[Afghan News] November 13, 2012

[یاسمینه]

Top U.S. commander in Afghanistan under investigation, scandal widens
Reuters By Phil Stewart Tue Nov 13, 2012
ABOARD A U.S. MILITARY AIRCRAFT - The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General John Allen, is under investigation for allegedly inappropriate communication with a woman at the center of the scandal involving former CIA Director David Petraeus, a senior U.S. defense official said on Tuesday, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The shocking revelation threatens to fell another one of the U.S. military's biggest names and suggests that the scandal involving Petraeus - a former four-star general who had Allen's job in Afghanistan before moving to the CIA last year - could expand much further than previously imagined.

The U.S. official said the FBI uncovered between 20,000 and 30,000 pages of communications - mostly emails and spanning from 2010 to 2012 - between Allen and Jill Kelley, who has been identified as a long-time friend of the Petraeus family and a Tampa, Florida, volunteer social liaison with military families at MacDill Air Force Base.

It was Kelley's complaints about harassing emails from the woman with whom Petraeus had had an affair, Paula Broadwell, that prompted an FBI investigation, ultimately alerting authorities to Petraeus' involvement with Broadwell. Petraeus resigned from his job on Friday.

Asked whether there was concern about the disclosure of classified information, the official said: "We are concerned about inappropriate communications. We are not going to speculate as to what is contained in these documents."

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in a statement given to reporters flying with him to Australia that he asked that Allen's nomination to be Commander of U.S. European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe be delayed "and the president has agreed."

Allen, who is now in Washington, was due to face a Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday, as was his slated successor in Afghanistan, General Joseph Dunford.

The FBI referred the case to the Pentagon on Sunday and Panetta directed the Defense Department's Inspector General to handle the investigation. Panetta informed the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee during the flight to Australia. The House Armed Services Committee was also notified.

The U.S. defense official said that Allen denied any wrongdoing and that Panetta had opted to keep him in his job while the matter was under review, and until Dunford can be confirmed to replace him - a process that gains urgency given the potentially lengthy review process and the cloud it could cast over the mission in Afghanistan.

"While the matter is under investigation and before the facts are determined, General Allen will remain commander of ISAF," Panetta said, referring to the NATO—led force in Afghanistan.

Only hours earlier, Panetta had said he was reviewing Allen's recommendations on the future U.S. presence in Afghanistan after most troops withdraw by the end of 2014.

Commending Allen's leadership in Afghanistan, Panetta said in his statement: "He is entitled to due process in this matter."

At the same time, he noted that wanted the Senate to act "promptly" on Dunford's nomination.

The U.S. official said Panetta was informed of the matter involving Allen on Sunday, as he flew to Hawaii, after the Pentagon's top lawyer called Panetta's chief of staff. The White House was informed next.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Mohammad Zargham)


Petraeus Scandal Spreads As Probe Targets Top U.S. Commander In Afghanistan
November 13, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General John Allen, is reportedly under investigation for alleged "inappropriate communications" with a woman at the center of the scandal involving former CIA director David Petraeus.

U.S. Defense Department officials say investigators have uncovered thousands of pages of communications between Allen and Jill Kelley between 2010 and 2012.

Kelley is a friend of the Petraeus family who is said to have received threatening e-mails from Paula Broadwell, the woman with whom Petraeus had an extramarital affair.

The revelation of Petraeus’s relationship with Broadwell prompted his resignation as CIA director on November 9.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in a statement that Allen's nomination to lead the U.S. European Command and become NATO’s supreme allied commander in Europe had been put on hold "until the relevant facts are determined."

The statement said President Barack Obama had agreed to the postponement.

The general was due to face a Senate confirmation hearing for the NATO post on November 15 and had been widely expected to win approval.

Panetta said that Allen would remain in Kabul as the commander of NATO-led security forces until his expected successor there, General Joseph Dunford, was confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

The defense secretary praised the general's work in Afghanistan, saying his leadership had been "instrumental" in securing progress in the war against Taliban militants.

Allan-Kelley Connection

Allen succeeded Petraeus as the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan in July 2011.

A veteran of the Iraq war, Allen was deputy commander of Central Command before taking over in Afghanistan.

News agencies quoted an unnamed defense official as saying the FBI had uncovered up to 30,000 pages of correspondence -- mostly e-mails -- between Allen and Kelley. A U.S. Defense Department official said Allen denied any wrongdoing.

It remains unclear what allegations Allen faces. Officials declined to comment whether he had disclosed any classified information.

The 37-year-old Kelley reportedly served as an unpaid social liaison at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, which is headquarters of the U.S. Central Command. Both Petraeus and Allen have served at the base.

Speaking to reporters aboard a plane en route to Australia, Panetta said Petraeus had made the right decision to resign as director of the CIA.

"I think it's really important to continue to have the CIA staying on track doing the job that is absolutely essential for our national security," Panetta said.

"They have a very important mission focused on intelligence and intelligence operations, and I think it's very important to get someone strong, capable, and dedicated to be able to continue that effort."

In another twist in the story, U.S. media are reporting that FBI agents searched Broadwell’s home in Charlotte, North Carolina late on November 12.

An FBI spokeswoman confirmed agents had gone to the home but declined to say what their task was.

The FBI has been investigating whether the relationship between Broadwell and Petraeus posed a security risk.

With reporting by Reuters, BBC, and AFP


Rocket Attack on Kabul City Kills 1 Civilian, Injures 2
TOLOnews.com Tuesday, 13 November 2012
An early morning rocket attack on Tuesday in the city of Kabul has killed one civilian and injured two others, local officials said.

At least three rockets landed in the Afghan capital between 6:35am and 6:45am, with a fourth round reported by Isaf Joint Command but not confirmed by the Kabul police.

The three casualties were all civilians travelling in a car near the National Directorate of Security office in District 16 where one of the rockets landed, Kabul police chief Gen Ayub Salangi told TOLOnews.

A second round hit private television station Shamshad TV near Kabul Stadium in District 9 with no casualties, Salangi said.

And a third round hit near Kabul International Airport, also with no casualties, he said.

An Isaf Joint Command spokesman told TOLOnews that four rounds of "indirect fire" hit the Afghan capital with at least one round landing on one of Kabul's two main hills, Bala Hisar, where the Afghan National Army has a military base.

As at 8:30am that was still Isaf's report. However, Salangi said that the report was incorrect and no rockets landed on Bala Hisar.

The rockets were fired from the area of Deh-e Sabz, or Green Village, north of Kabul International Airport via a remote-controlled or timed trigger using mobile phones, according to Salangi.

He believes the rockets were set up overnight. Three were successfully fired but the fourth was defused by police who arrived in the area before it was fired.

Two hours after the attack no group including the Taliban had claimed responsibility for the attack and no arrests in relation to the rockets had been made.

This is a developing story. Please check back for details.


Afghanistan Does Matter
11/12/2012 3:59 pm The Huffington Post Najib Sharifi Director, Afghanistan New Generation Organization
Eleven years ago at this time, my days and nights under the Taliban rule in Kabul were filled with fear and hope. Fear because some alleged that the U.S. would bomb Afghanistan back to the Stone Age after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Hope because the expected attacks by the United States and the international coalition on Afghanistan would create the only window which could bring a ray of light to the darkness of tyranny and oppression that had covered Afghanistan.

A few days after the military operation started, the fear dissipated and it was replaced by hope. It was because the assumptions about bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age was removed when people saw that the international coalition forces were targeting the Taliban and al Qaeda camps and military installations and there was little collateral damage.

The military operations finally drove the Taliban out of Kabul almost five weeks after the beginning of the attacks. For me and millions of other Afghans, the 15th of November 2001, which was the day that the Taliban left Kabul, marked our first moments of life when everything seemed possible for the first time. The possibility of a happy future captured our veins. After almost two decades of struggling for survival, I experienced what the pleasure of a life filled with hope meant. It was also the day that changed the long-running expression among the youths, bekash khoda, which literally means " get yourself out of the country" in Dari, one of the two official languages of the country).

However, this elated mood did not last long. After a couple of years of excitement, once again the cloud of disappointment started casting its shadows. Violence began manifesting its ugly face from different corners of the country and continued eroding Afghans' confidence in their future.

The growing sense of hopelessness was exacerbated by the West's weakening position towards their stated mission in Afghanistan and, above all, by all the talk of withdrawal. This is because for most Afghans, justifiably or not, hope for a peaceful future is tied with the presence of the international community and their forces in the country.

The turning point was the announcement that troops would leave in the summer of 2014. That day dashed the optimism of majority of Afghans, particularly the youth, and increased fear of a civil war or the return of the Taliban.

Today, many Afghans experience almost the same level of disappointment for the future as during the Taliban. The expression bekash khoda is once again becoming a common phrase, as most young people want to leave the country. This is a disaster for our country's future since it is the young people who have the most chance of bringing change here.

The biggest achievement of the last decade has been the emergence of a new generation of Afghans with the biggest desire and motive for a progressive country. If we lose them, the prospects for an Afghanistan that is peaceful and progressive, not a troublemaker to the international community, will become grim.

Personally, my fear about the West's mishandling of Afghanistan is even bigger. It stems from the fact that leaving Afghanistan's mission incomplete will be interpreted by many in Afghanistan and the region as a direct victory for the extremists and their ideology, which is the biggest threat to peace and security of this region and the world.

Many in the international community underestimate the cost of failure. They do so by reducing the implications to a simple loss of Afghanistan. In fact, any failure will leave catastrophic consequences on the entire region and beyond. It will greatly inspire Jihadis and Jihadist ideology throughout the world. It will embolden them to think about expanding their mission beyond Afghanistan. The heavily ideological force will attribute their victory to God's will and help against the infidels and push for creating and expanding an Islamic caliphate. This will motivate Islamic extremists all over the world to come with fresh momentum and capital to Afghanistan and wage Jihad against the West by dwelling on the failure of the West in Afghanistan.

It is understandable that the economic times are tough. But to safeguard the security and peace of the world and protect human values, the West, mainly the United States, needs to understand the profound consequences of mishandling Afghanistan's future. Judicious realization of the grave consequences of a hasty and irresponsible departure by the West coupled with a wise redefinition of its approach towards the matter is likely to prevent possibly the equivalent of another 9/11 whose human and financial cost will far exceed the spending on the completion of the mission.

The West's weak and hasty policies in accomplishing the mission has disheartened and demoralized many of us who are considered their local allies. This is critical because it is only the local forces that have the legitimacy to counter violent extremists' ideologies and promote alternative worldviews that uphold tolerance, co-existence and peace.

If the West would reassure us that they are not abandoning us, this would have a powerful effect on boosting the morale and confidence of their local allies and would undermine the violent extremists' narrative that it is defeating a great superpower. This is, after all, a war of perceptions for the most part.

On the other hand, if the West does not take Afghanistan's mission seriously, not only can Afghanistan risk losing its decade-long democratic achievements, but also the region's young pro-democracy currents will start doubting the genuine commitment of the West to freedom, democracy and human rights. This is likely to turn the tide against the popular democratic aspirations at a time when the Arab Awakening has provided a unique window of opportunity for the entire region to rid itself of totalitarian and extremist regimes.

Najib Sharifi is director of Afghanistan New Generation Organization -- a nonprofit youth empowerment entity based in Kabul, Afghanistan.


Foreign soldier killed in Afghan explosion
KABUL, Nov. 13 (Xinhua) -- One soldier with the NATO-led coalition force was killed Tuesday in an explosion in a military camp in restive southern Afghanistan, the coalition confirmed in a statement.

"An International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) service member died as a result of an explosion in an ISAF camp in southern Afghanistan today," the ISAF said in the statement.

The brief statement did not disclose the nationality of the victim and details about the incident, only saying "the cause of the explosion is unknown, however, there is no current indication that the explosion was a result of enemy activity. ISAF officials are investigating the incident."

A total of 50 countries are contributing to the 100,000-strong force in Afghanistan with over 68,000 of them American mainly stationed in the east and south, followed by 9,500 from UK mainly based in southern Afghanistan.

A total of 379 foreign soldiers, most of them Americans, have been killed in Afghanistan so far in 2012.


Afghan Warlord’s Call to Arms Rattles Officials
New York Times By GRAHAM BOWLEY November 12, 2012
HERAT, Afghanistan - One of the most powerful mujahedeen commanders in Afghanistan, Ismail Khan, is calling on his followers to reorganize and defend the country against the Taliban as Western militaries withdraw, in a public demonstration of faltering confidence in the national government and the Western-built Afghan National Army.

Mr. Khan is one of the strongest of a group of warlords who defined the country’s recent history in battling the Soviets, the Taliban and one another, and who then were brought into President Hamid Karzai’s cabinet as a symbol of unity. Now, in announcing that he is remobilizing his forces, Mr. Khan has rankled Afghan officials and stoked fears that other regional and factional leaders will follow suit and rearm, weakening support for the government and increasing the likelihood of civil war.

This month, Mr. Khan rallied thousands of his supporters in the desert outside Herat, the cultured western provincial capital and the center of his power base, urging them to coordinate and reactivate their networks. And he has begun enlisting new recruits and organizing district command structures.

“We are responsible for maintaining security in our country and not letting Afghanistan be destroyed again,” Mr. Khan, the minister of energy and water, said at a news conference over the weekend at his office in Kabul. But after facing criticism, he took care not to frame his action as defying the government: “There are parts of the country where the government forces cannot operate, and in such areas the locals should step forward, take arms and defend the country.”

President Karzai and his aides, however, were not greeting it as an altruistic gesture. The governor of Herat Province called Mr. Khan’s reorganization an illegal challenge to the national security forces. And Mr. Karzai’s spokesman, Aimal Faizi, tersely criticized Mr. Khan.

“The remarks by Ismail Khan do not reflect the policies of the Afghan government,” Mr. Faizi said. “The government of Afghanistan and the Afghan people do not want any irresponsible armed grouping outside the legitimate security forces structures.”

In Kabul, Mr. Khan’s provocative actions have played out in the news media and brought a fierce reaction from some members of Parliament, who said the warlords were preparing to take advantage of the American troop withdrawal set for 2014.

“People like Ismail Khan smell blood,” Belqis Roshan, a senator from Farah Province, said in an interview. “They think that as soon as foreign forces leave Afghanistan, once again they will get the chance to start a civil war, and achieve their ominous goals of getting rich and terminating their local rivals.”

Indeed, Mr. Khan’s is not the only voice calling for a renewed alliance of the mujahedeen against the Taliban, and some of the others are just as familiar.

Marshal Muhammad Qasim Fahim, an ethnic Tajik commander who is President Karzai’s first vice president, said in a speech in September, “If the Afghan security forces are not able to wage this war, then call upon the mujahedeen.”

Another prominent mujahedeen fighter, Ahmad Zia Massoud, said in an interview at his home in Kabul that people were worried about what was going to happen after 2014, and he was telling his own followers to make preliminary preparations.

“They don’t want to be disgraced again,” Mr. Massoud said. “Everyone tries to have some sort of Plan B. Some people are on the verge of rearming.”

He pointed out that it was significant that the going market price of Kalashnikov assault rifles had risen to about $1,000, driven up by demand from a price of $300 a decade ago. “Every household wants to have an AK-47 at home,” he said.

“The mujahedeen come here to meet me,” Mr. Massoud added. “They tell me they are preparing. They are trying to find weapons. They come from villages, from the north of Afghanistan, even some people from the suburbs of Kabul, and say they are taking responsibility for providing private security in their neighborhood.”

Still, there have long been fears about the re-emergence of the warlords, after more than a decade of efforts by Afghan officials and their Western allies to build up an inclusive national government and co-opt some of the factional leaders’ influence by bringing them into it.

One senior Western official in Kabul saw Mr. Khan’s actions as the start of a wave of political positioning before the 2014 transition and said it bore close watching. The allies want to avoid any replay of the civil war in the ’90s that led hundreds of thousands of Afghans to flee. A renewed civil war would undo much of what the West has tried to accomplish.

Mr. Khan is one of the towering figures of the resistance against the Soviets and the Taliban, and his power base in Herat Province, along the border with Iran, has remained relatively thriving throughout the war, despite a recent rise in kidnappings and militant attacks.

After years of consolidating power in the ’80s and early ’90s, he was forced to flee Herat after the Taliban took the city. After the northern coalition and American-led invasion drove out the Taliban in 2001, he was restored as governor of Herat. But he was removed by President Karzai in 2004, prompting violent demonstrations among his supporters.

He continues to exert strong influence in the western regions today, and he clashes regularly with the current governor, Daud Shah Saba, Western officials say.

Mr. Khan called a gathering of thousands outside Herat city on Nov. 1, in a district called Martyrs’ Town, which he established in the ’90s to give free housing and land to the families of slain mujahedeen. A video clip of the meeting, attended by many influential regional figures, featured Mr. Khan criticizing the international coalition for disarming the fighters but then failing to make Afghanistan secure.

“They collected our cannons and tanks and they turned them into a pile of garbage,” he told the crowd. “In return, they brought Dutch, German, American and French girls, they brought white soldiers from Europe and black soldiers from Africa in the hope of securing Afghanistan, but they failed.”

After the public criticism that he was creating an armed opposition to the government, Mr. Khan insisted at his news conference in Kabul on Saturday that he was not rearming his followers or opposing the security forces, but rather wanted the mujahedeen to work with the army and the police as a sort of reserve force, warning them, for example, if they saw signs of Taliban infiltration.

“This does not mean we are rebelling against the government,” he said. “We are struggling for 30 years to build this government, and we are not allowing this government to be toppled.”

Still, such an auxiliary role is exactly what was envisioned for the Afghan Local Police, organized and trained at great cost by American Special Operations forces in recent years.

In Herat, Mohammed Farooq Hussaini, one of the region’s most prominent mullahs, said that people were looking to their traditional leaders to protect them, and still possessed weapons if they ever had to fight.

His own family told a story of spreading Taliban influence, he said: his son-in-law, a pharmacist, recently joined the insurgency. “There are two to three weapons in each house in Herat and other provinces, and not only men but also women are ready to fight against the Taliban and other terrorists,” he said.

A mujahedeen fighter, Saeed Ahmad Hussaini, a member of the provincial council in Herat, said that if the United States had not yet recognized its failure in Afghanistan, the Afghan people certainly had.

“We have rescued this nation twice from the hands of invaders and oppressors, and we will rescue it once more if needed,” he said. “People cannot tolerate the whippings and beatings of the Taliban.”

Habib Zahori and Jawad Sukhanyar contributed reporting from Herat, Afghanistan, and an employee of The New York Times from Kabul.


US Weighing Troop Plans for Post-2014 Afghanistan
VOA News November 13, 2012
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says the Pentagon and the White House are discussing what presence the U.S. military will have in Afghanistan following the withdrawal of combat troops in 2014.

Panetta told reporters Monday aboard a military aircraft traveling to Australia that the head of the U.S.-led NATO coalition in Afghanistan, General John Allen, has presented plans to support counter-terrorism and training for Afghan forces.

“General Allen has worked on several options that we are now reviewing and working with the White House on. And my hope is that we'll be able to complete this process within the next few weeks," said Panetta. "I'm confident that we're going to be able to get to the right number that we're going to need for the post-2014 presence.”

The United States and Afghanistan signed a strategic partnership agreement in May outlining the future relationship between the two countries. It does not specify any specific troop presence, but pledges American aid for Afghanistan for at least a decade after international combat troops leave the country.

German Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere arrived in Afghanistan Monday to review the coalition's ongoing transfer of security control to the Afghan forces.

He said Germany will decide within a week on the next steps in the drawdown of its forces from Afghanistan. Germany has about 4,900 troops in Afghanistan, the third largest force in the coalition.


A Senior Taliban Leader Is Gunned Down in Quetta
Afghanistan’s Taliban thought their exile capital in Pakistan was a safe haven. Looks like they were wrong. Sami Yousafzai reports.
The Daily Beast By Sami Yousafzai Nov 12, 2012
Senior Afghan Taliban leaders are worried. For the first time, one of their own was gunned down Sunday afternoon on the outskirts of their longtime sanctuary and capital in exile, the Pakistani city of Quetta. And no one is sure who ordered the hit. All anyone can say is there’s no shortage of suspects.

An eyewitness tells The Daily Beast that Mullah Sayyid Ahmad Shahid Khel was shopping at a bazaar in the dusty town of Kuchlak, a few miles outside Quetta on the Afghan border, when four men rode in on two motorcycles. They opened fire on the Afghan insurgent chief with handguns at close range, shooting him in the leg, stomach, and chest. Although he managed to draw his own weapon, he was cut down before he could return fire, and the gunmen sped away.

Khel was rushed to a Quetta hospital, where doctors did their best to stabilize him before transferring him to medical facilities in Karachi. He remains in critical condition. Whether or not he survives, it’s likely to be a long time before he returns to duty as a high-ranking member of the Taliban’s ruling body, the Quetta Shura, and headmaster of the madrassa and Taliban recruiting center he runs on the Afghan border.

The day began quietly enough. According to one of the students at the madrassa, four strangers paid a call on the mullah yesterday, saying they had just rented the house next door and wanted to pay respects to their new neighbor. The mullah invited them in, as proper Afghan hospitality requires, and shared cups of green tea with his guests. After they left, he walked to the bazaar. The four men evidently followed him.

Who sent them? Speculation is running wild among the insurgents. Khel has made his share of enemies in the past 10 years—and not only the Americans and their allies in the Kabul government, although they certainly have no love for him. Back in 2003, when the shattered remnants of Mullah Mohammed Omar’s regime were spread across Pakistan, struggling just to survive and feed their families, Khel was a leader in the first efforts to regroup the Taliban and organize a serious resistance against the Americans.

He focused his efforts on Ghazni province, where he’s believed to have been responsible for the killing of Bettina Goislard, a Frenchwoman working for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. He was captured soon afterward, and he spent the next six years in a Kabul detention facility operated by the Afghan government’s intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security (NDS). The man credited with taking him down, Asadullah Khalid, was serving as provincial governor and has since been made the directorate’s chief.

For reasons best known to President Hamid Karzai’s government, Khel was freed in 2009 against the protests of his NDS advisors. “We understood he would be a risk, and we tried not to release him,” says an intelligence officer in Kabul. “We were sure he would rejoin the Taliban, but we let him go anyway. He was in Quetta the next day, opening his madrassa, sending Taliban to Afghanistan, and being rewarded by Mullah Omar as shadow governor of Laghman province.” Khel’s wasted no time before adding to his roster of deadly enemies. Soon after his release, according to the intelligence officer, Khel had a direct role in ordering and planning the suicide-bomb assassination of Afghanistan’s then deputy chief of intelligence, Abdullah Laghmani.

That alone would have been reason enough for the NDS to want Khel dead, but beyond that, he brazenly carried on his work for the Taliban in plain sight, just across the border from Afghanistan. “He was running his madrassa very openly,” says one of the mullah’s close friends, a subcommander in Ghazni province. When Khalid decided to make his mark as the new NDS chief, there was no need to look far for Khel.

Khel has made his share of enemies in the past 10 years—and not only the Americans and their allies in the Kabul government.

Suspicion is growing among the insurgents that Khalid is preparing to launch a shadow war against Taliban leaders in Pakistan, and that the attempt on Khel’s life is only the beginning. Others suggest that the CIA, long hobbled by the ban against drone strikes in Quetta, may have had a hand in the shooting.

In fact, however, there’s no way to rule out the possibility that Khel was targeted by hardliners among the Taliban. According to at least one Taliban source he had antagonized some of the younger extremists by denouncing them for carrying out bombings at mosques and resorting to other tactics that kill civilians.

The source says Khel’s complaints have particularly angered the Pakistani Taliban (Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan). “He was abducted and beaten up in Waziristan up few months back by TTP clerics because he criticized the TTP for attacking public places in Pakistan,” the source says, adding that Sirajuddin Haqqani, the de facto chief of the pro-Afghan Taliban Haqqani Network, finally prevailed on the clerics to let Khel go.

On top of Khel’s other problems, Taliban sources say a cloud has descended on him because of his alleged ties to Maulvi Ishmael (a.k.a. Mullah Ismail), a former senior insurgent leader who is said to have been killed for making unauthorized peace overtures to the Karzai government. So far no one has publicly claimed responsibility for the shooting. The only certainty is that many of Khel’s friends are asking whether they’re next.

Sami Yousafzai is Newsweek's correspondent in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where he has covered militancy, al Qaeda, and the Taliban for the magazine since 9/11. He was born in Afghanistan but moved to Pakistan with his family after the Russian invasion in 1979. He began his career as a sports journalist but switched to war reporting in 1997.

For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.


Afghan Women Fear Rights Will Erode as U.S. Leaves
Wall Street Journal By MARIA ABI-HABIB November 13, 2012
HERAT, Afghanistan - Rokhshana, a 14-year-girl, has been behind bars here since March. She is serving a yearlong adultery sentence after what she describes as rape by her adult cousin, who remains a free man.

"I love my country, but there's no justice here," says Rokhshana at Herat's juvenile prison, her arms bearing the signs of beatings.

Eleven years after the U.S. ousted the Taliban regime, citing its abuses against women as one of the reasons for the invasion, Afghan women—as well as girls—remain subjected to some of the world's most draconian laws. The U.S.-funded Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai routinely imprisons wives fleeing domestic abuse and puts raped children like Rokhshana in jail.

In part because of international pressure, Afghan women have made some progress in recent years: They can hold office, study in university or walk the streets of big cities without a traditional burqa covering. But, with the U.S.-led coalition withdrawing its troops by 2014, women's activists worry that even those fragile achievements will be sacrificed by Mr. Karzai's administration as he seeks a peace settlement with the Taliban.

"It's a men's country," says Hawa Alam Nuristani, one of a handful of female members on the High Peace Council, the government body appointed by Mr. Karzai to reach out to the insurgency. "Our only support is from the international community. What is the guarantee that we won't be faced with a similar regime as the Taliban when the Americans withdraw?"

The U.S. says women's rights will remain an important issue after the withdrawal, even though American officials acknowledge the limits of their waning influence. "Afghanistan is run by Afghans; we are significant partners," says Melanne Verveer, the U.S. Ambassador at large for global women's issues. "We will continue to ensure that women's rights are pivotal because of our partnership and because it is critical to the future."

Such promises fail to allay international observers like Heather Barr, Human Rights Watch's Afghanistan researcher. "We've seen Karzai repeatedly do violent zigzags on women's rights," she says. "The explanation is that he's getting pressure from opposite directions—the international community and conservative elements of Afghan society. Butif that political pressure [from the West] stops, the government's already weak support for women's rights will drop away even more."

In March, the Ulema Council, Afghanistan's government-funded supreme religious authority, decreed that Afghan husbands were allowed to beat their wives if they showed disobedience. Mr. Karzai publicly backed the Council's code of conduct. The Ulema Council declined repeated requests for comment.

Presidential spokesman Aimal Faizi said "today's Afghanistan is no more [the] Afghanistan of 10 years back. We do not think that Afghan women are facing more violations of their rights than before. It is the opposite."

Girls like Rokhshana, who uses only one name, are the faces of the present reality. Raised in a village outside Herat, western Afghanistan's main city, which is considered one of the country's most liberal, Rokhshana ended up living with her cousin Abdullah, now aged 38, after the death of her father.

At the Herat detention center, surrounded by bars, Rokhshana displays an arm with dark blue capillaries under the skin—the hallmarks of beatings by Abdullah, she says. The cousin, who is married with two children, forced her to smoke opium and then regularly raped her since she was 12, she recounts.

"I would smoke and I wouldn't know what was happening around me. Life seemed so far away and that's when my cousin would take me," she says, her hennaed hand nervously clutching her veil whenever she spoke.

She finally escaped the village in March, fleeing to a nearby police station where she explained her story. Instead of arresting Abdullah, the police locked up Rokhshana herself. Her offense: leaving home unescorted by a male relative. Such conduct is considered a crime by many judges in Afghanistan, who often apply Shariah, or Islamic laws, differently across the country.

Weeks later, her complaints of rape and abuse were turned into charges of leaving home and adultery—even though she is unmarried. "When the judge sentenced me he said 'I know you've been forced to have sexual relations but because you're now impure and escaped from home, you need to go to jail,' " she recalled, sitting on a prison bed.

The judge in the case, Humayoon Aseel, said he sentenced Rokhshana because she "committed adultery by her consent and repeatedly."

Under Afghan law, men committing adultery should also be imprisoned. Mr. Aseel said he also issued a warrant for Abdullah's arrest. Rokhshana says, however, that her cousin has bribed the police to avoid being detained and is now back in the village.

Noor Khan Nikzad, the spokesman for Herat police, says the police haven't received any warrant to arrest Abdullah. The police deny any allegations of bribery. The cousin couldn't be reached for comment.

Once she is freed from prison, Rokhshana says she hopes to be able to help women like herself find justice. "If I could ask one thing of President Karzai, I'd ask him to let me become a police officer," she says.

Abuses against women are also widespread these days in the rural areas controlled by the Taliban insurgents. There have been several cases of women stoned for adultery there in recent years—a punishment that government courts don't impose.

In July, a woman accused of adultery in an insurgent-dominated area of Parwan province neighboring Kabul was publicly executed by a gunman who shot her in the back of the head in front of a crowd of cheering villagers. The Afghan government accused the Taliban of staging the execution; the Taliban denied they were behind the killing.

Many Afghans worry that the Taliban will return to power once the majority of international troops withdraw in 2014, clawing back what tenuous achievements have been made under U.S. occupation. Like the Parwan execution, they are rattled by the October assassination attempt of Malala Yousafzai, the 14-year-old Pakistani girl shot in the head by a Taliban gunman for promoting girls' education. The Taliban has vowed to hunt down the badly wounded teen again.

Though the current Afghan government allows women to study and work, they must remain under the control of their male relatives. Those who flee an abusive home are unable to gain their independence. They usually live a cloistered, hidden life to protect themselves from kin seeking revenge for the dishonor of leaving the home and shaming the family.

Some have the option to stay at one of 14 women's shelters scattered across the country that are managed by women's groups with international support.

But these places have increasingly come under attack from conservative government officials. Earlier this year, Afghanistan's Justice Minister Habibullah Ghaleb wondered in a parliament speech: "What sort of immorality and prostitution are not happening at those places?" The remarks provoked outrage by European Union and United Nations officials, prompting Mr. Ghaleb to apologize.

Government regulations proposed by Afghanistan's women's affairs minister, Husn Banu Ghazanfar, last year would have required the women in the shelters to undergo virginity tests and to justify their stay to a government panel. The proposal was shelved after the United Nations pressured senior Afghan officials, and Western diplomats threatened funding cuts for some Afghan programs. Such intervention won't be as effective once the foreign forces and aid funds are gone after 2014.

In mid-September officials from Afghanistan's justice, interior and women's ministries issued a statement clarifying that the running away of women and girls from home isn't a criminal act. But local rights activists are doubtful that the government will release women detained for running away because courts often accuse these women of the intention to commit adultery.

"U.N. Women calls upon the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to unconditionally release all women and girls currently detained for 'running away' and for 'attempted adultery' " said an October statement from U.N. Women.

Few women locked up under these charges have been released, according to rights activists.

Suraya Pakzad, who runs two women's shelters in Afghanistan, says prominent government officials already have repeatedly threatened her, demanding that she expel their female relatives from her safe houses to return home. "I've never had a single problem with the Taliban," she says. "Only these warlords who are in government."

Sharifa, a wiry 17-year-old from a small village in remote Daikundi province, spent two years in one of the two shelters run by Ms. Pakzad's organization, Voice of Women.

When Sharifa was just 11, her father married her off, in exchange for money, to an 18-year-old man who beat her when she refused his sexual advances and then raped her for the two years their marriage lasted, she says.

"I don't know how much I was sold for," Sharifa recalls in a whisper during a recent interview in the Herat shelter, rarely looking up from her teacup. Though child marriages like hers are technically illegal in Afghanistan, they account for some 40% of all weddings, according to the United Nations Children Fund.

The dowry the father received helped him manage his farm. When Sharifa's husband sent her back to live with her father, the father had to repay the dowry. He beat Sharifa with even more fury, she says.

The father declined to comment.

Finally, two years ago, at age 15, Sharifa fled the village, stealing her father's clothes and walking for 48 hours to a highway. There she stood and waited awkwardly with her freshly shorn hair, in the traditional men's clothes, the shalwar kameez, that were too large for her small body.

After hitching a ride to Herat, Sharifa found work in a brick kiln for two months. Sleeping and eating among the boys and men in the factory, she woke up one morning to find her secret had been discovered because her period arrived sooner than expected. One of the men asked Sharifa why she was bleeding. Terrified, she says she ran off. Her male colleagues chased after her until she outran them and found a police station.

Rather than lock her up, the sympathetic police took Sharifa to a shelter, where she lived for two years, learning embroidery and other skills.

"The few months I was a boy it was freedom. I realized how little freedom I had as a girl," she says.

Afghan women activists consider her case a success because Sharifa's family has agreed not to kill her to restore their honor. Her uncle Nazer Hussain, who lives in Herat, recently allowed her to live with him while her father, who remains in Daikundi, is arranging another marriage.

"Of course she wants to get married! This is what women want," Mr. Hussain said. He confirmed the story of her escape.

Marrying a man of her father's choosing is the only way Sharifa can avoid a lifetime in a shelter or time in jail. "I'm angry. My life is so hard and there's no way to make it better," she says in a whisper, half mournful, half defiant. "My family wants me to remarry. The only thing I hope for in life is not to remarry."

The plight of Afghan women jailed for so-called moral crimes such as escaping home or adultery began to attract international attention last year, when the European Union funded a documentary on an 18-year-old named Golnaz. She was imprisoned after reporting that her cousin had raped her two years earlier.

"What kind of government and justice is this? I'm not a suicide bomber. I'm not a drug addict. I'm a victim," Golnaz said in an interview in Kabul's women's prison at the time.

Fearing backlash from conservative Afghans, the EU blocked the release of the documentary—causing a flurry of protests by international activists that eventually prompted Mr. Karzai to pardon Golnaz a year ago. Government officials at the time made it clear she was expected to marry her rapist, who had impregnated her.

Recently, Golnaz and her daughter were living in a woman's shelter in Kabul and her mother and brothers were refusing to speak with her, questioning her morality after the case. She is learning how to read and write. But for Golnaz, the likelihood that she will ever leave the shelter or find work to sustain herself and her young daughter is slim.

"Women like Golnaz are still stuck with these misogynistic, old school ideas that rule their lives," says Kimberley Motley, a Kabul-based lawyer who represents Golnaz. "In the West, shelters are a half way house to get women on their feet. In Afghanistan, they are the end result." —Habib Khan Totakhil and Ziaulhaq Sultani contributed to this article.


The Afghan expat's dilemma: Should I stay or should I go?
Thousands of Afghans who returned from abroad after the fall of the Taliban in 2001 now face the dilemma of once again having to flee and bear the resentment of Afghans left behind.
Christian Science Monitor By Halima Kazem, Correspondent November 12, 2012
Kabul, Afghanistan - In a 12 x 12 windowless room hang hundreds of oil paintings, Islamic calligraphy, and other fine art pieces created by Afghan artists trying to preserve traditional art forms, as well as push local boundaries in an effort to create new ones.

The room is in The Galleria, a small arts gallery tucked away in the corner of a busy Kabul city neighborhood. The owner of the gallery is Rameen Javid, a clean cut, fast talking Afghan-American from New York City.

Mr. Javid is one of thousands of Afghans who fled in late 1970s and '80s because of a communist takeover of the country and ensuing violence and then returned to Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001. And like many other Afghan returnees, he now faces the dilemma of once again having to flee Afghanistan if the security worsens and bear the resentment of the Afghans he leaves behind.

“We have no plans of leaving anytime soon. There has to be an extreme security situation for me to leave,” Mr. Javid says referring to his 1-year-old daughter and his wife Nadima, who was born and raised in Afghanistan.

While going to high school and college in New York, the 40-something said he dreamed of returning to Afghanistan and working with the local artists to market their work. He says he’s not going to give up his dream so quickly even if it means sticking it out through random insurgent attacks, fighting, and increasing crime in Kabul City.

“I am helping to change the lives of these artists. I’ve increased their profit margins from 25 percent to 200 percent. I want to make art a part of life in Afghanistan,” Javid says, pointing to paintings by a master artist from the western province of Herat.

In order to cover the cost of running The Galleria, Javid takes anywhere from 10 to 25 percent of the sale price of a piece of art and gives the rest to the artist.

“When we have a surplus, we either reinvest in more stock or a different variety of goods, or give advances to artists for their personal and professional needs,” Javid says.

Other Afghan Americans are also holding on to hope that the security situation in Afghanistan won’t force them out again.

Helena Malikyar, an Afghan-American from Arizona lives in Kabul with her husband and son. She says that despite the bleak forecast that many Afghan experts are predicting for Afghanistan after international forces completely withdraw in 2014, she still thinks young Afghans will rise to the occasion.

“I count on the young generation. I think they have developed a sense of awareness that gives them the potential to pull their act together to protect the gains of the recent years and work for progress and prosperity. I am aware that this may not be achieved during my lifetime, but I still hope that my son sees the Afghanistan that his parents dream of,” says Ms. Malikyar. ‘I felt like I was failing’

Other Afghan-Americans aren’t as hopeful as Moshref and Malikyar. Many have packed up and returned back to the US, leaving behind lucrative jobs, friends, and any hopes of seeing a responsible and capable government in Afghanistan.

“For a very long time, I felt an overwhelming sense of accomplishment in every little thing I did while living in Afghanistan, but toward the last few months, no matter what I did, I felt like I was failing. The security situation was getting worse. Attacks were becoming more random and a sense of mistrust was building all around me,” says Nilufar Shuja, an Afghan-American from California.

Ms. Shuja first returned to Afghanistan in March 2002 and has lived on and off in Kabul since then, working as a business development consultant for Afghan and international organizations. She returned to the US for good in July because she says she was seeing how quickly the security and the economy in Afghanistan were deteriorating.

“It seemed like everyone, from the international community to the ordinary Afghan citizens, were giving up. I was starting to develop a bitterness toward Afghanistan and I decided it was time to leave before I let the bitterness wash away all the positive memories and experiences I had over the last decade,” she says.

Shuja, Javid, and Malikyar all had high hopes when returning to their homeland for the first time. They all say it was a chance for them to help in their own way, big or small, to change Afghanistan’s future.

Malikyar currently owns her own translation company in Kabul. She started the company in 2007 because she noticed that a lot of development projects were failing because of miscommunication between Afghan government officials and their international advisers.

“There are a lot of translation firms here [in Afghanistan] but the translations of very important documents are very poor because the people who are translating are not fully proficient in Afghanistan’s native languages [Dari and Pashtu] and in English,” says Malikyar, who was schooled in Kabul until the 10th grade but went to college and graduate school in the US.

She says that accurate translations are just one way she has been able to serve Afghanistan’s efforts to rebuild. However, trying to find ways to help has come at a high personal cost for many Afghan expatriates.

“Living in Afghanistan as a single woman had its unique share of issues. Everyone wanted to take advantage of the fact that I had no male chaperon. I had to constantly move homes relinquish any sense of personal space and privacy and develop a very thick layer of skin to tolerate the sensitive questions and comments that came my way,” says Shuja.

The struggles continued even after the novelty wore off.

“I realized that the biggest challenge for me, was to deal with the moral damage of a protracted war. Afghans had become survivalists. That meant they had learned to lie, cheat, and use others to their own benefit,” says Malikyar. How locals feel about returned Afghans

However, local Afghans have expressed the same concerns about Afghan expatriates who have come back to Afghanistan in recent years.

“Most of the Afghan-Americans who came back [to Afghanistan] came to make money or for their own personal benefit, now they have the luxury of leaving when things are getting bad,” says Esmatullah a governmental employee who, like many Afghans, only goes by one name.

Mr. Esmatullah’s sentiment is echoed in a lot of offices and businesses, where Afghan-Americans have used their Western credentials and experiences to take high paying consultancy jobs, positions as diplomats and ministers, and to open up businesses.

The fact that Afghans-Americans can leave when things get bad in Afghanistan has left some local Afghans resentful and others envious.

“I want to leave Afghanistan. I see very little hope for most of the Afghan youth, the streets are not safe anymore, and you can’t even get the basic job without paying someone a big bribe or having a connection to get you in, says Sher Mohmad an unemployed high school graduate. Mr. Mohmad is referring to the deeply entrenched system of patronage and impunity for corrupt officials that prevail in Afghanistan.

Mohmad said many of his friends are willing to pay human traffickers $5,000 to $10,000 to take them to Turkey, Greece, and eventually to Europe or the United States.

“A lot of young Afghans these days believe this is their last hope before a worse government takes over here in Afghanistan. They would rather die trying to leave then stay here and be killed by the criminals on the street or the insurgent attacks,” says Mohmad.

Javid says the youth is exactly why he is staying. Some of his most popular artists are young and just getting to the peak of their careers.

“I am under no illusion that there may be a day that I will have to leave, that is why I am teaching the artists how to market and sell their own art. I am teaching them about sustainability,” Javid says.

And if the Taliban take control of Afghanistan again, Javid says he will work with the Afghan artists from abroad and keep selling for them all over the world.


Pakistan accuses Afghan forces of killing civilians, complicating peace envoy’s visit
Associated Press November 12 , 2012
ISLAMABAD - Pakistan on Monday accused Afghan forces of killing at least four civilians in a cross-border shelling attack, increasing tension just as a senior Afghan official visited Islamabad to discuss peace talks with the Taliban.

Pakistan is seen as critical to reaching a peace deal with the Taliban because of its historical ties to the group. The process has been complicated by significant levels of distrust among the major players — Afghanistan, Pakistan, the United States and the Taliban.

Pakistani Foreign Secretary Jalil Abbas Jilani condemned Sunday evening’s cross-border attack in a conversation with the Afghan ambassador to Pakistan, Mohammad Umar Daudzai.

Jilani called the attacks “unhelpful and unproductive” and said they would undermine “the conducive environment that Pakistan is trying to create for promotion of peace and stability in the region,” according to a statement from the Pakistani Foreign Ministry.

The Pakistani government said the attack killed four civilians, but Pakistani intelligence officials and a local resident, Habib Wazir, put the death toll at five — four men and a child. They said mortars exploded outside a house in the border village of Neiznarai in the South Waziristan tribal area.

The intelligence officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.

There was no immediate response from the Afghan government, which has repeatedly accused Pakistani forces of killing Afghan civilians with cross-border shelling in the other direction.

The latest accusations surfaced as the head of the Afghan government’s council for peace talks with the Taliban, Salahuddin Rabbani, started three days of talks in Islamabad with Pakistani political and military leaders. Kabul set up the council in 2010 to negotiate an end to the decade-long war in Afghanistan.

Rabbani was named the council chief after his predecessor and father, Burhanuddin Rabbani, was assassinated in Sept. 2011. The killing stalled peace efforts and exacerbated tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Some Afghan officials accused Pakistani intelligence agents of involvement in the assassination, allegations denied by Islamabad.

Rabbani met Monday with Pakistani Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, who expressed hope that the visit would improve relations between the two countries.

Significant disagreements remain. Afghanistan has long accused Pakistan of not doing enough to prevent Taliban militants from using its territory to launch cross-border attacks against Afghan and U.S.-led forces.

Kabul has also demanded that Islamabad release the former deputy leader of the Taliban, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who was captured in Pakistan in 2010. His arrest reportedly angered Afghan President Hamid Karzai because Baradar was conducting secret talks with the Afghan government.

Pakistan has refused to release Baradar, who is seen by some as a potentially important player in striking a peace deal in Afghanistan. Islamabad has also struck back by accusing Kabul of not doing enough to stop militants based in Afghanistan from launching cross-border attacks against Pakistan.

Despite these disagreements, there is hope among some analysts that Pakistan may step up its cooperation with the peace process, because Islamabad is concerned that instability in Afghanistan after most foreign forces withdraw in 2014 could negatively impact Pakistan.

Many of the Taliban’s top leaders are thought to be based in Pakistan, and Islamabad and Washington recently set up a group to determine which militants would be open to reconciliation and ensure they could travel out of the country for talks.
____
Associated Press writer Ishtiaq Mahsud contributed to this report from Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan.


IMF says Afghanistan makes progress on reforms
AFP 12/11/2012
WASHINGTON - The International Monetary Fund on Monday said Afghanistan was making progress on structural reforms but needs to speed up resolution of the Kabul Bank, at the heart of a corruption scandal.

The head of an IMF mission that wound up Kabul talks with Afghan authorities on Sunday, Paul Ross, said the economic outlook was "broadly positive," with growth projected at 11 percent this year.

Ross and his team completed the second review of Kabul's progress supported by a $133.6 million loan granted to the war-torn country in November 2011.

In June, the IMF released $18.2 million under the loan program after a largely positive first review.

Ross said Kabul had made headway in implementing structural reforms to strengthen the financial sector, mobilize domestic revenue, and improve governance.

But he called for swifter action in two financial sector reforms: improvement of the tax to gross domestic product ratio in 2013, and the strengthening of the financial sector and its governance, against the background of the Kabul Bank crisis.

"There was agreement on the need to expedite work to complete the submission of the new banking law to parliament," Ross said.

"The authorities stated their commitment to continuing Kabul Bank's asset recovery efforts and complete its resolution quickly," he said.

The original IMF loan had been held up for a year as foreign donors and the Fund pressed the government to deal with the massive Kabul Bank scandal, in which nearly $1 billion were lost in a scheme involving many powerful Afghan businessmen and officials.

The bank, once Afghanistan's largest, had to be taken over by the central bank in late 2010 amid accusations that powerful former executives siphoned off more than $900 million, some of which was used to buy luxury properties in Dubai.

Ross said the IMF team would continue its talks with Afghan authorities in the coming weeks.


Lawmakers Criticise High Peace Council Activities
TOLOnews.com By Jawed Stanikzai Monday, 12 November 2012
Afghan lawmakers on Monday criticised the activities of the High Peace Council (HPC) calling it a token entity that ignored the real threat of insurgents as its chairman departed for Pakistan for talks with officials.

MPs said in Monday's parliamentary session attended by the HPC chief Salahuddin Rabbani that all the goodwill of the Afghan government towards insurgents was being responded to with only more violence and cruel acts from the militants.

Kabul MP Shukria Barekzai said other countries were trying to benefit from the negotiations by appearing to mediate the talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

"We will not allow the neighboring countries to earn their grim aims by acting as mediators between the Afghan government and opposition groups," she said.

MP Mohammad Younus Qanooni said that negotiation needed to be taken more seriously as talks with the insurgents were too unconditional.

"We should consider the art of negotiations, otherwise we will not have desired outcomes," he said.

HPC chairman Salahuddin Rabbani, who addressed the MPs before he left for the three-day trip to Pakistan, said that the council is trying "any means" to bring the armed opposition groups to the negotiation table which included assistance from other Islamic countries.

"The Afghan High Peace Council is trying to invite the armed opposition groups to the negotiation table by any means, we have also considered some of their demands so far," Rabbani said.

"Our common efforts with grand Islamic organisations and centers helps change Pakistani thinking and approach towards war and peace issues in Afghanistan. This is one of the important things that can be useful consolidating durable peace," he added.

Rabbani went to Pakistan at the behest of Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar to meet with top Pakistani officials on Islamabad's role in the reconciliation process.


German Defense Minister Visits Afghanistan
TOLOnews.com Monday, 12 November 2012
The German Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere arrived in northern Afghanistan on Monday to visit troops based there and discuss withdrawal plans.

The Minister landed early Monday at a German military headquarters in the capital of northern Balkh province Mazar-e- Sharif and said his country will decide next week over its drawdown plans from Afghanistan.

He is expected to meet Afghan Minister of Defense Bismullah Khan Mohammadi in Kabul.

The German news agency dpa reported that Maiziere has said that he wants to get a picture of how the Afghan forces are taking on more responsibility for security.

His visit comes as Nato-led combat troops are set to withdraw by the end of 2014, handing over security responsibilities to Afghan forces.

Germany currently has 4,760 troops in Afghanistan as part of the Nato mission Isaf with most of them based in northern Kunduz province.


Afghans Scared by Talk of Militia Revival
Plan to bring together old mujahedin factions and reactivate their armed units.
IWPR By Hafizullah Gardesh 12 Nov 12
Afghanistan - A former Afghan warlord has caused consternation by suggesting that militias re-form to fill the gap left when international troops withdraw in 2014.

Mohammad Ismail Khan, formerly governor of Herat and now minister of energy and water, voiced the idea in a speech in the western city in late October.

The mujahedin groups that fought the Soviets in the 1980s and each other in the early 1990s have faded from view under United Nations-backed disarmament initiatives since 2001.

Despite the formation of the Afghan National Army, Ismail Khan says the old militias need to be reconstituted as a bulwark against the insurgents after 2014. He said he had discussed the idea with President Hamid Karzai as well as former mujahedin commanders.

"I have spoken in detail with the president himself, who is a former mujahedin member himself. We are now working on registering names, an agenda and a draft structure for a nationwide jihadi formation."

"I have talked to jihadi leaders from different provinces,” he continued. “We want to establish a general council of the mojahedin of Afghanistan very soon, for the sake of the country’s future and in order to uphold the Islamic system."

Karzai’s press office declined to tell IWPR whether the president had discussed or agreed to Ismail Khan’s proposal.

Creating a new military force with its own governing body would seem to undo 11 years of efforts to build a centralised government and national army. Also, although Ismail Khan argues that the paramilitaries are the only force capable of stabilising Afghanistan, the groups he is talking are mostly from the northern part of the country, and it unlikely they could control the Pashtun south or defeat the insurgents.

As provincial governor and then minister, Ismail Khan has been part of government in the post-2001 dispensation. But he used his speech to attack both the government and its international allies, accusing them of disarming militias like his own.

"They gathered up our artillery and tanks, and piled them up somewhere like trash. In their place, they brought in German girls, French girls, Dutch girls and armed American girls. They brought in white European soldiers and black African soldiers and thought they could ensure security here, but they weren’t able to," he said.

Although the mujahedin factions used to be notorious for fighting among themselves, Ismail Khan’s plan has won some support in some quarters. One of his old allies, Gholam Mohammad Masun, expanded on the proposal.

“Since people are evincing some fear and trepidation about the withdrawal of foreign forces after 2014, Ismail Khan decided to tell them he is standing side by side with them,” Masun said. “As for the mujahedin forces. who were dismissed in the name of DDR [Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration], it’s been decided to register and mobilise them so that if need be, they can help the national army and police.”

Qazi Nazir Ahmad Hanafi, a former militia commander in Herat and now a member of the Afghan parliament, said Ismail Khan’s remarks had been twisted – he had no intention of creating a parallel government or army.

"Ismail Khan's aim is to get the mujahedin involved in the government’s political and military system so as to provide better security once foreign forces withdraw," he said.

Such reassurances will do nothing to calm fears of a resurgence of numerous armed groups answerable to their own leaders rather than central government, and with a past record of bloodshed and plunder.

"I don’t know who Ismail Khan is going to wage jihad against probably against our oppressed nation," public servant Mohammad Hassan said, expressing worries shared by many. "I have a few requests for Ismail Khan and his jihadi friends. The biggest service they can do us is to refrain from harming us and our country. If they really want to serve the country and people, they should give the government the money they have looted and the lands they have seized over the past 25 years. They should stop trading under the terms Islam and jihad, stop working for Iran and Pakistan, and stop pouring salt on people's wounds."

The upper house of parliament condemned Ismail Khan’s proposal as illegal, and said building up the government’s defence forces was the only way forward.

Afghans who remember the civil war of the early 1990s fear any repetition of those years. As multiple militia factions fought each other, realigned themselves in new alliances, and then started fighting again, tens of thousands of civilians were killed, indiscriminate shell and rocket fire devastated large parts of Kabul, and lawless paramilitaries brutalised the population and looted property. When the Taleban arrived in Kabul in 1996, they were greeted as a much-needed force for stability and order.

Although the armed factions provided the ground forces for the United States-led invasion of late 2001, they subsequently receded from public view thanks to disarmament programmes and the creation of a national army.

"Any other [non-state] military formation is illegitimate and against the national interest," Ajmal Sohail, leader of the Afghan Liberal Party, said. “This move by Ismail Khan will further weaken the people's confidence in the Afghan government and armed forces. In fact, it is doing the enemy a favour.”

Sohail suggested that militia leaders were keen to demonstrate their continued ability to wield force, in the face of accusations of human rights violations and war crimes.

"They are doing this to defend themselves. It is a preemptive response to the [possible] implementation of transitional justice in this country, or trials at the International Criminal Court in The Hague,” he said.

A major report by Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission on past human rights abuses was quietly shelved last year – reportedly under pressure from individuals named as alleged perpetrators, and still in positions of power. According to Sohail, discussions on publishing the report were revived recently.

“That was a danger signal for those who have been involved in human rights violations of one kind or another,” he said.

Another view is that Ismail Khan is lining up a role for himself in a new, decentralised Afghanistan.

Political analyst Wahid Mozhda said there was now talk of dividing Afghanistan into eight zones, so Ismail Khan was manoeuvring to secure the western territories he used to control.

As Mozhda put it, "Ismail Khan wants to appropriate one of the eight ‘kingdoms’ for himself."

The result, Mozhda said, would be renewed civil war, as regional leaders backed by various foreign powers jostled for position.

Another analyst, Fazel Rahman Oria, agreed that fragmentation was a risk, adding that Karzai was unconcerned about this as long as he could ensure his own political survival beyond the next presidential election, due in 2014.

“The only thing Karzai wants is to make one of his own relatives the next president, so that he can be prime minister, and to ensure that the eight zones are ruled by his friends,” Oria said.

Hafizullah Gardesh is IWPR editor for Afghanistan.

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