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U.S. Soldier Accused Of Afghan Massacre Could Face Death Penalty
November 14, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Army prosecutors say a U.S. soldier accused of killing 16 Afghan villagers should face a court martial and, ultimately, the death penalty.
Prosecutors say Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales committed "heinous and despicable crimes."
Prosecutors made their closing arguments after a week of testimony in the preliminary hearing.
An attorney for Bales argued that there was not enough information to move forward with the court martial.
Prosecutors say the 39-year-old Bales slipped away from his remote base at Camp Belambay in southern Afghanistan to attack two villages early on March 11.
Among the dead were nine children.
Afghan witnesses who testified by video link from Kandahar described a single U.S. soldier barging into their homes and shooting civilians.
Based on reporting by AP, dpa, and Reuters.
Afghan newspapers look with pessimism on peace delegation talks in Pakistan
KABUL, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Afghan local newspapers on Wednesday expressed doubt about the prospect of peace delegation visit to Pakistan and seeking Islamabad's role to bolster national reconciliation with Taliban in Afghanistan.
"Attacking Kabul with rockets by Taliban militants on Tuesday is the response to Afghanistan government peace efforts and the visit of peace chief negotiator Salahudin Rabbani to Islamabad," the daily 8Subh or 8 Morning writes in its editorial on Wednesday.
A high ranking delegation led by Salahudin Rabbani, the chairman of government-backed peach body, High Peace Council, paid a three-day visit to Pakistan on Monday, during which they held meetings with Pakistani leaders including president and prime minister.
The Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, according to media reports, expressed his support to durable peace in Afghanistan, saying a stable Afghanistan is in the interest of Pakistan and the region.
"Taliban by firing rockets on Kabul from one hand rejected the ongoing peace efforts; while on the other, sent the message to President Hamid Karzai that the outfit is determined to continue fighting," the newspaper 8Subh further writes.
It also added that "Taliban supporters in Pakistan are reluctant to push Taliban leaders for talks before 2014; rather, the militants would intensify their attacks after 2014 when the NATO-led forces vacate Afghanistan."
Barrages of four rockets presumably fired by Taliban militants slammed into residential areas in Kabul on Tuesday left one person dead and injured three others.
Describing rocket attacks on Kabul as the failure of Afghan security agencies, the newspaper 8Subh warned that repeating such incidents would psychologically damage the Afghan people.
Another local newspaper the Daily Mandegar also predicted that the Afghan peace delegation "would return home empty handed" from Pakistan.
"Pakistan unfortunately has been utilizing Taliban as an instrument in achieving its strategic goals in Afghanistan and therefore would not give up support to the outfit," the Daily Mandegar wrote in its editorial, adding any optimism for wining Islamabad support towards peace in Afghanistan by Afghan government, Afghan peace delegation and the United States is deemed to defeat.
The Daily Mandegar also wrote in an article that Pakistan, like the past decade, the decade of war on terror, would not cooperate in achieving durable peace in Afghanistan in the future.
Pakistan to Release Some Afghan Taliban Prisoners
VOA News November 14, 2012
Pakistan has agreed to release some Afghan Taliban prisoners, amid talks with members of Afghanistan's High Peace Council about the country's reconciliation efforts.
Afghanistan has long sought access to the prisoners to aid the stalled peace process.
It was not clear how many or which prisoners would be involved in the release.
The head of the peace council, Salahuddin Rabbani, is in Pakistan for talks with top officials, including President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf and army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.
Ashraf told the Afghan delegation there is consensus that both countries should work together for peace in the region.
President Zardari pledged to support Afghanistan's peace efforts, and said having a peaceful, stable Afghanistan is important for Pakistan's own stability and prosperity.
International troops are handing over security responsibility to Afghan forces, and are set to withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
U.S. Defense Secretary Expresses 'Confidence' In General Allen
November 14, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has expressed confidence in the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, despite an investigation into possibly "inappropriate" communications.
General John Allen is under scrutiny for emails with a Florida woman linked to a sex scandal that engulfed David Petraeus and forced his resignation as CIA director.
Speaking in Australia, Panetta cautioned against jumping to early conclusions about the allegations against General Allen.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appeared with Panetta at a news conference on November 14. She declined to comment except to suggest the situation has not harmed the U.S. mission in Afghanistan.
On November 13, Panetta announced that Allen's nomination to become NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe had been put on hold.
Allen will now return to Afghanistan and remain in charge of international forces there until the probe in over.
Based on reporting by AFP and AP
NATO chief expresses "full confidence" in General Allen
BRUSSELS, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Wednesday expressed "full confidence" in General John Allen, the NATO and U.S. commander in Afghanistan, who is currently under investigation for alleged "inappropriate" communications with a woman.
"I have full confidence in General Allen. I really appreciate his leadership. He has demonstrated outstanding leadership as commander of our ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) mission in Afghanistan and has contributed to making significant progress," Rasmussen told reporters at the NATO headquarters.
Allen assumed command of NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan in July 2011, succeeding General David Petraeus. He has been nominated to be NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), the top military position in NATO, from early 2013, pending confirmation by the U.S. Senate.
"I look forward to continuing working with him if according to the U.S. procedures he is approved and confirmed as the new SACEUR," Rasmussen said.
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Tuesday that Allen's nomination for SACEUR would be delayed due to the ongoing investigation.
Allen's correspondence with Jill Kelley, a Florida socialite, surfaced after the FBI began to investigate the extramarital affair between Petraeus, the former CIA director, and his biographer Paula Broadwell.
Allen has maintained that he did nothing wrong.
Afghanistan's thriving civil society is getting worried
Building a strong civil society is among the greatest US successes since the occupation began. Can it last when the US leaves?
Global Post By Chris Sands November 13, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - Aziz Rafiee knows how tumultuous times of change can be in Afghanistan. As a young activist who protested against the Soviet occupation, he was imprisoned during the 1980s.
He then found himself living amid the chaos that followed when the communist government collapsed, before later witnessing the harsh reality of the Taliban regime's determination to impose law and order.
Now, with NATO troops leaving the country after more than a decade, a new dawn is again approaching. Some are worried that one of the few tangible achievements of the US-led occupation — the building of a thriving civil society — may be lost.
Rafiee is executive director of the Afghan Civil Society Forum organization, which started work in 2002 and has 120 member groups nationwide.
Looking back at more than 30 years of violence and unrest, he found it difficult to identify the darkest time because “we have passed through many.” But in contrast to his overwhelmingly bleak recollections of the eras that came before, he gave a mixed assessment of the current situation.
Hard-won gains in the areas of freedom of expression and human rights have been "two major successes" for him and his colleagues, he said. But he warned that they are being threatened by a mainstream shift toward religious fundamentalism, most clearly seen in faltering efforts to negotiate with the Taliban.
Speaking at his office near the heavily guarded Interior Ministry in Kabul, he said, "The Europeans, the Americans, the Afghan government and the regional actors are pushing political agendas rather than the social agenda for change and development.”
Nevertheless, Rafiee is confident the country is slowly heading in the right direction, largely because of a new generation’s desire for an end to the fighting. He doubts the withdrawal of foreign troops will cause the Taliban to return to power or provoke a civil war.
"I think more or less we will have the same situation, with a corrupt government, corrupt elections, a corrupt state, a corrupt economy — something in between," he said.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has sought to reassure people here that their basic rights will not be forgotten as America and its allies leave.
During an international summit in Kabul in 2010, she warned that if women and civil society groups "are silenced and pushed to the margins the prospects for peace and justice will be subverted."
In July this year, she met with Afghan activists in Japan, telling them "we want to continue to stand with you."
As part of the same conference in Tokyo, the international community reaffirmed it would give the government here a greater role in choosing how donor money is used, including a commitment to channel at least 50 percent of development assistance through the national budget. Washington has also agreed to that in its strategic pact with Kabul.
Some civil society representatives worry that in the future, substantially less aid will trickle down to a grassroots level because Afghan officials are inefficient, have other spending priorities or are corrupt.
Mirwais Rahimzai is executive board director for the Civil Society Coordination Center (CSCC), a nationwide network. He said there has already been a sharp decrease in funding as NATO troops begin to withdraw, investment is cut and the world turns its attention elsewhere.
"What we would have expected in 2014, we are seeing it — experiencing it — now," he said.
In the Taliban era, civil society was severely curtailed. Now, tens of thousands of Afghans are employed in the sector and the Economy Ministry alone has 1,755 local, nongovernmental organizations — including civil society groups — registered on its books.
But Rahimzai fears the country could suffer from a “brain drain” that sees young Afghanswho have benefited from the last decade moving abroad because the government is “not willing or ready” to recruit them to appropriate jobs and the opportunities within civil society are limited.
Another problem is growing insecurity. Although this effects much of the general population, it has left activists feeling more vulnerable to attacks from rebels and criminals.
Rahimzai comes from Maidan Wardak province, bordering Kabul. He told GlobalPost the Taliban’s strong presence in the area means he “cannot dream of going” there.
With time running out before all conventional foreign combat troops are due to depart at the end of 2014, activists are still waiting to see if the United States and its allies share their hopes for the future.
“If civil society does not find its place within the next two years, then Afghanistan will once again be in the hands of people who do not care about it,” said Malalai Shinwari, an executive board member of the Civil Society Coordination Center. “Once again Afghanistan will be in crisis and we will lose everything.”
Afghans Test Lead Role in Tough Spot
Wall Street Journal By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS November 13, 2012
SANGIN, Afghanistan - Two years before the U.S. and its allies are to hand over security responsibilities to Kabul, the Marines are putting to the test the question of whether the Afghans can hold on to hard-won gains in this restive area of the country's south.
The Marines, who last year numbered 21,000 in Helmand province, withdrew two-thirds of that force this summer and in many areas are standing back as Afghan soldiers and police work on their own. There are 18,000 foreign coalition forces in the province, compared with 30,000 during the peak of President Barack Obama's 2010-11 troop surge.
The early results in Helmand are mixed. Taliban fighters have become more aggressive, planting bombs and setting ambushes in areas the Marines had largely cleared. But the Afghan army has added thousands of troops to the province, and U.S. and Afghan commanders say they have shown the ability to battle back—albeit with allied air, intelligence and medical support that they will likely soon lose.
"In line with how they are manned and trained and equipped, they're absolutely holding their own and then some," said Brig. Gen. David Berger, commander of Marine ground forces in Helmand province. "That doesn't mean they're not taking a beating—they are where they're being challenged in some cases," he said.
Afghanistan is a Balkanized country and gains in one province can coincide with losses in another. Helmand, however, is key for both sides of the conflict. It is a heartland of the Pashtun, who make up the core of the insurgency, and contains vast fields of opium poppies that finance Taliban and drug gangs.
Early in the war, Helmand was the responsibility of British forces, who struggled to control the insurgency with some 10,000 troops. During the surge, the British collapsed into the central Helmand River Valley while new U.S. battalions fought for control of the southern and northern sections.
Sangin District, in the northern river valley, has been particularly dangerous. In the four years the British were in charge, one in every three of their troops killed in Afghanistan was killed in Sangin. The first U.S. unit to serve a full seven-month tour in Sangin, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, saw 25 men killed in action, most by roadside bombs.
The infusion of surge troops, however, succeeded in driving the insurgents back and securing the main road, Highway 611, which runs north to the American-financed hydroelectric dam at Kajaki. Insurgent attacks on coalition forces, Afghan troops and civilians in Helmand province fell 5% over the first nine months of the year, compared with the same period in 2011, according to military data.
Such attacks fell 4% nationwide over that interval, even as U.S. forces in the country have been reduced to about 68,000 from more than 100,000, according to the military.
The military hasn't decided at what pace to withdraw the remaining troops; U.S. commanders hope to leave a force of special-operations troops even after the handover.
Now the Marines are down to just two infantry battalions in Helmand, plus support units, while Afghan army and police in the province number some 30,000. The Afghan army last month moved to northern Helmand the headquarters of a seasoned unit, the 2nd Brigade of the 215th Corps, whose men now occupy 140 positions in the districts of Sangin, Kajaki, Musa Qala and Now Zad, a rogue's gallery of hot spots.
In those rough areas of northern Helmand, U.S., Georgian and other coalition forces join Afghan forces on about half of the patrols, according to Lt. Col. Stewart Upton, a Marine spokesman. In the southern Helmand River valley, which is more peaceful, the Afghan troops conduct about 90% of missions on their own.
"If we keep fighting for them, they're never going to pick up the slack," said Marine Capt. Sean Ramirez, an adviser to the Afghan brigade.
The insurgents have noticed the U.S. drawdown and are probing for weaknesses in government forces, especially on the road to the dam, according to U.S. and Afghan officers. Military data show a summer increase in insurgent attacks in Helmand as the Marines flowed out of the province.
At Forward Operating Base Nolay, the 2nd Brigade's new headquarters in Sangin, insurgents fire on the guards almost every night; and, in a brazen move, twice last month managed to plant roadside bombs at the entrance to the base itself, under the noses of Afghan soldiers standing watch.
The first bomb damaged a U.S. armored vehicle as it pulled into the camp, but caused no major injuries. The Afghan troops, now equipped with their own explosives-disposal unit, spotted the second bomb and destroyed it.
"The enemy thinks [the Marines] were defeated, and now they will be the owners of Afghanistan," said Col. Abdul Hai Neshat, the Afghan brigade's executive officer, who studied in Soviet and U.S. war colleges. But he said Afghan government forces are getting stronger. "We don't believe the enemy is winning the war."
The Afghan army still requires U.S. help in certain areas, particularly in providing air cover for ground troops, evacuation of the most seriously wounded and imagery from spy blimps, security cameras, jets and drones to monitor insurgent movements, according to American and Afghan officers.
Gen. Berger predicted the Afghans will continue to need U.S. air support for at least a couple of years, but called the Afghan military "much more resilient" than many skeptics think.
The insurgents, Col. Abdul Hai said, get support and shelter across the border in Pakistan. But many are locals who pick up a rifle one day and a hoe the next, making it hard even for Afghan forces to identify friend from foe.
Col. Abdul Hai predicted that, barring a political solution after 2014, insurgents and government forces will continue a grinding war in Helmand, with the army and police focused on securing district centers and main roads.
"It's a kind of war where there is no winner," he said.
Write to Michael M. Phillips at michael.phillips@wsj.com
Interview: Afghanistan braced for withdrawal of foreign forces in 2014
by Farid Behbud
KABUL, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Afghanistan is not worried over the withdrawal of the NATO-led foreign troops from the country by the end of 2014, Afghan Second Vice President Mohammad Karim Khalili told Xinhua recently.
"We are not concerned. Afghanistan is taking more security charges. The situation is improving and the security transition has already proven a successful process," Khalili said.
The transition of security control from over 100,000 NATO-led forces to Afghan national security forces, which began in summer 2011, will be completed by the end of 2014 when Afghanistan is due to take over defense for their own country.
"Personally, I do not agree that there will be a crisis in Afghanistan after the pullout of the foreign forces," Khalili said.
He said that the Afghan people, the government and international partners have a shared vision of developing Afghanistan into a stable, secure and prosperous country in the region.
The last of 33,000 U.S. reinforcing troops deployed to Afghanistan were pulled out of the insurgency-hit country in September.
"The number of our security forces has already reached the goal. They are strong and capable of providing security for the civilians. The withdrawal of the foreign forces is taking place gradually," Khalili said.
Afghanistan has a strong support from international community now and in the future. "So everything moves on smoothly,"he added.
Some observers say that 2014 will be a decisive year for the country as the third presidential elections since the downfall of Taliban regime in late 2001 will be held in April ahead of the final withdrawal of the coalition troops.
Currently there are about 100,000 NATO-led forces, with 68,000 of them Americans, stationed in the country to stop the Taliban from returning to power.
In a couple of weeks, when the third phase of the transition process ends, the Afghan national security forces will take full control of areas with about 75 percent of the country's population.
While the war-weary Afghans are worried over the capability of their national security forces to maintain security, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and other high-ranking military officials have expressed confidence in the army and police ability to protect civilians.
According to Karzai, even if the NATO-led forces leave Afghanistan, international financial support for the war-ravaged country will stay.
During an international aid conference in Japan in July, the donor countries pledged more than 16 billion U.S. dollars in development aid for Afghanistan through 2015.
The U.S. and its NATO allies also promised almost the same amount to support Afghan army and police after pull-out of their troops.
"The armed oppositions can renounce violence. They can take part in the upcoming presidential election. They can vote and they can name their candidates for the polls," Khalili said.
Karzai and other leaders have repeatedly offered peace talks with the Taliban. However, the insurgent group has categorically rejected the offer, saying there will be no talks until foreign troops leave the country.
Afghan Haqqani faction would consider talks under Taliban
Reuters By Jibran Ahmad 13/11/2012
PESHAWAR, Pakistan - The Haqqani network, seen as the most lethal insurgent faction in Afghanistan, would take part in peace talks with the United States but only under the direction of their Afghan Taliban leaders, a top faction commander said on Tuesday.
The rare flexibility exhibited by an Afghan militant commander was accompanied by a warning that the Haqqanis would keep up pressure on Western forces with high-profile attacks and would pursue their goal of establishing an Islamic state.
The Haqqanis, who operate out of the unruly border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan, say they are part of the Afghan Taliban and must act in unison in any peace process.
The commander, who declined to be identified, accused the United States of being insincere in peace efforts and trying to divide the two organisations.
"However, if the central shura, headed by Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, decided to hold talks with the United States, we would welcome it," he told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed, referring to the militants' leadership council.
The United States designated the Haqqani network a terrorist organization in September, a move its commanders said proved Washington was not sincere about peace efforts in Afghanistan.
The Haqqani network may prove to be President Barack Obama's biggest security challenge as he tries to stabilise Afghanistan before most NATO combat troops withdraw from Afghanistan in 2014.
The group's experience in guerrilla fighting dating back to the anti-Soviet war in the 1980s and its substantial financial network, could make it the ultimate spoiler of peace efforts, which have made little headway.
The commander said the Haqqani network was pleased about Obama's re-election, predicting he would be demoralised by battlefield losses and pull out U.S. forces earlier than expected.
"From what we see on the ground, Obama would not wait for 2014 to call back his forces," said the commander.
"They suffered heavy human and financial losses and are not in a position to suffer more."
The Taliban said in March they were suspending nascent peace talks with the United States.
A senior Afghan official closely involved with reconciliation efforts said last week the government had failed to secure direct talks with the Taliban and no significant progress was expected before 2014.
(Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Robert Birsel)
Afghanistan halts Helmand police fuel supplies after major theft
Cut to fuel supply after theft estimated at £380m risks ability of police to operate in Taliban stronghold
Guardian.co.uk By Emma Graham-Harrison Tuesday 13 November 2012
Garmser - Senior Afghan officials are said to have discovered large-scale theft of fuel in Helmand and halted all deliveries to police in the province, compromising the ability of the force to operate in one of the Taliban's major strongholds.
The cost of stolen or "misallocated" fuel in the province is thought to run into hundreds of millions of dollars. One official estimated its worth at $600m (£380m), though a spokesman for the Nato-led coalition said that would be equivalent to the total annual fuel budget for all Afghan security forces.
The apparent severity of the authorities' response, halting supplies since the start of November, indicates they considered the theft exceptional even in a country where fraud is rampant. To tackle it, they were willing to leave police without the fuel they needed to patrol one of the most dangerous parts of country, potentially putting security gains there at risk.
"There is an investigation still going on, but there was thievery or at least a misallocation of a huge amount of fuel at the provincial level," said US Marine Captain Devin Blowse, the company commander at Forward Operating Base Delhi in the Garmser district of Helmand.
Blowse said senior Afghan government officials were cutting off the Helmand police's fuel until they could stop the problem. "The higher levels in their government are basically cutting them off until the investigation can be completed and they can ensure it's not going to continue to happen," he said.
When they heard about the cut-off, marines responsible for training Afghan police units scrambled to fill the gap with Nato fuel. Officially they had stopped providing diesel months earlier, hoping to force the police to strengthen their own supply, but too much was at stake.
"You can't just turn off fuel," said Lieutenant Shane Vickers, a logistics expert on the police training team in the district, who asked for a month's supply. "They can't go out on patrol if they don't have any fuel. They can't run their generators, they don't have power," he said.
Both the provincial police chief and his top logistics officer confirmed that supplies to Helmand had been temporarily halted, although they denied corruption concerns played any role.
Police chief Colonel Abdul Nabi Elham said the cut-off was due to teething problems with new Nato procedures for fuel truck drivers and a new system to calculate fuel allocations, both of which had been resolved.
Logistics chief Colonel Torjan said fuel supplies had dried up two months ago and police had been buying diesel with government funds from ordinary gas stations. The stoppage was because Nato worried about the size of the bills. "There is a lot of spending on fuel, that's the reason," he told the Guardian . "They [Nato] said: 'you are using a lot of petrol, more than necessary'. He expected the disagreement to be resolved soon, he said.
Without stopgap Nato supplies, police might have been forced to foot fuel bills from their own modest salaries, or be stuck idling in their offices. If such a crisis occurred a year from now when most marines have gone home as part of the phased withdrawal from Afghanistan, the impact on security in Garmsir could be devastating.
Blowse has spent his most recent deployment in Afghanistan scaling back Marines' security and logistical support to their Afghan allies, with the informal motto "let them see failure but not achieve it". He reasons that the Afghan security forces need to test their limits while the Marines are providing a safety net, because by this time next year, they are expected to be largely on their own, but says the fuel outage is more than the police can currently manage.
"Something has gone critically wrong at the higher levels, so if the aftermath of that is that police in the entire district stop operating for an extended period of time that would be kind of a critical failure that we don't want to allow to happen," he said.
"We certainly don't want to make it easy for them to just revert back to using our supplies, but we also don't want a huge setback such as them completely ceasing to operate during a certain time In my eyes that would be achieving failure."
Problems with fuel are unlikely to go away; its scarcity and expense in a landlocked country with poor roads mean it is "like having normal money", according to one logistics officer. It has also attracted corruption, as a US government watchdog has pointed out in a string of reports.
The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction warned a few months back that the department of defence cannot accurately account for $1.1bn worth of fuel given to the Afghan National Army over a period of years, and have announced plans to audit police logistics systems for fuel, because they suspect they may be vulnerable to the same problems.
"No single commodity is as important to the reconstruction effort in Afghanistan as fuel, and no commodity is at such risk of being stolen or wasted," Special Inspector General John F Sopko was quoted saying in a recent report. "As the US and its coalition allies withdraw and transfer security responsibility to Afghan forces, US funded fuel will become even more vulnerable to waste through corruption and theft."
A spokesman for the coalition's regional headquarters in Helmand denied there had been a provincial-level halt in supplies, and said there were no allegations of fraud.
"The supply of fuel has not been switched off, I understand there have been delays due to the tightening up of accounting procedures," Lieutenant Colonel Martin Morris said in response to questions. There might be some shortages at the district level because the Ministry of Interior had not approved fuel requests, he added.
Additional reporting by Mokhtar Amiri
Pakistan Fears Afghan Spillover Of Chaos, Refugees
NPR By Philip Reeves November 13, 2012
Burhan Khan can't remember exactly when he fled from Afghanistan to Pakistan. He thinks it was about 30 years ago.
"Because there was war. There was killing, there was murdering, there was firing, and they wanted to kill me, and they wanted to kill my children, so I had to come here," he says.
It was the final phase of the Cold War, and CIA-armed Afghan guerrillas were fighting to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan.
Khan and his family wound up where they are today, in a mud hovel on a patch of wasteland outside Pakistan's capital, Islamabad.
Khan is 60, though his full white beard and deeply lined face make him look a lot older. He survives by hauling vegetables in a market.
He has never returned to his home, in northern Afghanistan's Kunduz province. He feels it's still too dangerous to try. "We can't go there because if we go, we will die there, our children will be killed; everybody is still killing us there," Khan says.
Each big new conflict in Afghanistan over the past three decades has unleashed a wave of refugees, many of whom have returned home.
Yet Pakistan still has some 1.7 million refugees — mostly Afghans — on its soil. Pakistanis fear another wave will arrive because of the fallout after 2014 from the drawdown of U.S. and NATO forces.
There is widespread concern the drawdown will be followed by a civil war in Afghanistan that will spill over into Pakistan, causing more violence in an already unstable nation. Leading Pakistani analysts say that prospect has led their country's policymakers to change tactics toward its neighbor.
External And Internal Threats
Pervez Hoodbhoy, a leading Pakistani political activist and commentator, says he thinks civil war in Afghanistan is "almost a certainty" after the departure of the international troops.
He wants U.S. forces to leave Afghanistan but says their withdrawal should be gradual. Even so, Hoodbhoy is very worried about what happens next. "It's going to be ugly, bloody, and no one is looking forward to 2014, except for the Taliban," he says.
Pakistan is going through a particularly rocky period in its turbulent history. The economy is in crisis. Conflict between Pakistani government forces and homegrown Islamist insurgents, including the Pakistani Taliban, has claimed tens of thousands of lives.
Hoodbhoy believes if he's right — and there is an Afghan civil war — refugees won't be the only threat to Pakistan.
"We will see the Taliban will become much bolder," he says. "There will be a feeling among Islamist forces in this country, and not just the Taliban, that with the Americans now out of here, it is now time for an Islamic revolution in Pakistan."
Fear that they'll soon face another bout of chaos and bloodshed is preying heavily on the minds of Pakistan's rulers.
A Shift In Policy
Pakistan's military and intelligence services determine the country's Afghan policy. And some analysts see a significant shift in that policy, brought about by Pakistan's desire to avoid more instability and violence.
"I think Pakistan has learned its lesson," says Tariq Fatemi, a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington. "It recognizes that in Afghanistan peace can prevail only where there is power sharing among the various ethnic groups."
Fatemi says he has spoken to many people in key positions, who tell him "that they now recognize that these ambitious plans of wanting to determine Afghanistan's destiny was not only a failed policy, but was a policy that caused us immense harm."
That policy is linked to Pakistan's constant worry about being sandwiched between two hostile countries.
Its old enemy, India, lies to the east. So for years, Pakistan sought to influence events in Afghanistan, to the west, by supporting its majority ethnic group, the Pashtuns.
Pakistan helped the Taliban come to power in the mid-1990s. In recent years, Islamabad has often been accused of covertly supporting certain Pashtun militant groups, including the Taliban and the Haqqani network.
With its own large population of Pashtuns, Pakistan has worked on the assumption that a Pashtun-run Afghanistan would be friendly and, it hoped, compliant.
Maleeha Lodhi, also a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington, says that's all changed.
"One of the biggest mistakes that Pakistan made in the past is that it saw somehow a Pashtun solution to Afghanistan, whereas now it sees an Afghan solution to Afghanistan," Lodhi says.
She says Pakistan no longer talks about seeking a friendly government in Kabul, just a stable one.
"If any group is excluded from power then there will be trouble in Afghanistan. That is the lesson from history that Pakistan has learned," she says.
Deep Divisions Remain
But have Pakistan's policymakers really learned that lesson?
Zahid Hussain has written several books about Pakistan and Islamist militancy. He is convinced that Pakistan's military fully signed on to the new Afghan policy a while back.
"It cannot be a policy without the approval of the Pakistani military establishment," he says. "I think there is complete unanimity on that."
Pakistan's military and intelligence establishment is highly secretive, and it's hard for outsiders to know what's going on within it.
Hoodbhoy, the analyst, points to deep internal divisions.
"The army is torn from within," he says. "There is a party which is seriously at war with one part of the Taliban. On the other hand, there is a substantial group which aspires to right-wing Islamist ideology."
Still, those seeking to forge peace in Afghanistan will surely welcome Pakistan's apparent new approach.
Everyone knows, though, that it won't necessarily avert disaster. There are so many unanswered questions: What if Afghanistan's presidential elections, slated for spring 2014, end in turmoil? Will an Afghan peace process ever get off the ground?
Deep distrust prevails between Afghanistan's ethnic groups.
Back in his mud hovel, Burhan Khan, the Afghan refugee, is unsure whether there will ever be peace back home — or if he'll ever be able to return.
Everyone back home knows one another; everyone remembers who supported whom in Afghanistan's wars, he explains. And that means there are many unsettled scores.
Security forces kill 2 key Taliban commanders in S. Afghan province
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Afghan and the NATO-led troops during a combined operations had killed two key Taliban commanders in militants' former stronghold Helmand province 555 km south of Kabul on Tuesday, provincial administration said in a statement released here Wednesday.
"The key Taliban commanders Mullah Barakat and Mullah Nasir were killed during joined operations of Afghan and coalition forces in Nahr-e-Saraj district Tuesday afternoon," the short statement added without giving more details.
According to the statement, the elimination of the mentioned Taliban commanders is a major setback to the outfit in Helmand and adjoining areas.
Taliban militants fighting the government and NATO-led force have yet to make comment.
7 Taliban, Haqqani fighters arrested in Afghanistan: ISAF
KABUL, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Seven Taliban and Haqqani fighters have been detained in operations in different Afghan provinces, as part of an increased campaign against insurgents in the country, the coalition forces said on Wednesday.
"An Afghan and coalition security force arrested a Taliban weapons and ammunition facilitator in Kandahar province today," the coalition or International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement providing daily operational updates.
Prior to his arrest, the Taliban facilitator was reportedly arranging to buy rocket-propelled grenades and a large quantity of assault-style rifles for the insurgency in the province some 450 km south of Afghan capital Kabul, it said.
Separately, the joint forces arrested a Taliban Improvised Explosive Device (IED) attack leader in Kandahar province also Wednesday morning.
"The detained Taliban leader is believed responsible for the coordination and emplacement of IED attacks targeting Afghan and coalition forces in the province."
Another Taliban weapons facilitator was captured in Helmand province 555 km south of Kabul on Monday.
"The detained Taliban leader is alleged to have regularly distributed heavy weapons and ammunition to Taliban fighters in Helmand,"
In addition, a Haqqani weapons facilitator was captured in eastern Logar province 60 km south of Kabul earlier Wednesday.
The Taliban-linked Haqqani network mostly operating in eastern Afghan provinces and capital Kabul is responsible for many high- profile attacks against the security forces.
"Afghan and coalition forces today confirmed the arrest of a Haqqani IED facilitator in Paktiya province Monday," the ISAF statement said, adding that the detained Haqqani leader is believed to be in charge of construction, transfer and emplacement of IEDs in the province 100 km south of Kabul.
The Taliban insurgent group and the Haqqani network, which was designated as terrorist group by the United States on Sept. 7 this year, has yet to make comments.
Hillary Clinton urges Australia to continue role in Afghanistan
The Australian By Paige Taylor November 14, 2012
THE US wants Australia to be part of continued work in Afghanistan after the end of the combat mission in 2014, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says at the start of bilateral talks in Perth.
Mrs Clinton congratulated Australia on being elected to the UN Security Council in her opening remarks at the annual AUSMIN conference at the West Australian state reception in Kings Park this morning.
"That achievement opens the door to even closer co-operation between us and lends an additional dimension to our AUSMIN agenda," she said.
The brief opening remarks were made shortly after Mrs Clinton went to the nearby State War Memorial to place a wreath. At the beginning of the conference, media were invited to listen to short statements. Mrs Clinton was seated at a long rectangular table flanked by senior colleagues including US Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta.
Sitting across the table were Defence Minister Stephen Smith, Foreign Affairs Minister Bob Carr, Australia's ambassador to the US Kim Beazley and senior Australian bureaucrats.
Mrs Clinton said she applauded the Australian parliament's approval of the US-Australia Defence Trade Co-operation Treaty, which she said would make it easier for the militaries of both countries to work together and further boost two-way commerce.
Mrs Clinton said today's talks would be about bilateral issues, but now that Australia was on the Security Council it was essential that the US listened to its views on other issues too.
"For example on Iran, where the international community remains firmly united in our efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, and on Syria where we need to stand together now," Mrs Clinton said.
She stressed the need for a long-term commitment to Afghanistan after the combat mission came to a close in 2014.
"That will not mark the end of our commitment to the people of Afghanistan," she said.
"The United States and the Australian government will have to work closely together with international partners to support Afghanistan ... so that it never again becomes a staging ground for international terrorism."
Mrs Clinton said all the work Australia and the US did together in the region and beyond was driven by shared values and visions.
She said the US was also committed to working with Australia "to build a more mature and effective multilateral architecture for the region" that could help settle disputes peacefully and promote universal rights.
Finalising the Trans-Pacific Partnership was a priority because it would lower trade barriers, raise labour and environmental standards, and drive growth across the region, she said.
Violence against Women Law is Not Islamic: Hajj Deputy Minister
TOLOnews.com By Karim Amini Tuesday, 13 November 2012
Some parts of Afghanistan's Elimination of Violence Against Women law is not in accordance with the provisions of Islamic Sharia law and will not be enforced by mullahs, Deputy Minister of Hajj Daee-ul-Haq Abed said on Tuesday.
"This act is against Islamic provisions so it would be difficult for our mullahs to implement it," Abed said in response to an activist asking if the Hajj Ministry will promote the law through the Islamic leaders.
"As long as it is not revised, we will not enforce it," Abed added, saying amendments were needed for it to be in accordance with Sharia law.
Abed made the remarks in a meeting with Afghan lawmakers and the civil society members. He did not elaborate on what parts of the law go against Islam.
The lawmakers present criticised his statements saying that if the law is not enforced, the ministry will face legal action.
"This law is not against the Islamic provisions, and the Ministry of Hajj is obliged to enforce the law otherwise it will face legal actions from the MPs," said Badakhshan MP Nilofar Ibrahimi, who attended the meeting with the Hajj officials.
Some other MPs including Massouda Karokhil, said that the mullahs are effectively encouraging men to commit violence against women.
"These mullahs are the cause of the increasing violence against women, with some of them even encouraging men to do violence against their wives," Karokhil said.
The Elimination of Violence Against Women law was enacted in 2009 to criminalise child marriage, forced marriage, selling and buying women for the purpose or under the pretext of marriage, baad (giving away a woman or girl to settle a dispute), forced self-immolation, rape, beating and 15 other acts of violence against women.
However, its enforcement has always been regarded as weak at best.
Abed's comments come on the back of a rising concern that violence against women is only increasing with the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission saying recently that reported cases have increased this year.
3000 Cases of Violence Against Women in 6 Months: AIHRC
TOLOnews.com By Rafi Sediqi Tuesday, 13 November 2012
Afghanistan Independent Human Right Commission (AIHRC) on Tuesday said it has registered more than 3,000 cases of violence against women in the first six months of the current Persian year.
The commission said that the massive number of cases is related to a greater awareness about what the rights of women were leading to more reporting of situations that go against this.
"The Human Rights Commission has held human rights training with people via meetings, seminars and awareness programs in many provinces, with the purpose to make people familiar of their rights, chiefly women," AIHRC Women's Rights Program Coordinator Latifa Sultani said.
"The programs are also held in some police bodies and schools," she added.
The Ministry of Hajj and Islamic Affairs says that Imams and religious leaders are responsible to be aware people about human rights in Islam.
Hajj Ministry's head of Mosques Mawlawi Abdul Malik Zyayee said that violence against women is forbidden in Islam, adding that he has ordered Imams to ensure people are aware of women's rights.
"Islam condemns violence against women. We started up some awareness programs for Imams to make people know of women's rights and we will supervise the programs as well," he told TOLOnews.
However, the Deputy Minister of Hajj Daee-ul-Haq Abed said today in a meeting with lawmakers and civil society activists that the 2009 Elimination of Violence Against Women law had provisions which went against Islam and would be difficult for mullahs to implement.
"As long as it is not revised, we will not enforce it," he said in response to a question from an activist about it.
Balochi Genocide Continues Today: Elders
TOLOnews.com By Rafi Sediqi Tuesday, 13 November 2012
Elders of the Baloch tribe in Afghanistan voiced concerns on Tuesday that their people were being systematically targeted in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran.
Speaking at a commemoration ceremony of the Baloch martyrs, Head of Afghan Baloch Tribal Council Shir Agha Baloch said he was concerned that there a genocide of his tribe was taking place with thousands of Balochi men and women killed by Afghan, Iranian and Pakistani security forces.
"Unfortunately, the genocide of the Baloch tribe continues intensively in Iran and Pakistan. They are always at risk while asking for their natural rights. Thousands of Balochis have been killed in the past years," he said.
"We will continue our fight to gain our rights," Baloch said, adding that 8,000 tribespersons were killed during Ziaulhaq's presidency in Pakistan and 18,000 more disappeared.
Member of Afghanistan's Sciences Academy Sulaiman Layeq also said that the tribe will continue to fight for their rights in society.
"Balochistan and the Balochis are under pressure and face brutality during the ages, but this tribe will continue fight for their rights," Layeq said.
Afghan lawmakers said that Balochis make up nearly two million people in Afghanistan but claimed that their equal rights were not provided.
"The rights of the Balochis have perished all over the country. The government has sidelined this tribe and did not provide them with basic governance," Afghan MP Farida Hamidi said.
According to head of the Balochis Council, the tribe is spread across multiple countries in the region with a population reaching to more than 27 million.
MOI Orders Arrest of Local Uruzgan Commander
TOLOnews.com By Jawed Stanikzai Tuesday, 13 November 2012
Afghan Interior Minister Mujtaba Patang on Tuesday ordered the arrest of a local armed commander in southwestern Uruzgan province following complaints from local residents of his cruelty and abuse.
Residents of Khas district of Uruzgan province on Tuesday complained to the parliamentary complaints commission that the local armed commander Hakim Shujaee, who appeared to be associated with the Afghan Local Police (ALP), was killing and raping residents.
The residents said Shujaee and his followers were equipped with police weapons and vehicles. They claimed he had murdered innocent people and raped women with impunity.
"They killed two of my sons during the month of Ramadan," one of the residents said to the lawmakers on Tuesday.
"If the government does not react, we will take up arms against them," another resident said.
Patang, who attend the commission to hear the complaints, immediately ordered Shujaee's arrest saying that he was not with the Afghan forces.
"Shuajee is an illegal armed commander, I have ordered his arrest and he will be introduced to the justice organs soon after detention," he told to the residents.
Some residents questioned how Shujaee could not be with the local police because he is using the facilities and equipment of the ALP.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
November 14, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Army prosecutors say a U.S. soldier accused of killing 16 Afghan villagers should face a court martial and, ultimately, the death penalty.
Prosecutors say Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales committed "heinous and despicable crimes."
Prosecutors made their closing arguments after a week of testimony in the preliminary hearing.
An attorney for Bales argued that there was not enough information to move forward with the court martial.
Prosecutors say the 39-year-old Bales slipped away from his remote base at Camp Belambay in southern Afghanistan to attack two villages early on March 11.
Among the dead were nine children.
Afghan witnesses who testified by video link from Kandahar described a single U.S. soldier barging into their homes and shooting civilians.
Based on reporting by AP, dpa, and Reuters.
Afghan newspapers look with pessimism on peace delegation talks in Pakistan
KABUL, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Afghan local newspapers on Wednesday expressed doubt about the prospect of peace delegation visit to Pakistan and seeking Islamabad's role to bolster national reconciliation with Taliban in Afghanistan.
"Attacking Kabul with rockets by Taliban militants on Tuesday is the response to Afghanistan government peace efforts and the visit of peace chief negotiator Salahudin Rabbani to Islamabad," the daily 8Subh or 8 Morning writes in its editorial on Wednesday.
A high ranking delegation led by Salahudin Rabbani, the chairman of government-backed peach body, High Peace Council, paid a three-day visit to Pakistan on Monday, during which they held meetings with Pakistani leaders including president and prime minister.
The Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, according to media reports, expressed his support to durable peace in Afghanistan, saying a stable Afghanistan is in the interest of Pakistan and the region.
"Taliban by firing rockets on Kabul from one hand rejected the ongoing peace efforts; while on the other, sent the message to President Hamid Karzai that the outfit is determined to continue fighting," the newspaper 8Subh further writes.
It also added that "Taliban supporters in Pakistan are reluctant to push Taliban leaders for talks before 2014; rather, the militants would intensify their attacks after 2014 when the NATO-led forces vacate Afghanistan."
Barrages of four rockets presumably fired by Taliban militants slammed into residential areas in Kabul on Tuesday left one person dead and injured three others.
Describing rocket attacks on Kabul as the failure of Afghan security agencies, the newspaper 8Subh warned that repeating such incidents would psychologically damage the Afghan people.
Another local newspaper the Daily Mandegar also predicted that the Afghan peace delegation "would return home empty handed" from Pakistan.
"Pakistan unfortunately has been utilizing Taliban as an instrument in achieving its strategic goals in Afghanistan and therefore would not give up support to the outfit," the Daily Mandegar wrote in its editorial, adding any optimism for wining Islamabad support towards peace in Afghanistan by Afghan government, Afghan peace delegation and the United States is deemed to defeat.
The Daily Mandegar also wrote in an article that Pakistan, like the past decade, the decade of war on terror, would not cooperate in achieving durable peace in Afghanistan in the future.
Pakistan to Release Some Afghan Taliban Prisoners
VOA News November 14, 2012
Pakistan has agreed to release some Afghan Taliban prisoners, amid talks with members of Afghanistan's High Peace Council about the country's reconciliation efforts.
Afghanistan has long sought access to the prisoners to aid the stalled peace process.
It was not clear how many or which prisoners would be involved in the release.
The head of the peace council, Salahuddin Rabbani, is in Pakistan for talks with top officials, including President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf and army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.
Ashraf told the Afghan delegation there is consensus that both countries should work together for peace in the region.
President Zardari pledged to support Afghanistan's peace efforts, and said having a peaceful, stable Afghanistan is important for Pakistan's own stability and prosperity.
International troops are handing over security responsibility to Afghan forces, and are set to withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
U.S. Defense Secretary Expresses 'Confidence' In General Allen
November 14, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has expressed confidence in the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, despite an investigation into possibly "inappropriate" communications.
General John Allen is under scrutiny for emails with a Florida woman linked to a sex scandal that engulfed David Petraeus and forced his resignation as CIA director.
Speaking in Australia, Panetta cautioned against jumping to early conclusions about the allegations against General Allen.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appeared with Panetta at a news conference on November 14. She declined to comment except to suggest the situation has not harmed the U.S. mission in Afghanistan.
On November 13, Panetta announced that Allen's nomination to become NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe had been put on hold.
Allen will now return to Afghanistan and remain in charge of international forces there until the probe in over.
Based on reporting by AFP and AP
NATO chief expresses "full confidence" in General Allen
BRUSSELS, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Wednesday expressed "full confidence" in General John Allen, the NATO and U.S. commander in Afghanistan, who is currently under investigation for alleged "inappropriate" communications with a woman.
"I have full confidence in General Allen. I really appreciate his leadership. He has demonstrated outstanding leadership as commander of our ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) mission in Afghanistan and has contributed to making significant progress," Rasmussen told reporters at the NATO headquarters.
Allen assumed command of NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan in July 2011, succeeding General David Petraeus. He has been nominated to be NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), the top military position in NATO, from early 2013, pending confirmation by the U.S. Senate.
"I look forward to continuing working with him if according to the U.S. procedures he is approved and confirmed as the new SACEUR," Rasmussen said.
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Tuesday that Allen's nomination for SACEUR would be delayed due to the ongoing investigation.
Allen's correspondence with Jill Kelley, a Florida socialite, surfaced after the FBI began to investigate the extramarital affair between Petraeus, the former CIA director, and his biographer Paula Broadwell.
Allen has maintained that he did nothing wrong.
Afghanistan's thriving civil society is getting worried
Building a strong civil society is among the greatest US successes since the occupation began. Can it last when the US leaves?
Global Post By Chris Sands November 13, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - Aziz Rafiee knows how tumultuous times of change can be in Afghanistan. As a young activist who protested against the Soviet occupation, he was imprisoned during the 1980s.
He then found himself living amid the chaos that followed when the communist government collapsed, before later witnessing the harsh reality of the Taliban regime's determination to impose law and order.
Now, with NATO troops leaving the country after more than a decade, a new dawn is again approaching. Some are worried that one of the few tangible achievements of the US-led occupation — the building of a thriving civil society — may be lost.
Rafiee is executive director of the Afghan Civil Society Forum organization, which started work in 2002 and has 120 member groups nationwide.
Looking back at more than 30 years of violence and unrest, he found it difficult to identify the darkest time because “we have passed through many.” But in contrast to his overwhelmingly bleak recollections of the eras that came before, he gave a mixed assessment of the current situation.
Hard-won gains in the areas of freedom of expression and human rights have been "two major successes" for him and his colleagues, he said. But he warned that they are being threatened by a mainstream shift toward religious fundamentalism, most clearly seen in faltering efforts to negotiate with the Taliban.
Speaking at his office near the heavily guarded Interior Ministry in Kabul, he said, "The Europeans, the Americans, the Afghan government and the regional actors are pushing political agendas rather than the social agenda for change and development.”
Nevertheless, Rafiee is confident the country is slowly heading in the right direction, largely because of a new generation’s desire for an end to the fighting. He doubts the withdrawal of foreign troops will cause the Taliban to return to power or provoke a civil war.
"I think more or less we will have the same situation, with a corrupt government, corrupt elections, a corrupt state, a corrupt economy — something in between," he said.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has sought to reassure people here that their basic rights will not be forgotten as America and its allies leave.
During an international summit in Kabul in 2010, she warned that if women and civil society groups "are silenced and pushed to the margins the prospects for peace and justice will be subverted."
In July this year, she met with Afghan activists in Japan, telling them "we want to continue to stand with you."
As part of the same conference in Tokyo, the international community reaffirmed it would give the government here a greater role in choosing how donor money is used, including a commitment to channel at least 50 percent of development assistance through the national budget. Washington has also agreed to that in its strategic pact with Kabul.
Some civil society representatives worry that in the future, substantially less aid will trickle down to a grassroots level because Afghan officials are inefficient, have other spending priorities or are corrupt.
Mirwais Rahimzai is executive board director for the Civil Society Coordination Center (CSCC), a nationwide network. He said there has already been a sharp decrease in funding as NATO troops begin to withdraw, investment is cut and the world turns its attention elsewhere.
"What we would have expected in 2014, we are seeing it — experiencing it — now," he said.
In the Taliban era, civil society was severely curtailed. Now, tens of thousands of Afghans are employed in the sector and the Economy Ministry alone has 1,755 local, nongovernmental organizations — including civil society groups — registered on its books.
But Rahimzai fears the country could suffer from a “brain drain” that sees young Afghanswho have benefited from the last decade moving abroad because the government is “not willing or ready” to recruit them to appropriate jobs and the opportunities within civil society are limited.
Another problem is growing insecurity. Although this effects much of the general population, it has left activists feeling more vulnerable to attacks from rebels and criminals.
Rahimzai comes from Maidan Wardak province, bordering Kabul. He told GlobalPost the Taliban’s strong presence in the area means he “cannot dream of going” there.
With time running out before all conventional foreign combat troops are due to depart at the end of 2014, activists are still waiting to see if the United States and its allies share their hopes for the future.
“If civil society does not find its place within the next two years, then Afghanistan will once again be in the hands of people who do not care about it,” said Malalai Shinwari, an executive board member of the Civil Society Coordination Center. “Once again Afghanistan will be in crisis and we will lose everything.”
Afghans Test Lead Role in Tough Spot
Wall Street Journal By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS November 13, 2012
SANGIN, Afghanistan - Two years before the U.S. and its allies are to hand over security responsibilities to Kabul, the Marines are putting to the test the question of whether the Afghans can hold on to hard-won gains in this restive area of the country's south.
The Marines, who last year numbered 21,000 in Helmand province, withdrew two-thirds of that force this summer and in many areas are standing back as Afghan soldiers and police work on their own. There are 18,000 foreign coalition forces in the province, compared with 30,000 during the peak of President Barack Obama's 2010-11 troop surge.
The early results in Helmand are mixed. Taliban fighters have become more aggressive, planting bombs and setting ambushes in areas the Marines had largely cleared. But the Afghan army has added thousands of troops to the province, and U.S. and Afghan commanders say they have shown the ability to battle back—albeit with allied air, intelligence and medical support that they will likely soon lose.
"In line with how they are manned and trained and equipped, they're absolutely holding their own and then some," said Brig. Gen. David Berger, commander of Marine ground forces in Helmand province. "That doesn't mean they're not taking a beating—they are where they're being challenged in some cases," he said.
Afghanistan is a Balkanized country and gains in one province can coincide with losses in another. Helmand, however, is key for both sides of the conflict. It is a heartland of the Pashtun, who make up the core of the insurgency, and contains vast fields of opium poppies that finance Taliban and drug gangs.
Early in the war, Helmand was the responsibility of British forces, who struggled to control the insurgency with some 10,000 troops. During the surge, the British collapsed into the central Helmand River Valley while new U.S. battalions fought for control of the southern and northern sections.
Sangin District, in the northern river valley, has been particularly dangerous. In the four years the British were in charge, one in every three of their troops killed in Afghanistan was killed in Sangin. The first U.S. unit to serve a full seven-month tour in Sangin, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, saw 25 men killed in action, most by roadside bombs.
The infusion of surge troops, however, succeeded in driving the insurgents back and securing the main road, Highway 611, which runs north to the American-financed hydroelectric dam at Kajaki. Insurgent attacks on coalition forces, Afghan troops and civilians in Helmand province fell 5% over the first nine months of the year, compared with the same period in 2011, according to military data.
Such attacks fell 4% nationwide over that interval, even as U.S. forces in the country have been reduced to about 68,000 from more than 100,000, according to the military.
The military hasn't decided at what pace to withdraw the remaining troops; U.S. commanders hope to leave a force of special-operations troops even after the handover.
Now the Marines are down to just two infantry battalions in Helmand, plus support units, while Afghan army and police in the province number some 30,000. The Afghan army last month moved to northern Helmand the headquarters of a seasoned unit, the 2nd Brigade of the 215th Corps, whose men now occupy 140 positions in the districts of Sangin, Kajaki, Musa Qala and Now Zad, a rogue's gallery of hot spots.
In those rough areas of northern Helmand, U.S., Georgian and other coalition forces join Afghan forces on about half of the patrols, according to Lt. Col. Stewart Upton, a Marine spokesman. In the southern Helmand River valley, which is more peaceful, the Afghan troops conduct about 90% of missions on their own.
"If we keep fighting for them, they're never going to pick up the slack," said Marine Capt. Sean Ramirez, an adviser to the Afghan brigade.
The insurgents have noticed the U.S. drawdown and are probing for weaknesses in government forces, especially on the road to the dam, according to U.S. and Afghan officers. Military data show a summer increase in insurgent attacks in Helmand as the Marines flowed out of the province.
At Forward Operating Base Nolay, the 2nd Brigade's new headquarters in Sangin, insurgents fire on the guards almost every night; and, in a brazen move, twice last month managed to plant roadside bombs at the entrance to the base itself, under the noses of Afghan soldiers standing watch.
The first bomb damaged a U.S. armored vehicle as it pulled into the camp, but caused no major injuries. The Afghan troops, now equipped with their own explosives-disposal unit, spotted the second bomb and destroyed it.
"The enemy thinks [the Marines] were defeated, and now they will be the owners of Afghanistan," said Col. Abdul Hai Neshat, the Afghan brigade's executive officer, who studied in Soviet and U.S. war colleges. But he said Afghan government forces are getting stronger. "We don't believe the enemy is winning the war."
The Afghan army still requires U.S. help in certain areas, particularly in providing air cover for ground troops, evacuation of the most seriously wounded and imagery from spy blimps, security cameras, jets and drones to monitor insurgent movements, according to American and Afghan officers.
Gen. Berger predicted the Afghans will continue to need U.S. air support for at least a couple of years, but called the Afghan military "much more resilient" than many skeptics think.
The insurgents, Col. Abdul Hai said, get support and shelter across the border in Pakistan. But many are locals who pick up a rifle one day and a hoe the next, making it hard even for Afghan forces to identify friend from foe.
Col. Abdul Hai predicted that, barring a political solution after 2014, insurgents and government forces will continue a grinding war in Helmand, with the army and police focused on securing district centers and main roads.
"It's a kind of war where there is no winner," he said.
Write to Michael M. Phillips at michael.phillips@wsj.com
Interview: Afghanistan braced for withdrawal of foreign forces in 2014
by Farid Behbud
KABUL, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Afghanistan is not worried over the withdrawal of the NATO-led foreign troops from the country by the end of 2014, Afghan Second Vice President Mohammad Karim Khalili told Xinhua recently.
"We are not concerned. Afghanistan is taking more security charges. The situation is improving and the security transition has already proven a successful process," Khalili said.
The transition of security control from over 100,000 NATO-led forces to Afghan national security forces, which began in summer 2011, will be completed by the end of 2014 when Afghanistan is due to take over defense for their own country.
"Personally, I do not agree that there will be a crisis in Afghanistan after the pullout of the foreign forces," Khalili said.
He said that the Afghan people, the government and international partners have a shared vision of developing Afghanistan into a stable, secure and prosperous country in the region.
The last of 33,000 U.S. reinforcing troops deployed to Afghanistan were pulled out of the insurgency-hit country in September.
"The number of our security forces has already reached the goal. They are strong and capable of providing security for the civilians. The withdrawal of the foreign forces is taking place gradually," Khalili said.
Afghanistan has a strong support from international community now and in the future. "So everything moves on smoothly,"he added.
Some observers say that 2014 will be a decisive year for the country as the third presidential elections since the downfall of Taliban regime in late 2001 will be held in April ahead of the final withdrawal of the coalition troops.
Currently there are about 100,000 NATO-led forces, with 68,000 of them Americans, stationed in the country to stop the Taliban from returning to power.
In a couple of weeks, when the third phase of the transition process ends, the Afghan national security forces will take full control of areas with about 75 percent of the country's population.
While the war-weary Afghans are worried over the capability of their national security forces to maintain security, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and other high-ranking military officials have expressed confidence in the army and police ability to protect civilians.
According to Karzai, even if the NATO-led forces leave Afghanistan, international financial support for the war-ravaged country will stay.
During an international aid conference in Japan in July, the donor countries pledged more than 16 billion U.S. dollars in development aid for Afghanistan through 2015.
The U.S. and its NATO allies also promised almost the same amount to support Afghan army and police after pull-out of their troops.
"The armed oppositions can renounce violence. They can take part in the upcoming presidential election. They can vote and they can name their candidates for the polls," Khalili said.
Karzai and other leaders have repeatedly offered peace talks with the Taliban. However, the insurgent group has categorically rejected the offer, saying there will be no talks until foreign troops leave the country.
Afghan Haqqani faction would consider talks under Taliban
Reuters By Jibran Ahmad 13/11/2012
PESHAWAR, Pakistan - The Haqqani network, seen as the most lethal insurgent faction in Afghanistan, would take part in peace talks with the United States but only under the direction of their Afghan Taliban leaders, a top faction commander said on Tuesday.
The rare flexibility exhibited by an Afghan militant commander was accompanied by a warning that the Haqqanis would keep up pressure on Western forces with high-profile attacks and would pursue their goal of establishing an Islamic state.
The Haqqanis, who operate out of the unruly border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan, say they are part of the Afghan Taliban and must act in unison in any peace process.
The commander, who declined to be identified, accused the United States of being insincere in peace efforts and trying to divide the two organisations.
"However, if the central shura, headed by Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, decided to hold talks with the United States, we would welcome it," he told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed, referring to the militants' leadership council.
The United States designated the Haqqani network a terrorist organization in September, a move its commanders said proved Washington was not sincere about peace efforts in Afghanistan.
The Haqqani network may prove to be President Barack Obama's biggest security challenge as he tries to stabilise Afghanistan before most NATO combat troops withdraw from Afghanistan in 2014.
The group's experience in guerrilla fighting dating back to the anti-Soviet war in the 1980s and its substantial financial network, could make it the ultimate spoiler of peace efforts, which have made little headway.
The commander said the Haqqani network was pleased about Obama's re-election, predicting he would be demoralised by battlefield losses and pull out U.S. forces earlier than expected.
"From what we see on the ground, Obama would not wait for 2014 to call back his forces," said the commander.
"They suffered heavy human and financial losses and are not in a position to suffer more."
The Taliban said in March they were suspending nascent peace talks with the United States.
A senior Afghan official closely involved with reconciliation efforts said last week the government had failed to secure direct talks with the Taliban and no significant progress was expected before 2014.
(Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Robert Birsel)
Afghanistan halts Helmand police fuel supplies after major theft
Cut to fuel supply after theft estimated at £380m risks ability of police to operate in Taliban stronghold
Guardian.co.uk By Emma Graham-Harrison Tuesday 13 November 2012
Garmser - Senior Afghan officials are said to have discovered large-scale theft of fuel in Helmand and halted all deliveries to police in the province, compromising the ability of the force to operate in one of the Taliban's major strongholds.
The cost of stolen or "misallocated" fuel in the province is thought to run into hundreds of millions of dollars. One official estimated its worth at $600m (£380m), though a spokesman for the Nato-led coalition said that would be equivalent to the total annual fuel budget for all Afghan security forces.
The apparent severity of the authorities' response, halting supplies since the start of November, indicates they considered the theft exceptional even in a country where fraud is rampant. To tackle it, they were willing to leave police without the fuel they needed to patrol one of the most dangerous parts of country, potentially putting security gains there at risk.
"There is an investigation still going on, but there was thievery or at least a misallocation of a huge amount of fuel at the provincial level," said US Marine Captain Devin Blowse, the company commander at Forward Operating Base Delhi in the Garmser district of Helmand.
Blowse said senior Afghan government officials were cutting off the Helmand police's fuel until they could stop the problem. "The higher levels in their government are basically cutting them off until the investigation can be completed and they can ensure it's not going to continue to happen," he said.
When they heard about the cut-off, marines responsible for training Afghan police units scrambled to fill the gap with Nato fuel. Officially they had stopped providing diesel months earlier, hoping to force the police to strengthen their own supply, but too much was at stake.
"You can't just turn off fuel," said Lieutenant Shane Vickers, a logistics expert on the police training team in the district, who asked for a month's supply. "They can't go out on patrol if they don't have any fuel. They can't run their generators, they don't have power," he said.
Both the provincial police chief and his top logistics officer confirmed that supplies to Helmand had been temporarily halted, although they denied corruption concerns played any role.
Police chief Colonel Abdul Nabi Elham said the cut-off was due to teething problems with new Nato procedures for fuel truck drivers and a new system to calculate fuel allocations, both of which had been resolved.
Logistics chief Colonel Torjan said fuel supplies had dried up two months ago and police had been buying diesel with government funds from ordinary gas stations. The stoppage was because Nato worried about the size of the bills. "There is a lot of spending on fuel, that's the reason," he told the Guardian . "They [Nato] said: 'you are using a lot of petrol, more than necessary'. He expected the disagreement to be resolved soon, he said.
Without stopgap Nato supplies, police might have been forced to foot fuel bills from their own modest salaries, or be stuck idling in their offices. If such a crisis occurred a year from now when most marines have gone home as part of the phased withdrawal from Afghanistan, the impact on security in Garmsir could be devastating.
Blowse has spent his most recent deployment in Afghanistan scaling back Marines' security and logistical support to their Afghan allies, with the informal motto "let them see failure but not achieve it". He reasons that the Afghan security forces need to test their limits while the Marines are providing a safety net, because by this time next year, they are expected to be largely on their own, but says the fuel outage is more than the police can currently manage.
"Something has gone critically wrong at the higher levels, so if the aftermath of that is that police in the entire district stop operating for an extended period of time that would be kind of a critical failure that we don't want to allow to happen," he said.
"We certainly don't want to make it easy for them to just revert back to using our supplies, but we also don't want a huge setback such as them completely ceasing to operate during a certain time In my eyes that would be achieving failure."
Problems with fuel are unlikely to go away; its scarcity and expense in a landlocked country with poor roads mean it is "like having normal money", according to one logistics officer. It has also attracted corruption, as a US government watchdog has pointed out in a string of reports.
The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction warned a few months back that the department of defence cannot accurately account for $1.1bn worth of fuel given to the Afghan National Army over a period of years, and have announced plans to audit police logistics systems for fuel, because they suspect they may be vulnerable to the same problems.
"No single commodity is as important to the reconstruction effort in Afghanistan as fuel, and no commodity is at such risk of being stolen or wasted," Special Inspector General John F Sopko was quoted saying in a recent report. "As the US and its coalition allies withdraw and transfer security responsibility to Afghan forces, US funded fuel will become even more vulnerable to waste through corruption and theft."
A spokesman for the coalition's regional headquarters in Helmand denied there had been a provincial-level halt in supplies, and said there were no allegations of fraud.
"The supply of fuel has not been switched off, I understand there have been delays due to the tightening up of accounting procedures," Lieutenant Colonel Martin Morris said in response to questions. There might be some shortages at the district level because the Ministry of Interior had not approved fuel requests, he added.
Additional reporting by Mokhtar Amiri
Pakistan Fears Afghan Spillover Of Chaos, Refugees
NPR By Philip Reeves November 13, 2012
Burhan Khan can't remember exactly when he fled from Afghanistan to Pakistan. He thinks it was about 30 years ago.
"Because there was war. There was killing, there was murdering, there was firing, and they wanted to kill me, and they wanted to kill my children, so I had to come here," he says.
It was the final phase of the Cold War, and CIA-armed Afghan guerrillas were fighting to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan.
Khan and his family wound up where they are today, in a mud hovel on a patch of wasteland outside Pakistan's capital, Islamabad.
Khan is 60, though his full white beard and deeply lined face make him look a lot older. He survives by hauling vegetables in a market.
He has never returned to his home, in northern Afghanistan's Kunduz province. He feels it's still too dangerous to try. "We can't go there because if we go, we will die there, our children will be killed; everybody is still killing us there," Khan says.
Each big new conflict in Afghanistan over the past three decades has unleashed a wave of refugees, many of whom have returned home.
Yet Pakistan still has some 1.7 million refugees — mostly Afghans — on its soil. Pakistanis fear another wave will arrive because of the fallout after 2014 from the drawdown of U.S. and NATO forces.
There is widespread concern the drawdown will be followed by a civil war in Afghanistan that will spill over into Pakistan, causing more violence in an already unstable nation. Leading Pakistani analysts say that prospect has led their country's policymakers to change tactics toward its neighbor.
External And Internal Threats
Pervez Hoodbhoy, a leading Pakistani political activist and commentator, says he thinks civil war in Afghanistan is "almost a certainty" after the departure of the international troops.
He wants U.S. forces to leave Afghanistan but says their withdrawal should be gradual. Even so, Hoodbhoy is very worried about what happens next. "It's going to be ugly, bloody, and no one is looking forward to 2014, except for the Taliban," he says.
Pakistan is going through a particularly rocky period in its turbulent history. The economy is in crisis. Conflict between Pakistani government forces and homegrown Islamist insurgents, including the Pakistani Taliban, has claimed tens of thousands of lives.
Hoodbhoy believes if he's right — and there is an Afghan civil war — refugees won't be the only threat to Pakistan.
"We will see the Taliban will become much bolder," he says. "There will be a feeling among Islamist forces in this country, and not just the Taliban, that with the Americans now out of here, it is now time for an Islamic revolution in Pakistan."
Fear that they'll soon face another bout of chaos and bloodshed is preying heavily on the minds of Pakistan's rulers.
A Shift In Policy
Pakistan's military and intelligence services determine the country's Afghan policy. And some analysts see a significant shift in that policy, brought about by Pakistan's desire to avoid more instability and violence.
"I think Pakistan has learned its lesson," says Tariq Fatemi, a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington. "It recognizes that in Afghanistan peace can prevail only where there is power sharing among the various ethnic groups."
Fatemi says he has spoken to many people in key positions, who tell him "that they now recognize that these ambitious plans of wanting to determine Afghanistan's destiny was not only a failed policy, but was a policy that caused us immense harm."
That policy is linked to Pakistan's constant worry about being sandwiched between two hostile countries.
Its old enemy, India, lies to the east. So for years, Pakistan sought to influence events in Afghanistan, to the west, by supporting its majority ethnic group, the Pashtuns.
Pakistan helped the Taliban come to power in the mid-1990s. In recent years, Islamabad has often been accused of covertly supporting certain Pashtun militant groups, including the Taliban and the Haqqani network.
With its own large population of Pashtuns, Pakistan has worked on the assumption that a Pashtun-run Afghanistan would be friendly and, it hoped, compliant.
Maleeha Lodhi, also a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington, says that's all changed.
"One of the biggest mistakes that Pakistan made in the past is that it saw somehow a Pashtun solution to Afghanistan, whereas now it sees an Afghan solution to Afghanistan," Lodhi says.
She says Pakistan no longer talks about seeking a friendly government in Kabul, just a stable one.
"If any group is excluded from power then there will be trouble in Afghanistan. That is the lesson from history that Pakistan has learned," she says.
Deep Divisions Remain
But have Pakistan's policymakers really learned that lesson?
Zahid Hussain has written several books about Pakistan and Islamist militancy. He is convinced that Pakistan's military fully signed on to the new Afghan policy a while back.
"It cannot be a policy without the approval of the Pakistani military establishment," he says. "I think there is complete unanimity on that."
Pakistan's military and intelligence establishment is highly secretive, and it's hard for outsiders to know what's going on within it.
Hoodbhoy, the analyst, points to deep internal divisions.
"The army is torn from within," he says. "There is a party which is seriously at war with one part of the Taliban. On the other hand, there is a substantial group which aspires to right-wing Islamist ideology."
Still, those seeking to forge peace in Afghanistan will surely welcome Pakistan's apparent new approach.
Everyone knows, though, that it won't necessarily avert disaster. There are so many unanswered questions: What if Afghanistan's presidential elections, slated for spring 2014, end in turmoil? Will an Afghan peace process ever get off the ground?
Deep distrust prevails between Afghanistan's ethnic groups.
Back in his mud hovel, Burhan Khan, the Afghan refugee, is unsure whether there will ever be peace back home — or if he'll ever be able to return.
Everyone back home knows one another; everyone remembers who supported whom in Afghanistan's wars, he explains. And that means there are many unsettled scores.
Security forces kill 2 key Taliban commanders in S. Afghan province
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Afghan and the NATO-led troops during a combined operations had killed two key Taliban commanders in militants' former stronghold Helmand province 555 km south of Kabul on Tuesday, provincial administration said in a statement released here Wednesday.
"The key Taliban commanders Mullah Barakat and Mullah Nasir were killed during joined operations of Afghan and coalition forces in Nahr-e-Saraj district Tuesday afternoon," the short statement added without giving more details.
According to the statement, the elimination of the mentioned Taliban commanders is a major setback to the outfit in Helmand and adjoining areas.
Taliban militants fighting the government and NATO-led force have yet to make comment.
7 Taliban, Haqqani fighters arrested in Afghanistan: ISAF
KABUL, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Seven Taliban and Haqqani fighters have been detained in operations in different Afghan provinces, as part of an increased campaign against insurgents in the country, the coalition forces said on Wednesday.
"An Afghan and coalition security force arrested a Taliban weapons and ammunition facilitator in Kandahar province today," the coalition or International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement providing daily operational updates.
Prior to his arrest, the Taliban facilitator was reportedly arranging to buy rocket-propelled grenades and a large quantity of assault-style rifles for the insurgency in the province some 450 km south of Afghan capital Kabul, it said.
Separately, the joint forces arrested a Taliban Improvised Explosive Device (IED) attack leader in Kandahar province also Wednesday morning.
"The detained Taliban leader is believed responsible for the coordination and emplacement of IED attacks targeting Afghan and coalition forces in the province."
Another Taliban weapons facilitator was captured in Helmand province 555 km south of Kabul on Monday.
"The detained Taliban leader is alleged to have regularly distributed heavy weapons and ammunition to Taliban fighters in Helmand,"
In addition, a Haqqani weapons facilitator was captured in eastern Logar province 60 km south of Kabul earlier Wednesday.
The Taliban-linked Haqqani network mostly operating in eastern Afghan provinces and capital Kabul is responsible for many high- profile attacks against the security forces.
"Afghan and coalition forces today confirmed the arrest of a Haqqani IED facilitator in Paktiya province Monday," the ISAF statement said, adding that the detained Haqqani leader is believed to be in charge of construction, transfer and emplacement of IEDs in the province 100 km south of Kabul.
The Taliban insurgent group and the Haqqani network, which was designated as terrorist group by the United States on Sept. 7 this year, has yet to make comments.
Hillary Clinton urges Australia to continue role in Afghanistan
The Australian By Paige Taylor November 14, 2012
THE US wants Australia to be part of continued work in Afghanistan after the end of the combat mission in 2014, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says at the start of bilateral talks in Perth.
Mrs Clinton congratulated Australia on being elected to the UN Security Council in her opening remarks at the annual AUSMIN conference at the West Australian state reception in Kings Park this morning.
"That achievement opens the door to even closer co-operation between us and lends an additional dimension to our AUSMIN agenda," she said.
The brief opening remarks were made shortly after Mrs Clinton went to the nearby State War Memorial to place a wreath. At the beginning of the conference, media were invited to listen to short statements. Mrs Clinton was seated at a long rectangular table flanked by senior colleagues including US Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta.
Sitting across the table were Defence Minister Stephen Smith, Foreign Affairs Minister Bob Carr, Australia's ambassador to the US Kim Beazley and senior Australian bureaucrats.
Mrs Clinton said she applauded the Australian parliament's approval of the US-Australia Defence Trade Co-operation Treaty, which she said would make it easier for the militaries of both countries to work together and further boost two-way commerce.
Mrs Clinton said today's talks would be about bilateral issues, but now that Australia was on the Security Council it was essential that the US listened to its views on other issues too.
"For example on Iran, where the international community remains firmly united in our efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, and on Syria where we need to stand together now," Mrs Clinton said.
She stressed the need for a long-term commitment to Afghanistan after the combat mission came to a close in 2014.
"That will not mark the end of our commitment to the people of Afghanistan," she said.
"The United States and the Australian government will have to work closely together with international partners to support Afghanistan ... so that it never again becomes a staging ground for international terrorism."
Mrs Clinton said all the work Australia and the US did together in the region and beyond was driven by shared values and visions.
She said the US was also committed to working with Australia "to build a more mature and effective multilateral architecture for the region" that could help settle disputes peacefully and promote universal rights.
Finalising the Trans-Pacific Partnership was a priority because it would lower trade barriers, raise labour and environmental standards, and drive growth across the region, she said.
Violence against Women Law is Not Islamic: Hajj Deputy Minister
TOLOnews.com By Karim Amini Tuesday, 13 November 2012
Some parts of Afghanistan's Elimination of Violence Against Women law is not in accordance with the provisions of Islamic Sharia law and will not be enforced by mullahs, Deputy Minister of Hajj Daee-ul-Haq Abed said on Tuesday.
"This act is against Islamic provisions so it would be difficult for our mullahs to implement it," Abed said in response to an activist asking if the Hajj Ministry will promote the law through the Islamic leaders.
"As long as it is not revised, we will not enforce it," Abed added, saying amendments were needed for it to be in accordance with Sharia law.
Abed made the remarks in a meeting with Afghan lawmakers and the civil society members. He did not elaborate on what parts of the law go against Islam.
The lawmakers present criticised his statements saying that if the law is not enforced, the ministry will face legal action.
"This law is not against the Islamic provisions, and the Ministry of Hajj is obliged to enforce the law otherwise it will face legal actions from the MPs," said Badakhshan MP Nilofar Ibrahimi, who attended the meeting with the Hajj officials.
Some other MPs including Massouda Karokhil, said that the mullahs are effectively encouraging men to commit violence against women.
"These mullahs are the cause of the increasing violence against women, with some of them even encouraging men to do violence against their wives," Karokhil said.
The Elimination of Violence Against Women law was enacted in 2009 to criminalise child marriage, forced marriage, selling and buying women for the purpose or under the pretext of marriage, baad (giving away a woman or girl to settle a dispute), forced self-immolation, rape, beating and 15 other acts of violence against women.
However, its enforcement has always been regarded as weak at best.
Abed's comments come on the back of a rising concern that violence against women is only increasing with the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission saying recently that reported cases have increased this year.
3000 Cases of Violence Against Women in 6 Months: AIHRC
TOLOnews.com By Rafi Sediqi Tuesday, 13 November 2012
Afghanistan Independent Human Right Commission (AIHRC) on Tuesday said it has registered more than 3,000 cases of violence against women in the first six months of the current Persian year.
The commission said that the massive number of cases is related to a greater awareness about what the rights of women were leading to more reporting of situations that go against this.
"The Human Rights Commission has held human rights training with people via meetings, seminars and awareness programs in many provinces, with the purpose to make people familiar of their rights, chiefly women," AIHRC Women's Rights Program Coordinator Latifa Sultani said.
"The programs are also held in some police bodies and schools," she added.
The Ministry of Hajj and Islamic Affairs says that Imams and religious leaders are responsible to be aware people about human rights in Islam.
Hajj Ministry's head of Mosques Mawlawi Abdul Malik Zyayee said that violence against women is forbidden in Islam, adding that he has ordered Imams to ensure people are aware of women's rights.
"Islam condemns violence against women. We started up some awareness programs for Imams to make people know of women's rights and we will supervise the programs as well," he told TOLOnews.
However, the Deputy Minister of Hajj Daee-ul-Haq Abed said today in a meeting with lawmakers and civil society activists that the 2009 Elimination of Violence Against Women law had provisions which went against Islam and would be difficult for mullahs to implement.
"As long as it is not revised, we will not enforce it," he said in response to a question from an activist about it.
Balochi Genocide Continues Today: Elders
TOLOnews.com By Rafi Sediqi Tuesday, 13 November 2012
Elders of the Baloch tribe in Afghanistan voiced concerns on Tuesday that their people were being systematically targeted in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran.
Speaking at a commemoration ceremony of the Baloch martyrs, Head of Afghan Baloch Tribal Council Shir Agha Baloch said he was concerned that there a genocide of his tribe was taking place with thousands of Balochi men and women killed by Afghan, Iranian and Pakistani security forces.
"Unfortunately, the genocide of the Baloch tribe continues intensively in Iran and Pakistan. They are always at risk while asking for their natural rights. Thousands of Balochis have been killed in the past years," he said.
"We will continue our fight to gain our rights," Baloch said, adding that 8,000 tribespersons were killed during Ziaulhaq's presidency in Pakistan and 18,000 more disappeared.
Member of Afghanistan's Sciences Academy Sulaiman Layeq also said that the tribe will continue to fight for their rights in society.
"Balochistan and the Balochis are under pressure and face brutality during the ages, but this tribe will continue fight for their rights," Layeq said.
Afghan lawmakers said that Balochis make up nearly two million people in Afghanistan but claimed that their equal rights were not provided.
"The rights of the Balochis have perished all over the country. The government has sidelined this tribe and did not provide them with basic governance," Afghan MP Farida Hamidi said.
According to head of the Balochis Council, the tribe is spread across multiple countries in the region with a population reaching to more than 27 million.
MOI Orders Arrest of Local Uruzgan Commander
TOLOnews.com By Jawed Stanikzai Tuesday, 13 November 2012
Afghan Interior Minister Mujtaba Patang on Tuesday ordered the arrest of a local armed commander in southwestern Uruzgan province following complaints from local residents of his cruelty and abuse.
Residents of Khas district of Uruzgan province on Tuesday complained to the parliamentary complaints commission that the local armed commander Hakim Shujaee, who appeared to be associated with the Afghan Local Police (ALP), was killing and raping residents.
The residents said Shujaee and his followers were equipped with police weapons and vehicles. They claimed he had murdered innocent people and raped women with impunity.
"They killed two of my sons during the month of Ramadan," one of the residents said to the lawmakers on Tuesday.
"If the government does not react, we will take up arms against them," another resident said.
Patang, who attend the commission to hear the complaints, immediately ordered Shujaee's arrest saying that he was not with the Afghan forces.
"Shuajee is an illegal armed commander, I have ordered his arrest and he will be introduced to the justice organs soon after detention," he told to the residents.
Some residents questioned how Shujaee could not be with the local police because he is using the facilities and equipment of the ALP.
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