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U.S. Finds Graft by Favored Afghan Leader
Governor Seen as Hope for Security Is Steeped in Corruption, Documents Say, Clouding Strategy of Allying With Warlords
Wall Street Journal By NATHAN HODGE November 2, 2012
JALALABAD, Afghanistan - One of Afghanistan's top power brokers has been freeing suspected insurgents, running an open extortion scheme and traveling with suitcases of undeclared cash earned from criminal activity, according to internal U.S. documents.
A few years ago, the U.S. military described Gov. Gul Agha Shirzai as the best hope for securing Nangarhar province, a critical gateway to Pakistan. Now, under Gov. Shirzai, U.S. officials say, Nangarhar has turned into a center of corruption, allowing the Taliban and criminal groups to stage a comeback.
An assessment of Gov. Shirzai prepared by a top U.S. civilian official in eastern Afghanistan—marked "secret" and viewed by The Wall Street Journal—details "systemic corruption" by the governor and members of his administration, including extortion, illegal "land grabbing" and narcotics trafficking.
The assessment is a draft diplomatic cable that is awaiting final review. A second document, a shorter U.S. diplomatic cable marked "sensitive" and prepared by civilian U.S. customs experts, sounds a similar theme. U.S. officials said the documents were authentic and didn't dispute their contents.
Gov. Shirzai, contacted through his spokesman and intermediaries with details on the allegations, didn't respond to repeated requests for comment.
U.S. officials acknowledge that corruption is a problem in Nangarhar province. They have long described Gov. Shirzai as someone who could deliver on security and reconstruction, even while acknowledging he was an autocrat with a fortune from insider dealings. Now, U.S. officials working in Afghanistan openly question whether that bargain was a miscalculation.
Cmdr. William Speaks, a Defense Department spokesman, said the Pentagon takes corruption allegations "very seriously," but added: "It's also important to remember that we are not in a position to select the country's leaders—that is a matter for the Afghan people."
The deterioration in Nangarhar—home to around 1.4 million people and eastern Afghanistan's biggest city, Jalalabad—underscores the pitfalls of America's long-standing strategy of relying on Afghan warlords to bring security. After a decade of nation-building attempts, U.S. and Afghan officials worry that, as the U.S.-led coalition withdraws, the country will be dominated once again by what they describe as "criminal patronage networks," fueling the insurgency.
The Taliban began their march to power in the 1990s in the southern city of Kandahar because of popular outrage with local warlords' abuses. Gov. Shirzai was one of these warlords, serving as Kandahar governor at the time, and once again following the 2001 U.S. invasion.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai, a fellow Kandahari, appointed Gov. Shirzai to oversee Nangarhar in 2005. Mr. Karzai's term expires in 2014. Gov. Shirzai has publicly indicated his interest in running for the presidency.
The draft U.S. assessment of Gov. Shirzai, which is based on intelligence reports and other sources, alleges that he has amassed a vast personal fortune from the so-called Shirzai Fund, an unauthorized tax collected at the Torkham Gate border crossing with neighboring Pakistan. The operation nets the governor $1.5 million to $4 million per month, according to the report.
During a trip to Germany in early July, Gov. Shirzai was detained for two hours by the German Customs Police as he tried to enter carrying three briefcases full of undeclared cash, the report says. "Because of his diplomatic passport, he was released and allowed to enter the country with his ill-gotten gains," it says.
The German Foreign Ministry wasn't informed about the governor's visit to the country, said a person familiar with the matter. German tax law prohibits customs officials from revealing details of individual cases or incidents, said a spokeswoman for the Frankfurt Airport customs office.
The U.S. document also says officials in Gov. Shirzai's administration "have recently been involved in facilitating the insurgency by refusing to detain and prosecute insurgents caught preparing attacks" on U.S. and Afghan troops.
In one case, the document says, Gov. Shirzai lobbied to obtain the release of six Afghans who had been arrested in Nangarhar's Goshta district for driving trucks carrying about a half-ton of ammonium nitrate—a chemical precursor for homemade explosives widely used by insurgents—hidden in bags of sugar. In another case, it says, Gov. Shirzai applied pressure to local officials to release a dozen men who had been detained by Afghan forces for allegedly manufacturing and placing roadside bombs in the province's restless Khogyani district. They were released before they could be tried.
A senior coalition official, queried about the allegations, said he believed Gov. Shirzai was intervening in these cases for monetary gain, not out of any sympathy for the Taliban.
The U.S. document also details Mr. Shirzai's association with alleged local criminals. One passage describes the governor attending wedding parties in the company of an alleged crime boss who had been recently been released on bail. According to the document, Mr. Shirzai helped broker the man's release. Footage of the events was carried on local television, the report said.
Gov. Shirzai was once a U.S. favorite. In interviews with the Journal in 2009, senior U.S. officials said he was able to get things done through "force of personality"—including cutting opium production, boosting security and pushing through reconstruction projects. It was the U.S. that installed the former warlord as governor of Kandahar after ousting the Taliban in 2001, and he amassed a considerable fortune providing contracting services to the giant U.S. military base there.
U.S. civilian and military officials working in the region these days openly describe Gov. Shirzai as emblematic of the dysfunctional government that Afghanistan will inherit after most U.S. and international troops withdraw in 2014. "He is the biggest detriment to good governance in Nangarhar," said Lt. Col. Martin Willmarth, an Army civil affairs officer in the province. "I wish we could get rid of him."
While Gov. Shirzai isn't a Nangarhar native, his revenue-collection scheme gives him a powerful tool for winning local loyalties. At a provincial development committee meeting at the governor's palace in September—chaired by Gov. Shirzai and observed by a Wall Street Journal reporter—local officials hashed out the details of local development projects: school textbooks to be ordered, bridges and canals to be repaired, power outages to be discussed.
The meeting stalled because U.S. advisers working with Gov. Shirzai had put an uncomfortable topic at the top of the agenda: The province's massive budget shortfall. The local directors, who report to ministries in Kabul, struggled to understand the detailed budget numbers that had been prepared for them by U.S. advisers. With just a few months left in Afghanistan's current fiscal year, the central government in Kabul had transferred less than 5% of the $48 million earmarked for development projects in Nangarhar to the provincial level.
That left a gaping shortfall in funding for social programs. The directors were reluctant to admit that to the governor.
Gov. Shirzai intervened by spreading around the cash.
"I'll give you $50,000 from the Shirzai Fund to solve your problem," he told the man representing the Ministry of Labor, Social Affairs, Martyrs and Disabled. The governor then doubled his offer to $100,000, to applause. His fund would also foot the $30,000 bill for an X-ray machine at a local hospital, he added.
"He's making it rain again," an astonished U.S. official said after the meeting.
"This is how the sausage gets made," said Air Force Lt. Col. Grant Hargrove, the commander of the U.S.-led Nangarhar Provincial Reconstruction Team, a military unit focusing on development issues in the province, after observing the meeting.
Gov. Shirzai's quick-fix largess presents a big dilemma for Nangarhar. According to the previously undisclosed report by U.S. government customs experts, the Shirzai Fund collects tolls at an unmarked customs building across from the main complex at the Torkham Gate crossing.
At the crossing, Afghan customs officials levy a lawful fee for vehicles entering the country. But provincial officials reporting to Gov. Shirzai collect separate fees—from 200 to 2,500 Afghanis ($4 to $50) per vehicle, with the tariffs set on a sliding scale, depending on the size of the vehicle and the type of cargo. The secret report describes the tax as an "ongoing illegal extortion scheme" at the border.
"The collection operation is well organized and run in an efficient, businesslike manner," the customs report states. The illegal tax represents a fraction of what Gov. Shirzai is believed to earn from other alleged criminal activity, the U.S. reports and officials say.
Afghan officials acknowledge the fund's existence. Ihsanullah Kamawal, Afghan Customs director for Nangarhar, said the Shirzai Fund—formally known as the "Provincial Reconstruction Fund"—was voluntarily supported by local traders, who in the past had to pay fees extorted by the Taliban and local warlords. Collection of the fund "does not affect our revenues," Mr. Kamawal said.
Truck drivers who travel through the Torkham Gate say they have been forced to pay the fee as they move cargo to the provincial capital of Jalalabad from Peshawar, Pakistan.
Trucker Jafar Utmanzai said his contribution to the Shirzai Fund was usually around 500 Afghanis, or about $10. "They say it's a reconstruction fund, but God knows where this money goes," Mr. Utmanzai said.
Mirwais Yasini, an influential Afghan parliamentarian from Nangarhar, said Gov. Shirzai's provincial reconstruction scheme was akin to someone stealing $500 from your pocket and then saying: "Don't worry, I'll buy you lunch today."
Meanwhile, lawlessness and violence has risen in Nangarhar, once considered relatively peaceful. In recent months, several judges have been assassinated, including Behsud District Judge Sharifullah, whose nearly decapitated body was discovered after he was abducted from a downtown vegetable market in Jalalabad in March.
An atmosphere of intimidation has made it all the more difficult to oust corrupt officials. Mr. Karzai recently sacked several provincial governors for poor performance and lack of progress in combating corruption. Gov. Shirzai survived the purge. So did a northern power broker, Tajik former warlord Gen. Mohammed Atta Noor, the governor of Balkh province—home to the main border crossing with Uzbekistan.
A senior Afghan official in Kabul said the two governors have been spared because firing them would have destabilized the region.
U.S. officials openly acknowledge corruption by Mr. Shirzai. But the consensus at the coalition's headquarters in Kabul hasn't tipped in favor of calling for his ouster—especially considering how important the Torkham Gate crossing will be for removing U.S. equipment as military forces go home.
"He's been on our side," a senior coalition official said. "We know he's corrupt. But we have to ask ourselves: Has he crossed a sufficient number of red lines that we've got to deal with? So far, it doesn't appear to be." —Habib Khan Totakhil and David Crawford contributed to this article.
Write to Nathan Hodge at nathan.hodge@wsj.com
12 Taliban fighters lay down arms in W. Afghanistan
HERAT, Afghanistan, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- A dozen armed Taliban militants laid down their arms and joined the government-backed peace process in the western Herat province 640 km west of Kabul on Saturday.
"Today 12 Taliban fighters under Mullah Baz Mohammad joined the peace process and resumed normal life," provincial governor Daud Shah Saba said in the welcoming ceremony to receive the former militants.
These people, he said, were active in Kushk-e-Kohna district over the past couple of years and with their joining to peace process, security will be further improved in the province and adjoining areas.
More than 3,000 Taliban militants, according to the government officials, have joined the government-back peace process over the past one year, a claim rejected by the Taliban outfit as baseless.
Head of Anti-Taliban Group Killed in Pakistan
VOA News November 3, 2012
Pakistani police say the head of an anti-Taliban committee has been killed by a suicide blast in the country's northwest.
Police officials say the suicide bomber targeted a vehicle carrying committee chief Fateh Khan Saturday in restive Buner district in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.
The attack also killed three guards and wounded several other people.
Buner district is believed to be a hiding place for the Pakistani Taliban. It borders the the Swat Valley, where Taliban gunmen last month seriously wounded a 14-year-old girl who spoke out against the militant group and in favor of education for women.
Some information for this report was provided by AP and AFP.
7 Taliban, 1 police officer killed in Afghan violence
KABUL, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- Eight people including a senior police officer and seven Taliban fighters have been killed in Afghanistan, while a dozen Taliban militants laid down arms and 14 others have been detained, officials said Saturday.
In the latest incident which occurred early Saturday in the Taliban's birthplace and former stronghold Kandahar, 450 km south of Kabul, a senior police officer and three Taliban fighters were killed, Kandahar provincial administration confirmed in a statement sent to media.
"A number of enemies riding motorbikes opened fire and killed the police chief of Dand district, Rahmatullah, and injured another police," the statement asserted.
It added that three attackers were killed in the firefight which lasted for a while.
Earlier, local official Hamdullah Nazik said that Rahmatullah was killed in a roadside bomb in Marouf district, where Taliban militants attacked a police checkpoint and Rahmatullah was going there to inspect the situation.
Conflicts also claimed the lives of four Taliban militants in neighboring Helmand province 555 km south of Kabul as police raided Taliban hideouts there late Friday night, police spokesman Farid Farhang said Saturday.
"During police operations against militants in Nahr-e-Saraj district on Friday night, four Taliban rebels including notorious commander Mullah Shejah were killed," Farhang told Xinhua.
Furthermore, Afghan police in war against the ongoing militancy in the country have arrested more than a dozen Taliban fighters over the past 24 hours, Interior Ministry said in a statement released here on Saturday.
"Fourteen armed Taliban rebels have been arrested over the past 24 hours during a series of operations conducted in Kabul, Nangarhar, Jowzjan, Kandahar, Logar, Paktiya and Helmand provinces, " the statement added.
There were no casualties on the police personnel, it contended. The Taliban outfit has yet to make comment.
Mounting press against anti-government militants is said to have forced some Taliban fighters to give up fighting and join the government-backed peace process as a dozen Taliban armed fighters laid down their weapons in the western Herat province 640 km west of Kabul on Saturday.
"Today 12 Taliban fighters under Mullah Baz Mohammad joined the peace process and resumed normal life," provincial governor Daud Shah Saba said in the welcoming ceremony to receive the former militants.
These people, he said, were active in Kushk-e-Kohna district over the past couple of years and with their joining the peace process, security will be further improved in the province and adjoining areas.
More than 3,000 Taliban militants, around 700 of them in Herat according to the government officials, have joined the government backed peace process over the past one year, a claim rejected by the Taliban outfit as baseless.
Apparent Insider Attack Kills 4 Afghan Police
VOA News November 2, 2012
Authorities in southern Afghanistan say four Afghan police officers have been killed by their colleagues.
The local police chief, Mohammad Toryali, said the four were shot and killed at a checkpoint in the Gereshk district of Helmand province.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, the latest in a series of incidents in which Afghan security personnel or militants wearing police or army uniforms have opened fire on their Afghan and international counterparts.
So far this year, at least 55 coalition troops have been killed in such attacks. Several Afghan police officers and soldiers have also been killed by their colleagues.
The increase in such incidents comes as international troops continue to transfer security responsibility to Afghan forces and withdraw from the country ahead of a 2014 deadline.
Some information for this report was provided by AP and AFP.
Torture claims halt MoD transfers to Afghan jails
Head of directorate to which MoD wants to transfer prisoners is alleged to have been involved in torture, court hears
The Guardian By Richard Norton-Taylor and Ian Cobain Friday 2 November 2012
A determined attempt by the Ministry of Defence to transfer insurgents to Afghan jails was blocked by the high court on Friday after it heard evidence that they would be handed over to a notorious torturer and alleged killer.
The court heard how the Foreign Office minister Lady Warsi – the former Conservative Party co-chair – had failed to question assurances by Asadullah Khalid, the head of the Afghan National Directorate of Security (NDS), even though he was alleged to be widely known to have been personally involved in torture.
An urgent hearing was requested by lawyers acting for an Afghan prisoner tortured in breach of assurances made to British officials. James Eadie QC, for the MoD, told the hearing: "Both the secretary of state for defence [Philip Hammond] and the baroness [Warsi] were briefed on the allegations. But the fact of the matter is, he is head of the NDS."
He added: "We have to deal with the NDS: it is to the NDS that insurgents are transferred. Therefore, it is obvious that whatever the truth of the allegations, the government engages with the body it engages with." Khalid is reported to be a close aide to the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai.
Lord Justice Moses intervened to say Warsi had done a deal with a man responsible for prisons where there were "still very live concerns". Eadie accepted the point.
The court heard that a senior Canadian diplomat in Afghanistan had made public allegations that the head of the NDS "was known to personally torture people" in a "dungeon under his guest house", "had people killed who got in his way" and was "running a narcotics operation". Khalid has previously denied the allegations.
The court hearing – in a case of the kind likely to be heard in secret if the government's justice and security bill is passed – was requested by the law firm Leigh Day and the legal charity Reprieve, acting for Serdar Mohammed, tortured by the Afghan security services after being transferred to their custody by UK forces.
Following Mohamed's allegations, the government placed a moratorium in 2010 on all transfers of prisoners to the NDS.
The MoD now wants to lift that moratorium. Eadie argued there was a "pressing need" for British forces to transfer detainees to the Afghan prison at Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand Province. From there, they might be transferred to jails in Kandahar and Kabul, where prisoners had also been tortured, the court heard.
Eadie said delays in transferring the prisoners to what he called "a sovereign state's criminal justice system" could damage the UK's relations with the Afghan government. Some detainees might have to be released from British custody if they could not be handed over to an Afghan jail, thereby endangering the lives of British soldiers and the local population, Eadie argued. Safeguards, including monitoring of Afghan jails by UK officials, had been put in place, he added.
Dinah Rose, QC for Mohammed, repeatedly described the head of the NDS as "Mr Khalid the Torturer". Warsi must have received a Foreign Office briefing before meeting him, she told the court: "Baroness Warsi met him and shook his hand, and I hope she washed her hands well afterwards."
Eadie suggested two whips found at Lashkar Gah jail in September and November last year were insufficient evidence for a reasonable prospect of success at a full court hearing into the matter scheduled for later this month.
"That is not enough", Eadie said, referring to the weight of evidence. "Not enough whips?", asked Moses.
"My Lord, this is a serious issue," Eadie replied. "Exactly", said Moses.
Following the exchange, Rose told the court: "In fact there are two more." Two suspicious lengths of hose pipe had also been found in interrogation rooms when MoD inspectors visited on two occasions earlier last year, the court heard. Moses said this suggested they were "not isolated incidents" but "spoke to a culture" of abuse. If the court found for the MoD and the safeguards the MoD had arranged proved inadequate, it could lead to a "disastrous situation".Moses described the prospect as "chilling".
Documents disclosed to the court showed Britain's deputy ambassador to Afghanistan, Catherine Royle, met officials from the UN assistance mission in Afghanistan in June and asked them to name Khalid as a torturer in a forthcoming report.
Granting the injunction, Lord Justice Moses said that if the "substantial body of evidence" of mistreatment were to be accepted, Khalid's assurances that prisoners handed over by Britain would be safe from harm "represents a very dramatic change of heart from his behaviour in the past".
Afghanistan's first female rapper tells the stories that might otherwise be lost
Soosan Firooz isn't just a rebel with western appeal – her highly personal narrative also shines a light on the nation's suffering
Guardian.co.uk By Torie Rose DeGhett Friday 2 November 2012
Soosan Firooz is being touted as Afghanistan's first female rapper, a voice for women's rights and political consciousness in a country that has been torn up by war, extremism and political transition for decades. She has emerged in a nascent hip-hop scene in Afghanistan, where so far only a handful of (male) rappers have begun to garner a following. Hip-hop is often a potent voice of the marginalised, and a form that offers the chance for forceful voices to lend a public narrative to suffering. Firooz's gender makes waves in itself, drawing attention from international press as the first woman to be seen in the hip-hop scene in her country and butting heads with the fundamentalist and traditionalist elements within her own country.
The act of making music is a radical one in itself. Afghanistan and its people have spent decades with their politics dominated by militancy and by foreign invasion, and censorship of music, along with other forms of expression, has been an intrinsic part of that long experience. The gradual evolution of music censorship can be traced back to the beginning of communist rule under Nur Muhammad Taraki in 1978. According to a 2001 article by John Baily, the Taliban's suppression of music is rooted in the beginning of the censorship of this period, when refugee camps in Iran and Pakistan enforced a total ban on music in order to preserve a constant state of mourning.
Firooz herself is no stranger to camps like these. The 23 year old grew up in one in Iran in the 1990s and spent time as a refugee with her family in Pakistan as well. They returned to their native country seven years ago. It is this life story that drives her narrative and purpose in the one song she has released, a Dari-language single composed and arranged by Afghan singer Farid Rastagar with the lyrics written by poet Suhrab Sirat.
This is one of the important dimensions of hip-hop and of political music generally: the element of storytelling, of relaying detailed chronicles that need to be heard. Music can make itself a platform for human stories otherwise lost, and with her single, Firooz has made use of hip-hop in just that way. It's a highly personal narrative for her, and one to which she brings authenticity and poignancy, calling for her audience to listen: "Hear my stories and hear/Hear my sorrows, my sadness/Hear the story of my displacement and homelessness/We were lost, we were lost, lost around the world." Her lyrics continue with the narration of life as a refugee, dreaming of their homeland and being treated as worthless abroad, ending with a call for hope and an end to abuses, to the invading and interfering forces of the west and of Pakistan and Iran. "From now on," she concludes, "it will be Afghanistan."
At the moment, Firooz has put out only this one song: titled "Our Neighbors" and performed in Dari. The effort put into the production may not be immediately evident, but Firooz, who lives without a great deal of financial luxury with her family in north Kabul, worked on the song's production on an old and finicky desktop computer and a donated keyboard. She also works as an actress in local soap operas. Her father left his electrical department job to accompany her as a bodyguard, fearful of the death threats she has faced.
With this song, Firooz doesn't just join the ranks of Afghanistan's newly minted hip-hop scene, but the ranks of many Afghan women working to shine the light on poverty, women's rights, refugees' rights and the effects of war (joined by her mother, who does humanitarian work in southern Afghanistan). She has garnered international attention because of the bravery and talent she invests in what she does, but also by dint of the western fascination with the idea of an Afghan woman who does not cover her hair, making her way as a hip-hop artist and television soap actress. She should be looked at, not just as a representative of a conventionally western understanding of rebellion and musical expression, but as a representative of all those who work to narrate suffering in the voices of Afghans themselves.
• This piece was commissioned after a suggestion by Pagey. If there's a subject you'd like to see covered on Comment is free, please visit our You Tell Us page
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
Governor Seen as Hope for Security Is Steeped in Corruption, Documents Say, Clouding Strategy of Allying With Warlords
Wall Street Journal By NATHAN HODGE November 2, 2012
JALALABAD, Afghanistan - One of Afghanistan's top power brokers has been freeing suspected insurgents, running an open extortion scheme and traveling with suitcases of undeclared cash earned from criminal activity, according to internal U.S. documents.
A few years ago, the U.S. military described Gov. Gul Agha Shirzai as the best hope for securing Nangarhar province, a critical gateway to Pakistan. Now, under Gov. Shirzai, U.S. officials say, Nangarhar has turned into a center of corruption, allowing the Taliban and criminal groups to stage a comeback.
An assessment of Gov. Shirzai prepared by a top U.S. civilian official in eastern Afghanistan—marked "secret" and viewed by The Wall Street Journal—details "systemic corruption" by the governor and members of his administration, including extortion, illegal "land grabbing" and narcotics trafficking.
The assessment is a draft diplomatic cable that is awaiting final review. A second document, a shorter U.S. diplomatic cable marked "sensitive" and prepared by civilian U.S. customs experts, sounds a similar theme. U.S. officials said the documents were authentic and didn't dispute their contents.
Gov. Shirzai, contacted through his spokesman and intermediaries with details on the allegations, didn't respond to repeated requests for comment.
U.S. officials acknowledge that corruption is a problem in Nangarhar province. They have long described Gov. Shirzai as someone who could deliver on security and reconstruction, even while acknowledging he was an autocrat with a fortune from insider dealings. Now, U.S. officials working in Afghanistan openly question whether that bargain was a miscalculation.
Cmdr. William Speaks, a Defense Department spokesman, said the Pentagon takes corruption allegations "very seriously," but added: "It's also important to remember that we are not in a position to select the country's leaders—that is a matter for the Afghan people."
The deterioration in Nangarhar—home to around 1.4 million people and eastern Afghanistan's biggest city, Jalalabad—underscores the pitfalls of America's long-standing strategy of relying on Afghan warlords to bring security. After a decade of nation-building attempts, U.S. and Afghan officials worry that, as the U.S.-led coalition withdraws, the country will be dominated once again by what they describe as "criminal patronage networks," fueling the insurgency.
The Taliban began their march to power in the 1990s in the southern city of Kandahar because of popular outrage with local warlords' abuses. Gov. Shirzai was one of these warlords, serving as Kandahar governor at the time, and once again following the 2001 U.S. invasion.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai, a fellow Kandahari, appointed Gov. Shirzai to oversee Nangarhar in 2005. Mr. Karzai's term expires in 2014. Gov. Shirzai has publicly indicated his interest in running for the presidency.
The draft U.S. assessment of Gov. Shirzai, which is based on intelligence reports and other sources, alleges that he has amassed a vast personal fortune from the so-called Shirzai Fund, an unauthorized tax collected at the Torkham Gate border crossing with neighboring Pakistan. The operation nets the governor $1.5 million to $4 million per month, according to the report.
During a trip to Germany in early July, Gov. Shirzai was detained for two hours by the German Customs Police as he tried to enter carrying three briefcases full of undeclared cash, the report says. "Because of his diplomatic passport, he was released and allowed to enter the country with his ill-gotten gains," it says.
The German Foreign Ministry wasn't informed about the governor's visit to the country, said a person familiar with the matter. German tax law prohibits customs officials from revealing details of individual cases or incidents, said a spokeswoman for the Frankfurt Airport customs office.
The U.S. document also says officials in Gov. Shirzai's administration "have recently been involved in facilitating the insurgency by refusing to detain and prosecute insurgents caught preparing attacks" on U.S. and Afghan troops.
In one case, the document says, Gov. Shirzai lobbied to obtain the release of six Afghans who had been arrested in Nangarhar's Goshta district for driving trucks carrying about a half-ton of ammonium nitrate—a chemical precursor for homemade explosives widely used by insurgents—hidden in bags of sugar. In another case, it says, Gov. Shirzai applied pressure to local officials to release a dozen men who had been detained by Afghan forces for allegedly manufacturing and placing roadside bombs in the province's restless Khogyani district. They were released before they could be tried.
A senior coalition official, queried about the allegations, said he believed Gov. Shirzai was intervening in these cases for monetary gain, not out of any sympathy for the Taliban.
The U.S. document also details Mr. Shirzai's association with alleged local criminals. One passage describes the governor attending wedding parties in the company of an alleged crime boss who had been recently been released on bail. According to the document, Mr. Shirzai helped broker the man's release. Footage of the events was carried on local television, the report said.
Gov. Shirzai was once a U.S. favorite. In interviews with the Journal in 2009, senior U.S. officials said he was able to get things done through "force of personality"—including cutting opium production, boosting security and pushing through reconstruction projects. It was the U.S. that installed the former warlord as governor of Kandahar after ousting the Taliban in 2001, and he amassed a considerable fortune providing contracting services to the giant U.S. military base there.
U.S. civilian and military officials working in the region these days openly describe Gov. Shirzai as emblematic of the dysfunctional government that Afghanistan will inherit after most U.S. and international troops withdraw in 2014. "He is the biggest detriment to good governance in Nangarhar," said Lt. Col. Martin Willmarth, an Army civil affairs officer in the province. "I wish we could get rid of him."
While Gov. Shirzai isn't a Nangarhar native, his revenue-collection scheme gives him a powerful tool for winning local loyalties. At a provincial development committee meeting at the governor's palace in September—chaired by Gov. Shirzai and observed by a Wall Street Journal reporter—local officials hashed out the details of local development projects: school textbooks to be ordered, bridges and canals to be repaired, power outages to be discussed.
The meeting stalled because U.S. advisers working with Gov. Shirzai had put an uncomfortable topic at the top of the agenda: The province's massive budget shortfall. The local directors, who report to ministries in Kabul, struggled to understand the detailed budget numbers that had been prepared for them by U.S. advisers. With just a few months left in Afghanistan's current fiscal year, the central government in Kabul had transferred less than 5% of the $48 million earmarked for development projects in Nangarhar to the provincial level.
That left a gaping shortfall in funding for social programs. The directors were reluctant to admit that to the governor.
Gov. Shirzai intervened by spreading around the cash.
"I'll give you $50,000 from the Shirzai Fund to solve your problem," he told the man representing the Ministry of Labor, Social Affairs, Martyrs and Disabled. The governor then doubled his offer to $100,000, to applause. His fund would also foot the $30,000 bill for an X-ray machine at a local hospital, he added.
"He's making it rain again," an astonished U.S. official said after the meeting.
"This is how the sausage gets made," said Air Force Lt. Col. Grant Hargrove, the commander of the U.S.-led Nangarhar Provincial Reconstruction Team, a military unit focusing on development issues in the province, after observing the meeting.
Gov. Shirzai's quick-fix largess presents a big dilemma for Nangarhar. According to the previously undisclosed report by U.S. government customs experts, the Shirzai Fund collects tolls at an unmarked customs building across from the main complex at the Torkham Gate crossing.
At the crossing, Afghan customs officials levy a lawful fee for vehicles entering the country. But provincial officials reporting to Gov. Shirzai collect separate fees—from 200 to 2,500 Afghanis ($4 to $50) per vehicle, with the tariffs set on a sliding scale, depending on the size of the vehicle and the type of cargo. The secret report describes the tax as an "ongoing illegal extortion scheme" at the border.
"The collection operation is well organized and run in an efficient, businesslike manner," the customs report states. The illegal tax represents a fraction of what Gov. Shirzai is believed to earn from other alleged criminal activity, the U.S. reports and officials say.
Afghan officials acknowledge the fund's existence. Ihsanullah Kamawal, Afghan Customs director for Nangarhar, said the Shirzai Fund—formally known as the "Provincial Reconstruction Fund"—was voluntarily supported by local traders, who in the past had to pay fees extorted by the Taliban and local warlords. Collection of the fund "does not affect our revenues," Mr. Kamawal said.
Truck drivers who travel through the Torkham Gate say they have been forced to pay the fee as they move cargo to the provincial capital of Jalalabad from Peshawar, Pakistan.
Trucker Jafar Utmanzai said his contribution to the Shirzai Fund was usually around 500 Afghanis, or about $10. "They say it's a reconstruction fund, but God knows where this money goes," Mr. Utmanzai said.
Mirwais Yasini, an influential Afghan parliamentarian from Nangarhar, said Gov. Shirzai's provincial reconstruction scheme was akin to someone stealing $500 from your pocket and then saying: "Don't worry, I'll buy you lunch today."
Meanwhile, lawlessness and violence has risen in Nangarhar, once considered relatively peaceful. In recent months, several judges have been assassinated, including Behsud District Judge Sharifullah, whose nearly decapitated body was discovered after he was abducted from a downtown vegetable market in Jalalabad in March.
An atmosphere of intimidation has made it all the more difficult to oust corrupt officials. Mr. Karzai recently sacked several provincial governors for poor performance and lack of progress in combating corruption. Gov. Shirzai survived the purge. So did a northern power broker, Tajik former warlord Gen. Mohammed Atta Noor, the governor of Balkh province—home to the main border crossing with Uzbekistan.
A senior Afghan official in Kabul said the two governors have been spared because firing them would have destabilized the region.
U.S. officials openly acknowledge corruption by Mr. Shirzai. But the consensus at the coalition's headquarters in Kabul hasn't tipped in favor of calling for his ouster—especially considering how important the Torkham Gate crossing will be for removing U.S. equipment as military forces go home.
"He's been on our side," a senior coalition official said. "We know he's corrupt. But we have to ask ourselves: Has he crossed a sufficient number of red lines that we've got to deal with? So far, it doesn't appear to be." —Habib Khan Totakhil and David Crawford contributed to this article.
Write to Nathan Hodge at nathan.hodge@wsj.com
12 Taliban fighters lay down arms in W. Afghanistan
HERAT, Afghanistan, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- A dozen armed Taliban militants laid down their arms and joined the government-backed peace process in the western Herat province 640 km west of Kabul on Saturday.
"Today 12 Taliban fighters under Mullah Baz Mohammad joined the peace process and resumed normal life," provincial governor Daud Shah Saba said in the welcoming ceremony to receive the former militants.
These people, he said, were active in Kushk-e-Kohna district over the past couple of years and with their joining to peace process, security will be further improved in the province and adjoining areas.
More than 3,000 Taliban militants, according to the government officials, have joined the government-back peace process over the past one year, a claim rejected by the Taliban outfit as baseless.
Head of Anti-Taliban Group Killed in Pakistan
VOA News November 3, 2012
Pakistani police say the head of an anti-Taliban committee has been killed by a suicide blast in the country's northwest.
Police officials say the suicide bomber targeted a vehicle carrying committee chief Fateh Khan Saturday in restive Buner district in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.
The attack also killed three guards and wounded several other people.
Buner district is believed to be a hiding place for the Pakistani Taliban. It borders the the Swat Valley, where Taliban gunmen last month seriously wounded a 14-year-old girl who spoke out against the militant group and in favor of education for women.
Some information for this report was provided by AP and AFP.
7 Taliban, 1 police officer killed in Afghan violence
KABUL, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- Eight people including a senior police officer and seven Taliban fighters have been killed in Afghanistan, while a dozen Taliban militants laid down arms and 14 others have been detained, officials said Saturday.
In the latest incident which occurred early Saturday in the Taliban's birthplace and former stronghold Kandahar, 450 km south of Kabul, a senior police officer and three Taliban fighters were killed, Kandahar provincial administration confirmed in a statement sent to media.
"A number of enemies riding motorbikes opened fire and killed the police chief of Dand district, Rahmatullah, and injured another police," the statement asserted.
It added that three attackers were killed in the firefight which lasted for a while.
Earlier, local official Hamdullah Nazik said that Rahmatullah was killed in a roadside bomb in Marouf district, where Taliban militants attacked a police checkpoint and Rahmatullah was going there to inspect the situation.
Conflicts also claimed the lives of four Taliban militants in neighboring Helmand province 555 km south of Kabul as police raided Taliban hideouts there late Friday night, police spokesman Farid Farhang said Saturday.
"During police operations against militants in Nahr-e-Saraj district on Friday night, four Taliban rebels including notorious commander Mullah Shejah were killed," Farhang told Xinhua.
Furthermore, Afghan police in war against the ongoing militancy in the country have arrested more than a dozen Taliban fighters over the past 24 hours, Interior Ministry said in a statement released here on Saturday.
"Fourteen armed Taliban rebels have been arrested over the past 24 hours during a series of operations conducted in Kabul, Nangarhar, Jowzjan, Kandahar, Logar, Paktiya and Helmand provinces, " the statement added.
There were no casualties on the police personnel, it contended. The Taliban outfit has yet to make comment.
Mounting press against anti-government militants is said to have forced some Taliban fighters to give up fighting and join the government-backed peace process as a dozen Taliban armed fighters laid down their weapons in the western Herat province 640 km west of Kabul on Saturday.
"Today 12 Taliban fighters under Mullah Baz Mohammad joined the peace process and resumed normal life," provincial governor Daud Shah Saba said in the welcoming ceremony to receive the former militants.
These people, he said, were active in Kushk-e-Kohna district over the past couple of years and with their joining the peace process, security will be further improved in the province and adjoining areas.
More than 3,000 Taliban militants, around 700 of them in Herat according to the government officials, have joined the government backed peace process over the past one year, a claim rejected by the Taliban outfit as baseless.
Apparent Insider Attack Kills 4 Afghan Police
VOA News November 2, 2012
Authorities in southern Afghanistan say four Afghan police officers have been killed by their colleagues.
The local police chief, Mohammad Toryali, said the four were shot and killed at a checkpoint in the Gereshk district of Helmand province.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, the latest in a series of incidents in which Afghan security personnel or militants wearing police or army uniforms have opened fire on their Afghan and international counterparts.
So far this year, at least 55 coalition troops have been killed in such attacks. Several Afghan police officers and soldiers have also been killed by their colleagues.
The increase in such incidents comes as international troops continue to transfer security responsibility to Afghan forces and withdraw from the country ahead of a 2014 deadline.
Some information for this report was provided by AP and AFP.
Torture claims halt MoD transfers to Afghan jails
Head of directorate to which MoD wants to transfer prisoners is alleged to have been involved in torture, court hears
The Guardian By Richard Norton-Taylor and Ian Cobain Friday 2 November 2012
A determined attempt by the Ministry of Defence to transfer insurgents to Afghan jails was blocked by the high court on Friday after it heard evidence that they would be handed over to a notorious torturer and alleged killer.
The court heard how the Foreign Office minister Lady Warsi – the former Conservative Party co-chair – had failed to question assurances by Asadullah Khalid, the head of the Afghan National Directorate of Security (NDS), even though he was alleged to be widely known to have been personally involved in torture.
An urgent hearing was requested by lawyers acting for an Afghan prisoner tortured in breach of assurances made to British officials. James Eadie QC, for the MoD, told the hearing: "Both the secretary of state for defence [Philip Hammond] and the baroness [Warsi] were briefed on the allegations. But the fact of the matter is, he is head of the NDS."
He added: "We have to deal with the NDS: it is to the NDS that insurgents are transferred. Therefore, it is obvious that whatever the truth of the allegations, the government engages with the body it engages with." Khalid is reported to be a close aide to the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai.
Lord Justice Moses intervened to say Warsi had done a deal with a man responsible for prisons where there were "still very live concerns". Eadie accepted the point.
The court heard that a senior Canadian diplomat in Afghanistan had made public allegations that the head of the NDS "was known to personally torture people" in a "dungeon under his guest house", "had people killed who got in his way" and was "running a narcotics operation". Khalid has previously denied the allegations.
The court hearing – in a case of the kind likely to be heard in secret if the government's justice and security bill is passed – was requested by the law firm Leigh Day and the legal charity Reprieve, acting for Serdar Mohammed, tortured by the Afghan security services after being transferred to their custody by UK forces.
Following Mohamed's allegations, the government placed a moratorium in 2010 on all transfers of prisoners to the NDS.
The MoD now wants to lift that moratorium. Eadie argued there was a "pressing need" for British forces to transfer detainees to the Afghan prison at Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand Province. From there, they might be transferred to jails in Kandahar and Kabul, where prisoners had also been tortured, the court heard.
Eadie said delays in transferring the prisoners to what he called "a sovereign state's criminal justice system" could damage the UK's relations with the Afghan government. Some detainees might have to be released from British custody if they could not be handed over to an Afghan jail, thereby endangering the lives of British soldiers and the local population, Eadie argued. Safeguards, including monitoring of Afghan jails by UK officials, had been put in place, he added.
Dinah Rose, QC for Mohammed, repeatedly described the head of the NDS as "Mr Khalid the Torturer". Warsi must have received a Foreign Office briefing before meeting him, she told the court: "Baroness Warsi met him and shook his hand, and I hope she washed her hands well afterwards."
Eadie suggested two whips found at Lashkar Gah jail in September and November last year were insufficient evidence for a reasonable prospect of success at a full court hearing into the matter scheduled for later this month.
"That is not enough", Eadie said, referring to the weight of evidence. "Not enough whips?", asked Moses.
"My Lord, this is a serious issue," Eadie replied. "Exactly", said Moses.
Following the exchange, Rose told the court: "In fact there are two more." Two suspicious lengths of hose pipe had also been found in interrogation rooms when MoD inspectors visited on two occasions earlier last year, the court heard. Moses said this suggested they were "not isolated incidents" but "spoke to a culture" of abuse. If the court found for the MoD and the safeguards the MoD had arranged proved inadequate, it could lead to a "disastrous situation".Moses described the prospect as "chilling".
Documents disclosed to the court showed Britain's deputy ambassador to Afghanistan, Catherine Royle, met officials from the UN assistance mission in Afghanistan in June and asked them to name Khalid as a torturer in a forthcoming report.
Granting the injunction, Lord Justice Moses said that if the "substantial body of evidence" of mistreatment were to be accepted, Khalid's assurances that prisoners handed over by Britain would be safe from harm "represents a very dramatic change of heart from his behaviour in the past".
Afghanistan's first female rapper tells the stories that might otherwise be lost
Soosan Firooz isn't just a rebel with western appeal – her highly personal narrative also shines a light on the nation's suffering
Guardian.co.uk By Torie Rose DeGhett Friday 2 November 2012
Soosan Firooz is being touted as Afghanistan's first female rapper, a voice for women's rights and political consciousness in a country that has been torn up by war, extremism and political transition for decades. She has emerged in a nascent hip-hop scene in Afghanistan, where so far only a handful of (male) rappers have begun to garner a following. Hip-hop is often a potent voice of the marginalised, and a form that offers the chance for forceful voices to lend a public narrative to suffering. Firooz's gender makes waves in itself, drawing attention from international press as the first woman to be seen in the hip-hop scene in her country and butting heads with the fundamentalist and traditionalist elements within her own country.
The act of making music is a radical one in itself. Afghanistan and its people have spent decades with their politics dominated by militancy and by foreign invasion, and censorship of music, along with other forms of expression, has been an intrinsic part of that long experience. The gradual evolution of music censorship can be traced back to the beginning of communist rule under Nur Muhammad Taraki in 1978. According to a 2001 article by John Baily, the Taliban's suppression of music is rooted in the beginning of the censorship of this period, when refugee camps in Iran and Pakistan enforced a total ban on music in order to preserve a constant state of mourning.
Firooz herself is no stranger to camps like these. The 23 year old grew up in one in Iran in the 1990s and spent time as a refugee with her family in Pakistan as well. They returned to their native country seven years ago. It is this life story that drives her narrative and purpose in the one song she has released, a Dari-language single composed and arranged by Afghan singer Farid Rastagar with the lyrics written by poet Suhrab Sirat.
This is one of the important dimensions of hip-hop and of political music generally: the element of storytelling, of relaying detailed chronicles that need to be heard. Music can make itself a platform for human stories otherwise lost, and with her single, Firooz has made use of hip-hop in just that way. It's a highly personal narrative for her, and one to which she brings authenticity and poignancy, calling for her audience to listen: "Hear my stories and hear/Hear my sorrows, my sadness/Hear the story of my displacement and homelessness/We were lost, we were lost, lost around the world." Her lyrics continue with the narration of life as a refugee, dreaming of their homeland and being treated as worthless abroad, ending with a call for hope and an end to abuses, to the invading and interfering forces of the west and of Pakistan and Iran. "From now on," she concludes, "it will be Afghanistan."
At the moment, Firooz has put out only this one song: titled "Our Neighbors" and performed in Dari. The effort put into the production may not be immediately evident, but Firooz, who lives without a great deal of financial luxury with her family in north Kabul, worked on the song's production on an old and finicky desktop computer and a donated keyboard. She also works as an actress in local soap operas. Her father left his electrical department job to accompany her as a bodyguard, fearful of the death threats she has faced.
With this song, Firooz doesn't just join the ranks of Afghanistan's newly minted hip-hop scene, but the ranks of many Afghan women working to shine the light on poverty, women's rights, refugees' rights and the effects of war (joined by her mother, who does humanitarian work in southern Afghanistan). She has garnered international attention because of the bravery and talent she invests in what she does, but also by dint of the western fascination with the idea of an Afghan woman who does not cover her hair, making her way as a hip-hop artist and television soap actress. She should be looked at, not just as a representative of a conventionally western understanding of rebellion and musical expression, but as a representative of all those who work to narrate suffering in the voices of Afghans themselves.
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