was not happening at those places?" he said.
Baroness Ashton, the EU foreign minister, said she was "deeply troubled" by his comments which sabotaged efforts to protect women from violence and sexual abuse.
"Too many Afghan women have experienced violence, gender based and sexual, often on a repeated basis," she said in a statement. "Women forced to resort to shelters are amongst the bravest Afghans we know."
'Kite Runner' Author On His Childhood, His Writing, And The Plight Of 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 tell me about your childhood in Afghanistan?
Khaled Hosseini: I was born there in 1965, and I grew up essentially in the pre-Soviet war era in Afghanistan. [I] grew up in Kabul. Both of my parents were university educated. My mother was a Farsi and history teacher at a large high school for girls; my father was a diplomat at the Foreign Ministry.
And, you know, Afghanistan was a country at peace with itself, with its neighbors. Kabul was a growing, thriving, cosmopolitan city. So it was a very, very different picture of Afghanistan than the one you would think of today if somebody said the word Afghanistan. So I feel very fortunate to have lived through the final few peaceful years of recent Afghan history.
RFE/RL: How and why did your family leave Afghanistan?
Hosseini: We left in 1976 because my father was assigned to a diplomatic post at the Afghan Embassy in Paris, and it was supposed to be a four-year assignment. While we were in Paris, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and a war began, and things became very unstable back home. And there was -- the refugee crisis began, and we knew people who were in prison, and tortured, and beaten, and killed.
And so my father applied for asylum to the United States, and instead of returning to Afghanistan my family moved instead to San Jose, California, in the fall in 1980, where most of my family has lived ever since.
RFE/RL: What was it like to move to the United States as a teenager?
Hosseini: I was 15 when I moved to the U.S., went straight into high school, and you know, for me, I think the adjustment was difficult because of the age. You know, being a teen is difficult anyway. But I think it was an even more difficult adjustment for my parents to be uprooted and to have lost everything they had worked their lives for, and to have to restart their lives essentially from scratch and to try to restart a life in an environment that was dramatically different from the one they were accustomed to.
That said, I think they also had a very healthy sense of perspective in that we were among the extremely fortunate Afghans who were allowed to restart our lives in America, whereas millions of Afghans ended up living in refugee camps in Pakistan, lived as laborers in Iran or elsewhere in the world. So we were quite, quite fortunate.
RFE/RL: Did you speak English when you came to the U.S.?
Hosseini: I did not. I spoke a few words, a few phrases, but I had to learn English essentially on the fly. It was tough. I’ve always had a sort of a knack for languages, but it was really difficult to be -- within two weeks of arrival here I was enrolled in regular English classes as a freshman. And it was really a process of sink or swim.
So I soaked up the language through reading the paper, through television, through radio, through going to school, and I think within a year I was pretty fluent.
RFE/RL: What experiences inspired the storyline for "The Kite Runner"?
Hosseini: Well, the storyline itself was fairly fictional, although, you know, I was watching a news story in the spring of 1999 on television, and this news story was about the Taliban. And it was talking about all the different impositions that the Taliban had placed on the Afghan people. And at some point along the line, it mentioned that they had banned the sport of kite flying, which kind of struck a personal chord for me, because as a boy I grew up in Kabul with all my cousins and friends flying kites.
So I sat down after that news story and wrote a 25-page short story about two boys in Kabul flying kites, and it became this kind of a much darker, more involved tale than I had anticipated.
A couple of years later, in March of 2001, I rediscovered the short story in my garage, essentially, and it kind of became the inspiration for the novel. And I kind of sat down and began expanding the short story into a book, which eventually became "The Kite Runner," the novel.
RFE/RL: Your subsequent book, “A Thousand Splendid Suns,” focuses on the very different experience of women in Afghanistan. What compelled you to tell this story?
Hosseini: Almost as soon as I had finished "The Kite Runner," I knew I wanted to write a second book, and I knew I wanted to write about women. Because I had gone to Afghanistan in March of 2003 and seen firsthand the aftermath of the war there, heard so many stories about what happened to women, the tragedies that they had endured, the difficulties, the gender-based violence that they had suffered, the discrimination, the being barred from active life during the Taliban, having their movement restricted, being banned essentially from practicing their legal, social rights, political rights.
I felt it was an outrage and I felt it was a very important story. And when I was in Kabul in 2003 I heard many personal stories about women, and sort of eventually over a couple of years those voices coalesced into a pair of characters. And I sat down finally with the story in hand and wrote "A Thousand Splendid Suns."
RFE/RL: Was writing "A Thousand Splendid Suns" more difficult than "The Kite Runner"?
Hosseini: Far more difficult. It was a real challenge to write from the standpoint of not one, but two, different women from different social backgrounds. And so I really struggled with that for quite a bit. And eventually at some point the characters became alive to me when I stopped obsessing about it so much -- about, you know, capturing an authentic voice for an Afghan woman.
And I just kind of wrote the characters as human beings with a set of fears, and concerns, and disappointments, and hopes, and personality traits, and so on. And so at that point suddenly the characters kind of took on a life of their own and became very real for me.
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?
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. 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 1990s 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?
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...basic services that we need for day-to-day survival.
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, 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.
www.afghanistannewscentr.com
By Joshua Partlow, The Washington Post
KABUL — On a warm summer evening, with peacocks strutting amid the patio chairs and moonlight reflecting off the lake, the Spugmay Restaurant is one of the most elegant sanctuaries in Kabul, a place where the war feels almost far enough away.
Seven young men changed that with sickening speed Thursday night. Armed with guns and grenades and explosives strapped over their baggy clothes, a minivan-load of Taliban fighters stormed through the ivy-draped restaurant’s arched gateway, transforming a relaxed evening on the water into another scene of smoke, blood and broken glass. Over the course of Thursday night and Friday morning, the insurgents executed diners and staff and fought a prolonged gun battle with security forces.
By the end, at least 20 people lay dead, including restaurant patrons, cooks, guards, police and all seven of the attackers, according to Kabul police chief Ayoub Salangi. But the insurgents proved once again that few places, even in the heavily policed capital, lie beyond their reach.
The choice of targets — a restaurant frequented primarily by Afghan families — was somewhat unusual for the Taliban, which has tended to marshal its limited resources to assault symbols of government or U.S. military power, such as armored convoys, ministries or Western embassies. But the insurgents have also attacked hotels, shopping centers and supermarkets in recent years.
In claiming responsibility for the attack, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid characterized the restaurant and nearby Spozhmai Hotel as a den of booze, prostitution, dancing and “wild parties” that catered to foreigners and was an affront to Islam. But Afghan police strongly disputed the description, saying the resort on Qargha Lake outside Kabul was frequented by Afghans relaxing with their families.
The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John R. Allen, said the attack bore the signature of the Haqqani network, a Taliban-allied insurgent group based in the tribal areas of Pakistan. The Haqqani group, which U.S. officials believe has links to Pakistan’s intelligence service, has organized many of the most dramatic and deadly assaults in Kabul. Its ruthlessness and effectiveness have made it one of the most important enemies of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
“There is no doubt that innocent Afghan civilians were the intended targets of this unspeakably brutal attack,” Allen said in a statement.
“This is a crime against humanity because they targeted children, women and civilians picnicking at the lake,” said Gen. Mohammad Zahir, chief of the Kabul police investigation unit. “There wasn’t even a single soldier around there.”
The insurgents arrived at the Spugmay in a minivan at around 11:30 p.m. Thursday — the start of the Afghan weekend — while the restaurant was full of guests, some smoking hookahs under pine trees on the lawn, others eating lamb kebabs on the rooftop terrace. In the parking lot, the gunmen shot the manager’s brother and security guards, then charged through the front door, past a sign that read “No guns allowed.”
Sharif Aloko and 11 of his friends were sitting on the patio when the gunmen entered. One of them shot a father and his daughter while family members pleaded, “Please don’t kill us.”
A gunman then killed another guest, grabbed his cellphone and made a call, Aloko recalled in an interview. “He said, ‘Hafiz, I am here. Pray for me to succeed. So far the security forces have not arrived.’ ” After ending the call, Aloko said, the attacker shouted at his men to preserve their bullets.
One of the cooks said he jumped out the kitchen window and cowered behind a hedge the entire night. Other guests leapt into the lake, and one drowned as he tried to escape, according to Afghan officials. One man was fatally shot while smoking a cigarette, which was still in his fingers as he lay dead.
Afghan police stationed down the street ran into the parking lot but were repulsed. Eventually, Afghan reinforcements, backed by NATO helicopters and Norwegian special forces, arrived at the restaurant and battled the attackers.
“What we did for two hours was just protect the surrounding areas,” said Salim, one of the Afghan policemen who responded to the attack. “Nobody could dare come close to the gate. They were on the roof, and it was well lit, so whoever tried to come in they would shoot. Even if we lit a lighter they would shoot at us.”
Police said the Taliban released women and children in the morning. By mid-morning, when Afghan troops killed the last insurgents, the restaurant was pocked with bullet holes and littered with shell casings. Dead insurgents lay slumped on stairways and inside toilet stalls.
“When these attacks happen, the people definitely start hating the Taliban,” said Omid Sherzada, a 20-year-old former waiter at the restaurant, who came by to survey the wreckage. “I saw one guy sitting on the grass crying, saying, ‘Imagine, these are Muslims, and they’re doing this kind of killing.’ ”
The slaughter seemed less shocking to others.
“We were thinking one day this restaurant would come under attack,” said Mohammed Latif, a 35-year-old policeman who is stationed near the Spugmay. “There were foreigners coming and drinking alcohol here. We are Muslims, and our law and path is the holy Koran.”
Special correspondent Javed Hamdard contributed to this report.
NATO commander links Haqqani network to Kabul attack
KABUL (Reuters) - The commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan said on Friday that a deadly attack on a hotel on the outskirts of Kabul bore the signature of the Taliban-linked Haqqani group which he said continued to operate from Pakistan.
Elite Afghan police backed by NATO forces ended a 12-hour siege at the popular hotel, leaving at least 20 dead after Taliban gunmen stormed the lakeside building, bursting into a party and seizing dozens of hostages.
"Afghan National Security Forces and coalition military sources acknowledge that this attack bears the signature of the Haqqani network, which continues to target and kill innocent Afghans and blatantly violate Afghan sovereignty from the safety of Pakistan," General John Allen said in a statement.
(Reporting by Sanjeev Miglani; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)
Kabul birthday party reduced to bloody destruction
By Usman Sharifi AFP via Yahoo! News - Jun 22 04:25am
A carefree birthday party and night out to celebrate the start of the Afghan weekend were reduced to destruction and butchery when Taliban gunmen stormed a lakeside hotel, opening fire indiscriminately on wealthy revellers.
Pools of blood, broken glass and hundreds of bullet casings littered the floor in the main dining room, where three young Afghan men were shot dead as they sat at a table sipping energy drinks, cut down in the prime of life. Their blood-drenched bodies lay slumped out of their chairs on the floor.
A middle-aged man stood sobbing over the body of his nephew.
"Yesterday he told me they were coming to this place for a nice evening, now he's lying there dead," he cried.
The weeping of the bereaved and shouts of security officials alone broke the silence Friday at the Spozhmai Hotel, after the 12-hour siege finally ended. Sixteen people were killed.
On a balcony overlooking the glistening lake, a 22nd birthday cake lay half eaten on a table surrounded by a dozen empty chairs. Nearby sprawled the bloodied body of a young man shot repeatedly in the chest.
Like many of the victims, he was dressed in Western clothes -- jeans, T-shirt and sports shoes -- a sign of the wealthy clientele that frequented the upmarket hotel, now battered and bloodied.
For some, the attack prompted a desperate bid for survival.
Police said they had recovered the bodies of three people who jumped into the lake in an effort to save themselves from the Kalashnikov-wielding attackers.
Sharifullah, 30, searched desperately through the wreckage of the Spozhmai for his friend who he lost in the chaos and bloodshed.
"I saw three armed men entering the area where people, families had gathered. Moments later the shooting broke out, people panicked and started screaming," he told AFP.
"I threw myself in a ditch but saw bullets hitting a father, his son and wife who were sitting around a table near me.
"I am not sure if they survived, security forces arrived 20 minutes later, but the shooting continued."
Outside in the car park, flashy new four-wheel-drive vehicles were pockmarked with bullet holes.
One bloodied body of an attacker, who looked like a teenager, lay on the roof wearing traditional shalwa khamis. A second lay twisted in a dining room and a third among the trees down by the lake.
Backgrounder: Major attacks in Afghanistan since May 3 Taliban spring offensive
by Farid Behbud, Chen Xin
KABUL, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Taliban insurgents, who have been waging more than a decade-long insurgency, announced on May 2 that they would launch a spring offensive against Afghan-NATO security forces from May 3, warning they would also attack people who support the government.
Taliban militants launched a hostage-taking attack against Spozhmai Hotel in Qargha Lake, a picnic spot in the western outskirts of Kabul overnight, triggering an 11-hour gun fight and blasts till Friday noon.
Four civilians, three hotel guards and a policemen were killed and 40 guests were rescued by security forces, the number of the injured is not released at the moment.
The following is the major attacks across the country since early May.
June 20 -- Twenty people including three U.S. soldiers, two policemen and 15 civilians were killed and 37 others injured when a Taliban suicide bomber set off his explosive in eastern Khost province.
June 20 -- Eight civilians were killed and five others injured when their vehicle ran over a roadside bomb in eastern Logar province.
June 19 -- Three policemen, one NATO soldier and 11 Taliban were killed when militants launched two attacks on Afghan-NATO outposts in southern Kandahar province.
June 18 -- Eight civilians were killed and five others injured in a roadside bombing in southern Helmand province.
June 18 -- Three men in Afghan police uniform killed a NATO soldier in Kandahar.
June 18 -- Five people, including four local police force servicemen were killed and 20 civilians injured when a bomb went off in eastern Kapisa province.
June 15 -- A civilian was killed and 10 others were injured when a motorcycle bomb went off in Kandahar.
June 14 -- Four policemen were killed in a roadside bombing in eastern Nangarhar province.
June 14 -- At least one civilian was killed and 11 others were injured when a bomb was detonated in Shbirghan, provincial capital of northern Jawzjan province.
June 12 -- Two civilians were killed and six policemen injured when a suicide bomber blew himself up in northern Balkh province.
June 11 -- An ambulance carrying a pregnant woman to a hospital touched off a bomb in Sari Pul province, killing five people and injuring two others including the woman.
June 8 -- A suicide bombing left two civilians dead and 10 others injured in northern Faryab province.
June 7 -- Four French NATO soldiers were killed and eight others, including five French soldiers and three civilians, injured when a Taliban suicide attacker set off his explosive vest in Kapisa province.
June 6 -- A Taliban double suicide bombing against a marketplace, frequented by contractors of local companies which provide services to foreign troops, left 22 people dead and 50 others injured.
June 1 -- Five civilians were killed and 20 others injured when a Taliban truck bomb hit a U.S. military camp in eastern Khost province, in an raid that also left 14 suicide attackers dead. However, some media outlets reported that two U.S. soldiers were also killed and more than 100 U.S. soldiers were injured in the attack.
May 31 -- A suicide car bomb killed five Afghan border policemen in Kandahar.
May 28 -- Four policemen and three civilians were killed in roadside bomb attack in northern Baghlan province.
May 20 -- Two NATO soldiers and two children were killed and six children injured in a suicide bombing in Tirin Kot town, capital of southern Uruzgan province.
May 19 -- Ten civilians and three policemen were killed and three others injured in a suicide bombing in Ali Sher district of Khost province.
May 17 -- Taliban lunched a coordinated attack against the governor office building in western Farah province, leaving six policemen, one civilian and four attackers dead and over a dozen others injured.
May 14 -- Nine people, including a member of provincial council named Amanullah Shahab were killed and eight others injured in a bomb attack against a bazaar in northern Faryab province.
May 13 -- A roadside bombing left five Afghan army soldiers dead in eastern Laghman province.
May 13 -- A member of Afghan Peace Council and former Taliban official named Arsallah Rahmani was shot and killed in Kabul.
May 12 -- Four policemen were killed in a roadside bomb attack in northwestern Badghis province.
May 12 -- Two British soldiers with the NATO were killed by two men in Afghan police uniform in southern Helmand province.
May 11 -- Two men in police uniform shot and killed a U.S. solider and injured two others in eastern Kunar province.
May 10 -- Two back to back bomb blasts killed eight policemen and injured three others in Helmand.
May 10 -- Six suicide attackers were killed and three policemen and two civilians injured in a Taliban attack in eastern Paktika province.
May 8 -- Militants attack a convoy of education ministry, killing five staff members in Paktika.
May 6 -- Three civilians were injured and 32 others rescued after Taliban launched an attack against a building in Paktika's capital Sharan, four suicide attackers were also killed.
May 6 -- Man in army uniform shot dead a NATO soldier in southern Afghanistan.
May 4 -- Five border policemen were killed in a roadside bombing in Nangarhar.
May 4 -- Two British soldiers and 11 Taliban were killed in a massive attack against check posts in Helmand.
May 2 -- Eight civilians were killed and 17 others, including 10 school children, were injured when Taliban suicide bombers stormed a NATO civilian-military camp named green village in eastern Kabul. Four attackers were also killed.
Afghan forces need reading lessons before security transfer
By Sanjeev Miglani
KABUL (Reuters) - A third of Afghan national security forces are taking basic lessons in reading and counting as NATO commanders accelerate their training ahead of the withdrawal of most foreign troops in 2014, the coalition has said.
More than 95 percent of recruits in the Afghan national army and police are functionally illiterate, having never been to school, so are sent on a beginner's course to teach them how to write their name and count to 1,000 in their mother tongue.
Afghan forces, which hit a strength of 343,000 men in April as part of a rapid build-up, are set to take over security responsibilities by the middle of next year as a deadly Taliban insurgency rages.
The widespread absence of elementary reading and counting skills in a nation torn by three decades of war has slowed their training and their ability to do the job, underscoring the challenges facing Afghanistan after the bulk of Western military support is withdrawn.
"For many in Afghanistan, because of 30 years of war they have had little access to information, education. They know a lot but they don't know how to read or write," said Barbara Goodno, chief of the literacy and language division at NATO's training mission in Afghanistan.
"What we are trying to do is to jump-start the process," she said.
On Friday, Afghan forces battled Taliban gunmen who were holding hostages overnight in a popular lakeside hotel on the outskirts of Kabul.
About 119,000 Afghan soldiers and police are undergoing a three-stage literacy program which aims to teach them writing, reading and counting skills equivalent to students aged eight in the third grade of the Afghan school system.
NATO said a 2009 survey found that the Afghan national army, which is considered the most professional of all the country's forces and the spearhead of the fight against the Taliban, had a literacy rate of 13 percent. The police were assumed to be little better, on the basis of the army survey.
The coalition said it was not aware of a follow-up study, but its assumption was the figure would have risen since then, though there was no hard statistical data.
The soldiers can neither read nor write at the start of the literacy course, so instructors have to explain everything in pictures. All training is manual and every skill has to be demonstrated, commanders say.
Troops are unable to read instructions on how to maintain a vehicle, fill out a form for the issue of equipment, or read a serial number to distinguish their weapon from another - all basic soldiering duties anywhere in the world.
"If you have someone who is injured and they are unable to read a map and to provide their location to get picked up, it's a serious problem. That is a matter of life and death," said Goodno.
"If you have an individual, a police officer who is responsible for enforcing laws that they are unable to read, and they are unable to write a report, that is a matter of life and death."
Afghanistan's overall literacy rate is 37 percent, ranking 117 out of 123 nations.
Some 3,000 Afghan teachers have been hired as part of a $200 million program for basic literacy funded by Japan, Britain, Finland and the United Arab Emirates until 2014.
"Training is difficult, it does not happen quickly or easily," Goodno said.
(Editing by Daniel Magnowski)
Afghan academics fired for 'offensive' ethnic book
AFP via Yahoo! News - Jun 20 09:58am
Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Wednesday sacked four academics from a leading research centre over a book that sparked fury for reportedly insulting the Hazara ethnic group.
The head of the Afghanistan Academy of Science and three other scholars were dismissed and referred to the attorney general's office for questioning, Karzai's office said in a statement.
The "Ethnographic Atlas of the Tribes of Afghanistan", published recently, reportedly described Hazaras as liars, stubborn, violent and anti-Islamic, prompting outrage from Hazara politicians.
"The content of the book is grossly offensive and considered an insult to all the resident ethnicities and thus the entire Afghan population," the statement quoted Karzai as saying.
Hazaras make up an estimated 15 to 20 percent of the war-torn nation's ethnically diverse population, and Hazara Shiite Muslims suffered brutal persecution under Taliban rule in the 1990s.
Karzai's government is a delicate mix of the three main ethnic groups -- Pashtun, Tajik and Hazara -- and has ordered the book withdrawn from circulation.
The publication led to fierce debates on television chat shows, and was condemned by Hazara lawmakers in parliament.
Haji Mohammad Mohaqiq, leader of the Afghanistan People's Unity Party, one of the main Hazara political factions, condemned the book and called for the authors to be punished.
Asadullah Sahdati, an MP from the Hazara-majority central province of Deh Kondi, condemned the book.
"The book contains non-scientific contents, and in some parts is childish. We welcome the move by the president sacking those behind it," he told AFP.
However, he said he did not want to see the book banned.
"I want this book to be circulated, distributed to all Afghans, especially to every Hazara, so they understand the situation and the (hostile) feeling towards them," he said.
"We're proud of our ethnic group and welcome any academic research into it."
Ethnic divisions have led to some of the most brutal conflicts in Afghanistan's bloody history.
The mountainous country's total population is estimated to be between 24 to 35 million, but no census has been held since the 1970s due to three decades of war.
Book Talk: Antigone in a remote Afghan military post
By Elaine Lies – Thu, Jun 21, 2012
TOKYO (Reuters) - A legless Afghan woman pushing herself in a cart appears outside a remote U.S. military outpost after a desperate, dusty firefight, demanding the body of her brother - one of the attackers - to take home for burial.
Her presence sparks fierce debate in "The Watch," a novel by Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya, as the soldiers take turns telling the story as they try to determine if she herself is a terrorist, someone come to destroy them, or exactly what she says.
The Indian-born Roy-Bhattacharya spoke with Reuters about writing, the current state of literary fiction, and his novel, which was inspired by the Greek myth of Antigone, who tried to recover her brother's body in the face of laws forbidding even mourning him since he was considered a traitor.
Q: What got this book going?
A: "What got it going was my own frustration with the fact that literary fiction appears to have stopped dealing with the real world. So you have book after book coming out where it essentially deals with, I don't know, family issues this, that and the other ... I come from India, so in terms of what is known as collateral damage, we get little to nothing about what is actually happening on the ground in Afghanistan, much less than what is happening on the ground in Iraq. And I began this book with the intention of lending a face and a voice to those statistics.
"It was only after I'd written the first draft and started talking to American soldiers who had been there, that I realized that they themselves felt they were fighting this forgotten war. Everyone paid lip service - and I've been told this repeatedly - no one wanted to listen to them. So it became equally important to me to tell their side of the story. One of the reasons I framed the book as I have is that I wanted to get out of the way entirely as an author and give agency to each one of the characters in the book and have them tell the story in the first person, passing it along like a baton.
"More than anything else, I wanted to write a book that would squarely involve the civilian reader in the kind of decision making and moral quandaries that are the soldiers' fate. Once you've read the book and you come to the penultimate page, you've really gone the whole emotional arc of identifying with the Pashtun girl to apprehending what's going to happen to the soldiers that you now know so well."
Q: Were some of the points of view more difficult for you to write than others? Did some resonate more?
A: "Well, certainly the medic's point of view resonated because I think he was the one who was the most sensitive and made it a point to read up on Afghan culture. The medic is representative of somebody who actually steps out of the shell of his training and tries to see the other point of view.
"The captain was a difficult feat to pull off because I had to be someone who was completely middle of the road, completely strait-laced, completely resistant to breaking what in the military is called the chain of command."
Q: You said you started talking to service members after you wrote the first draft. Why at that point?
A: "I had become very impatient with the fact that literary fiction just seems to have settled into this very comfortable groove. You have your sinecured job teaching writing, which I believe is a complete racket, and it's very parochial and you never go out of your comfort zone. I think of the writers of the 19th century and the real impact they had on the society - Dickens's novels leading to real changes in child labor laws, and so on. I don't have a background in literature, I've been an inveterate reader from the time I was a child; my background is in the social sciences. And if I'm to write fiction there's absolutely no reason why I can't imagine something based on my own research ... When Stefenie Mayer writes vampire novels, is she a vampire? It's just this kind of self-imposed limitations on the part of contemporary writers that I don't understand."
Q: So what should fiction be doing?
A: "I think fiction should be addressing the real world and imaginatively bringing people out of their despair, in a way. Fiction should be to a certain extent activist, but it should certainly be engaging, in the sense of the French word "engagement," with the world we live in today. Trying to bring about changes. The pen being mightier than the sword - doesn't that sound like such an anachronism today when you look at literary fiction? It's like a parlor game. I believe in the pen being mightier than the sword and I think we need to go back to doing that, because the alternative is just pure entertainment.
"It depends on the writer. It can be entertaining, but at the same time, it must address issues. It must address moral issues. Dickens isn't exactly a difficult read, but you can feel the urgency of the issues he addresses."
(Reporting by Elaine Lies; editing by Paul Casciato)
Pentagon: Afghan forces face challenges but ‘on track’ to take charge
The Washington Times By Kristina Wong Thursday, June 21, 2012
Training Afghan forces to fend for themselves in the defense of their nation is continually hampered by illiteracy, attrition and a shortage of non-commissioned officers, Pentagon officials said.
But the overall U.S.-led effort to enable the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) to take charge of Afghanistan’s security by 2014 is “on track,” defense officials told a House Armed Services subcommittee on Wednesday.
David Sedney, deputy assistant secretary of defense for Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia, said the ANSF now participates in more than 90 percent of all security operations in Afghanistan, and helps plan more than 40 percent of those missions.
“They are more in the lead than ever before,” Mr. Sedney said.
About half of the 40 percent of missions that Afghan forces helped plan were led by an Afghan commander, said Army Maj. Gen. Stephen Townsend, director of the Afghanistan/Pakistan coordination cell for the Joint Staff.
Yet challenges remain for the ANSF’s long-term development, the defense officials said.
Gen. Townsend noted that the Afghan army lacks 17,000 non-commissioned officers and the police lack 11,000.
Despite the challenges, Afghanistan’s army and police force are on track to meet their end-strength goal of 352,000 members by the end of September, the officials testified.
Those numbers should fall to 230,000 by 2017, depending on the security situation, which will be reviewed every six months, the officials said.
While $4.1 billion a year is the estimated cost to sustain the Afghan security forces after 2014, the cost would depend on the reductions in end-strength, Mr. Sedney said. He added that the goal is for Afghanistan to fund the forces by 2024.
US considers launching joint US-Afghan raids in Pakistan to hunt down militant groups
Associated Press June 22, 2012
WASHINGTON - U.S. military and intelligence officials are so frustrated with Pakistan's failure to stop local militant groups from attacking Americans in neighboring Afghanistan that they have considered launching secret joint U.S.-Afghan commando raids into Pakistan to hunt them down, officials told The Associated Press.
But the idea, which U.S. officials say comes up every couple of months, has been consistently rejected because the White House believes the chance of successfully rooting out the deadly Haqqani network would not be worth the intense diplomatic blowback from Pakistan that inevitably would ensue.
Members of the Haqqani tribe have been targeted by pilotless U.S. drone aircraft, but sending American and Afghan troops into Pakistan would be a serious escalation of the hunt for terrorists and potentially the final straw for Pakistan, already angered over what it sees as U.S. violations of its sovereignty.
The Al Qaeda-allied Haqqani tribe runs a mafia-like smuggling operation and occasionally turns to terrorism with the aim of controlling its territory in eastern Afghanistan. The Haqqanis use Pakistani towns to plan, train and arm themselves with guns and explosives, cross into Afghanistan to attack NATO and Afghan forces, then retreat back across the border to safety.
The latest round of debate over whether to launch clandestine special operations raids into Pakistan against the Haqqanis came after the June 1 car bombing of Forward Operating Base Salerno in eastern Afghanistan that injured up to 100 U.S. and Afghan soldiers, according to three current and two former U.S. officials who were briefed on the discussions. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the still-evolving debates.
The officials told the AP that recent discussions of clandestine ground attacks have included Gen. John Allen, the senior U.S. commander in Afghanistan, as well as top CIA and special operations officials.
Allen's spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Brook DeWalt, said Allen "has not and does not intend to push for a cross-border operation."
The White House and the CIA declined to comment for this story.
Pentagon spokesman George Little said the U.S. was still focused on U.S.-Pakistan cooperation.
"The key is to work together with Pakistan to find ways of fighting terrorists who threaten both the United States and Pakistan, including along the Afghan-Pakistan border, where extremists continue to plot attacks against coalition forces and innocent civilians," he said.
The U.S. relationship with Pakistan is arguably at its lowest point over the continuation of drone strikes to hit terror targets in Pakistan, the successful Navy SEAL raid in Pakistan to kill Usama bin Laden that was carried out without a heads-up to the country's leaders and the U.S. refusal to apologize for a border skirmish in which the U.S. mistakenly killed 24 Pakistani troops. On Thursday, the State Department's inspector general accused the Pakistani government of harassing U.S. Embassy personnel.
Pakistan has done little in response to repeated U.S. requests for a crackdown on the Haqqanis, and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta surprisingly voiced that frustration in a visit to Kabul this month.
He said the U.S. was "reaching the limits" of its patience with Pakistan's failure to tackle the tribe's safe havens. He added that the U.S. was "extraordinarily dissatisfied with the effect that Pakistan has had on the Haqqanis." He also made fun of Pakistan's ignorance over the bin Laden raid at a speech in India, Pakistan's archrival.
Pakistan's army has attacked militant strongholds across the tribal areas, except for North Waziristan, where the Haqqanis hold sway and shelter both Al Qaeda and Taliban militants. Pakistani officials say that they intend to hit North Waziristan but that their army is too overstretched to move as fast as the U.S. demands.
Pakistani officials have conceded privately, however, that they have been reluctant to take on the powerful tribe for fear of retaliatory strikes.
To make up for Pakistan's inaction, the CIA's covert drone program has targeted Haqqani leaders, safe houses, bomb factories and training camps inside Pakistan, and special operations raids have hit Haqqani targets on the Afghan side of the border, but that has failed to stop Haqqani attacks on U.S. and Afghan troops and civilian targets.
The officials say Allen expressed frustration that militants would attack and then flee across the border in Pakistan, immediately taking shelter in urban areas where attacking them by missile fire could kill civilians.
The officials say options that have been prepared for President Barack Obama's review included raids that could be carried out by U.S. special operations forces together with Afghan commandos, ranging from air assaults that drop raiders deep inside the tribal areas to hit top leaders to shorter dashes only a few miles into Pakistan territory.
The shorter raids would not necessarily be covert, as they could be carried out following the U.S. military principle known as "hot pursuit" that military officials say entitles their forces to pursue a target that attacks them in Afghanistan up to 6.2 miles inside a neighboring country's territory.
The U.S. has staged two major raids and other minor forays into Pakistan's tribal territory before during the George W. Bush administration; the most contentious was in September 2008 when Navy SEALs raided an Al Qaeda compound. The operators killed their target, but the ensuing firefight triggered a diplomatic storm with Pakistan.
Rather than fly in, which U.S. military planners at the time feared would alert the Pakistanis, the SEALs marched across the mountainous border, arriving later than planned because of the harsh terrain and just as the fighters were waking for morning prayers, according to one current and one former U.S. official. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the clandestine operation.
Everyone inside the targeted compound opened fire on the SEALs, including the women, one of whom lightly wounded one of the American operators. The firefight also woke the entire village, which joined in the battle, so the SEALs had to call for strafing runs by Black Hawk helicopters to beat them back.
At least one woman and one child were among the many dead.
US Should Help to Extradite Fetrat Back to Kabul
TOLOnews.com Thursday, 21 June 2012
We should put pressure on the US to extradite former Central Bank Governor Abdul Qadir Fitrat back to Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai said in a meeting with Afghan lawmakers Thursday.
He also called on Afghan parliamentarians and the international community to do more to stump out corruption.
Addressing to both houses of parliament and the judiciary, Mr Karzai added that unity was needed to tackle the current challenges Afghanistan is facing.
He cited corruption as a major challenged despite ten years of efforts.
Mr Fetrat quit in June 2011 claiming he was under threat for investigating fraud at the privately-owned Kabul Bank.
The government condemned his decision, adding that he himself was under investigation for fraud.
Mr Fetrat claimed the government had interfered in his efforts to pursue those responsible for corruption at the Kabul Bank, which almost collapsed in 2010 after evidence of large-scale embezzlement emerged.
Australian revises survivors of capsized asylum seeker boat down to 109
CANBERRA, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Australian Home Affairs Minister said Friday the official number of survivors from the capsized asylum seeker boat has been revised down to 109.
"I've just been briefed by the commander of Border Protection Command, the number of survivors has now been revised down from 110 to 109," Minister Jason Clare told reporters on Friday.
Clare said a plane had also just flown over the area and there were more bodies in the water. "This is looking increasingly grim by the hour." But Clare said it wasn't yet clear if the boat had really sunk.
"Some (of life jackets) are floating on their own, some of them that have people wearing them, and they have identified more bodies in the water," Clare said.
"It's pretty rough water out there. We are still in that critical window." The minister said it appeared that all of the people were from Afghanistan.
A Border Protection spokeswoman said it was not clear why the number of survivors had been revised down but that details would change as more information became available.
Local reports said that there had been confusion from Indonesia surrounding Australia's handling of the incident. Clare said " there's been a number of inquiries about different boats over the last 24 hours," but there was no other boats in trouble so far.
Real security in Afghanistan depends on people's basic needs being met
For Afghans, particularly women, security is not only about protection from external threats and insurgents
Guardian.co.uk By Michael Keating Thursday 21 June 2012
The message from May's Nato summit in Chicago was that the Afghans would not again be abandoned by the international community, as they were in the early 1990s.
It resulted in financial pledges for Afghan security forces beyond 2014, whose cost is estimated at over $4bn a year, by which point most foreign troops will have left. This was no small achievement in today's global economic climate, given growing disenchantment with Afghanistan.
But it is not enough. Unless funding for Afghanistan's security forces is matched by investment in meeting people's basic needs, and by robust efforts to protect civilians and human rights, the money being spent on security could be wasted.
For Afghans, particularly women, security is not only about protection from external threats and insurgents, critical as these are. It is also about protection from unaccountable officials and security forces in the course of daily life.
It is about knowing that that jobs and opportunities are not just for the well-off, that property rights are respected, injustices addressed, abuse of authority checked. Afghans are no different from the rest of us.
The imperative now is to ensure that the blood spilled, money spent and gains made over the last decade are not reversed, that they yield a sustainable security dividend. What is needed is a partnership that focuses on meeting Afghans' practical needs.
The Tokyo Conference on Afghanistan in early July is an opportunity to set the right course, to substantiate the grand ambitions set out in many previous conferences, including in Bonn in December.
As foreign troops go, economic activity, revenues for the state and foreign aid budgets will drop. A virtue must be made of this necessity – to rationalise international support in a way that protects people, supports them to manage their own affairs, and rewards enterprise.
Aid and development alone cannot deliver peace, any more than security forces. An inclusive intra-Afghan political process is a must, supported by neighbouring countries, both to bring the country's long nightmare to a close, and to reduce the need for costly security.
Equally important is to ensure that presidential elections, slated for 2014, do not become the catalyst of violence, but are accepted as credible by the population, ideally contributing to reconciliation. Not easy, given ongoing insurgency, but it can be done.
But the bedrock of longer-term security and stability is sustained improvement in the quality of life, authorities that are accountable, institutions that function, and jobs.
Despite the decade of progress in areas as diverse as freedom of expression and political participation, infrastructure and mine clearance, healthcare and girls' education, Afghans are increasingly anxious about the future, and frustrated.
Five million still live as refugees or undocumented migrants. Conflict-induced displacement has risen steadily over the last five years and now amounts to over 500,000 people. Women and children suffer disproportionately from the conflict.
In 2011, a quarter of the population received food support, and over a million people got emergency drinking water. 55% of Afghan children under five are stunted, and their chances later in life of being self-reliant and contributing to economic growth are impaired. Female illiteracy and maternal mortality rates are among the highest in the world.
Land, soil, forests, water resources, and mineral deposits are degraded by over three decades of conflict, prey to illicit exploitation. The incidence of disasters, including floods, earthquakes, avalanches and droughts, is increasing. Drug production is responding to international demand, as farmers seek incomes to survive. About half the population is under 18, with few prospects, particularly in rapidly growing cities.
These are not the ingredients of stability. A long-term partnership is needed to tackle problems that are now inter-generational.
First, protection of civilians, accountability and the rule of law must be hardwired into plans for the transition, training and support of security forces. Strengthening a police force that is professional, answerable and responsive to civilians is essential.
Second, funding for security must be matched by funding of a practical, needs-based development agenda that focuses on what Afghans want, especially jobs, functioning institutions and basic services. They also need help to deal with urgent and extensive humanitarian needs.
This must go hand in hand with support for public-private partnerships to generate revenues that will increase the country's self sufficiency – infrastructure, services, and responsible management and exploitation of the country's vast natural resources.
Third, Tokyo should clarify the respective roles and responsibilities of the Afghan government and international community and agree a mutual accountability mechanism. Stronger and more accountable governance must be at the heart of the deal. That is what local people want, entrepreneurs need, and what western politicians must have if they are to vote the funds.
The price tag of continued support will be significant. But this will be modest compared to the vast sums now spent by the west on security – currently over $2bn a week - and the cost both to Afghans, the region and the international community if social tensions and a sense of injustice go unchecked.
Getting it right will pay enormous dividends – for Afghans, the region and the world.
Afghan women in shelters are prostitutes, says justice minister
Afghanistan's justice minister Habibullah Ghaleb has claimed women in shelters for domestic violence victims are prostitutes.
Telegraph.co.uk By Dean Nelson, South Asia Editor 21 Jun 2012
His comments at a conference organised by the Afghan parliament's Women's Affairs Committee provoked outrage among human rights campaigners and demands for President Hamid Karzai to sack him.
Mr Ghaleb told delegates that 250 women living in 12 foreign-funded shelters were being encouraged to disobey their parents.
"Mostly they were encouraging girls, saying, 'If your father says anything bad to you don't listen to him, if your mother says anything to you don't listen to them. There are safe houses for you where you can stay.' What safe houses? What sort of immorality and prostitution was not happening at those places?" he said.
Baroness Ashton, the EU foreign minister, said she was "deeply troubled" by his comments which sabotaged efforts to protect women from violence and sexual abuse.
"Too many Afghan women have experienced violence, gender based and sexual, often on a repeated basis," she said in a statement. "Women forced to resort to shelters are amongst the bravest Afghans we know."
'Kite Runner' Author On His Childhood, His Writing, And The Plight Of 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 tell me about your childhood in Afghanistan?
Khaled Hosseini: I was born there in 1965, and I grew up essentially in the pre-Soviet war era in Afghanistan. [I] grew up in Kabul. Both of my parents were university educated. My mother was a Farsi and history teacher at a large high school for girls; my father was a diplomat at the Foreign Ministry.
And, you know, Afghanistan was a country at peace with itself, with its neighbors. Kabul was a growing, thriving, cosmopolitan city. So it was a very, very different picture of Afghanistan than the one you would think of today if somebody said the word Afghanistan. So I feel very fortunate to have lived through the final few peaceful years of recent Afghan history.
RFE/RL: How and why did your family leave Afghanistan?
Hosseini: We left in 1976 because my father was assigned to a diplomatic post at the Afghan Embassy in Paris, and it was supposed to be a four-year assignment. While we were in Paris, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and a war began, and things became very unstable back home. And there was -- the refugee crisis began, and we knew people who were in prison, and tortured, and beaten, and killed.
And so my father applied for asylum to the United States, and instead of returning to Afghanistan my family moved instead to San Jose, California, in the fall in 1980, where most of my family has lived ever since.
RFE/RL: What was it like to move to the United States as a teenager?
Hosseini: I was 15 when I moved to the U.S., went straight into high school, and you know, for me, I think the adjustment was difficult because of the age. You know, being a teen is difficult anyway. But I think it was an even more difficult adjustment for my parents to be uprooted and to have lost everything they had worked their lives for, and to have to restart their lives essentially from scratch and to try to restart a life in an environment that was dramatically different from the one they were accustomed to.
That said, I think they also had a very healthy sense of perspective in that we were among the extremely fortunate Afghans who were allowed to restart our lives in America, whereas millions of Afghans ended up living in refugee camps in Pakistan, lived as laborers in Iran or elsewhere in the world. So we were quite, quite fortunate.
RFE/RL: Did you speak English when you came to the U.S.?
Hosseini: I did not. I spoke a few words, a few phrases, but I had to learn English essentially on the fly. It was tough. I’ve always had a sort of a knack for languages, but it was really difficult to be -- within two weeks of arrival here I was enrolled in regular English classes as a freshman. And it was really a process of sink or swim.
So I soaked up the language through reading the paper, through television, through radio, through going to school, and I think within a year I was pretty fluent.
RFE/RL: What experiences inspired the storyline for "The Kite Runner"?
Hosseini: Well, the storyline itself was fairly fictional, although, you know, I was watching a news story in the spring of 1999 on television, and this news story was about the Taliban. And it was talking about all the different impositions that the Taliban had placed on the Afghan people. And at some point along the line, it mentioned that they had banned the sport of kite flying, which kind of struck a personal chord for me, because as a boy I grew up in Kabul with all my cousins and friends flying kites.
So I sat down after that news story and wrote a 25-page short story about two boys in Kabul flying kites, and it became this kind of a much darker, more involved tale than I had anticipated.
A couple of years later, in March of 2001, I rediscovered the short story in my garage, essentially, and it kind of became the inspiration for the novel. And I kind of sat down and began expanding the short story into a book, which eventually became "The Kite Runner," the novel.
RFE/RL: Your subsequent book, “A Thousand Splendid Suns,” focuses on the very different experience of women in Afghanistan. What compelled you to tell this story?
Hosseini: Almost as soon as I had finished "The Kite Runner," I knew I wanted to write a second book, and I knew I wanted to write about women. Because I had gone to Afghanistan in March of 2003 and seen firsthand the aftermath of the war there, heard so many stories about what happened to women, the tragedies that they had endured, the difficulties, the gender-based violence that they had suffered, the discrimination, the being barred from active life during the Taliban, having their movement restricted, being banned essentially from practicing their legal, social rights, political rights.
I felt it was an outrage and I felt it was a very important story. And when I was in Kabul in 2003 I heard many personal stories about women, and sort of eventually over a couple of years those voices coalesced into a pair of characters. And I sat down finally with the story in hand and wrote "A Thousand Splendid Suns."
RFE/RL: Was writing "A Thousand Splendid Suns" more difficult than "The Kite Runner"?
Hosseini: Far more difficult. It was a real challenge to write from the standpoint of not one, but two, different women from different social backgrounds. And so I really struggled with that for quite a bit. And eventually at some point the characters became alive to me when I stopped obsessing about it so much -- about, you know, capturing an authentic voice for an Afghan woman.
And I just kind of wrote the characters as human beings with a set of fears, and concerns, and disappointments, and hopes, and personality traits, and so on. And so at that point suddenly the characters kind of took on a life of their own and became very real for me.
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?
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. 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 1990s 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?
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...basic services that we need for day-to-day survival.
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, 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.
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