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Karzai Hints at Conditional Immunity for US Personnel
Sharon Behn VOA News December 8, 2012
As international forces prepare to leave Afghanistan, Washington and Kabul have been working towards a security agreement that would allow some U.S. personnel to stay on in Afghanistan. Now, one of the sticking points in that agreement appears to have been resolved.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai says he is willing to grant legal immunity for U.S. personnel staying behind in Afghanistan after 2014 - if the United States respects Afghan laws, sovereignty, life and property, trains and equips Afghan security forces and cedes total control of Afghan airspace to the Afghan government.
"Within those conditions, and once those conditions are fulfilled by the U.S. with us, Afghanistan is willing to consider immunity for them and I, as president of Afghanistan, am willing to go to the Afghan people and put that case forward and argue for it."
The question of legal jurisdiction has been a sensitive one. Washington has insisted that any crimes committed by Americans should be tried in the United States.
Failure to strike a similar deal on immunity for U.S. troops in Iraq essentially ended American military presence in that country.
But while resolving this immunity issue is a step forward, Afghan political and security analyst Idres Rahmani says there are other, more contentious issues that still need to be settled.
One of those is the use of Afghan airspace. Currently the CIA-led drone program targeting terrorists on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border is staged from bases in Afghanistan. Rahmani says another is the use of U.S. special forces in secret operations.
"Now, that is one point that President Karzai is not willing to accept, at least so far he has said ‘let's stop that one.’"
Rahmani said another issue likely to come up is how U.S. forces will protect the bases they live in, and what will be the role of the Afghan state if those bases come under attack.
The U.S.-Afghan talks on the post-2014 security pact are expected to continue for months.
Karzai: Spy Chief Bomber Came from Pakistan
VOA News December 8, 2012
The president of Afghanistan says the suicide bombing that wounded his intelligence chief was planned in neighboring Pakistan.
Hamid Karzai said Saturday Afghan officials are certain the suicide bomber who wounded National Directorate of Security head Asadullah Khalid came from Pakistan.
Karzai said he would raise the issue with Islamabad, but stopped short of blaming the Pakistani government. The president did not provide any evidence to support his comments.
The suicide bomber posed as a peace messenger Thursday when he attacked Khalid at a guest house in Kabul.
The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attack.
Khalid is being treated at a hospital at Bagram Air Base, outside Kabul.
An NDS official said Thursday that the intelligence chief had severe injuries on the right side of his body, particularly in the abdomen, leg and hand, but that his chances of survival are good.
Khalid, who is close to the family of President Karzai, took over the intelligence agency in September after the president reshuffled his Cabinet. Since taking over, Khalid has led an aggressive campaign against the Taliban.
Prior to becoming intelligence chief, Khalid served as Afghanistan's minister of tribal and border affairs and as a provincial governor. Human rights groups have accused him of involvement in acts of torture and other abuses while he was governor of Kandahar province. Khalid has denied any wrongdoing.
Wounded Afghan Intel Chief Treated at US Base
VOA News December 7, 2012
Afghanistan's intelligence chief, who was seriously wounded Thursday in an assassination attempt, is being treated at a U.S. military base outside of Kabul.
Afghan officials say a suicide bomber carrying a peace message on behalf of the Taliban attacked National Directorate of Security (NDS) head Asadullah Khalid at a guest house in Kabul. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the blast.
Khalid was transferred to a hospital at the Bagram Air Base, and on Friday, the head of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, General John Allen, visited him there.
NATO said the coalition commander discussed the Afghan intelligence chief's condition with medical staff and spent some time at his bedside. Allen said in a statement, "I wish this lionhearted Afghan patriot a speedy recovery" and that "my prayers are with him and his family during this trying period."
An NDS official and close friend of Khalid's who did not want to be identified told VOA's Afghan Service on Thursday that the intelligence chief had severe injuries on the right side of his body, particularly in the abdomen, leg and hand, but that his chances of survival were good.
Khalid, who is close to the family of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, took over the intelligence agency in September after the president reshuffled his Cabinet. Since taking over, Khalid has led an aggressive campaign against the Taliban.
Prior to becoming intelligence chief, Khalid served as Afghanistan's minister of tribal and border affairs and as a provincial governor. Human rights groups have accused him of involvement in acts of torture and other abuses while he was governor of Kandahar province. He has denied any wrongdoing.
Afghanistan: The Taliban Plot to Assassinate Karzai
The latest suicide-bomb attack on an Afghan official was far from the first time the insurgents used the same trick. Why does it keep working? Sami Yousafzai reports.
The Daily Beast By Sami Yousafzai Dec 8, 2012
There’s something deeply disturbing about the way Taliban suicide bombers keep employing the same ruse to get within killing distance of senior Afghan government officials—and something even more disturbing about the way Afghan officials keep falling for it. The latest victim was Asadullah Khalid, the head of Aghanistan’s domestic intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security. Yesterday, a Taliban envoy supposedly carrying a message of peace was allowed to enter a fortified NDS guest house in Kabul for a meeting with Khalid. Once inside, the purported messenger detonated a hidden explosive, badly injuring Khalid and reportedly killing at least one of the NDS chief’s bodyguards. The Taliban quickly and gleefully claimed responsibility for the attack.
If you think the plot sounds familiar, you’re right: it’s the same pretext a Taliban suicide bomber successfully used in September 2011 to assassinate the head of the Kabul government’s High Peace Council, former Afghan president Berhanuddin Rabbani.
It gets worse. The Daily Beast has learned that the Taliban nearly pulled off a similar attempt on the life of no less than Afghan President Hamid Karzai two years ago. Readers may recall the revelation in late 2010 that a supposed Taliban peace envoy was actually an impostor, not the senior insurgent leader he had pretended to be. At the time it sounded like an open-and-shut case: before being discovered, the fake Taliban commander reportedly persuaded coalition officials to entrust him with a substantial amount of money. But recently a reliable Taliban source informed The Daily Beast that the bogus envoy was actually sent to Kabul in hope of killing Karzai.
For some time insurgent leaders in Pakistan had been getting repeated peace gestures from Kabul via British intermediaries. The Taliban leadership had no desire to talk peace, but they were interested nevertheless. To them, the persistent invitations looked like a wide-open chance to kill the Afghan president. And the insurgents who conceived the plan figured that a fat man would be their best bet to smuggle a suicide bomb into Karzai’s presence. The Taliban source says they soon found the perfect candidate, a lookalike for one of the Taliban’s top leaders, the famously overweight Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansoor. To give their fake envoy extra credibility, the insurgents actually persuaded their British contacts and Karzai’s own security people to arrange transportation to Kabul for “Mansoor.”
They sent the would-be assassin to Kabul twice to gain the trust of Karzai and his security people. On one of the trips he reportedly met with the president himself. But on the third visit he would be carrying a bomb. The insurgents’ demolitions experts discussed among themselves whether to stitch a high-powered explosive into the fake envoy’s cap (the bomb that would later take Rabbani’s life was hidden in his killer’s turban) or possibly have it surgically implanted in the would-be assassin’s body.
Fortunately for Karzai’s allies, the plot unraveled before it could be carried out. “The Britons wer insisting they had made an exclusive contact with the Taliban,” says Karzai’s chief of staff, Umar Daudzai. At least two senior Afghan security officials were likewise convinced that the connection was legitimate, Daudzai says. The phony envoy was helicoptered from the Pakistan border to the International Security Assistance Force’s base in Kandahar, where he spent several days before traveling on to Kabul. But first, Daudzai says, a trusted Karzai friend was sent to check out “Mansoor.” The real Mansoor had served years before as the Taliban regime’s aviation minister, and Karzai’s friend had met him face-to-face. “The report of the inspection guy was negative,” says Daudzai. “He said, ‘This is not Mansoor’.”
“Some of the plotters proposed that an actual insurgent leader should go to Kabul under his true identity and meet with Karzai in a suicide vest, but no one in the group’s senior ranks was willing to accept the job.”
Nevertheless, Daudzai says, “The phony Mansoor did meet once with Karzai.” But if Daudzai had been warned that the supposed peace envoy was an impostor, why was he allowed into Karzai’s presence? The idea, Daudzai says, was to observe the bogus representative in hope of learning who was behind him, and the president’s security people inspected him thoroughly before the meeting. Afghanistan’s presidential security is famously effective, Daudzai says. According to Daudzai, Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto told Karzai before her assassination in December 2007 that she wanted his security team to train her people, The Taliban source says the insurgents were getting ready to send their impostor to Kabul for the third and final time when the plotters learned that Karzai’s security people had discovered that “Mansoor” was a fake, and the assassination attempt was scrubbed. Even after the imposture was revealed, however, Taliban leaders remained positive that that their trick could still work. After all, U.S. and Afghan int
elligence officials didn’t seem to be aware of the assassination plot. On the contrary, the Americans still seemed to believe that the bogus Mansoor was only trying to con them into giving him money.
According to the Taliban source, some of the plotters proposed that an actual insurgent leader should go to Kabul under his true identity and meet with Karzai in a suicide vest, but no one in the group’s senior ranks was willing to accept the job. “There were numerous opportunities,” the source says, “but Karzai happens to be a lucky president, and he has the breath of a cat” (a colloquial reference not to halitosis but to the popular saying that “a cat has seven souls”—the equivalent of “nine lives”). The hope is that his luck will keep holding.
Sami Yousafzai is Newsweek's correspondent in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where he has covered militancy, al Qaeda, and the Taliban for the magazine since 9/11. He was born in Afghanistan but moved to Pakistan with his family after the Russian invasion in 1979. He began his career as a sports journalist but switched to war reporting in 1997.
For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.
Spy Chief’s Attacker Hid Bomb in Groin, Afghanistan Says
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN December 7, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - The man who tried to kill Afghanistan’s intelligence chief this week by smuggling a bomb into a guesthouse in Kabul concealed the device “around his groin,” according to a statement released Friday by the government. The statement suggested that could have been one reason the bomb might not have been detected during a search.
It called the bombing, which seriously wounded the intelligence director, Asadullah Khalid, “unethical and contrary to principles of Shariah law.”
Shafiqullah Taheri, a spokesman for the National Directorate of Security, the agency headed by Mr. Khalid, said, “It is degrading and insulting to search anyone’s genital area, according to Shariah law.”
The spy agency has not said whether the bomber was searched — or to what extent — when he entered the guesthouse where Mr. Khalid met him on Thursday.
But if he were searched, the bomber would have forced any security guard who wanted to do his job thoroughly to behave in an un-Islamic fashion and intrude on an area of the body that is usually off limits to anyone other than a very close relative.
The only other information released Friday by the government was that Mr. Khalid, who is in his early 40s, was recovering. Western officials with some knowledge of the case said that while he would survive, he had serious abdominal injuries that would require multiple operations and that it was not yet clear if or when he would be able to return to work. The Taliban have claimed responsibility for the attack.
President Hamid Karzai visited Mr. Khalid on Thursday at a hospital run by the security directorate where he was initially taken, and Gen. John R. Allen, the commander of the international coalition forces in Afghanistan, visited him on Friday at the Bagram Air Base hospital, where he was transferred late Thursday.
The intelligence agency said little about the attack in its Friday statement and released no information about the attacker, including whether he had died in the explosion or had been shot by a guard.
The directorate’s statement about the location of the bomb seemed in part to be a response to questions from the public about how a suicide bomber was able to get so close to Mr. Khalid without being detected.
Afghans have found the notion of security searches, which are routine in the West, extremely difficult to embrace from a religious and a cultural perspective. Muslim cultures generally place great emphasis on modesty, and men and women are reluctant to show any parts of their bodies to strangers. While different schools of Islamic law have somewhat different teachings, revealing any part of the body and touching anyone else’s body is restricted.
In Afghanistan’s extremely conservative culture, a sense of discretion runs even deeper. Even at the height of summer, most Afghan men do not wear shorts; if they were to, the shorts would be knee-length. Outside major cities, a vast majority of women would not leave their homes without wearing a burqa, a veil that completely hides the face and body.
Gradually, searches in Afghanistan have become more thorough as suicide bombers wearing explosive vests have become more prevalent. Afghan security forces have tried to inculcate a more Western approach to searches among their guards, but it has not been easy.
A number of Afghans regard a body search as an insult signifying a lack of trust. So if the bomber who tried to assassinate Mr. Khalid was being brought to meet him by a trusted person, guards might well have been reluctant to offend him with a thorough body search.
US: 200 Teens Have Been Detained in Afghan War
Associated Press By By PETER JAMES SPIELMANN December 8, 2012
NEW YORK - The U.S. military has detained more than 200 Afghan teenagers who were captured in the war for about a year at a time at a military prison next to Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, the United States has told the United Nations.
The U.S. State Department characterized the detainees held since 2008 as "enemy combatants" in a report sent every four years to the United Nations in Geneva updating U.S. compliance with the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The U.S. military had held them "to prevent a combatant from returning to the battlefield," the report said.
A few are still confined at the Detention Facility in Parwan, which will be turned over to the Afghan government, it said. "Many of them have been released or transferred to the Afghan government," said the report, distributed this week.
Most of the juvenile Afghan detainees were about 16 years old, but their age was not usually determined until after capture, the U.S. report said.
If the average age is 16, "This means it is highly likely that some children were as young as 14 or 13 years old when they were detained by U.S. forces," Jamil Dakwar, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's human rights program, said Friday.
"I've represented children as young as 11 or 12 who have been at Bagram," said Tina M. Foster, executive director of the International Justice Network, which represents adult and juvenile Bagram detainees.
"I question the number of 200, because there are thousands of detainees at Parwan," Foster said Friday. "There are other children whose parents have said these children are under 18 at the time of their capture, and the U.S. doesn't allow the detainees or their families to contest their age."
Dakwar also criticized the length of detention, a year on average, according to the U.S. report.
"This is an extraordinarily unacceptably long period of time that exposes children in detention to greater risk of physical and mental abuse, especially if they are denied access to the protections guaranteed to them under international law," Dakwar said.
The U.S. State Department was called for comment on the criticism, and a representative said they were seeking an officer to reply.
The previous American report four years ago provided a snapshot of the focus of the U.S. military's effort in the endgame of the Bush presidency after years of warfare and anti-terrorism campaigns. In 2008, the U.S. said it held about 500 juveniles in Iraqi detention centers and then had only about 10 at the Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan. A total of some 2,500 youths had been detained, almost all in Iraq, from 2002 through 2008 under the Bush administration.
Barack Obama campaigned for the presidency in 2008 in part on winding down active U.S. involvement in the Iraq War, and shifting the military focus to Afghanistan. The latest figures on under-18 detainees reflect the redeployment of U.S. efforts to Afghanistan.
Because the teen detainees were not charged with any crime, "a detainee would generally not be provided legal assistance." They were allowed to attend open hearings and defend themselves, and a personal advocate was assigned to each detainee, the report said.
"These are basically sham proceedings," Foster said. "The personal representatives don't do anything different for the child detainees than they do for the adults, which is nothing."
The report added that "the purpose of detention is not punitive but preventative: to prevent a combatant from returning to the battlefield."
It cited a 2004 U.S. Supreme Court case, Hamdi vs. Rumsfeld, as establishing that "the law of armed conflict permits the United States to detain belligerents until the end of hostilities without charging such individuals with crimes, because they are not being held as criminals facing future criminal trial."
The U.S. military is fighting irregular forces — al-Qaida, the Taliban, and an array of similar shadowy insurgent or terrorist groups. So it is not clear when "hostilities" would ever formally end, since there is no declaration of war and no enemy government to defeat. Only the United States can decide when it deems a conflict to be over, in those circumstances.
Foster said that the teens seized are not in uniform or even typically taken in combat.
"We're not talking about battlefield captures, we're talking about people who are living at home, and four or five brothers might be taken together. It might take them a year or more to figure out that one of them was younger than 18, to determine the identities of these kids," she said.
In January, the State Department will send a delegation to Geneva to present the report to the U.N.'s Committee on the Rights of the Child, and to answer any further questions the U.N. committee members may have.
Extreme Franchising: Bringing RadioShack to Afghanistan
Bloomberg By Nick Leiber December 07, 2012
The next time you stroll through downtown Kabul, you might be able to buy batteries from a RadioShack (RSH) outlet, the result of a new effort by the U.S. to shore up Afghanistan’s economy: selling American franchises to Afghan entrepreneurs.
The U.S. has set a 2014 deadline for troops to withdraw from Afghanistan and turn security over to Afghan military and police. That is prompting capital flight, depressing property values, and triggering other economic pain. That’s where franchising might fit—and an initial foray into the country proved promising, U.S. executives say.
“I didn’t have huge expectations going there that we would consummate an agreement, but after being there on the streets and seeing some fairly sophisticated [retail] operators in a very difficult climate, I’ve walked away with the fact that we would do business in Afghanistan,” says Martin Amschler, a RadioShack vice president who joined several American franchise executives to participate in a five-day matchmaking event in Kabul this week.
Organized by the U.S. Department of Commerce, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the International Franchise Association (IFA), the event gave franchising brass a chance to explore the market and meet with Afghan businessmen and U.S. and Afghan officials. Outside of mostly fast-food chains on bases, there aren’t any American franchises in Afghanistan, says Beth Solomon, a vice president at the IFA who led the trip. “There is a vast culture of young [Afghans] who are very tech savvy, Internet savvy. Everyone’s got the latest Samsung or iPhone,” she says, “and there is disposable income.”
The big idea behind the effort is the “knowledge transfer” of infrastructure-building and business services expertise to locals to help rebuild the country, says Solomon, who recruited participants from RadioShack, Hertz Equipment Rental (HTZ), Tutor Doctor, and AlphaGraphics. “Franchising can be a very useful transitional economic development strategy, because the challenges of security and so forth can be minimized because it’s Afghan business leaders who are going to run these businesses,” says Solomon.
Of course, with more than one-third of Afghanistan’s 30 million people living below the poverty line, according to the CIA’s World Fact Book, much of the population can’t afford to buy an American franchise.
Bill Edwards, a seasoned franchising consultant who specializes in exporting American franchise brands such as Build-A-Bear Workshop (BBW) and Denny’s (DENN), and was on the trip for AlphaGraphics, doesn’t see a lack of Afghan investors. “There’s a lot of money there” willing to invest in American franchises, Edwards says. “There’s a need for Western business. There’s a market, there’s consumers, there’s funding, there’s capital. But there’s all the other challenges, of course.”
Apart from security, the biggest challenge would be vetting prospective buyers, says RadioShack’s Amschler. “But at the end of the day there are private contractors over there today that provide those services and then, of course, we would have our own list of requirements in terms of net worth and what types of business experience they have,” he says.
Approved Afghan buyers would attend RadioShack University at corporate headquarters in Fort Worth and get “support on the ground” from RadioShack employees for about two weeks when a store opens, plus training visits throughout the year, Amschler says.
Among other efforts to stabilize Afghanistan’s economy, how significant could franchising be? A statement from the Commerce Department’s International Trade Administration about the conference notes “franchising has proven to be an ideal market vehicle for both employment and economic growth.” Edwards says he thinks franchising is “the model” because “it brings a business model that’s proven. It brings training, which is the thing they need; the skill set is just really not good there.”
Education is crucial to Afghanistan, says Rogelio Martinez, vice president of international franchise development at 30-employee Tutor Doctor, a “supplementary education” business that has sold about 400 franchises in 14 countries. “It’s something that everybody was talking about. [Afghan] business owners wanted to develop Afghan employees to take mid-level, senior-level management positions. Families want their kids to learn and attend good universities in Afghanistan or abroad.”
The Van Nuys (Calif.) company, which Martinez says charges franchisees about $57,000 to get started, provides training and an online tool that uses a Skype-like interface for tutors and students to communicate online. He expects to sell about seven franchises in Afghanistan in 2013. “They can’t be importing expats all the time; they need to have the local talent to have a sustainable model,” says Martinez.
David Riker, franchise development director for Hertz, is also optimistic about his company’s prospects in Afghanistan. Unlike fellow participants on the Kabul trip, he already has franchises on two military bases there, renting heavy machinery used in building roads and construction projects. “As the military draws down, Afghanistan is going to have to support more of its infrastructure, so that’s where the opportunity comes in,” Riker says. Depending on what kind of equipment a franchise buyer wants, getting started is “probably in the $3 million range.”
Aiding Afghanistan through franchising certainly won’t be quick, says Edwards. “Let’s not be too Pollyannaish. This is going to be a challenge, but it’s definitely an opportunity.”
Former U.S. Envoy Returns to Kabul Politics
Wall Street Journal By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV and NATHAN HODGE December 7, 2012
KABUL - The Afghan-born former U.S. ambassador to Kabul, Zalmay Khalilzad, has returned for consultations aimed at ensuring a smooth election and transfer of power as President Hamid Karzai leaves office in 2014.
These political discussions seek to help determine a potential successor to Mr. Karzai who could command widespread consensus as U.S.-led forces withdraw later that year, according to politicians in Kabul.
Many Afghan and Western officials believe Mr. Khalilzad may see himself as a potential candidate. Asked whether he was considering running for the Afghan presidency, Mr. Khalilzad said by email Friday: "This is not the purpose of this trip."
Mr. Khalilzad, 61 years old, made the rounds of key Afghan politicians this week while staying in the presidential palace as a guest of Mr. Karzai. As U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan in 2003-05, he was instrumental in solidifying Mr. Karzai's hold on power, meeting with the Afghan president almost daily and often using the pronoun "we" when speaking about the Afghan government.
Afghan politicians "need to make sure that there is a constitutional, democratic and orderly change of government," Mr. Khalilzad said. "I am here to facilitate an agreement among key personalities and forces on a possible consensus on key issues confronting the country, and the formation of a team to lead a broad public discourse on those issues."
Mr. Karzai isn't eligible to run for a third term under the constitution, and hasn't anointed a preferred successor.
Senior members of his government have participated in some of the recent meetings. "It's not just about the candidate—first, we must agree on a program," said one such official.
Afghan politicians seek to avoid the trauma of the fraud-ridden 2009 presidential election, which pushed many former government supporters into opposition and inflamed ethnic tensions. A similar crisis of legitimacy in 2014 would risk fracturing Afghanistan's security forces and giving ground to the Taliban.
To garner consensus, a presidential candidate would need to placate the powerful leaders of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, which represents mostly the ethnic Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara minorities, while drawing support from the country's largest ethnic group, the Pashtun, who have traditionally ruled Afghanistan. "We all need to sit together and discuss the current situation, and ultimately reach an agreement and choose the best one," said former Vice President Ahmad Zia Massoud, leader of the National Front opposition alliance and brother of the legendary Tajik commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, who was slain by al Qaeda in 2001.
Mr. Karzai hasn't endorsed a successor, and there was "nothing special" about him hosting Mr. Khalilzad, said the president's spokesman, Aimal Faizi. "Every time he is here, he is in the palace because it's safer, and because he can easily meet officials," Mr. Faizi added.
Mr. Khalilzad is a Pashtun who was born in northern Afghanistan's main city of Mazar-e-Sharif. After pursuing his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago and becoming a U.S. citizen, he served in several senior U.S. government positions under three Republican presidents. He left government in 2009 after serving as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and now has his own consulting firm.
If Mr. Khalilzad were to run for office in Afghanistan in 2014, he would have to renounce his American citizenship. He hasn't publicly mentioned a possible run during recent meetings in Kabul, Afghan politicians say.
"He wants to have a political role in Afghanistan," said Mohammed Mohaqeq, a leader of the ethnic Hazara community who met Mr. Khalilzad during these encounters.
Another leading politician who met Mr. Khalilzad to discuss the election, former parliament speaker Yunus Qanooni, said that "before someone nominates himself as a candidate, we need to have the very best team, a broad-based national team." Mr. Khalilzad, he added, has agreed to work as part of that joint team.
Mr. Khalilzad could be "very instrumental in the making of alliances" between different Afghan political factions, said Idrees Zaman, an independent analyst with Cooperation for Peace and Unity, an Afghan think tank. But Mr. Zaman expressed doubt that Mr. Khalilzad would be a viable presidential candidate, comparing him with another prominent Afghan-American political figure, former Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali, who is also seen as a potential aspirant.
"They don't live in Afghanistan, really," Mr. Zaman said. "They come only to make some sort of temporary living arrangement in Kabul during election times."
Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com and Nathan Hodge atnathan.hodge@wsj.com
US military facing fresh questions over targeting of children in Afghanistan
Outrage grows after senior officer claimed troops in Afghanistan were on the lookout for 'children with potential hostile intent'
Guardian.co.uk By Karen McVeigh Friday 7 December 2012
The US military is facing fresh questions over its targeting policy in Afghanistan after a senior army officer suggested that troops were on the lookout for "children with potential hostile intent".
In comments which legal experts and campaigners described as "deeply troubling", army Lt Col Marion Carrington told the Marine Corp Times that children, as well as "military-age males", had been identified as a potential threat because some were being used by the Taliban to assist in attacks against Afghan and coalition forces.
"It kind of opens our aperture," said Carrington, whose unit, 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, was assisting the Afghan police. "In addition to looking for military-age males, it's looking for children with potential hostile intent."
In the article, headlined "Some Afghan kids aren't bystanders", Carrington referred to a case this year in which the Afghan national police in Kandahar province said they found children helping insurgents by carrying soda bottles full of potassium chlorate.
The piece also quoted an unnamed marine corps official who questioned the "innocence" of Afghan children, particularly three who were killed in a US rocket strike in October. Last month, the New York Times quoted local officials who said Borjan, 12, Sardar Wali, 10, and Khan Bibi, eight, from Helmand's Nawa district had been killed while gathering dung for fuel.
However, the US official claimed that, before they called for the strike on suspected insurgents planting improvised explosive devices, marines had seen the children digging a hole in a dirt road and that "the Taliban may have recruited the children to carry out the mission".
Last year, Human Rights Watch reported a sharp increase in the Taliban's deployment of children in suicide bombings, some as young as seven.
But the apparent widening of the US military's already controversial targeting policy has alarmed human rights lawyers and campaigners.
Amos Guiora, a law professor at the University of Utah specialising in counter-terrorism, said Carrington's remarks reflected the shifting definitions of legitimate military targets within the Obama administration.
Guiora, who spent years in the Israel Defence Forces, including time as a legal adviser in the Gaza Strip, said: "I have great respect for people who put themselves in harm's way. Carrington is probably a great guy, but he is articulating a deeply troubling policy adopted by the Obama administration.
"The decision about who you consider a legitimate target is less defined by your conduct than the conduct of the people or category of people which you are assigned to belong to That is beyond troubling. It is also illegal and immoral."
Guiora added: "If you are looking to create a paradigm where you increase the 'aperture' – that scares me. It doesn't work, operationally, morally or practically."
Guiora cited comments made by John Brennan, the White House counter-terrorism chief, in April, in which he "talked about flexible definitions of imminent threat."
Pardiss Kebriaei, senior attorney of the Center for Constitutional Rights and a specialist in targeted killings, said she was concerned over what seemed to be an attempt to justify the killing of children.
Kebriaei said: "This is one official quoted. I don't know if that standard is what they are using but the standard itself is troubling."
The US is already facing criticism for using the term term "military-aged male" to justify targeted killings where the identities of individuals are not known. Under the US definition, all fighting-age males killed in drone strikes are regarded as combatants and not civilians, unless there is explicit evidence to the contrary. This has the effect of significantly reducing the official tally of civilian deaths.
Kebriael said the definition was reportedly being used in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. "Under the rules of law you can only target civilians if they are directly participating in hostilities. So, here, this standard of presuming any military aged males in the vicinity of a war zone are militants, already goes beyond what the law allows.
"When you get to the suggestion that children with potentially hostile intent may be perceived to be legitimate targets is deeply troubling and unlawful."
Children in conflict zones have additional protections under the law.
Kebriael, who is counsel for CCR in a lawsuit which seeks accountability for the killing of three American citizens – including a 16 year old boy – in US drone strikes in Yemen last year, said that the piece also raised questions over how those killed in that incident were counted. "Were they counted as military-aged males or were they counted as children with potentially hostile intent or were they counted as the innocent bystanders they were?"
In a speech in April setting out the context for the US programme of targeted killings, White House counter-terrorism chief John Brennan spoke about a threshold of "significant threat', which was widely seen as introducing a lower criteria than "imminent threat".
Brennan said: "Even if it is lawful to pursue a specific member of al-Qaida, we ask ourselves whether that individual's activities rise to a certain threshold for action, and whether taking action will, in fact, enhance our security. For example, when considering lethal force we ask ourselves whether the individual poses a significant threat to US interests. This is absolutely critical, and it goes to the very essence of why we take this kind of exceptional action."
An Isaf spokesman, Lt Col Jimmie Cummings, told the Marine Corp Times that insurgents continue to use children as suicide bombers and IED emplacers, even though Taliban leader Mullah Omar has ordered them to stop harming civilians.
There have been more than 200 children killed in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen by the CIA and Joint Special Operating Command, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
2 killed, 9 wounded in eastern Afghan blast
KHOST, Afghanistan, Dec. 8 (Xinhua) -- A bomb exploded near an Afghan army patrol Saturday in the country's eastern Khost province, killing two civilians and wounding nine others, a statement issued by the provincial government said.
"A bomb went off near an army unit patrolling in the main bazaar in Bak district at around 12:08 p.m. local time, killing two innocent civilians and injuring five civilians and four army personnel," the statement said blaming Taliban insurgent for the attack in the province 150 km southeast of capital Kabul bordering Pakistan.
The Taliban-led insurgency has been rampant since the militant group launched annual spring offensive on May 3 against Afghan government forces and about 100,000 NATO-led troops stationed in the country.
The insurgent group has warned the civilians to stay away from official gatherings, military convoys and centers regarded as the legitimate targets by militants besides warning people against supporting government and foreign troops.
Two local Taliban leaders killed in N. Afghanistan: police
KUNDUZ, Afghanistan, Dec. 8 (Xinhua) -- Two Taliban local leaders have been killed in an operation carried out by the Afghan police in northern Kunduz province, police said on Saturday.
"The Afghan National Police (ANP) launched an operation to clear from militants and armed robbers on a main road connecting provincial capital Kunduz city to neighbouring Dasht-i-Archi district, killing two Taliban leaders," the provincial police spokesman, Sayyid Sarwar Housaini, told Xinhua.
He said two other militants were detained in the ongoing operation began Thursday in the province 250 km north of capital Kabul.
However, the Taliban insurgent group, which announced the launching of an annual spring offensive from May 3 against Afghan and NATO forces, has not to make comments yet.
In another development, the police found the body of a local businessman named Mohammad Saddiq on Friday in a suburban area in Kunduz city who was kidnapped by criminal gangs on Nov. 29, the spokesman added.
Rural Afghan town feels caught between U.S. and Taliban
Washington Post By Pamela Constable December 7 , 2012
MAIDAN SHAHR, Afghanistan - Every day except Friday, the little midwife school bustled with activity. Students practiced listening for fetal heartbeats and cutting umbilical cords. New mothers and babies sometimes spent the night. It was the only center of its kind in Wardak province, a region of scattered villages surrounded by mountains.
Early Nov. 23, a truck piled with firewood approached the clinic in this small provincial capital 30 miles south of Kabul. Challenged by a policeman, the driver detonated a powerful bomb hidden under his cargo, sending shock waves across the town and shattering almost every window in a five-block radius.
The midwife program was closed for the weekly Muslim holy day, so no one was harmed in the office. But much of it was destroyed, and officials there said it would not reopen. A dozen mud-brick houses nearby were reduced to rubble, and hundreds of people were knocked down or sliced by shards of glass. Panic-stricken residents stumbled or were carried to the town hospital. Four people died, including the bomber, and 160 were treated for injuries.
“The ground shook and everyone started to run,” said Abdul Wali, 25, a hardware shop owner whose gaping glass storefront was still covered with a blanket Monday. “I don’t know who would do such a terrible thing, but we have no security at all. The police beat people, the Americans raid our villages and still we are not safe. We would be happy if they all left tomorrow.”
Even for people hardened by a decade of war, the massive truck bomb dealt a devastating psychological blow. More than a week after the attack, many shops were empty and not a single woman was to be seen outside the hospital. People in stores and offices were visibly nervous and seething with anger but unsure whether to direct it at the unknown culprits or the authorities, who had failed to protect them.
Taliban spokesmen claimed that they had carried out the bombing to avenge the execution of several Taliban prisoners in Kabul, but police officials had a different theory. They said Afghan security forces had been conducting intensive anti-insurgent raids in the area, and the Taliban wanted to prove that they could assault a high-security district that included police headquarters, the governor’s guesthouse and a joint U.S.-Afghan military command post, as well as the midwife school.
“The enemy stabbed us from behind,” said Gen. Abdul Razzak Qureshi, the deputy provincial police commander, whose office door was blown off its hinges. “We cleared 150 villages this month. We wanted to test our forces to see if they can defeat the Taliban once the American troops leave. We were very successful, but they did this cowardly attack to show they are still here.”
Wardak, a rural province where nomads camp in summer, has increasingly come under Taliban control in the past five years. The town of Maidan Shahr is strategically located on a major highway, and both the national police and the U.S. military have large bases less than a mile away. But most of the populace is from the same Pashtun ethnic group as the Taliban, and many farmers have turned to opium poppy cultivation, making them natural allies of the insurgents.
Taliban attacks have been relatively rare in Wardak, but in early September, twin suicide attacks in the town of Syedabad killed 13 people and wounded 80 when one bomber on foot and another driving a fuel tanker detonated explosives near a U.S. military base.
Although the trappings of security are visible in Maidan Shahr — including U.S. military cameras on posts and a spy balloon that floats over the town — residents complain that the Afghan government’s presence is woefully inadequate. They said the governor and most provincial officials live in Kabul for their own protection and visit Maidan Shahr a few hours a day at most, leaving well before sunset. The governor, through a spokesman in Kabul, declined to be interviewed.
“The problem is not that the Taliban are strong, it’s that the government is weak,” said Ghulam Nabi, an administrator for the Scandinavian charity that operated the midwife school. He said many civilian officials and police officers were ethnic Tajiks from the north, who have a history of conflict with Pashtuns. “If our governor and police chief lived here and had families here, they would make sure we had the peace and security and services we need.”
Residents expressed widespread indignation at the abusive behavior of local police, and half a dozen people separately described the recent beating and drowning of a truck driver at police hands. And although no one openly said they supported the Taliban, many people expressed far stronger concern and frustration about the village raids being carried out by Afghan troops with U.S. backing.
Two nervous officials from a government agency, who had driven from Kabul to assess bomb damage to shops, said they could not find most of the owners.
One of the few open stores was a small but stylishly arranged boutique for women’s fashions and shoes. The proprietor, a young man named Taj Mohammed, said he had been sleeping there at night, despite the freezing cold, because he feared being arrested if he returned to his home village.
“We have nowhere to stand. We have trouble with the government, the Americans and the Taliban too,” said Mohammed, who had just spent $400 to replace his picture window. He was clearly terrified by the bombing, which he described as a roaring wind that made the roof collapse on him. But he shook with emotion when he described other powerful forces, including NATO troops, as having replaced his town’s normal life with uncertainty, abuse and fear.
“We don’t even feel human,” he said. “I know we will suffer more when the American forces go, but we are fed up with them too. We don’t expect much from the Taliban except beatings, but the Americans are supposed to bring laws and principles. What we have here now is just chaos.”
Afghanistan's growing demand for plastic surgery
BBC News By Khalil Noori 8 December 2012
Kabul - There is a growing demand for cosmetic surgery in Afghanistan, where just 10 years ago such procedures were mainly used to deal with injuries caused by decades of conflict.
Even though it may come as a surprise to some that looks can count for so much in a country where war, poverty and corruption have been commonplace, plastic surgery has a relatively long history in Afghanistan.
It was the conflict itself which gave medics the specific medical skills required to become plastic surgeons. Used to carrying out burn re-construction and other trauma surgery, they have been able to adapt their skills accordingly.
And the market seems to be growing all the time. Cosmetic surgery is especially popular among a younger generation of Afghans.
'Not qualified'
Women tend to visit plastic surgeons for facelifts, nose reshapes or liposuction. Eyebrow tattoos and hair transplants are more popular among younger men.
Representatives of both sexes often request a specific look based on photos of Bollywood actors and actresses.
While most recipients hail the benefits of cosmetic surgery, critics are concerned that the growth in demand has resulted in a skills shortage, with some surgeons not sufficiently qualified to carry it out.
Kabul private hospital plastic surgeon Dr Najibullah Najib is a prolific plastic surgeon, on average dealing with two or three patients every day.
Surgeons like Dr Najib cut their teeth treating the victims of war for more than 20 years - thereby gaining the skills required for such delicate operations.
"Many girls want their eyebrows shaped in a new Chinese style or they want their eyelids done. Sometimes they want their noses to be narrower and higher," he said.
'Nicer then I expected'
Housewife Sheba, 40, is typical of the kind of patient who Dr Najib treats. She has already had three operations.
"First I removed fat from my abdomen, then I removed the bags under my eyes and also reshaped my eyebrows," she says.
"When I was laughing, I suffered by looking at my wrinkles. Now some friends even say I look 14 years younger.
"I love my body and my clothes fit a lot better."
Another client, Sahar, has had a nose operation.
"Now it is narrower and higher. I didn't expect such a change. When the dressings were removed, I was so surprised: it was nicer than I expected."
Most of the cosmetic surgeries that have sprung up in recent years are based in Kabul, with specialists trained in Iran and Pakistan.
All over more affluent parts of the city, it is possible to see adverts promising better looks and better hair, juxtaposed with classic "before and after" shots of apparently satisfied clients.
Skin 'destroyed'
So successful in fact has Afghanistan's cosmetic surgery business become that people have even started coming to the country from abroad for the comparatively low cost of treatment.
A basic nose alteration in Afghanistan costs in the region of $300-$600 (£187- £375), doctors say. A similar operation in the West can cost up to 10 times more than that.
Bahador Shirzad, who works as an assistant at a hair enhancement centre in Kabul, says that surgical and non-surgical methods are used.
"We recommend non-surgical methods for those whose side hairs are weak or where the skin is destroyed," he says.
"With the surgical method, we take hair from the back of head of the patient and implant it onto the balding area."
But with the increase in demand, so the criticism of the quality of treatment on offer has grown.
Shafi is a patient unhappy with the treatment he received and who claims to have suffered unpleasant side effects.
"Doctors polished my head with some oil and then they implanted artificial hair on my head and joined it up with my own hair," he recalls.
"After a couple of hours I got a bad headache and my eyes were itching. I understood that these were [expected] side-effects of the implant procedure.
"But then I removed the hairs and my scalp had completely lost its colour."
Abdul Ghafar Ghayoor, a plastic surgeon in a hospital in Pakistan, says that some Afghan doctors lack the necessary experience to carry out such highly technical surgery.
"I have seen a number of Afghan doctors who have [only] worked for less than a year in Iran, Pakistan, India or Russia... This is why their work is usually not perfect."
Senior Al Qaeda Leader Killed in Drone Attack
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 08 December 2012
Sheikh Khalid Bin Abdul Rehman Al-Hussainan, considered second-in-command to Al Qaeda leader Ayman Al Zawahiri, was killed on Friday in a drone strike in Pakistan.
US officials and Jihadist's forums reported that Al-Hussainan, also known as Abu Ziad al-Kuwaiti, was killed Friday morning in Pakistan.
"We celebrate to you the news of the martyrdom of the working scholar Shaykh Khalid al-Hussainan while eating his Suhoor meal, and we ask Allah to accept him in paradise," a post said on an Al Qaeda affiliated web forum.
NBC News terrorism expert Evan Kohlmann said that al-Kuwaiti was in the top tier of Al Qaeda following the death of Osama Bin Laden in May 2011, who was also killed in Pakistan.
"That's a big gap in the leadership," said Kohlmann in the NBC News report. "He was the last senior Al Qaeda leader in the Afghanistan-Pakistan area who was, one, from the Arabian Peninsula and, two, who had serious clerical credentials. Now there is no obvious publicly recognisable candidate left to succeed Zawahiri."
In an interview earlier this year, al-Kuwaiti stated he began his religious studies in 1986 in Saudi Arabia.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
Sharon Behn VOA News December 8, 2012
As international forces prepare to leave Afghanistan, Washington and Kabul have been working towards a security agreement that would allow some U.S. personnel to stay on in Afghanistan. Now, one of the sticking points in that agreement appears to have been resolved.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai says he is willing to grant legal immunity for U.S. personnel staying behind in Afghanistan after 2014 - if the United States respects Afghan laws, sovereignty, life and property, trains and equips Afghan security forces and cedes total control of Afghan airspace to the Afghan government.
"Within those conditions, and once those conditions are fulfilled by the U.S. with us, Afghanistan is willing to consider immunity for them and I, as president of Afghanistan, am willing to go to the Afghan people and put that case forward and argue for it."
The question of legal jurisdiction has been a sensitive one. Washington has insisted that any crimes committed by Americans should be tried in the United States.
Failure to strike a similar deal on immunity for U.S. troops in Iraq essentially ended American military presence in that country.
But while resolving this immunity issue is a step forward, Afghan political and security analyst Idres Rahmani says there are other, more contentious issues that still need to be settled.
One of those is the use of Afghan airspace. Currently the CIA-led drone program targeting terrorists on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border is staged from bases in Afghanistan. Rahmani says another is the use of U.S. special forces in secret operations.
"Now, that is one point that President Karzai is not willing to accept, at least so far he has said ‘let's stop that one.’"
Rahmani said another issue likely to come up is how U.S. forces will protect the bases they live in, and what will be the role of the Afghan state if those bases come under attack.
The U.S.-Afghan talks on the post-2014 security pact are expected to continue for months.
Karzai: Spy Chief Bomber Came from Pakistan
VOA News December 8, 2012
The president of Afghanistan says the suicide bombing that wounded his intelligence chief was planned in neighboring Pakistan.
Hamid Karzai said Saturday Afghan officials are certain the suicide bomber who wounded National Directorate of Security head Asadullah Khalid came from Pakistan.
Karzai said he would raise the issue with Islamabad, but stopped short of blaming the Pakistani government. The president did not provide any evidence to support his comments.
The suicide bomber posed as a peace messenger Thursday when he attacked Khalid at a guest house in Kabul.
The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attack.
Khalid is being treated at a hospital at Bagram Air Base, outside Kabul.
An NDS official said Thursday that the intelligence chief had severe injuries on the right side of his body, particularly in the abdomen, leg and hand, but that his chances of survival are good.
Khalid, who is close to the family of President Karzai, took over the intelligence agency in September after the president reshuffled his Cabinet. Since taking over, Khalid has led an aggressive campaign against the Taliban.
Prior to becoming intelligence chief, Khalid served as Afghanistan's minister of tribal and border affairs and as a provincial governor. Human rights groups have accused him of involvement in acts of torture and other abuses while he was governor of Kandahar province. Khalid has denied any wrongdoing.
Wounded Afghan Intel Chief Treated at US Base
VOA News December 7, 2012
Afghanistan's intelligence chief, who was seriously wounded Thursday in an assassination attempt, is being treated at a U.S. military base outside of Kabul.
Afghan officials say a suicide bomber carrying a peace message on behalf of the Taliban attacked National Directorate of Security (NDS) head Asadullah Khalid at a guest house in Kabul. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the blast.
Khalid was transferred to a hospital at the Bagram Air Base, and on Friday, the head of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, General John Allen, visited him there.
NATO said the coalition commander discussed the Afghan intelligence chief's condition with medical staff and spent some time at his bedside. Allen said in a statement, "I wish this lionhearted Afghan patriot a speedy recovery" and that "my prayers are with him and his family during this trying period."
An NDS official and close friend of Khalid's who did not want to be identified told VOA's Afghan Service on Thursday that the intelligence chief had severe injuries on the right side of his body, particularly in the abdomen, leg and hand, but that his chances of survival were good.
Khalid, who is close to the family of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, took over the intelligence agency in September after the president reshuffled his Cabinet. Since taking over, Khalid has led an aggressive campaign against the Taliban.
Prior to becoming intelligence chief, Khalid served as Afghanistan's minister of tribal and border affairs and as a provincial governor. Human rights groups have accused him of involvement in acts of torture and other abuses while he was governor of Kandahar province. He has denied any wrongdoing.
Afghanistan: The Taliban Plot to Assassinate Karzai
The latest suicide-bomb attack on an Afghan official was far from the first time the insurgents used the same trick. Why does it keep working? Sami Yousafzai reports.
The Daily Beast By Sami Yousafzai Dec 8, 2012
There’s something deeply disturbing about the way Taliban suicide bombers keep employing the same ruse to get within killing distance of senior Afghan government officials—and something even more disturbing about the way Afghan officials keep falling for it. The latest victim was Asadullah Khalid, the head of Aghanistan’s domestic intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security. Yesterday, a Taliban envoy supposedly carrying a message of peace was allowed to enter a fortified NDS guest house in Kabul for a meeting with Khalid. Once inside, the purported messenger detonated a hidden explosive, badly injuring Khalid and reportedly killing at least one of the NDS chief’s bodyguards. The Taliban quickly and gleefully claimed responsibility for the attack.
If you think the plot sounds familiar, you’re right: it’s the same pretext a Taliban suicide bomber successfully used in September 2011 to assassinate the head of the Kabul government’s High Peace Council, former Afghan president Berhanuddin Rabbani.
It gets worse. The Daily Beast has learned that the Taliban nearly pulled off a similar attempt on the life of no less than Afghan President Hamid Karzai two years ago. Readers may recall the revelation in late 2010 that a supposed Taliban peace envoy was actually an impostor, not the senior insurgent leader he had pretended to be. At the time it sounded like an open-and-shut case: before being discovered, the fake Taliban commander reportedly persuaded coalition officials to entrust him with a substantial amount of money. But recently a reliable Taliban source informed The Daily Beast that the bogus envoy was actually sent to Kabul in hope of killing Karzai.
For some time insurgent leaders in Pakistan had been getting repeated peace gestures from Kabul via British intermediaries. The Taliban leadership had no desire to talk peace, but they were interested nevertheless. To them, the persistent invitations looked like a wide-open chance to kill the Afghan president. And the insurgents who conceived the plan figured that a fat man would be their best bet to smuggle a suicide bomb into Karzai’s presence. The Taliban source says they soon found the perfect candidate, a lookalike for one of the Taliban’s top leaders, the famously overweight Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansoor. To give their fake envoy extra credibility, the insurgents actually persuaded their British contacts and Karzai’s own security people to arrange transportation to Kabul for “Mansoor.”
They sent the would-be assassin to Kabul twice to gain the trust of Karzai and his security people. On one of the trips he reportedly met with the president himself. But on the third visit he would be carrying a bomb. The insurgents’ demolitions experts discussed among themselves whether to stitch a high-powered explosive into the fake envoy’s cap (the bomb that would later take Rabbani’s life was hidden in his killer’s turban) or possibly have it surgically implanted in the would-be assassin’s body.
Fortunately for Karzai’s allies, the plot unraveled before it could be carried out. “The Britons wer insisting they had made an exclusive contact with the Taliban,” says Karzai’s chief of staff, Umar Daudzai. At least two senior Afghan security officials were likewise convinced that the connection was legitimate, Daudzai says. The phony envoy was helicoptered from the Pakistan border to the International Security Assistance Force’s base in Kandahar, where he spent several days before traveling on to Kabul. But first, Daudzai says, a trusted Karzai friend was sent to check out “Mansoor.” The real Mansoor had served years before as the Taliban regime’s aviation minister, and Karzai’s friend had met him face-to-face. “The report of the inspection guy was negative,” says Daudzai. “He said, ‘This is not Mansoor’.”
“Some of the plotters proposed that an actual insurgent leader should go to Kabul under his true identity and meet with Karzai in a suicide vest, but no one in the group’s senior ranks was willing to accept the job.”
Nevertheless, Daudzai says, “The phony Mansoor did meet once with Karzai.” But if Daudzai had been warned that the supposed peace envoy was an impostor, why was he allowed into Karzai’s presence? The idea, Daudzai says, was to observe the bogus representative in hope of learning who was behind him, and the president’s security people inspected him thoroughly before the meeting. Afghanistan’s presidential security is famously effective, Daudzai says. According to Daudzai, Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto told Karzai before her assassination in December 2007 that she wanted his security team to train her people, The Taliban source says the insurgents were getting ready to send their impostor to Kabul for the third and final time when the plotters learned that Karzai’s security people had discovered that “Mansoor” was a fake, and the assassination attempt was scrubbed. Even after the imposture was revealed, however, Taliban leaders remained positive that that their trick could still work. After all, U.S. and Afghan int
elligence officials didn’t seem to be aware of the assassination plot. On the contrary, the Americans still seemed to believe that the bogus Mansoor was only trying to con them into giving him money.
According to the Taliban source, some of the plotters proposed that an actual insurgent leader should go to Kabul under his true identity and meet with Karzai in a suicide vest, but no one in the group’s senior ranks was willing to accept the job. “There were numerous opportunities,” the source says, “but Karzai happens to be a lucky president, and he has the breath of a cat” (a colloquial reference not to halitosis but to the popular saying that “a cat has seven souls”—the equivalent of “nine lives”). The hope is that his luck will keep holding.
Sami Yousafzai is Newsweek's correspondent in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where he has covered militancy, al Qaeda, and the Taliban for the magazine since 9/11. He was born in Afghanistan but moved to Pakistan with his family after the Russian invasion in 1979. He began his career as a sports journalist but switched to war reporting in 1997.
For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.
Spy Chief’s Attacker Hid Bomb in Groin, Afghanistan Says
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN December 7, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - The man who tried to kill Afghanistan’s intelligence chief this week by smuggling a bomb into a guesthouse in Kabul concealed the device “around his groin,” according to a statement released Friday by the government. The statement suggested that could have been one reason the bomb might not have been detected during a search.
It called the bombing, which seriously wounded the intelligence director, Asadullah Khalid, “unethical and contrary to principles of Shariah law.”
Shafiqullah Taheri, a spokesman for the National Directorate of Security, the agency headed by Mr. Khalid, said, “It is degrading and insulting to search anyone’s genital area, according to Shariah law.”
The spy agency has not said whether the bomber was searched — or to what extent — when he entered the guesthouse where Mr. Khalid met him on Thursday.
But if he were searched, the bomber would have forced any security guard who wanted to do his job thoroughly to behave in an un-Islamic fashion and intrude on an area of the body that is usually off limits to anyone other than a very close relative.
The only other information released Friday by the government was that Mr. Khalid, who is in his early 40s, was recovering. Western officials with some knowledge of the case said that while he would survive, he had serious abdominal injuries that would require multiple operations and that it was not yet clear if or when he would be able to return to work. The Taliban have claimed responsibility for the attack.
President Hamid Karzai visited Mr. Khalid on Thursday at a hospital run by the security directorate where he was initially taken, and Gen. John R. Allen, the commander of the international coalition forces in Afghanistan, visited him on Friday at the Bagram Air Base hospital, where he was transferred late Thursday.
The intelligence agency said little about the attack in its Friday statement and released no information about the attacker, including whether he had died in the explosion or had been shot by a guard.
The directorate’s statement about the location of the bomb seemed in part to be a response to questions from the public about how a suicide bomber was able to get so close to Mr. Khalid without being detected.
Afghans have found the notion of security searches, which are routine in the West, extremely difficult to embrace from a religious and a cultural perspective. Muslim cultures generally place great emphasis on modesty, and men and women are reluctant to show any parts of their bodies to strangers. While different schools of Islamic law have somewhat different teachings, revealing any part of the body and touching anyone else’s body is restricted.
In Afghanistan’s extremely conservative culture, a sense of discretion runs even deeper. Even at the height of summer, most Afghan men do not wear shorts; if they were to, the shorts would be knee-length. Outside major cities, a vast majority of women would not leave their homes without wearing a burqa, a veil that completely hides the face and body.
Gradually, searches in Afghanistan have become more thorough as suicide bombers wearing explosive vests have become more prevalent. Afghan security forces have tried to inculcate a more Western approach to searches among their guards, but it has not been easy.
A number of Afghans regard a body search as an insult signifying a lack of trust. So if the bomber who tried to assassinate Mr. Khalid was being brought to meet him by a trusted person, guards might well have been reluctant to offend him with a thorough body search.
US: 200 Teens Have Been Detained in Afghan War
Associated Press By By PETER JAMES SPIELMANN December 8, 2012
NEW YORK - The U.S. military has detained more than 200 Afghan teenagers who were captured in the war for about a year at a time at a military prison next to Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, the United States has told the United Nations.
The U.S. State Department characterized the detainees held since 2008 as "enemy combatants" in a report sent every four years to the United Nations in Geneva updating U.S. compliance with the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The U.S. military had held them "to prevent a combatant from returning to the battlefield," the report said.
A few are still confined at the Detention Facility in Parwan, which will be turned over to the Afghan government, it said. "Many of them have been released or transferred to the Afghan government," said the report, distributed this week.
Most of the juvenile Afghan detainees were about 16 years old, but their age was not usually determined until after capture, the U.S. report said.
If the average age is 16, "This means it is highly likely that some children were as young as 14 or 13 years old when they were detained by U.S. forces," Jamil Dakwar, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's human rights program, said Friday.
"I've represented children as young as 11 or 12 who have been at Bagram," said Tina M. Foster, executive director of the International Justice Network, which represents adult and juvenile Bagram detainees.
"I question the number of 200, because there are thousands of detainees at Parwan," Foster said Friday. "There are other children whose parents have said these children are under 18 at the time of their capture, and the U.S. doesn't allow the detainees or their families to contest their age."
Dakwar also criticized the length of detention, a year on average, according to the U.S. report.
"This is an extraordinarily unacceptably long period of time that exposes children in detention to greater risk of physical and mental abuse, especially if they are denied access to the protections guaranteed to them under international law," Dakwar said.
The U.S. State Department was called for comment on the criticism, and a representative said they were seeking an officer to reply.
The previous American report four years ago provided a snapshot of the focus of the U.S. military's effort in the endgame of the Bush presidency after years of warfare and anti-terrorism campaigns. In 2008, the U.S. said it held about 500 juveniles in Iraqi detention centers and then had only about 10 at the Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan. A total of some 2,500 youths had been detained, almost all in Iraq, from 2002 through 2008 under the Bush administration.
Barack Obama campaigned for the presidency in 2008 in part on winding down active U.S. involvement in the Iraq War, and shifting the military focus to Afghanistan. The latest figures on under-18 detainees reflect the redeployment of U.S. efforts to Afghanistan.
Because the teen detainees were not charged with any crime, "a detainee would generally not be provided legal assistance." They were allowed to attend open hearings and defend themselves, and a personal advocate was assigned to each detainee, the report said.
"These are basically sham proceedings," Foster said. "The personal representatives don't do anything different for the child detainees than they do for the adults, which is nothing."
The report added that "the purpose of detention is not punitive but preventative: to prevent a combatant from returning to the battlefield."
It cited a 2004 U.S. Supreme Court case, Hamdi vs. Rumsfeld, as establishing that "the law of armed conflict permits the United States to detain belligerents until the end of hostilities without charging such individuals with crimes, because they are not being held as criminals facing future criminal trial."
The U.S. military is fighting irregular forces — al-Qaida, the Taliban, and an array of similar shadowy insurgent or terrorist groups. So it is not clear when "hostilities" would ever formally end, since there is no declaration of war and no enemy government to defeat. Only the United States can decide when it deems a conflict to be over, in those circumstances.
Foster said that the teens seized are not in uniform or even typically taken in combat.
"We're not talking about battlefield captures, we're talking about people who are living at home, and four or five brothers might be taken together. It might take them a year or more to figure out that one of them was younger than 18, to determine the identities of these kids," she said.
In January, the State Department will send a delegation to Geneva to present the report to the U.N.'s Committee on the Rights of the Child, and to answer any further questions the U.N. committee members may have.
Extreme Franchising: Bringing RadioShack to Afghanistan
Bloomberg By Nick Leiber December 07, 2012
The next time you stroll through downtown Kabul, you might be able to buy batteries from a RadioShack (RSH) outlet, the result of a new effort by the U.S. to shore up Afghanistan’s economy: selling American franchises to Afghan entrepreneurs.
The U.S. has set a 2014 deadline for troops to withdraw from Afghanistan and turn security over to Afghan military and police. That is prompting capital flight, depressing property values, and triggering other economic pain. That’s where franchising might fit—and an initial foray into the country proved promising, U.S. executives say.
“I didn’t have huge expectations going there that we would consummate an agreement, but after being there on the streets and seeing some fairly sophisticated [retail] operators in a very difficult climate, I’ve walked away with the fact that we would do business in Afghanistan,” says Martin Amschler, a RadioShack vice president who joined several American franchise executives to participate in a five-day matchmaking event in Kabul this week.
Organized by the U.S. Department of Commerce, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the International Franchise Association (IFA), the event gave franchising brass a chance to explore the market and meet with Afghan businessmen and U.S. and Afghan officials. Outside of mostly fast-food chains on bases, there aren’t any American franchises in Afghanistan, says Beth Solomon, a vice president at the IFA who led the trip. “There is a vast culture of young [Afghans] who are very tech savvy, Internet savvy. Everyone’s got the latest Samsung or iPhone,” she says, “and there is disposable income.”
The big idea behind the effort is the “knowledge transfer” of infrastructure-building and business services expertise to locals to help rebuild the country, says Solomon, who recruited participants from RadioShack, Hertz Equipment Rental (HTZ), Tutor Doctor, and AlphaGraphics. “Franchising can be a very useful transitional economic development strategy, because the challenges of security and so forth can be minimized because it’s Afghan business leaders who are going to run these businesses,” says Solomon.
Of course, with more than one-third of Afghanistan’s 30 million people living below the poverty line, according to the CIA’s World Fact Book, much of the population can’t afford to buy an American franchise.
Bill Edwards, a seasoned franchising consultant who specializes in exporting American franchise brands such as Build-A-Bear Workshop (BBW) and Denny’s (DENN), and was on the trip for AlphaGraphics, doesn’t see a lack of Afghan investors. “There’s a lot of money there” willing to invest in American franchises, Edwards says. “There’s a need for Western business. There’s a market, there’s consumers, there’s funding, there’s capital. But there’s all the other challenges, of course.”
Apart from security, the biggest challenge would be vetting prospective buyers, says RadioShack’s Amschler. “But at the end of the day there are private contractors over there today that provide those services and then, of course, we would have our own list of requirements in terms of net worth and what types of business experience they have,” he says.
Approved Afghan buyers would attend RadioShack University at corporate headquarters in Fort Worth and get “support on the ground” from RadioShack employees for about two weeks when a store opens, plus training visits throughout the year, Amschler says.
Among other efforts to stabilize Afghanistan’s economy, how significant could franchising be? A statement from the Commerce Department’s International Trade Administration about the conference notes “franchising has proven to be an ideal market vehicle for both employment and economic growth.” Edwards says he thinks franchising is “the model” because “it brings a business model that’s proven. It brings training, which is the thing they need; the skill set is just really not good there.”
Education is crucial to Afghanistan, says Rogelio Martinez, vice president of international franchise development at 30-employee Tutor Doctor, a “supplementary education” business that has sold about 400 franchises in 14 countries. “It’s something that everybody was talking about. [Afghan] business owners wanted to develop Afghan employees to take mid-level, senior-level management positions. Families want their kids to learn and attend good universities in Afghanistan or abroad.”
The Van Nuys (Calif.) company, which Martinez says charges franchisees about $57,000 to get started, provides training and an online tool that uses a Skype-like interface for tutors and students to communicate online. He expects to sell about seven franchises in Afghanistan in 2013. “They can’t be importing expats all the time; they need to have the local talent to have a sustainable model,” says Martinez.
David Riker, franchise development director for Hertz, is also optimistic about his company’s prospects in Afghanistan. Unlike fellow participants on the Kabul trip, he already has franchises on two military bases there, renting heavy machinery used in building roads and construction projects. “As the military draws down, Afghanistan is going to have to support more of its infrastructure, so that’s where the opportunity comes in,” Riker says. Depending on what kind of equipment a franchise buyer wants, getting started is “probably in the $3 million range.”
Aiding Afghanistan through franchising certainly won’t be quick, says Edwards. “Let’s not be too Pollyannaish. This is going to be a challenge, but it’s definitely an opportunity.”
Former U.S. Envoy Returns to Kabul Politics
Wall Street Journal By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV and NATHAN HODGE December 7, 2012
KABUL - The Afghan-born former U.S. ambassador to Kabul, Zalmay Khalilzad, has returned for consultations aimed at ensuring a smooth election and transfer of power as President Hamid Karzai leaves office in 2014.
These political discussions seek to help determine a potential successor to Mr. Karzai who could command widespread consensus as U.S.-led forces withdraw later that year, according to politicians in Kabul.
Many Afghan and Western officials believe Mr. Khalilzad may see himself as a potential candidate. Asked whether he was considering running for the Afghan presidency, Mr. Khalilzad said by email Friday: "This is not the purpose of this trip."
Mr. Khalilzad, 61 years old, made the rounds of key Afghan politicians this week while staying in the presidential palace as a guest of Mr. Karzai. As U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan in 2003-05, he was instrumental in solidifying Mr. Karzai's hold on power, meeting with the Afghan president almost daily and often using the pronoun "we" when speaking about the Afghan government.
Afghan politicians "need to make sure that there is a constitutional, democratic and orderly change of government," Mr. Khalilzad said. "I am here to facilitate an agreement among key personalities and forces on a possible consensus on key issues confronting the country, and the formation of a team to lead a broad public discourse on those issues."
Mr. Karzai isn't eligible to run for a third term under the constitution, and hasn't anointed a preferred successor.
Senior members of his government have participated in some of the recent meetings. "It's not just about the candidate—first, we must agree on a program," said one such official.
Afghan politicians seek to avoid the trauma of the fraud-ridden 2009 presidential election, which pushed many former government supporters into opposition and inflamed ethnic tensions. A similar crisis of legitimacy in 2014 would risk fracturing Afghanistan's security forces and giving ground to the Taliban.
To garner consensus, a presidential candidate would need to placate the powerful leaders of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, which represents mostly the ethnic Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara minorities, while drawing support from the country's largest ethnic group, the Pashtun, who have traditionally ruled Afghanistan. "We all need to sit together and discuss the current situation, and ultimately reach an agreement and choose the best one," said former Vice President Ahmad Zia Massoud, leader of the National Front opposition alliance and brother of the legendary Tajik commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, who was slain by al Qaeda in 2001.
Mr. Karzai hasn't endorsed a successor, and there was "nothing special" about him hosting Mr. Khalilzad, said the president's spokesman, Aimal Faizi. "Every time he is here, he is in the palace because it's safer, and because he can easily meet officials," Mr. Faizi added.
Mr. Khalilzad is a Pashtun who was born in northern Afghanistan's main city of Mazar-e-Sharif. After pursuing his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago and becoming a U.S. citizen, he served in several senior U.S. government positions under three Republican presidents. He left government in 2009 after serving as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and now has his own consulting firm.
If Mr. Khalilzad were to run for office in Afghanistan in 2014, he would have to renounce his American citizenship. He hasn't publicly mentioned a possible run during recent meetings in Kabul, Afghan politicians say.
"He wants to have a political role in Afghanistan," said Mohammed Mohaqeq, a leader of the ethnic Hazara community who met Mr. Khalilzad during these encounters.
Another leading politician who met Mr. Khalilzad to discuss the election, former parliament speaker Yunus Qanooni, said that "before someone nominates himself as a candidate, we need to have the very best team, a broad-based national team." Mr. Khalilzad, he added, has agreed to work as part of that joint team.
Mr. Khalilzad could be "very instrumental in the making of alliances" between different Afghan political factions, said Idrees Zaman, an independent analyst with Cooperation for Peace and Unity, an Afghan think tank. But Mr. Zaman expressed doubt that Mr. Khalilzad would be a viable presidential candidate, comparing him with another prominent Afghan-American political figure, former Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali, who is also seen as a potential aspirant.
"They don't live in Afghanistan, really," Mr. Zaman said. "They come only to make some sort of temporary living arrangement in Kabul during election times."
Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com and Nathan Hodge atnathan.hodge@wsj.com
US military facing fresh questions over targeting of children in Afghanistan
Outrage grows after senior officer claimed troops in Afghanistan were on the lookout for 'children with potential hostile intent'
Guardian.co.uk By Karen McVeigh Friday 7 December 2012
The US military is facing fresh questions over its targeting policy in Afghanistan after a senior army officer suggested that troops were on the lookout for "children with potential hostile intent".
In comments which legal experts and campaigners described as "deeply troubling", army Lt Col Marion Carrington told the Marine Corp Times that children, as well as "military-age males", had been identified as a potential threat because some were being used by the Taliban to assist in attacks against Afghan and coalition forces.
"It kind of opens our aperture," said Carrington, whose unit, 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, was assisting the Afghan police. "In addition to looking for military-age males, it's looking for children with potential hostile intent."
In the article, headlined "Some Afghan kids aren't bystanders", Carrington referred to a case this year in which the Afghan national police in Kandahar province said they found children helping insurgents by carrying soda bottles full of potassium chlorate.
The piece also quoted an unnamed marine corps official who questioned the "innocence" of Afghan children, particularly three who were killed in a US rocket strike in October. Last month, the New York Times quoted local officials who said Borjan, 12, Sardar Wali, 10, and Khan Bibi, eight, from Helmand's Nawa district had been killed while gathering dung for fuel.
However, the US official claimed that, before they called for the strike on suspected insurgents planting improvised explosive devices, marines had seen the children digging a hole in a dirt road and that "the Taliban may have recruited the children to carry out the mission".
Last year, Human Rights Watch reported a sharp increase in the Taliban's deployment of children in suicide bombings, some as young as seven.
But the apparent widening of the US military's already controversial targeting policy has alarmed human rights lawyers and campaigners.
Amos Guiora, a law professor at the University of Utah specialising in counter-terrorism, said Carrington's remarks reflected the shifting definitions of legitimate military targets within the Obama administration.
Guiora, who spent years in the Israel Defence Forces, including time as a legal adviser in the Gaza Strip, said: "I have great respect for people who put themselves in harm's way. Carrington is probably a great guy, but he is articulating a deeply troubling policy adopted by the Obama administration.
"The decision about who you consider a legitimate target is less defined by your conduct than the conduct of the people or category of people which you are assigned to belong to That is beyond troubling. It is also illegal and immoral."
Guiora added: "If you are looking to create a paradigm where you increase the 'aperture' – that scares me. It doesn't work, operationally, morally or practically."
Guiora cited comments made by John Brennan, the White House counter-terrorism chief, in April, in which he "talked about flexible definitions of imminent threat."
Pardiss Kebriaei, senior attorney of the Center for Constitutional Rights and a specialist in targeted killings, said she was concerned over what seemed to be an attempt to justify the killing of children.
Kebriaei said: "This is one official quoted. I don't know if that standard is what they are using but the standard itself is troubling."
The US is already facing criticism for using the term term "military-aged male" to justify targeted killings where the identities of individuals are not known. Under the US definition, all fighting-age males killed in drone strikes are regarded as combatants and not civilians, unless there is explicit evidence to the contrary. This has the effect of significantly reducing the official tally of civilian deaths.
Kebriael said the definition was reportedly being used in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. "Under the rules of law you can only target civilians if they are directly participating in hostilities. So, here, this standard of presuming any military aged males in the vicinity of a war zone are militants, already goes beyond what the law allows.
"When you get to the suggestion that children with potentially hostile intent may be perceived to be legitimate targets is deeply troubling and unlawful."
Children in conflict zones have additional protections under the law.
Kebriael, who is counsel for CCR in a lawsuit which seeks accountability for the killing of three American citizens – including a 16 year old boy – in US drone strikes in Yemen last year, said that the piece also raised questions over how those killed in that incident were counted. "Were they counted as military-aged males or were they counted as children with potentially hostile intent or were they counted as the innocent bystanders they were?"
In a speech in April setting out the context for the US programme of targeted killings, White House counter-terrorism chief John Brennan spoke about a threshold of "significant threat', which was widely seen as introducing a lower criteria than "imminent threat".
Brennan said: "Even if it is lawful to pursue a specific member of al-Qaida, we ask ourselves whether that individual's activities rise to a certain threshold for action, and whether taking action will, in fact, enhance our security. For example, when considering lethal force we ask ourselves whether the individual poses a significant threat to US interests. This is absolutely critical, and it goes to the very essence of why we take this kind of exceptional action."
An Isaf spokesman, Lt Col Jimmie Cummings, told the Marine Corp Times that insurgents continue to use children as suicide bombers and IED emplacers, even though Taliban leader Mullah Omar has ordered them to stop harming civilians.
There have been more than 200 children killed in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen by the CIA and Joint Special Operating Command, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
2 killed, 9 wounded in eastern Afghan blast
KHOST, Afghanistan, Dec. 8 (Xinhua) -- A bomb exploded near an Afghan army patrol Saturday in the country's eastern Khost province, killing two civilians and wounding nine others, a statement issued by the provincial government said.
"A bomb went off near an army unit patrolling in the main bazaar in Bak district at around 12:08 p.m. local time, killing two innocent civilians and injuring five civilians and four army personnel," the statement said blaming Taliban insurgent for the attack in the province 150 km southeast of capital Kabul bordering Pakistan.
The Taliban-led insurgency has been rampant since the militant group launched annual spring offensive on May 3 against Afghan government forces and about 100,000 NATO-led troops stationed in the country.
The insurgent group has warned the civilians to stay away from official gatherings, military convoys and centers regarded as the legitimate targets by militants besides warning people against supporting government and foreign troops.
Two local Taliban leaders killed in N. Afghanistan: police
KUNDUZ, Afghanistan, Dec. 8 (Xinhua) -- Two Taliban local leaders have been killed in an operation carried out by the Afghan police in northern Kunduz province, police said on Saturday.
"The Afghan National Police (ANP) launched an operation to clear from militants and armed robbers on a main road connecting provincial capital Kunduz city to neighbouring Dasht-i-Archi district, killing two Taliban leaders," the provincial police spokesman, Sayyid Sarwar Housaini, told Xinhua.
He said two other militants were detained in the ongoing operation began Thursday in the province 250 km north of capital Kabul.
However, the Taliban insurgent group, which announced the launching of an annual spring offensive from May 3 against Afghan and NATO forces, has not to make comments yet.
In another development, the police found the body of a local businessman named Mohammad Saddiq on Friday in a suburban area in Kunduz city who was kidnapped by criminal gangs on Nov. 29, the spokesman added.
Rural Afghan town feels caught between U.S. and Taliban
Washington Post By Pamela Constable December 7 , 2012
MAIDAN SHAHR, Afghanistan - Every day except Friday, the little midwife school bustled with activity. Students practiced listening for fetal heartbeats and cutting umbilical cords. New mothers and babies sometimes spent the night. It was the only center of its kind in Wardak province, a region of scattered villages surrounded by mountains.
Early Nov. 23, a truck piled with firewood approached the clinic in this small provincial capital 30 miles south of Kabul. Challenged by a policeman, the driver detonated a powerful bomb hidden under his cargo, sending shock waves across the town and shattering almost every window in a five-block radius.
The midwife program was closed for the weekly Muslim holy day, so no one was harmed in the office. But much of it was destroyed, and officials there said it would not reopen. A dozen mud-brick houses nearby were reduced to rubble, and hundreds of people were knocked down or sliced by shards of glass. Panic-stricken residents stumbled or were carried to the town hospital. Four people died, including the bomber, and 160 were treated for injuries.
“The ground shook and everyone started to run,” said Abdul Wali, 25, a hardware shop owner whose gaping glass storefront was still covered with a blanket Monday. “I don’t know who would do such a terrible thing, but we have no security at all. The police beat people, the Americans raid our villages and still we are not safe. We would be happy if they all left tomorrow.”
Even for people hardened by a decade of war, the massive truck bomb dealt a devastating psychological blow. More than a week after the attack, many shops were empty and not a single woman was to be seen outside the hospital. People in stores and offices were visibly nervous and seething with anger but unsure whether to direct it at the unknown culprits or the authorities, who had failed to protect them.
Taliban spokesmen claimed that they had carried out the bombing to avenge the execution of several Taliban prisoners in Kabul, but police officials had a different theory. They said Afghan security forces had been conducting intensive anti-insurgent raids in the area, and the Taliban wanted to prove that they could assault a high-security district that included police headquarters, the governor’s guesthouse and a joint U.S.-Afghan military command post, as well as the midwife school.
“The enemy stabbed us from behind,” said Gen. Abdul Razzak Qureshi, the deputy provincial police commander, whose office door was blown off its hinges. “We cleared 150 villages this month. We wanted to test our forces to see if they can defeat the Taliban once the American troops leave. We were very successful, but they did this cowardly attack to show they are still here.”
Wardak, a rural province where nomads camp in summer, has increasingly come under Taliban control in the past five years. The town of Maidan Shahr is strategically located on a major highway, and both the national police and the U.S. military have large bases less than a mile away. But most of the populace is from the same Pashtun ethnic group as the Taliban, and many farmers have turned to opium poppy cultivation, making them natural allies of the insurgents.
Taliban attacks have been relatively rare in Wardak, but in early September, twin suicide attacks in the town of Syedabad killed 13 people and wounded 80 when one bomber on foot and another driving a fuel tanker detonated explosives near a U.S. military base.
Although the trappings of security are visible in Maidan Shahr — including U.S. military cameras on posts and a spy balloon that floats over the town — residents complain that the Afghan government’s presence is woefully inadequate. They said the governor and most provincial officials live in Kabul for their own protection and visit Maidan Shahr a few hours a day at most, leaving well before sunset. The governor, through a spokesman in Kabul, declined to be interviewed.
“The problem is not that the Taliban are strong, it’s that the government is weak,” said Ghulam Nabi, an administrator for the Scandinavian charity that operated the midwife school. He said many civilian officials and police officers were ethnic Tajiks from the north, who have a history of conflict with Pashtuns. “If our governor and police chief lived here and had families here, they would make sure we had the peace and security and services we need.”
Residents expressed widespread indignation at the abusive behavior of local police, and half a dozen people separately described the recent beating and drowning of a truck driver at police hands. And although no one openly said they supported the Taliban, many people expressed far stronger concern and frustration about the village raids being carried out by Afghan troops with U.S. backing.
Two nervous officials from a government agency, who had driven from Kabul to assess bomb damage to shops, said they could not find most of the owners.
One of the few open stores was a small but stylishly arranged boutique for women’s fashions and shoes. The proprietor, a young man named Taj Mohammed, said he had been sleeping there at night, despite the freezing cold, because he feared being arrested if he returned to his home village.
“We have nowhere to stand. We have trouble with the government, the Americans and the Taliban too,” said Mohammed, who had just spent $400 to replace his picture window. He was clearly terrified by the bombing, which he described as a roaring wind that made the roof collapse on him. But he shook with emotion when he described other powerful forces, including NATO troops, as having replaced his town’s normal life with uncertainty, abuse and fear.
“We don’t even feel human,” he said. “I know we will suffer more when the American forces go, but we are fed up with them too. We don’t expect much from the Taliban except beatings, but the Americans are supposed to bring laws and principles. What we have here now is just chaos.”
Afghanistan's growing demand for plastic surgery
BBC News By Khalil Noori 8 December 2012
Kabul - There is a growing demand for cosmetic surgery in Afghanistan, where just 10 years ago such procedures were mainly used to deal with injuries caused by decades of conflict.
Even though it may come as a surprise to some that looks can count for so much in a country where war, poverty and corruption have been commonplace, plastic surgery has a relatively long history in Afghanistan.
It was the conflict itself which gave medics the specific medical skills required to become plastic surgeons. Used to carrying out burn re-construction and other trauma surgery, they have been able to adapt their skills accordingly.
And the market seems to be growing all the time. Cosmetic surgery is especially popular among a younger generation of Afghans.
'Not qualified'
Women tend to visit plastic surgeons for facelifts, nose reshapes or liposuction. Eyebrow tattoos and hair transplants are more popular among younger men.
Representatives of both sexes often request a specific look based on photos of Bollywood actors and actresses.
While most recipients hail the benefits of cosmetic surgery, critics are concerned that the growth in demand has resulted in a skills shortage, with some surgeons not sufficiently qualified to carry it out.
Kabul private hospital plastic surgeon Dr Najibullah Najib is a prolific plastic surgeon, on average dealing with two or three patients every day.
Surgeons like Dr Najib cut their teeth treating the victims of war for more than 20 years - thereby gaining the skills required for such delicate operations.
"Many girls want their eyebrows shaped in a new Chinese style or they want their eyelids done. Sometimes they want their noses to be narrower and higher," he said.
'Nicer then I expected'
Housewife Sheba, 40, is typical of the kind of patient who Dr Najib treats. She has already had three operations.
"First I removed fat from my abdomen, then I removed the bags under my eyes and also reshaped my eyebrows," she says.
"When I was laughing, I suffered by looking at my wrinkles. Now some friends even say I look 14 years younger.
"I love my body and my clothes fit a lot better."
Another client, Sahar, has had a nose operation.
"Now it is narrower and higher. I didn't expect such a change. When the dressings were removed, I was so surprised: it was nicer than I expected."
Most of the cosmetic surgeries that have sprung up in recent years are based in Kabul, with specialists trained in Iran and Pakistan.
All over more affluent parts of the city, it is possible to see adverts promising better looks and better hair, juxtaposed with classic "before and after" shots of apparently satisfied clients.
Skin 'destroyed'
So successful in fact has Afghanistan's cosmetic surgery business become that people have even started coming to the country from abroad for the comparatively low cost of treatment.
A basic nose alteration in Afghanistan costs in the region of $300-$600 (£187- £375), doctors say. A similar operation in the West can cost up to 10 times more than that.
Bahador Shirzad, who works as an assistant at a hair enhancement centre in Kabul, says that surgical and non-surgical methods are used.
"We recommend non-surgical methods for those whose side hairs are weak or where the skin is destroyed," he says.
"With the surgical method, we take hair from the back of head of the patient and implant it onto the balding area."
But with the increase in demand, so the criticism of the quality of treatment on offer has grown.
Shafi is a patient unhappy with the treatment he received and who claims to have suffered unpleasant side effects.
"Doctors polished my head with some oil and then they implanted artificial hair on my head and joined it up with my own hair," he recalls.
"After a couple of hours I got a bad headache and my eyes were itching. I understood that these were [expected] side-effects of the implant procedure.
"But then I removed the hairs and my scalp had completely lost its colour."
Abdul Ghafar Ghayoor, a plastic surgeon in a hospital in Pakistan, says that some Afghan doctors lack the necessary experience to carry out such highly technical surgery.
"I have seen a number of Afghan doctors who have [only] worked for less than a year in Iran, Pakistan, India or Russia... This is why their work is usually not perfect."
Senior Al Qaeda Leader Killed in Drone Attack
TOLOnews.com Saturday, 08 December 2012
Sheikh Khalid Bin Abdul Rehman Al-Hussainan, considered second-in-command to Al Qaeda leader Ayman Al Zawahiri, was killed on Friday in a drone strike in Pakistan.
US officials and Jihadist's forums reported that Al-Hussainan, also known as Abu Ziad al-Kuwaiti, was killed Friday morning in Pakistan.
"We celebrate to you the news of the martyrdom of the working scholar Shaykh Khalid al-Hussainan while eating his Suhoor meal, and we ask Allah to accept him in paradise," a post said on an Al Qaeda affiliated web forum.
NBC News terrorism expert Evan Kohlmann said that al-Kuwaiti was in the top tier of Al Qaeda following the death of Osama Bin Laden in May 2011, who was also killed in Pakistan.
"That's a big gap in the leadership," said Kohlmann in the NBC News report. "He was the last senior Al Qaeda leader in the Afghanistan-Pakistan area who was, one, from the Arabian Peninsula and, two, who had serious clerical credentials. Now there is no obvious publicly recognisable candidate left to succeed Zawahiri."
In an interview earlier this year, al-Kuwaiti stated he began his religious studies in 1986 in Saudi Arabia.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com