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Suicide bombers attack U.S. base in Afghanistan
By Rafiq Shirzad
JALALABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Suicide attackers detonated bombs and fired rockets outside a major U.S. base in Afghanistan on Sunday, killing five people in a brazen operation that highlighted the country's security challenges ahead of the 2014 NATO combat troop pullout.
Local police officials said bodies in Afghan police and military uniforms were scattered around the entrance of the airfield in the eastern city of Jalalabad after a two-hour battle. A Taliban spokesman said the militant group had launched the 6 a.m. assault.
The Taliban, who have been fighting U.S.-led NATO and Afghan forces for more than a decade, sometimes dress in uniforms for attacks.
Two suicide bombers died after blowing themselves up in cars, said Nasir Ahmad Safi, a spokesman for the provincial government.
Seven other bombers were killed in the a gunbattle with Afghan and coalition forces. Three Afghan soldiers and two civilians also died, said Safi.
U.S. helicopters circled overhead.
"There were multiple suicide bombers involved," said Major Martyn Crighton, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
Several coalition troops were wounded, he said.
The United States and Afghan government are scrambling to stabilise Afghanistan before most NATO combat troops withdraw at the end of 2014 and hand over security to Afghan forces.
Some Afghans doubt government security forces will be able to defend the country against any Taliban attempts to seize power again after foreign troops withdraw. There are also growing fears that a civil war will erupt.
President Hamid Karzai's government say Afghan security forces have made good progress.
Afghanistan's defence ministry spokesman said there were rocket attacks at the Jalalabad base followed by suicide bombings.
In a text message, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said : "This morning at 6 a.m. a number of our devotees attacked the major U.S. Base in Jalalabad city and so far have brought heavy casualties to the enemy."
In February, a suicide car bomber killed nine people at the base, almost exclusively used by NATO and the U.S. military.
(Additional reporting by Martin Petty in KABUL; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Ron Popeski)
Afghan peace council sees signs of progress with Pakistan and Taliban
Washington Post By Pamela Constable Sunday, December 2, 2012
KABUL - A year ago, Shafiullah Nooristani, a religious scholar from eastern Afghanistan’s Nuristan province, was shivering in a rudimentary, snow-covered cell after a month in Taliban captivity, wondering if each day would be his last.
Today, his rural district is still under Taliban control, but as a member of the government-appointed Afghan High Peace Council, his job is to try to persuade local insurgent commanders to give up their armed struggle. During a trip home in early November, he said, two of them accepted.
“I invite them to talk, and I tell them that if they keep on fighting, no roads or schools will be built and Nuristan will stay poor and backward,” Nooristani said last week. “But the key is working through our common tribal base. It was the tribe that negotiated my release last winter, and it is the tribes that can help us negotiate peace now.”
The High Peace Council has had a rocky two-year history, marred by controversy over appointees and the Taliban assassination of its leader, former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani, 14 months ago. But today, the 70-member group has begun showing unexpected signs of progress and energy under its new head, Rabbani’s son Salahuddin, 41, a Western-educated diplomat who was most recently Afghan ambassador to Turkey.
Beyond its members’ success in wooing homegrown Taliban commanders to join the peace process, the council has made recent headway with a larger and cooler customer, the government of next-door Pakistan. Officials there have paid lip service to the peace process, but they have also maintained long-standing ties with the Taliban and are believed to provide sanctuary for anti-Afghan insurgents.
In November, a council delegation headed by Salahuddin Rabbani held four days of talks in Islamabad and came away with several accomplishments. First, Pakistan announced it was releasing nine Taliban prisoners and pledged to release more. It also agreed to grant Taliban negotiators safe passage to travel for peace talks, seek to exempt them from U.N. sanctions and hold a meeting of regional Muslim scholars.
Rabbani, who has been visiting Washington and New York for talks, characterized the gestures as a turning point in Pakistan’s attitude, saying officials there are alarmed by the toll militant attacks have taken on their country and worried about a spillover of violence after NATO forces leave Afghanistan in 2014.
A visit by Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul to Pakistan on Friday appeared to reinforce the progress made by the High Peace Council delegation. In a joint statement after high-level talks in Islamabad, both sides expressed support for a political settlement to the conflict.
On Saturday, Pakistan announced it would release more Taliban prisoners, reportedly in response to a request from Rassoul. Pakistan’s foreign ministry did not say how many detainees would be freed or when, only that the steps would be taken to promote peace talks and “urge the Taliban to renounce ties to al-Qaeda.”
The Pakistanis “are showing they are ready to cooperate in the peace process. It is a big achievement,” said Habibullah Fawzi, a council member who was once a diplomat for the Taliban regime. “They are feeling pressure from the world community, and they realize that after 2014, if there is no peace in Afghanistan, it will affect the security and economy of Pakistan, too.”
But some council members, like many Afghans, remain deeply suspicious of Pakistan and suggest it is playing a double game, lending superficial support to the peace process while preparing for a possible Taliban return to power after Western troops withdraw.
“We cannot trust Pakistan. They are only acting now and releasing prisoners because of American pressure,” said Maulvi Qalamuddin, a bushy-bearded man in his 60s who once struck fear into Kabul residents as chief enforcer of the Taliban regime’s harsh Islamic rules. “What we need is for the other side to create a peace council. If they do that, I will call it an achievement, but not these tiny steps.”
Qalamuddin, who lives in a modest home off a steep dirt alley in the capital, expressed contempt for the present-day insurgents, saying they have “no will” for peace and no respect for law. “They are revolutionaries and thieves. They are not the real Taliban,” he said. “We were a government, and we followed Islamic law.”
There has been widespread criticism of the council’s pursuit of immunity or amnesty for Taliban who want to negotiate. Human rights activists said it would be a mistake to extend broad amnesty to individuals who have committed war crimes or violently suppressed the populace.
“No blanket amnesty will facilitate a lasting peace,” said Nader Nadery, an activist for human rights and good governance. “People are angry at the crimes and the bombings, and there is a great demand for punishment.”
Although fighting has decreased as cold weather sets in, the Taliban has continued to stage deadly attacks. In the past month, the group has claimed responsibility for a bombing that killed two guards in a high-security zone of Kabul and a truck bomb that decimated a public square in the capital of Wardak province, killing three people and wounding at least 90.
Taliban spokesmen have continued to denounce the Afghan government and the peace process, insisting they will never negotiate as long as Western forces remain in the country. They reacted violently to the recent executions of several Taliban prisoners in Kabul, all of whom were convicted of murder under Afghan law. Taliban spokesmen said the Wardak bombing was in retaliation for the hangings, which were condemned by international human rights groups but welcomed by many Afghans.
But some council officials said they see potential signs of change in the Taliban. Fawzi, who serves as a spokesman for the council, said he believed circumstances in Afghanistan — including the coming withdrawal of foreign troops — are shifting in favor of those on both sides who prefer negotiation to conflict.
“From the beginning, there have always been some Taliban who wanted peace, but the world and the government insisted on war,” he said. “Now the world has agreed that war is not the solution, the Afghan people are tired of it, and it seems like Pakistan is, too. So now, there is a way open for the Taliban. If this process continues sincerely, I think in another year or two, they will sit down and talk.”
Clash leaves 3 Taliban dead in eastern Afghanistan
PARUN, Afghanistan, Dec. 1 (Xinhua) -- Three Taliban militants were killed in a gun battle in the eastern province of Nuristan on Saturday, provincial police chief Ghulam Mohammad Nuristani said.
"A group of Taliban rebels raided police checkpoint in Barg-e- Matal district this morning and police returned fire killing three rebels on the spot and forcing others to flee," Nuristani told Xinhua, adding there were no casualties on police.
Meanwhile, Zabihullah Mujahid who claims to speak for the Taliban outfit told media by telephone from unknown location that two Taliban fighters and two police were killed in the gun battle.
Afghan Taliban commander killed
TRINKOT, Afghanistan, Dec. 1 (Xinhua) -- Afghan security forces raided a Taliban hideout in southern province of Uruzgan on Saturday, killing a key commander Mullah Nasir and arresting another commander Mullah Ghazi, police said.
"Afghan forces backed by the NATO-led coalition stormed a Taliban hideout in Charchino district at around 1:00 a.m. local time today, killing Taliban commander Mullah Nasir on the spot and arrested another commander Mullah Ghazi," provincial police spokesman Ayel Farid told Xinhua.
During the operation, two more Taliban militants were killed and two others arrested, he added.
Suicide car bomb kills 3 Afghans, wounds 4
TRINKOT, Afghanistan, Dec. 1 (Xinhua) -- A suicide car bomb that rocked Deh Rawad district in Uruzgan province 370 km south of Kabul left three civilians dead and injured four others on Saturday, police said.
"A terrorist equipped with suicide vest and driving a car blew himself up next to a police van in a bazaar in Deh Rawad district at around 04:00 p.m. local time killing three civilians including two children on the spot, and injured four more civilians," provincial police spokesman Farid Ayel told Xinhua. There were no casualties on police, he contended.
The bomber was also killed in his blast, he added.
Ayel also blamed Taliban militants for organizing the attack. However, the outfit fighting the government is yet to comment.
Today's deadly suicide bombing took place hours after killing a Taliban commander Mullah Nasir and arresting another called Mullah Ghazi in the neighboring Charchino district of Uruzgan province.
'4,000 domestic violence cases in Afghanistan in 7 months'
Mumbai, December 02, 2012 Hindustan Times
About 4,000 cases of domestic violence have been reported in Afghanistan in the last seven months, chairperson of Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission Dr Sima Samar has said. "In the last seven months, 4,000 cases of domestic violence were reported in Afghanistan," Samar said during an award function held here recently.
Male-domination in the society and lack of education are responsible for this, she said.
Samar, however, acknowledged that the condition of women has improved as compared to what it was under the Taliban.
"The condition of women in Afghanistan has improved a lot since the fall of the Taliban. During the Taliban rule, women were practically imprisoned in their own houses," she said.
According to her, the situation is changing for the better as girls are now getting educated. "Women are now educating themselves. They are also active in politics and have even began working as journalists," she said.
However, at some places there is a threat from the Taliban, who continue to burn girls' schools and even assault them, Samar said, adding, "Nonetheless, girls are taking the risk of going to their schools."
Afghanistan's displaced dread the coming winter
The country has nearly half a million displaced people, many living in primitive camps where the cold weather will mean death for some.
By David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times December 1, 2012
PARWAN-A-DUH CAMP, Afghanistan — Winter is descending on the Shakur clan.
In the pale gray twilight of late autumn, a sharp wind slaps at the scraps of plastic that Abdel Shakur, the clan patriarch, has installed on his mud hut walls in a futile attempt at insulation. The thin tarpaulins that serve as a roof are held fast by round patties of cow dung and worn auto tires.
Already, night temperatures are dipping to freezing or below. The 10 children of Abdel Shakur pad across the packed-clay floors in bare feet or plastic slippers. He pulls his wool wrap close around his bony shoulders.
"The snows are coming soon, and I'm afraid for the children," Shakur says. "When the snows come, people die."
During last year's exceptionally brutal winter, at least 42 people died of exposure or starvation in Parwan-a-Duh and other makeshift camps on Kabul's shabby fringes, according to the Afghan Ministry of Refugees and Repatriations. Almost all were children or elderly.
The French aid group Solidarites International puts the number higher, saying the cold killed more than 100 children alone in the numerous camps scattered in and around the capital.
Shakur, bearded and wizened at 47, says he lost his infant granddaughter, Parsima, last winter. The little girl grew weak and sickly before she was at last transported to a clinic, where she soon died.
Afghanistan is home to 460,000 internally displaced people, Afghans who have fled war, strife or famine in other parts of the country. More than 30,000 have settled in illegal camps around Kabul in search of jobs and shelter, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
In a desperately poor country, the internally displaced are often among the most dispossessed, living in abject poverty in makeshift housing with little access to sanitation or medical care. They get only nominal help from the Afghan refugee ministry, and limited, though regular, assistance from the U.N. refugee agency and other aid groups.
Even after a decadelong, multibillion-dollar Western humanitarian relief effort, the displaced remain as miserable and wretched as ever. That was the case last winter, when emergency relief efforts were not mounted in earnest until February, well after the first children had died.
The Afghan government discourages the settlements and does not want them to become permanent, worrying that they will attract even more people. Thus camp residents are not eligible for most humanitarian assistance, or for education or medical care. Authorities have encouraged them to return to their home provinces by offering assistance and free land there.
Meanwhile, the U.N. refugee agency and international aid groups have vowed to provide enough assistance — particularly blankets, clothes, gloves, fuel and plastic sheeting — to prevent deaths from cold and exposure this winter.
Mohammad Nader Farhad, a UNHCR spokesman, said the agency and other groups are providing emergency winter assistance for 240,000 internally displaced people. The agency has budgeted $2.8 million this year to assist internally displaced people year-round.
In Parwan-a-Duh, thin rivulets of raw sewage flow into low pits at the edge of homes thrown together from dried mud and clay, bricks, tarps and plastic sheeting. Water must be pumped from a well dug by aid workers and ferried home in plastic jugs.
Firewood is scare and expensive, so the huts are heated by burning trash and plastic collected by children whose hands are stained black with grime. From each hut, blue curls of acrid smoke rise to the overcast skies, contributing to the pall of dust and auto fumes that hangs like a shroud over the city.
Shakur has a steady source of fuel: dried manure from the 20 sheep and two cows he maintains in return for a small daily payment from local butchers. But the burning dung raises an awful stench, and the neighbors complain.
Shakur says the original camp was forcibly moved two years ago from an adjacent plot, where two new apartment towers have since risen. Their blue glass windows glint in the brittle afternoon sunshine. Well-to-do Afghan residents of the apartments gaze down at a vast expanse of tattered huts and garbage.
"They look at us with hate; they close their noses against the smell," Shakur says. "They tell us: 'Go away! You are filthy people!'"
He shrugs. "But where can we go?"
Shakur's clan of 20 Pashtun families fled Laghman province, where he says Taliban insurgents threatened to kill anyone who didn't give shelter and food to the fighters. The families had precious little food to spare, he says, and feared they would be killed. They retreated to Kabul nearly five years ago.
But Shakur also says the clan came to the capital in search of work; the Afghan refugee ministry contends that many among the internally displaced are economic, not war, refugees.
Shakur says the ministry's emergency aid was too little too late last winter. And so far this year, the ministry has provided no aid, he says.
That's true, says Dr. Abdul Samad Hami, deputy minister of refugees and repatriations. The ministry has submitted a budget for aid for internally displaced people, he says, "but, unfortunately, the Finance Ministry didn't approve the budget."
The relief burden must fall instead on the U.N. and international relief organizations, Hami says.
Shakur, chewing a slimy gob of green snuff, says he'll believe it when he sees it.
So, too, says Mohammed Anwar, 35, the bald, burly, self-appointed head of a section of the much bigger Qambar Square refugee camp a few miles away.
"We get no help; we're forgotten, even in the winter, when people are dying," Anwar says. He stands, arms folded, beside an ancient stove where his children are stuffing plastic and cardboard into a sputtering fire.
Aschiana, a nongovernmental Afghan relief group, provided the camp with a well and two tiny schools — one for boys and one for girls — housed in tents, in accordance with government policies banning permanent structures. The teachers are themselves refugees, like Joma Khan, 21, who says he learned to read and write during his five years in the camp.
There are occasional deliveries of cooking oil, rice, flour and blankets by relief groups, Anwar says, but not enough for the camp's 5,000 to 6,000 people.
Anwar says his extended family of 16 people fled Helmand province four years ago. They were trapped, he says, between NATO coalition airstrikes and night raids on the one hand, and Taliban demands for food and shelter on the other.
Now Anwar ekes out a living selling snacks, vegetables and cigarettes on the shoulder of a highway that skirts the camp. Sometimes he and his male relatives find day labor jobs in Kabul.
He pulls out a thin clump of worn bills, bound by a rubber band. He flaps it against his belly. "This is all I earn. My wife wants money for cooking gas — it's not enough."
Anwar looks down at his children. He has three sons and five daughters. Some attend the tent schools, he says. But on this day they are happily collecting trash to burn or begging from passing cars by tapping urgently on windshields and adopting pitiful poses.
Their hands and faces are stained black. "Look at them; they aren't really this black," Anwar says. "It's because they must live with dirt and trash."
Last winter, he says, more people would have died if several wealthy Afghan businessmen had not delivered food, fuel and blankets. This year, volunteers like Parween Omidi, a media worker in Kabul for the International Security Assistance Force — the North Atlantic Treaty Organization mission in Afghanistan — have taken it upon themselves to provide help.
Omidi, an Afghan American from Orange County, collected clothes, blankets, gloves, hats and school supplies for families at a displaced-persons camp called Chaman-e-Hozori. Escorted by a U.S. military security team, Omidi handed out bags of supplies to several dozen camp residents who had been driven to a school to accept the aid.
At the Parwan-a-Duh camp, Abdel Shakur nods in approval when told of the donations. But then he says, "That's fine for them, but we still have nothing."
He does not hold out hope that any aid will come to his camp from the ISAF. In fact, he says, it makes no difference to displaced people who rules the country, or whether international troops go or stay.
"We never see these foreign troops; we are invisible to them," Shakur says.
He says he has heard American combat troops are leaving in 2014. He shrugs at the thought, and turns back to tending his cows and sheep, whose hooves are smeared with their own manure.
"What does it matter?" he says. "After they leave, we will still be poor, and we will still be right here."
david.zucchino@latimes.com
Pakhtuns make majority of 1.6m Afghan refugees
Khaleej Times By Afzal Khan 2 December 2012
ISLAMABAD - Pakhtuns make the most of 1.6 million Afghan refugees registered in Pakistan, while around 70 per cent of them were born as refugees in the country, according to a nationwide survey.
“Pakhtuns constitute 82 per cent of the total Afghan refugee population in Pakistan and they are followed by five per cent Tajiks and four per cent Uzbeks and other ethnic groups,” said the findings of the Population Profiling, Verification and Response Survey of Afghan Refugees done by the States and Frontier Regions ministry and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in 2011.
According to a news release issued here, around one million Afghan refugees in Pakistan were interviewed for the survey, which examined the specific needs of Afghan refugees and generated accurate and detailed description of registered Afghan population, including information about intention to return to their country, livelihoods, socio-economic and legal conditions. The survey revealed that around 20 per cent of working Afghans had collectively invested over Rs18 billion in business in the country. The government had issued Proof of Registration Cards to refugees which would expire by the end of December. According to the survey, around 70 per cent of Afghan population was under the age of 18 and that most were born and raised in Pakistan.
Around 360,000 of the total of 1.6 million registered Afghan refugees have planned to return to Afghanistan. The refugees, who didn’t want to return to their country, cited insecurity, unemployment and lack of shelter major reasons for it. The survey revealed that 22.53 per cent of the refugees were economically active and of them, men accounted for 85.59 per cent of the total workforce.
According to it, the Afghan workforce comprises mostly adults aged between 25 and 59, while 31.3 per cent is made up of youths aged from 15 to 24.
Members of the two groups make 90 per cent of the total refugee population. The survey said many refugees were currently working as unskilled labourers — mostly as sales workers, or in the construction, handicraft and transportation sectors. According to it, 70 per cent of the refugees have one earning family member, while six per cent of the households have no breadwinner.
The survey said in education sector, 43 per cent of boys and 67 per cent of school-age girls were never enrolled in schools.
With Help, Afghan ‘Honor’ Victim Inches Back
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN December 1, 2012
JALALABAD, Afghanistan - It is doubly miraculous that the young woman named Gul Meena is alive. After she was struck by an ax 15 times, slashing her head and face so deeply that it exposed her brain, she held on long enough to reach medical care and then, despite the limitations of what the doctors could do, clung to life.
“We had no hope she would survive,” said Dr. Zamiruddin, a neurosurgeon at the Nangarhar Regional Medical Center in the eastern city of Jalalabad who, like many Afghans, uses only one name. After she was brought in, he worked for more than six hours in the hospital’s rudimentary operating theater, gently reinserting her brain and stitching her many wounds.
For weeks afterward, she was often unconscious, always uncommunicative and, but for the hospital staff, utterly alone, with no family members to care for her. That is because, if the accounts from her home province are true, she is an adulterer: though already married, she ran away with another man, moving south until her family caught up with them.
Locals say that the man who wielded the ax against her, and also killed the man with her, was most likely her brother.
That she reached a hospital and received care at all is the second part of the miracle: the villagers, doctors and nurses who helped her were bucking a deeply ingrained tradition that often demands death for women who dishonor their families.
Such “honor killings” of women exist in a number of cultures, but in Afghanistan they are firmly anchored by Pashtunwali, an age-old tribal code prevalent in the ethnic Pashtun areas of the country that the government and rights advocates have fought for years to override with a national civil legal system. This year, six such killings have been reported in Afghanistan’s far east alone, more than in each of the past two years, and for every one that comes to light, human rights advocates believe a dozen or more remain hidden.
Gul Meena’s story, as best it can be pieced together from relatives, tribal elders and others, gives insight into that deeply entrenched tribal culture. But it is also a story about a society struggling to come to terms with a different way of thinking about women.
The Americans and Europeans who have been there since 2001 have put a special emphasis on programs to help Afghan women and raise awareness of their rights. Now, as the Western money and presence are dwindling, women’s advocates fear that even the limited gains will erode and a more tribal and Taliban culture will prevail, especially in the south and east of the country, where Pashtun tribal attitudes toward women are strongly held.
It is a credit to many people — villagers, doctors, the police, rights advocates — that they chose to help Gul Meena, overcoming centuries of distaste for dealing with so-called moral crimes. The doctors at the Nangarhar Regional Medical Center who first treated her and cared for her for weeks were aware of her likely transgressions and chose to ignore them. However, the doctors, who say Gul Meena is about 18, were also bewildered about what to do with her.
“She has no one; no mother has come, no father, no one from her tribe has come,” said Dr. Abdul Shakoor Azimi, the hospital’s medical director, as he stood at the foot of her bed looking at her. “What is the solution? Even the government, the police, even the Women’s Affairs Ministry, they are not coming here to follow up and visit the patient.”
A patient in an Afghan hospital without a family member is a neglected soul. Most hospitals are so impoverished that they offer only the bed itself and limited medical care. Gul Meena lay in her own urine when a reporter first visited her because no relative was there to change her sheets. Hospital staff members were able to tend to her sporadically, but they are overstretched. Without a relative, the patient has no one to pay for drugs, drips, needles or food, no one to bring fresh clothes.
Dr. Azimi manages the hospital’s Zakat fund, a charitable collection that all the physicians contribute to, and for the first three weeks of Gul Meena’s care, the fund and individual doctors paid for everything.
Many women are not so fortunate and lie in unmarked graves in Afghanistan’s mountains and deserts, but as the culture urbanizes and women begin to consider marrying for love, families and tribal codes are being tested.
“As the numbers of these moral cases increase, the severity of punishment decreases,” said Ahmad Gul Wasiq, a professor of theology at Jalalabad University, who also counsels families when there are marriage problems and who had heard about Gul Meena’s case.
Gul Meena first arrived in the area, in a village called Kandi Bagh in a rural stretch of Nangarhar, about two months ago, traveling with a man named Qari Zakir. The villagers asked few questions, although the two had traveled south from Kunar Province with just a single bag. That is hardly the profile of a married couple hoping to set up housekeeping in a new place.
“Everybody avoids such cases, and doesn’t want to get involved in others’ troubles,” said Hikmat Azimi, 27, who lives in Kandi Bagh and works as a teacher at a nearby agricultural institute.
The last time anyone saw Mr. Zakir was about a week after their arrival, on the night before he was killed. He was seen buying a large bag of fruit, it seemed in honor of Gul Meena’s brother. He had turned up a few days earlier, according to villagers’ accounts related by Col. Nasir Sulaimanzai, the head of the Nangarhar police investigative division. Her father had also come but then left, said Mr. Azimi, the villager.
The next morning, a distant relative of Mr. Zakir’s who lived in the area knocked on the couple’s door. When no one answered, he climbed over the wall that surrounds most Afghan homes and was met by a scene of carnage: Mr. Zakir lay on a bed, blood clotted black around his neck, his head all but severed. Gul Meena lay on a separate bed bleeding profusely. Her brother had vanished.
“I shivered when I saw it,” said Mr. Azimi, who was one of the villagers called in to help. He and others borrowed a car and drove her to the hospital in Jalalabad.
For days as Gul Meena lay in the hospital, government entities in Jalalabad held meetings and discussed what to do with her.
Her situation was not helped as people learned more specifics. According to villagers and tribal elders as well as her relatives in Kunar Province and just over the border in Chitral State in Pakistan, Gul Meena was married, as was Qari Zakir. So the couple had broken fundamental moral codes as well as Afghan law.
According to Gul Meena’s relatives, her family moved to kill her in part because of pressure from her husband’s family.
“Her husband’s family came to them and said, ‘If you don’t do this thing, we will come after you,’ ” said a close relative of Gul Meena who asked not to be named because the issue is so delicate. “Her mother agreed to let them kill her in order to protect her sons.”
The provincial council, with its overwhelmingly male membership and many people from traditional backgrounds, seemed paralyzed. “We have some tribal customs and provisions that are tough for females,” said Mufti Moin Muin Shah, the chairman of the Nangarhar provincial council, saying he favored following Shariah law, which would have required a trial. He said that maybe only 1 in 20 of his constituents would agree with him — and that the rest would embrace the swift, brutal Pashtun tribal law.
Colonel Sulaimanzai, the provincial police official, was recently assigned here from Kabul, and he sees the tribal code as the root of the problem in a case where Afghan civil law should prevail.
“What is destroying us is this useless, unofficial justice, these tribal jirgas. The tribal elders, the jirgas, always violate the provisions of the law,” he said. “Many things in this case need investigation: why did she run away from her husband’s house? Maybe he was old, maybe he was impotent, maybe he didn’t feed her,” he added. “They should bring her to the court. We have laws in this country.”
One of the few female members of the provincial council that weighed in on Gul Meena’s fate, Angaza Shinwari, insisted that the woman had also been failed by the government and other agencies: “We have lots of NGOs operating in this country and spending a lot of money; how can they not have someone to take care of her?” she said, referring to nongovernmental organizations. “Our Women’s Affairs Ministry office has a lot of employees. Why can’t they send someone to stay with her in the hospital?”
For their part, officials with the Afghan Ministry of Women’s Affairs said they were unwilling to move Gul Meena to a shelter, in part because of her continuing medical needs but also because of security concerns. Her attacker is still at large, and the police say they believe he had slipped over the nearby border into Pakistan to avoid arrest.
“What if something bad had happened to her, who would have been held responsible for that?” said Anisa Umrani, the provincial head of the women’s ministry office, referring to the common situation in which vengeful relatives try to drag girls from shelters and kill them. “We do have problems dealing with moral crimes. We are scared of dealing with such issues. We are facing threats and danger while dealing with these cases.”
Ultimately it was an Afghan-American human rights organization, Women for Afghan Women, that arranged to move Gul Meena from Jalalabad to a safer, better supplied hospital in Kabul, and the organization has paid for 24-hour care, underscoring the crucial importance of the West in supporting women here. She is now physically far better, able to speak, but not to remember what happened to her.
“Things are changing, but they are changing slowly,” said Manizha Naderi, who runs the organization that is now caring for Gul Meena. “We’re trying to change the culture, and that takes a long time.”
Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting from Jalalabad, and an employee of The New York Times from Kunar Province.
A U.S. future in Afghanistan?
By Editorial Board, Sunday, December 2, 2012 The Washington Post
TALKS BETWEEN the Obama administration and the Afghan government over a U.S. military presence after 2014 have gotten off to a poor start. In Washington, officials have been briefing journalists about minimalist options for counterterrorism forces and trainers after the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops is completed. The figure of 10,000 troops recently reported by the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times is about one-third the number that defense analysts Kimberly and Frederick Kagan, who have advised U.S. commanders in Afghanistan for years, said would be necessary for a stay-on force in a recent Post op-ed.
The government of President Hamid Karzai, for its part, is making its own troubling noises. Mr. Karzai has been suggesting that he will refuse to grant U.S. troops immunity from the Afghan courts after 2014 — crossing what he knows is a Pentagon red line. Some of his top advisers are questioning whether any Western soldiers should remain in the country. “If the 150,000 foreign troops haven’t been successful here so far, how could the 10,000 or 20,000 or 30,000 that would stay inside their bases after 2014 achieve any success?” his chief of staff recently asked a Wall Street Journal reporter.
If all this sounds familiar, it’s because it is: This is how negotiations between the Obama administration and the Iraqi government unfolded during the 2011 troop withdrawal there. U.S. officials said they wanted an agreement, while steadily scaling down the proposed size of the force; Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, perceiving ambivalence, declined to make the political effort needed to win agreement from parliament on a bilateral accord including an immunity provision.
In the end no U.S. forces remained in Iraq, with consequences that are still playing out: the de facto separation of Iraq into sectarian pieces and increasing reliance by Mr. Maliki on Iran. Iraq has intermittently allowed Iran to use its airspace to supply weapons and trainers to the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. While a U.S. stay-on force could not have prevented all of these developments, it could have helped defuse some flash points, such as the growing tensions between the Iraqi army and Kurdish forces.
In Afghanistan, the results of a full U.S. withdrawal would certainly be worse. To start with, it would be virtually impossible to continue drone strikes against al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan’s tribal territories or Afghanistan itself, since there would be no U.S. bases within the drones’ range. Mr. Karzai’s bravado aside, the withdrawal of all American forces would embolden the Taliban and likely lead to the crumbling of the Afghan army and a new civil war. As it has in Syria, that would create new room for al-Qaeda.
According to the strategic partnership agreement that Mr. Obama and Mr. Karzai signed in May, the two countries have until next October to agree on a post-2014 military arrangement. But a much earlier deal is needed in order to plan and carry out the withdrawal of the 66,000 U.S. troops currently in the country. To get there, an infusion of political courage is needed on both sides.
More on this debate: Seth Riebman (letter): Why the U.S. should leave Afghanistan Jackson Diehl: The red flags in Obama’s foreign policy Afghani Barakzai: The future of Afghan women Husain Haqqani: Why the U.S. needs Muslim allies
Ismail Khan Impeachment Expected Monday
TOLOnews.com By Saleha Soadat Saturday, 01 December 2012
Parliament is expected to impeach the Minister of Energy and Water Mohammad Ismail Khan on Monday after more than 50 lawmakers voted in favour of his removal, the Administrative Office said Saturday.
Khan has become unpopular with the lawmakers after publically calling last month for the former mujahedeen figures to take up arms and join the private army of the Jihadi Council he leads.
The Administrative Office said that 55 parliamentarians have signed in favour of impeaching Khan and in their written reasons for doing so, the main one precisely being his private milita plan.
"Fifty-five MPs sent their signatures to the Administrative Office. The subject was discussed in a meeting... and it was specified that [Parliament will] impeach him on Monday," Deputy Secretary Mohammad Farhad Azimi said.
Other reasons cited were a lack of development plans for electricity to some parts of country, slow process in construction and reconstruction of hyrdo-electric dams and the budget expenditure of the ministry.
Some parliamentarians said that the lower house has the legal right to impeach government ministers but feared government meddling.
"Some of the influential people and ministers threaten representatives by phone call to take back their signatures and give up the decision," Kabul parliamentarian Nazifa Zakee said.
"The House of Representatives has the right to impeach some ineffective ministers but the government improperly interferes in the House," Kunar parliamentarian Wazhma Safee said.
Others said the reasons for the impeachment were incorrect.
"The reasons for Ismail Khan's impeachment by the House are meaningless – every minister has the right to have some meetings with the Mujahedeen," Ghour parliamentarian Sima Joinda said.
Khan has said that his reasons for forming the militia outside of the national security forces is to help secure the country where Nato has failed.
Analysts Slam Obama Move to Lessen Curbs on Pakistan
TOLOnews.com By Karim Amini Saturday, 01 December 2012
Afghan analysts on Saturday rejected moves by the Obama administration to lessen restrictions placed on Pakistan by US Congress saying that tough measures were needed for Pakistan's attitude on terrorism to change.
"Pakistan's policy will not change until the US and Afghanistan take a strict and coordinated policy against it," political analyst Omar Sharifi said.
Kabul University lecturer in law Nasratullah Stanikzai also said that the US was being too soft.
"It would seem that the US and Pakistan have some deal. The Pakistanis know how to play with the US," he said.
The comments come after the Obama administration warned Congress that some of its restrictions on Pakistan may damage the campaign against terrorism in Afghanistan.
The Executive Office of the US President said in a statement released Friday that limitations on reimbursement for times when Nato supply lines are closed may have a negative impact on bilateral relations.
The restriction was introduced in the recently passed National Defence Authorisation Act for US fiscal year 2013.
It also claimed that some of the certification requirements "require the Secretary of Defence to certify Pakistani cooperation on issues outside of his purview".
The statement said the restrictions are "proposed at a particularly sensitive time and would severely constrict [Department of Defence]'s ability to respond to emergent war-time coalition support requirements, putting at risk the success of our campaign in Afghanistan."
5 Men Detained in Kabul for Kidnapping
TOLOnews.com By Rafi Sediqi Saturday, 01 December 2012
Police have detained five men in relation to the kidnapping of a four-year-old boy north of Kabul a month ago, local officials said Saturday.
The group allegedly took the boy while the family were at a wedding party in the capital of Parwan province Charikar, police said.
They were arrested on Thursday while they were discussing the ransom with the boy's family in the Shakar Dera district of Kabul.
When the police arrived in the area, the men opened fire and a shootout ensued as the police responded, the chief of Kabul criminal investigation department Gen. Mohammad Zahir said.
Two of the group were wounded including their leader Abdul Fatah in the exchange of fire. The boy has been returned safely to his family, he said.
"The kidnappers are professional criminals who were led by Abdul Fatah. They kidnapped a four-year-old boy from a wedding party in Charikar," he said.
However, the kidnappers had confessed their crimes and said that "they will not repeat again", he added.
The detained men were presented at a press conference in Kabul.
"I was monitoring the area during the kidnapping to ensure the police did not arrive. Mirwais kidnapped the kid from the house and come out while the [wedding] party was continuing and gave him to Hamid. Hamid then carried him to a different place," one of the men Sadiq said.
Another of the alleged kidnappers Najibullah said: "I called many times to the family [of the boy] and I asked them to pay thousands of dollars. Recently they were ready to pay $16,000."
The boy's family has called on the justice organs to deliver the harshest of penalties.
"The government should hang them in public so that no one would repeat such a thing," the father Haji Mohammad Kabir father said.
Zahir said that police have been ordered to remain alert and capture those who are doing kidnappings.
Planner of Faryab Suicide Attack Killed
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 01 December 2012
A senior Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) leader involved in the Faryab suicide bombing on Eid al-Adha last month has been killed in a joint military operation, Isaf said Saturday.
Shukrullah and two other insurgents were killed during an Afghan and coalition forces operation in Faryab's Almar district on Friday.
According to the Isaf statement, Shukrullah coordinated the October 26 suicide attack in the capital Meymaneh that killed 41 Afghans.
"He also trained insurgents and provided improvised explosive device components to both IMU and Taliban fighters throughout Faryab and Sar-e Pul province," Isaf said.
Meanwhile, a Haqqani leader and a Haqqani facilitator have been captured in a joint operation in Logar province on Friday, Isaf said.
The arrested leader acquired weapons for Haqqani fighters and directed attacks against security forces throughout the Muhammad Aghah district, the statement said.
"At the time of his arrest, he was overseeing the movement of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and Haqqani fighters in preparation for an attack," it added.
The facilitator planned and executed attacks against Afghan and coalition forces within Muhammad Aghah district while managing the transfer of weapons and IEDs to Haqqani fighters.
Another suspected insurgents were also captured during the operation.
It comes after an operation on Thursday in Jawzjan province in north of Afghanistan where a joint security force arrested a Taliban facilitator who planned and directed IED attacks against Afghan and Isaf forces. One suspected insurgent was detained along with a number of IED components, Isaf said.
Qadir Apologises for Guards' Assault on Policeman
TOLOnews.com By Rafi Sediqi Saturday, 01 December 2012
Parliament's first deputy speaker Abdul Zahir Qadir on Saturday apologised to the policeman who was beaten by Qadir's guards at the scene of a suicide attack last month.
A police officer from Kabul's District 10 force was struck by the guards apparently after he stopped the men from getting close to the area of a suicide attack in Wazir Akbar Khan on Wednesday Nov 21.
The incident was photographed and the image of the scene went viral on social networks along with demands for justice.
The Ministry of Interior (MOI) subsequently investigated and detained the guards involved.
Qadir visited the District 10 police headquarter on Friday along with some other lawmakers and apologised for the bad behavior of his guards, the MOI said in a statement.
His guards were then released with Qadir promising such an incident will not happen again.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
By Rafiq Shirzad
JALALABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Suicide attackers detonated bombs and fired rockets outside a major U.S. base in Afghanistan on Sunday, killing five people in a brazen operation that highlighted the country's security challenges ahead of the 2014 NATO combat troop pullout.
Local police officials said bodies in Afghan police and military uniforms were scattered around the entrance of the airfield in the eastern city of Jalalabad after a two-hour battle. A Taliban spokesman said the militant group had launched the 6 a.m. assault.
The Taliban, who have been fighting U.S.-led NATO and Afghan forces for more than a decade, sometimes dress in uniforms for attacks.
Two suicide bombers died after blowing themselves up in cars, said Nasir Ahmad Safi, a spokesman for the provincial government.
Seven other bombers were killed in the a gunbattle with Afghan and coalition forces. Three Afghan soldiers and two civilians also died, said Safi.
U.S. helicopters circled overhead.
"There were multiple suicide bombers involved," said Major Martyn Crighton, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
Several coalition troops were wounded, he said.
The United States and Afghan government are scrambling to stabilise Afghanistan before most NATO combat troops withdraw at the end of 2014 and hand over security to Afghan forces.
Some Afghans doubt government security forces will be able to defend the country against any Taliban attempts to seize power again after foreign troops withdraw. There are also growing fears that a civil war will erupt.
President Hamid Karzai's government say Afghan security forces have made good progress.
Afghanistan's defence ministry spokesman said there were rocket attacks at the Jalalabad base followed by suicide bombings.
In a text message, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said : "This morning at 6 a.m. a number of our devotees attacked the major U.S. Base in Jalalabad city and so far have brought heavy casualties to the enemy."
In February, a suicide car bomber killed nine people at the base, almost exclusively used by NATO and the U.S. military.
(Additional reporting by Martin Petty in KABUL; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Ron Popeski)
Afghan peace council sees signs of progress with Pakistan and Taliban
Washington Post By Pamela Constable Sunday, December 2, 2012
KABUL - A year ago, Shafiullah Nooristani, a religious scholar from eastern Afghanistan’s Nuristan province, was shivering in a rudimentary, snow-covered cell after a month in Taliban captivity, wondering if each day would be his last.
Today, his rural district is still under Taliban control, but as a member of the government-appointed Afghan High Peace Council, his job is to try to persuade local insurgent commanders to give up their armed struggle. During a trip home in early November, he said, two of them accepted.
“I invite them to talk, and I tell them that if they keep on fighting, no roads or schools will be built and Nuristan will stay poor and backward,” Nooristani said last week. “But the key is working through our common tribal base. It was the tribe that negotiated my release last winter, and it is the tribes that can help us negotiate peace now.”
The High Peace Council has had a rocky two-year history, marred by controversy over appointees and the Taliban assassination of its leader, former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani, 14 months ago. But today, the 70-member group has begun showing unexpected signs of progress and energy under its new head, Rabbani’s son Salahuddin, 41, a Western-educated diplomat who was most recently Afghan ambassador to Turkey.
Beyond its members’ success in wooing homegrown Taliban commanders to join the peace process, the council has made recent headway with a larger and cooler customer, the government of next-door Pakistan. Officials there have paid lip service to the peace process, but they have also maintained long-standing ties with the Taliban and are believed to provide sanctuary for anti-Afghan insurgents.
In November, a council delegation headed by Salahuddin Rabbani held four days of talks in Islamabad and came away with several accomplishments. First, Pakistan announced it was releasing nine Taliban prisoners and pledged to release more. It also agreed to grant Taliban negotiators safe passage to travel for peace talks, seek to exempt them from U.N. sanctions and hold a meeting of regional Muslim scholars.
Rabbani, who has been visiting Washington and New York for talks, characterized the gestures as a turning point in Pakistan’s attitude, saying officials there are alarmed by the toll militant attacks have taken on their country and worried about a spillover of violence after NATO forces leave Afghanistan in 2014.
A visit by Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul to Pakistan on Friday appeared to reinforce the progress made by the High Peace Council delegation. In a joint statement after high-level talks in Islamabad, both sides expressed support for a political settlement to the conflict.
On Saturday, Pakistan announced it would release more Taliban prisoners, reportedly in response to a request from Rassoul. Pakistan’s foreign ministry did not say how many detainees would be freed or when, only that the steps would be taken to promote peace talks and “urge the Taliban to renounce ties to al-Qaeda.”
The Pakistanis “are showing they are ready to cooperate in the peace process. It is a big achievement,” said Habibullah Fawzi, a council member who was once a diplomat for the Taliban regime. “They are feeling pressure from the world community, and they realize that after 2014, if there is no peace in Afghanistan, it will affect the security and economy of Pakistan, too.”
But some council members, like many Afghans, remain deeply suspicious of Pakistan and suggest it is playing a double game, lending superficial support to the peace process while preparing for a possible Taliban return to power after Western troops withdraw.
“We cannot trust Pakistan. They are only acting now and releasing prisoners because of American pressure,” said Maulvi Qalamuddin, a bushy-bearded man in his 60s who once struck fear into Kabul residents as chief enforcer of the Taliban regime’s harsh Islamic rules. “What we need is for the other side to create a peace council. If they do that, I will call it an achievement, but not these tiny steps.”
Qalamuddin, who lives in a modest home off a steep dirt alley in the capital, expressed contempt for the present-day insurgents, saying they have “no will” for peace and no respect for law. “They are revolutionaries and thieves. They are not the real Taliban,” he said. “We were a government, and we followed Islamic law.”
There has been widespread criticism of the council’s pursuit of immunity or amnesty for Taliban who want to negotiate. Human rights activists said it would be a mistake to extend broad amnesty to individuals who have committed war crimes or violently suppressed the populace.
“No blanket amnesty will facilitate a lasting peace,” said Nader Nadery, an activist for human rights and good governance. “People are angry at the crimes and the bombings, and there is a great demand for punishment.”
Although fighting has decreased as cold weather sets in, the Taliban has continued to stage deadly attacks. In the past month, the group has claimed responsibility for a bombing that killed two guards in a high-security zone of Kabul and a truck bomb that decimated a public square in the capital of Wardak province, killing three people and wounding at least 90.
Taliban spokesmen have continued to denounce the Afghan government and the peace process, insisting they will never negotiate as long as Western forces remain in the country. They reacted violently to the recent executions of several Taliban prisoners in Kabul, all of whom were convicted of murder under Afghan law. Taliban spokesmen said the Wardak bombing was in retaliation for the hangings, which were condemned by international human rights groups but welcomed by many Afghans.
But some council officials said they see potential signs of change in the Taliban. Fawzi, who serves as a spokesman for the council, said he believed circumstances in Afghanistan — including the coming withdrawal of foreign troops — are shifting in favor of those on both sides who prefer negotiation to conflict.
“From the beginning, there have always been some Taliban who wanted peace, but the world and the government insisted on war,” he said. “Now the world has agreed that war is not the solution, the Afghan people are tired of it, and it seems like Pakistan is, too. So now, there is a way open for the Taliban. If this process continues sincerely, I think in another year or two, they will sit down and talk.”
Clash leaves 3 Taliban dead in eastern Afghanistan
PARUN, Afghanistan, Dec. 1 (Xinhua) -- Three Taliban militants were killed in a gun battle in the eastern province of Nuristan on Saturday, provincial police chief Ghulam Mohammad Nuristani said.
"A group of Taliban rebels raided police checkpoint in Barg-e- Matal district this morning and police returned fire killing three rebels on the spot and forcing others to flee," Nuristani told Xinhua, adding there were no casualties on police.
Meanwhile, Zabihullah Mujahid who claims to speak for the Taliban outfit told media by telephone from unknown location that two Taliban fighters and two police were killed in the gun battle.
Afghan Taliban commander killed
TRINKOT, Afghanistan, Dec. 1 (Xinhua) -- Afghan security forces raided a Taliban hideout in southern province of Uruzgan on Saturday, killing a key commander Mullah Nasir and arresting another commander Mullah Ghazi, police said.
"Afghan forces backed by the NATO-led coalition stormed a Taliban hideout in Charchino district at around 1:00 a.m. local time today, killing Taliban commander Mullah Nasir on the spot and arrested another commander Mullah Ghazi," provincial police spokesman Ayel Farid told Xinhua.
During the operation, two more Taliban militants were killed and two others arrested, he added.
Suicide car bomb kills 3 Afghans, wounds 4
TRINKOT, Afghanistan, Dec. 1 (Xinhua) -- A suicide car bomb that rocked Deh Rawad district in Uruzgan province 370 km south of Kabul left three civilians dead and injured four others on Saturday, police said.
"A terrorist equipped with suicide vest and driving a car blew himself up next to a police van in a bazaar in Deh Rawad district at around 04:00 p.m. local time killing three civilians including two children on the spot, and injured four more civilians," provincial police spokesman Farid Ayel told Xinhua. There were no casualties on police, he contended.
The bomber was also killed in his blast, he added.
Ayel also blamed Taliban militants for organizing the attack. However, the outfit fighting the government is yet to comment.
Today's deadly suicide bombing took place hours after killing a Taliban commander Mullah Nasir and arresting another called Mullah Ghazi in the neighboring Charchino district of Uruzgan province.
'4,000 domestic violence cases in Afghanistan in 7 months'
Mumbai, December 02, 2012 Hindustan Times
About 4,000 cases of domestic violence have been reported in Afghanistan in the last seven months, chairperson of Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission Dr Sima Samar has said. "In the last seven months, 4,000 cases of domestic violence were reported in Afghanistan," Samar said during an award function held here recently.
Male-domination in the society and lack of education are responsible for this, she said.
Samar, however, acknowledged that the condition of women has improved as compared to what it was under the Taliban.
"The condition of women in Afghanistan has improved a lot since the fall of the Taliban. During the Taliban rule, women were practically imprisoned in their own houses," she said.
According to her, the situation is changing for the better as girls are now getting educated. "Women are now educating themselves. They are also active in politics and have even began working as journalists," she said.
However, at some places there is a threat from the Taliban, who continue to burn girls' schools and even assault them, Samar said, adding, "Nonetheless, girls are taking the risk of going to their schools."
Afghanistan's displaced dread the coming winter
The country has nearly half a million displaced people, many living in primitive camps where the cold weather will mean death for some.
By David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times December 1, 2012
PARWAN-A-DUH CAMP, Afghanistan — Winter is descending on the Shakur clan.
In the pale gray twilight of late autumn, a sharp wind slaps at the scraps of plastic that Abdel Shakur, the clan patriarch, has installed on his mud hut walls in a futile attempt at insulation. The thin tarpaulins that serve as a roof are held fast by round patties of cow dung and worn auto tires.
Already, night temperatures are dipping to freezing or below. The 10 children of Abdel Shakur pad across the packed-clay floors in bare feet or plastic slippers. He pulls his wool wrap close around his bony shoulders.
"The snows are coming soon, and I'm afraid for the children," Shakur says. "When the snows come, people die."
During last year's exceptionally brutal winter, at least 42 people died of exposure or starvation in Parwan-a-Duh and other makeshift camps on Kabul's shabby fringes, according to the Afghan Ministry of Refugees and Repatriations. Almost all were children or elderly.
The French aid group Solidarites International puts the number higher, saying the cold killed more than 100 children alone in the numerous camps scattered in and around the capital.
Shakur, bearded and wizened at 47, says he lost his infant granddaughter, Parsima, last winter. The little girl grew weak and sickly before she was at last transported to a clinic, where she soon died.
Afghanistan is home to 460,000 internally displaced people, Afghans who have fled war, strife or famine in other parts of the country. More than 30,000 have settled in illegal camps around Kabul in search of jobs and shelter, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
In a desperately poor country, the internally displaced are often among the most dispossessed, living in abject poverty in makeshift housing with little access to sanitation or medical care. They get only nominal help from the Afghan refugee ministry, and limited, though regular, assistance from the U.N. refugee agency and other aid groups.
Even after a decadelong, multibillion-dollar Western humanitarian relief effort, the displaced remain as miserable and wretched as ever. That was the case last winter, when emergency relief efforts were not mounted in earnest until February, well after the first children had died.
The Afghan government discourages the settlements and does not want them to become permanent, worrying that they will attract even more people. Thus camp residents are not eligible for most humanitarian assistance, or for education or medical care. Authorities have encouraged them to return to their home provinces by offering assistance and free land there.
Meanwhile, the U.N. refugee agency and international aid groups have vowed to provide enough assistance — particularly blankets, clothes, gloves, fuel and plastic sheeting — to prevent deaths from cold and exposure this winter.
Mohammad Nader Farhad, a UNHCR spokesman, said the agency and other groups are providing emergency winter assistance for 240,000 internally displaced people. The agency has budgeted $2.8 million this year to assist internally displaced people year-round.
In Parwan-a-Duh, thin rivulets of raw sewage flow into low pits at the edge of homes thrown together from dried mud and clay, bricks, tarps and plastic sheeting. Water must be pumped from a well dug by aid workers and ferried home in plastic jugs.
Firewood is scare and expensive, so the huts are heated by burning trash and plastic collected by children whose hands are stained black with grime. From each hut, blue curls of acrid smoke rise to the overcast skies, contributing to the pall of dust and auto fumes that hangs like a shroud over the city.
Shakur has a steady source of fuel: dried manure from the 20 sheep and two cows he maintains in return for a small daily payment from local butchers. But the burning dung raises an awful stench, and the neighbors complain.
Shakur says the original camp was forcibly moved two years ago from an adjacent plot, where two new apartment towers have since risen. Their blue glass windows glint in the brittle afternoon sunshine. Well-to-do Afghan residents of the apartments gaze down at a vast expanse of tattered huts and garbage.
"They look at us with hate; they close their noses against the smell," Shakur says. "They tell us: 'Go away! You are filthy people!'"
He shrugs. "But where can we go?"
Shakur's clan of 20 Pashtun families fled Laghman province, where he says Taliban insurgents threatened to kill anyone who didn't give shelter and food to the fighters. The families had precious little food to spare, he says, and feared they would be killed. They retreated to Kabul nearly five years ago.
But Shakur also says the clan came to the capital in search of work; the Afghan refugee ministry contends that many among the internally displaced are economic, not war, refugees.
Shakur says the ministry's emergency aid was too little too late last winter. And so far this year, the ministry has provided no aid, he says.
That's true, says Dr. Abdul Samad Hami, deputy minister of refugees and repatriations. The ministry has submitted a budget for aid for internally displaced people, he says, "but, unfortunately, the Finance Ministry didn't approve the budget."
The relief burden must fall instead on the U.N. and international relief organizations, Hami says.
Shakur, chewing a slimy gob of green snuff, says he'll believe it when he sees it.
So, too, says Mohammed Anwar, 35, the bald, burly, self-appointed head of a section of the much bigger Qambar Square refugee camp a few miles away.
"We get no help; we're forgotten, even in the winter, when people are dying," Anwar says. He stands, arms folded, beside an ancient stove where his children are stuffing plastic and cardboard into a sputtering fire.
Aschiana, a nongovernmental Afghan relief group, provided the camp with a well and two tiny schools — one for boys and one for girls — housed in tents, in accordance with government policies banning permanent structures. The teachers are themselves refugees, like Joma Khan, 21, who says he learned to read and write during his five years in the camp.
There are occasional deliveries of cooking oil, rice, flour and blankets by relief groups, Anwar says, but not enough for the camp's 5,000 to 6,000 people.
Anwar says his extended family of 16 people fled Helmand province four years ago. They were trapped, he says, between NATO coalition airstrikes and night raids on the one hand, and Taliban demands for food and shelter on the other.
Now Anwar ekes out a living selling snacks, vegetables and cigarettes on the shoulder of a highway that skirts the camp. Sometimes he and his male relatives find day labor jobs in Kabul.
He pulls out a thin clump of worn bills, bound by a rubber band. He flaps it against his belly. "This is all I earn. My wife wants money for cooking gas — it's not enough."
Anwar looks down at his children. He has three sons and five daughters. Some attend the tent schools, he says. But on this day they are happily collecting trash to burn or begging from passing cars by tapping urgently on windshields and adopting pitiful poses.
Their hands and faces are stained black. "Look at them; they aren't really this black," Anwar says. "It's because they must live with dirt and trash."
Last winter, he says, more people would have died if several wealthy Afghan businessmen had not delivered food, fuel and blankets. This year, volunteers like Parween Omidi, a media worker in Kabul for the International Security Assistance Force — the North Atlantic Treaty Organization mission in Afghanistan — have taken it upon themselves to provide help.
Omidi, an Afghan American from Orange County, collected clothes, blankets, gloves, hats and school supplies for families at a displaced-persons camp called Chaman-e-Hozori. Escorted by a U.S. military security team, Omidi handed out bags of supplies to several dozen camp residents who had been driven to a school to accept the aid.
At the Parwan-a-Duh camp, Abdel Shakur nods in approval when told of the donations. But then he says, "That's fine for them, but we still have nothing."
He does not hold out hope that any aid will come to his camp from the ISAF. In fact, he says, it makes no difference to displaced people who rules the country, or whether international troops go or stay.
"We never see these foreign troops; we are invisible to them," Shakur says.
He says he has heard American combat troops are leaving in 2014. He shrugs at the thought, and turns back to tending his cows and sheep, whose hooves are smeared with their own manure.
"What does it matter?" he says. "After they leave, we will still be poor, and we will still be right here."
david.zucchino@latimes.com
Pakhtuns make majority of 1.6m Afghan refugees
Khaleej Times By Afzal Khan 2 December 2012
ISLAMABAD - Pakhtuns make the most of 1.6 million Afghan refugees registered in Pakistan, while around 70 per cent of them were born as refugees in the country, according to a nationwide survey.
“Pakhtuns constitute 82 per cent of the total Afghan refugee population in Pakistan and they are followed by five per cent Tajiks and four per cent Uzbeks and other ethnic groups,” said the findings of the Population Profiling, Verification and Response Survey of Afghan Refugees done by the States and Frontier Regions ministry and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in 2011.
According to a news release issued here, around one million Afghan refugees in Pakistan were interviewed for the survey, which examined the specific needs of Afghan refugees and generated accurate and detailed description of registered Afghan population, including information about intention to return to their country, livelihoods, socio-economic and legal conditions. The survey revealed that around 20 per cent of working Afghans had collectively invested over Rs18 billion in business in the country. The government had issued Proof of Registration Cards to refugees which would expire by the end of December. According to the survey, around 70 per cent of Afghan population was under the age of 18 and that most were born and raised in Pakistan.
Around 360,000 of the total of 1.6 million registered Afghan refugees have planned to return to Afghanistan. The refugees, who didn’t want to return to their country, cited insecurity, unemployment and lack of shelter major reasons for it. The survey revealed that 22.53 per cent of the refugees were economically active and of them, men accounted for 85.59 per cent of the total workforce.
According to it, the Afghan workforce comprises mostly adults aged between 25 and 59, while 31.3 per cent is made up of youths aged from 15 to 24.
Members of the two groups make 90 per cent of the total refugee population. The survey said many refugees were currently working as unskilled labourers — mostly as sales workers, or in the construction, handicraft and transportation sectors. According to it, 70 per cent of the refugees have one earning family member, while six per cent of the households have no breadwinner.
The survey said in education sector, 43 per cent of boys and 67 per cent of school-age girls were never enrolled in schools.
With Help, Afghan ‘Honor’ Victim Inches Back
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN December 1, 2012
JALALABAD, Afghanistan - It is doubly miraculous that the young woman named Gul Meena is alive. After she was struck by an ax 15 times, slashing her head and face so deeply that it exposed her brain, she held on long enough to reach medical care and then, despite the limitations of what the doctors could do, clung to life.
“We had no hope she would survive,” said Dr. Zamiruddin, a neurosurgeon at the Nangarhar Regional Medical Center in the eastern city of Jalalabad who, like many Afghans, uses only one name. After she was brought in, he worked for more than six hours in the hospital’s rudimentary operating theater, gently reinserting her brain and stitching her many wounds.
For weeks afterward, she was often unconscious, always uncommunicative and, but for the hospital staff, utterly alone, with no family members to care for her. That is because, if the accounts from her home province are true, she is an adulterer: though already married, she ran away with another man, moving south until her family caught up with them.
Locals say that the man who wielded the ax against her, and also killed the man with her, was most likely her brother.
That she reached a hospital and received care at all is the second part of the miracle: the villagers, doctors and nurses who helped her were bucking a deeply ingrained tradition that often demands death for women who dishonor their families.
Such “honor killings” of women exist in a number of cultures, but in Afghanistan they are firmly anchored by Pashtunwali, an age-old tribal code prevalent in the ethnic Pashtun areas of the country that the government and rights advocates have fought for years to override with a national civil legal system. This year, six such killings have been reported in Afghanistan’s far east alone, more than in each of the past two years, and for every one that comes to light, human rights advocates believe a dozen or more remain hidden.
Gul Meena’s story, as best it can be pieced together from relatives, tribal elders and others, gives insight into that deeply entrenched tribal culture. But it is also a story about a society struggling to come to terms with a different way of thinking about women.
The Americans and Europeans who have been there since 2001 have put a special emphasis on programs to help Afghan women and raise awareness of their rights. Now, as the Western money and presence are dwindling, women’s advocates fear that even the limited gains will erode and a more tribal and Taliban culture will prevail, especially in the south and east of the country, where Pashtun tribal attitudes toward women are strongly held.
It is a credit to many people — villagers, doctors, the police, rights advocates — that they chose to help Gul Meena, overcoming centuries of distaste for dealing with so-called moral crimes. The doctors at the Nangarhar Regional Medical Center who first treated her and cared for her for weeks were aware of her likely transgressions and chose to ignore them. However, the doctors, who say Gul Meena is about 18, were also bewildered about what to do with her.
“She has no one; no mother has come, no father, no one from her tribe has come,” said Dr. Abdul Shakoor Azimi, the hospital’s medical director, as he stood at the foot of her bed looking at her. “What is the solution? Even the government, the police, even the Women’s Affairs Ministry, they are not coming here to follow up and visit the patient.”
A patient in an Afghan hospital without a family member is a neglected soul. Most hospitals are so impoverished that they offer only the bed itself and limited medical care. Gul Meena lay in her own urine when a reporter first visited her because no relative was there to change her sheets. Hospital staff members were able to tend to her sporadically, but they are overstretched. Without a relative, the patient has no one to pay for drugs, drips, needles or food, no one to bring fresh clothes.
Dr. Azimi manages the hospital’s Zakat fund, a charitable collection that all the physicians contribute to, and for the first three weeks of Gul Meena’s care, the fund and individual doctors paid for everything.
Many women are not so fortunate and lie in unmarked graves in Afghanistan’s mountains and deserts, but as the culture urbanizes and women begin to consider marrying for love, families and tribal codes are being tested.
“As the numbers of these moral cases increase, the severity of punishment decreases,” said Ahmad Gul Wasiq, a professor of theology at Jalalabad University, who also counsels families when there are marriage problems and who had heard about Gul Meena’s case.
Gul Meena first arrived in the area, in a village called Kandi Bagh in a rural stretch of Nangarhar, about two months ago, traveling with a man named Qari Zakir. The villagers asked few questions, although the two had traveled south from Kunar Province with just a single bag. That is hardly the profile of a married couple hoping to set up housekeeping in a new place.
“Everybody avoids such cases, and doesn’t want to get involved in others’ troubles,” said Hikmat Azimi, 27, who lives in Kandi Bagh and works as a teacher at a nearby agricultural institute.
The last time anyone saw Mr. Zakir was about a week after their arrival, on the night before he was killed. He was seen buying a large bag of fruit, it seemed in honor of Gul Meena’s brother. He had turned up a few days earlier, according to villagers’ accounts related by Col. Nasir Sulaimanzai, the head of the Nangarhar police investigative division. Her father had also come but then left, said Mr. Azimi, the villager.
The next morning, a distant relative of Mr. Zakir’s who lived in the area knocked on the couple’s door. When no one answered, he climbed over the wall that surrounds most Afghan homes and was met by a scene of carnage: Mr. Zakir lay on a bed, blood clotted black around his neck, his head all but severed. Gul Meena lay on a separate bed bleeding profusely. Her brother had vanished.
“I shivered when I saw it,” said Mr. Azimi, who was one of the villagers called in to help. He and others borrowed a car and drove her to the hospital in Jalalabad.
For days as Gul Meena lay in the hospital, government entities in Jalalabad held meetings and discussed what to do with her.
Her situation was not helped as people learned more specifics. According to villagers and tribal elders as well as her relatives in Kunar Province and just over the border in Chitral State in Pakistan, Gul Meena was married, as was Qari Zakir. So the couple had broken fundamental moral codes as well as Afghan law.
According to Gul Meena’s relatives, her family moved to kill her in part because of pressure from her husband’s family.
“Her husband’s family came to them and said, ‘If you don’t do this thing, we will come after you,’ ” said a close relative of Gul Meena who asked not to be named because the issue is so delicate. “Her mother agreed to let them kill her in order to protect her sons.”
The provincial council, with its overwhelmingly male membership and many people from traditional backgrounds, seemed paralyzed. “We have some tribal customs and provisions that are tough for females,” said Mufti Moin Muin Shah, the chairman of the Nangarhar provincial council, saying he favored following Shariah law, which would have required a trial. He said that maybe only 1 in 20 of his constituents would agree with him — and that the rest would embrace the swift, brutal Pashtun tribal law.
Colonel Sulaimanzai, the provincial police official, was recently assigned here from Kabul, and he sees the tribal code as the root of the problem in a case where Afghan civil law should prevail.
“What is destroying us is this useless, unofficial justice, these tribal jirgas. The tribal elders, the jirgas, always violate the provisions of the law,” he said. “Many things in this case need investigation: why did she run away from her husband’s house? Maybe he was old, maybe he was impotent, maybe he didn’t feed her,” he added. “They should bring her to the court. We have laws in this country.”
One of the few female members of the provincial council that weighed in on Gul Meena’s fate, Angaza Shinwari, insisted that the woman had also been failed by the government and other agencies: “We have lots of NGOs operating in this country and spending a lot of money; how can they not have someone to take care of her?” she said, referring to nongovernmental organizations. “Our Women’s Affairs Ministry office has a lot of employees. Why can’t they send someone to stay with her in the hospital?”
For their part, officials with the Afghan Ministry of Women’s Affairs said they were unwilling to move Gul Meena to a shelter, in part because of her continuing medical needs but also because of security concerns. Her attacker is still at large, and the police say they believe he had slipped over the nearby border into Pakistan to avoid arrest.
“What if something bad had happened to her, who would have been held responsible for that?” said Anisa Umrani, the provincial head of the women’s ministry office, referring to the common situation in which vengeful relatives try to drag girls from shelters and kill them. “We do have problems dealing with moral crimes. We are scared of dealing with such issues. We are facing threats and danger while dealing with these cases.”
Ultimately it was an Afghan-American human rights organization, Women for Afghan Women, that arranged to move Gul Meena from Jalalabad to a safer, better supplied hospital in Kabul, and the organization has paid for 24-hour care, underscoring the crucial importance of the West in supporting women here. She is now physically far better, able to speak, but not to remember what happened to her.
“Things are changing, but they are changing slowly,” said Manizha Naderi, who runs the organization that is now caring for Gul Meena. “We’re trying to change the culture, and that takes a long time.”
Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting from Jalalabad, and an employee of The New York Times from Kunar Province.
A U.S. future in Afghanistan?
By Editorial Board, Sunday, December 2, 2012 The Washington Post
TALKS BETWEEN the Obama administration and the Afghan government over a U.S. military presence after 2014 have gotten off to a poor start. In Washington, officials have been briefing journalists about minimalist options for counterterrorism forces and trainers after the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops is completed. The figure of 10,000 troops recently reported by the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times is about one-third the number that defense analysts Kimberly and Frederick Kagan, who have advised U.S. commanders in Afghanistan for years, said would be necessary for a stay-on force in a recent Post op-ed.
The government of President Hamid Karzai, for its part, is making its own troubling noises. Mr. Karzai has been suggesting that he will refuse to grant U.S. troops immunity from the Afghan courts after 2014 — crossing what he knows is a Pentagon red line. Some of his top advisers are questioning whether any Western soldiers should remain in the country. “If the 150,000 foreign troops haven’t been successful here so far, how could the 10,000 or 20,000 or 30,000 that would stay inside their bases after 2014 achieve any success?” his chief of staff recently asked a Wall Street Journal reporter.
If all this sounds familiar, it’s because it is: This is how negotiations between the Obama administration and the Iraqi government unfolded during the 2011 troop withdrawal there. U.S. officials said they wanted an agreement, while steadily scaling down the proposed size of the force; Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, perceiving ambivalence, declined to make the political effort needed to win agreement from parliament on a bilateral accord including an immunity provision.
In the end no U.S. forces remained in Iraq, with consequences that are still playing out: the de facto separation of Iraq into sectarian pieces and increasing reliance by Mr. Maliki on Iran. Iraq has intermittently allowed Iran to use its airspace to supply weapons and trainers to the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. While a U.S. stay-on force could not have prevented all of these developments, it could have helped defuse some flash points, such as the growing tensions between the Iraqi army and Kurdish forces.
In Afghanistan, the results of a full U.S. withdrawal would certainly be worse. To start with, it would be virtually impossible to continue drone strikes against al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan’s tribal territories or Afghanistan itself, since there would be no U.S. bases within the drones’ range. Mr. Karzai’s bravado aside, the withdrawal of all American forces would embolden the Taliban and likely lead to the crumbling of the Afghan army and a new civil war. As it has in Syria, that would create new room for al-Qaeda.
According to the strategic partnership agreement that Mr. Obama and Mr. Karzai signed in May, the two countries have until next October to agree on a post-2014 military arrangement. But a much earlier deal is needed in order to plan and carry out the withdrawal of the 66,000 U.S. troops currently in the country. To get there, an infusion of political courage is needed on both sides.
More on this debate: Seth Riebman (letter): Why the U.S. should leave Afghanistan Jackson Diehl: The red flags in Obama’s foreign policy Afghani Barakzai: The future of Afghan women Husain Haqqani: Why the U.S. needs Muslim allies
Ismail Khan Impeachment Expected Monday
TOLOnews.com By Saleha Soadat Saturday, 01 December 2012
Parliament is expected to impeach the Minister of Energy and Water Mohammad Ismail Khan on Monday after more than 50 lawmakers voted in favour of his removal, the Administrative Office said Saturday.
Khan has become unpopular with the lawmakers after publically calling last month for the former mujahedeen figures to take up arms and join the private army of the Jihadi Council he leads.
The Administrative Office said that 55 parliamentarians have signed in favour of impeaching Khan and in their written reasons for doing so, the main one precisely being his private milita plan.
"Fifty-five MPs sent their signatures to the Administrative Office. The subject was discussed in a meeting... and it was specified that [Parliament will] impeach him on Monday," Deputy Secretary Mohammad Farhad Azimi said.
Other reasons cited were a lack of development plans for electricity to some parts of country, slow process in construction and reconstruction of hyrdo-electric dams and the budget expenditure of the ministry.
Some parliamentarians said that the lower house has the legal right to impeach government ministers but feared government meddling.
"Some of the influential people and ministers threaten representatives by phone call to take back their signatures and give up the decision," Kabul parliamentarian Nazifa Zakee said.
"The House of Representatives has the right to impeach some ineffective ministers but the government improperly interferes in the House," Kunar parliamentarian Wazhma Safee said.
Others said the reasons for the impeachment were incorrect.
"The reasons for Ismail Khan's impeachment by the House are meaningless – every minister has the right to have some meetings with the Mujahedeen," Ghour parliamentarian Sima Joinda said.
Khan has said that his reasons for forming the militia outside of the national security forces is to help secure the country where Nato has failed.
Analysts Slam Obama Move to Lessen Curbs on Pakistan
TOLOnews.com By Karim Amini Saturday, 01 December 2012
Afghan analysts on Saturday rejected moves by the Obama administration to lessen restrictions placed on Pakistan by US Congress saying that tough measures were needed for Pakistan's attitude on terrorism to change.
"Pakistan's policy will not change until the US and Afghanistan take a strict and coordinated policy against it," political analyst Omar Sharifi said.
Kabul University lecturer in law Nasratullah Stanikzai also said that the US was being too soft.
"It would seem that the US and Pakistan have some deal. The Pakistanis know how to play with the US," he said.
The comments come after the Obama administration warned Congress that some of its restrictions on Pakistan may damage the campaign against terrorism in Afghanistan.
The Executive Office of the US President said in a statement released Friday that limitations on reimbursement for times when Nato supply lines are closed may have a negative impact on bilateral relations.
The restriction was introduced in the recently passed National Defence Authorisation Act for US fiscal year 2013.
It also claimed that some of the certification requirements "require the Secretary of Defence to certify Pakistani cooperation on issues outside of his purview".
The statement said the restrictions are "proposed at a particularly sensitive time and would severely constrict [Department of Defence]'s ability to respond to emergent war-time coalition support requirements, putting at risk the success of our campaign in Afghanistan."
5 Men Detained in Kabul for Kidnapping
TOLOnews.com By Rafi Sediqi Saturday, 01 December 2012
Police have detained five men in relation to the kidnapping of a four-year-old boy north of Kabul a month ago, local officials said Saturday.
The group allegedly took the boy while the family were at a wedding party in the capital of Parwan province Charikar, police said.
They were arrested on Thursday while they were discussing the ransom with the boy's family in the Shakar Dera district of Kabul.
When the police arrived in the area, the men opened fire and a shootout ensued as the police responded, the chief of Kabul criminal investigation department Gen. Mohammad Zahir said.
Two of the group were wounded including their leader Abdul Fatah in the exchange of fire. The boy has been returned safely to his family, he said.
"The kidnappers are professional criminals who were led by Abdul Fatah. They kidnapped a four-year-old boy from a wedding party in Charikar," he said.
However, the kidnappers had confessed their crimes and said that "they will not repeat again", he added.
The detained men were presented at a press conference in Kabul.
"I was monitoring the area during the kidnapping to ensure the police did not arrive. Mirwais kidnapped the kid from the house and come out while the [wedding] party was continuing and gave him to Hamid. Hamid then carried him to a different place," one of the men Sadiq said.
Another of the alleged kidnappers Najibullah said: "I called many times to the family [of the boy] and I asked them to pay thousands of dollars. Recently they were ready to pay $16,000."
The boy's family has called on the justice organs to deliver the harshest of penalties.
"The government should hang them in public so that no one would repeat such a thing," the father Haji Mohammad Kabir father said.
Zahir said that police have been ordered to remain alert and capture those who are doing kidnappings.
Planner of Faryab Suicide Attack Killed
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 01 December 2012
A senior Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) leader involved in the Faryab suicide bombing on Eid al-Adha last month has been killed in a joint military operation, Isaf said Saturday.
Shukrullah and two other insurgents were killed during an Afghan and coalition forces operation in Faryab's Almar district on Friday.
According to the Isaf statement, Shukrullah coordinated the October 26 suicide attack in the capital Meymaneh that killed 41 Afghans.
"He also trained insurgents and provided improvised explosive device components to both IMU and Taliban fighters throughout Faryab and Sar-e Pul province," Isaf said.
Meanwhile, a Haqqani leader and a Haqqani facilitator have been captured in a joint operation in Logar province on Friday, Isaf said.
The arrested leader acquired weapons for Haqqani fighters and directed attacks against security forces throughout the Muhammad Aghah district, the statement said.
"At the time of his arrest, he was overseeing the movement of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and Haqqani fighters in preparation for an attack," it added.
The facilitator planned and executed attacks against Afghan and coalition forces within Muhammad Aghah district while managing the transfer of weapons and IEDs to Haqqani fighters.
Another suspected insurgents were also captured during the operation.
It comes after an operation on Thursday in Jawzjan province in north of Afghanistan where a joint security force arrested a Taliban facilitator who planned and directed IED attacks against Afghan and Isaf forces. One suspected insurgent was detained along with a number of IED components, Isaf said.
Qadir Apologises for Guards' Assault on Policeman
TOLOnews.com By Rafi Sediqi Saturday, 01 December 2012
Parliament's first deputy speaker Abdul Zahir Qadir on Saturday apologised to the policeman who was beaten by Qadir's guards at the scene of a suicide attack last month.
A police officer from Kabul's District 10 force was struck by the guards apparently after he stopped the men from getting close to the area of a suicide attack in Wazir Akbar Khan on Wednesday Nov 21.
The incident was photographed and the image of the scene went viral on social networks along with demands for justice.
The Ministry of Interior (MOI) subsequently investigated and detained the guards involved.
Qadir visited the District 10 police headquarter on Friday along with some other lawmakers and apologised for the bad behavior of his guards, the MOI said in a statement.
His guards were then released with Qadir promising such an incident will not happen again.
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