Tweet
NATO death toll in Afghanistan drops in November
by Farid Behbud
KABUL, Dec. 5 (Xinhua) -- The death toll of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan dropped considerably for the third successive month in November as the fighting season has ended in the insurgency-hit country.
In November, a total of 17 ISAF or coalition soldiers, with 16 of them Americans, have lost their lives against 52 in August when the military alliance suffered the highest casualties since January this year, according to the iCasualties, a website tracking the casualties of foreign troops in the war-torn country.
The spring and summer is known as fighting season in the central Asian state.
The Taliban insurgent group, which has been waging an insurgency of more than one decade, launched an annual offensive in early May this year.
In the fighting season or from April to September, the military alliance had respectively lost 39, 45, 39, 46, 52, and 27 soldiers each month, according to figures compiled in the independent iCasualties website.
Twenty-four ISAF soldiers have been killed in Taliban-initiated attacks in October.
Out of the total fatalities last month, three service members died in non-battle related injuries and one British soldier with the coalition was killed in the so-called "green-on-blue" insider attack when Afghan army, police or gunmen in their uniform open fire against their international partners.
A British soldier was shot dead on Nov. 11 by a member of Afghan army following an argument in Nad Ali district of Helmand province, 555 km south of Kabul, where majority of the coalition soldier are from Britain.
Another British soldier was wounded and the attacker, who was also injured in the exchange of fire, was detained. No details about the incident were released.
The casualty brings the number of foreign soldiers killed in the green-on-blue attacks to 58 in about 38 insider attacks so far this year.
Taliban insurgents have often claimed responsibility for the insider attacks but the coalition military officials have recently said that about 25 percent of the insider attacks are in some manner related to the Taliban-led insurgency.
They said the factors that contribute to the so-called green on blue shootings are wide-ranging from infiltration and impersonation to personal grievances.
Eight out of 17 service members were killed in Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) explosions last month.
The simple but difficult to be detected Taliban weapon, the IEDs used in making suicide vests and roadside bombs, has proved a challenge for Afghan and NATO-led forces in the insurgency-hit country.
Up to 830 Afghan army personnel have also been killed in Taliban-led attacks from April to October and about 85 percent of Afghan army casualties were caused by the IEDs, said General Zahir Azimi, spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry last month.
Currently about 100,000 NATO-led forces, with 68,000 of them Americans, are stationed in the country to stop the Taliban from returning to power.
So far this year as of Wednesday Dec. 5, a total of 389 foreign soldiers, including 298 Americans have been killed in the war-torn country.
In 2010 and 2011, the NATO-led ISAF had respectively lost 711 service members including 499 Americans, and 566 service members, including 418 Americans.
According to iCasualties, a total of 3,236 service members with the ISAF forces have lost their lives since the war began in late 2001 in Afghanistan. Out of the total fatalities, 2,162 were Americans, 438 Britons and 636 from other troops-contributing countries.
Security transition conclude in 6 eastern Afghan provinces: army
JALALABAD, Afghanistan, Dec. 5 (Xinhua) -- Afghan forces took over the full security charges of six eastern provinces from the NATO-led forces, an Afghan army commander said Wednesday.
"Afghan army and police officially took full control of security duties in Nangarhar, Laghman, Kunar, Kapisa, Parwan and Panjshir provinces from NATO-led coalition forces and the security transition process in those provinces is entirely completed," commander of army regional Corps 201 Selab, General Zaman Waziri, told a ceremony to mark the event held in Jalalabad, the capital town of Nangarhar province.
"The government's goal to assume leading security duties across the country by the end of 2014 has been proceeding smoothly and is on track," he added.
The transition of security control from foreign troops to Afghan forces which begun in summer 2011 is due to be completed by the end of 2014.
However, some high-ranking military officials with the country' s defense ministry recently said that the Afghan government forces will be in charge of security of the entire country by the end of 2013, ahead of the schedule.
In a couple of weeks, when the third phase of the transition process ends, the Afghan forces will take full control of areas with about 75 percent of the country's population.
A total of 50 countries are contributing 100,000-strong forces in Afghanistan with more than 68,000 of them Americans.
Kabul's Roads, Paved With Good Intentions
NPR By Sean Carberry December 4, 2012
Sometimes, you don't have to go far to find a story. For the past few months, just stepping outside NPR's Kabul office has been a drama.
The neighborhood is in the midst of a major road and sewer renovation project. It's just one of many such projects that is badly needed in Kabul and elsewhere in the country.
But as is often the case, the pace and quality of the work has been uneven. And residents aren't so sure whether the final product will be worth the months of gridlock, power outages and business interruption.
The street outside of our office is complete dirt. It's rough and uneven, with huge craters and giant piles of boulders and rubble. It's hard to imagine how this could be a planned construction project — and this is one of dozens of streets in the neighborhood where this work has been going on, causing massive disruptions to people, to businesses and to daily life in this area.
The Sufi Restaurant is one of the businesses being affected. The renowned establishment serves traditional Afghan food to everyone from diplomats to development workers.
Bismillah, the restaurant's manager, says business is down about 50 percent compared with last year.
"Foreigners come here and see there is no parking area, so they give up and leave," he says.
Bismillah says he's had to lay off staff.
"We've appealed to many government departments, but no one listens to us," he says.
Part Of A Major Project
Sayed Nezamuddin Wahdat is the head of Kabul's 10th District, where this work is taking place. He says it's part of a citywide project to pave more than 60 miles of roads and renovate the fetid sewage trenches. Wahdat believes the project is going much better than past projects. He estimates 80 percent of the work is "going well."
"Most of the problems are caused by the contractors," he adds.
Wahdat says the city will fine the contractors if they do not complete the work properly and on time — by the end of December.
Yet one of the main contractors, UBCC, says that deadline will not be met. The company says the delays were unavoidable. Control and coordination among the four different contractors has been a problem. Often multiple streets are simultaneously shut down, hence the paralyzing traffic, even by Kabul standards.
To make matters worse, people in the neighborhood say no one from the government or the project has spoken to them about what streets would be torn up and when.
Yama Torabi is director of Integrity Watch Afghanistan, a nongovernmental transparency and accountability group.
"They have been able to do this main road, which is in front of the attorney general's office, in about a month or even less," Torabi says. "But then why is it that this road is taking four months?"
He says he does think it will be a huge improvement when it's done, and by all accounts, the quality of the work is far better than past paving projects that often crumble after one winter. But Torabi also says this area is only getting renovated because it's a wealthy neighborhood.
"We have a long way ahead of us, because 90 percent of the roads in Kabul are just not paved," he says.
At the rate things are going, many of the streets in our neighborhood aren't going to be paved anytime soon, either.
NATO Foreign Ministers Discuss Afghanistan, Georgia
December 5, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen says the alliance's foreign ministers have had a "productive" session with Afghanistan's foreign minister in Brussels.
The December 5 meeting focused on the handover of security responsibilities to Afghan forces by the end of 2014 and a new NATO mission to train more soldiers and police officers.
Rasmussen told journalists that NATO will contribute to the funding of Afghan security forces after 2014.
NATO foreign ministers also held a meeting of the NATO-Georgia Commission with Georgian Foreign Minister Maia Panjikidze.
Rasmussen described NATO's commitment to Georgia as "solid."
On December 4, the ministers also met and approved NATO member Turkey's request to have Patriot surface-to-air defense missiles deployed on its territory to protect the country from possible attacks from neighboring Syria.
Based on reporting by dpa and AFP
Nearly 83,000 Afghan refugees return home from Pakistan this year
ISLAMABAD, Dec. 5 (Xinhua) -- The UN refugee agency said Wednesday that nearly 83,000 Afghan refugees have returned home this year through its assisted voluntary repatriation program, a 24 percent increase from 2011.
In November this year, more than 8,200 refugees returned from Pakistan, compared with some 3,000 a year earlier. However, Pakistan is still hosting some 1.65 million Afghan refugees and another 1 million undocumented Afghans, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said.
Voluntary repatriation remains the UNHCR's preferred solution globally for most refugees. Since 2002, around 5.7 million Afghan refugees have returned to their home country, constituting nearly a quarter of the country's population. Nevertheless, Pakistan and Iran are still generously hosting some 2.7 million Afghan refugees after three decades, a UNHCR statement said.
The Pakistani government is holding informal consultations to formulate the policy beyond Dec. 31, 2012, a date set for the Afghan refugees to return homes.
Pakistan has issued Proof of Registration Cards (PoRs) to Afghan refugees that will expire on Dec. 31 and the government has not yet decided to extend its period. Pakistan said that it will treat all Afghan refugees as illegal immigrants after the expiry of PoRs.
Pakistani Minister for States and Frontier Regions, Engineer Shaukatullah Khan, whose ministry also deals with the refugees affairs, concluded a three-day visit to Afghanistan on Tuesday and has assured the Afghan leaders that Pakistan will not forcibly expel Afghans.
The minister also called on Afghan President Hamid Karzai and expressed his commitment to the voluntary return of Afghan refugees to their homeland, while also hoping that the Pakistani government will soon agree to a mechanism in this respect for voluntary and dignified return. During this meeting, emphasis was made on the voluntary nature of return by the president, the UNHCR said.
The minister also saw first-hand the implementation of the Solutions Strategy for Afghan Returnees (SSAR) in Afghanistan, and the conditions in which refugee returns are taking place.
Together with Dr. Jamaher Anwary, minister for Refugees and Repatriation, he visited two high-return areas where they met returnees from Pakistan. They were also accompanied by representatives of the UNHCR in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including Neill Wright, UNHCR representative in Pakistan.
The delegations met with recently returned refugees from Pakistan and witnessed the many needs still faced by the returnees as winter approaches, despite several already completed projects, including a new school that was under construction at the time.
Voluntary repatriation and sustainable reintegration are at the center of the SSAR that was endorsed at an international conference in Geneva in May 2012. "However, we need development funding and development actors to urgently become more engaged in supporting sustainable reintegration for refugees, through the implementation of this strategy, "said Dr. Anwary.
Senate OKs $631 billion defense bill that pushes for US drawdown in Afghanistan
Associated Press Wednesday, December 5, 2012
WASHINGTON - The Senate overwhelmingly approved a sweeping, $631 billion defense bill Tuesday that sends a clear signal to President Barack Obama to move quickly to get U.S. combat troops out of Afghanistan, tightens sanctions on Iran and limits the president’s authority in handling terror suspects.
Ignoring a veto threat, the Senate voted 98-0 for the legislation that authorizes money for weapons, aircraft and ships and provides a 1.7 percent pay raise for military personnel. After a decade of increasing Pentagon budgets, the vote came against the backdrop of significant reductions in projected military spending and the threat of deeper cuts from the looming “fiscal cliff” of automatic spending cuts and tax increases.
The bill reflects the nation’s war-weariness after more than a decade of fighting in Afghanistan, the messy uncertainty about new threats to U.S. security and Washington belt-tightening in times of trillion-dollar-plus deficits. Spending solely on the base defense budget has nearly doubled in the past 10 years, but the latest blueprint reins in the projected growth in military dollars.
The bill would provide some $526 billion for the base defense budget, $17 billion for defense programs in the Energy Department and about $88 billion for the war in Afghanistan. House and Senate negotiators must reconcile their competing versions of the bill in the next few weeks.
“The major challenge is time,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., told reporters after the vote.
Reacting to the relentless violence in Syria, the Senate voted 92-6 to require the Pentagon to report to Congress on the ability of the U.S. military to impose a no-fly zone over Syria.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who has pushed for greater U.S. military involvement to end the Syrian civil war, sponsored the amendment. Obama on Monday warned Syrian President Bashar Assad not to use chemical and/or biological weapons against his people as the U.S. and its allies weigh military options.
“If military action has to be taken to prevent sarin gas to be used, Congress has to be involved,” McCain said.
But Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said it was a “bad idea to discuss contingency plans for war.”
The amendment specified that it should not be construed as a declaration of war or an authorization to use force.
Last year, Obama and congressional Republicans agreed on nearly $500 billion in defense cuts over 10 years. If the two sides fail in the next month to avert the “fiscal cliff” the Pentagon would face an additional $55 billion in automatic, across-the-board cuts after the first of the year.
Not far from the Capitol, a coalition of retired military leaders, administration officials and lawmakers pleaded with the president and Congress to address the nation’s debt, calling it the greatest threat to national security. The group of prominent Republicans and Democrats said the United States can spend less on defense while still maintaining its military superiority.
“A strong economy and strong national security are inextricably linked,” said retired Adm. Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The administration has threatened to veto the Senate bill, strongly objecting to a provision restricting the president’s authority to transfer terror suspects from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to foreign countries. The provision is in current law.
The Senate also voted to restrict the transfer of detainees held at Guantanamo to prisons in the United States.
Further stoking the debate over U.S. detention policy — and setting up a fight with the House — the Senate also added a provision saying the government may not detain a U.S. citizen or legal resident indefinitely without charge or trial even if there is a declaration of war or the authorization to use military force.
Current law denies suspected terrorists, including U.S. citizens seized within the nation’s borders, the right to trial and subjects them to the possibility they would be held indefinitely. It reaffirms the post-Sept. 11 authorization for the use of military force that allows indefinite detention of enemy combatants.
That provision had created a conservative backlash, and a coalition of liberal Democrats and libertarian Republicans pushed for the new provision.
The bill sends a clear message to Obama and the military to accelerate the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from Afghanistan. On a strong bipartisan vote of 62-33 last week, the Senate endorsed Obama’s timetable to withdraw all combat troops by the end of 2014 but pressed for a quicker pace, without specifying how that would be achieved.
Obama and the military are engaged in high-stakes talks about the pace of drawing down the 66,000 U.S. combat troops there now.
The bill added stringent new sanctions on Iran’s energy and shipping sectors in a fresh attempt to hobble the Islamic Republic’s economy and hamper its nuclear ambitions.
The sanctions build upon penalties that Congress has passed — and Obama has implemented — that target Tehran’s financial and energy sectors.
Officials in Washington argue that the sanctions have undermined Tehran’s economy and robust oil sales, thwarting its suspected pursuit of a nuclear weapon. Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.
Sens. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., and Mark Kirk, R-Ill., who have shepherded sanctions bills through Congress, sponsored the latest package that also would close a major loophole — the ability of Iran to circumvent sanctions and barter oil for precious metals. Turkey has been bartering gold for oil.
The sanctions would designate Iran’s energy, port, shipping and ship-building sectors as “entities of proliferation” and prohibit transactions with these areas. The legislation also would penalize individuals selling or supplying commodities such as graphite, aluminum and steel to Iran, all products that are crucial to Tehran’s ship-building and nuclear operations.
The administration had complained that the new sanctions were duplicative and unnecessary.
Cricket To Become Part Of The Curriculum In Afghanistan
By Farangis Najibullah and Safiullah Stanikzai December 4, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Cricket was one of the few sports in Afghanistan to survive the rule of the Taliban. Now, the wildly popular sporting import is poised to leave the playground and enter the classroom.
Afghanistan's Education Ministry is teaming up with the country's Cricket Board (ACB) to make cricket a compulsory class in Afghan schools as early as January.
According to the board's chief executive officer, Bashir Stanikzai, the idea is to help develop the sport in Afghanistan, spot talent, and turn the country into a force in the international cricketing arena.
"We want to develop cricket in a proper way, and schools will be a big project," he says. "If we succeed in developing cricket in schools, we are quite sure that we will get good players in the country. And it will have a social value as well, especially for those who love this game but don't get a chance to play."
Cricket came into its own only recently after it found acceptance under the hard-line Islamist regime. After the Taliban's fall in 2001 the sport flourished when the children of Afghan refugees returned to the country after learning to play cricket in neighboring Pakistan.
Since the national cricket squad was first formed in 2001, Afghanistan has shown that it has the potential to become a major player. In 2010, it secured qualification to the prestigious 2010 World Twenty20 competition, and is ranked among the world's top teams in that category.
Now, there is even talk that Afghanistan's cricketers could soon achieve test-playing status.
National Heroes
Although Afghanistan has not yet established a national cricket league, it regularly organizes domestic tournaments among the country's numerous clubs. The matches usually attract a full house of spectators, many of whom regard cricket players as national heroes and children's idols.
A recent nationwide survey indicated that nearly 75 percent of respondents consider cricket their favorite sport. Many of those questioned supported the idea of cricket being taught in schools.
In October, the board organized its first month-long training classes for potential cricket instructors and similar trainings for coaches and umpires are due to start on December 15.
"We are sending cricket kits for students that consist of plastic bats and balls, and other cricket equipment especially made for children," Stanikzai says.
Some of the country's top professionals are willing to lend a helping hand. Noorulhaq Malekzai, the captain of the Kabul-based Al-Masafi team, says he "would be more than happy" to assist the coaches.
Malekzai, a batsman who has represented his country in numerous international tournaments, believes officials "should not wait until all conditions are perfect to launch their plan."
"If there is a will to play, you can play cricket with the most basic equipment," he says. "As they say, 'just do it.'"
"There are so many children eager to play cricket," Malekzai adds. "You can see them playing in the streets, Many schools have small sports grounds. In the beginning, a pair of bats, a pair of balls, a pair of leg pads, and uniforms should be enough for an entire team of players. Of course, it's a far cry from international standards, but it is just enough to start professional careers in cricket."
'Like A Dream Come True"
Officials have yet to work out the details, such as what age group they should target, and how many hours a week the children should be taught cricket during physical education classes.
The ACB and the Education Ministry are expected to finalize arrangements "within days" before starting the first cricket lessons at several schools across five provinces in January 2013.
Kabul, Kandahar, Khost, Konduz, and Nangarhar provinces have been chosen due to their relatively developed cricket infrastructure. By the end of 2013, the project is expected to expand into six more provinces.
"We hope these schools will be a success story and serve as a role model to the rest of the country," Stanikzai says.
Fitratullah, a young boy who like many Afghans goes by one name, looks forward to that day. But for now he and his friends are honing their skills with a homemade bat on a dusty road in the eastern town of Jalalabad.
"We have only two special cricket academies in the province and they don't have space for everyone and besides they charge money," Fitratullah says. "If cricket becomes a school subject for free, it would be like a dream come true for many kids."
Written and reported by Farangis Najibullah with additional reporting by RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan correspondent Safiullah Stanikzai
Differing Afghan, U.S. priorities could sabotage proposed security agreement
Washington Post By Pamela Constable and Craig Whitlock December 4 , 2012
KABUL - When Afghan and American negotiators sat down here last month to begin talks on a bilateral security agreement that would define and govern a long-term U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, their meeting was cordial, vague and brief.
When the two sides meet again this month for more substantive discussions, each will begin to lay out a competing set of military concerns, political constraints and legal priorities that could severely test their fledgling postwar partnership, possibly to the point of failure.
For the Afghan government, which has smarted under a decade of Western military dominance in the fight against Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgents, the key will be balancing the desperate need for continued U.S. support of Afghan security forces with the public and political pressure to ensure equality and sovereignty after U.S. combat troops leave Afghanistan in 2014.
“There is no question we would like to see a continued U.S. military presence to strengthen Afghan institutions and assure the Afghan people that the U.S. will be a friend and ally after 2014. But this must be an agreement between two sovereign nations,” said Jawed Ludin, Afghanistan’s deputy foreign minister. “Some see this as being mostly about immunity and jurisdiction, but we see it in the larger context. This is our future at stake.”
For the U.S. government, which has lost more than 2,000 troops in an increasingly unpopular war, the key will be addressing the Afghans’ demand for sovereignty without conceding the right to protect all American forces stationed here in supporting roles from potentially abusive treatment by Afghan authorities or courts.
“As much as I want to get it right in Afghanistan and believe losing would be a national security disaster for the ages, if the Afghans insist on keeping American soldiers in Afghanistan without legal protections . . . I will not vote for one penny, and this war will come to an end,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said at a hearing in Washington last month.
Last year, during similar negotiations about the role and status of U.S. troops in postwar Iraq, the Iraqi government refused to grant legal immunity for any troops. Despite months of efforts to reach a compromise, the issue ultimately killed the agreement, resulting in the hasty departure of all remaining American forces.
In Afghanistan, the issue was starkly dramatized in March, when Robert Bales, a U.S. Army staff sergeant, was detained after a late-night shooting rampage that killed 16 villagers. Afghan leaders argued that Bales should face justice in Afghan courts, but U.S. military officials swiftly returned him to the United States for prosecution.
While the international command headed by Gen. John R. Allen here is working on recommendations for President Obama on the rate of withdrawal for American combat troops, the U.S. negotiating position for the follow-on force is being formulated in Washington. Officials there said that options currently under discussion call for 5,000 to 10,000 troops, including training and logistics experts as well as counterterrorism units.
Although the rules governing the future activities and status of American troops are being negotiated in private by senior Afghan and U.S. officials — a process that is expected to take up to a year — the public atmosphere surrounding the talks has already been roiled by a string of criticisms and demands from Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
In the past several months, Karzai has declared that NATO members should not count on immunity after 2014. He has also lambasted the United States for not responding more aggressively to cross-border rocket attacks from Pakistan, and repeatedly demanded that the United States fund a larger Afghan air force.
Last month, Karzai also accused the United States of breaking an earlier agreement to turn over full control of Afghan prisons and detainees, including more than 3,000 prisoners being held at Bagram air base, and he ordered his aides to carry out the “full Afghanization” of all prisons.
Critics of the president, who is supposed to step down in 2014, when a new election is scheduled, say he has been grandstanding, mainly for domestic political reasons. Some suggest that he wants to cling to power and is using the security agreement to win personal concessions from the United States, even at the risk of sacrificing the entire pact.
But several other Afghan officials insisted that the government fully recognizes the importance of the agreement and is only seeking to protect its rights after a decade of subordination to Western military forces.
“This continued partnership is clearly in both countries’ interests, and there is no question that America’s security needs are important to us as well,” Ludin said. “But our fear is that the legalistic approach from the American side will miss the political gravity of it for us. We need a sense of reassurance that the Afghan laws and constitution will be respected.”
Afghan army and police commanders have repeatedly said they need an array of sustained U.S. support — from weapons to logistics to training — in order to defend the nation against Islamist insurgents. The Afghan public, although weary and resentful of the protracted NATO military presence, is also fearful of what will happen when Western forces leave.
Despite the stumbling blocks, U.S. officials in Kabul said they are optimistic that the security talks will go more smoothly than they did in Iraq. They said a solid bilateral security agreement, building on a broad strategic partnership agreement signed by Obama and Karzai in March, can help persuade the Afghan public that the United States will not abandon them.
In Washington, however, officials said there is little chance that the Obama administration will agree to any deal that allows U.S. troops to be handed over to Afghan authorities for prosecution and trial, citing concerns about corruption and bias in the Afghan justice system.
The United States has status-of-forces agreements with more than 100 other countries that spell out when they can prosecute U.S. troops under specified circumstances.
In Afghanistan, a legal agreement has for years allowed American authorities to prosecute U.S. troops for any alleged crimes committed there. Christopher M. Jenks, an assistant law professor at Southern Methodist University and a former military prosecutor, said it is hard to imagine that Afghan leaders would agree to extend that arrangement past 2014.
Even if negotiators try to paper over their legal differences, Jenks added, any agreement would quickly fall apart in a future case — such as the allegations against Bales — in which U.S. troops are accused of rape, murder or other atrocities.
“That’s all well and good until you have an incident,” Jenks said. “You can build a house of cards, but you run the risk of it all coming down.”
Whitlock reported from Washington. Karen DeYoung in Washington and Kevin Sieff in Kabul contributed to this report.
British forces accused of killing four teenagers in Afghan operation
Boys were targeted at close range witnesses claim, as defence secretary asked to launch urgent inquiry
The Guardian By Richard Norton-Taylor and Nick Hopkins Tuesday 4 December 2012
The defence secretary, Philip Hammond, has been asked to launch an urgent inquiry into claims that British forces led a counter-insurgency operation in Afghanistan during which a 12-year-old boy and three teenagers were shot dead while they were drinking tea.
Lawyers acting for the brother of two of the victims have written to Hammond describing an incident on 18 October in the village of Loi Bagh in Nad Ali, Helmand province, where British forces have been based since 2006.
According to statements given to the lawyers by other family members and witnesses, the operation involved Afghan and UK forces, but it was British soldiers – possibly special forces – who were said to have been in the lead.
"We submit that all of the victims were under the control and authority of the UK at the times of the deaths and ill-treatment," states the letter to Hammond.
"The four boys killed all appear to have been deliberately targeted at close range by British forces. All were killed in a residential area over which UK forces clearly had the requisite degree of control and authority."
The four victims are named as Fazel Mohammed, 18, Naik Mohammed, 16, Mohammed Tayeb, 14 and Ahmed Shah, 12.
Britain contributes soldiers to Nato's International Security and Assistance Force (Isaf), which has already confirmed that an operation took place in the village on that date.
The incident has been reported in the Afghan media. Major Adam Wojack, a spokesman for Nato-led forces in Afghanistan, confirmed the "joint Afghan-coalition forces" operation in Nad Ali on 18 October. He said the result was the "killing of four Taliban enemies in action". That claim is rejected by relatives of the victims.
Military sources also said it was unusual for UK forces to take the lead in operations of this kind because the Afghans are supposed to be in control as part of the transition process. The MoD said it would give the claims "full consideration before responding".
According to a statement sent to Hammond on Tuesday by Tessa Gregory, lawyer for Noor Mohammad Noorzai, brother of two of the dead youths, the boys were "shot and killed at close range" in a family guesthouse. Gregory, of the law firm Public Interest Lawyers, obtained written sworn statements from witnesses in a visit to Afghanistan last month. They allege that British soldiers, who were engaged in a joint operation with Afghan forces, hooded some of those arrested despite a ban on the practice.
"The soldiers walked through the village calling at various houses asking to be told where the claimant's brother Fazel Mohammed lived", says Gregory's statement. "It is alleged that the soldiers entered the house of a neighbour dragged him from his bed, hooded him and his son and beat them until under questioning they showed the soldiers the house of Fazel which was across the street."
According to the document sent to Hammond, the families and neighbours "reject outright any suggestion that any of the four teenagers killed were in any way connected to the insurgency. All four were innocent teenagers who posed no threat whatsoever to Afghan or British forces".
Gregory told the Guardian: "On 18 October 2012, during a joint British-Afghan security operation, four innocent Afghan teenagers were shot whilst drinking tea in their family's mud home in Helmand province. Our client, the elder brother of two of the teenage victims, wants to know why this happened. As far as we are aware no investigation into these tragic deaths has taken place. We hope that in light of our urgent representations the Ministry of Defence will act swiftly to ensure that an effective and independent investigation is carried out without any further delay."
In her statement to Hammond, Gregory says: "After the soldiers left, the claimant's family and some neighbours entered the "guesthouse" where they found the bodies of the four teenagers lying in a line with their heads towards the doorway".
The statement adds: "It was clear that the bodies had been dragged into that position and all had been shot in the head and neck region as they sat on the floor of the guesthouse leaning against the wall drinking tea.."
Gregory says the British soldiers involved in the operation are bound by the European Convention of Human Rights which enshrines the right to life and outlaws inhumane treatment. Unless the MoD could show it has carried out a full investigation, lawyers representing the victims' families will ask the high court to order one.
An MoD spokesman said: "The Ministry of Defence received details of these allegations on Tuesday in a letter from a UK firm of solicitors on behalf of an Afghan national and will give them full consideration before responding. The 'letter before action' is the first stage of seeking a judicial review and requires the MoD to reply within 14 days, providing a reasonable opportunity to consider the claim and whether there is a case to answer."
The MoD said protection of the Afghan civilian population is at the core of Isaf's military strategy in Afghanistan and, that unlike the insurgency they are supporting the Afghan people to defeat, Isaf and UK forces place a high priority on protecting civilians during combat.
Crisis looms in central Asia’s Great Game
Financial Times By Ahmed Rashid December 4, 2012
Sixteen years ago this month there was panic across central Asia. Having captured Kabul, the Taliban were moving northwards and some commanders were threatening to Talibanise the entire region. That prompted Russia and China to promise support to the ex-Soviet states across the region.
Post-September 11 the Taliban threat receded but today central Asians are once again panicking at the thought of US troops exiting Afghanistan. Added to the threat of a resurgent Taliban are domestic Islamist extremist groups such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), whose members have spent the past decade in Pakistan’s tribal regions and are now, armed and battle ready, re-entering central Asia through northern Afghanistan.
A flurry of security officials from Nato, the US and the EU have been visiting the region trying to reassure the governments in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan that border Afghanistan, and fragile Kyrgyzstan, over increased aid and security. US officials are also believed to be offering sales of unwanted heavy weapons from the Afghan theatre.
But at the same time Russia and China are trying to wean those governments away from the US, with Vladimir Putin in particular making a determined effort to return central Asia to Russia’s backyard . In October Mr Putin signed a new 30-year treaty to secure a base in Tajikistan. A joint Russian-Tajik statement spoke of “the threat of terrorism and drug trafficking from Afghanistan”. The 7,000 Russian troops based in Tajikistan might increase. A month earlier Mr Putin had signed a treaty with Kyrgyzstan extending an air base lease for 20 years.
China has been offering greater security through the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation – a regional pact that is yet to really take off – as well as using its long term ally Pakistan to gain influence with the Taliban. India too has a growing presence, with a military base in Tajikistan and oil and mineral stakes in Kazakhstan.
This represents an intensification of the new Great Game that erupted in the region after the break-up of the Soviet Union.
Mr Putin’s aim is to ensure that the US is left with little presence in the region. At present Russia allows Nato supplies to travel through its territory to Afghanistan. The US has negotiated similar rights for its withdrawal from Afghanistan to reduce dependence on the southern route, which Pakistan closed earlier this year during a spat with the US. But Russia will make sure that these transit facilities end after 2014.
Russia is also adamantly opposing US plans to maintain small military bases in Afghanistan post-2014 for special forces, drone missiles and trainers for the Afghan army.
So far only Uzbekistan has dissented from the Russian line. In July President Islam Karimov withdrew from the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) of pro-Moscow states. He has also offered the Americans long-term facilities and is negotiating for US weapons supplies. But even if Mr Karimov – a ruthless dictator who has refused to carry out economic reforms – can resist Russian pressure for long, he is hardly an ideal ally for the west.
In the meantime Nato forces in northern Afghanistan are doing their best to eliminate the central Asian Islamic militant groups. The IMU in particular has proved to be a long-term threat and is now closely tied to al-Qaeda and Pakistan’s Lashkar-e-Taiba. Counting only a few hundred Uzbek and Tajik fighters in the late 1990s, the group now has thousands of militants drawn from all central Asian states as well as China, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Chechnya.
Yet for all the anxiety in Moscow and Washington about the shifting balance of power in Afghanistan, it does not represent the greatest threat to central Asia. What could really undermine the ex-Soviet states is the increasing pauperisation of their people, the collapse of services such as health and education, and the excesses of dictators and failure of governments – except for Kyrgyzstan’s – to carry out any political, social or economic reforms. Unfortunately as the new Great Game continues, both Russia and the US are ignoring the social and economic crisis that is about to erupt in central Asia. That crisis will not be because of Afghanistan.
The writer is an author of books on Afghanistan, Pakistan and central Asia, including ‘Descent into Chaos’
New commander faces challenge of winding down Afghanistan war
Reuters By David Alexander Tue Dec 4, 2012
WASHINGTON - Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford, who takes over as head of international forces in Afghanistan next year, faces the challenge of winding down a war in a country where he has little experience using a strategy he did not devise.
Dunford, whose nomination was confirmed by the Senate on Monday night, will be the fifth commander of the International Security Assistance Force since President Barack Obama took office, a leadership churn that worries Afghan war analysts.
Friends and colleagues describe Dunford, the Marine Corps assistant commandant, as a calm and thoughtful leader who earned the nickname "Fighting Joe" on the battlefields of Iraq by creating conditions for success with careful planning and harmonious execution.
But analysts expressed mixed views on his selection to replace Marine Corps General John Allen.
Some worry about the No. 2 Marine's lack of experience in Afghanistan and his vocal support for President Barack Obama's plan to withdraw most U.S. forces by the end of 2014. That could make him reluctant to ask for more time and troops if conditions on the ground are not right for a stable transition, they say.
But others contend that after a dozen years of war, Dunford's job is to execute the strategy he has been given, not reinvent it. And while he may be able to suggest some adjustments to the plan, he has very little room for maneuver as members of the 46-nation coalition edge toward departure.
"The problem is at this point nobody is going to fight it. It's the strategy. It's not his choice," said Anthony Cordesman, a defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. "For good or evil, the question is: How does he manage the shift towards an exit."
"FIGHTING JOE"
Dunford, a Boston native, is a 35-year veteran of the Marines. He was commissioned as an officer in 1977 and he served as a platoon and company commander for several years before moving to administrative roles. He holds two master's degrees and is a graduate of the elite Army Ranger School.
As the United States moved toward war with Iraq in 2003, Dunford - then a colonel - found himself in the First Marine Expeditionary Force serving as commander of Regimental Combat Team 5, the unit that would lead the U.S. invasion, seize the Rumaila oil fields and then head toward Baghdad.
When officials advanced the timing of the invasion by a day, Dunford had his forces ready to move in three hours. He kicked off the assault with a nighttime crossing of the 10-foot berm and anti-tank ditch separating Iraq and Kuwait, moving in darkness rather than at dawn as initially planned.
"He earned the Fighting Joe title by his actions during Operation Iraqi Freedom, when he led the initial attack into Iraq (crossing the berm on the accelerated timeline) and leading all the way to Baghdad," said General James Mattis, the head of U.S. Central Command, who was Dunford's commander in Iraq.
"He's not flashy, but he's the fighter - one I could always count on when the going got difficult," Mattis said in an email. "He is tactically cunning and does a superb job at setting his subordinate commanders up for success by orchestrating complex battle plans into harmonious actions."
Congressman Duncan Hunter, who served in the Marines in Iraq and occasionally had a chance to interact with Dunford, said the commander was seen as "a decisive leader who was well-respected by subordinates and peers throughout the chain of command."
"In a stressful, combat environment he proved himself to be an accomplished and energetic warrior," Hunter said in an email.
Since the war Dunford has moved rapidly up the chain of command. He became a brigadier general in 2004, was selected to become a major general in December 2007 and then promoted to lieutenant general two months later, before Congress had acted to confirm his second star.
"That in itself will give you an idea of how he was seen in the Marine Corps," said Marine Colonel David Lapan, a spokesman for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has worked for Dunford and been his neighbor.
He has a "great reputation as a combat commander, as an operational commander, very even-keeled, measured, analytical," Lapan said. While his combat experience is not in Afghanistan, the differences are not that great and he can bring a fresh perspective to the situation, Lapan said.
SOME QUESTIONS
But some Afghan war analysts are concerned about Dunford's appointment, saying his support for Obama's withdrawal strategy will make it difficult for him to adjust the drawdown based on conditions on the ground.
"He was in a very small minority among senior military officers in articulating that President Obama's Afghanistan strategy and the notion of firm deadlines could work," said Michael Rubin, a defense analyst at the American Enterprise Institute. "He has never explained ... how or why he thinks it could work."
Dunford will have to guide international forces through a series of critical milestones over the coming two years, starting with Afghan forces taking over the lead role for the country's security next summer.
The presidential election in the spring of 2014 is viewed as essential to ensuring Afghan support for the government once international forces withdraw. And Dunford also must manage the drawdown of U.S. and international forces and the transition to full Afghan control by the end of 2014.
"All too often when officials talk about the transition, they just talk in terms of numbers and the actual Afghans doing security and fighting," Rubin said. "But to really have transition and independence, you need a lot in the background."
Afghan National Security Forces still lack important specialty skills, from intelligence, logistics and communications to maintenance, engineering and accounting, he said. Medical support is a "huge example."
"When we're fighting with the Afghans and the Afghans get wounded, we triage them, evacuate them, that sort of thing. They have no capability of that on their own. We haven't focused on it in transition," Rubin said.
Ultimately the issue is whether withdrawal from Afghanistan will take place as Afghan security forces acquire the skills they need to defend the country, or whether it will move ahead according to a political timeline, he said.
"Most generals are looking at the capabilities," Rubin said. "Dunford is the exception. He appears to be looking at the politics."
But Cordesman said Dunford's job in Afghanistan is to execute the policy approved by the White House, the Pentagon and NATO and he has little flexibility in the matter.
"The purpose of a commander is not to tell the president what to do," he said. "The purpose of a commander is to do the task he's assigned as well as he possibly can."
He said he believed Dunford would be able to "tell the president bad news or make recommendations that indicated we had to change the way in which we exit ... or the timing."
"This is certainly not somebody who would simply accept or follow orders regardless of conditions," he said. "But it is obvious that no commander at this point is going to come in ... charged with reexamining and reinventing the strategy."
(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
Transparency: Two-Thirds Of Countries Perceived To Be 'Highly Corrupt'
By Antoine Blua December 5, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
The anticorruption group Transparency International (TI) says high levels of bribery, abuse of power, and secret dealings continue to “ravage” societies around the world, despite a growing public outcry over corrupt governments.
The annual Corruption Perceptions Index, published on December 5 by the Berlin-based group, shows that two-thirds of 176 countries are perceived by citizens to be highly corrupt.
Transparency International regional coordinator Svetlana Savitskaya told RFE/RL the findings indicate a public demand for institutions and officials to be more transparent and accountable.
She said priorities include stronger rules on lobbying and political financing and more transparency on public spending and contracting.
Governments 'Still Inactive'
Afghanistan, along with North Korea and Somalia, were once again at the bottom of the Corruption Perceptions Index.
Russia and former Soviet republics also scored poorly – with the exception of Georgia, which showed improvement.
TI says its composite index is based on data collected in the past 24 months by independent institutions specializing in governance and business climate analysis.
Two-thirds of the 176 countries scored below 50 on a scale from 0 (perceived to be highly corrupt) to 100 (perceived to be very clean).
"Despite the demonstrations all over the world, in many countries, which were sparked on the ground of corruption, the governments still remain inactive and still continue to act as before, and continue not to take effective measures to tackle corruption. Everywhere, even in the EU countries," Savitskaya said.
In these countries, TI says, the “lack of accountable leadership and effective public institutions” calls for a much stronger stance against corruption.
Iraq and Pakistan ranked 169 and 139, respectively.
Russia placed 133rd, alongside Iran and Kazakhstan.
Elsewhere in Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan ranked 154, followed by Tajikistan (157), Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan (both 170).
In the Caucasus, Georgia ranked 51st, leaving Armenia (105), Azerbaijan (139) and all the other CIS countries far behind.
Belarus was ranked 123rd, Ukraine 144th.
'Utterly Untransparent'
Savitskaya says the situation is not improving in Russia and other former Soviet republics, “with the very small exception of Georgia."
"These governments continue to be utterly untransparent and nonaccountable to citizens," Savitskaya said. "Even though many of these governments introduced very elegant anticorruption legislation -- very elaborate, very detailed strategies -- these remain to be not enforced and not implemented. And also there is a continued lack of citizen oversight -- civil oversight -- over what the governments are doing or not doing."
Savitskaya says Georgia has introduced “robust anticorruption reforms” under President Mikheil Saakashvili, particularly in the police and education sectors. But she adds that corruption remains a big problem in the country, including in the government.
Croatia, which is expected to join the European Union in 2013, had the lowest perceived corruption in Southeastern Europe (62). Macedonia came in 69th, followed by Bosnia-Herzegovina (72), Montenegro (75), Serbia (80), Moldova (94), and Kosovo (105).
Developed countries -- Denmark, Finland, and New Zealand -- tied for first place with scores of 90 due to “strong access to information systems and rules governing the behavior of those in public positions.”
Some European Union countries had low scores, including Italy (72), Romania (66), and Slovakia (62).
In a statement, TI Managing Director Cobus de Swardt said the world’s leading economies can influence the global fight against corruption by making sure their institutions are fully transparent and their leaders are held accountable.
ICIMOD calls for global support to save mountains
KATHMANDU, Dec. 05 (Xinhua) -- The International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) on Wednesday warned that water availability and its use will be critical in the near future.
The Kathmandu-based regional intergovernmental center for mountain development also called for global support for mountain communities to adapt and build resilience to climate change.
"A clear message to negotiators that water availability and use will be critical in the future and that mountain communities need global support to adapt and build resilience to climate change, rather than simply coping with the impacts," it said in a press release issued on Wednesday.
The ICIMOD serves the eight regional member countries of the Hindu Kush-Himalayan area -- Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan.
According to the press release, the ICIMOD, the government of Nepal and other partners jointly organized the "Mountain Day Event " on Dec. 3 alongside the 18th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
During the meeting, Keshab Man Shakya, Nepal's minister of environment, science and technology, also the chair of the event, pointed to the increased frequency of floods, accelerated melting of glaciers, uncertainty of water availability, and unprecedented damage to the entire mountain landscape as matters which need urgent attention.
Gyan Chandra Acharya, the United Nations' Under Secretary General and High Representative for Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries, and Small Island Developing States, mentioned the urgency to address the consequences of climate change on the mountainous region.
"The time to act on mountains is now; the world is heading for more than two degrees Celsius temperature and the implications for mountains will be catastrophic," said Acharya, quoted by the press release.
Acharya also emphasized that mountains need to be part of broader and integrated action to address the growing impact of climate change, noting the need for coordinated action among UN environmental conventions.
Schoolgirl Shot to Death in Kapisa
TOLOnews.com By Shakeela Ahbrimkhil Tuesday, 04 December 2012
A schoolgirl has been shot dead allegedly by local Taliban members while on her way home from school in eastern Kapisa province, provincial officials said Tuesday.
The girl, Anisa, was in Grade 10 and working as a volunteer on a polio campaign in Kapisa. She was returning home from the Mahmoud Raqi Girls High School on Sunday when she was killed in a volley of bullets from armed men.
Kapisa Head of Women's Affairs Saifoora Koohestani said it was local Taliban gunmen, although the group has not claimed responsibility.
"This girl was tenth grade student of Mahmoud Raqi Girls High School in the second part of Koohestan, Kapisa Province. This girl was not only a student, but also a volunteer worker for the (Ministry of) Public Health in the polio campaign," she said.
There have been several cases of students being killed or attacked, but many incidents are not reported.
The Taliban has opposed the polio campaign in parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
In October, Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai received worldwide recognition after surviving being shot in the head by Taliban militants for her work in promoting education for women.
Council of Ministers Removes Election Complaints Commission
TOLOnews.com By Shakeela Ahbrimkhil Tuesday, 04 December 2012
The Council of Ministers has approved the new election law without an Election Complaints Commission (ECC), assigning the powers that would belong to the ECC to the Supreme Court, according to the Independent Elections Commission (IEC).
IEC chief Fazel Ahmad Manawe said at a press conference in Kabul that the draft of the law was approved after three meetings of the ministers, with amendments.
"The draft was discussed in three sessions of the Council of Ministers and finally it was approved on Monday. We expressed our technical visions but it was up to the cabinet to decide about it. It will be sent to parliament for approval by end of the week," Manawe said Tuesday.
Under the changes introduced by the Council, the Supreme Court will be the only authority to investigate and follow up the election issues that would normally be overseen by the ECC.
"The Ministry of Finance had somehow changed our plans but after long discussion, the Supreme Court has been assigned to form a new election court to follow up any complaints," he added.
Afghan political parties and activists criticised the decision, warning of an unfair election.
"There is a double game being played in the election process and it will harm the confidence of the Afghan people on that process and legislation," executive director of Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan Jandad Spinghar told TOLOnews.
National Coalition of Afghanistan spokesman Sayed Fazel Sancharaki told TOLOnews that the ECC with its two foreign advisors was intended to ensure transparency and its omission was threatening and dangerous.
"What was decided by the Cabinet shows that the president is not willing to launch a transparent and fair election. He tries to influence the election organs to harm the credibility of the elections in the country," he said.
"If a government organ oversees the election results, it will be against the Afghan constitution. It should be the Election Complaints Commission that does that," a spokesman for the Right and Justice party said.
The parties urged the parliament to take the necessary decision and observe Afghanistan's constitution and the rights of the people.
Afghanistan's Competitive Pilgrims
After the spiritual experience of visiting Mecca, returning pilgrims are expected to host festivities for friends and relatives.
IWPR By Hijratullah Ekhtyar 4 Dec 12
Afghanistan - In Afghanistan, as in other Muslim countries, pilgrims returning from the annual Hajj are greeted with open arms – but here they are expected to reciprocate with lavish entertainment that some view as inappropriate.
In recent weeks, Afghans have been arriving home after joining the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, which this year took place in October.
Performing the Hajj is one of five central duties for Muslims who are able and can afford to go. About 30,000 Afghans make the trip in the course of a year, and for many the expense makes it a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
On their return, the pilgrims or “hajjis” are met by friends and relatives, but custom dictates that they spend the next few weeks receiving guests, hosting feasts and handing out gifts.
Some people regret that instead of marking an act of piety, the celebrations have become a form of ostentation.
Hajji Mohammad Yaqub, 60, says that since returning to his home in Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan, he has spent 6,000 US dollars on entertaining.
"I had to do it,” he said. “I would have spent the money whether I liked it or not, because it’s a matter of your cousins and the village. People would laugh at you if you didn’t bring them presents, arrange free lunches, and play host to people for a month. It’s tradition.
Yaqub acknowledged that the costs of putting on a good show mounted up.
“The cost of the Hajj plus the gifts, lunches, and hospitality can add up to 12,000 or 13,000 dollars, and it’s very hard for poor people like us to earn that amount of money,” he said. “But what else can we do? We have to find it."
Zainaba, a pupil at Bibi Hawa High School in the provincial centre Jalalabad, recalled what happened when a hajji returned to her neighbourhood.
“Dishes of food were cooked in the alley for several days, and people would come for lunch. It created problems for all the neighbours – women and children weren’t able to get through,” she said. “Going on the Hajj is an obligation, but people have turned tradition into an obligation that they place on themselves."
Families try to outdo one another when they go to meet the returning pilgrims, with as large a convoy of highly-decorated cars as they can get hold of.
Lal Mir, a resident of Nangarhar’s Batikot district, has lined up eight cars to welcome his father back, twice as many as were there for his cousin last year.
As he decked out his Toyota Corolla with plastic flowers, he said the convoy was a matter of pride.
"It’s a great source of happiness,” he explained. “This is what people earn money for. This is what people work for, so that they can walk tall among cousins and friends."
On their way back with the hajji, the cars often race each other, and accidents are not uncommon.
Shawali, a student of law and political science at Jalalabad’s Ariana University, recalled a trip he took in one of these convoys.
“There were seven or eight cars, and they kept overtaking each other along the way. Suddenly there was a car in front of us – our driver tried to swerve but he had an accident and the car crashed. My head and leg were injured. There were five passengers in our car and all of us were as good as dead," he said.
There are other risks too, given Afghanistan’s dangerous security environment. On November 29, a roadside bomb killed ten civilians, including a woman and five children, in Uruzgan province. The party was travelling to visit recently-returned Hajjis.
The head of the Shariah law faculty at Nangarhar University, Sayed Ahmad Fatemi said the competitive show of wealth was contrary to the spirit of Islam.
"In the next world, people will be asked about how they earned their money and how they spent it. Man is not free to make and spend money [at will] – people should spend neither so little nor so much that it harms themselves and society,” he said.
Nabi Basirat, who lectures in law and political science at Nangarhar university, said it was certainly permissible to bring back gifts for friends, but other customs like the feasts and convoys of decorated cars were not in keeping with Islam, as well as being bad for Afghan society given the state of the economy.
Abdul Qayum Mashwani, a member of Afghanistan’s Academy of Sciences, interviewed while attending a lunch laid on by a hajji, said, “These negative traditions place an economic burden on people, and prevent them from performing the central obligation [Hajj]. I know many people who have failed to perform the Hajj because of these customs."
Mashwani said that if he went on the Hajj himself, he would not say anything, and would just tell friends he was going on a trip.
Nangarhar resident Fatema agreed that the post-Hajj festivities were not grounded in religion.
“A friend of mine returned from Hajj a few days ago, but I haven’t been to see her yet – it would take up her time and be a bother for me,” she said.
People who are in a position to get the money together for the Hajj journey are often put off by the thought of the costs they would have to bear afterwards.
Moalem Mohammad Ghani, a shopkeeper in Mehtarlam, a town in Laghman province just north of Nangarhar, is among them.
"I can afford to carry out the Hajj obligation, but I can’t afford the other things that people have made into obligations, like bringing back gifts, prayer cloths and clothing, and hosting lunches,” he said. “More money is spent on these things than on the Hajj itself. And if you don’t do them, people will speak ill of you."
Hijratullah Ekhtyar is an IWPR-trained reporter in Nangarhar, Afghanistan.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
by Farid Behbud
KABUL, Dec. 5 (Xinhua) -- The death toll of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan dropped considerably for the third successive month in November as the fighting season has ended in the insurgency-hit country.
In November, a total of 17 ISAF or coalition soldiers, with 16 of them Americans, have lost their lives against 52 in August when the military alliance suffered the highest casualties since January this year, according to the iCasualties, a website tracking the casualties of foreign troops in the war-torn country.
The spring and summer is known as fighting season in the central Asian state.
The Taliban insurgent group, which has been waging an insurgency of more than one decade, launched an annual offensive in early May this year.
In the fighting season or from April to September, the military alliance had respectively lost 39, 45, 39, 46, 52, and 27 soldiers each month, according to figures compiled in the independent iCasualties website.
Twenty-four ISAF soldiers have been killed in Taliban-initiated attacks in October.
Out of the total fatalities last month, three service members died in non-battle related injuries and one British soldier with the coalition was killed in the so-called "green-on-blue" insider attack when Afghan army, police or gunmen in their uniform open fire against their international partners.
A British soldier was shot dead on Nov. 11 by a member of Afghan army following an argument in Nad Ali district of Helmand province, 555 km south of Kabul, where majority of the coalition soldier are from Britain.
Another British soldier was wounded and the attacker, who was also injured in the exchange of fire, was detained. No details about the incident were released.
The casualty brings the number of foreign soldiers killed in the green-on-blue attacks to 58 in about 38 insider attacks so far this year.
Taliban insurgents have often claimed responsibility for the insider attacks but the coalition military officials have recently said that about 25 percent of the insider attacks are in some manner related to the Taliban-led insurgency.
They said the factors that contribute to the so-called green on blue shootings are wide-ranging from infiltration and impersonation to personal grievances.
Eight out of 17 service members were killed in Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) explosions last month.
The simple but difficult to be detected Taliban weapon, the IEDs used in making suicide vests and roadside bombs, has proved a challenge for Afghan and NATO-led forces in the insurgency-hit country.
Up to 830 Afghan army personnel have also been killed in Taliban-led attacks from April to October and about 85 percent of Afghan army casualties were caused by the IEDs, said General Zahir Azimi, spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry last month.
Currently about 100,000 NATO-led forces, with 68,000 of them Americans, are stationed in the country to stop the Taliban from returning to power.
So far this year as of Wednesday Dec. 5, a total of 389 foreign soldiers, including 298 Americans have been killed in the war-torn country.
In 2010 and 2011, the NATO-led ISAF had respectively lost 711 service members including 499 Americans, and 566 service members, including 418 Americans.
According to iCasualties, a total of 3,236 service members with the ISAF forces have lost their lives since the war began in late 2001 in Afghanistan. Out of the total fatalities, 2,162 were Americans, 438 Britons and 636 from other troops-contributing countries.
Security transition conclude in 6 eastern Afghan provinces: army
JALALABAD, Afghanistan, Dec. 5 (Xinhua) -- Afghan forces took over the full security charges of six eastern provinces from the NATO-led forces, an Afghan army commander said Wednesday.
"Afghan army and police officially took full control of security duties in Nangarhar, Laghman, Kunar, Kapisa, Parwan and Panjshir provinces from NATO-led coalition forces and the security transition process in those provinces is entirely completed," commander of army regional Corps 201 Selab, General Zaman Waziri, told a ceremony to mark the event held in Jalalabad, the capital town of Nangarhar province.
"The government's goal to assume leading security duties across the country by the end of 2014 has been proceeding smoothly and is on track," he added.
The transition of security control from foreign troops to Afghan forces which begun in summer 2011 is due to be completed by the end of 2014.
However, some high-ranking military officials with the country' s defense ministry recently said that the Afghan government forces will be in charge of security of the entire country by the end of 2013, ahead of the schedule.
In a couple of weeks, when the third phase of the transition process ends, the Afghan forces will take full control of areas with about 75 percent of the country's population.
A total of 50 countries are contributing 100,000-strong forces in Afghanistan with more than 68,000 of them Americans.
Kabul's Roads, Paved With Good Intentions
NPR By Sean Carberry December 4, 2012
Sometimes, you don't have to go far to find a story. For the past few months, just stepping outside NPR's Kabul office has been a drama.
The neighborhood is in the midst of a major road and sewer renovation project. It's just one of many such projects that is badly needed in Kabul and elsewhere in the country.
But as is often the case, the pace and quality of the work has been uneven. And residents aren't so sure whether the final product will be worth the months of gridlock, power outages and business interruption.
The street outside of our office is complete dirt. It's rough and uneven, with huge craters and giant piles of boulders and rubble. It's hard to imagine how this could be a planned construction project — and this is one of dozens of streets in the neighborhood where this work has been going on, causing massive disruptions to people, to businesses and to daily life in this area.
The Sufi Restaurant is one of the businesses being affected. The renowned establishment serves traditional Afghan food to everyone from diplomats to development workers.
Bismillah, the restaurant's manager, says business is down about 50 percent compared with last year.
"Foreigners come here and see there is no parking area, so they give up and leave," he says.
Bismillah says he's had to lay off staff.
"We've appealed to many government departments, but no one listens to us," he says.
Part Of A Major Project
Sayed Nezamuddin Wahdat is the head of Kabul's 10th District, where this work is taking place. He says it's part of a citywide project to pave more than 60 miles of roads and renovate the fetid sewage trenches. Wahdat believes the project is going much better than past projects. He estimates 80 percent of the work is "going well."
"Most of the problems are caused by the contractors," he adds.
Wahdat says the city will fine the contractors if they do not complete the work properly and on time — by the end of December.
Yet one of the main contractors, UBCC, says that deadline will not be met. The company says the delays were unavoidable. Control and coordination among the four different contractors has been a problem. Often multiple streets are simultaneously shut down, hence the paralyzing traffic, even by Kabul standards.
To make matters worse, people in the neighborhood say no one from the government or the project has spoken to them about what streets would be torn up and when.
Yama Torabi is director of Integrity Watch Afghanistan, a nongovernmental transparency and accountability group.
"They have been able to do this main road, which is in front of the attorney general's office, in about a month or even less," Torabi says. "But then why is it that this road is taking four months?"
He says he does think it will be a huge improvement when it's done, and by all accounts, the quality of the work is far better than past paving projects that often crumble after one winter. But Torabi also says this area is only getting renovated because it's a wealthy neighborhood.
"We have a long way ahead of us, because 90 percent of the roads in Kabul are just not paved," he says.
At the rate things are going, many of the streets in our neighborhood aren't going to be paved anytime soon, either.
NATO Foreign Ministers Discuss Afghanistan, Georgia
December 5, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen says the alliance's foreign ministers have had a "productive" session with Afghanistan's foreign minister in Brussels.
The December 5 meeting focused on the handover of security responsibilities to Afghan forces by the end of 2014 and a new NATO mission to train more soldiers and police officers.
Rasmussen told journalists that NATO will contribute to the funding of Afghan security forces after 2014.
NATO foreign ministers also held a meeting of the NATO-Georgia Commission with Georgian Foreign Minister Maia Panjikidze.
Rasmussen described NATO's commitment to Georgia as "solid."
On December 4, the ministers also met and approved NATO member Turkey's request to have Patriot surface-to-air defense missiles deployed on its territory to protect the country from possible attacks from neighboring Syria.
Based on reporting by dpa and AFP
Nearly 83,000 Afghan refugees return home from Pakistan this year
ISLAMABAD, Dec. 5 (Xinhua) -- The UN refugee agency said Wednesday that nearly 83,000 Afghan refugees have returned home this year through its assisted voluntary repatriation program, a 24 percent increase from 2011.
In November this year, more than 8,200 refugees returned from Pakistan, compared with some 3,000 a year earlier. However, Pakistan is still hosting some 1.65 million Afghan refugees and another 1 million undocumented Afghans, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said.
Voluntary repatriation remains the UNHCR's preferred solution globally for most refugees. Since 2002, around 5.7 million Afghan refugees have returned to their home country, constituting nearly a quarter of the country's population. Nevertheless, Pakistan and Iran are still generously hosting some 2.7 million Afghan refugees after three decades, a UNHCR statement said.
The Pakistani government is holding informal consultations to formulate the policy beyond Dec. 31, 2012, a date set for the Afghan refugees to return homes.
Pakistan has issued Proof of Registration Cards (PoRs) to Afghan refugees that will expire on Dec. 31 and the government has not yet decided to extend its period. Pakistan said that it will treat all Afghan refugees as illegal immigrants after the expiry of PoRs.
Pakistani Minister for States and Frontier Regions, Engineer Shaukatullah Khan, whose ministry also deals with the refugees affairs, concluded a three-day visit to Afghanistan on Tuesday and has assured the Afghan leaders that Pakistan will not forcibly expel Afghans.
The minister also called on Afghan President Hamid Karzai and expressed his commitment to the voluntary return of Afghan refugees to their homeland, while also hoping that the Pakistani government will soon agree to a mechanism in this respect for voluntary and dignified return. During this meeting, emphasis was made on the voluntary nature of return by the president, the UNHCR said.
The minister also saw first-hand the implementation of the Solutions Strategy for Afghan Returnees (SSAR) in Afghanistan, and the conditions in which refugee returns are taking place.
Together with Dr. Jamaher Anwary, minister for Refugees and Repatriation, he visited two high-return areas where they met returnees from Pakistan. They were also accompanied by representatives of the UNHCR in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including Neill Wright, UNHCR representative in Pakistan.
The delegations met with recently returned refugees from Pakistan and witnessed the many needs still faced by the returnees as winter approaches, despite several already completed projects, including a new school that was under construction at the time.
Voluntary repatriation and sustainable reintegration are at the center of the SSAR that was endorsed at an international conference in Geneva in May 2012. "However, we need development funding and development actors to urgently become more engaged in supporting sustainable reintegration for refugees, through the implementation of this strategy, "said Dr. Anwary.
Senate OKs $631 billion defense bill that pushes for US drawdown in Afghanistan
Associated Press Wednesday, December 5, 2012
WASHINGTON - The Senate overwhelmingly approved a sweeping, $631 billion defense bill Tuesday that sends a clear signal to President Barack Obama to move quickly to get U.S. combat troops out of Afghanistan, tightens sanctions on Iran and limits the president’s authority in handling terror suspects.
Ignoring a veto threat, the Senate voted 98-0 for the legislation that authorizes money for weapons, aircraft and ships and provides a 1.7 percent pay raise for military personnel. After a decade of increasing Pentagon budgets, the vote came against the backdrop of significant reductions in projected military spending and the threat of deeper cuts from the looming “fiscal cliff” of automatic spending cuts and tax increases.
The bill reflects the nation’s war-weariness after more than a decade of fighting in Afghanistan, the messy uncertainty about new threats to U.S. security and Washington belt-tightening in times of trillion-dollar-plus deficits. Spending solely on the base defense budget has nearly doubled in the past 10 years, but the latest blueprint reins in the projected growth in military dollars.
The bill would provide some $526 billion for the base defense budget, $17 billion for defense programs in the Energy Department and about $88 billion for the war in Afghanistan. House and Senate negotiators must reconcile their competing versions of the bill in the next few weeks.
“The major challenge is time,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., told reporters after the vote.
Reacting to the relentless violence in Syria, the Senate voted 92-6 to require the Pentagon to report to Congress on the ability of the U.S. military to impose a no-fly zone over Syria.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who has pushed for greater U.S. military involvement to end the Syrian civil war, sponsored the amendment. Obama on Monday warned Syrian President Bashar Assad not to use chemical and/or biological weapons against his people as the U.S. and its allies weigh military options.
“If military action has to be taken to prevent sarin gas to be used, Congress has to be involved,” McCain said.
But Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said it was a “bad idea to discuss contingency plans for war.”
The amendment specified that it should not be construed as a declaration of war or an authorization to use force.
Last year, Obama and congressional Republicans agreed on nearly $500 billion in defense cuts over 10 years. If the two sides fail in the next month to avert the “fiscal cliff” the Pentagon would face an additional $55 billion in automatic, across-the-board cuts after the first of the year.
Not far from the Capitol, a coalition of retired military leaders, administration officials and lawmakers pleaded with the president and Congress to address the nation’s debt, calling it the greatest threat to national security. The group of prominent Republicans and Democrats said the United States can spend less on defense while still maintaining its military superiority.
“A strong economy and strong national security are inextricably linked,” said retired Adm. Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The administration has threatened to veto the Senate bill, strongly objecting to a provision restricting the president’s authority to transfer terror suspects from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to foreign countries. The provision is in current law.
The Senate also voted to restrict the transfer of detainees held at Guantanamo to prisons in the United States.
Further stoking the debate over U.S. detention policy — and setting up a fight with the House — the Senate also added a provision saying the government may not detain a U.S. citizen or legal resident indefinitely without charge or trial even if there is a declaration of war or the authorization to use military force.
Current law denies suspected terrorists, including U.S. citizens seized within the nation’s borders, the right to trial and subjects them to the possibility they would be held indefinitely. It reaffirms the post-Sept. 11 authorization for the use of military force that allows indefinite detention of enemy combatants.
That provision had created a conservative backlash, and a coalition of liberal Democrats and libertarian Republicans pushed for the new provision.
The bill sends a clear message to Obama and the military to accelerate the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from Afghanistan. On a strong bipartisan vote of 62-33 last week, the Senate endorsed Obama’s timetable to withdraw all combat troops by the end of 2014 but pressed for a quicker pace, without specifying how that would be achieved.
Obama and the military are engaged in high-stakes talks about the pace of drawing down the 66,000 U.S. combat troops there now.
The bill added stringent new sanctions on Iran’s energy and shipping sectors in a fresh attempt to hobble the Islamic Republic’s economy and hamper its nuclear ambitions.
The sanctions build upon penalties that Congress has passed — and Obama has implemented — that target Tehran’s financial and energy sectors.
Officials in Washington argue that the sanctions have undermined Tehran’s economy and robust oil sales, thwarting its suspected pursuit of a nuclear weapon. Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.
Sens. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., and Mark Kirk, R-Ill., who have shepherded sanctions bills through Congress, sponsored the latest package that also would close a major loophole — the ability of Iran to circumvent sanctions and barter oil for precious metals. Turkey has been bartering gold for oil.
The sanctions would designate Iran’s energy, port, shipping and ship-building sectors as “entities of proliferation” and prohibit transactions with these areas. The legislation also would penalize individuals selling or supplying commodities such as graphite, aluminum and steel to Iran, all products that are crucial to Tehran’s ship-building and nuclear operations.
The administration had complained that the new sanctions were duplicative and unnecessary.
Cricket To Become Part Of The Curriculum In Afghanistan
By Farangis Najibullah and Safiullah Stanikzai December 4, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Cricket was one of the few sports in Afghanistan to survive the rule of the Taliban. Now, the wildly popular sporting import is poised to leave the playground and enter the classroom.
Afghanistan's Education Ministry is teaming up with the country's Cricket Board (ACB) to make cricket a compulsory class in Afghan schools as early as January.
According to the board's chief executive officer, Bashir Stanikzai, the idea is to help develop the sport in Afghanistan, spot talent, and turn the country into a force in the international cricketing arena.
"We want to develop cricket in a proper way, and schools will be a big project," he says. "If we succeed in developing cricket in schools, we are quite sure that we will get good players in the country. And it will have a social value as well, especially for those who love this game but don't get a chance to play."
Cricket came into its own only recently after it found acceptance under the hard-line Islamist regime. After the Taliban's fall in 2001 the sport flourished when the children of Afghan refugees returned to the country after learning to play cricket in neighboring Pakistan.
Since the national cricket squad was first formed in 2001, Afghanistan has shown that it has the potential to become a major player. In 2010, it secured qualification to the prestigious 2010 World Twenty20 competition, and is ranked among the world's top teams in that category.
Now, there is even talk that Afghanistan's cricketers could soon achieve test-playing status.
National Heroes
Although Afghanistan has not yet established a national cricket league, it regularly organizes domestic tournaments among the country's numerous clubs. The matches usually attract a full house of spectators, many of whom regard cricket players as national heroes and children's idols.
A recent nationwide survey indicated that nearly 75 percent of respondents consider cricket their favorite sport. Many of those questioned supported the idea of cricket being taught in schools.
In October, the board organized its first month-long training classes for potential cricket instructors and similar trainings for coaches and umpires are due to start on December 15.
"We are sending cricket kits for students that consist of plastic bats and balls, and other cricket equipment especially made for children," Stanikzai says.
Some of the country's top professionals are willing to lend a helping hand. Noorulhaq Malekzai, the captain of the Kabul-based Al-Masafi team, says he "would be more than happy" to assist the coaches.
Malekzai, a batsman who has represented his country in numerous international tournaments, believes officials "should not wait until all conditions are perfect to launch their plan."
"If there is a will to play, you can play cricket with the most basic equipment," he says. "As they say, 'just do it.'"
"There are so many children eager to play cricket," Malekzai adds. "You can see them playing in the streets, Many schools have small sports grounds. In the beginning, a pair of bats, a pair of balls, a pair of leg pads, and uniforms should be enough for an entire team of players. Of course, it's a far cry from international standards, but it is just enough to start professional careers in cricket."
'Like A Dream Come True"
Officials have yet to work out the details, such as what age group they should target, and how many hours a week the children should be taught cricket during physical education classes.
The ACB and the Education Ministry are expected to finalize arrangements "within days" before starting the first cricket lessons at several schools across five provinces in January 2013.
Kabul, Kandahar, Khost, Konduz, and Nangarhar provinces have been chosen due to their relatively developed cricket infrastructure. By the end of 2013, the project is expected to expand into six more provinces.
"We hope these schools will be a success story and serve as a role model to the rest of the country," Stanikzai says.
Fitratullah, a young boy who like many Afghans goes by one name, looks forward to that day. But for now he and his friends are honing their skills with a homemade bat on a dusty road in the eastern town of Jalalabad.
"We have only two special cricket academies in the province and they don't have space for everyone and besides they charge money," Fitratullah says. "If cricket becomes a school subject for free, it would be like a dream come true for many kids."
Written and reported by Farangis Najibullah with additional reporting by RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan correspondent Safiullah Stanikzai
Differing Afghan, U.S. priorities could sabotage proposed security agreement
Washington Post By Pamela Constable and Craig Whitlock December 4 , 2012
KABUL - When Afghan and American negotiators sat down here last month to begin talks on a bilateral security agreement that would define and govern a long-term U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, their meeting was cordial, vague and brief.
When the two sides meet again this month for more substantive discussions, each will begin to lay out a competing set of military concerns, political constraints and legal priorities that could severely test their fledgling postwar partnership, possibly to the point of failure.
For the Afghan government, which has smarted under a decade of Western military dominance in the fight against Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgents, the key will be balancing the desperate need for continued U.S. support of Afghan security forces with the public and political pressure to ensure equality and sovereignty after U.S. combat troops leave Afghanistan in 2014.
“There is no question we would like to see a continued U.S. military presence to strengthen Afghan institutions and assure the Afghan people that the U.S. will be a friend and ally after 2014. But this must be an agreement between two sovereign nations,” said Jawed Ludin, Afghanistan’s deputy foreign minister. “Some see this as being mostly about immunity and jurisdiction, but we see it in the larger context. This is our future at stake.”
For the U.S. government, which has lost more than 2,000 troops in an increasingly unpopular war, the key will be addressing the Afghans’ demand for sovereignty without conceding the right to protect all American forces stationed here in supporting roles from potentially abusive treatment by Afghan authorities or courts.
“As much as I want to get it right in Afghanistan and believe losing would be a national security disaster for the ages, if the Afghans insist on keeping American soldiers in Afghanistan without legal protections . . . I will not vote for one penny, and this war will come to an end,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said at a hearing in Washington last month.
Last year, during similar negotiations about the role and status of U.S. troops in postwar Iraq, the Iraqi government refused to grant legal immunity for any troops. Despite months of efforts to reach a compromise, the issue ultimately killed the agreement, resulting in the hasty departure of all remaining American forces.
In Afghanistan, the issue was starkly dramatized in March, when Robert Bales, a U.S. Army staff sergeant, was detained after a late-night shooting rampage that killed 16 villagers. Afghan leaders argued that Bales should face justice in Afghan courts, but U.S. military officials swiftly returned him to the United States for prosecution.
While the international command headed by Gen. John R. Allen here is working on recommendations for President Obama on the rate of withdrawal for American combat troops, the U.S. negotiating position for the follow-on force is being formulated in Washington. Officials there said that options currently under discussion call for 5,000 to 10,000 troops, including training and logistics experts as well as counterterrorism units.
Although the rules governing the future activities and status of American troops are being negotiated in private by senior Afghan and U.S. officials — a process that is expected to take up to a year — the public atmosphere surrounding the talks has already been roiled by a string of criticisms and demands from Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
In the past several months, Karzai has declared that NATO members should not count on immunity after 2014. He has also lambasted the United States for not responding more aggressively to cross-border rocket attacks from Pakistan, and repeatedly demanded that the United States fund a larger Afghan air force.
Last month, Karzai also accused the United States of breaking an earlier agreement to turn over full control of Afghan prisons and detainees, including more than 3,000 prisoners being held at Bagram air base, and he ordered his aides to carry out the “full Afghanization” of all prisons.
Critics of the president, who is supposed to step down in 2014, when a new election is scheduled, say he has been grandstanding, mainly for domestic political reasons. Some suggest that he wants to cling to power and is using the security agreement to win personal concessions from the United States, even at the risk of sacrificing the entire pact.
But several other Afghan officials insisted that the government fully recognizes the importance of the agreement and is only seeking to protect its rights after a decade of subordination to Western military forces.
“This continued partnership is clearly in both countries’ interests, and there is no question that America’s security needs are important to us as well,” Ludin said. “But our fear is that the legalistic approach from the American side will miss the political gravity of it for us. We need a sense of reassurance that the Afghan laws and constitution will be respected.”
Afghan army and police commanders have repeatedly said they need an array of sustained U.S. support — from weapons to logistics to training — in order to defend the nation against Islamist insurgents. The Afghan public, although weary and resentful of the protracted NATO military presence, is also fearful of what will happen when Western forces leave.
Despite the stumbling blocks, U.S. officials in Kabul said they are optimistic that the security talks will go more smoothly than they did in Iraq. They said a solid bilateral security agreement, building on a broad strategic partnership agreement signed by Obama and Karzai in March, can help persuade the Afghan public that the United States will not abandon them.
In Washington, however, officials said there is little chance that the Obama administration will agree to any deal that allows U.S. troops to be handed over to Afghan authorities for prosecution and trial, citing concerns about corruption and bias in the Afghan justice system.
The United States has status-of-forces agreements with more than 100 other countries that spell out when they can prosecute U.S. troops under specified circumstances.
In Afghanistan, a legal agreement has for years allowed American authorities to prosecute U.S. troops for any alleged crimes committed there. Christopher M. Jenks, an assistant law professor at Southern Methodist University and a former military prosecutor, said it is hard to imagine that Afghan leaders would agree to extend that arrangement past 2014.
Even if negotiators try to paper over their legal differences, Jenks added, any agreement would quickly fall apart in a future case — such as the allegations against Bales — in which U.S. troops are accused of rape, murder or other atrocities.
“That’s all well and good until you have an incident,” Jenks said. “You can build a house of cards, but you run the risk of it all coming down.”
Whitlock reported from Washington. Karen DeYoung in Washington and Kevin Sieff in Kabul contributed to this report.
British forces accused of killing four teenagers in Afghan operation
Boys were targeted at close range witnesses claim, as defence secretary asked to launch urgent inquiry
The Guardian By Richard Norton-Taylor and Nick Hopkins Tuesday 4 December 2012
The defence secretary, Philip Hammond, has been asked to launch an urgent inquiry into claims that British forces led a counter-insurgency operation in Afghanistan during which a 12-year-old boy and three teenagers were shot dead while they were drinking tea.
Lawyers acting for the brother of two of the victims have written to Hammond describing an incident on 18 October in the village of Loi Bagh in Nad Ali, Helmand province, where British forces have been based since 2006.
According to statements given to the lawyers by other family members and witnesses, the operation involved Afghan and UK forces, but it was British soldiers – possibly special forces – who were said to have been in the lead.
"We submit that all of the victims were under the control and authority of the UK at the times of the deaths and ill-treatment," states the letter to Hammond.
"The four boys killed all appear to have been deliberately targeted at close range by British forces. All were killed in a residential area over which UK forces clearly had the requisite degree of control and authority."
The four victims are named as Fazel Mohammed, 18, Naik Mohammed, 16, Mohammed Tayeb, 14 and Ahmed Shah, 12.
Britain contributes soldiers to Nato's International Security and Assistance Force (Isaf), which has already confirmed that an operation took place in the village on that date.
The incident has been reported in the Afghan media. Major Adam Wojack, a spokesman for Nato-led forces in Afghanistan, confirmed the "joint Afghan-coalition forces" operation in Nad Ali on 18 October. He said the result was the "killing of four Taliban enemies in action". That claim is rejected by relatives of the victims.
Military sources also said it was unusual for UK forces to take the lead in operations of this kind because the Afghans are supposed to be in control as part of the transition process. The MoD said it would give the claims "full consideration before responding".
According to a statement sent to Hammond on Tuesday by Tessa Gregory, lawyer for Noor Mohammad Noorzai, brother of two of the dead youths, the boys were "shot and killed at close range" in a family guesthouse. Gregory, of the law firm Public Interest Lawyers, obtained written sworn statements from witnesses in a visit to Afghanistan last month. They allege that British soldiers, who were engaged in a joint operation with Afghan forces, hooded some of those arrested despite a ban on the practice.
"The soldiers walked through the village calling at various houses asking to be told where the claimant's brother Fazel Mohammed lived", says Gregory's statement. "It is alleged that the soldiers entered the house of a neighbour dragged him from his bed, hooded him and his son and beat them until under questioning they showed the soldiers the house of Fazel which was across the street."
According to the document sent to Hammond, the families and neighbours "reject outright any suggestion that any of the four teenagers killed were in any way connected to the insurgency. All four were innocent teenagers who posed no threat whatsoever to Afghan or British forces".
Gregory told the Guardian: "On 18 October 2012, during a joint British-Afghan security operation, four innocent Afghan teenagers were shot whilst drinking tea in their family's mud home in Helmand province. Our client, the elder brother of two of the teenage victims, wants to know why this happened. As far as we are aware no investigation into these tragic deaths has taken place. We hope that in light of our urgent representations the Ministry of Defence will act swiftly to ensure that an effective and independent investigation is carried out without any further delay."
In her statement to Hammond, Gregory says: "After the soldiers left, the claimant's family and some neighbours entered the "guesthouse" where they found the bodies of the four teenagers lying in a line with their heads towards the doorway".
The statement adds: "It was clear that the bodies had been dragged into that position and all had been shot in the head and neck region as they sat on the floor of the guesthouse leaning against the wall drinking tea.."
Gregory says the British soldiers involved in the operation are bound by the European Convention of Human Rights which enshrines the right to life and outlaws inhumane treatment. Unless the MoD could show it has carried out a full investigation, lawyers representing the victims' families will ask the high court to order one.
An MoD spokesman said: "The Ministry of Defence received details of these allegations on Tuesday in a letter from a UK firm of solicitors on behalf of an Afghan national and will give them full consideration before responding. The 'letter before action' is the first stage of seeking a judicial review and requires the MoD to reply within 14 days, providing a reasonable opportunity to consider the claim and whether there is a case to answer."
The MoD said protection of the Afghan civilian population is at the core of Isaf's military strategy in Afghanistan and, that unlike the insurgency they are supporting the Afghan people to defeat, Isaf and UK forces place a high priority on protecting civilians during combat.
Crisis looms in central Asia’s Great Game
Financial Times By Ahmed Rashid December 4, 2012
Sixteen years ago this month there was panic across central Asia. Having captured Kabul, the Taliban were moving northwards and some commanders were threatening to Talibanise the entire region. That prompted Russia and China to promise support to the ex-Soviet states across the region.
Post-September 11 the Taliban threat receded but today central Asians are once again panicking at the thought of US troops exiting Afghanistan. Added to the threat of a resurgent Taliban are domestic Islamist extremist groups such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), whose members have spent the past decade in Pakistan’s tribal regions and are now, armed and battle ready, re-entering central Asia through northern Afghanistan.
A flurry of security officials from Nato, the US and the EU have been visiting the region trying to reassure the governments in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan that border Afghanistan, and fragile Kyrgyzstan, over increased aid and security. US officials are also believed to be offering sales of unwanted heavy weapons from the Afghan theatre.
But at the same time Russia and China are trying to wean those governments away from the US, with Vladimir Putin in particular making a determined effort to return central Asia to Russia’s backyard . In October Mr Putin signed a new 30-year treaty to secure a base in Tajikistan. A joint Russian-Tajik statement spoke of “the threat of terrorism and drug trafficking from Afghanistan”. The 7,000 Russian troops based in Tajikistan might increase. A month earlier Mr Putin had signed a treaty with Kyrgyzstan extending an air base lease for 20 years.
China has been offering greater security through the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation – a regional pact that is yet to really take off – as well as using its long term ally Pakistan to gain influence with the Taliban. India too has a growing presence, with a military base in Tajikistan and oil and mineral stakes in Kazakhstan.
This represents an intensification of the new Great Game that erupted in the region after the break-up of the Soviet Union.
Mr Putin’s aim is to ensure that the US is left with little presence in the region. At present Russia allows Nato supplies to travel through its territory to Afghanistan. The US has negotiated similar rights for its withdrawal from Afghanistan to reduce dependence on the southern route, which Pakistan closed earlier this year during a spat with the US. But Russia will make sure that these transit facilities end after 2014.
Russia is also adamantly opposing US plans to maintain small military bases in Afghanistan post-2014 for special forces, drone missiles and trainers for the Afghan army.
So far only Uzbekistan has dissented from the Russian line. In July President Islam Karimov withdrew from the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) of pro-Moscow states. He has also offered the Americans long-term facilities and is negotiating for US weapons supplies. But even if Mr Karimov – a ruthless dictator who has refused to carry out economic reforms – can resist Russian pressure for long, he is hardly an ideal ally for the west.
In the meantime Nato forces in northern Afghanistan are doing their best to eliminate the central Asian Islamic militant groups. The IMU in particular has proved to be a long-term threat and is now closely tied to al-Qaeda and Pakistan’s Lashkar-e-Taiba. Counting only a few hundred Uzbek and Tajik fighters in the late 1990s, the group now has thousands of militants drawn from all central Asian states as well as China, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Chechnya.
Yet for all the anxiety in Moscow and Washington about the shifting balance of power in Afghanistan, it does not represent the greatest threat to central Asia. What could really undermine the ex-Soviet states is the increasing pauperisation of their people, the collapse of services such as health and education, and the excesses of dictators and failure of governments – except for Kyrgyzstan’s – to carry out any political, social or economic reforms. Unfortunately as the new Great Game continues, both Russia and the US are ignoring the social and economic crisis that is about to erupt in central Asia. That crisis will not be because of Afghanistan.
The writer is an author of books on Afghanistan, Pakistan and central Asia, including ‘Descent into Chaos’
New commander faces challenge of winding down Afghanistan war
Reuters By David Alexander Tue Dec 4, 2012
WASHINGTON - Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford, who takes over as head of international forces in Afghanistan next year, faces the challenge of winding down a war in a country where he has little experience using a strategy he did not devise.
Dunford, whose nomination was confirmed by the Senate on Monday night, will be the fifth commander of the International Security Assistance Force since President Barack Obama took office, a leadership churn that worries Afghan war analysts.
Friends and colleagues describe Dunford, the Marine Corps assistant commandant, as a calm and thoughtful leader who earned the nickname "Fighting Joe" on the battlefields of Iraq by creating conditions for success with careful planning and harmonious execution.
But analysts expressed mixed views on his selection to replace Marine Corps General John Allen.
Some worry about the No. 2 Marine's lack of experience in Afghanistan and his vocal support for President Barack Obama's plan to withdraw most U.S. forces by the end of 2014. That could make him reluctant to ask for more time and troops if conditions on the ground are not right for a stable transition, they say.
But others contend that after a dozen years of war, Dunford's job is to execute the strategy he has been given, not reinvent it. And while he may be able to suggest some adjustments to the plan, he has very little room for maneuver as members of the 46-nation coalition edge toward departure.
"The problem is at this point nobody is going to fight it. It's the strategy. It's not his choice," said Anthony Cordesman, a defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. "For good or evil, the question is: How does he manage the shift towards an exit."
"FIGHTING JOE"
Dunford, a Boston native, is a 35-year veteran of the Marines. He was commissioned as an officer in 1977 and he served as a platoon and company commander for several years before moving to administrative roles. He holds two master's degrees and is a graduate of the elite Army Ranger School.
As the United States moved toward war with Iraq in 2003, Dunford - then a colonel - found himself in the First Marine Expeditionary Force serving as commander of Regimental Combat Team 5, the unit that would lead the U.S. invasion, seize the Rumaila oil fields and then head toward Baghdad.
When officials advanced the timing of the invasion by a day, Dunford had his forces ready to move in three hours. He kicked off the assault with a nighttime crossing of the 10-foot berm and anti-tank ditch separating Iraq and Kuwait, moving in darkness rather than at dawn as initially planned.
"He earned the Fighting Joe title by his actions during Operation Iraqi Freedom, when he led the initial attack into Iraq (crossing the berm on the accelerated timeline) and leading all the way to Baghdad," said General James Mattis, the head of U.S. Central Command, who was Dunford's commander in Iraq.
"He's not flashy, but he's the fighter - one I could always count on when the going got difficult," Mattis said in an email. "He is tactically cunning and does a superb job at setting his subordinate commanders up for success by orchestrating complex battle plans into harmonious actions."
Congressman Duncan Hunter, who served in the Marines in Iraq and occasionally had a chance to interact with Dunford, said the commander was seen as "a decisive leader who was well-respected by subordinates and peers throughout the chain of command."
"In a stressful, combat environment he proved himself to be an accomplished and energetic warrior," Hunter said in an email.
Since the war Dunford has moved rapidly up the chain of command. He became a brigadier general in 2004, was selected to become a major general in December 2007 and then promoted to lieutenant general two months later, before Congress had acted to confirm his second star.
"That in itself will give you an idea of how he was seen in the Marine Corps," said Marine Colonel David Lapan, a spokesman for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has worked for Dunford and been his neighbor.
He has a "great reputation as a combat commander, as an operational commander, very even-keeled, measured, analytical," Lapan said. While his combat experience is not in Afghanistan, the differences are not that great and he can bring a fresh perspective to the situation, Lapan said.
SOME QUESTIONS
But some Afghan war analysts are concerned about Dunford's appointment, saying his support for Obama's withdrawal strategy will make it difficult for him to adjust the drawdown based on conditions on the ground.
"He was in a very small minority among senior military officers in articulating that President Obama's Afghanistan strategy and the notion of firm deadlines could work," said Michael Rubin, a defense analyst at the American Enterprise Institute. "He has never explained ... how or why he thinks it could work."
Dunford will have to guide international forces through a series of critical milestones over the coming two years, starting with Afghan forces taking over the lead role for the country's security next summer.
The presidential election in the spring of 2014 is viewed as essential to ensuring Afghan support for the government once international forces withdraw. And Dunford also must manage the drawdown of U.S. and international forces and the transition to full Afghan control by the end of 2014.
"All too often when officials talk about the transition, they just talk in terms of numbers and the actual Afghans doing security and fighting," Rubin said. "But to really have transition and independence, you need a lot in the background."
Afghan National Security Forces still lack important specialty skills, from intelligence, logistics and communications to maintenance, engineering and accounting, he said. Medical support is a "huge example."
"When we're fighting with the Afghans and the Afghans get wounded, we triage them, evacuate them, that sort of thing. They have no capability of that on their own. We haven't focused on it in transition," Rubin said.
Ultimately the issue is whether withdrawal from Afghanistan will take place as Afghan security forces acquire the skills they need to defend the country, or whether it will move ahead according to a political timeline, he said.
"Most generals are looking at the capabilities," Rubin said. "Dunford is the exception. He appears to be looking at the politics."
But Cordesman said Dunford's job in Afghanistan is to execute the policy approved by the White House, the Pentagon and NATO and he has little flexibility in the matter.
"The purpose of a commander is not to tell the president what to do," he said. "The purpose of a commander is to do the task he's assigned as well as he possibly can."
He said he believed Dunford would be able to "tell the president bad news or make recommendations that indicated we had to change the way in which we exit ... or the timing."
"This is certainly not somebody who would simply accept or follow orders regardless of conditions," he said. "But it is obvious that no commander at this point is going to come in ... charged with reexamining and reinventing the strategy."
(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
Transparency: Two-Thirds Of Countries Perceived To Be 'Highly Corrupt'
By Antoine Blua December 5, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
The anticorruption group Transparency International (TI) says high levels of bribery, abuse of power, and secret dealings continue to “ravage” societies around the world, despite a growing public outcry over corrupt governments.
The annual Corruption Perceptions Index, published on December 5 by the Berlin-based group, shows that two-thirds of 176 countries are perceived by citizens to be highly corrupt.
Transparency International regional coordinator Svetlana Savitskaya told RFE/RL the findings indicate a public demand for institutions and officials to be more transparent and accountable.
She said priorities include stronger rules on lobbying and political financing and more transparency on public spending and contracting.
Governments 'Still Inactive'
Afghanistan, along with North Korea and Somalia, were once again at the bottom of the Corruption Perceptions Index.
Russia and former Soviet republics also scored poorly – with the exception of Georgia, which showed improvement.
TI says its composite index is based on data collected in the past 24 months by independent institutions specializing in governance and business climate analysis.
Two-thirds of the 176 countries scored below 50 on a scale from 0 (perceived to be highly corrupt) to 100 (perceived to be very clean).
"Despite the demonstrations all over the world, in many countries, which were sparked on the ground of corruption, the governments still remain inactive and still continue to act as before, and continue not to take effective measures to tackle corruption. Everywhere, even in the EU countries," Savitskaya said.
In these countries, TI says, the “lack of accountable leadership and effective public institutions” calls for a much stronger stance against corruption.
Iraq and Pakistan ranked 169 and 139, respectively.
Russia placed 133rd, alongside Iran and Kazakhstan.
Elsewhere in Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan ranked 154, followed by Tajikistan (157), Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan (both 170).
In the Caucasus, Georgia ranked 51st, leaving Armenia (105), Azerbaijan (139) and all the other CIS countries far behind.
Belarus was ranked 123rd, Ukraine 144th.
'Utterly Untransparent'
Savitskaya says the situation is not improving in Russia and other former Soviet republics, “with the very small exception of Georgia."
"These governments continue to be utterly untransparent and nonaccountable to citizens," Savitskaya said. "Even though many of these governments introduced very elegant anticorruption legislation -- very elaborate, very detailed strategies -- these remain to be not enforced and not implemented. And also there is a continued lack of citizen oversight -- civil oversight -- over what the governments are doing or not doing."
Savitskaya says Georgia has introduced “robust anticorruption reforms” under President Mikheil Saakashvili, particularly in the police and education sectors. But she adds that corruption remains a big problem in the country, including in the government.
Croatia, which is expected to join the European Union in 2013, had the lowest perceived corruption in Southeastern Europe (62). Macedonia came in 69th, followed by Bosnia-Herzegovina (72), Montenegro (75), Serbia (80), Moldova (94), and Kosovo (105).
Developed countries -- Denmark, Finland, and New Zealand -- tied for first place with scores of 90 due to “strong access to information systems and rules governing the behavior of those in public positions.”
Some European Union countries had low scores, including Italy (72), Romania (66), and Slovakia (62).
In a statement, TI Managing Director Cobus de Swardt said the world’s leading economies can influence the global fight against corruption by making sure their institutions are fully transparent and their leaders are held accountable.
ICIMOD calls for global support to save mountains
KATHMANDU, Dec. 05 (Xinhua) -- The International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) on Wednesday warned that water availability and its use will be critical in the near future.
The Kathmandu-based regional intergovernmental center for mountain development also called for global support for mountain communities to adapt and build resilience to climate change.
"A clear message to negotiators that water availability and use will be critical in the future and that mountain communities need global support to adapt and build resilience to climate change, rather than simply coping with the impacts," it said in a press release issued on Wednesday.
The ICIMOD serves the eight regional member countries of the Hindu Kush-Himalayan area -- Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan.
According to the press release, the ICIMOD, the government of Nepal and other partners jointly organized the "Mountain Day Event " on Dec. 3 alongside the 18th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
During the meeting, Keshab Man Shakya, Nepal's minister of environment, science and technology, also the chair of the event, pointed to the increased frequency of floods, accelerated melting of glaciers, uncertainty of water availability, and unprecedented damage to the entire mountain landscape as matters which need urgent attention.
Gyan Chandra Acharya, the United Nations' Under Secretary General and High Representative for Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries, and Small Island Developing States, mentioned the urgency to address the consequences of climate change on the mountainous region.
"The time to act on mountains is now; the world is heading for more than two degrees Celsius temperature and the implications for mountains will be catastrophic," said Acharya, quoted by the press release.
Acharya also emphasized that mountains need to be part of broader and integrated action to address the growing impact of climate change, noting the need for coordinated action among UN environmental conventions.
Schoolgirl Shot to Death in Kapisa
TOLOnews.com By Shakeela Ahbrimkhil Tuesday, 04 December 2012
A schoolgirl has been shot dead allegedly by local Taliban members while on her way home from school in eastern Kapisa province, provincial officials said Tuesday.
The girl, Anisa, was in Grade 10 and working as a volunteer on a polio campaign in Kapisa. She was returning home from the Mahmoud Raqi Girls High School on Sunday when she was killed in a volley of bullets from armed men.
Kapisa Head of Women's Affairs Saifoora Koohestani said it was local Taliban gunmen, although the group has not claimed responsibility.
"This girl was tenth grade student of Mahmoud Raqi Girls High School in the second part of Koohestan, Kapisa Province. This girl was not only a student, but also a volunteer worker for the (Ministry of) Public Health in the polio campaign," she said.
There have been several cases of students being killed or attacked, but many incidents are not reported.
The Taliban has opposed the polio campaign in parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
In October, Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai received worldwide recognition after surviving being shot in the head by Taliban militants for her work in promoting education for women.
Council of Ministers Removes Election Complaints Commission
TOLOnews.com By Shakeela Ahbrimkhil Tuesday, 04 December 2012
The Council of Ministers has approved the new election law without an Election Complaints Commission (ECC), assigning the powers that would belong to the ECC to the Supreme Court, according to the Independent Elections Commission (IEC).
IEC chief Fazel Ahmad Manawe said at a press conference in Kabul that the draft of the law was approved after three meetings of the ministers, with amendments.
"The draft was discussed in three sessions of the Council of Ministers and finally it was approved on Monday. We expressed our technical visions but it was up to the cabinet to decide about it. It will be sent to parliament for approval by end of the week," Manawe said Tuesday.
Under the changes introduced by the Council, the Supreme Court will be the only authority to investigate and follow up the election issues that would normally be overseen by the ECC.
"The Ministry of Finance had somehow changed our plans but after long discussion, the Supreme Court has been assigned to form a new election court to follow up any complaints," he added.
Afghan political parties and activists criticised the decision, warning of an unfair election.
"There is a double game being played in the election process and it will harm the confidence of the Afghan people on that process and legislation," executive director of Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan Jandad Spinghar told TOLOnews.
National Coalition of Afghanistan spokesman Sayed Fazel Sancharaki told TOLOnews that the ECC with its two foreign advisors was intended to ensure transparency and its omission was threatening and dangerous.
"What was decided by the Cabinet shows that the president is not willing to launch a transparent and fair election. He tries to influence the election organs to harm the credibility of the elections in the country," he said.
"If a government organ oversees the election results, it will be against the Afghan constitution. It should be the Election Complaints Commission that does that," a spokesman for the Right and Justice party said.
The parties urged the parliament to take the necessary decision and observe Afghanistan's constitution and the rights of the people.
Afghanistan's Competitive Pilgrims
After the spiritual experience of visiting Mecca, returning pilgrims are expected to host festivities for friends and relatives.
IWPR By Hijratullah Ekhtyar 4 Dec 12
Afghanistan - In Afghanistan, as in other Muslim countries, pilgrims returning from the annual Hajj are greeted with open arms – but here they are expected to reciprocate with lavish entertainment that some view as inappropriate.
In recent weeks, Afghans have been arriving home after joining the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, which this year took place in October.
Performing the Hajj is one of five central duties for Muslims who are able and can afford to go. About 30,000 Afghans make the trip in the course of a year, and for many the expense makes it a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
On their return, the pilgrims or “hajjis” are met by friends and relatives, but custom dictates that they spend the next few weeks receiving guests, hosting feasts and handing out gifts.
Some people regret that instead of marking an act of piety, the celebrations have become a form of ostentation.
Hajji Mohammad Yaqub, 60, says that since returning to his home in Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan, he has spent 6,000 US dollars on entertaining.
"I had to do it,” he said. “I would have spent the money whether I liked it or not, because it’s a matter of your cousins and the village. People would laugh at you if you didn’t bring them presents, arrange free lunches, and play host to people for a month. It’s tradition.
Yaqub acknowledged that the costs of putting on a good show mounted up.
“The cost of the Hajj plus the gifts, lunches, and hospitality can add up to 12,000 or 13,000 dollars, and it’s very hard for poor people like us to earn that amount of money,” he said. “But what else can we do? We have to find it."
Zainaba, a pupil at Bibi Hawa High School in the provincial centre Jalalabad, recalled what happened when a hajji returned to her neighbourhood.
“Dishes of food were cooked in the alley for several days, and people would come for lunch. It created problems for all the neighbours – women and children weren’t able to get through,” she said. “Going on the Hajj is an obligation, but people have turned tradition into an obligation that they place on themselves."
Families try to outdo one another when they go to meet the returning pilgrims, with as large a convoy of highly-decorated cars as they can get hold of.
Lal Mir, a resident of Nangarhar’s Batikot district, has lined up eight cars to welcome his father back, twice as many as were there for his cousin last year.
As he decked out his Toyota Corolla with plastic flowers, he said the convoy was a matter of pride.
"It’s a great source of happiness,” he explained. “This is what people earn money for. This is what people work for, so that they can walk tall among cousins and friends."
On their way back with the hajji, the cars often race each other, and accidents are not uncommon.
Shawali, a student of law and political science at Jalalabad’s Ariana University, recalled a trip he took in one of these convoys.
“There were seven or eight cars, and they kept overtaking each other along the way. Suddenly there was a car in front of us – our driver tried to swerve but he had an accident and the car crashed. My head and leg were injured. There were five passengers in our car and all of us were as good as dead," he said.
There are other risks too, given Afghanistan’s dangerous security environment. On November 29, a roadside bomb killed ten civilians, including a woman and five children, in Uruzgan province. The party was travelling to visit recently-returned Hajjis.
The head of the Shariah law faculty at Nangarhar University, Sayed Ahmad Fatemi said the competitive show of wealth was contrary to the spirit of Islam.
"In the next world, people will be asked about how they earned their money and how they spent it. Man is not free to make and spend money [at will] – people should spend neither so little nor so much that it harms themselves and society,” he said.
Nabi Basirat, who lectures in law and political science at Nangarhar university, said it was certainly permissible to bring back gifts for friends, but other customs like the feasts and convoys of decorated cars were not in keeping with Islam, as well as being bad for Afghan society given the state of the economy.
Abdul Qayum Mashwani, a member of Afghanistan’s Academy of Sciences, interviewed while attending a lunch laid on by a hajji, said, “These negative traditions place an economic burden on people, and prevent them from performing the central obligation [Hajj]. I know many people who have failed to perform the Hajj because of these customs."
Mashwani said that if he went on the Hajj himself, he would not say anything, and would just tell friends he was going on a trip.
Nangarhar resident Fatema agreed that the post-Hajj festivities were not grounded in religion.
“A friend of mine returned from Hajj a few days ago, but I haven’t been to see her yet – it would take up her time and be a bother for me,” she said.
People who are in a position to get the money together for the Hajj journey are often put off by the thought of the costs they would have to bear afterwards.
Moalem Mohammad Ghani, a shopkeeper in Mehtarlam, a town in Laghman province just north of Nangarhar, is among them.
"I can afford to carry out the Hajj obligation, but I can’t afford the other things that people have made into obligations, like bringing back gifts, prayer cloths and clothing, and hosting lunches,” he said. “More money is spent on these things than on the Hajj itself. And if you don’t do them, people will speak ill of you."
Hijratullah Ekhtyar is an IWPR-trained reporter in Nangarhar, Afghanistan.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com