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Karzai slams US for failing to transfer of Bagram inmates to Afghans
Press TV November 19, 2012
President Hamid Karzai has strongly condemned the US for failing to transfer the control of thousands of inmates at the secret Bagram Detention Center to Afghan authorities.
The office of President Karzai said in a statement on Monday that the United States had not kept its promise of handing over the controversial prison to Afghans.
The president also blasted Washington's serious breach of the prison handover agreement between the two countries.
The statement came months after Washington and Kabul signed a deal in which the US consented to give control of the detention center in the northeastern province of Parwan to Afghan forces.
However, many view the transfer as a symbolic move as the US says it still retains the right to arrest Afghans.
The Bagram airbase prison, now called the Parwan Detention Center, holds thousands of prisoners. The transfer of hundreds of detainees, still in custody of the US forces, is among the unsettled issues.
The Prisoners found to be innocent are still being held at the controversial facility without charge.
Several human rights groups and organization have criticized the US-led Western military alliance for keeping the inmates in a state of limbo for years on end.
In May 2010, the International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed reports of the existence of the secret detention facility at the Bagram Airbase.
Karzai had demanded authority over the prison as a condition for signing an agreement covering the pull-out of US combat troops in 2014.
Washington is attempting to finalize a Strategic Partnership Agreement with Kabul under which the US troops are allowed to stay in the war-torn country beyond 2014.
The US claims its permanent military bases would greatly help Afghanistan fight against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. But twelve years on into the war, the vast swaths of the country are still home to militants.
Afghans believe that the presence of the US-led forces in their country is further escalating the unrest.
Karzai has frequently said the US and its Western allies were not serious about tackling the ongoing insurgency in Afghanistan.
The US-led invasion of Afghanistan was launched in 2001. The offensive removed the Taliban from power, but insecurity continues to rise across the country, despite the presence of thousands of foreign troops.
The US-led war in Afghanistan, which has caused record-high civilian and military casualties, has become the longest military conflict in the American history.
The escalating human cost of the war is putting a great deal of pressure on NATO member states to withdraw their troops.
Blast rocks western Afghan town, 3 injured
HERAT, Afghanistan, Nov. 19 (Xinhua) -- A powerful blast rocked the border town of Islam Qala in the western Herat province 640 km west of Kabul on Monday, injuring three people, a local official said.
"The blast happened at around 09:50 a.m. local time near a border police checkpoint in the border town of Islam Qala, leaving three people injured," the official told Xinhua but declined to be identified.
He also noted that authorized officials would release the details after completion of investigation.
Quetta Shura Reviews Afghan Peace Talks
TOLOnews.com By Abdul Wali Arian Sunday, 18 November 2012
Members of the Taliban leadership council, known as Quetta Shura, have reportedly reviewing Afghan peace process days after an Afghan delegation convinced Pakistani government to release senior Taliban officials as a confidence-building measure to bring Taliban to the negotiation table.
A member of the Shura, who didn't want to be named, has told Pakistani daily, The Nation, that the Taliban leadership council has welcomed new efforts by the Afghan and Pakistani governments.
President Hamid Karzai sent a delegation of High Peace Council members, led by Chairman Salahuddin Rabbani, to Islamabad to seek Pakistani officials support for the peace process. Pakistani government released eight ex-Taliban officials, including Taliban justice minister Noorudin Toorabi.
An ex-Taliban leader, Mohammad Akbar Agha, who lives in Kabul, said it would be effective if the Quetta Shura has changed its view regarding the peace process.
"If the comments by the Shura member represents the perspective of the whole council, it would be effectual for peace talks," Mr Agha told TOLOnews.
Afghan High Peace Council has welcomed the comments by the Taliban council.
The Afghan ambassador to Islamabad, Mohammad Omar Daudzai, earlier said that the Pakistani government has agreed to a gradual release of all Taliban prisoners in Pakistan.
Islamabad's role is considered as key to bring the Taliban to the negotiation table.
Police accused of robbing Afghan bank
Los Angles Times By David Zucchino November 18, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - The bank robbers were men who were often seen around town in uniform – police uniforms. They were, in fact, police.
Three Afghan National Police officers fled a bank in Afghanistan’s Nuristan province after breaking in after hours and stealing more than 29 million afghanis (about $550,000) late Friday night, according to Gen. Ghulamullah Nuristani, the provincial police chief.
You might call it an inside job. The officers were assigned to guard the bank, a local branch of Afghanistan’s central bank, Nuristani said.
Two of the officers were cornered in a nearby home and arrested, Nuristani told The Los Angeles Times. He said the home belongs to Abdul Rahman Kahan, who had been in charge of security guards for the province’s previous government.
Police recovered most of the money and were pursuing the third bandit and the rest of the cash, Nuristani said.
Nuristani said he suspected that powerful local figures loyal to the previous provincial government may have had a hand in organizing the robbery.
"Possibly there are some power-brokers behind this," Nuristani said by telephone from the isolated, mountainous province in northeastern Afghanistan. "The police have launched an investigation to find out who else is behind this."
UNICEF's role in providing education, health care to Afghan children
By Yan Zhonghua and Farid Behbud
KABUL, Nov. 19 (Xinhua) -- Protecting the rights of Afghan children and investing in their education and healthcare are the basic considerations in a smooth and orderly transition from a post-Taliban Afghanistan up to 2014 and beyond, said an official of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) here.
"We must be able to continue to have hope in the current generation of (Afghan) children and to invest in helping provide them with a better future, because we believe that by investing in education and healthcare and access to clean water, protection of children's rights, we can help ensure a stable transition for Afghanistan," Peter Crowley, UNICEF Representative in Afghanistan, told Xinhua in an interview on the eve of celebration of the Universal Children's Day on Nov. 20.
The handover of security control from about 100,000 NATO-led international troops to Afghan national forces, which began in summer 2011, will be completed by the end of 2014 when Afghans will take over the defense and police responsibilities for their country.
Some Afghan observers said that 2014 will be a decisive year for the war-torn country as the third presidential elections since the 2001 downfall of Taliban regime will be held months ahead of the final withdrawal of the coalition troops.
Crowley said that UNICEF has promoted the rights of women and children throughout Afghanistan and has worked to bring basic services, including education and healthcare, to those most in need, which are central to empower Afghan communities to develop their potentials and for the whole country to achieve peace and stability.
As one of the longest-serving international agencies in Afghanistan, UNICEF has been working consistently in the country for over 60 years in support of Afghan children and women.
Crowley believed that UNICEF's most tangible accomplishment in the country has been in the Afghan education sector.
"UNICEF was asked to play quite an important role immediately after the fall of the Taliban and we continued to have a very close partnership with the Ministry of Education of the government of Afghanistan," Crowley said.
Under the Taliban rule, which collapsed in late 2001, violence and intimidation were routinely used to prevent girls and women from attending school.
During the Taliban rule, there were fewer than 1 million children that have attended school, but today there are 8.3 million Afghan children in schools, some 40 percent of them girls, according to a UNICEF factsheet released in May 2012.
However, more than 4.2 million school-aged Afghan children,60 percent of them girls, are still deprived of education due to security problems, shrinking donor support, cultural norms that oppose girls' education, and sometimes early marriage, usually arranged by parents.
The present literacy rate in Afghanistan now stands at only 26 percent, but Afghan Education Minister Farooq Wardak hopes to increase it to 75 percent by 2020.
"Afghanistan does remain a very insecure environment and an unpredictable environment. And therefore we have to work very hard to try to manage and reduce the risks faced by our staff as much as possible," said Crowley
Having worked in Afghanistan for several years, Crowley said the conflict for the past 30 years makes the country a tough place for children but he added that he was impressed by the resilience of the Afghan people and the desire of the young to get an education.
"They are very positive and upbeat, they want to be doctors, they want to be engineers, and they want to build a better Afghanistan," Crowley said.
Crowley, who is an Irishman, said he found his work in Afghanistan challenging but enjoyable, adding that that in such an environment he was able to "draw enormous satisfaction for overcoming the challenges and making a difference in the lives of the Afghan people."
Freewheeling Afghan City Fearful of U.S. Pullout
New York Times By GRAHAM BOWLEY November 18, 2012
HERAT, Afghanistan - Women in Converse sneakers jog untrammeled — if still in full, flowing chadors — in this western Afghan city’s biggest park, enjoying freedoms rarely witnessed in the rest of Afghanistan.
Rich businessmen, refugees for a few days of “picnic” from more violent Kandahar, pull on apple-scented shisha pipes like lotus eaters in the pagodas of the local pleasure garden. Unwary for once of kidnappers or suicide bombers, they punctuate the night with hoots of laughter.
Herat, an ancient trading city of minarets and wide avenues in the brown borderlands of western Afghanistan, has probably advanced further than any other in this country toward modernity over the past 10 years. There is a quiet and firm belief here that if any place can ride out the coming economic and security turbulence as international forces and money depart, it will be this city.
Yet there are still whispers of encroaching violence, tremors of economic downturn, calls by a local strongman to rearm against the Taliban, conservative opposition to modernization — and doubt.
“War will start,” said Ghulam Reza, a slight man with a gray beard and turban, an old mujahedeen fighter who had brought his two grown-up daughters and their husbands to the Citadel, one of Herat’s landmarks.
He wanted them to see how much the hulking battlements had been restored with, in large part, a $1.2 million grant from the United States Consulate.
He also wanted to show them where he used to fight when war stalked the city, and all of those parts were in ruins.
“Everything will go back to the early 1990s, when there was a civil war among the mujahedeen groups,” he said, adding that there would still be hope if foreign forces stayed in large numbers.
There is the strong sense that Herat has an immense amount to lose.
The source of the city’s prosperity is not hard to see — the snaking road from the Iranian border 80 miles away runs to the dusty 200-acre customs yard on the edge of town. There, beneath brown hills chalked with “Allahu akbar” and “My love, Afghanistan,” lumbering trucks spill German air-conditioners, Chinese motorcycle parts and Saudi honey into the Herat economy for transport to the Afghan hinterland.
Although there are attacks in the districts outside the city, the Taliban have not secured a strong foothold in Herat. And trade and proximity to Iran and Turkmenistan have bred openness and a rich urbanization of furniture stores, office towers and storied homes, some in places where dirt tracks ran just five years ago.
The city has swelled in recent years to more than a million residents, according to provincial estimates. And the life here, in the quiet paved neighborhoods, the laughter of its fairs and chatter of its soccer fields, evokes something all too rare in Afghanistan — a people actually having fun.
But Herat is also a place where Afghan history has a tendency to splinter. It was here in 1979 that locals rose up against the Soviet-backed government, giving first momentum to a chain of uprisings that prompted the invasion and 10-year Soviet occupation of the country.
Much of the city was destroyed. In a dirty, bombed-out wasteland in the center of Herat, 600-year-old minarets still stand, barely, looking like haunted industrial smokestacks — a reminder to the people not only of their history but also of what they should be careful not to lose again, said Ayamuddin Ajmal, head of the department for the preservation of cultural monuments.
“They are the five fingers of our history,” said Mr. Ajmal, a sturdy man with short black hair, as he strode one morning beneath the minarets. “They witnessed a lot. Those bullet holes are holes in our history.”
A commander who took part in the 1979 rebellion, Ismail Khan, later became governor and self-styled emir of this region, his fatherly largess evident in Herat’s parks and museums.
Now, he is active again. Leaving his office in Kabul, where he serves as minister for energy and water, he returned to Herat on Nov. 1 to gather thousands of his former fighters outside the city, urging them to reactivate their networks and prepare to counter the Taliban if the national army is not up to the job. That call raised fears around the country that old dividing lines were again becoming active among the network of mujahedeen warlords who waged the civil war.
Worries about a return to the bad old days here and elsewhere in Afghanistan have cast a pall over Herat, contributing to a weakening of its lifeblood — trade — as the 2014 troop withdrawal approaches.
Annual economic growth has slipped from 20 percent in 2011 to about 10 percent, according to the Chamber of Commerce and Industries. And restrictions on trade through Iran and a slowing of that economy next door are also making things worse, locals say.
Out in the warehouses of the Shahab motorcycle factory in an industrial park near the airport, production has dropped from 400 bikes a day to 100, and the manager, Halim Shah Haideri, was forced to lay off half of the 150 workers. Mr. Haideri, 50, burst into sudden pessimism: “There will be a war, definitely.”
This pessimism has nurtured a sense of siege even in those areas where Herat has made the most social and cultural progress, like women’s rights and the media.
Herat boasts some of the highest levels of education for girls, and Afghanistan’s only female provincial chief prosecutor.
But the prosecutor, Maria Bashir, receives monthly notifications “of Taliban plots to attack me,” she said, sitting in her defended office in the government compound. “It is very difficult for them to accept that a woman should be in a decision-making position.”
Not far away, in one of Herat’s more expensive neighborhoods, Sayed Wahid Qattali, a young, well-connected businessman from a prosperous family, rented a house for $1,500 a month, built a studio and this month began Herat’s newest television station, Asar, or Time, which he describes as pro-democratic. He also started a radio station focused solely on women and their issues.
Both stations celebrate new freedoms won over the last decade. But the way he describes them, they are also weapons crucial now to defending those freedoms against the country’s enemies.
“I am trying to protect all these values,” Mr. Qattali said.
The competition includes rival cable channels in Herat — backed, he said, by Iran and Pakistan, and occupied with disseminating their propaganda. Those two neighbors loom large in almost every Afghan’s fears about who will determine the country’s fate once the United States leaves.
“We are against Talibanization,” Mr. Qattali said. “We are against the influence of Iran and Pakistan, who are supporting fundamentalism in the region.”
Later, in the sprawling park known as the Takht-e-Safar gardens — one of Ismail Khan’s legacies — children swirled in flying chairs at a creaky multicolored fun fair. As traditional music pulsed through a loudspeaker, they howled and kicked, still able to enjoy the openness of their sparkling city below.
But Mohammad Hares, a 19-year-old law student, wearing brown, traditional shalwar kameez and eating potato chips in the shadows of the pine trees, worried how long it would last.
“Recently there has been some security incidents in Herat city, and in the districts — assassinations, kidnappings — which have made Heratis very concerned,” he said, watching another ride, the Big Wheel, as men and women together were lifted up in blue, red and green buckets toward the sunset.
“I remember the Taliban times,” he said, “and I hope Afghanistan will be free so that the kids can continue with their education and go to school.”
Habib Zahori contributed reporting.
James Bond actor visits UK troops in Afghanistan
Reuters Sun Nov 18, 2012
LONDON - James Bond actor Daniel Craig surprised British troops in Afghanistan on Sunday by turning up at Camp Bastion in Helmand Province to introduce the latest 007 movie "Skyfall" as 800 soldiers sat down to watch it.
According to the Ministry of Defence, after giving a brief speech ahead of the screening, the 44-year-old actor was given a tour of the camp and met soldiers to see some of the training they underwent before being deployed to forward operating bases.
He also fired some of the machine guns used by British forces in Afghanistan and visited Bastion Role 3 Hospital which specialises in treating trauma patients.
"It was really good morale for everyone - it's a decent thing for him to take time to come out and visit everyone here," said Private Scott Craggs who serves as a medical technician.
"Skyfall", the 23rd official James Bond movie in the 50-year-old franchise, is now the highest-grossing instalment in the series with a global box office take of $669 million, surpassing the $599 million taken in by "Casino Royale" in 2006.
Craig has starred in the last three Bond movies.
(Reporting by Mike Collett-White; Editing by Stephen Powell)
Most Afghans Will Have Internet Access in 2 Years: Officials
TOLOnews.com By Zabihullah Jhanmal Monday, 19 November 2012
More than 80 percent of the Afghan population will have access to internet within the next two years, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) said after it issued an internet service license of Vimax to three private internet service providers (ISP).
Vimax will help the ISPs provide faster and more accessible internet services and will help other companies be more interested in investing in the country, Ministry officials said.
"The service is for regular internet customers such as internet companies, their customers, and government offices, but we expect the service will lead to a growth in investments," said MCIT Minister Amirzai Sangin.
The license was given to internet companies with a value of more than $500,000, he added.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Finance said the MCIT income is expected to be more than $160 million in this financial year.
"This year, a 9-month financial year, the income of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology will reach up to more than $160 million. This income is satisfactory," Deputy Minister of Finance Abdurrazaq Wahedi said.
MCIT said it has also begun serious monitoring over the quality of mobile phone services in a number of provinces. The companies will be penalised a cash fine if a low-quality service by the companies is proven, it said.
2 Taliban Weapon Facilitators Captured in Afghan Raid
TOLOnews.com Sunday, 18 November 2012
Two Taliban operative who were facilitating weapons and explosives to other militants were captured in a joint Afghan and Nato forces operation in southern Kandahar province on Sunday, Isaf said.
"The first detained Taliban facilitator is an improvised explosive device expert who is believed responsible for the acquisition, construction and emplacement of IEDs for attacks against Afghan and coalition forces throughout the province," Isaf said in a statement.
The second detainee is a weapons trafficker alleged to have coordinated transport of weapons and IED components to Taliban insurgents in Helmand and Kandahar provinces, it said.
The forces also captured one other suspected insurgent and seized IED-making materials during the operation, according to the statement.
It comes as five other insurgents were captured in a joint forces operation and seized 9 kilograms illegal narcotics during a security operation in search of a Taliban lethal aid facilitator in southern Helmand province today.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
Press TV November 19, 2012
President Hamid Karzai has strongly condemned the US for failing to transfer the control of thousands of inmates at the secret Bagram Detention Center to Afghan authorities.
The office of President Karzai said in a statement on Monday that the United States had not kept its promise of handing over the controversial prison to Afghans.
The president also blasted Washington's serious breach of the prison handover agreement between the two countries.
The statement came months after Washington and Kabul signed a deal in which the US consented to give control of the detention center in the northeastern province of Parwan to Afghan forces.
However, many view the transfer as a symbolic move as the US says it still retains the right to arrest Afghans.
The Bagram airbase prison, now called the Parwan Detention Center, holds thousands of prisoners. The transfer of hundreds of detainees, still in custody of the US forces, is among the unsettled issues.
The Prisoners found to be innocent are still being held at the controversial facility without charge.
Several human rights groups and organization have criticized the US-led Western military alliance for keeping the inmates in a state of limbo for years on end.
In May 2010, the International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed reports of the existence of the secret detention facility at the Bagram Airbase.
Karzai had demanded authority over the prison as a condition for signing an agreement covering the pull-out of US combat troops in 2014.
Washington is attempting to finalize a Strategic Partnership Agreement with Kabul under which the US troops are allowed to stay in the war-torn country beyond 2014.
The US claims its permanent military bases would greatly help Afghanistan fight against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. But twelve years on into the war, the vast swaths of the country are still home to militants.
Afghans believe that the presence of the US-led forces in their country is further escalating the unrest.
Karzai has frequently said the US and its Western allies were not serious about tackling the ongoing insurgency in Afghanistan.
The US-led invasion of Afghanistan was launched in 2001. The offensive removed the Taliban from power, but insecurity continues to rise across the country, despite the presence of thousands of foreign troops.
The US-led war in Afghanistan, which has caused record-high civilian and military casualties, has become the longest military conflict in the American history.
The escalating human cost of the war is putting a great deal of pressure on NATO member states to withdraw their troops.
Blast rocks western Afghan town, 3 injured
HERAT, Afghanistan, Nov. 19 (Xinhua) -- A powerful blast rocked the border town of Islam Qala in the western Herat province 640 km west of Kabul on Monday, injuring three people, a local official said.
"The blast happened at around 09:50 a.m. local time near a border police checkpoint in the border town of Islam Qala, leaving three people injured," the official told Xinhua but declined to be identified.
He also noted that authorized officials would release the details after completion of investigation.
Quetta Shura Reviews Afghan Peace Talks
TOLOnews.com By Abdul Wali Arian Sunday, 18 November 2012
Members of the Taliban leadership council, known as Quetta Shura, have reportedly reviewing Afghan peace process days after an Afghan delegation convinced Pakistani government to release senior Taliban officials as a confidence-building measure to bring Taliban to the negotiation table.
A member of the Shura, who didn't want to be named, has told Pakistani daily, The Nation, that the Taliban leadership council has welcomed new efforts by the Afghan and Pakistani governments.
President Hamid Karzai sent a delegation of High Peace Council members, led by Chairman Salahuddin Rabbani, to Islamabad to seek Pakistani officials support for the peace process. Pakistani government released eight ex-Taliban officials, including Taliban justice minister Noorudin Toorabi.
An ex-Taliban leader, Mohammad Akbar Agha, who lives in Kabul, said it would be effective if the Quetta Shura has changed its view regarding the peace process.
"If the comments by the Shura member represents the perspective of the whole council, it would be effectual for peace talks," Mr Agha told TOLOnews.
Afghan High Peace Council has welcomed the comments by the Taliban council.
The Afghan ambassador to Islamabad, Mohammad Omar Daudzai, earlier said that the Pakistani government has agreed to a gradual release of all Taliban prisoners in Pakistan.
Islamabad's role is considered as key to bring the Taliban to the negotiation table.
Police accused of robbing Afghan bank
Los Angles Times By David Zucchino November 18, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - The bank robbers were men who were often seen around town in uniform – police uniforms. They were, in fact, police.
Three Afghan National Police officers fled a bank in Afghanistan’s Nuristan province after breaking in after hours and stealing more than 29 million afghanis (about $550,000) late Friday night, according to Gen. Ghulamullah Nuristani, the provincial police chief.
You might call it an inside job. The officers were assigned to guard the bank, a local branch of Afghanistan’s central bank, Nuristani said.
Two of the officers were cornered in a nearby home and arrested, Nuristani told The Los Angeles Times. He said the home belongs to Abdul Rahman Kahan, who had been in charge of security guards for the province’s previous government.
Police recovered most of the money and were pursuing the third bandit and the rest of the cash, Nuristani said.
Nuristani said he suspected that powerful local figures loyal to the previous provincial government may have had a hand in organizing the robbery.
"Possibly there are some power-brokers behind this," Nuristani said by telephone from the isolated, mountainous province in northeastern Afghanistan. "The police have launched an investigation to find out who else is behind this."
UNICEF's role in providing education, health care to Afghan children
By Yan Zhonghua and Farid Behbud
KABUL, Nov. 19 (Xinhua) -- Protecting the rights of Afghan children and investing in their education and healthcare are the basic considerations in a smooth and orderly transition from a post-Taliban Afghanistan up to 2014 and beyond, said an official of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) here.
"We must be able to continue to have hope in the current generation of (Afghan) children and to invest in helping provide them with a better future, because we believe that by investing in education and healthcare and access to clean water, protection of children's rights, we can help ensure a stable transition for Afghanistan," Peter Crowley, UNICEF Representative in Afghanistan, told Xinhua in an interview on the eve of celebration of the Universal Children's Day on Nov. 20.
The handover of security control from about 100,000 NATO-led international troops to Afghan national forces, which began in summer 2011, will be completed by the end of 2014 when Afghans will take over the defense and police responsibilities for their country.
Some Afghan observers said that 2014 will be a decisive year for the war-torn country as the third presidential elections since the 2001 downfall of Taliban regime will be held months ahead of the final withdrawal of the coalition troops.
Crowley said that UNICEF has promoted the rights of women and children throughout Afghanistan and has worked to bring basic services, including education and healthcare, to those most in need, which are central to empower Afghan communities to develop their potentials and for the whole country to achieve peace and stability.
As one of the longest-serving international agencies in Afghanistan, UNICEF has been working consistently in the country for over 60 years in support of Afghan children and women.
Crowley believed that UNICEF's most tangible accomplishment in the country has been in the Afghan education sector.
"UNICEF was asked to play quite an important role immediately after the fall of the Taliban and we continued to have a very close partnership with the Ministry of Education of the government of Afghanistan," Crowley said.
Under the Taliban rule, which collapsed in late 2001, violence and intimidation were routinely used to prevent girls and women from attending school.
During the Taliban rule, there were fewer than 1 million children that have attended school, but today there are 8.3 million Afghan children in schools, some 40 percent of them girls, according to a UNICEF factsheet released in May 2012.
However, more than 4.2 million school-aged Afghan children,60 percent of them girls, are still deprived of education due to security problems, shrinking donor support, cultural norms that oppose girls' education, and sometimes early marriage, usually arranged by parents.
The present literacy rate in Afghanistan now stands at only 26 percent, but Afghan Education Minister Farooq Wardak hopes to increase it to 75 percent by 2020.
"Afghanistan does remain a very insecure environment and an unpredictable environment. And therefore we have to work very hard to try to manage and reduce the risks faced by our staff as much as possible," said Crowley
Having worked in Afghanistan for several years, Crowley said the conflict for the past 30 years makes the country a tough place for children but he added that he was impressed by the resilience of the Afghan people and the desire of the young to get an education.
"They are very positive and upbeat, they want to be doctors, they want to be engineers, and they want to build a better Afghanistan," Crowley said.
Crowley, who is an Irishman, said he found his work in Afghanistan challenging but enjoyable, adding that that in such an environment he was able to "draw enormous satisfaction for overcoming the challenges and making a difference in the lives of the Afghan people."
Freewheeling Afghan City Fearful of U.S. Pullout
New York Times By GRAHAM BOWLEY November 18, 2012
HERAT, Afghanistan - Women in Converse sneakers jog untrammeled — if still in full, flowing chadors — in this western Afghan city’s biggest park, enjoying freedoms rarely witnessed in the rest of Afghanistan.
Rich businessmen, refugees for a few days of “picnic” from more violent Kandahar, pull on apple-scented shisha pipes like lotus eaters in the pagodas of the local pleasure garden. Unwary for once of kidnappers or suicide bombers, they punctuate the night with hoots of laughter.
Herat, an ancient trading city of minarets and wide avenues in the brown borderlands of western Afghanistan, has probably advanced further than any other in this country toward modernity over the past 10 years. There is a quiet and firm belief here that if any place can ride out the coming economic and security turbulence as international forces and money depart, it will be this city.
Yet there are still whispers of encroaching violence, tremors of economic downturn, calls by a local strongman to rearm against the Taliban, conservative opposition to modernization — and doubt.
“War will start,” said Ghulam Reza, a slight man with a gray beard and turban, an old mujahedeen fighter who had brought his two grown-up daughters and their husbands to the Citadel, one of Herat’s landmarks.
He wanted them to see how much the hulking battlements had been restored with, in large part, a $1.2 million grant from the United States Consulate.
He also wanted to show them where he used to fight when war stalked the city, and all of those parts were in ruins.
“Everything will go back to the early 1990s, when there was a civil war among the mujahedeen groups,” he said, adding that there would still be hope if foreign forces stayed in large numbers.
There is the strong sense that Herat has an immense amount to lose.
The source of the city’s prosperity is not hard to see — the snaking road from the Iranian border 80 miles away runs to the dusty 200-acre customs yard on the edge of town. There, beneath brown hills chalked with “Allahu akbar” and “My love, Afghanistan,” lumbering trucks spill German air-conditioners, Chinese motorcycle parts and Saudi honey into the Herat economy for transport to the Afghan hinterland.
Although there are attacks in the districts outside the city, the Taliban have not secured a strong foothold in Herat. And trade and proximity to Iran and Turkmenistan have bred openness and a rich urbanization of furniture stores, office towers and storied homes, some in places where dirt tracks ran just five years ago.
The city has swelled in recent years to more than a million residents, according to provincial estimates. And the life here, in the quiet paved neighborhoods, the laughter of its fairs and chatter of its soccer fields, evokes something all too rare in Afghanistan — a people actually having fun.
But Herat is also a place where Afghan history has a tendency to splinter. It was here in 1979 that locals rose up against the Soviet-backed government, giving first momentum to a chain of uprisings that prompted the invasion and 10-year Soviet occupation of the country.
Much of the city was destroyed. In a dirty, bombed-out wasteland in the center of Herat, 600-year-old minarets still stand, barely, looking like haunted industrial smokestacks — a reminder to the people not only of their history but also of what they should be careful not to lose again, said Ayamuddin Ajmal, head of the department for the preservation of cultural monuments.
“They are the five fingers of our history,” said Mr. Ajmal, a sturdy man with short black hair, as he strode one morning beneath the minarets. “They witnessed a lot. Those bullet holes are holes in our history.”
A commander who took part in the 1979 rebellion, Ismail Khan, later became governor and self-styled emir of this region, his fatherly largess evident in Herat’s parks and museums.
Now, he is active again. Leaving his office in Kabul, where he serves as minister for energy and water, he returned to Herat on Nov. 1 to gather thousands of his former fighters outside the city, urging them to reactivate their networks and prepare to counter the Taliban if the national army is not up to the job. That call raised fears around the country that old dividing lines were again becoming active among the network of mujahedeen warlords who waged the civil war.
Worries about a return to the bad old days here and elsewhere in Afghanistan have cast a pall over Herat, contributing to a weakening of its lifeblood — trade — as the 2014 troop withdrawal approaches.
Annual economic growth has slipped from 20 percent in 2011 to about 10 percent, according to the Chamber of Commerce and Industries. And restrictions on trade through Iran and a slowing of that economy next door are also making things worse, locals say.
Out in the warehouses of the Shahab motorcycle factory in an industrial park near the airport, production has dropped from 400 bikes a day to 100, and the manager, Halim Shah Haideri, was forced to lay off half of the 150 workers. Mr. Haideri, 50, burst into sudden pessimism: “There will be a war, definitely.”
This pessimism has nurtured a sense of siege even in those areas where Herat has made the most social and cultural progress, like women’s rights and the media.
Herat boasts some of the highest levels of education for girls, and Afghanistan’s only female provincial chief prosecutor.
But the prosecutor, Maria Bashir, receives monthly notifications “of Taliban plots to attack me,” she said, sitting in her defended office in the government compound. “It is very difficult for them to accept that a woman should be in a decision-making position.”
Not far away, in one of Herat’s more expensive neighborhoods, Sayed Wahid Qattali, a young, well-connected businessman from a prosperous family, rented a house for $1,500 a month, built a studio and this month began Herat’s newest television station, Asar, or Time, which he describes as pro-democratic. He also started a radio station focused solely on women and their issues.
Both stations celebrate new freedoms won over the last decade. But the way he describes them, they are also weapons crucial now to defending those freedoms against the country’s enemies.
“I am trying to protect all these values,” Mr. Qattali said.
The competition includes rival cable channels in Herat — backed, he said, by Iran and Pakistan, and occupied with disseminating their propaganda. Those two neighbors loom large in almost every Afghan’s fears about who will determine the country’s fate once the United States leaves.
“We are against Talibanization,” Mr. Qattali said. “We are against the influence of Iran and Pakistan, who are supporting fundamentalism in the region.”
Later, in the sprawling park known as the Takht-e-Safar gardens — one of Ismail Khan’s legacies — children swirled in flying chairs at a creaky multicolored fun fair. As traditional music pulsed through a loudspeaker, they howled and kicked, still able to enjoy the openness of their sparkling city below.
But Mohammad Hares, a 19-year-old law student, wearing brown, traditional shalwar kameez and eating potato chips in the shadows of the pine trees, worried how long it would last.
“Recently there has been some security incidents in Herat city, and in the districts — assassinations, kidnappings — which have made Heratis very concerned,” he said, watching another ride, the Big Wheel, as men and women together were lifted up in blue, red and green buckets toward the sunset.
“I remember the Taliban times,” he said, “and I hope Afghanistan will be free so that the kids can continue with their education and go to school.”
Habib Zahori contributed reporting.
James Bond actor visits UK troops in Afghanistan
Reuters Sun Nov 18, 2012
LONDON - James Bond actor Daniel Craig surprised British troops in Afghanistan on Sunday by turning up at Camp Bastion in Helmand Province to introduce the latest 007 movie "Skyfall" as 800 soldiers sat down to watch it.
According to the Ministry of Defence, after giving a brief speech ahead of the screening, the 44-year-old actor was given a tour of the camp and met soldiers to see some of the training they underwent before being deployed to forward operating bases.
He also fired some of the machine guns used by British forces in Afghanistan and visited Bastion Role 3 Hospital which specialises in treating trauma patients.
"It was really good morale for everyone - it's a decent thing for him to take time to come out and visit everyone here," said Private Scott Craggs who serves as a medical technician.
"Skyfall", the 23rd official James Bond movie in the 50-year-old franchise, is now the highest-grossing instalment in the series with a global box office take of $669 million, surpassing the $599 million taken in by "Casino Royale" in 2006.
Craig has starred in the last three Bond movies.
(Reporting by Mike Collett-White; Editing by Stephen Powell)
Most Afghans Will Have Internet Access in 2 Years: Officials
TOLOnews.com By Zabihullah Jhanmal Monday, 19 November 2012
More than 80 percent of the Afghan population will have access to internet within the next two years, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) said after it issued an internet service license of Vimax to three private internet service providers (ISP).
Vimax will help the ISPs provide faster and more accessible internet services and will help other companies be more interested in investing in the country, Ministry officials said.
"The service is for regular internet customers such as internet companies, their customers, and government offices, but we expect the service will lead to a growth in investments," said MCIT Minister Amirzai Sangin.
The license was given to internet companies with a value of more than $500,000, he added.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Finance said the MCIT income is expected to be more than $160 million in this financial year.
"This year, a 9-month financial year, the income of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology will reach up to more than $160 million. This income is satisfactory," Deputy Minister of Finance Abdurrazaq Wahedi said.
MCIT said it has also begun serious monitoring over the quality of mobile phone services in a number of provinces. The companies will be penalised a cash fine if a low-quality service by the companies is proven, it said.
2 Taliban Weapon Facilitators Captured in Afghan Raid
TOLOnews.com Sunday, 18 November 2012
Two Taliban operative who were facilitating weapons and explosives to other militants were captured in a joint Afghan and Nato forces operation in southern Kandahar province on Sunday, Isaf said.
"The first detained Taliban facilitator is an improvised explosive device expert who is believed responsible for the acquisition, construction and emplacement of IEDs for attacks against Afghan and coalition forces throughout the province," Isaf said in a statement.
The second detainee is a weapons trafficker alleged to have coordinated transport of weapons and IED components to Taliban insurgents in Helmand and Kandahar provinces, it said.
The forces also captured one other suspected insurgent and seized IED-making materials during the operation, according to the statement.
It comes as five other insurgents were captured in a joint forces operation and seized 9 kilograms illegal narcotics during a security operation in search of a Taliban lethal aid facilitator in southern Helmand province today.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com