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Afghan Vote Plan Raises Tensions
Government Decides to Issue Electronic ID Cards for Crucial 2014 Presidential Election, a Strategy the West Has Criticized
Wall Street Journal By MARIA ABI-HABIB and NATHAN HODGE October 14, 2012
KABUL - The Afghan government's plan to issue biometric ID cards ahead of the 2014 presidential election is raising tensions with international donors, who are concerned the ambitious project could tarnish the vote instead of eliminating fraud.
As part of its preparations for the election, the Afghan government decided last month to issue to all Afghans an electronic national ID card, known as e-tazkira, which includes scanned thumbprints. The plan is expected to cost $115 million, most of it from Western sources, U.S. and international officials say.
However, some senior Afghan officials say it is virtually impossible to register most Afghans in time for the election, which is set to pick President Hamid Karzai's successor.
"Time is running out," warned Fazal Ahmad Manawi, the chairman of Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission. He said he wasn't sure if Afghan government ministries "can run this project based on the time that we need."
A Karzai spokesman declined to comment.
The 2014 election—coinciding with the planned withdrawal of most U.S. and international troops—is critical for Afghanistan's stability.
While Mr. Karzai isn't allowed to run again under the constitution, Western diplomats expect him to try to put in office a relative or a close ally who could protect the extended Karzai clan and its vast business interests. Officials from donor countries say any fraud perpetrated by Mr. Karzai could reignite the civil-war fault lines of the 1990s and could threaten foreign aid.
Officials from some Western donor countries say their governments have threatened to cut off some aid if there were massive fraud in the election.
Officially, the Karzai administration says it hopes to issue e-tazkiras to virtually all of the 15 million voters officials expect to be eligible by 2014.
But Zmarialai Wafa, acting director for information security at Afghanistan's ministry of communications and information technology, which is implementing the plan, said time and logistics will allow for only between five and eight million voters to receive the cards.
"At least Kabul and some other major cities will be done by that time," he said.
The crucial issue—so far undecided—is whether the new e-tazkiras will become the only acceptable voter ID. Limiting voting to cardholders could have political implications.
The e-tazkira program was initially considered eight years ago, but didn't take off because of wrangling between government ministries. Mr. Karzai's plan to become the first Afghan to scan his fingerprints and receive a national ID this month—a symbolic start for the nationwide program—was delayed because the government hasn't yet approved the card's design, the interior ministry said.
Current voter cards and national IDs can be purchased on the black market for just $30 apiece, and Western officials say millions of fraudulent cards circulate in the country.
Disillusionment about fraud and growing violence have led to declining voter participation since Afghanistan's first post-Taliban election in 2004.
Despite these pitfalls, Western officials recommended to the Independent Election Commission—which conducts the polls—to leave in place Afghanistan's current voter registration system. Most of the fraud in 2009 happened after polls closed, when election officials stuffed ballot boxes, and not during the vote itself, the officials say.
Mr. Karzai's cabinet, however, decided to go forward with the e-tazkira system despite these objections last month. The e-tazkira is to include a chip that serves as an electronic driver's license, proves voter eligibility and allows Afghans to receive medical care.
It is far from certain the technology will work in a largely illiterate country like Afghanistan, where most of the population has no access to electricity. The chip would need to be charged or the information accessed by a computer. When Dubai, the rich and technologically savvy emirate, embarked on a similar program of electronic IDs in 2000, glitches caused years of delays to register a population that is a small fraction of Afghanistan's.
The issue of biometric registration is sensitive. Kabul-based officials say a previous deal between the U.S. and the Afghan interior ministry to biometrically register Afghans at border crossings and share the information was derailed by Mr. Karzai, who was concerned about the data's ownership and the plan's implications for national sovereignty.
The U.S. military has been separately collecting Afghans' finger prints and retina scans for intelligence purposes for years. Roughly two million Afghans, most of them in the insurgent heartlands of the south and the east, were biometrically registered in that data base.
Concerns over who will have access to the e-tazkira data caused a delay of at least nine months in 2011 as the government negotiated how the information would be stored and used, Mr. Wafa said. The Afghan government, he added, will maintain sole ownership of the data it collects for the national ID card. —Habib Khan Totakhil and Ziaulhaq Sultani contributed to this article.
Write to Maria Abi-Habib at maria.habib@dowjones.com and Nathan Hodge atnathan.hodge@wsj.com
UN Organizing Informal Talks With All Afghan Factions
October 15, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
The head of the UN mission in Afghanistan, Jan Kubis, has said the United Nations is organizing informal talks that it hopes will attract "all relevant forces and people" in Afghanistan.
Kubis said the Track II talks should involve as many "stakeholders in Afghanistan" as possible, including antigovernment groups such as the Taliban.
Kubis said these are not peace talks and added, "We are not going to tell the Afghans what they have to think."
Kubis said the aim was to bring various Afghan groups together to discuss the country's future, especially after 2014, when the majority of foreign forces will have withdrawn from Afghanistan.
Kubis said the first of these meeting should take place before the end of this year.
Meanwhile, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has made a surprise visit to Afghanistan, seeking assurances from President Hamid Karzai that he is doing all he can to halt "insider attacks."
The prime minister’s office said Gillard met Karzai on October 14 in Kabul and visited Australian troops.
She raised concerns about the so-called "green-on-blue" attacks in which uniformed Afghans turn their weapons against their international allies.
On August 30, Australia suffered its deadliest day when five troops were killed in two separate incidents in Afghanistan.
Australia is a close ally of the United States. Its Afghan deployment began in 2001.
It announced this year that it would begin withdrawing its forces in 2013, earlier than planned.
Based on reporting by AFP, RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan, dpa, and Interfax
Feature: War-weary Afghans express both hope and uncertainty after 2014
by Farid Behbud, Chen Xin
KABUL, Oct. 15 (Xinhua) -- War-weary Afghans have expressed both hope and uncertainty once the NATO-led foreign troops finally leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
"The situation in Afghanistan is relatively normal. It is not as bad as the media are reporting. You see here, if there is no hope for the future, why is this businessman building a guesthouse inside the diplomatic enclave in Kabul?" Nabi, 60, a construction designer, told Xinhua over the weekend.
The transition of security control from over 100,000 NATO-led forces, majority of them Americans, to Afghan forces is due to completed by the end of 2014.
"In my opinion, our army and police forces, the noble men and women of this country, are well-trained and strong-minded in defeating the enemies of the country. We have confidence on them. They are from every part of the country and from every ethnicity," Nabi, who like many Afghans goes only by one name, said.
The last of 33,000 U.S. surge troops deployed to Afghanistan in early 2010 have pulled out of the insurgency-hit country in September.
"Personally, I welcome the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan, because I think the security situation in the country is much more improved and there is nothing to worry about, " Nabi said.
But not all Afghans share Nabi's positive view of the situation in Afghanistan.
Another Kabul resident, Abdullah Shah, 30, in talks with Xinhua, said that the future of Afghanistan after the foreign troops' pullout is still uncertain.
"It is still not the proper time for the foreign troops to pull out since the Afghan security forces are not yet capable in dealing with terrorist threats, particularly from the Taliban. They do not have enough air power, with only a few planes," Shah said.
"It doesn't matter whether the U.S. and its ally will leave Afghanistan or not, what we need is peace and security. We have had enough of the killings and bombings. We want to live in peace, " he said.
The Afghan forces and NATO troops have completed transition in the first two of five tranches of provinces and districts across the country. In a couple of weeks, when the current third phase of the process ends, the Afghan national security forces will take full control of areas where about 75 percent of the population lives.
Even if the NATO-led forces leave Afghanistan, international financial support for the Afghan security forces will continue.
During an international conference on Afghanistan held in Japan in July, the donor countries pledged more than 16 billion U.S. dollars in development aid for Afghanistan through 2015. The U.S. and its NATO allies also promised almost the same amount to support Afghan army and police after pull-out of their troops.
However, the International Crisis Group (ICG), in a report released on Monday, said that the Afghan government is "far from ready" to assume responsibility for security when U.S. and NATO forces withdraw in 2014.
The Brussels-based ICG said that "plagued by factionalism and corruption, Afghanistan is far from ready to assume responsibility for security when U.S. and NATO forces withdraw in 2014. That makes the political challenge of organizing a credible presidential election and transfer of power from President Karzai to a successor that year all the more daunting. A repeat of previous elections' chaos and chicanery would trigger a constitutional crisis, lessening chances the present political dispensation can survive the transition."
NATO defense ministers on Wednesday endorsed the broad political framework for a new training mission in Afghanistan after 2014.
"This (the framework) will guide our military experts as they take the planning process forward. I expect us to agree on a detailed outline early next year, and to complete the plan well before the end of 2013," NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said following the two-day gathering of NATO defense chiefs in Brussels.
Rasmussen said it is still too early to decide on the size of NATO troops in the new mission, which will largely depend on the security situation in Afghanistan by that time.
Mining Contract Details Disclosed in Afghanistan
New York Times By GRAHAM BOWLEY and MATTHEW ROSENBERG October 14, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - Enmeshed in a bruising political battle over new mining rules seen as vital to Afghanistan’s economic future, the country’s mining minister on Sunday disclosed about 200 previous mining contracts for the first time, portraying the move as an attempt to bring transparency to a process vulnerable to corruption.
In the process, he appeared to take a swipe at a brother of President Hamid Karzai, citing as flawed the award of a contract in 2006 for a cement company in which he was a partner.
The action, by Mining Minister Wahidullah Shahrani, was likely to please his supporters in the West, including the United States, who made greater openness in the Afghan government’s financial dealings a condition of billions of dollars in development assistance and aid money pledged earlier this year.
But the move also comes at a precarious time for Mr. Shahrani. He is embattled politically and a target of critics for his shepherding of a proposed new mining law, vital to attracting foreign investment, which was blocked by the Afghan cabinet in July with President Karzai’s support. Mr. Shahrani is to resubmit the law in the coming weeks.
Developing Afghanistan’s potentially rich deposits of iron, oil, gold, copper, lithium and other natural resources is regarded as crucial to the country’s economic prospects, transforming it into a state that can begin to pay its own way and allowing the international community to cut back its financial and, ultimately, military support. But there are persistent concerns that any resource boom could be jeopardized by corruption, worsening security and political instability.
“From now on every contract will be made public,” Mr. Shahrani said at a news conference here. “No contract will be kept secret.”
However, Mr. Shahrani did not release the contract for one of the country’s biggest and most lucrative mining concessions, the 2007 agreement for the Aynak copper deposit in Logar Province near Kabul struck with a Chinese state-owned conglomerate, China Metallurgical Group Corporation. Accusations of bribery and a sweetheart deal for the mining concern have swirled for years, but without proof.
Mr. Shahrani said this agreement was made under a previous minister when nonpublication was subject to a legal deal with the Chinese. He said he had written to the Chinese with a request to make the contract public. Almost all of the other contracts published on the ministry Web site, struck as far back as 2002, covered an array of much smaller marble, coal and other mines, and until the details of the Aynak contract are released, analysts questioned whether the new initiative had full force.
“This is a start,” said Yama Torabi, director of Integrity Watch Afghanistan, an anticorruption watchdog based in Kabul.
Mr. Shahrani said the ministry had discovered “financial, legal and technical flaws” in some of the contracts, and held up as an example at the news conference the operating rights for the country’s only cement factory, which was awarded at the time to a partnership of investors, among them Mahmoud Karzai, one of President Karzai’s brothers.
Mahmoud Karzai has been accused of using his brother’s position for financial gain, and the cement factory had been controversial, not least among local provincial leaders who said the investors had cut jobs and paid low salaries. The contract was only four pages long, for an agreement that under proper international standards would normally be far longer, Mr. Shahrani said.
“Look at the contract of Ghori Cement,” he said. “Nobody remembers a 30-year contract being signed in four pages.” He said the shortcomings reflected lack of capacity and experience among officials in the ministry when the agreement was put together, and that the flawed contracts would be revised.
Neither President Karzai’s office nor Mahmoud Karzai returned messages seeking comment.
Afghan and Western officials in Kabul, along with technical experts who advise the government, have said that the initial rejection of the new mining and oil drilling law in part reflected the minister’s political weakness. Mr. Shahrani, who took over in 2010, had expected the new law to breeze past the cabinet, yet instead found himself pitted almost alone against a range of more experienced and better-connected politicians — from those seen as pro-Western reformers to former communists and the religiously conservative who, among other things, objected to the proposals as being too generous to foreign mining interests eager to exploit Afghanistan’s natural resources.
President Karzai publicly sided with those lined up against the new law, sending it back for revisions over Mr. Shahrani’s objections.
Some Western officials fear the maneuvering reflects attempts by political rivals to snatch control of the Mining Ministry, a coveted post that oversees millions of dollars in contracts.
“A lot of groups, a lot of people in the government, want to be part of the mining now that it is seen as a way to generate large sums of revenue,” said one senior European diplomat in Kabul who follows the mining deliberations.
The diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Sunday’s announcement could be seen as an attempt by Mr. Shahrani to address his political vulnerability by boosting his standing among Afghans and the international community.
The Mes Aynak mine has been delayed by deterioration in security and the discovery of Buddhist ruins and artifacts. But Mr. Shahrani said that archaeologists preparing the site now had a deadline of the end of this year to finish their survey, and that he was confident that the Chinese could begin mining extraction in 2014.
Since he took over the ministry two years ago, Mr. Shahrani has been collecting details of agreements struck on natural resource deals going back over the past 10 years.
Earlier this year, fulfilling concerns raised by Western governments at the Tokyo Conference, where for the first time donors made it a condition that the Afghan government reduce corruption before receiving all of the money, President Karzai issued a decree calling for full details of natural resource contracts to be published, giving further impetus to his efforts.
EU Withholds Some Aid, Citing Lack of Reform
Wall Street Journal By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV and NATHAN HODGE October 14, 2012
KABUL - The European Union told the Afghan government it was withholding millions of euros in aid because of a failure to reform the judiciary—signaling that future international funding will become increasingly dependent on Kabul living up to its promises.
The EU decision comes amid heightened tension between President Hamid Karzai's administration and the West over issues that range from insider attacks on coalition troops to Western concerns that the next presidential election, scheduled for 2014, will be even more fraud-ridden than the previous vote.
An international conference on assisting Afghanistan, held in Tokyo in July, affirmed that pledges of billions of dollars in foreign aid for Kabul are conditional on "the Afghan government delivering on its commitments" on issues such as good governance, corruption and human rights.
One of these commitments has been to present to donors one of several so-called National Priority Programs, or NPPs, that in this case outlines how Afghanistan will depoliticize its judiciary, largely controlled by Mr. Karzai, and ensure the rule of law.
No agreement on this NPP has been reached so far between the government and international donors, prompting the EU to inform Afghan ministers in recent days that Brussels is delaying the implementation of a previously agreed commitment for 20 million ($26 million) for the sector.
Given the billions of dollars allies are spending in Afghanistan, the sum itself is relatively insignificant. The decision, however, was meant as a warning of future aid cuts should the Afghan government keep stalling reforms. "It is a signal that with Tokyo things have changed, that there is no more business as usual," a Western official said.
Other donors, such as the U.S., have not yet held back funding, officials say.
Afghanistan's Senior Minister Hedayat Amin Arsala, who coordinates the government's reform process and was one of the recipients of the EU letter, said he believed it was just a temporary hiccup.
"I did not get the impression that they are dissatisfied. We are also interested in completing the NPP as soon as possible, provided the international community becomes more cooperative and tries to resolve whatever issues there are," he said in an interview. "If they want to use this as an excuse, this is a different issue."
The EU is not the only partner with whom the Afghan government has disagreements. The U.S. and Afghanistan are just getting ready to negotiate a bilateral security agreement on what military presence, if any, the U.S. will retain in the country after the coalition's mandate ends in 2014.
Even the basic details of how to conduct these negotiations are in dispute. Afghan officials say they interpret a May U.S.-Afghan partnership declaration as committing the two sides to reach the security agreement within 12 months of that date. The U.S. position is that the 12-month clock will only start once formal talks begin following the U.S. presidential election next month, U.S. officials say, adding that Washington would be happy to strike the deal earlier if possible.
Vice President Joe Biden seemed to indicate that the U.S. was not really interested in maintaining forces in Afghanistan at all, saying in last week's debate: "We are leaving in 2014, period."
Afghan officials tried to minimize that statement. "Vice President Biden's position was always different from the whole government. Right now whatever statements are made are made on the basis of what is required for elections," Mr. Arsala said. "I don't think that anything would be done which would be considered irresponsible... The reputation of the West will be at stake."
Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com and Nathan Hodge atnathan.hodge@wsj.com
Afghan women seek role in peace process
KABUL, Oct. 15 (Xinhua) -- Amid government's hectic efforts to hold dialogue with Taliban militants and find peaceful settlement to Afghanistan lingering crisis, the Afghan women are seeking proactive role in the government-backed peace process, local media reported on Monday.
"No durable peace will be ensured in Afghanistan if half of the population of the country who are women is overlooked in the peace talks," citing women rights activist Dr. Sima Samar, the Daily 8 Subh or 8 Morning writes in its edition.
Mrs. Samar who heads the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), according to the newspaper has also emphasized for fairness and transparency in the ongoing peace talks with the Taliban outfit.
The government-backed High Council for Peace, a body entrusted to push for talks with the Taliban fighters, consisted of 70 members, nine of them women. However, women right activists and civil society entities call for incorporating more women in the peace body.
"The High Council for Peace should take into account the people of Afghanistan particularly the women and brief them about the achievements," Dr. Samar said, according to the newspaper 8Subh.
She made the remarks in the wake of reports about making progress in peace talks with the Taliban militants.
Mohammad Masoum Stanikzai, a senior official with the High Council for Peace, according to local media reports has reported progress in dialogue between government and the Taliban militants.
Taliban militants who had ruled out any talks with the government have yet to comment on Stanikzai's claim.
Dr. Samar who heads the Afghan rights watchdog has also lamented the women absence in peace dialogue, saying women's signatures are not seen in big deals.
Taliban militants, whose regime was driven out of power by the U.S.-led military campaign in late 2001, are reluctant to sit around the same table with women to hold talks.
The hardliner outfit during its six-year reign which collapsed 11 years ago had dismissed women employees from government departments, confined women in the four-walls of their houses and banned school girls in the country.
However, in the post-Taliban Afghanistan women are involved in social, economic and political activities. In today's Afghanistan, women serve as parliamentarians and cabinet members, a progress unthinkable during Taliban rule in the country.
Mrs. Sayeda Mujgan Mustafawi, the deputy to Afghanistan Ministry for Women Affairs has also backed the demand and calling for proactive role of women in the peace and national reconciliation process.
"The women should have their due role in the peace process," Mujgan Mustafawi said, according to local media reports. "No peace would be acceptable if the right of women is compromised," Mustafawi asserted, according to 8Subh, saying the achievements over the past 11 years is important for women.
Afghan peace negotiator sees progress in talks with Taliban
Reuters By Adrian Croft October 14, 2012
KABUL - The Afghan government's efforts to encourage Taliban insurgents to enter peace talks are making progress despite apparent deadlock, a senior government negotiator said on Sunday.
Mohammad Masoom Stanekzai, who was wounded in a Taliban attack a year ago, suggested there was behind-the-scenes activity to start a peace process in Afghanistan.
"When politicians are on the stage, they will be always saying something different than what they are discussing in private," he said.
"There (is) progress," he said, without giving details.
Stanekzai was badly hurt in an explosion detonated by a Taliban suicide bomber in September last year that killed Burhanuddin Rabbani, a former Afghan president and head of the High Peace Council, set up by President Hamid Karzai to liaise with insurgents.
Stanekzai, who suffered injuries to his feet and a lung and lost his hearing on one side in the attack, has returned to work as a senior advisor to Karzai and head of the peace council's secretariat.
With most foreign combat troops due to pull out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014, a political settlement between the Afghan government and insurgents is widely seen as a way of bringing stability to the country.
Stanekzai said he was optimistic about the prospects for a political settlement but said it was hard to say whether one could be reached before the end of 2014.
"It is very difficult to set a timeline. Sometimes maybe a consensus can be reached when people are under the pressure of time ... that pressure sometimes brings people together," he said, speaking to a group of foreign reporters visiting Afghanistan on a media tour organized by NATO.
Talks on a political settlement have so far failed to make much headway, while the Taliban said in March they were suspending nascent peace talks with the United States, blaming "shaky, erratic and vague" U.S. statements.
Contacts between the Taliban and the Afghan government have continued, according to Afghan government sources.
Stanekzai also suggested there would be no need to hold separate talks from the Taliban with the Haqqani network, a Pakistan-based group accused of high-profile attacks in Afghanistan, and designated a terrorist organization by the United States last month. "They are counting themselves as a part of the Taliban," he said.
(Editing by Myra MacDonald)
Afghan president Karzai leaves for Azerbaijan for ECO summit
KABUL, Oct. 15 (Xinhua) -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai left for Azerbaijan's capital Baku on Monday to attend the 12th summit of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO), a statement released by his office here said.
"President Hamid Karzai, leading a high level delegation left this afternoon for Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan on a visit during which he will participate and deliver a speech in the 12th summit of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO)," the statement added.
Following the ECO summit, President Karzai will also set off on Tuesday for Kuwait to attend the 1st summit of the Asia Cooperation Dialogue (ACD), the statement said.
Established in 1985 for the propose of economic, trade, cultural and technical cooperation, the ECO presently includes turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
Pakistani Girl Shot by Taliban Sent to Britain
VOA News October 15, 2012
Pakistan's military says the 14-year-old schoolgirl who was recently shot by the Taliban has been sent to Britain for medical treatment.
The military said Monday that a panel of doctors recommended Malala Yousafzai's transfer to a British facility "which has the capability to provide integrated care to children who have sustained severe injury." The teenager was being treated in military hospitals in the Pakistani cities of Peshawar and Rawalpindi.
Taliban gunmen shot Yousafzai in the neck and head on October 9 as she left school in the northwestern area of Swat Valley. The Taliban said it targeted the girl because she spoke out against the militant group.
The Pakistani military said Monday doctors agreed that Yousafzai "will require prolonged care to fully recover from the physical and psychological effects of trauma that she has received." The military said she will need the repair or replacement of "damaged bones of the skull and long-term rehabilitation."
The United Arab Emirates provided an air ambulance for Yousafzai's trip to Britain, where British Foreign Secretary William Hague said she will be receiving specialist medical care at a public hospital.
Yousafzai has been internationally recognized for promoting education for girls and documenting Taliban atrocities in the area near her home in the northwestern Swat Valley.
British Foreign Secretary Hague said Monday "last week's barbaric attack on Malala Yousafzai and her school friends shocked Pakistan and the world." He said, "Malala's bravery in standing up for the right of all young girls in Pakistan to an education is an example to us all."
On Sunday, thousands of people gathered in Pakistan's largest city, Karachi, to show their support for Yousafzai.
Also Sunday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai urged the political and religious leaders of Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan to mount a collaborative plan of action against terrorism and extremism.
Children across Pakistan and Afghanistan Saturday prayed for Yousafzai's recovery.
Pakistani police have arrested several shooting suspects in Swat Valley.
A Taliban spokesman in the region said Friday the group's leaders decided a few months ago to kill Yousafzai and assigned gunmen to carry it out. The Taliban said the girl was targeted because she is "pro-West," has denounced the militant group and has called U.S. President Barack Obama her idol.
3 civilians killed in IED blast in E. Afghanistan
MAIDAN SHAR, Afghanistan, Oct. 15 (Xinhua) -- Three civilians were killed Monday morning in an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) blast in Afghanistan's eastern province of Wardak, the provincial government confirmed.
"A civilian named Habibullah along with his two teenage nephews named Nimatullah and Hismatullah were killed when an IED went off in Nawi Shar area of Jaghato district at round 9 a.m. local time Monday," the provincial government said in a statement.
It blamed Taliban militants for emplacing the IED along the road in the province, some 35 km west of Afghan capital Kabul.
In a separate development, a civilian man named Sayyed Jamal was beheaded by Taliban militants while travelling from Jaghato to neighbouring Ghazni province late on Sunday.
According to the statement the man was a daily wager and was going to search a job in Ghazni. Authorities are investigating the motive behind the killing.
The Taliban militants, who launched in May spring offensive against Afghan and NATO forces, have yet to make comment.
The militant group has warned the civilians to stay away from official gatherings, military convoys and centers regarded as the legitimate targets by militants besides warning people against supporting government and foreign troops.
A total of 1,145 Afghan civilians were killed and 1,954 injured in conflicts in the first six months of 2012 in the insurgency-hit country, 15 percent down in overall civilian casualties compared with the same period in 2011, according to a United Nations report released in Kabul on Aug. 8.
MOI Concerned About Nangarhar's Unofficial Armed Groups
TOLOnews.com Sunday, 14 October 2012
Afghanistan's Ministry of Interior said at least four unofficial armed groups are upsetting security in Nangarhar province with impunity, calling for the local security forces to put an end to the instability or for the security leaders to resign.
Senior Deputy Minister of Security Affairs Gen. Abdul Rahman said that the Nangarhar officials were either too weak or were choosing to not stop the groups from operating.
"Some of the local officials and different people whom I do not want to name – but there are four groups – are disrupting security for their personal interests," Rahman said Saturday. "They are trying to defame Nangarhar but the weakness is them because the commandership is in their hands and they are not able to or they don't want security to be provided in Nangarhar."
Rahman said the local officials responsible for security should resign if they are incapable of controlling such groups.
"According to the law, all security organisations whether it's police, national army, national security, or local police have their capabilities, and if they don't or can't use this capability, or if the people do not consider them the governing power, then it is because of the weak leadership of that department and its leader should resign," he said.
However, Nangarhar provincial spokesperson dismissed Rahman's suggestion that local officials were supporting the groups, saying that they are endeavoring to stop the unauthorised armed men from roaming.
"The security forces have been told to disarm unauthorised armed men, and we have had some achievements in this regard, but there are still some issues to resolve of which the governor has informed the responsible officials in the capital [Kabul]," Ahmad Zia Abdulzai told TOLOnews. "We reject the idea that local officials allegedly support some of the unauthorised armed groups. On the contrary, there has been a fight against it and the capital is also informed to support the fight."
This comes as local residents have been taking up arms to fight insurgents over the past few months. Provincial officials have warned that those who are found involved in transferring weapons illegally in Nangarhar's city and districts will be treated within the law as the law states.
6 Taliban killed in clash with Afghan villagers
GHAZNI, Afghanistan, Oct. 15 (Xinhua) -- Six Taliban fighters were killed as villagers clashed with the militants in Ghazni province 125 km south of capital city Kabul on Monday, said Faizanullah Faizan, a pro-government figure.
"The clash took place in Alam Khan and Khani Baba villages of Andar district today morning as a result six Taliban fighters were killed," Faizan told Xinhua.
There were no casualties on the side of villagers, he said.
Taliban militants are yet to make comment.
A number of villagers in Andar district and adjoining areas have launched uprising against Taliban militants over the past months and reportedly have expelled the Taliban fighters from several villages.
The Afghan government has been supporting the uprising against Taliban militants elsewhere in the militancy-ridden country.
Imran Khan says Taliban's 'holy war' in Afghanistan is justified by Islamic law
Pakistani politician's comments at hospital that treated shooting victim Malala Yousafzai outrage Afghanistan's government
Guardian.co.uk By Jon Boone Sunday 14 October 2012
Islamabad - Afghanistan's government has lashed out at Imran Khan after the former Pakistan cricket star, now a politician, said the Taliban were fighting a "holy war" in the country that was justified by Islamic law.
Speaking after visiting a hospital in Peshawar where Malala Yousafzai – the 14-year-old activist shot in the head by the Taliban for supporting girls' education – was treated last week, Khan told reporters that insurgents in Afghanistan were fighting a "jihad". Citing a verse from the Qur'an, he said: "It is very clear that whoever is fighting for their freedom is fighting a jihad
"The people who are fighting in Afghanistan against the foreign occupation are fighting a jihad," he added, according to a video of remarks to journalists.
Afghan politicians have reacted with disbelief, with one parliamentarian suggesting Khan should be arrested. The Ulema Council, a grouping of senior clerics, declared his comments "unislamic".
A Kabul foreign ministry spokesman said Khan was "either profoundly and dangerously ignorant about the reality in Afghanistan, or he has ill will against the Afghan people.
"Our children are killed on daily basis, civilians killed and our schools, hospitals and infrastructure attacked on a daily basis. To call any of that jihad is profoundly wrong and misguided."
Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, has written to all of Pakistan's political leaders, including Khan, saying: "We must ask why we have been unable to counter the terrorism that is attacking our people, and the promise of a better future for our children."
Khan has also courted criticism by saying he will not publicly name the Taliban while criticising the men who attempted to kill Malala, because he feared it would put his party's supporters at risk.
The row with Kabul highlights the awkward political situation Khan has found himself in recent days. He has long blamed the rise of the Taliban in the country on the US, saying its military operations in Afghanistan and the CIA drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal belt are responsible for the upsurge in militancy.
But his populist position has been challenged by the almost unprecedented public anger against the Pakistani Taliban triggered by the attempt to kill Malala as she sat in a van with her classmates in Swat last Tuesday.
While many observers fear the mood of national outrage will ultimately change little, the country's media continues to cover the saga intensively while the country's powerful military chief called on the nation to "unite and stand up to fight" against extremism.
The foreign minister has even suggested the attack might be a turning point for a country that has long struggled to muster support for a decisive push against militants. On Sunday, tens of thousands of people attended a rally in Karachi in support of Malala, organised by the Muttahida Qaumi movement, the dominant political party in the southern city.
Malala is unconscious and in intensive care in a military hospital in the garrison city of Rawalpindi. A military spokesman said her condition was improving and that no decision had been made as to whether she should be sent overseas, despite an offer from the United Arab Emirates to supply an air ambulance.
Local media continued to focus on her condition despite government warnings that the Pakistani Taliban, apparently angered by criticism of the attack on Malala, had ordered attacks on journalists.
Pakistan to Allow Afghan Transit to Wagha Port
TOLOnews.com By Haseeb Maudoodi Sunday, 14 October 2012
Afghan trade officials have reached a breakthrough assurance from their Pakistani counterparts that Afghan vehicles will be permitted to travel to Pakistan's Wagha Port.
Afghanistan's Minister of Commerce and Industries Anwarulhaq Ahadi said Sunday that in meetings last Thursday and Friday Pakistani officials pledged to implement the terms of the Afghan-Pakistan Trade Transit Agreement (APTTA) of 2010.
Previously Afghan transit vehicles would unload their goods in Peshawar, which were then transported to Wagha Port by Pakistani vehicles.
Afghan traders have been calling for permission to transport cargo to Wagha Port for years, and were apparently allowed to do so under APTTA signed in October 2010, but were prevented from doing so in practice by Pakistani transit and port officials.
Wagha Port provides more facilities for Afghan traders to increase business with India.
Ahadi welcomed the guarantee from Pakistan to honour APTTA but said there are still a few items that need to ironed out.
"We don't say our problems are solved one hundred percent, but our problems with Pakistan are solved seventy percent. There are one or two small issues that are to be considered in a few months at the next meeting," said the Minister.
Afghan traders are also hopeful that with no requirement to transfer cargo to Pakistani transport, the incidence of goods spoiling by the time they get to the port will drop. The traders claim that delays in transferring the goods to other transport had caused foodstuffs to expire before they reached their destination.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
Government Decides to Issue Electronic ID Cards for Crucial 2014 Presidential Election, a Strategy the West Has Criticized
Wall Street Journal By MARIA ABI-HABIB and NATHAN HODGE October 14, 2012
KABUL - The Afghan government's plan to issue biometric ID cards ahead of the 2014 presidential election is raising tensions with international donors, who are concerned the ambitious project could tarnish the vote instead of eliminating fraud.
As part of its preparations for the election, the Afghan government decided last month to issue to all Afghans an electronic national ID card, known as e-tazkira, which includes scanned thumbprints. The plan is expected to cost $115 million, most of it from Western sources, U.S. and international officials say.
However, some senior Afghan officials say it is virtually impossible to register most Afghans in time for the election, which is set to pick President Hamid Karzai's successor.
"Time is running out," warned Fazal Ahmad Manawi, the chairman of Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission. He said he wasn't sure if Afghan government ministries "can run this project based on the time that we need."
A Karzai spokesman declined to comment.
The 2014 election—coinciding with the planned withdrawal of most U.S. and international troops—is critical for Afghanistan's stability.
While Mr. Karzai isn't allowed to run again under the constitution, Western diplomats expect him to try to put in office a relative or a close ally who could protect the extended Karzai clan and its vast business interests. Officials from donor countries say any fraud perpetrated by Mr. Karzai could reignite the civil-war fault lines of the 1990s and could threaten foreign aid.
Officials from some Western donor countries say their governments have threatened to cut off some aid if there were massive fraud in the election.
Officially, the Karzai administration says it hopes to issue e-tazkiras to virtually all of the 15 million voters officials expect to be eligible by 2014.
But Zmarialai Wafa, acting director for information security at Afghanistan's ministry of communications and information technology, which is implementing the plan, said time and logistics will allow for only between five and eight million voters to receive the cards.
"At least Kabul and some other major cities will be done by that time," he said.
The crucial issue—so far undecided—is whether the new e-tazkiras will become the only acceptable voter ID. Limiting voting to cardholders could have political implications.
The e-tazkira program was initially considered eight years ago, but didn't take off because of wrangling between government ministries. Mr. Karzai's plan to become the first Afghan to scan his fingerprints and receive a national ID this month—a symbolic start for the nationwide program—was delayed because the government hasn't yet approved the card's design, the interior ministry said.
Current voter cards and national IDs can be purchased on the black market for just $30 apiece, and Western officials say millions of fraudulent cards circulate in the country.
Disillusionment about fraud and growing violence have led to declining voter participation since Afghanistan's first post-Taliban election in 2004.
Despite these pitfalls, Western officials recommended to the Independent Election Commission—which conducts the polls—to leave in place Afghanistan's current voter registration system. Most of the fraud in 2009 happened after polls closed, when election officials stuffed ballot boxes, and not during the vote itself, the officials say.
Mr. Karzai's cabinet, however, decided to go forward with the e-tazkira system despite these objections last month. The e-tazkira is to include a chip that serves as an electronic driver's license, proves voter eligibility and allows Afghans to receive medical care.
It is far from certain the technology will work in a largely illiterate country like Afghanistan, where most of the population has no access to electricity. The chip would need to be charged or the information accessed by a computer. When Dubai, the rich and technologically savvy emirate, embarked on a similar program of electronic IDs in 2000, glitches caused years of delays to register a population that is a small fraction of Afghanistan's.
The issue of biometric registration is sensitive. Kabul-based officials say a previous deal between the U.S. and the Afghan interior ministry to biometrically register Afghans at border crossings and share the information was derailed by Mr. Karzai, who was concerned about the data's ownership and the plan's implications for national sovereignty.
The U.S. military has been separately collecting Afghans' finger prints and retina scans for intelligence purposes for years. Roughly two million Afghans, most of them in the insurgent heartlands of the south and the east, were biometrically registered in that data base.
Concerns over who will have access to the e-tazkira data caused a delay of at least nine months in 2011 as the government negotiated how the information would be stored and used, Mr. Wafa said. The Afghan government, he added, will maintain sole ownership of the data it collects for the national ID card. —Habib Khan Totakhil and Ziaulhaq Sultani contributed to this article.
Write to Maria Abi-Habib at maria.habib@dowjones.com and Nathan Hodge atnathan.hodge@wsj.com
UN Organizing Informal Talks With All Afghan Factions
October 15, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
The head of the UN mission in Afghanistan, Jan Kubis, has said the United Nations is organizing informal talks that it hopes will attract "all relevant forces and people" in Afghanistan.
Kubis said the Track II talks should involve as many "stakeholders in Afghanistan" as possible, including antigovernment groups such as the Taliban.
Kubis said these are not peace talks and added, "We are not going to tell the Afghans what they have to think."
Kubis said the aim was to bring various Afghan groups together to discuss the country's future, especially after 2014, when the majority of foreign forces will have withdrawn from Afghanistan.
Kubis said the first of these meeting should take place before the end of this year.
Meanwhile, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has made a surprise visit to Afghanistan, seeking assurances from President Hamid Karzai that he is doing all he can to halt "insider attacks."
The prime minister’s office said Gillard met Karzai on October 14 in Kabul and visited Australian troops.
She raised concerns about the so-called "green-on-blue" attacks in which uniformed Afghans turn their weapons against their international allies.
On August 30, Australia suffered its deadliest day when five troops were killed in two separate incidents in Afghanistan.
Australia is a close ally of the United States. Its Afghan deployment began in 2001.
It announced this year that it would begin withdrawing its forces in 2013, earlier than planned.
Based on reporting by AFP, RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan, dpa, and Interfax
Feature: War-weary Afghans express both hope and uncertainty after 2014
by Farid Behbud, Chen Xin
KABUL, Oct. 15 (Xinhua) -- War-weary Afghans have expressed both hope and uncertainty once the NATO-led foreign troops finally leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
"The situation in Afghanistan is relatively normal. It is not as bad as the media are reporting. You see here, if there is no hope for the future, why is this businessman building a guesthouse inside the diplomatic enclave in Kabul?" Nabi, 60, a construction designer, told Xinhua over the weekend.
The transition of security control from over 100,000 NATO-led forces, majority of them Americans, to Afghan forces is due to completed by the end of 2014.
"In my opinion, our army and police forces, the noble men and women of this country, are well-trained and strong-minded in defeating the enemies of the country. We have confidence on them. They are from every part of the country and from every ethnicity," Nabi, who like many Afghans goes only by one name, said.
The last of 33,000 U.S. surge troops deployed to Afghanistan in early 2010 have pulled out of the insurgency-hit country in September.
"Personally, I welcome the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan, because I think the security situation in the country is much more improved and there is nothing to worry about, " Nabi said.
But not all Afghans share Nabi's positive view of the situation in Afghanistan.
Another Kabul resident, Abdullah Shah, 30, in talks with Xinhua, said that the future of Afghanistan after the foreign troops' pullout is still uncertain.
"It is still not the proper time for the foreign troops to pull out since the Afghan security forces are not yet capable in dealing with terrorist threats, particularly from the Taliban. They do not have enough air power, with only a few planes," Shah said.
"It doesn't matter whether the U.S. and its ally will leave Afghanistan or not, what we need is peace and security. We have had enough of the killings and bombings. We want to live in peace, " he said.
The Afghan forces and NATO troops have completed transition in the first two of five tranches of provinces and districts across the country. In a couple of weeks, when the current third phase of the process ends, the Afghan national security forces will take full control of areas where about 75 percent of the population lives.
Even if the NATO-led forces leave Afghanistan, international financial support for the Afghan security forces will continue.
During an international conference on Afghanistan held in Japan in July, the donor countries pledged more than 16 billion U.S. dollars in development aid for Afghanistan through 2015. The U.S. and its NATO allies also promised almost the same amount to support Afghan army and police after pull-out of their troops.
However, the International Crisis Group (ICG), in a report released on Monday, said that the Afghan government is "far from ready" to assume responsibility for security when U.S. and NATO forces withdraw in 2014.
The Brussels-based ICG said that "plagued by factionalism and corruption, Afghanistan is far from ready to assume responsibility for security when U.S. and NATO forces withdraw in 2014. That makes the political challenge of organizing a credible presidential election and transfer of power from President Karzai to a successor that year all the more daunting. A repeat of previous elections' chaos and chicanery would trigger a constitutional crisis, lessening chances the present political dispensation can survive the transition."
NATO defense ministers on Wednesday endorsed the broad political framework for a new training mission in Afghanistan after 2014.
"This (the framework) will guide our military experts as they take the planning process forward. I expect us to agree on a detailed outline early next year, and to complete the plan well before the end of 2013," NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said following the two-day gathering of NATO defense chiefs in Brussels.
Rasmussen said it is still too early to decide on the size of NATO troops in the new mission, which will largely depend on the security situation in Afghanistan by that time.
Mining Contract Details Disclosed in Afghanistan
New York Times By GRAHAM BOWLEY and MATTHEW ROSENBERG October 14, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - Enmeshed in a bruising political battle over new mining rules seen as vital to Afghanistan’s economic future, the country’s mining minister on Sunday disclosed about 200 previous mining contracts for the first time, portraying the move as an attempt to bring transparency to a process vulnerable to corruption.
In the process, he appeared to take a swipe at a brother of President Hamid Karzai, citing as flawed the award of a contract in 2006 for a cement company in which he was a partner.
The action, by Mining Minister Wahidullah Shahrani, was likely to please his supporters in the West, including the United States, who made greater openness in the Afghan government’s financial dealings a condition of billions of dollars in development assistance and aid money pledged earlier this year.
But the move also comes at a precarious time for Mr. Shahrani. He is embattled politically and a target of critics for his shepherding of a proposed new mining law, vital to attracting foreign investment, which was blocked by the Afghan cabinet in July with President Karzai’s support. Mr. Shahrani is to resubmit the law in the coming weeks.
Developing Afghanistan’s potentially rich deposits of iron, oil, gold, copper, lithium and other natural resources is regarded as crucial to the country’s economic prospects, transforming it into a state that can begin to pay its own way and allowing the international community to cut back its financial and, ultimately, military support. But there are persistent concerns that any resource boom could be jeopardized by corruption, worsening security and political instability.
“From now on every contract will be made public,” Mr. Shahrani said at a news conference here. “No contract will be kept secret.”
However, Mr. Shahrani did not release the contract for one of the country’s biggest and most lucrative mining concessions, the 2007 agreement for the Aynak copper deposit in Logar Province near Kabul struck with a Chinese state-owned conglomerate, China Metallurgical Group Corporation. Accusations of bribery and a sweetheart deal for the mining concern have swirled for years, but without proof.
Mr. Shahrani said this agreement was made under a previous minister when nonpublication was subject to a legal deal with the Chinese. He said he had written to the Chinese with a request to make the contract public. Almost all of the other contracts published on the ministry Web site, struck as far back as 2002, covered an array of much smaller marble, coal and other mines, and until the details of the Aynak contract are released, analysts questioned whether the new initiative had full force.
“This is a start,” said Yama Torabi, director of Integrity Watch Afghanistan, an anticorruption watchdog based in Kabul.
Mr. Shahrani said the ministry had discovered “financial, legal and technical flaws” in some of the contracts, and held up as an example at the news conference the operating rights for the country’s only cement factory, which was awarded at the time to a partnership of investors, among them Mahmoud Karzai, one of President Karzai’s brothers.
Mahmoud Karzai has been accused of using his brother’s position for financial gain, and the cement factory had been controversial, not least among local provincial leaders who said the investors had cut jobs and paid low salaries. The contract was only four pages long, for an agreement that under proper international standards would normally be far longer, Mr. Shahrani said.
“Look at the contract of Ghori Cement,” he said. “Nobody remembers a 30-year contract being signed in four pages.” He said the shortcomings reflected lack of capacity and experience among officials in the ministry when the agreement was put together, and that the flawed contracts would be revised.
Neither President Karzai’s office nor Mahmoud Karzai returned messages seeking comment.
Afghan and Western officials in Kabul, along with technical experts who advise the government, have said that the initial rejection of the new mining and oil drilling law in part reflected the minister’s political weakness. Mr. Shahrani, who took over in 2010, had expected the new law to breeze past the cabinet, yet instead found himself pitted almost alone against a range of more experienced and better-connected politicians — from those seen as pro-Western reformers to former communists and the religiously conservative who, among other things, objected to the proposals as being too generous to foreign mining interests eager to exploit Afghanistan’s natural resources.
President Karzai publicly sided with those lined up against the new law, sending it back for revisions over Mr. Shahrani’s objections.
Some Western officials fear the maneuvering reflects attempts by political rivals to snatch control of the Mining Ministry, a coveted post that oversees millions of dollars in contracts.
“A lot of groups, a lot of people in the government, want to be part of the mining now that it is seen as a way to generate large sums of revenue,” said one senior European diplomat in Kabul who follows the mining deliberations.
The diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Sunday’s announcement could be seen as an attempt by Mr. Shahrani to address his political vulnerability by boosting his standing among Afghans and the international community.
The Mes Aynak mine has been delayed by deterioration in security and the discovery of Buddhist ruins and artifacts. But Mr. Shahrani said that archaeologists preparing the site now had a deadline of the end of this year to finish their survey, and that he was confident that the Chinese could begin mining extraction in 2014.
Since he took over the ministry two years ago, Mr. Shahrani has been collecting details of agreements struck on natural resource deals going back over the past 10 years.
Earlier this year, fulfilling concerns raised by Western governments at the Tokyo Conference, where for the first time donors made it a condition that the Afghan government reduce corruption before receiving all of the money, President Karzai issued a decree calling for full details of natural resource contracts to be published, giving further impetus to his efforts.
EU Withholds Some Aid, Citing Lack of Reform
Wall Street Journal By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV and NATHAN HODGE October 14, 2012
KABUL - The European Union told the Afghan government it was withholding millions of euros in aid because of a failure to reform the judiciary—signaling that future international funding will become increasingly dependent on Kabul living up to its promises.
The EU decision comes amid heightened tension between President Hamid Karzai's administration and the West over issues that range from insider attacks on coalition troops to Western concerns that the next presidential election, scheduled for 2014, will be even more fraud-ridden than the previous vote.
An international conference on assisting Afghanistan, held in Tokyo in July, affirmed that pledges of billions of dollars in foreign aid for Kabul are conditional on "the Afghan government delivering on its commitments" on issues such as good governance, corruption and human rights.
One of these commitments has been to present to donors one of several so-called National Priority Programs, or NPPs, that in this case outlines how Afghanistan will depoliticize its judiciary, largely controlled by Mr. Karzai, and ensure the rule of law.
No agreement on this NPP has been reached so far between the government and international donors, prompting the EU to inform Afghan ministers in recent days that Brussels is delaying the implementation of a previously agreed commitment for 20 million ($26 million) for the sector.
Given the billions of dollars allies are spending in Afghanistan, the sum itself is relatively insignificant. The decision, however, was meant as a warning of future aid cuts should the Afghan government keep stalling reforms. "It is a signal that with Tokyo things have changed, that there is no more business as usual," a Western official said.
Other donors, such as the U.S., have not yet held back funding, officials say.
Afghanistan's Senior Minister Hedayat Amin Arsala, who coordinates the government's reform process and was one of the recipients of the EU letter, said he believed it was just a temporary hiccup.
"I did not get the impression that they are dissatisfied. We are also interested in completing the NPP as soon as possible, provided the international community becomes more cooperative and tries to resolve whatever issues there are," he said in an interview. "If they want to use this as an excuse, this is a different issue."
The EU is not the only partner with whom the Afghan government has disagreements. The U.S. and Afghanistan are just getting ready to negotiate a bilateral security agreement on what military presence, if any, the U.S. will retain in the country after the coalition's mandate ends in 2014.
Even the basic details of how to conduct these negotiations are in dispute. Afghan officials say they interpret a May U.S.-Afghan partnership declaration as committing the two sides to reach the security agreement within 12 months of that date. The U.S. position is that the 12-month clock will only start once formal talks begin following the U.S. presidential election next month, U.S. officials say, adding that Washington would be happy to strike the deal earlier if possible.
Vice President Joe Biden seemed to indicate that the U.S. was not really interested in maintaining forces in Afghanistan at all, saying in last week's debate: "We are leaving in 2014, period."
Afghan officials tried to minimize that statement. "Vice President Biden's position was always different from the whole government. Right now whatever statements are made are made on the basis of what is required for elections," Mr. Arsala said. "I don't think that anything would be done which would be considered irresponsible... The reputation of the West will be at stake."
Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com and Nathan Hodge atnathan.hodge@wsj.com
Afghan women seek role in peace process
KABUL, Oct. 15 (Xinhua) -- Amid government's hectic efforts to hold dialogue with Taliban militants and find peaceful settlement to Afghanistan lingering crisis, the Afghan women are seeking proactive role in the government-backed peace process, local media reported on Monday.
"No durable peace will be ensured in Afghanistan if half of the population of the country who are women is overlooked in the peace talks," citing women rights activist Dr. Sima Samar, the Daily 8 Subh or 8 Morning writes in its edition.
Mrs. Samar who heads the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), according to the newspaper has also emphasized for fairness and transparency in the ongoing peace talks with the Taliban outfit.
The government-backed High Council for Peace, a body entrusted to push for talks with the Taliban fighters, consisted of 70 members, nine of them women. However, women right activists and civil society entities call for incorporating more women in the peace body.
"The High Council for Peace should take into account the people of Afghanistan particularly the women and brief them about the achievements," Dr. Samar said, according to the newspaper 8Subh.
She made the remarks in the wake of reports about making progress in peace talks with the Taliban militants.
Mohammad Masoum Stanikzai, a senior official with the High Council for Peace, according to local media reports has reported progress in dialogue between government and the Taliban militants.
Taliban militants who had ruled out any talks with the government have yet to comment on Stanikzai's claim.
Dr. Samar who heads the Afghan rights watchdog has also lamented the women absence in peace dialogue, saying women's signatures are not seen in big deals.
Taliban militants, whose regime was driven out of power by the U.S.-led military campaign in late 2001, are reluctant to sit around the same table with women to hold talks.
The hardliner outfit during its six-year reign which collapsed 11 years ago had dismissed women employees from government departments, confined women in the four-walls of their houses and banned school girls in the country.
However, in the post-Taliban Afghanistan women are involved in social, economic and political activities. In today's Afghanistan, women serve as parliamentarians and cabinet members, a progress unthinkable during Taliban rule in the country.
Mrs. Sayeda Mujgan Mustafawi, the deputy to Afghanistan Ministry for Women Affairs has also backed the demand and calling for proactive role of women in the peace and national reconciliation process.
"The women should have their due role in the peace process," Mujgan Mustafawi said, according to local media reports. "No peace would be acceptable if the right of women is compromised," Mustafawi asserted, according to 8Subh, saying the achievements over the past 11 years is important for women.
Afghan peace negotiator sees progress in talks with Taliban
Reuters By Adrian Croft October 14, 2012
KABUL - The Afghan government's efforts to encourage Taliban insurgents to enter peace talks are making progress despite apparent deadlock, a senior government negotiator said on Sunday.
Mohammad Masoom Stanekzai, who was wounded in a Taliban attack a year ago, suggested there was behind-the-scenes activity to start a peace process in Afghanistan.
"When politicians are on the stage, they will be always saying something different than what they are discussing in private," he said.
"There (is) progress," he said, without giving details.
Stanekzai was badly hurt in an explosion detonated by a Taliban suicide bomber in September last year that killed Burhanuddin Rabbani, a former Afghan president and head of the High Peace Council, set up by President Hamid Karzai to liaise with insurgents.
Stanekzai, who suffered injuries to his feet and a lung and lost his hearing on one side in the attack, has returned to work as a senior advisor to Karzai and head of the peace council's secretariat.
With most foreign combat troops due to pull out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014, a political settlement between the Afghan government and insurgents is widely seen as a way of bringing stability to the country.
Stanekzai said he was optimistic about the prospects for a political settlement but said it was hard to say whether one could be reached before the end of 2014.
"It is very difficult to set a timeline. Sometimes maybe a consensus can be reached when people are under the pressure of time ... that pressure sometimes brings people together," he said, speaking to a group of foreign reporters visiting Afghanistan on a media tour organized by NATO.
Talks on a political settlement have so far failed to make much headway, while the Taliban said in March they were suspending nascent peace talks with the United States, blaming "shaky, erratic and vague" U.S. statements.
Contacts between the Taliban and the Afghan government have continued, according to Afghan government sources.
Stanekzai also suggested there would be no need to hold separate talks from the Taliban with the Haqqani network, a Pakistan-based group accused of high-profile attacks in Afghanistan, and designated a terrorist organization by the United States last month. "They are counting themselves as a part of the Taliban," he said.
(Editing by Myra MacDonald)
Afghan president Karzai leaves for Azerbaijan for ECO summit
KABUL, Oct. 15 (Xinhua) -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai left for Azerbaijan's capital Baku on Monday to attend the 12th summit of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO), a statement released by his office here said.
"President Hamid Karzai, leading a high level delegation left this afternoon for Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan on a visit during which he will participate and deliver a speech in the 12th summit of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO)," the statement added.
Following the ECO summit, President Karzai will also set off on Tuesday for Kuwait to attend the 1st summit of the Asia Cooperation Dialogue (ACD), the statement said.
Established in 1985 for the propose of economic, trade, cultural and technical cooperation, the ECO presently includes turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
Pakistani Girl Shot by Taliban Sent to Britain
VOA News October 15, 2012
Pakistan's military says the 14-year-old schoolgirl who was recently shot by the Taliban has been sent to Britain for medical treatment.
The military said Monday that a panel of doctors recommended Malala Yousafzai's transfer to a British facility "which has the capability to provide integrated care to children who have sustained severe injury." The teenager was being treated in military hospitals in the Pakistani cities of Peshawar and Rawalpindi.
Taliban gunmen shot Yousafzai in the neck and head on October 9 as she left school in the northwestern area of Swat Valley. The Taliban said it targeted the girl because she spoke out against the militant group.
The Pakistani military said Monday doctors agreed that Yousafzai "will require prolonged care to fully recover from the physical and psychological effects of trauma that she has received." The military said she will need the repair or replacement of "damaged bones of the skull and long-term rehabilitation."
The United Arab Emirates provided an air ambulance for Yousafzai's trip to Britain, where British Foreign Secretary William Hague said she will be receiving specialist medical care at a public hospital.
Yousafzai has been internationally recognized for promoting education for girls and documenting Taliban atrocities in the area near her home in the northwestern Swat Valley.
British Foreign Secretary Hague said Monday "last week's barbaric attack on Malala Yousafzai and her school friends shocked Pakistan and the world." He said, "Malala's bravery in standing up for the right of all young girls in Pakistan to an education is an example to us all."
On Sunday, thousands of people gathered in Pakistan's largest city, Karachi, to show their support for Yousafzai.
Also Sunday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai urged the political and religious leaders of Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan to mount a collaborative plan of action against terrorism and extremism.
Children across Pakistan and Afghanistan Saturday prayed for Yousafzai's recovery.
Pakistani police have arrested several shooting suspects in Swat Valley.
A Taliban spokesman in the region said Friday the group's leaders decided a few months ago to kill Yousafzai and assigned gunmen to carry it out. The Taliban said the girl was targeted because she is "pro-West," has denounced the militant group and has called U.S. President Barack Obama her idol.
3 civilians killed in IED blast in E. Afghanistan
MAIDAN SHAR, Afghanistan, Oct. 15 (Xinhua) -- Three civilians were killed Monday morning in an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) blast in Afghanistan's eastern province of Wardak, the provincial government confirmed.
"A civilian named Habibullah along with his two teenage nephews named Nimatullah and Hismatullah were killed when an IED went off in Nawi Shar area of Jaghato district at round 9 a.m. local time Monday," the provincial government said in a statement.
It blamed Taliban militants for emplacing the IED along the road in the province, some 35 km west of Afghan capital Kabul.
In a separate development, a civilian man named Sayyed Jamal was beheaded by Taliban militants while travelling from Jaghato to neighbouring Ghazni province late on Sunday.
According to the statement the man was a daily wager and was going to search a job in Ghazni. Authorities are investigating the motive behind the killing.
The Taliban militants, who launched in May spring offensive against Afghan and NATO forces, have yet to make comment.
The militant group has warned the civilians to stay away from official gatherings, military convoys and centers regarded as the legitimate targets by militants besides warning people against supporting government and foreign troops.
A total of 1,145 Afghan civilians were killed and 1,954 injured in conflicts in the first six months of 2012 in the insurgency-hit country, 15 percent down in overall civilian casualties compared with the same period in 2011, according to a United Nations report released in Kabul on Aug. 8.
MOI Concerned About Nangarhar's Unofficial Armed Groups
TOLOnews.com Sunday, 14 October 2012
Afghanistan's Ministry of Interior said at least four unofficial armed groups are upsetting security in Nangarhar province with impunity, calling for the local security forces to put an end to the instability or for the security leaders to resign.
Senior Deputy Minister of Security Affairs Gen. Abdul Rahman said that the Nangarhar officials were either too weak or were choosing to not stop the groups from operating.
"Some of the local officials and different people whom I do not want to name – but there are four groups – are disrupting security for their personal interests," Rahman said Saturday. "They are trying to defame Nangarhar but the weakness is them because the commandership is in their hands and they are not able to or they don't want security to be provided in Nangarhar."
Rahman said the local officials responsible for security should resign if they are incapable of controlling such groups.
"According to the law, all security organisations whether it's police, national army, national security, or local police have their capabilities, and if they don't or can't use this capability, or if the people do not consider them the governing power, then it is because of the weak leadership of that department and its leader should resign," he said.
However, Nangarhar provincial spokesperson dismissed Rahman's suggestion that local officials were supporting the groups, saying that they are endeavoring to stop the unauthorised armed men from roaming.
"The security forces have been told to disarm unauthorised armed men, and we have had some achievements in this regard, but there are still some issues to resolve of which the governor has informed the responsible officials in the capital [Kabul]," Ahmad Zia Abdulzai told TOLOnews. "We reject the idea that local officials allegedly support some of the unauthorised armed groups. On the contrary, there has been a fight against it and the capital is also informed to support the fight."
This comes as local residents have been taking up arms to fight insurgents over the past few months. Provincial officials have warned that those who are found involved in transferring weapons illegally in Nangarhar's city and districts will be treated within the law as the law states.
6 Taliban killed in clash with Afghan villagers
GHAZNI, Afghanistan, Oct. 15 (Xinhua) -- Six Taliban fighters were killed as villagers clashed with the militants in Ghazni province 125 km south of capital city Kabul on Monday, said Faizanullah Faizan, a pro-government figure.
"The clash took place in Alam Khan and Khani Baba villages of Andar district today morning as a result six Taliban fighters were killed," Faizan told Xinhua.
There were no casualties on the side of villagers, he said.
Taliban militants are yet to make comment.
A number of villagers in Andar district and adjoining areas have launched uprising against Taliban militants over the past months and reportedly have expelled the Taliban fighters from several villages.
The Afghan government has been supporting the uprising against Taliban militants elsewhere in the militancy-ridden country.
Imran Khan says Taliban's 'holy war' in Afghanistan is justified by Islamic law
Pakistani politician's comments at hospital that treated shooting victim Malala Yousafzai outrage Afghanistan's government
Guardian.co.uk By Jon Boone Sunday 14 October 2012
Islamabad - Afghanistan's government has lashed out at Imran Khan after the former Pakistan cricket star, now a politician, said the Taliban were fighting a "holy war" in the country that was justified by Islamic law.
Speaking after visiting a hospital in Peshawar where Malala Yousafzai – the 14-year-old activist shot in the head by the Taliban for supporting girls' education – was treated last week, Khan told reporters that insurgents in Afghanistan were fighting a "jihad". Citing a verse from the Qur'an, he said: "It is very clear that whoever is fighting for their freedom is fighting a jihad
"The people who are fighting in Afghanistan against the foreign occupation are fighting a jihad," he added, according to a video of remarks to journalists.
Afghan politicians have reacted with disbelief, with one parliamentarian suggesting Khan should be arrested. The Ulema Council, a grouping of senior clerics, declared his comments "unislamic".
A Kabul foreign ministry spokesman said Khan was "either profoundly and dangerously ignorant about the reality in Afghanistan, or he has ill will against the Afghan people.
"Our children are killed on daily basis, civilians killed and our schools, hospitals and infrastructure attacked on a daily basis. To call any of that jihad is profoundly wrong and misguided."
Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, has written to all of Pakistan's political leaders, including Khan, saying: "We must ask why we have been unable to counter the terrorism that is attacking our people, and the promise of a better future for our children."
Khan has also courted criticism by saying he will not publicly name the Taliban while criticising the men who attempted to kill Malala, because he feared it would put his party's supporters at risk.
The row with Kabul highlights the awkward political situation Khan has found himself in recent days. He has long blamed the rise of the Taliban in the country on the US, saying its military operations in Afghanistan and the CIA drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal belt are responsible for the upsurge in militancy.
But his populist position has been challenged by the almost unprecedented public anger against the Pakistani Taliban triggered by the attempt to kill Malala as she sat in a van with her classmates in Swat last Tuesday.
While many observers fear the mood of national outrage will ultimately change little, the country's media continues to cover the saga intensively while the country's powerful military chief called on the nation to "unite and stand up to fight" against extremism.
The foreign minister has even suggested the attack might be a turning point for a country that has long struggled to muster support for a decisive push against militants. On Sunday, tens of thousands of people attended a rally in Karachi in support of Malala, organised by the Muttahida Qaumi movement, the dominant political party in the southern city.
Malala is unconscious and in intensive care in a military hospital in the garrison city of Rawalpindi. A military spokesman said her condition was improving and that no decision had been made as to whether she should be sent overseas, despite an offer from the United Arab Emirates to supply an air ambulance.
Local media continued to focus on her condition despite government warnings that the Pakistani Taliban, apparently angered by criticism of the attack on Malala, had ordered attacks on journalists.
Pakistan to Allow Afghan Transit to Wagha Port
TOLOnews.com By Haseeb Maudoodi Sunday, 14 October 2012
Afghan trade officials have reached a breakthrough assurance from their Pakistani counterparts that Afghan vehicles will be permitted to travel to Pakistan's Wagha Port.
Afghanistan's Minister of Commerce and Industries Anwarulhaq Ahadi said Sunday that in meetings last Thursday and Friday Pakistani officials pledged to implement the terms of the Afghan-Pakistan Trade Transit Agreement (APTTA) of 2010.
Previously Afghan transit vehicles would unload their goods in Peshawar, which were then transported to Wagha Port by Pakistani vehicles.
Afghan traders have been calling for permission to transport cargo to Wagha Port for years, and were apparently allowed to do so under APTTA signed in October 2010, but were prevented from doing so in practice by Pakistani transit and port officials.
Wagha Port provides more facilities for Afghan traders to increase business with India.
Ahadi welcomed the guarantee from Pakistan to honour APTTA but said there are still a few items that need to ironed out.
"We don't say our problems are solved one hundred percent, but our problems with Pakistan are solved seventy percent. There are one or two small issues that are to be considered in a few months at the next meeting," said the Minister.
Afghan traders are also hopeful that with no requirement to transfer cargo to Pakistani transport, the incidence of goods spoiling by the time they get to the port will drop. The traders claim that delays in transferring the goods to other transport had caused foodstuffs to expire before they reached their destination.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com