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Women among victims of Afghanistan attacks
Aljazeera
Two roadside bombs have killed at least 11 civilians in southern Afghanistan, government officials say.
Among the dead in Wednesday's blasts were seven women and three children, the interior ministry said.
"Today at around 9am [0430 GMT] a roadside bomb blew up a civilian truck in Musa Qala that killed 10, including seven young women and three children." provincial spokesman Farid Ahmad Farhang told the AFP news agency.
Another woman and a man were wounded in the Helmand province attack.
Hours later, a second device destroyed a civilian motorcycle, killing a man and wounding a woman and three children -- all members of the same family -- Farhang said.
The government in Lashkar Gah, the provinicial capital, blamed the Taliban for the improvised explosive devices, IEDs, but no group has claimed responsibility yet.
The crude devices, often built on old ammunition, are planted by the side of roads to target NATO and Afghan troops.
The UN says 1,145 civilians were killed in the Afghan war in the first six months of this year, blaming 80 per cent of the deaths on fighters - more than half of those caused by roadside bombs.
Also on Wednesday, seven policemen were killed in an attack on a checkpoint in Zabul province.
Police officials, who called the attacker a "Taliban infiltrator", said he fled the Shah Joy district scene with weapons he seized from the slain policemen.
Both developments come as the independent election commission officially announced April 5, 2014, as the date of the next presidential election in the Central Asian nation.
Fazel Ahmad Manawi, chief of the Independent Election Commission, said on Wednesday that provincial elections would take place on the same day.
Manawi, speaking in Kabul, said: "we are even prepared to pave the ground for the armed opposition, be it the Taliban or Hezb-e-Islami , to participate in the election, either as voters or candidates".
"There will be no discrimination," the IEC chief added.
In the case of no presidential candidate securing more than 50 per cent of the vote, a May 22, 2014, runoff will be implemented.
Afghan-German Boxer Fights In Kabul For Peace
By Frud Bezhan October 31, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
"I want to bring peace to my hometown in Afghanistan," said Afghan-German boxer Hamid Rahimi. "I think sport has the magic to bring all the people and all religions together."
Afghanistan was at the center of the boxing world as the 29-year-old spoke, one day before stepping into the ring for the first professional boxing match in Afghanistan in more than 30 years.
Rahimi's scheduled 12-round bout with Tanzania's Said Mbelwa on October 30 was dubbed "Fight 4 Peace," with the World Boxing Organization's unclaimed intercontinental middleweight championship at stake.
Rahimi pulled no punches, winning by TKO in the seventh round in the Afghan capital's Loya Jirga, or grand assembly tent with upward of 1,500 spectators on hand.
But getting there was a tough task for the boxers and organizers alike. The first thing that needed to be overcome: security fears that had kept fight promoters away from Afghanistan for decades.
'My Inner Strength'
It took two years of vigorous campaigning through his "Fight 4 Peace" project, but Rahimi finally succeeded in convincing the WBO, the Afghan government, and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to host the event in Kabul.
With the win, Rahimi now boasts a record of 21 wins -- nine by knockout -- and one loss as a professional. Earlier this year, after he won the World Boxing Union championship, he set his sights on winning the WBO belt in his home country.
But he has even loftier goals, such as inspiring a new generation of Afghan boxers and helping to unite Afghanistan's fractious society. He says this event will show the world that there is more to the country than just war and bloodshed.
"Whenever I compete in a boxing match I carry the Afghan flag [and my heritage] on my shoulders," Rahimi said. "This gives me my inner strength."
Afghan President Hamid Karzai congratulated "Rahimi and the Afghan nation" after the fight, thanking the Tanzanian for coming to Afghanistan to take part.
'The Dragon'
Rahimi was 9 years old when he left Kabul for Germany with his parents and three siblings. They left in 1992 amid a brutal civil war that claimed the lives of some 70,000 people in Kabul alone.
His boxing career began in 2003 when he was discovered by renowned Jamaica-born German boxer and trainer Owen Reece, who took Rahimi under his wing. In 2006, he fought in his first professional fight in Germany as a middleweight under the moniker "The Dragon."
At the time, Rahimi said he chose the name because "a dragon is an adaptable creature; it can cope with water, wind, and fire. Likewise, I can handle every opponent and every situation in the ring."
After he took the WBU crown in February by defeating Belarusian Ruslan Rodivich in Hamburg, where he trains, Rahimi became heavily involved in Afghanistan.
He traveled to Kabul at the invitation of the National Olympic Committee to help develop Afghan boxers and was given a warm welcome. Afghan President Hamid Karzai awarded Rahimi with the Mir Masjidi Khan state medal, named after an Afghan hero who fought the British during the First Anglo-Afghan War in the 19th century.
Rahimi's mother, Fatima Rahimi, arrived in Kabul for the first time since the family's departure some 20 years ago to see her son's championship fight against the 23-year-old Mbelwa. After the loss, the Tanzanian middleweight has 19 wins, including 12 knockouts, nine losses, and four draws.
Family, National Honor?
The Rahimi family is from the Hazara minority, but Fatima Rahimi insists her son is fighting for all Afghans.
Speaking to journalists in Kabul on the eve of the fight, she said she was confident her son would emerge victorious.
"I am so hopeful and I believe that my son will be the winner, considering his tireless efforts, day and night," the proud mother said. "He will succeed and he will be the winner."
WBO representative Christof Hawerkamp, speaking a day before the fight, said it was a great honor to host a "peace championship" in the war-torn country.
The WBO's motto is "Dignity Democracy Honesty", and Hawerkamp says the idea is to inspire young Afghans to take up professional boxing.
"Don't use weapons. Go to [the] gym. Go to [the] football ground for soccer. That should be your fight, not the battlefields," dpa news agency quoted him as saying.
RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan contributed to this report
Afghan boxer inspires youths in Kabul's first professional match
By Farid Behbud, Chen Xin
KABUL, Oct. 31 (Xinhua) -- The World Boxing Union (WBU) champion, Hamidullah Rahimi encouraged the war-tired youths in Afghanistan on Tuesday by grabbing the golden belt in the first professional boxing event ever in the history of the war-torn country.
"It is an exciting match. I am instigated by the first professional competition. It is a great day as I have forgotten the war and conflicts for a while," an excited female viewer, Maryam Siddiqi, told Xinhua.
Rahimi knocked out his Tanzanian challenger Said Mbelwa in the seventh round after Mbelwa admitted retreating to his angle with a shoulder hurt.
"I am fighting for peace. The banner of this match is 'Fighting for Peace'," Rahimi told the audience.
"It is a great moment for my country. This gold belt is not just mine. It is for Afghanistan," energized Rahimi told after winning the race.
"We want no more fighting. The youth of this country must not hold a gun. They should wear boxing gloves or play football," he said.
"As soon as I heard the advertisement about the competition, I've decided to come and see in the event. It is the first boxing match I ever saw in my live," the 28-year-old Siddiqi went on to say.
"It is for first time that Afghanistan is hosting a big sport event like this. I am sure it can promote peace and make Afghans happy at least for one day," she said.
Thousands of boxing fans were watching the match in a giant tent, located in western Kabul amid tight security while millions of Afghans were watching the event broadcasted live by government-run National TV and a newly established local TV channel Khurshid.
"It had to be held in a sport stadium but we do not have such a building in Kabul. Instead they hold the match in the Loya Jirga tent. It is also ok,"
The youngest member of Afghan Wolesi Jirga or Lower House of the Parliament, Baktash Siawash, who was also among the eager viewers, told Xinhua that his country was raring to go for a sign of ordinary life.
"It is an activity for peace building in Afghanistan and also an emotional moment for me as a member of the parliament. We yearn for peace and welcome any kind of action which is helpful for peace." Siawash said.
"I think sport is the biggest ambassador of peace. If we have more activities of this kind in Afghanistan, it will send a message of peace to people of Afghanistan, because we cannot bring peace only by guns."
Mbelwa, 23, fights in the super-middleweight division and has a record of 31 fights with 19 wins, eight losses and four draws. Rahimi is six years older than his opponent and has won 20 of his 21 fights.
Ahead of the fight, Mbelwa said that he understood that the occasion was "a very special event for Afghanistan and sent a very important message for the whole world". He vowed to fight as hard as any other match once in the ring.
"I hope that this global victory could encourage our youth in every part of the country and boost their endeavors for ensuring peace in the country, in order to provide better opportunity for further growth of sport in the country," local media quoted Afghan Minister of Information and Culture Dr. Sayed Makhdom Raheen as saying in his congratulatory message in the wake of the event.
Rahimi, 29, was born Kabul in September 1983. In 1992, he fled the civil war and went to the Hamburg, Germany with his parents.
A crucial experience from his childhood marked the beginning of his boxing career:
In 1998, the very first thing he did was to acquire the basic skills of Thai boxing. Obsessed with his goal to become stronger and better, Hamid spent several months in 2002 in a training camp in Thailand, which is the birth place of Thai boxing.
Since the collapse of Taliban regime, Afghan athletes have already joined several competitions at regional and international level and started bringing medals and honors to the country.
Beijing Olympic medalist, Rohullah Nikpa, won the only medal in London 2012 Olympic Games for his war-torn country.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) had suspended the membership of Afghanistan in 1999 due to Taliban's brutal policies that included restrictions on the country's athletes.
The Taliban fundamentalist regime had outlawed a series of sports activities aside from forcing athletes to grow long beard and wear tall shirts and trousers during matches.
The IOC lifted the suspension in 2002 after the collapse of the Taliban regime.
The tickets for the fight sold out too fast, many fans were trying to buy but it was too difficult, Kabul resident, Shir Shah Ghafori, told Xinhua.
"The tickets were too expensive. Many sport lovers failed to enter the tent. It was too difficult to get the tickets. We do have economy problems and such matches cost us a lot to watch from close range," Ghafori.
Senators Urge Tougher Line Against Taliban
TOLOnews.com By Shahla Muratzaie Tuesday, 30 October 2012
Afghan senators on Tuesday urged President Hamid Karzai and the government to revise the strategy of dealing with the Taliban towards taking a tougher line with them.
The senators said the current approach is soft and will not work because the Taliban have no regard for the people of Afghanistan.
The calls come after the Friday suicide attack in Faryab killed as many as 40 people and injured around 50 more – mostly civilians who were exiting a mosque on the first day of Eid al-Adha.
"They should be eliminated because they are intending to destroy the people of Afghanistan," said senator Sayed Farukh Shah Jenab, who is part of a delegation investigating the bombing, on Tuesday.
"Our security forces should eliminate them. The peaceful approach to Taliban is not effective and will not work," he added.
Another senator urged the national Ulema Council to declare jihad against the Taliban for the bloodshed in Faryab province.
"I don't know why they are not declaring jihad against them, why the Ulema is quiet," senator Ali Akbar Jamshidi said. "We seriously urge the Ulema Council to perform their responsibility and declare jihad against these heretics."
The head of Afghanistan's Ulema Council went with Karzai to Faryab on Sunday and accused Pakistan of planning the suicide attacks.
"We spread the Islamic religion to the others and they announce jihad against us. They themselves have said that jihad in Afghanistan is the defense of Pakistan," Qeyamudin Kashaf said Sunday, condemning suicide attacks for going against the tenants of Islam.
The Latest Word On The Afghan Street
October 31, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
In the latest twist in the controversy over naming Afghan streets after national heroes, the governor of Afghanistan's western Herat Province, Daud Shah Saba, has said that Afghan law stipulates that streets can only be named after people who died at least 50 years ago.
But municipal officials in Herat say the city is unlikely to change the names of two major thoroughfares in the city, which are named after mujahedin commander Ahmad Shah Masud and Mirwais Sadiq, a former civil aviation minister and son of Herati strongman Ismail Khan.
Masud was killed in 2001, Sadiq in 2004.
Afghan officials, as well as the public, are sharply divided over the issue of naming streets and institutions after former anti-Soviet and anti-Taliban leaders or their allies. Supporters see such steps as honoring the service and sacrifice of these figures. Opponents consider the bestowing of such honors as inciting further hatred and division among Afghans, some of whom see these jihadi figures as symbols of the suffering that Afghans endured during the civil war in the 1990s.
In August, a scandal erupted when provincial officials in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif requested that authorities in Kabul determine whether a street in the city should be named after a group of Iranian diplomats killed there in 1998. The provincial council was forced to ask for formal approval after Afghan media and politicians criticized the council for naming a city street the Martyrs of the Consulate of the Islamic Republic of Iran without approval from Kabul.
A more serious controversy erupted in September when Afghan President Hamid Karzai issued a decree renaming Kabul Education University after former President Burhannudin Rabbani, who was killed by a suspected Taliban suicide bomber in 2011.
More than two weeks of peaceful demonstrations by students protesting the name change turned violent in early October when supporters of the move clashed with protesters. Most of the supporters were said to be from outside the university.
The scuffles forced the government to settle on a compromise solution. The former Afghan president's name will not be put on the diplomas of graduating students. The school, however, will be called the Kabul Education University of Rabbani. Like many controversies in Afghanistan, the issue is far from resolved but will likely be pushed onto the backburner by fresh crises.
Afghanistan clearly needs a uniform address system. Although the size of Afghan towns and cities has mushroomed over the past decade, streets, buildings, and houses have no organized numbering system. Finding a house or a shop in a city as large as Kabul often means endless roaming in warrens of similar-looking streets. Many Afghans will tell you to look for a tree or the color of their door or use proximity to a famous mosque when they're giving directions.
-- Abubakar Siddique
EU Welcomes Afghan Election Date Announcement
VOA News October 31, 2012
The European Union has welcomed Afghanistan's announcement that presidential elections will be held in April of 2014.
The EU's special representative to Afghanistan, Vygaudas Usackas, said Wednesday the decision to hold elections demonstrates Afghan authorities are fulfilling their duties in accordance with political commitments.
Usackas said the EU is supportive of "inclusive and transparent elections with a legitimate outcome."
Afghan President Hamid Karzai is serving his second term and is constitutionally barred from running for re-election. Next year's vote is seen as a test of Afghanistan's young democracy, after the 2009 election was marred by allegations of voter fraud.
Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission said the presidential poll, as well as provincial elections, will be held April 5, 2014. IEC head Fazel Ahmad Manawi urged insurgents - including the Taliban and Hezb-e-Islami - to lay down their arms.
The presidential vote will take place as international combat troops continue their withdrawal ahead of a 2014 deadline.
Separately, Afghan officials said Wednesday two separate roadside bombs in the southern province of Helmand killed 11 civilians. The commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, General John Allen, on Wednesday condemned roadside bombs, particularly those that cause casualties among children.
Allen noted that Mullah Omar recently called on followers to avoid causing civilian deaths - accusing the Taliban leader of being "highly disingenuous."
Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.
Why Taliban Leader Rahman Is Berlin's Top Priority
Der Spiegel By Matthias Gebauer, Gordon Repinski, Christoph Reuter and Holger Stark 30/10/2012
German intelligence and special forces were instrumental in the recent arrest of Taliban commander Mullah Abdul Rahman. Ever since he hijacked two NATO tanker trucks in 2009, he has been a top priority for Berlin. Now, the government is even considering having him extradited to face justice in Germany.
The building complex is enormous and its reputation is legendary. Afghanistan's intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security, or NDS, operates its own prison in the middle of Kabul. The country's most important prisoners are sent to the facility in the city's Shash Darak quarter. One of them is Mullah Abdul Rahman, the Taliban leader and shadow governor of Kunduz Province, who was captured a week and a half ago. No one is willing to say whether the gaunt, bearded man is locked up in solitary or if he is being held in a group cell. Those who have spent time in the NDS prison describe it in various ways. Some mention torture, while others say that anything can be had there in return for a bribe, even freedom.
That is precisely what the German government wants to prevent, because Abdul Rahman is "its" man. Immediately after his arrest, German Ambassador Rüdiger König paid a visit to the Afghan government and explained how incredibly important it is to try and convict Rahman.
Abdul Rahman is the face of the enemy, at least for the Germans stationed in Afghanistan. More than any other Afghan, he symbolizes the ambivalence and difficulty of the German mission in the country. Rahman was behind the hijacking of two tanker trucks that became stuck on a sand bar in the middle of a river near Kunduz in September 2009, an incident that ended with a devastating air strike and the death of almost 100 people.
A Brazen Claim
The German commanding officer in Kunduz, Colonel Georg Klein, had ordered the strike on the tankers, which killed local residents who had come to the sand bank to tap the fuel from the trucks. With the exception of a few Taliban, most of the victims were civilians. The Afghan informant who notified the German special-forces unit, the KSK, of the tankers' presence had insisted that the people at the sand bar were only Taliban. It was a brazen claim, for which he was paid $1,500, but it became even more devastating when Colonel Klein, who was about to be promoted to general, believed it.
The incident led to the resignation of then Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and to the formation of an investigative committee. For Rahman, on the other hand, it suddenly meant advancing from his role as a village commander to a major figure within the Taliban.
On Nov. 4, 2009, the Germans placed him at No. 2242 on NATO's so-called Joint Prioritized Effects List, a very special list of wanted individuals. It includes more than 4,000 people, most of them Taliban commanders or presumed terrorists with other groups, complete with photos. Some, like Rahman, are merely on a wanted list, while the letter K, for "Kill," is listed next to the names of others, meaning that they can be eliminated at any time.
Immediately following the incident, Taliban strategists treated the blunder by the German military, one of the bloodiest NATO operations to have taken place in Afghanistan, as a great propaganda coup. An order was issued in Quetta, Pakistan, where elements of the Taliban leadership are in hiding, that Rahman was to be treated as an important commander in the Kunduz region from that point on. Combatants were assigned to him and he was expected to plan new operations.
Extradition to Germany?
Which, according to the German government, he soon did. Berlin accuses the mullah of having struck back on Good Friday in 2010. Rahman is thought to have been one of the organizers of a deadly ambush in the Chahar Darreh district, in which three German soldiers were killed: Sergeant First Class Nils Bruns, Corporal Robert Hartert and Private Martin Augustyniak.
Bringing those responsible for the attack to justice is a priority for the Germany government, partially because of its symbolism. Berlin wants justice to be done for the families of the three soldiers by putting Rahman behind bars for many years, provided the charges against him can be substantiated. Berlin is even thinking of filing a request for his extradition, an indication of how serious the Germans are about the case. "The treatment of arrested Taliban is a challenge that the Afghan judiciary must face," says German Economic Development Minister Dirk Niebel.
But proving Rahman's guilt may prove difficult. The Federal Public Prosecutor's Office in Karlsruhe is currently examining whether the evidence is sufficient for an arrest warrant, which would serve as the basis for an extradition request. The facts that have been presented so far, however, are insufficient.
Like so many Taliban field commanders, Rahman fled to Pakistan in the winter of 2010, after almost half of the Taliban commanders in Kunduz had fallen victim to American operations within only one year. From there Rahman, a Pashtun, commanded sub-commanders in the region and allegedly recruited suicide bombers and instructed Afghans to make roadside bombs. He made periodic trips to Afghanistan.
The mullah knew that the tanker-truck incident would change his life. When he met with a SPIEGEL reporter in January 2010, he feared an attack by the US military or a deadly drone attack at any moment. But he also felt flattered that Western journalists were interested in him.
'A Huge Mistake'
In short telephone conversations, Rahman gave the reporter directions to a busy market in Baghlan, an hour's drive south of Kunduz. Since the abduction of the tanker trucks, he had replaced his SIM card several times to avoid being tracked. Suddenly Rahman, covered with a green blanket, appeared and knocked on the window of the Toyota. When he sat down on the back seat, the car was suddenly filled with the pungent odor of sweat. He seemed less like a powerful commander than someone who was on the run. He stared out the window as he spoke quietly about the day of the attack. "It was a huge mistake," he said at the time. "Now I'm being hunted down by foreign soldiers."
Later, when Rahman was presumably in Pakistan, German military surveillance teams repeatedly heard his name being mentioned. In August 2011, an informant told the Germans that the mullah was planning an attack using suicide bombers on public buildings in Kunduz. The Bundeswehr spent two months intercepting telephone conversations, which indicated that Rahman had passed on explosives to two bomb-makers.
The BND, Germany's foreign intelligence service, achieved the critical breakthrough a week and a half ago. Rahman had just returned to Afghanistan from Pakistan. He was hiding, together with two of his followers, in the village of Ghunday Kalay near Kunduz when German elite soldiers launched their attack. Under cover of darkness, about 30 KSK soldiers and 60 Afghan troops they had trained encircled the small farmhouse, surrounded by high mud walls, before breaking down the doors and storming the courtyard. Rahman, wrapped in wool blankets, didn't resist arrest. Since January 2011, 19 similar arrests had resulted from tips coming from the German intelligence service. Rahman is number 20.
Since then, the German government has supported Kabul in its handling of the Rahman case. The German Embassy is currently collecting evidence that will be passed on to local prosecutors -- because even if an extradition request is made, it's unlikely that the prisoner will be sent to Germany.
Confusion
Still, Berlin is eager to avoid a repeat of a past humiliation. In May 2009, the KSK arrested another Taliban leader and flew him to Kabul. The trial dragged on, and in the end he was given a mild sentence instead of a long prison term. In the context of an amnesty in the summer of 2011, the prisoner, a presumed murderer, was released and became a free man.
There was some confusion last week, however, stemming from the news that two Taliban commanders named Abdul Rahman had been captured in Afghanistan, one by the Germans and the second one by the NDS, near the Pakistani border.
One of the two men is the shadow governor. While the Bundeswehr is absolutely certain that they arrested the real one southwest of Kunduz, Afghan security officials are not as convinced. Acquaintances of the shadow governor, a former United Nations employee and Asadullah Omarkhel, the local provincial head of the "High Peace Council," believe that the man the NDS picked up near the Pakistani border is the real Rahman. He reportedly returned from Pakistan recently, using an assumed name, after taking his sick son to Peshawar for treatment. On the way back, he apparently received a new driver south of Kunduz who was in fact working for the NDS.
Even if this is true, one of the men now in custody is undoubtedly the shadow governor.
But what does Rahman's arrest mean for northern Afghanistan, a region in which German politicians like to claim the situation is stabilizing? Last Friday, when Rahman was already in prison, a suicide bomber in a police uniform blew himself up in front of the mosque in Maimana, the capital of Faryab Province in northern Afghanistan. The explosion killed 41 people. It was one of the most gruesome attacks of the last few years.
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
Neither heat nor gloom ... Afghan post office delivers
As the Afghan government struggles to develop, the post office has quietly managed to become one of the nation's most efficient institutions - and with extremely limited international assistance.
By Tom A. Peter | Christian Science Monitor – Tue, Oct 30, 2012
Ten years ago, the Afghan postal service lay in near total ruin, undone by the nation's civil war. Sending a letter usually meant having to find someone traveling in the direction of the recipient willing to carry a note and hoping for the best.
Then, about four years ago, Ahmad Sher, a Jalalabad shopkeeper, noticed his city had a post office. On a whim, Mr. Sher, who loves listening to the radio, decided to send letters to several talk radio programs using the Afghan government postal service.
Like most Afghan 20-somethings who have grown up only knowing broken government institutions like the post office, he wasn't surprised at his friends' skepticism when he told them he planned to send the letters. "My friends made fun of me and said my letters wouldn't be read on the radio for a year," Sher says.
Sher and his friends were surprised, however, when the letters started making it through – regularly and in less than a week.
During the past 11 years, the United States has spent more than $60 billion on Afghan development to improve a government that still openly deals in corruption and often struggles to offer basic services to many of its citizens. Yet as the government struggles to develop despite an excess of foreign aid, the post office has quietly managed to become one of the most efficient national institutions – and with extremely limited international assistance.
"We saw a huge amount of money was spent on the Defense Ministry, Interior Ministry, and the national intelligence service. Their job is to provide security for people, but 10 years later the security is getting worse, and people are still concerned about their safety," says Fouzia Roufi, a member of the Afghan parliament's telecommunication commission. "The Afghan postal service is a promising administration. Whenever we talk to people, they are happy about the services they provide."
"Friendly customer service" is not a phrase often heard in reference to government projects in Afghanistan, but, sure enough, post office workers in Kabul even go so far as to lick stamps for patrons.
"If employees are committed to providing services for people, I think that even with empty pockets they can do something," says Mohammad Naseem Rahimi, acting head of the Afghan postal service, adding that he thinks the postal service's attitude could be a model for other government offices.
Unlike other government offices that employ full-time foreign advisers, who are paid healthy six-figure salaries, the Afghan postal service has only occasionally hired temporary foreign advisers to help revise its postal code.
The US Agency for International Development and the International Security Assistance Force contributed delivery trucks, China provided 100 mail-delivery bicycles, and Iran sent postal bags. International postal organizations have also provided some equipment. Otherwise, the organization has had to be largely self-sufficient compared with other development projects.
"The postal service doesn't need a big investment. With just a little bit of money you can provide people with a postal service," Mr. Rahimi says.
Afghanistan first established a postal service in 1878. Fifty years after its inception, it received international recognition. On the eve of the Soviet invasion it had grown into one of the stronger regional postal services, able to send and receive letters from anywhere in the world in a timely manner.
Since the civil war, the postal service has reinvented itself with offices in all 34 provinces, and, Rahimi says, it is close to having offices in all 364 districts.
Though street addresses are a foreign concept in Afghanistan, the postal service manages to do house deliveries – even if a postman might sometimes have to ask around to find the correct house.
Sher says he now uses the postal service regularly.
He's even received calendars and other promotional items in the mail from a Chinese radio station, he says, delivered to his shop for about the cost of a piece of bread.
Transition of Afghanistan on track: PM
CANBERRA, Oct. 31 (Xinhua) -- The transition of control of Afghanistan from international forces to Afghan forces is on track, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has told parliament on Wednesday.
"This does not mean the end of combat for international forces, but it does mean, gradually and carefully, international forces are moving to a supporting role," she said.
Gillard has flagged the need for extra defence force personnel to be sent to Afghanistan as part of the transition process to regional security control.
"As we begin detailed planning for its final phases, which of course remain some time off, it is likely that we will identify the need for some additional personnel and resources to complete those final phases of practical extraction and repatriation," Gillard indicated.
"By the middle of next year, when transition is due to begin in the fifth and final group of provinces, the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) will have lead responsibility for security across the whole country."
Gillard also mentioned the threat posed by insider attacks. " The best evidence that we will prevail against the threat from insider attacks is this: we have not allowed it to disrupt our training and operations," she said.
Taliban Hits Region Seen as ‘Safest’ for Afghans
New York Times By GRAHAM BOWLEY October 30, 2012
BAMIAN, Afghanistan - The war has finally found Bamian, a remote corner of Afghanistan that for a decade had enjoyed near immunity to Taliban violence.
As the American troop surge peaked over the past two years, Taliban insurgents began contesting parts of this central province, flowing in from more embattled areas of the country. And now, a series of deadly strikes in recent months has intimidated residents and served notice that roads are unsafe and government officials are targets.
That it has happened in Bamian — known for its rugged beauty, nascent skiing industry and the ancient Buddha statues that once kept vigil here — has added to the sense that nowhere in Afghanistan can be considered safe. And that, Afghan and Western analysts say, is a crucial part of the Taliban’s strategy in coming here.
“Bamian was the safest province in the country,” said Mohammed Natiqi, a Kabul-based military analyst. “The insurgents are trying to find a toehold there by destabilizing it to show their presence all over the country.”
Despite years of international military efforts, the Taliban have continued to show that they can drift away from Western forces and carry out attacks elsewhere. And now that the surge is over, and the force of 68,000 American troops is scheduled to withdraw by the end of 2014, the Taliban’s resilience has raised stark fears about what will happen next.
By contesting the roads into Bamian, the insurgents have added to the sense of encirclement of the Afghan capital, Kabul. These barren valleys and high passes are just a few hours from Kabul by car, but now the roads are nearly impassable for foreigners and dangerous for most Afghans.
On the roads into Bamian, the Taliban now regularly descend from the hills at night in shows of strength, setting up their own checkpoints after local police officers have left. They take those opportunities to rob, or kill, travelers, local officials say. And they regularly carry out deadly incursions into Bamian itself, particularly in a section of its northeast. Such attacks, including the abduction and killing of the provincial council chief last year on the main road to Kabul and the deaths of 14 coalition and Afghan soldiers over a few weeks this summer, are collectively the worst spasm of violence in the region’s rocky valleys since the Taliban’s fall in 2001.
Few suffered as much at the Taliban’s hands as the Hazara, the moderate Shiite ethnic minority that makes up most of the population in Bamian Province. They were massacred by the thousands during the civil war and the ensuing reign of the Taliban, who are mostly ethnic Pashtuns.
Before their ouster, the Taliban also destroyed Bamian’s most famous landmarks, two giant Buddhas that had gazed across the rough plains from their honeycomb sandstone hills for 1,500 years. Their ruins stand as a reminder of the cycles of devastation that have swept this region.
In the years since, the Hazaras have established an island of relative stability behind Bamian’s high mountain borders. Fields of potatoes and wheat stretch across basins and adorn hillsides. And though the population as a whole is quite poor, education levels for girls are among the highest in the country.
The provincial capital, a bazaar town of stalls and marketplaces where farmers sell watermelons and plums, and its surrounding areas have remained mostly peaceful, officials say. But even here, the insurgents have sympathizers. And the people of Bamian worry that the violent tremors that have begun here point to more troubling times ahead.
According to Mohammad Aziz Shafaq, head of Bamian’s provincial council, fear has begun constricting both their livelihoods and lives.
Ordinary people “cannot feel safe to go to their farms and do their work,” he said. “Businessmen do not feel safe sending supplies in and out of the province because they fear they will be confiscated by illegal armed men and insurgents.”
In July, gunmen killed an American engineer traveling on the Kabul-Bamian road. In September, five Hazaras were killed on another connecting road through Wardak Province. The main Hazara political leader has been targeted in attacks. And this month, a girls’ school was set on fire, and the convoy of one of President Hamid Karzai’s deputies was attacked.
Residents in Bamian have held protests, gathering in front of the governor’s office to demand action. As the noose tightens, even the police have sought help in traversing this newly dangerous landscape.
“We have asked the central government to provide us with helicopters,” said Ahmad Alia, a spokesman for the Bamian police chief. “Local government officials are not traveling by ground anymore, and they want to have helicopters so they can go to Kabul or other provinces.”
Most of the insurgents seem to be moving in across Bamian’s eastern and northeastern borderlands from the neighboring provinces of Baghlan and Parwan, especially Baghlan’s Tala Wa Barfak district, officials say. These provinces have a longer history of unrest, pointing to a broader problem in this central region of Afghanistan.
While coalition and Afghan officials say the insurgency has brought much of the recent violence, as the central provinces have become arteries to transport fighters and weapons, it is not just the Taliban who are behind the attacks. In some cases, criminal groups are at work extorting local businessmen and kidnapping traveling traders. They, too, have been energized by the coming Western withdrawal.
Hajji Ashuqullah Wafa, a member of Parliament from Baghlan, said militant groups enjoy the patronage of local warlords who are intent on destabilizing the government and are preparing for a time after 2014 when coalition combat forces are gone and they can extend their sway more widely throughout the region.
“They are people who benefit from fighting and war,” he said.
For residents here, the most serious signs of encroachment came this summer when two roadside bombs hit Afghan police patrols, and then the longstanding New Zealand peacekeeping force lost five of its personnel in two attacks.
In one of the attacks, about 40 New Zealand soldiers were drawn into an unexpectedly fierce and prolonged gun battle when they responded to calls for help from Afghan intelligence forces raiding a compound outside the village of Baghak, in the northwest.
“Even the locals were surprised at how it spiraled,” said Maj. Gen. David Gawn, commander of the joint forces of New Zealand.
As they consider this violence, Afghan officials concede that they are facing resilient enemies with an ability to move from regions to the south and east of the country, eluding security forces concentrated there.
“While our other activities were going on in the south, problems increased in some parts of the north and our enemies concentrated on the north,” said Mohammad Zahir Azimi, a Defense Ministry spokesman, describing the Afghan security forces’ experience at a recent news conference.
“Then we concentrated on the north and west, and that helped the situation become more stable, but then our enemies focused on the east,” he continued. “At the beginning of the year, we also concentrated on the east, and the enemies were able to take advantage of some vacuums, especially in some central parts and the points which connect to Bamian.”
Coalition commanders contend that Bamian’s instability actually is an indication of success of a sort: they have said that coalition and Afghan forces are compressing the fighting space and pushing desperate insurgents to more remote areas, like Bamian.
In fact, the real effects of the surge and the continuing drawdown of the war in these final years may not be known for some months, other analysts say. They suggest that the new troubles and insurgent advances in Bamian may be a disturbing revelation that the Taliban fighters are not as weakened as some hope.
“It is another step forward in their general expansion in the north,” said Thomas Ruttig, co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, a research organization in Kabul, who said the surge had not changed conditions as much as the international coalition would have liked.
He added, “ISAF claiming security improvement is a narrative that is not always covered by reality.”
Habib Zahori contributed reporting from Bamian, and an employee of The New York Times from Kabul, Afghanistan.
What will the Afghanistan war legacy be?
Much of the Soviets' development work got wiped out by a civil war in the 1990s. But the scope of the effort then was limited compared with the work today.
By Tom A. Peter | Christian Science Monitor – Tue, Oct 30, 2012
There may be two years left on the clock for the war in Afghanistan, but NATO's ability to shape events has largely come to an end, with the fighting at a stalemate, stalled peace negotiations, and incidents of Afghan security forces turning against their international counterparts.
Officials say international war and aid efforts are ongoing, but there are few indications that they will yield different results.
Rather than asking what more the international community can do in Afghanistan, the question may now be, What kind of legacy will the past decade of international influence leave here, and how long can it last?
Since invading Afghanistan in October 2001, the United States has appropriated nearly $100 billion for reconstruction and development there. Despite problems with fraud, corruption, and mismanagement, Afghanistan is a different nation than it was 11 years ago. The investment has created a 352,000-strong Afghan security force and increased access to electricity from 6 percent to 18 percent of the population; 3.2 million girls are now in school, up from fewer than 5,000 during the Taliban regime.
Yet throughout the country there are numerous indicators that many Afghans have little faith in the future. An estimated $8 billion in cash was taken out of the country last year, and property dealers say Afghans have all but stopped buying land, the stalwart investment in this largely agrarian society.
THE SOVIET EXAMPLE
To better understand the road ahead, a look back at the Soviet experience here may prove instructive.
"[The Soviets] were pretty active, and to a large degree effective, in urban-based development schemes, the paving of roads, the construction of buildings for government, and things of that nature," says Thomas Gouttierre, director of the Center for Afghanistan Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
Mr. Gouttierre first began working in Afghanistan in 1964. Unable to visit during the nine-year Russian war, he says he remembers returning shortly after it was over to find that many of the large cities such as Kabul, Jalalabad, and Herat had been noticeably changed by Soviet development projects. The power grid had improved, new roads were paved, and housing developments had been expanded.
Meanwhile, there were other changes not readily apparent. Russians had sent Afghans to study in the USSR and even launched an Afghan pilot into space.
"We built agricultural enterprises, industrial projects, schools, and universities," says Makhmut Gareev, a former Soviet general who advised former Afghan President Mohammad Najibullah. He says Afghans remember the Soviet period with warmth, though many others would dispute that assessment.
Shortly after the Russians withdrew in 1989, however, the country erupted into a violent civil war that undid most of the Soviets' work. When the Taliban took over in 1996, they brutally executed Mr. Najibullah, the last vestige of Soviet attempts to improve governance, and Afghanistan was left in near total ruin.
"Everything got completely destroyed during the civil war. Markets were looted, power lines were cut, the roads were destroyed, everything," says Rahmatullah, a Kabul shopkeeper who, like many Afghans, only uses one name.
THE DIFFERENCE - FUNDING
Today, those Afghans inclined to speak warmly of the Soviets' development work concede that the scope of the effort was limited compared with the work now being done by international donors.
Indeed, the US has spent $100 billion in reconstruction alone in Afghanistan, whereas the Soviet Union spent a maximum of an estimated $21 billion annually, accounting for inflation, on their entire war effort here, including both fighting and development.
The massive influx of international spending fueled corruption and created other problems, but it also allowed for a wider range of work than under the Soviets.
Just outside Rahmatullah's shop, a construction crew finishes paving the road. It's one of the many development projects he's seen that have transformed Kabul, he says. Aside from internationally funded development, Afghans who have become millionaires working with foreign donors and militaries have invested in large-scale construction projects, even building several small skyscrapers that Kabul had not seen before.
Though the NATO combat mission will end in 2014, American troops are expected to remain in Afghanistan in some capacity until 2024, unlike the Soviets who withdrew entirely.
"Only God knows what will happen, but I am not worried about a civil war like there was in the past, because the people are more educated now, and they know how much destruction fighting brings," says Rahmatullah, echoing a common sentiment among Afghans.
The same influx of foreign money that has helped develop Kabul may also protect it from civil war. Following the Soviet war, militias that had been heavily armed by the US turned their weapons against each other, destroying much of the country.
Now these commanders have benefited financially from foreign development contracts and security spending. Other younger Afghans who have risen to prominence and raised their own militias, in some cases becoming millionaires, now have something to lose if there were to be a full-scale war here.
And the warlords and militants who are most likely to challenge the government lack the firepower of militia commanders at the end of the Soviet war.
"If [warlords] re-create the situation we had in the 1990s, they will lose what they have gained. Their very selfish interest will prevent them from breaking what has been built," says Najib Mamalai, an independent political analyst in Kabul. "Fifteen years ago when they bombed Kabul, nothing belonged to those who were bombing. Now everything belongs to those who can bomb."
RAMPANT POLITICAL CORRUPTION
Even if Afghanistan escapes the type of violence it experienced in the wake of the Soviet pullout, it will still face rampant political corruption, which often fuels instability.
Despite international efforts to bolster the Afghan government and create a more transparent system, a number of questionable figures continue to populate the ranks of national decisionmakers.
Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, for example, is widely believed to have invited Osama bin Laden into Afghanistan in 1996 and to have maintained ties with Al Qaeda, yet he currently holds a seat in parliament here.
Another example: Shortly after the US-led invasion in 2001, Abdul Shakoor Muslim returned to Afghanistan after living in Pakistan as a refugee. When he arrived at his family's land he found a prominent local police official had claimed it as his own. Mr. Muslim confronted him about it, but the high-profile squatter threatened his life.
Muslim then took the case to court. In two separate rulings, the court sided in his favor, yet the squatter's family, which had gained more influence in the Afghan police and Ministry of Defense, still refused to leave.
Recognizing the sensitivity of the case, the Kabul municipality offered Muslim a plot of land as compensation about three years ago. But when Muslim arrived at the new plot, he says, it had already been stolen by the driver of the Afghan vice president.
"If the Americans leave a corrupt government behind, then there will be problems. But if the Americans, and the world, try to establish a strong government in the country that can implement the rules on everyone equally – a minister, a farmer, everyone should obey the same rules – there won't be any problems," Muslim says.
Although such abuses of power and corruption are a real concern, they may not be insurmountable, says Ken Yama****a, mission director in Afghanistan for the US Agency for International Development.
USAID and other government agencies have committed to work in Afghanistan. Democracies take time to develop, and the country only just ratified its Constitution eight years ago, Mr. Yama****a points out. "In 2024, what we hope to see is an improving process of governance, an improving electoral process, and an improving accountability of Afghan political leadership to its people," he says.
"Our sense is that as that accountability improves, then ... individuals who have had a record of various actions that are not consistent with what the people want will not get voted in."
• Olga Podolskaya in Moscow and Zubair Babakarkhail in Kabul, Afghanistan, contributed.
Premature mine blast kills 2 Taliban in northern Afghan town
PUL-E-KHUMRI, Afghanistan, Oct. 31 (Xinhua) -- Two Taliban militants were killed as their explosive device went off prematurely in Baghlan province 160 km north of capital Kabul on Wednesday, provincial police chief Assadullah Shirzad said.
"Three Taliban militants were busy in planting mine on a road in Bagh-e-Shamal village outside provincial capital Pul-e-Khumri early this morning but the device exploded prematurely killing two rebels on the spot and injuring another," Shirzad told Xinhua.
The injured militant has been taken to hospital, he added.
Taliban fighters are yet to comment.
Festering Balkan Tension a Warning on Afghan Withdrawal
Bloomberg By Indira A.R. Lakshmanan and Nicole Gaouette Oct 31, 2012
As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visits the Balkans this week, she’s seeing how hard it is to build durable peace, democracy and prosperity where ethnic and religious rivalries still fester.
November 21 will be the 17th anniversary of the Dayton Peace Accords that ended the Bosnian War and the worst atrocities in Europe since World War II, and its aftermath may hold lessons for the U.S. in Afghanistan and Iraq. While the peace deal midwifed by American, European and Russian officials halted the ethnic and religious slaughter that claimed almost 100,000 lives, it also helped entrench the region’s ethnic and religious divisions.
Postwar Bosnia is a reminder to U.S. officials that a peace deal alone can’t produce stability and effective governance, according to former diplomats and Balkans specialists. After U.S. and allied forces withdraw, former warring parties may seek in peace what they failed to achieve in war. Power-sharing deals intended to satisfy rival ethnic groups also can lead to political paralysis.
“Ending a war is only the beginning,” Bruce Hitchner, director of the Dayton Peace Accords Project at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, said in an interview. “Winning the peace” requires “more sustained investment and commitment, and more patience. If there is one lesson that the intervention in Bosnia has taught us, it is that if you take too long and move too cautiously in the postwar phase, you will lose effective control of the postwar process. And that’s what happened in Bosnia.”
Some Bosnian Serb leaders have carried on a “longstanding, peaceful counterinsurgency” to “undermine and divide Bosnia,” Hitchner said.
‘Totally Unacceptable’
Traveling together in Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo this week, Clinton and the European Union’s top diplomat, Catherine Ashton, are encouraging leaders to respect peace agreements and borders and adopt political and economic reforms required to join the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
“It is totally unacceptable that, 17 years after the war ended, some still question Bosnia and Herzegovina’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Clinton said yesterday in Sarajevo, Bosnia’s capital, a message aimed at Bosnian Serb leaders agitating to secede and form an independent state. “Such talk is a distraction from the problems facing this country, and serves only to undermine the goal of European integration.”
U.S. and European officials have criticized Bosnia’s postwar leaders -- Muslims known as Bosniaks and Christian Serbs and Croats who govern under a power-sharing agreement -- for putting their own interests above the nation’s and failing to govern effectively without international overnight.
No Government
The Bosnian economy is depressed, and for 16 months after elections in October 2010, the country had no government. The current leadership is “more than shaky” and has made no headway on any significant project, said Alexandra Stiglmayer, a senior analyst with the European Stability Initiative, a research group based in Berlin.
Bosnia is divided into two autonomous regions, a Serb Republic and a Muslim-Croat federation, held together tenuously by the weak central government. Unlike in Iraq, where Sunni Muslims, Shiites and Kurds are dueling after the withdrawal of U.S. forces at the end of last year, an international High Representative for Bosnia has far-reaching powers, including the right to impose legislation by decree and dismiss officials.
Clinton and Ashton met with the country’s three co- presidents from each ethnic group, as well as international officials, including international community High Representative Valentin Inzko, who has warned that Bosnia lags behind its neighbors in meeting requirements to join the EU and NATO.
‘Opportunistic Leaders’
“We -- I will be honest with you -- have been frustrated” by the Bosnian leadership’s dragging its feet on reform, Clinton said at a press conference.
The reason for that gridlock, Stiglmayer said in an interview, is “not ancient religious and ethnic rivalries,” nor is it the fault of the power-sharing design of the Dayton Accords. The fault, she said, in a comment that’s relevant to Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries, lies with “opportunistic leaders” who have exploited ethnic fears “and an international mission with far-reaching powers” that has prevented Bosnian institutions from functioning by themselves.
Stiglmayer, who covered the Bosnian War as a journalist and worked for the international High Representative in Sarajevo, said Clinton should say, “It is up to the Bosnians to make their country work.” Clinton and Ashton can “lend a helping hand, but no more.”
Human Rights
Benjamin Ward, deputy Europe director in London for Human Rights Watch, a New York-based advocacy group, said the U.S. must press Bosnia’s leaders to respect human rights, including for gays and lesbians and for minorities, including Jews and Roma who are barred from running for public office unless they declare themselves a member of one of the three main ethnic groups.
A disheartening example of segregation 17 years after the Dayton agreement is in education, Ward said. Children in the Muslim-Croat federation attend separate schools under one roof with different curricula and no mixing. “And these are kids who were not alive during the war,” he said.
Dayton’s defenders say the agreement was the only way to halt the genocide. Dayton’s success -- and the success of the U.S. intervention in Bosnia -- is that peace has held.
“We led an intervention in Bosnia to stop a civil war that was pumping out refugees throughout Europe and threatening to destabilize the region,” James Dobbins, who served as a U.S. special adviser on the Balkans and a special envoy to Bosnia, said in an interview. “It’s mission accomplished -- there are no refugees, no civil war, and no destabilization.”
Dysfunctional System
“You’re not going to make Muslims, Croats and Serbs love each other” after the atrocities that were committed during the war, he said. The “most you can expect is to make them stop killing each other. Maybe generations from now, you’ll have a less divided society.”
While Dobbins acknowledged that ethnic divisions have created a dysfunctional political system, he said that “all societies tend to be divided along some lines -- ideological, class, sectarian, religious,” and any democratic system is prone to gridlock.
“But the fact remains that” no one in Bosnia “is happy with” the system there, said Marko Prelec, the Balkans project director for the International Crisis Group, a global non- governmental organization focused on conflict zones.
The Dayton accord, he and other analysts said, is a qualified success that may serve as a guide to winding down some other military interventions.
Higher Stakes
The stakes may be higher for the U.S. in Iraq, where 4,486 Americans died according to icasualties.org, the local al-Qaeda affiliate is rebuilding and Iranian influence is growing. In Afghanistan, where according to the same source 2,244 Americans have died, the central government remains weak and the Taliban and other extremist groups remain strong, while militants have a safe haven in neighboring Pakistan.
One lesson for the U.S. as it withdraws from these other conflicts is that any peace agreement in Afghanistan would have to be supported by its neighbors, said Dobbins, who also served as a special envoy to Afghanistan and is now director of the security and defense policy center at the Washington office of the Santa Monica, California-based RAND Corp., a policy institute.
Bosnia’s peace deal worked, Dobbins said, because U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke and other negotiators were able to strong-arm the leaders of neighboring Serbia and Croatia to compel local warring parties to make peace.
Pakistan, Iran, Russia and India all have clients and influence in Afghanistan, and would have to support a peace deal, Dobbins said.
“It may be too late already,” for America’s efforts at nation-building in Iraq, said Hitchner at Tufts University. “But for Afghanistan, it means pursuing in tandem with Kabul and our allies a clear strategy for neutralizing the Taliban politically that will be achieved within, say, the next five years, not 17 years and counting.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Indira A.R. Lakshmanan in Washington atilakshmanan@bloomberg.net; Nicole Gaouette in Sarajevo atngaouette@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Walcott atjwalcott9@bloomberg.net
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
Aljazeera
Two roadside bombs have killed at least 11 civilians in southern Afghanistan, government officials say.
Among the dead in Wednesday's blasts were seven women and three children, the interior ministry said.
"Today at around 9am [0430 GMT] a roadside bomb blew up a civilian truck in Musa Qala that killed 10, including seven young women and three children." provincial spokesman Farid Ahmad Farhang told the AFP news agency.
Another woman and a man were wounded in the Helmand province attack.
Hours later, a second device destroyed a civilian motorcycle, killing a man and wounding a woman and three children -- all members of the same family -- Farhang said.
The government in Lashkar Gah, the provinicial capital, blamed the Taliban for the improvised explosive devices, IEDs, but no group has claimed responsibility yet.
The crude devices, often built on old ammunition, are planted by the side of roads to target NATO and Afghan troops.
The UN says 1,145 civilians were killed in the Afghan war in the first six months of this year, blaming 80 per cent of the deaths on fighters - more than half of those caused by roadside bombs.
Also on Wednesday, seven policemen were killed in an attack on a checkpoint in Zabul province.
Police officials, who called the attacker a "Taliban infiltrator", said he fled the Shah Joy district scene with weapons he seized from the slain policemen.
Both developments come as the independent election commission officially announced April 5, 2014, as the date of the next presidential election in the Central Asian nation.
Fazel Ahmad Manawi, chief of the Independent Election Commission, said on Wednesday that provincial elections would take place on the same day.
Manawi, speaking in Kabul, said: "we are even prepared to pave the ground for the armed opposition, be it the Taliban or Hezb-e-Islami , to participate in the election, either as voters or candidates".
"There will be no discrimination," the IEC chief added.
In the case of no presidential candidate securing more than 50 per cent of the vote, a May 22, 2014, runoff will be implemented.
Afghan-German Boxer Fights In Kabul For Peace
By Frud Bezhan October 31, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
"I want to bring peace to my hometown in Afghanistan," said Afghan-German boxer Hamid Rahimi. "I think sport has the magic to bring all the people and all religions together."
Afghanistan was at the center of the boxing world as the 29-year-old spoke, one day before stepping into the ring for the first professional boxing match in Afghanistan in more than 30 years.
Rahimi's scheduled 12-round bout with Tanzania's Said Mbelwa on October 30 was dubbed "Fight 4 Peace," with the World Boxing Organization's unclaimed intercontinental middleweight championship at stake.
Rahimi pulled no punches, winning by TKO in the seventh round in the Afghan capital's Loya Jirga, or grand assembly tent with upward of 1,500 spectators on hand.
But getting there was a tough task for the boxers and organizers alike. The first thing that needed to be overcome: security fears that had kept fight promoters away from Afghanistan for decades.
'My Inner Strength'
It took two years of vigorous campaigning through his "Fight 4 Peace" project, but Rahimi finally succeeded in convincing the WBO, the Afghan government, and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to host the event in Kabul.
With the win, Rahimi now boasts a record of 21 wins -- nine by knockout -- and one loss as a professional. Earlier this year, after he won the World Boxing Union championship, he set his sights on winning the WBO belt in his home country.
But he has even loftier goals, such as inspiring a new generation of Afghan boxers and helping to unite Afghanistan's fractious society. He says this event will show the world that there is more to the country than just war and bloodshed.
"Whenever I compete in a boxing match I carry the Afghan flag [and my heritage] on my shoulders," Rahimi said. "This gives me my inner strength."
Afghan President Hamid Karzai congratulated "Rahimi and the Afghan nation" after the fight, thanking the Tanzanian for coming to Afghanistan to take part.
'The Dragon'
Rahimi was 9 years old when he left Kabul for Germany with his parents and three siblings. They left in 1992 amid a brutal civil war that claimed the lives of some 70,000 people in Kabul alone.
His boxing career began in 2003 when he was discovered by renowned Jamaica-born German boxer and trainer Owen Reece, who took Rahimi under his wing. In 2006, he fought in his first professional fight in Germany as a middleweight under the moniker "The Dragon."
At the time, Rahimi said he chose the name because "a dragon is an adaptable creature; it can cope with water, wind, and fire. Likewise, I can handle every opponent and every situation in the ring."
After he took the WBU crown in February by defeating Belarusian Ruslan Rodivich in Hamburg, where he trains, Rahimi became heavily involved in Afghanistan.
He traveled to Kabul at the invitation of the National Olympic Committee to help develop Afghan boxers and was given a warm welcome. Afghan President Hamid Karzai awarded Rahimi with the Mir Masjidi Khan state medal, named after an Afghan hero who fought the British during the First Anglo-Afghan War in the 19th century.
Rahimi's mother, Fatima Rahimi, arrived in Kabul for the first time since the family's departure some 20 years ago to see her son's championship fight against the 23-year-old Mbelwa. After the loss, the Tanzanian middleweight has 19 wins, including 12 knockouts, nine losses, and four draws.
Family, National Honor?
The Rahimi family is from the Hazara minority, but Fatima Rahimi insists her son is fighting for all Afghans.
Speaking to journalists in Kabul on the eve of the fight, she said she was confident her son would emerge victorious.
"I am so hopeful and I believe that my son will be the winner, considering his tireless efforts, day and night," the proud mother said. "He will succeed and he will be the winner."
WBO representative Christof Hawerkamp, speaking a day before the fight, said it was a great honor to host a "peace championship" in the war-torn country.
The WBO's motto is "Dignity Democracy Honesty", and Hawerkamp says the idea is to inspire young Afghans to take up professional boxing.
"Don't use weapons. Go to [the] gym. Go to [the] football ground for soccer. That should be your fight, not the battlefields," dpa news agency quoted him as saying.
RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan contributed to this report
Afghan boxer inspires youths in Kabul's first professional match
By Farid Behbud, Chen Xin
KABUL, Oct. 31 (Xinhua) -- The World Boxing Union (WBU) champion, Hamidullah Rahimi encouraged the war-tired youths in Afghanistan on Tuesday by grabbing the golden belt in the first professional boxing event ever in the history of the war-torn country.
"It is an exciting match. I am instigated by the first professional competition. It is a great day as I have forgotten the war and conflicts for a while," an excited female viewer, Maryam Siddiqi, told Xinhua.
Rahimi knocked out his Tanzanian challenger Said Mbelwa in the seventh round after Mbelwa admitted retreating to his angle with a shoulder hurt.
"I am fighting for peace. The banner of this match is 'Fighting for Peace'," Rahimi told the audience.
"It is a great moment for my country. This gold belt is not just mine. It is for Afghanistan," energized Rahimi told after winning the race.
"We want no more fighting. The youth of this country must not hold a gun. They should wear boxing gloves or play football," he said.
"As soon as I heard the advertisement about the competition, I've decided to come and see in the event. It is the first boxing match I ever saw in my live," the 28-year-old Siddiqi went on to say.
"It is for first time that Afghanistan is hosting a big sport event like this. I am sure it can promote peace and make Afghans happy at least for one day," she said.
Thousands of boxing fans were watching the match in a giant tent, located in western Kabul amid tight security while millions of Afghans were watching the event broadcasted live by government-run National TV and a newly established local TV channel Khurshid.
"It had to be held in a sport stadium but we do not have such a building in Kabul. Instead they hold the match in the Loya Jirga tent. It is also ok,"
The youngest member of Afghan Wolesi Jirga or Lower House of the Parliament, Baktash Siawash, who was also among the eager viewers, told Xinhua that his country was raring to go for a sign of ordinary life.
"It is an activity for peace building in Afghanistan and also an emotional moment for me as a member of the parliament. We yearn for peace and welcome any kind of action which is helpful for peace." Siawash said.
"I think sport is the biggest ambassador of peace. If we have more activities of this kind in Afghanistan, it will send a message of peace to people of Afghanistan, because we cannot bring peace only by guns."
Mbelwa, 23, fights in the super-middleweight division and has a record of 31 fights with 19 wins, eight losses and four draws. Rahimi is six years older than his opponent and has won 20 of his 21 fights.
Ahead of the fight, Mbelwa said that he understood that the occasion was "a very special event for Afghanistan and sent a very important message for the whole world". He vowed to fight as hard as any other match once in the ring.
"I hope that this global victory could encourage our youth in every part of the country and boost their endeavors for ensuring peace in the country, in order to provide better opportunity for further growth of sport in the country," local media quoted Afghan Minister of Information and Culture Dr. Sayed Makhdom Raheen as saying in his congratulatory message in the wake of the event.
Rahimi, 29, was born Kabul in September 1983. In 1992, he fled the civil war and went to the Hamburg, Germany with his parents.
A crucial experience from his childhood marked the beginning of his boxing career:
In 1998, the very first thing he did was to acquire the basic skills of Thai boxing. Obsessed with his goal to become stronger and better, Hamid spent several months in 2002 in a training camp in Thailand, which is the birth place of Thai boxing.
Since the collapse of Taliban regime, Afghan athletes have already joined several competitions at regional and international level and started bringing medals and honors to the country.
Beijing Olympic medalist, Rohullah Nikpa, won the only medal in London 2012 Olympic Games for his war-torn country.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) had suspended the membership of Afghanistan in 1999 due to Taliban's brutal policies that included restrictions on the country's athletes.
The Taliban fundamentalist regime had outlawed a series of sports activities aside from forcing athletes to grow long beard and wear tall shirts and trousers during matches.
The IOC lifted the suspension in 2002 after the collapse of the Taliban regime.
The tickets for the fight sold out too fast, many fans were trying to buy but it was too difficult, Kabul resident, Shir Shah Ghafori, told Xinhua.
"The tickets were too expensive. Many sport lovers failed to enter the tent. It was too difficult to get the tickets. We do have economy problems and such matches cost us a lot to watch from close range," Ghafori.
Senators Urge Tougher Line Against Taliban
TOLOnews.com By Shahla Muratzaie Tuesday, 30 October 2012
Afghan senators on Tuesday urged President Hamid Karzai and the government to revise the strategy of dealing with the Taliban towards taking a tougher line with them.
The senators said the current approach is soft and will not work because the Taliban have no regard for the people of Afghanistan.
The calls come after the Friday suicide attack in Faryab killed as many as 40 people and injured around 50 more – mostly civilians who were exiting a mosque on the first day of Eid al-Adha.
"They should be eliminated because they are intending to destroy the people of Afghanistan," said senator Sayed Farukh Shah Jenab, who is part of a delegation investigating the bombing, on Tuesday.
"Our security forces should eliminate them. The peaceful approach to Taliban is not effective and will not work," he added.
Another senator urged the national Ulema Council to declare jihad against the Taliban for the bloodshed in Faryab province.
"I don't know why they are not declaring jihad against them, why the Ulema is quiet," senator Ali Akbar Jamshidi said. "We seriously urge the Ulema Council to perform their responsibility and declare jihad against these heretics."
The head of Afghanistan's Ulema Council went with Karzai to Faryab on Sunday and accused Pakistan of planning the suicide attacks.
"We spread the Islamic religion to the others and they announce jihad against us. They themselves have said that jihad in Afghanistan is the defense of Pakistan," Qeyamudin Kashaf said Sunday, condemning suicide attacks for going against the tenants of Islam.
The Latest Word On The Afghan Street
October 31, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
In the latest twist in the controversy over naming Afghan streets after national heroes, the governor of Afghanistan's western Herat Province, Daud Shah Saba, has said that Afghan law stipulates that streets can only be named after people who died at least 50 years ago.
But municipal officials in Herat say the city is unlikely to change the names of two major thoroughfares in the city, which are named after mujahedin commander Ahmad Shah Masud and Mirwais Sadiq, a former civil aviation minister and son of Herati strongman Ismail Khan.
Masud was killed in 2001, Sadiq in 2004.
Afghan officials, as well as the public, are sharply divided over the issue of naming streets and institutions after former anti-Soviet and anti-Taliban leaders or their allies. Supporters see such steps as honoring the service and sacrifice of these figures. Opponents consider the bestowing of such honors as inciting further hatred and division among Afghans, some of whom see these jihadi figures as symbols of the suffering that Afghans endured during the civil war in the 1990s.
In August, a scandal erupted when provincial officials in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif requested that authorities in Kabul determine whether a street in the city should be named after a group of Iranian diplomats killed there in 1998. The provincial council was forced to ask for formal approval after Afghan media and politicians criticized the council for naming a city street the Martyrs of the Consulate of the Islamic Republic of Iran without approval from Kabul.
A more serious controversy erupted in September when Afghan President Hamid Karzai issued a decree renaming Kabul Education University after former President Burhannudin Rabbani, who was killed by a suspected Taliban suicide bomber in 2011.
More than two weeks of peaceful demonstrations by students protesting the name change turned violent in early October when supporters of the move clashed with protesters. Most of the supporters were said to be from outside the university.
The scuffles forced the government to settle on a compromise solution. The former Afghan president's name will not be put on the diplomas of graduating students. The school, however, will be called the Kabul Education University of Rabbani. Like many controversies in Afghanistan, the issue is far from resolved but will likely be pushed onto the backburner by fresh crises.
Afghanistan clearly needs a uniform address system. Although the size of Afghan towns and cities has mushroomed over the past decade, streets, buildings, and houses have no organized numbering system. Finding a house or a shop in a city as large as Kabul often means endless roaming in warrens of similar-looking streets. Many Afghans will tell you to look for a tree or the color of their door or use proximity to a famous mosque when they're giving directions.
-- Abubakar Siddique
EU Welcomes Afghan Election Date Announcement
VOA News October 31, 2012
The European Union has welcomed Afghanistan's announcement that presidential elections will be held in April of 2014.
The EU's special representative to Afghanistan, Vygaudas Usackas, said Wednesday the decision to hold elections demonstrates Afghan authorities are fulfilling their duties in accordance with political commitments.
Usackas said the EU is supportive of "inclusive and transparent elections with a legitimate outcome."
Afghan President Hamid Karzai is serving his second term and is constitutionally barred from running for re-election. Next year's vote is seen as a test of Afghanistan's young democracy, after the 2009 election was marred by allegations of voter fraud.
Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission said the presidential poll, as well as provincial elections, will be held April 5, 2014. IEC head Fazel Ahmad Manawi urged insurgents - including the Taliban and Hezb-e-Islami - to lay down their arms.
The presidential vote will take place as international combat troops continue their withdrawal ahead of a 2014 deadline.
Separately, Afghan officials said Wednesday two separate roadside bombs in the southern province of Helmand killed 11 civilians. The commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, General John Allen, on Wednesday condemned roadside bombs, particularly those that cause casualties among children.
Allen noted that Mullah Omar recently called on followers to avoid causing civilian deaths - accusing the Taliban leader of being "highly disingenuous."
Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.
Why Taliban Leader Rahman Is Berlin's Top Priority
Der Spiegel By Matthias Gebauer, Gordon Repinski, Christoph Reuter and Holger Stark 30/10/2012
German intelligence and special forces were instrumental in the recent arrest of Taliban commander Mullah Abdul Rahman. Ever since he hijacked two NATO tanker trucks in 2009, he has been a top priority for Berlin. Now, the government is even considering having him extradited to face justice in Germany.
The building complex is enormous and its reputation is legendary. Afghanistan's intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security, or NDS, operates its own prison in the middle of Kabul. The country's most important prisoners are sent to the facility in the city's Shash Darak quarter. One of them is Mullah Abdul Rahman, the Taliban leader and shadow governor of Kunduz Province, who was captured a week and a half ago. No one is willing to say whether the gaunt, bearded man is locked up in solitary or if he is being held in a group cell. Those who have spent time in the NDS prison describe it in various ways. Some mention torture, while others say that anything can be had there in return for a bribe, even freedom.
That is precisely what the German government wants to prevent, because Abdul Rahman is "its" man. Immediately after his arrest, German Ambassador Rüdiger König paid a visit to the Afghan government and explained how incredibly important it is to try and convict Rahman.
Abdul Rahman is the face of the enemy, at least for the Germans stationed in Afghanistan. More than any other Afghan, he symbolizes the ambivalence and difficulty of the German mission in the country. Rahman was behind the hijacking of two tanker trucks that became stuck on a sand bar in the middle of a river near Kunduz in September 2009, an incident that ended with a devastating air strike and the death of almost 100 people.
A Brazen Claim
The German commanding officer in Kunduz, Colonel Georg Klein, had ordered the strike on the tankers, which killed local residents who had come to the sand bank to tap the fuel from the trucks. With the exception of a few Taliban, most of the victims were civilians. The Afghan informant who notified the German special-forces unit, the KSK, of the tankers' presence had insisted that the people at the sand bar were only Taliban. It was a brazen claim, for which he was paid $1,500, but it became even more devastating when Colonel Klein, who was about to be promoted to general, believed it.
The incident led to the resignation of then Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and to the formation of an investigative committee. For Rahman, on the other hand, it suddenly meant advancing from his role as a village commander to a major figure within the Taliban.
On Nov. 4, 2009, the Germans placed him at No. 2242 on NATO's so-called Joint Prioritized Effects List, a very special list of wanted individuals. It includes more than 4,000 people, most of them Taliban commanders or presumed terrorists with other groups, complete with photos. Some, like Rahman, are merely on a wanted list, while the letter K, for "Kill," is listed next to the names of others, meaning that they can be eliminated at any time.
Immediately following the incident, Taliban strategists treated the blunder by the German military, one of the bloodiest NATO operations to have taken place in Afghanistan, as a great propaganda coup. An order was issued in Quetta, Pakistan, where elements of the Taliban leadership are in hiding, that Rahman was to be treated as an important commander in the Kunduz region from that point on. Combatants were assigned to him and he was expected to plan new operations.
Extradition to Germany?
Which, according to the German government, he soon did. Berlin accuses the mullah of having struck back on Good Friday in 2010. Rahman is thought to have been one of the organizers of a deadly ambush in the Chahar Darreh district, in which three German soldiers were killed: Sergeant First Class Nils Bruns, Corporal Robert Hartert and Private Martin Augustyniak.
Bringing those responsible for the attack to justice is a priority for the Germany government, partially because of its symbolism. Berlin wants justice to be done for the families of the three soldiers by putting Rahman behind bars for many years, provided the charges against him can be substantiated. Berlin is even thinking of filing a request for his extradition, an indication of how serious the Germans are about the case. "The treatment of arrested Taliban is a challenge that the Afghan judiciary must face," says German Economic Development Minister Dirk Niebel.
But proving Rahman's guilt may prove difficult. The Federal Public Prosecutor's Office in Karlsruhe is currently examining whether the evidence is sufficient for an arrest warrant, which would serve as the basis for an extradition request. The facts that have been presented so far, however, are insufficient.
Like so many Taliban field commanders, Rahman fled to Pakistan in the winter of 2010, after almost half of the Taliban commanders in Kunduz had fallen victim to American operations within only one year. From there Rahman, a Pashtun, commanded sub-commanders in the region and allegedly recruited suicide bombers and instructed Afghans to make roadside bombs. He made periodic trips to Afghanistan.
The mullah knew that the tanker-truck incident would change his life. When he met with a SPIEGEL reporter in January 2010, he feared an attack by the US military or a deadly drone attack at any moment. But he also felt flattered that Western journalists were interested in him.
'A Huge Mistake'
In short telephone conversations, Rahman gave the reporter directions to a busy market in Baghlan, an hour's drive south of Kunduz. Since the abduction of the tanker trucks, he had replaced his SIM card several times to avoid being tracked. Suddenly Rahman, covered with a green blanket, appeared and knocked on the window of the Toyota. When he sat down on the back seat, the car was suddenly filled with the pungent odor of sweat. He seemed less like a powerful commander than someone who was on the run. He stared out the window as he spoke quietly about the day of the attack. "It was a huge mistake," he said at the time. "Now I'm being hunted down by foreign soldiers."
Later, when Rahman was presumably in Pakistan, German military surveillance teams repeatedly heard his name being mentioned. In August 2011, an informant told the Germans that the mullah was planning an attack using suicide bombers on public buildings in Kunduz. The Bundeswehr spent two months intercepting telephone conversations, which indicated that Rahman had passed on explosives to two bomb-makers.
The BND, Germany's foreign intelligence service, achieved the critical breakthrough a week and a half ago. Rahman had just returned to Afghanistan from Pakistan. He was hiding, together with two of his followers, in the village of Ghunday Kalay near Kunduz when German elite soldiers launched their attack. Under cover of darkness, about 30 KSK soldiers and 60 Afghan troops they had trained encircled the small farmhouse, surrounded by high mud walls, before breaking down the doors and storming the courtyard. Rahman, wrapped in wool blankets, didn't resist arrest. Since January 2011, 19 similar arrests had resulted from tips coming from the German intelligence service. Rahman is number 20.
Since then, the German government has supported Kabul in its handling of the Rahman case. The German Embassy is currently collecting evidence that will be passed on to local prosecutors -- because even if an extradition request is made, it's unlikely that the prisoner will be sent to Germany.
Confusion
Still, Berlin is eager to avoid a repeat of a past humiliation. In May 2009, the KSK arrested another Taliban leader and flew him to Kabul. The trial dragged on, and in the end he was given a mild sentence instead of a long prison term. In the context of an amnesty in the summer of 2011, the prisoner, a presumed murderer, was released and became a free man.
There was some confusion last week, however, stemming from the news that two Taliban commanders named Abdul Rahman had been captured in Afghanistan, one by the Germans and the second one by the NDS, near the Pakistani border.
One of the two men is the shadow governor. While the Bundeswehr is absolutely certain that they arrested the real one southwest of Kunduz, Afghan security officials are not as convinced. Acquaintances of the shadow governor, a former United Nations employee and Asadullah Omarkhel, the local provincial head of the "High Peace Council," believe that the man the NDS picked up near the Pakistani border is the real Rahman. He reportedly returned from Pakistan recently, using an assumed name, after taking his sick son to Peshawar for treatment. On the way back, he apparently received a new driver south of Kunduz who was in fact working for the NDS.
Even if this is true, one of the men now in custody is undoubtedly the shadow governor.
But what does Rahman's arrest mean for northern Afghanistan, a region in which German politicians like to claim the situation is stabilizing? Last Friday, when Rahman was already in prison, a suicide bomber in a police uniform blew himself up in front of the mosque in Maimana, the capital of Faryab Province in northern Afghanistan. The explosion killed 41 people. It was one of the most gruesome attacks of the last few years.
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
Neither heat nor gloom ... Afghan post office delivers
As the Afghan government struggles to develop, the post office has quietly managed to become one of the nation's most efficient institutions - and with extremely limited international assistance.
By Tom A. Peter | Christian Science Monitor – Tue, Oct 30, 2012
Ten years ago, the Afghan postal service lay in near total ruin, undone by the nation's civil war. Sending a letter usually meant having to find someone traveling in the direction of the recipient willing to carry a note and hoping for the best.
Then, about four years ago, Ahmad Sher, a Jalalabad shopkeeper, noticed his city had a post office. On a whim, Mr. Sher, who loves listening to the radio, decided to send letters to several talk radio programs using the Afghan government postal service.
Like most Afghan 20-somethings who have grown up only knowing broken government institutions like the post office, he wasn't surprised at his friends' skepticism when he told them he planned to send the letters. "My friends made fun of me and said my letters wouldn't be read on the radio for a year," Sher says.
Sher and his friends were surprised, however, when the letters started making it through – regularly and in less than a week.
During the past 11 years, the United States has spent more than $60 billion on Afghan development to improve a government that still openly deals in corruption and often struggles to offer basic services to many of its citizens. Yet as the government struggles to develop despite an excess of foreign aid, the post office has quietly managed to become one of the most efficient national institutions – and with extremely limited international assistance.
"We saw a huge amount of money was spent on the Defense Ministry, Interior Ministry, and the national intelligence service. Their job is to provide security for people, but 10 years later the security is getting worse, and people are still concerned about their safety," says Fouzia Roufi, a member of the Afghan parliament's telecommunication commission. "The Afghan postal service is a promising administration. Whenever we talk to people, they are happy about the services they provide."
"Friendly customer service" is not a phrase often heard in reference to government projects in Afghanistan, but, sure enough, post office workers in Kabul even go so far as to lick stamps for patrons.
"If employees are committed to providing services for people, I think that even with empty pockets they can do something," says Mohammad Naseem Rahimi, acting head of the Afghan postal service, adding that he thinks the postal service's attitude could be a model for other government offices.
Unlike other government offices that employ full-time foreign advisers, who are paid healthy six-figure salaries, the Afghan postal service has only occasionally hired temporary foreign advisers to help revise its postal code.
The US Agency for International Development and the International Security Assistance Force contributed delivery trucks, China provided 100 mail-delivery bicycles, and Iran sent postal bags. International postal organizations have also provided some equipment. Otherwise, the organization has had to be largely self-sufficient compared with other development projects.
"The postal service doesn't need a big investment. With just a little bit of money you can provide people with a postal service," Mr. Rahimi says.
Afghanistan first established a postal service in 1878. Fifty years after its inception, it received international recognition. On the eve of the Soviet invasion it had grown into one of the stronger regional postal services, able to send and receive letters from anywhere in the world in a timely manner.
Since the civil war, the postal service has reinvented itself with offices in all 34 provinces, and, Rahimi says, it is close to having offices in all 364 districts.
Though street addresses are a foreign concept in Afghanistan, the postal service manages to do house deliveries – even if a postman might sometimes have to ask around to find the correct house.
Sher says he now uses the postal service regularly.
He's even received calendars and other promotional items in the mail from a Chinese radio station, he says, delivered to his shop for about the cost of a piece of bread.
Transition of Afghanistan on track: PM
CANBERRA, Oct. 31 (Xinhua) -- The transition of control of Afghanistan from international forces to Afghan forces is on track, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has told parliament on Wednesday.
"This does not mean the end of combat for international forces, but it does mean, gradually and carefully, international forces are moving to a supporting role," she said.
Gillard has flagged the need for extra defence force personnel to be sent to Afghanistan as part of the transition process to regional security control.
"As we begin detailed planning for its final phases, which of course remain some time off, it is likely that we will identify the need for some additional personnel and resources to complete those final phases of practical extraction and repatriation," Gillard indicated.
"By the middle of next year, when transition is due to begin in the fifth and final group of provinces, the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) will have lead responsibility for security across the whole country."
Gillard also mentioned the threat posed by insider attacks. " The best evidence that we will prevail against the threat from insider attacks is this: we have not allowed it to disrupt our training and operations," she said.
Taliban Hits Region Seen as ‘Safest’ for Afghans
New York Times By GRAHAM BOWLEY October 30, 2012
BAMIAN, Afghanistan - The war has finally found Bamian, a remote corner of Afghanistan that for a decade had enjoyed near immunity to Taliban violence.
As the American troop surge peaked over the past two years, Taliban insurgents began contesting parts of this central province, flowing in from more embattled areas of the country. And now, a series of deadly strikes in recent months has intimidated residents and served notice that roads are unsafe and government officials are targets.
That it has happened in Bamian — known for its rugged beauty, nascent skiing industry and the ancient Buddha statues that once kept vigil here — has added to the sense that nowhere in Afghanistan can be considered safe. And that, Afghan and Western analysts say, is a crucial part of the Taliban’s strategy in coming here.
“Bamian was the safest province in the country,” said Mohammed Natiqi, a Kabul-based military analyst. “The insurgents are trying to find a toehold there by destabilizing it to show their presence all over the country.”
Despite years of international military efforts, the Taliban have continued to show that they can drift away from Western forces and carry out attacks elsewhere. And now that the surge is over, and the force of 68,000 American troops is scheduled to withdraw by the end of 2014, the Taliban’s resilience has raised stark fears about what will happen next.
By contesting the roads into Bamian, the insurgents have added to the sense of encirclement of the Afghan capital, Kabul. These barren valleys and high passes are just a few hours from Kabul by car, but now the roads are nearly impassable for foreigners and dangerous for most Afghans.
On the roads into Bamian, the Taliban now regularly descend from the hills at night in shows of strength, setting up their own checkpoints after local police officers have left. They take those opportunities to rob, or kill, travelers, local officials say. And they regularly carry out deadly incursions into Bamian itself, particularly in a section of its northeast. Such attacks, including the abduction and killing of the provincial council chief last year on the main road to Kabul and the deaths of 14 coalition and Afghan soldiers over a few weeks this summer, are collectively the worst spasm of violence in the region’s rocky valleys since the Taliban’s fall in 2001.
Few suffered as much at the Taliban’s hands as the Hazara, the moderate Shiite ethnic minority that makes up most of the population in Bamian Province. They were massacred by the thousands during the civil war and the ensuing reign of the Taliban, who are mostly ethnic Pashtuns.
Before their ouster, the Taliban also destroyed Bamian’s most famous landmarks, two giant Buddhas that had gazed across the rough plains from their honeycomb sandstone hills for 1,500 years. Their ruins stand as a reminder of the cycles of devastation that have swept this region.
In the years since, the Hazaras have established an island of relative stability behind Bamian’s high mountain borders. Fields of potatoes and wheat stretch across basins and adorn hillsides. And though the population as a whole is quite poor, education levels for girls are among the highest in the country.
The provincial capital, a bazaar town of stalls and marketplaces where farmers sell watermelons and plums, and its surrounding areas have remained mostly peaceful, officials say. But even here, the insurgents have sympathizers. And the people of Bamian worry that the violent tremors that have begun here point to more troubling times ahead.
According to Mohammad Aziz Shafaq, head of Bamian’s provincial council, fear has begun constricting both their livelihoods and lives.
Ordinary people “cannot feel safe to go to their farms and do their work,” he said. “Businessmen do not feel safe sending supplies in and out of the province because they fear they will be confiscated by illegal armed men and insurgents.”
In July, gunmen killed an American engineer traveling on the Kabul-Bamian road. In September, five Hazaras were killed on another connecting road through Wardak Province. The main Hazara political leader has been targeted in attacks. And this month, a girls’ school was set on fire, and the convoy of one of President Hamid Karzai’s deputies was attacked.
Residents in Bamian have held protests, gathering in front of the governor’s office to demand action. As the noose tightens, even the police have sought help in traversing this newly dangerous landscape.
“We have asked the central government to provide us with helicopters,” said Ahmad Alia, a spokesman for the Bamian police chief. “Local government officials are not traveling by ground anymore, and they want to have helicopters so they can go to Kabul or other provinces.”
Most of the insurgents seem to be moving in across Bamian’s eastern and northeastern borderlands from the neighboring provinces of Baghlan and Parwan, especially Baghlan’s Tala Wa Barfak district, officials say. These provinces have a longer history of unrest, pointing to a broader problem in this central region of Afghanistan.
While coalition and Afghan officials say the insurgency has brought much of the recent violence, as the central provinces have become arteries to transport fighters and weapons, it is not just the Taliban who are behind the attacks. In some cases, criminal groups are at work extorting local businessmen and kidnapping traveling traders. They, too, have been energized by the coming Western withdrawal.
Hajji Ashuqullah Wafa, a member of Parliament from Baghlan, said militant groups enjoy the patronage of local warlords who are intent on destabilizing the government and are preparing for a time after 2014 when coalition combat forces are gone and they can extend their sway more widely throughout the region.
“They are people who benefit from fighting and war,” he said.
For residents here, the most serious signs of encroachment came this summer when two roadside bombs hit Afghan police patrols, and then the longstanding New Zealand peacekeeping force lost five of its personnel in two attacks.
In one of the attacks, about 40 New Zealand soldiers were drawn into an unexpectedly fierce and prolonged gun battle when they responded to calls for help from Afghan intelligence forces raiding a compound outside the village of Baghak, in the northwest.
“Even the locals were surprised at how it spiraled,” said Maj. Gen. David Gawn, commander of the joint forces of New Zealand.
As they consider this violence, Afghan officials concede that they are facing resilient enemies with an ability to move from regions to the south and east of the country, eluding security forces concentrated there.
“While our other activities were going on in the south, problems increased in some parts of the north and our enemies concentrated on the north,” said Mohammad Zahir Azimi, a Defense Ministry spokesman, describing the Afghan security forces’ experience at a recent news conference.
“Then we concentrated on the north and west, and that helped the situation become more stable, but then our enemies focused on the east,” he continued. “At the beginning of the year, we also concentrated on the east, and the enemies were able to take advantage of some vacuums, especially in some central parts and the points which connect to Bamian.”
Coalition commanders contend that Bamian’s instability actually is an indication of success of a sort: they have said that coalition and Afghan forces are compressing the fighting space and pushing desperate insurgents to more remote areas, like Bamian.
In fact, the real effects of the surge and the continuing drawdown of the war in these final years may not be known for some months, other analysts say. They suggest that the new troubles and insurgent advances in Bamian may be a disturbing revelation that the Taliban fighters are not as weakened as some hope.
“It is another step forward in their general expansion in the north,” said Thomas Ruttig, co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, a research organization in Kabul, who said the surge had not changed conditions as much as the international coalition would have liked.
He added, “ISAF claiming security improvement is a narrative that is not always covered by reality.”
Habib Zahori contributed reporting from Bamian, and an employee of The New York Times from Kabul, Afghanistan.
What will the Afghanistan war legacy be?
Much of the Soviets' development work got wiped out by a civil war in the 1990s. But the scope of the effort then was limited compared with the work today.
By Tom A. Peter | Christian Science Monitor – Tue, Oct 30, 2012
There may be two years left on the clock for the war in Afghanistan, but NATO's ability to shape events has largely come to an end, with the fighting at a stalemate, stalled peace negotiations, and incidents of Afghan security forces turning against their international counterparts.
Officials say international war and aid efforts are ongoing, but there are few indications that they will yield different results.
Rather than asking what more the international community can do in Afghanistan, the question may now be, What kind of legacy will the past decade of international influence leave here, and how long can it last?
Since invading Afghanistan in October 2001, the United States has appropriated nearly $100 billion for reconstruction and development there. Despite problems with fraud, corruption, and mismanagement, Afghanistan is a different nation than it was 11 years ago. The investment has created a 352,000-strong Afghan security force and increased access to electricity from 6 percent to 18 percent of the population; 3.2 million girls are now in school, up from fewer than 5,000 during the Taliban regime.
Yet throughout the country there are numerous indicators that many Afghans have little faith in the future. An estimated $8 billion in cash was taken out of the country last year, and property dealers say Afghans have all but stopped buying land, the stalwart investment in this largely agrarian society.
THE SOVIET EXAMPLE
To better understand the road ahead, a look back at the Soviet experience here may prove instructive.
"[The Soviets] were pretty active, and to a large degree effective, in urban-based development schemes, the paving of roads, the construction of buildings for government, and things of that nature," says Thomas Gouttierre, director of the Center for Afghanistan Studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
Mr. Gouttierre first began working in Afghanistan in 1964. Unable to visit during the nine-year Russian war, he says he remembers returning shortly after it was over to find that many of the large cities such as Kabul, Jalalabad, and Herat had been noticeably changed by Soviet development projects. The power grid had improved, new roads were paved, and housing developments had been expanded.
Meanwhile, there were other changes not readily apparent. Russians had sent Afghans to study in the USSR and even launched an Afghan pilot into space.
"We built agricultural enterprises, industrial projects, schools, and universities," says Makhmut Gareev, a former Soviet general who advised former Afghan President Mohammad Najibullah. He says Afghans remember the Soviet period with warmth, though many others would dispute that assessment.
Shortly after the Russians withdrew in 1989, however, the country erupted into a violent civil war that undid most of the Soviets' work. When the Taliban took over in 1996, they brutally executed Mr. Najibullah, the last vestige of Soviet attempts to improve governance, and Afghanistan was left in near total ruin.
"Everything got completely destroyed during the civil war. Markets were looted, power lines were cut, the roads were destroyed, everything," says Rahmatullah, a Kabul shopkeeper who, like many Afghans, only uses one name.
THE DIFFERENCE - FUNDING
Today, those Afghans inclined to speak warmly of the Soviets' development work concede that the scope of the effort was limited compared with the work now being done by international donors.
Indeed, the US has spent $100 billion in reconstruction alone in Afghanistan, whereas the Soviet Union spent a maximum of an estimated $21 billion annually, accounting for inflation, on their entire war effort here, including both fighting and development.
The massive influx of international spending fueled corruption and created other problems, but it also allowed for a wider range of work than under the Soviets.
Just outside Rahmatullah's shop, a construction crew finishes paving the road. It's one of the many development projects he's seen that have transformed Kabul, he says. Aside from internationally funded development, Afghans who have become millionaires working with foreign donors and militaries have invested in large-scale construction projects, even building several small skyscrapers that Kabul had not seen before.
Though the NATO combat mission will end in 2014, American troops are expected to remain in Afghanistan in some capacity until 2024, unlike the Soviets who withdrew entirely.
"Only God knows what will happen, but I am not worried about a civil war like there was in the past, because the people are more educated now, and they know how much destruction fighting brings," says Rahmatullah, echoing a common sentiment among Afghans.
The same influx of foreign money that has helped develop Kabul may also protect it from civil war. Following the Soviet war, militias that had been heavily armed by the US turned their weapons against each other, destroying much of the country.
Now these commanders have benefited financially from foreign development contracts and security spending. Other younger Afghans who have risen to prominence and raised their own militias, in some cases becoming millionaires, now have something to lose if there were to be a full-scale war here.
And the warlords and militants who are most likely to challenge the government lack the firepower of militia commanders at the end of the Soviet war.
"If [warlords] re-create the situation we had in the 1990s, they will lose what they have gained. Their very selfish interest will prevent them from breaking what has been built," says Najib Mamalai, an independent political analyst in Kabul. "Fifteen years ago when they bombed Kabul, nothing belonged to those who were bombing. Now everything belongs to those who can bomb."
RAMPANT POLITICAL CORRUPTION
Even if Afghanistan escapes the type of violence it experienced in the wake of the Soviet pullout, it will still face rampant political corruption, which often fuels instability.
Despite international efforts to bolster the Afghan government and create a more transparent system, a number of questionable figures continue to populate the ranks of national decisionmakers.
Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, for example, is widely believed to have invited Osama bin Laden into Afghanistan in 1996 and to have maintained ties with Al Qaeda, yet he currently holds a seat in parliament here.
Another example: Shortly after the US-led invasion in 2001, Abdul Shakoor Muslim returned to Afghanistan after living in Pakistan as a refugee. When he arrived at his family's land he found a prominent local police official had claimed it as his own. Mr. Muslim confronted him about it, but the high-profile squatter threatened his life.
Muslim then took the case to court. In two separate rulings, the court sided in his favor, yet the squatter's family, which had gained more influence in the Afghan police and Ministry of Defense, still refused to leave.
Recognizing the sensitivity of the case, the Kabul municipality offered Muslim a plot of land as compensation about three years ago. But when Muslim arrived at the new plot, he says, it had already been stolen by the driver of the Afghan vice president.
"If the Americans leave a corrupt government behind, then there will be problems. But if the Americans, and the world, try to establish a strong government in the country that can implement the rules on everyone equally – a minister, a farmer, everyone should obey the same rules – there won't be any problems," Muslim says.
Although such abuses of power and corruption are a real concern, they may not be insurmountable, says Ken Yama****a, mission director in Afghanistan for the US Agency for International Development.
USAID and other government agencies have committed to work in Afghanistan. Democracies take time to develop, and the country only just ratified its Constitution eight years ago, Mr. Yama****a points out. "In 2024, what we hope to see is an improving process of governance, an improving electoral process, and an improving accountability of Afghan political leadership to its people," he says.
"Our sense is that as that accountability improves, then ... individuals who have had a record of various actions that are not consistent with what the people want will not get voted in."
• Olga Podolskaya in Moscow and Zubair Babakarkhail in Kabul, Afghanistan, contributed.
Premature mine blast kills 2 Taliban in northern Afghan town
PUL-E-KHUMRI, Afghanistan, Oct. 31 (Xinhua) -- Two Taliban militants were killed as their explosive device went off prematurely in Baghlan province 160 km north of capital Kabul on Wednesday, provincial police chief Assadullah Shirzad said.
"Three Taliban militants were busy in planting mine on a road in Bagh-e-Shamal village outside provincial capital Pul-e-Khumri early this morning but the device exploded prematurely killing two rebels on the spot and injuring another," Shirzad told Xinhua.
The injured militant has been taken to hospital, he added.
Taliban fighters are yet to comment.
Festering Balkan Tension a Warning on Afghan Withdrawal
Bloomberg By Indira A.R. Lakshmanan and Nicole Gaouette Oct 31, 2012
As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visits the Balkans this week, she’s seeing how hard it is to build durable peace, democracy and prosperity where ethnic and religious rivalries still fester.
November 21 will be the 17th anniversary of the Dayton Peace Accords that ended the Bosnian War and the worst atrocities in Europe since World War II, and its aftermath may hold lessons for the U.S. in Afghanistan and Iraq. While the peace deal midwifed by American, European and Russian officials halted the ethnic and religious slaughter that claimed almost 100,000 lives, it also helped entrench the region’s ethnic and religious divisions.
Postwar Bosnia is a reminder to U.S. officials that a peace deal alone can’t produce stability and effective governance, according to former diplomats and Balkans specialists. After U.S. and allied forces withdraw, former warring parties may seek in peace what they failed to achieve in war. Power-sharing deals intended to satisfy rival ethnic groups also can lead to political paralysis.
“Ending a war is only the beginning,” Bruce Hitchner, director of the Dayton Peace Accords Project at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, said in an interview. “Winning the peace” requires “more sustained investment and commitment, and more patience. If there is one lesson that the intervention in Bosnia has taught us, it is that if you take too long and move too cautiously in the postwar phase, you will lose effective control of the postwar process. And that’s what happened in Bosnia.”
Some Bosnian Serb leaders have carried on a “longstanding, peaceful counterinsurgency” to “undermine and divide Bosnia,” Hitchner said.
‘Totally Unacceptable’
Traveling together in Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo this week, Clinton and the European Union’s top diplomat, Catherine Ashton, are encouraging leaders to respect peace agreements and borders and adopt political and economic reforms required to join the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
“It is totally unacceptable that, 17 years after the war ended, some still question Bosnia and Herzegovina’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Clinton said yesterday in Sarajevo, Bosnia’s capital, a message aimed at Bosnian Serb leaders agitating to secede and form an independent state. “Such talk is a distraction from the problems facing this country, and serves only to undermine the goal of European integration.”
U.S. and European officials have criticized Bosnia’s postwar leaders -- Muslims known as Bosniaks and Christian Serbs and Croats who govern under a power-sharing agreement -- for putting their own interests above the nation’s and failing to govern effectively without international overnight.
No Government
The Bosnian economy is depressed, and for 16 months after elections in October 2010, the country had no government. The current leadership is “more than shaky” and has made no headway on any significant project, said Alexandra Stiglmayer, a senior analyst with the European Stability Initiative, a research group based in Berlin.
Bosnia is divided into two autonomous regions, a Serb Republic and a Muslim-Croat federation, held together tenuously by the weak central government. Unlike in Iraq, where Sunni Muslims, Shiites and Kurds are dueling after the withdrawal of U.S. forces at the end of last year, an international High Representative for Bosnia has far-reaching powers, including the right to impose legislation by decree and dismiss officials.
Clinton and Ashton met with the country’s three co- presidents from each ethnic group, as well as international officials, including international community High Representative Valentin Inzko, who has warned that Bosnia lags behind its neighbors in meeting requirements to join the EU and NATO.
‘Opportunistic Leaders’
“We -- I will be honest with you -- have been frustrated” by the Bosnian leadership’s dragging its feet on reform, Clinton said at a press conference.
The reason for that gridlock, Stiglmayer said in an interview, is “not ancient religious and ethnic rivalries,” nor is it the fault of the power-sharing design of the Dayton Accords. The fault, she said, in a comment that’s relevant to Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries, lies with “opportunistic leaders” who have exploited ethnic fears “and an international mission with far-reaching powers” that has prevented Bosnian institutions from functioning by themselves.
Stiglmayer, who covered the Bosnian War as a journalist and worked for the international High Representative in Sarajevo, said Clinton should say, “It is up to the Bosnians to make their country work.” Clinton and Ashton can “lend a helping hand, but no more.”
Human Rights
Benjamin Ward, deputy Europe director in London for Human Rights Watch, a New York-based advocacy group, said the U.S. must press Bosnia’s leaders to respect human rights, including for gays and lesbians and for minorities, including Jews and Roma who are barred from running for public office unless they declare themselves a member of one of the three main ethnic groups.
A disheartening example of segregation 17 years after the Dayton agreement is in education, Ward said. Children in the Muslim-Croat federation attend separate schools under one roof with different curricula and no mixing. “And these are kids who were not alive during the war,” he said.
Dayton’s defenders say the agreement was the only way to halt the genocide. Dayton’s success -- and the success of the U.S. intervention in Bosnia -- is that peace has held.
“We led an intervention in Bosnia to stop a civil war that was pumping out refugees throughout Europe and threatening to destabilize the region,” James Dobbins, who served as a U.S. special adviser on the Balkans and a special envoy to Bosnia, said in an interview. “It’s mission accomplished -- there are no refugees, no civil war, and no destabilization.”
Dysfunctional System
“You’re not going to make Muslims, Croats and Serbs love each other” after the atrocities that were committed during the war, he said. The “most you can expect is to make them stop killing each other. Maybe generations from now, you’ll have a less divided society.”
While Dobbins acknowledged that ethnic divisions have created a dysfunctional political system, he said that “all societies tend to be divided along some lines -- ideological, class, sectarian, religious,” and any democratic system is prone to gridlock.
“But the fact remains that” no one in Bosnia “is happy with” the system there, said Marko Prelec, the Balkans project director for the International Crisis Group, a global non- governmental organization focused on conflict zones.
The Dayton accord, he and other analysts said, is a qualified success that may serve as a guide to winding down some other military interventions.
Higher Stakes
The stakes may be higher for the U.S. in Iraq, where 4,486 Americans died according to icasualties.org, the local al-Qaeda affiliate is rebuilding and Iranian influence is growing. In Afghanistan, where according to the same source 2,244 Americans have died, the central government remains weak and the Taliban and other extremist groups remain strong, while militants have a safe haven in neighboring Pakistan.
One lesson for the U.S. as it withdraws from these other conflicts is that any peace agreement in Afghanistan would have to be supported by its neighbors, said Dobbins, who also served as a special envoy to Afghanistan and is now director of the security and defense policy center at the Washington office of the Santa Monica, California-based RAND Corp., a policy institute.
Bosnia’s peace deal worked, Dobbins said, because U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke and other negotiators were able to strong-arm the leaders of neighboring Serbia and Croatia to compel local warring parties to make peace.
Pakistan, Iran, Russia and India all have clients and influence in Afghanistan, and would have to support a peace deal, Dobbins said.
“It may be too late already,” for America’s efforts at nation-building in Iraq, said Hitchner at Tufts University. “But for Afghanistan, it means pursuing in tandem with Kabul and our allies a clear strategy for neutralizing the Taliban politically that will be achieved within, say, the next five years, not 17 years and counting.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Indira A.R. Lakshmanan in Washington atilakshmanan@bloomberg.net; Nicole Gaouette in Sarajevo atngaouette@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Walcott atjwalcott9@bloomberg.net
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