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Pakistan Releases More Afghan Taliban Prisoners
VOA News December 31, 2012
Pakistan has released four Afghan Taliban prisoners, including the minister of justice under Taliban rule of Afghanistan in the late 1990's.
Pakistani officials who did not want to be identified told reporters Monday that former Afghan Justice Minister Mullah Nooruddin Turabi, former Helmand province Governor Abdul Bari, and two other Afghan Taliban detainees have been freed.
Turabi is said to be in poor health. The United Nations says he was appointed as a Taliban military commander in Afghanistan in mid-2009 and was a deputy to Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar.
The spokesman for the Afghan Taliban also confirmed the release. Earlier this month, Pakistan released nine Afghan Taliban prisoners, but the insurgent group's former deputy leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, was not among them. He was captured in Pakistan in 2010.
Afghanistan has long sought access to the prisoners to aid the stalled peace process. Support from Pakistan, which backed the Taliban regime, is seen as crucial to Afghan reconciliation efforts as international forces complete their withdrawal from the war-torn country by the end of 2014.
Separately, Pakistani security officials say the bodies of nine militants were found dumped in Pakistan's northwestern tribal region on Monday.
The bodies were found off a road in the Pir Kili village of North Waziristan tribal agency. Officials said the militants were members of the Pakistani Taliban.
The discovery comes a day after 21 kidnapped tribal police officers were found dead. The police personnel were captured by militants during attacks on checkposts near the city of Peshawar last week.
Afghan policeman who turned down Taliban bribe is honoured
An Afghan policeman the Taliban tried to recruit in order to betray his comrades has been decorated for infiltrating their suicide bombing network and laying a trap for their arrest.
Telegraph.co.uk By Ben Farmer 30 Dec 2012
Beyar Khan Weyaar was offered a house in Pakistan and $30,000 (£19,000) in cash to smuggle a team of suicide attackers into a government compound in south eastern Afghanistan.
Instead he told his superiors and played along with the plot until the suicide team assembled and could be seized.
Mr Weyaar, who controlled a small checkpoint in Sar Hawza district of Paktika province, was rewarded last week with a medal from Mujtaba Patang, the interior minister.
The case has thrown some light on the tactics the insurgents use to conduct their spectacular suicide assaults against Afghan and Nato forces.
It also came as relief to Afghan security forces, as infiltration by the Taliban, or coercion serving officers, has been responsible for many insider shootings and security lapses.
Mr Weyaar said he was first telephoned by a man who promised he could get rich if he met a local insurgent commander. Soon afterwards, a man called Mohammed came to visit him at his checkpoint.
"He brazenly asked me to take the Taliban side and help them launch an attack inside the police force. I asked him to give me time to think," Mr Weyaar told Agence France Presse.
Under the orders of his Taliban handler, he helped three young Taliban fighters carry out reconnaissance of the government compound they were to attack.
Afghan officials claim that at one point he received direct telephone orders from Sirajuddin Haqqani, a senior commander of the Haqqani network that is at the forefront of suicide attacks in Afghanistan.
All the time he was passing the intelligence to his superiors, said Gen Dawlat Khan Zadran, chief of police in Paktika.
As the date for the attack approached, Mr Weyaar and his Taliban fighters were sent weapons, grenades and suicide vests.
Finally two more attackers arrived, along with a police pick-up truck which was to be laden with explosives and driven by Mohammed.
But as the attackers assembled police officers swooped to arrest them and the team was rounded up without a shot being fired.
Mohibullah Samim, the governor of Paktika, said: "He is a true warrior and he was not worried about his own security. We trusted him, and he proved himself to be a brave patriot."
Afghanistan Announces Next Security Transition
December 31, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
The Afghan government says the next phase of transferring security from NATO to Afghan control will begin in two months.
The latest transition will see Afghan forces assuming control of 87 percent of the country.
With most NATO-led troops set to leave by 2014, the 330,000-strong Afghan National Army is assuming more responsibility, including leading combat operations.
The upcoming transition will see Afghan forces take over control of 12 provinces, mostly in central and northern Afghanistan, as well as a district in Helmand Province, in the country's restive south.
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in a statement that the impending transition was a "significant step toward our shared goal of seeing Afghans fully in charge of their own security by the end of 2014."
With reporting by AP
NATO casualties drop in Afghanistan in 2012
by Farid Behbud, Chen Xin
KABUL, Dec. 31 (Xinhua) -- The casualties of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in the Afghan war dropped down in 2012 for the second successive year in comparison with the 2010 when the military alliance suffered the highest losses of lives.
According to iCasualties, a website tracking the casualties of NATO-led troops in the U.S.-led war on terror, 405 service members with 309 of them Americans had been killed in the militancy-hit Afghanistan from this year.
In December alone, according to the website, 14 ISAF soldiers have lost their lives, the lowest casualties in a single month over the past three years in the war against terror in the post- Taliban country.
A total of 566 coalition or ISAF soldiers lost their lives in 2011 according to the website; in 2010 the casualties of NATO-led forces in Afghanistan had been registered 711.
However, the local observers are in the view that a decline in the violence, foreign troops withdrawal and handing over the security responsibilities from foreign forces to the Afghan army and police might also be a reason for the foreign forces' casualties to be lower throughout the 2012.
Out of total casualties in 2012, up to 58 coalition soldiers had been killed in the so-called "green on blue" insider attacks when Afghan army, police or gunmen in their uniform open fire against their international partners.
In the latest such attacks, a U.S. police advisor was shot and killed by an Afghan policewoman on Dec. 16. The shooting took place inside the fortified Kabul police headquarters. The shooter was detained by the security forces and the motive behind the attack was still not known.
The Taliban insurgents, who have been waging an insurgency of more than one decade, have regularly claimed responsibilities for the green on blue attacks, saying their men have infiltrated into the ranks of Afghan army and police to kill foreign soldiers.
However, the coalition military officials have recently said that about 25 percent of the insider attacks are in some manner related to the Taliban-led insurgency.
They said the factors that contribute to the so-called green on blue shootings are wide-ranging from infiltration and impersonation to personal grievances.
However, it is said that the cultural differences between Afghan security forces and their western partners could also be a reason for the attacks.
On the other hand, the Taliban's home-made bomb or Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) continue to be the largest killer of the foreign forces in Afghanistan, as up to 315 out of 405 casualties in 2012 were caused by the IEDs.
The simple but difficult to be detected Taliban weapon, the IEDs, used in making suicide vests and roadside bombs, has proved a challenge for Afghan and NATO-led forces in the post-Talibna country.
According to U.S. President Barack Obama's withdrawal plan, the last of 33,000 additional U.S. troops pulled out from Afghanistan in September 2012, bringing the total number of foreign soldiers to 100,000 with nearly 68,000 of them Americans.
The ultimate goal is to transfer leading security responsibility to the Afghan forces by 2014.
Since launching the counter-insurgency campaign or the Operation Enduring Freedom against Taliban regime in October 2001 by the U.S.-led Coalition, according to iCasualties, 3,252 service members with 2,173 of them Americans and 438 Britons have been killed in the central Asian state.
Afghans angry at US soldiers who drove away in the night leaving rent unpaid
Only sign of huge US base is pile of rubbish and broken vehicles – and a festering land dispute in a volatile province
Guardian.co.uk By Emma Graham-Harrison Sunday 30 December 2012
Kabul - US forces left behind piles of equipment, an unpaid rent bill and a festering land dispute that threatens to undermine the Afghan government when they moved out of a volatile corner of eastern Kunar province this year, local officials and their former landlords say.
The only clue that a base that dominated Pashengar village for years had been abandoned for good was the midnight rumble of a convoy of trucks. In the morning, locals found guards gone, buildings blown up and, scattered around what had been a forbidding military encampment, piles of detritus from years of western living in a remote, mountainous valley.
Rows of air conditioning units stuck out of a damaged wall, a giant, dilapidated generator was marooned near shipping containers and twisted, dented vehicles remained. But there was no sign of a cheque for a landlord who said years of rent, running to hundreds of thousands of dollars, was owing to him.
"They stayed six years and only paid rent for one year," said Haji Najibullah Khan, who grew up in the Pashengar house that became a US base. He said the departing US commander warned him off pushing for rent money when they met a few weeks before the soldiers drove away in the night.
A few kilometres down the road, in the centre of Naray district, the US departure was neater, with a joint base handed over to full Afghan army control. But, even here, there is anger because the base was built on a muddle of small plots shared out among 90 families from the area.
They are also claiming that years of back rent is owed by the Americans and are worried they may never see their land again now Afghan government troops are firmly entrenched. The simmering dispute threatens to undermine loyalty to troops ostensibly sent to protect the area.
Gul Rahman, the district governor, has attempted to mediate but with little success. "I met the Afghan National Army (ANA) with the elders. Now the army are staying, the people are very angry and asking for the payments they are owed, but no one is listening to them."
Land is one of the most sensitive issues in Afghanistan. During 30 years of war, many legal documents have been destroyed, landowners and their families have been killed or become refugees, and people have settled on to land to which they have no legal claim.
Haji Usman, headmaster of the Naray boys' high school and owner of about two hectares of land that is now part of the base, led a delegation to Kabul that lobbied successfully for an official investigation and recognition of the villagers' claim to the land. The army is ignoring that finding at its own risk, he said.
"The people are very angry that the ANA are not leaving," Usman said. "I don't think most people who have had their land taken would be willing to join the Taliban; this is a village under government control. But there are maybe a few, who live in more remote houses, who will join if this issue is not resolved."
Rahman, the district governor, said security problems had kept him from visiting Pashengar, but he had been looking into Khan's situation and believed a sale of the military detritus could help pay some of the rent.
"I didn't visit the house but I asked some people about it, so I know that some containers, vehicles and generators were left behind. Some were destroyed but some were OK," he told the Guardian by phone from his heavily guarded offices in Naray. "This equipment left by the Americans could make up perhaps half the rent of Haji Najibullah, or at least a quarter."
But Khan said it was mostly worthless in an area of subsistence farmers. "I can't sell any of the equipment because it is not stuff that people in the district use. I just leave it in my yard, because it's quite worthless to me."
Afghanistan's landscape is littered with rusting Soviet tanks and other military junk, a constant reminder of the Soviets' troubled decade in the country, but since 2001, foreign forces have gone to great lengths to leave no trace.
To abandon even non-military equipment is unusual and perhaps a sign of the challenges facing Naray, which lies at Kunar's northern tip. Poor and isolated, it is a place where insurgents can slip easily across the border from Pakistan or down from lawless Nuristan province, where an insurgent vice-and-virtue police holds sway in some villages.
A spokesman for the Afghan army would not comment on the situation in Naray, and the Kunar provincial governor, Fazlullah Wahedi, said he had not heard about the land disputes there.
The Nato-led International Security Assistance Force declined to comment on the situation at either base. "As a matter of policy, Isaf does not publicly discuss information pertaining to potential or pending claims," said spokesman Charlie Stadtlander.
Mokhtar Amiri contributed reporting
US Family Pleas for Couple Missing in Afghanistan
Associated Press By By DENIS D. GRAY and ERIC TUCKER December 31, 2012
KABUL - The family of an ailing, pregnant American woman missing in Afghanistan with her Canadian husband has broken months of silence over the mysterious case, making public appeals for the couple's safe return.
James Coleman, the father of 27-year-old Caitlan Coleman, told The Associated Press over the weekend that she was due to deliver in January and needed urgent medical attention for a liver ailment that required regular checkups. He said he and his wife, Lyn, last heard from their son-in-law Josh on Oct. 8 from an Internet cafe in what Josh described as an "unsafe" part of Afghanistan. The Colemans asked that Josh be identified by his first name only to protect his privacy.
The couple had embarked on a journey last July that took them to Russia, the central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and then finally to Afghanistan.
Neither the Taliban nor any other militant group has claimed it is holding the couple, leading some to believe they were kidnapped. But no ransom demand has been made.
An Afghan official said their trail has gone dead.
"Our goal is to get them back safely and healthy," the father told AP on Friday night by phone. "I don't know what kind of care they're getting or not getting," he added. "We're just an average family and we don't have connections with anybody and we don't have a lot of money."
He made a similar appeal in a video posted on YouTube on Dec. 13.
"We appeal to whoever is caring for her to show compassion and allow Caity, Josh and our unborn grandbaby to come home," he said.
Before the video came out, the family had kept quiet about the case since the couple disappeared in early October. They appear to have broken their silence in hopes it might lead to a breakthrough.
But many questions remain over the disappearances.
It is not known whether the couple is still alive or how or why they entered Afghanistan. And there is no information about what they were doing in the country before they went missing.
James Coleman, of York County, Pennsylvania, said he was not entirely sure what his daughter and her husband were doing in Afghanistan. But he surmised they may have been seeking to help Afghans by joining an aid group after touring the region. In the AP interview, he described his daughter as "naive" and "adventuresome" with a humanitarian bent.
He said Josh did not disclose their exact location in his last email contact on Oct. 8, only saying they were not in a safe place. James Coleman also said the last withdrawals from the couple's account were made Oct. 8 and 9 in Kabul with no activity on the account and no further communication from them after that date.
"He just said they were heading into the mountains — wherever that was, I don't know," the father said, adding, "They're both kind of naive, always have been in my view. Why they actually went to Afghanistan, I'm not sure... I assume it was more of the same, getting to know the local people, if they could find an NGO (non-governmental organization) or someone they could work with in a little way."
There was some indication that the couple knew they were in dangerous territory, though they perhaps did not grasp just how dangerous. James Coleman said in general, they preferred small villages and communities because they felt safer there than in big cities, and that is where they wanted to focus their travels.
"I assume they were going to strike out on foot like they were doing," he added.
Both the U.S. State Department and Canadian Foreign Affairs Ministry say they are looking into the disappearance.
"Canada is pursuing all appropriate channels and officials are in close contact with local authorities," Canadian Foreign Affairs Ministry spokeswoman Chrystiane Roy said Friday, calling the incident a "possible kidnap."
It was not known whether the silence over the case by U.S. and Canadian officials and, until now, by the Coleman family was because of ongoing negotiations to seek their release. But information black-outs have kept some similar past cases quiet in an attempt to not further endanger those missing.
According to Hazrat Janan, the head of the provincial council in Afghanistan's Wardak province, the two were abducted in Wardak in an area about 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of the capital Kabul. They were passing through Wardak while traveling from Ghazni province south of Kabul to the capital.
Wardak province, despite its proximity to Kabul, is a rugged, mountainous haven for the Taliban and travel along its roads is dangerous. Foreigners who do not travel with military escorts take a substantial risk.
He said they were believed to have been taken from one district in Wardak to a second and then into Ghazni.
"After that, the trail went dead," Janan said.
He said it was suspected that the kidnappers were Taliban because criminal gangs would have likely asked for a ransom.
When the AP contacted Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid about the missing couple two months ago, he said the group had carried out an investigation and found no Taliban members were involved.
"We do not know about these two foreigners," he said in a telephone interview.
Janan's information could not be independently verified, and U.S. and Canadian officials still do not say for certain the couple was abducted.
NATO officials said they had no current information on the case, which was turned over to the U.S. State Department after it was determined the couple were not affiliated with foreign military forces.
Coleman said his daughter and her husband met on the Internet and married in 2011. They had previously travelled through Central America so they had some experience abroad.
During their recent Asian travels, they bought local goods to help vendors, slept in their tent and hostels and interacted with villagers. Despite her travel fever, love of history and a desire to do good, her father said Caitlan "wanted basically to be a housewife and have a bunch of kids."
———
Tucker reported from Washington. Associated Press reporter Amir Shah in Kabul contributed to this report.
Afghan-US Company to Build Oil Refinery in Northern Afghanistan
TOLOnews.com By Zabihullah Jhanmal Sunday, 30 December 2012
An oil refinery with an investment of $700 million will be constructed in northern Afghanistan by a joint US-Afghan company, Afghanistan Investment Support Agency (AISA) said Sunday.
The American company, AFM Co., will help establish the facility capable of refining 60,000 barrels of oil a day when the plant opens in 2016, AISA officials said.
"Following the commencement of this company's work in Afghanistan, there will be no need to ship crude oil abroad," said Wafiullah Eftekhar, head of AISA.
The oil refinery news comes as Afghanistan Industries Union officials welcomed a 40 percent increase in tariffs on imported fruit juice to help domestic producers.
"We are optimistic towards these commitments of the government. This act will encourage [domestic] investments in the country," Shirbaz Kaminzada, Head of Afghanistan Industries Union.
The Union also asked the government to follow through on its promise to support all industrial sectors across the country.
AISA said that more industrial parks will be established in different provinces of country.
But they also demanded that the government move the military bases from the vicinity of the Pul-e-Charkhi industrial park because they pose security risks to factories.
An Afghan juice company suffered a $10 million loss after a suicide attack on a foreign military contractor located nearby.
Out With The Troops, In With The Afghan Investment?
By Farangis Najibullah and Zarif Nazar December 31, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Foreign forces are preparing to leave the country, capital is fleeing, and it's the Afghan government's job to stop it.
To meet its objective, the Afghan Finance Ministry has drafted a package of incentives to assure companies and individual that their investments in Afghanistan will be safe after the expected withdrawal of Western troops in 2014.
Outlined in a bill facing a parliamentary vote in February, the incentives would reward those who invest in the country over the next two years with significant tax breaks and the right to purchase land for a symbolic price.
Najibullah Manalai, an adviser to Finance Minister Omar Zakhilwal, says the manufacturing, mining, and agricultural sectors would be the most likely areas of investment.
According to the Afghan National Bank, at least $4.6 billion has been taken out of Afghanistan in the past year, a development that has been attributed to fears over increased insecurity and corruption after the 2014 pullout.
Manalai downplays the impact the NATO withdrawal will have on the Afghan economy, but he acknowledges the incentive package is intended to "minimize such economic effects."
"We don't think there would be a major economic impact, but we are concerned about such speculation in the mass media," he says. "Such speculation could easily lead to economic downturn. So our aim is to counter such speculation and also to attract investors to Afghanistan over the next two years, which is a sensitive period."
Attractive Incentives
According to Finance Ministry spokesman Wahid Tawhidi, the goal is to entice entities willing to invest at least $1 million each into the country's ailing economy.
"Investors will be exempt from tax and customs duties for the next 10 years," Tawhidi says.
The spokesman says that companies would be given land effectively free of charge and electricity would be made available at a fraction of the current rates.
"In addition, if some companies are willing to invest but don't have enough money, we would help them to borrow the money from two state-owned banks -- the National Bank and the Pashtani Tujarati Bank," Tawhidi says. "Five hundred million dollars would be allocated for this purpose. We would enable them to borrow the money with low tax and low interest rates and to invest it in the Afghan economy."
While the incentives are looked upon as a potential boon to government coffers, not everyone shares the Finance Ministry's optimism that they can win over investors.
"Afghanistan has two major problems that scare away investors, and they are corruption and a lack of security," says Azarakhsh Hafizi of the Afghan Chamber of Commerce and Industries.
Afghanistan ranks among the three most-corrupt countries in the world in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index.
"When investors have to bribe to operate and have to pay for additional security measures because of the constant attacks and kidnappings, it costs them more money to stay here," Hafizi says.
Half Of GDP
The Afghan government has had trouble providing security even for some of its most high-profile foreign investors.
Earlier this year, a group of Chinese miners left Afghanistan after militants attacked the Aynak copper mine in eastern Logar Province. The deal to lease the mine to the China Metallurgical Group for 30 years was the country's biggest private business venture when it was agreed in 2007.
The government has high hopes for similar investments in Afghanistan's lucrative energy and mineral sectors. The country boasts significant copper, iron, gold, and oil and gas reserves. Manalai notes that the goal is for revenue generated from investment in these areas to eventually "provide half of the country's gross domestic product."
Nasiruddin Shansab, the head of the U.S.-based Afghanistan-Central Asia Transnational Company LLC, says Afghanistan's natural resources and its geographical location offer great investment potential.
However, "in the climate of constant security threats and notoriously widespread culture of bribery," Afghanistan isn't going to see major Western companies rushing to invest there anytime soon, says the Afghan-born businessman.
"Tax breaks and other incentives for investors exist everywhere," Shansab says. "Afghanistan should know that it is competing with the rest of world to get investors."
Afghan officials insist they have been addressing the corruption issues. As a part of the campaign against corruption, the country has introduced so-called merit-based hiring tests to employ managers to government agencies. Several district governors and deputy provincial governors have recently been appointed after passing such tests, scrutinized by independent monitors.
The Afghan Chamber of Commerce and Industries' Hafizi says the country still has a long way to go to eliminate corruption. "But I wouldn't say it's an impossible task," he says.
As for the lack of security, Hafizi believes many investors will still stay and watch what happens beyond 2014.
Energy Drinks Take Afghanistan By Storm
RFE/RL By Frud Bezhan December 30, 2012
What do a young woman roaring across the desert on a flashy motorbike, a sweaty construction worker, and a muscle man pulling a semi-truck have in common?
High energy -- the kind that, if the blaring advertisements bombarding Afghans can be believed, can only come from drinking caffeine-rich, glucose-heavy drinks with names like "Effect," "Gangster," and "Boom Boom."
As the commercial (see below) featuring our three high-octane heroes suggests, "There is no effect without 'Effect'." But this television advertisement is just one of dozens making the hard sell on television, billboards, and posters across Afghanistan.
Energy drinks are sold everywhere in modern Afghanistan -- from street carts to corner shops to the finest restaurants. Even hard-line Taliban militants have been known to enjoy one of the many available concoctions to quench their thirst on the battlefield.
But energy drinks are definitely rattling some nerves, leading to calls for the drinks to be banned outright.
Although many are certified as "Islamic-approved," they have come under fire from religious figures. Because of their stimulant properties, some liken them to alcoholic drinks, which are "haram" (forbidden under Islam).
Others have raised eyebrows over the quality of some of the drinks being imported, and the negative effect they could have on Afghans' health.
Sales Booming, But At What Price?
In Afghanistan, there is little government regulation and no national standards for imported drinks, food, or medicines. That has meant the Afghan market has been flooded by outdated, low-quality energy drinks deemed unfit for sale in other countries.
Abdullah, an assistant shopkeeper, says Afghan distributors for foreign beverage companies sell expired products for discounted prices, and that some shopkeepers readily buy the inferior products and sell them for a quick profit.
"Some of the drinks are past their expiry dates or have gone bad. They pose a health risk to people and shouldn't be sold. Only those that are legal, with expiry dates, and in good condition should be sold," he says. "The Public Health Ministry must regulate the market and take the necessary steps to stop this."
Despite the risks and controversy, business appears to be booming. Habib Rahman, a shopkeeper in Kabul, says they are outselling popular soft drinks such as Pepsi and Coca-Cola.
"Most Afghans like energy drinks. They think it gives them energy and can get rid of tiredness," Rahman says. "It mostly started with young employed Afghans in urban areas buying the drinks. But now, it has spread to all sectors of society."
Overall sales statistics are unavailable, but more than two dozen brands have arrived on the market, catering to a broad spectrum of consumers.
Red Bull, the Austrian-made drink, costs about $1.50 and is popular among young, urban consumers, while the Thai-made Carabao, which costs half that amount, is favored among the working class.
And well aware that Afghanistan's is a deeply patriarchal society, some foreign brands have made their energy drinks gender-specific. That means men can take on a Big Bear -- marketed "for men only" -- while women can sip a high-energy Hot Bird.
RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan contributed to this report
Fereshta Kazemi takes a risky stand for acting in Afghanistan
Actress Fereshta Kazemi violates codes on dress and work in the country to try to change the culture. There are threats, and recently an actress was killed.
Los Angeles Times By David Zucchino December 30, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - Coarse mud was clinging to Fereshta Kazemi's high-heeled boots as she tottered on a slippery footpath. No one noticed. Everyone was staring at her legs.
Her legs! They were exposed! And worse — she wore sheer hosiery that only accented her limbs and emphasized that her tight skirt ended somewhat above her knees. Her hair was uncovered too. It cascaded like a dark blanket across her shoulders.
The popcorn peddler stopped filling his soiled bags and ogled her. The vegetable man leered, and so did the security guard. Two women wearing burkas stared hard. A herd of boys and men bird-dogged this exotic figure from America, pointing and scolding in an alleyway in Old Kabul's Shar-e-Kohna neighborhood.
One boy was so transfixed that he tumbled into a sewage ditch, drawing howls of laughter from his companions. And still everyone gawked at the Afghan woman from America.
Kazemi offered no apology, no explanation. She was born in Kabul 33 years ago and left at age 2. Raised in the U.S., she is back now for the first time, determined to radically alter the way Afghans view women — particularly women who act.
If making it in Hollywood, Kazemi's previous endeavor, is demanding, making it in Kabul is brutal. In August, Benafsha, 22, an Afghan actress from a TV satire, was stabbed to death outside a mosque and two fellow actresses were knifed. Witnesses said the women had been threatened by men for "un-Islamic" behavior.
The two survivors were taken to a police station for virginity tests — and prostitution charges. Another actress, Sahar Parniyan, received death threats after the stabbings and went into hiding.
On this day in Kabul, Kazemi was on her way to a film location. It was a serial, an Afghan soap opera. Kazemi had accepted an ironic role, playing a liberated Afghan American woman who returns home to Kabul; dramatic cultural clashes ensue.
On the outdoor set, the director, Mirwais Rakab, greeted her with a startled look. "Fereshta!" he said.
"I almost passed out," Rakab said later. "Oh, the way she dresses. The way she walks. I was shocked! I loved it, but I was shocked."
Rakab pointed out that he is no prude. He's attended film festivals in Europe and Aspen Filmfest in Colorado.
"Ah, but this is Afghanistan," he said. "We are under great stress."
Kazemi is violating two Afghan codes — one that demands the submissive, fully covered Afghan woman and another that assumes every actress is a *****. In fact, Kazemi and others say, for many years the only women who could be persuaded to act here were, indeed, prostitutes.
While in Kabul, Kazemi is also filming a documentary on the lives of Afghan actors and actresses, focusing on the risks of daring to act in a repressive society. One actress she's following works as a prostitute.
Her subjects will not allow her to interview family members, who object to the disreputable craft. Kazemi herself declined to allow her relatives in Kabul to be interviewed for this article because they consider acting shameful — and a threat to their dignity and safety.
Kazemi realizes that the way she dresses and acts — literally, that she acts — is a dangerous provocation. Death threats are common. This is a country where censors blur the offending legs or shoulders of actresses in foreign-made dramas. Kissing is scandalous and forbidden, even between actors portraying husband and wife.
Kazemi knows too that merely dressing in a way that would be unremarkable in Los Angeles, where she found roles in small independent films, can signal to Afghan men that a woman is, to put it mildly, available — or, worse, soliciting for paid sex.
"I want to make sure I'm putting up a big 'No Vacancy' sign," she said.
But the eyes of Afghan men and boys follow her footfalls. One man told his friends after watching Kazemi walk to the serial set: "She should be beaten."
"Fereshta needs to be careful," said Tarique Qayumi, 37, an Afghan Canadian filmmaker here who cast her in an Afghan-themed movie shot in California. "She's very aggressive and a total feminist, and that's good. But it can be dangerous here."
Other Afghan friends have warned her: "They tell me, do not show 1 inch of skin, Fereshta," she said in her rapid-fire, New York-inflected diction.
But other Afghans have thanked her for championing actresses as artists and even patriots. "One guy, a security guard, saw me and smiled," she said. "He said, 'nooshe jan-et' — enjoy deeply — like, look at this crazy girl, no head cover, smoking, just going her own way.''
Reviving Afghan film
In the 1970s and early 1980s, Afghan cinema was modern and vibrant. Kazemi's documentary follows Maimoona Ghezal, an Afghan actress in her 60s who was a glamorous star of the era.
"I worked in cinema then, and I remember all the women's gorgeous legs — I'm hungry for all that again," said Rakab, the director.
Sadam Niko, 21, who plays Kazemi's love interest in the serial, "Kocha-e-Ma" (Our Street), said of his costar: "I think she's so brave." If the war ever ends, he said, "All these problems will just go away."
Kazemi is living temporarily with relatives in a conservative neighborhood where most women wear burkas. She refuses to wear even a head scarf.
"I respect the traditions of being covered, but I will not cover my hair. I won't," she said.
The men in the shop next to her relatives' house gossip about her, she said, and stare as she strolls past. Her male cousins insist on escorting her every time she walks to find a taxi.
One cousin told her that he would be shamed and would deny he was her relative if she appears on the TV serial. When she told him to have courage, he said it was about honor, not courage.
"He told me: 'You'll be considered a prostitute,'" she said. "The value of a female is directly connected to male honor. Her reputation — how she looks and behaves in public — is all that matters. And it's all tied to sexuality."
When Kazemi mentioned to her aunt that she plans to find her own apartment, she was told that she would first need her parents' permission.
This is true, said Kazemi's mother, who lives with Fereshta's father in the Bay Area. Kazemi asked that her mother's name not be published because she has worked in Afghanistan as a translator for American troops.
Parents had other ideas
Kazemi's parents are classic immigrant strivers who wanted their daughter to become a doctor. Both are professionals who fled Afghanistan after Fereshta's father was put on a death list by the communist government, Kazemi said. The family lived in Thailand before moving to New York when Kazemi was 6.
Even as a child, Kazemi wanted to be an actress, her mother said. "She always told me: 'One day, I'll go back to Afghanistan and change things,'" she said.
The other day, Kazemi was trying on a wedding dress for a movie role as an Afghan woman married in a village. She playfully suggested that she discard the wedding cloak and instead bare her shoulders.
"No! Cover your shoulders!" the movie's producer, Omar Zazai Ramin, told her. "Do you want to get us all killed?"
Even for men, filmmaking is often considered base and subversive, said Qayumi, the filmmaker: "Respect for the industry isn't there yet."
Qayumi spoke inside a high-rise construction site, where he was filming "The Road to the Truth," about the April 15 attack on Kabul's diplomatic zone by insurgents firing from an unfinished high-rise. The docu-drama's stars are the actual Afghan rapid response police who fought the attackers. One officer flung stones at rubber-neckers who gathered too close to the set.
Western-raised Afghans like Qayumi and Kazemi, who plans to stay here for a year, want to show that cinema can honor Afghan culture by creating admirable, nuanced characters. They resent the insipid Indian, Turkish and Iranian dramas that dominate Afghan TV and overshadow locally made productions.
"Every nation needs its storytellers," Qayumi said. "Afghans are working to heal their country — police, doctors, soldiers. What we're doing is building heroes."
Kazemi met Qayumi when he sought Afghan American actresses while completing his master's degree in screenwriting at UCLA. She won the role of the Afghan wife of an Afghan immigrant hounded in Los Angeles by a female American soldier with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Kazemi said she persuaded Qayumi to make her character — a traditional wife — stronger and more willful. She lobbied for and won a fleeting scene in which she and her husband kiss in the movie, "Targeting," a psychological thriller written by Qayumi.
Qayumi said he gave Kazemi the part because "she has a certain fire in her. She brought a lot of energy to the role."
One cold evening in Kabul, at a private club on a trash-strewn dirt street, "Targeting" was screened on a swatch of white cloth tacked to a brick wall. Qayumi, wearing a "Rambo III" T-shirt, propped the projector on a napkin box.
The audience represented a slice of Kabul's young, hip, urbane milieu. The dominant language was English with smatterings of Dari. Kazemi sat up front, well dressed and elegantly coiffed.
In the film, Kazemi's character spoke in Dari and English. The wife is respectful but bold enough to argue with her husband. In a brief long shot, they kiss. When the credits rolled, everyone applauded and whistled. Kazemi and Qayumi rose to answer audience questions.
Kazemi had a question of her own. "I don't know if everybody caught the kiss — did you?" she said. "I hope so. It's very important."
david.zucchino@latimes.com
Afghan Camps Receive Winter Aid, but Officials Say It Isn’t Enough
New York Times By ROD NORDLAND December 30, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees on Sunday distributed emergency cold-weather supplies to families in a refugee camp where two days earlier a 3-year-old died of exposure to the freezing temperatures.
But camp leaders and Afghan government officials criticized the aid delivery as inadequate to protect residents from the weather and to prevent more deaths.
Last winter, more than 100 children died of the cold in refugee camps around Kabul, with 26 dying in the Charahi Qambar camp alone. That is the same camp where the 3-year-old died Friday; it was the first confirmed death because of the cold this winter.
The distribution of supplies at the camp, which is home to about 900 families in western Kabul, had been scheduled before news reports about the child’s death, said Mohammad Nader Farhad, a spokesman for the United Nations refugees agency in Kabul.
On less than an hour’s notice, the agency convened a news conference with Afghan government officials at the camp to announce the distribution.
Each family was given warm children’s clothing, blankets, tarps, cooking utensils and soap. Separately, other aid groups, financed by the United Nations and other donors, will be distributing charcoal once every month through February, officials said.
United Nations officials acknowledged, however, that the fuel distributions in themselves were not enough to heat the mud and tarp huts throughout the season, and there were no plans to distribute food to the families. In most cases the men, who are largely war-displaced refugees, are unable to find day work as laborers in the cold weather, so they are usually unable to buy food.
“We are happy to receive this,” said Tawoos Khan, one of the camp representatives. “But we want food, and we need more fuel; we have all run out of firewood and charcoal.” He and other camp officials said large sacks of charcoal were distributed to every family more than two weeks ago, but supplies had run out.
“It’s supplementary,” said Douglas DiSalvo, a protection officer with the United Nations agency who was at the Charahi Qambar camp. “People have some level of support they can achieve for themselves.”
Mr. Farhad said, “The assistance we are providing, at least it is mitigating the harsh winter these families are experiencing right now.”
The estimated 35,000 people in 50 camps in and around Kabul are not classified as refugees from an international legal point of view, but as “internally displaced persons.” Since the United Nations agency’s mandate is to primarily help refugees — defined as those who flee across international borders — it has not provided support to the Kabul camps in the past. That changed late last winter when the Afghan government asked it to do so in response to the conditions that were taking so many lives.
This year, the agency is spearheading the effort to supply the camps, along with the Afghan government’s Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation, other United Nations agencies, and several aid groups, in order to prevent a recurrence of the crisis last winter.
Ministry officials, however, criticized the effort on Sunday — even though they were among the sponsors. “We have never claimed that we provided the internally displaced Afghans with sufficient food items, clothing or means of heat. We admit this. What the internally displaced people have received so far is not adequate at all,” said Islamuddin Jurat, a spokesman for the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation.
“Before the arrival of harsh winter,” he added, “we asked the international community and donor countries to help the internally displaced people, and luckily today U.N.H.C.R. provided them with some humanitarian assistance. But again we believe it’s not sufficient at all.”
Both aid officials and the Afghan government have said they are wary about providing too much aid for fear that it would encourage more people to leave their homes. That fear has also been why the Afghan government has refused to allow permanent buildings to be erected in the camps, many of which are five or more years old.
“The illegal nature of these squatter settlements poses an obstacle to more lasting interventions and improvements,” said Mr. Farhad of the United Nations refugees agency. “Coordination this year has been very strong, and we expect that the multiagency effort will help us to detect and respond to particular problem areas as the winter progresses.”
Little is provided in the way of food aid. The only food aid in the Charahi Qambar camp is a hot lunch program for 750 students at a tented school run by Aschiana, an Afghan aid group.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is providing the cold-weather packages to 40,000 families, 5,000 of them in the Kabul camps, at a cost of $6 million. Other Kabul camps will receive distributions in the next two days, Mr. Farhad said.
The packages, which cost about $150 each, include two tarps, three blankets, six bars of soap, a cooking utensils set, and 26 items of clothing ranging from jackets and sweaters to socks and hats, mostly for children.
Taj Mohammad, the father of the child who died, Janan, said Sunday that he believed that his son might have survived if the cold-weather kit had arrived earlier. But like many of the refugees, he was critical of its contents, which he said were hard to sell in exchange for food.
“I didn’t know a package costs $150,” he said. “It’s a lot of money. It would have been much better if they had given us the money, and we would have spent it on what we need the most.”
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
VOA News December 31, 2012
Pakistan has released four Afghan Taliban prisoners, including the minister of justice under Taliban rule of Afghanistan in the late 1990's.
Pakistani officials who did not want to be identified told reporters Monday that former Afghan Justice Minister Mullah Nooruddin Turabi, former Helmand province Governor Abdul Bari, and two other Afghan Taliban detainees have been freed.
Turabi is said to be in poor health. The United Nations says he was appointed as a Taliban military commander in Afghanistan in mid-2009 and was a deputy to Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar.
The spokesman for the Afghan Taliban also confirmed the release. Earlier this month, Pakistan released nine Afghan Taliban prisoners, but the insurgent group's former deputy leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, was not among them. He was captured in Pakistan in 2010.
Afghanistan has long sought access to the prisoners to aid the stalled peace process. Support from Pakistan, which backed the Taliban regime, is seen as crucial to Afghan reconciliation efforts as international forces complete their withdrawal from the war-torn country by the end of 2014.
Separately, Pakistani security officials say the bodies of nine militants were found dumped in Pakistan's northwestern tribal region on Monday.
The bodies were found off a road in the Pir Kili village of North Waziristan tribal agency. Officials said the militants were members of the Pakistani Taliban.
The discovery comes a day after 21 kidnapped tribal police officers were found dead. The police personnel were captured by militants during attacks on checkposts near the city of Peshawar last week.
Afghan policeman who turned down Taliban bribe is honoured
An Afghan policeman the Taliban tried to recruit in order to betray his comrades has been decorated for infiltrating their suicide bombing network and laying a trap for their arrest.
Telegraph.co.uk By Ben Farmer 30 Dec 2012
Beyar Khan Weyaar was offered a house in Pakistan and $30,000 (£19,000) in cash to smuggle a team of suicide attackers into a government compound in south eastern Afghanistan.
Instead he told his superiors and played along with the plot until the suicide team assembled and could be seized.
Mr Weyaar, who controlled a small checkpoint in Sar Hawza district of Paktika province, was rewarded last week with a medal from Mujtaba Patang, the interior minister.
The case has thrown some light on the tactics the insurgents use to conduct their spectacular suicide assaults against Afghan and Nato forces.
It also came as relief to Afghan security forces, as infiltration by the Taliban, or coercion serving officers, has been responsible for many insider shootings and security lapses.
Mr Weyaar said he was first telephoned by a man who promised he could get rich if he met a local insurgent commander. Soon afterwards, a man called Mohammed came to visit him at his checkpoint.
"He brazenly asked me to take the Taliban side and help them launch an attack inside the police force. I asked him to give me time to think," Mr Weyaar told Agence France Presse.
Under the orders of his Taliban handler, he helped three young Taliban fighters carry out reconnaissance of the government compound they were to attack.
Afghan officials claim that at one point he received direct telephone orders from Sirajuddin Haqqani, a senior commander of the Haqqani network that is at the forefront of suicide attacks in Afghanistan.
All the time he was passing the intelligence to his superiors, said Gen Dawlat Khan Zadran, chief of police in Paktika.
As the date for the attack approached, Mr Weyaar and his Taliban fighters were sent weapons, grenades and suicide vests.
Finally two more attackers arrived, along with a police pick-up truck which was to be laden with explosives and driven by Mohammed.
But as the attackers assembled police officers swooped to arrest them and the team was rounded up without a shot being fired.
Mohibullah Samim, the governor of Paktika, said: "He is a true warrior and he was not worried about his own security. We trusted him, and he proved himself to be a brave patriot."
Afghanistan Announces Next Security Transition
December 31, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
The Afghan government says the next phase of transferring security from NATO to Afghan control will begin in two months.
The latest transition will see Afghan forces assuming control of 87 percent of the country.
With most NATO-led troops set to leave by 2014, the 330,000-strong Afghan National Army is assuming more responsibility, including leading combat operations.
The upcoming transition will see Afghan forces take over control of 12 provinces, mostly in central and northern Afghanistan, as well as a district in Helmand Province, in the country's restive south.
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in a statement that the impending transition was a "significant step toward our shared goal of seeing Afghans fully in charge of their own security by the end of 2014."
With reporting by AP
NATO casualties drop in Afghanistan in 2012
by Farid Behbud, Chen Xin
KABUL, Dec. 31 (Xinhua) -- The casualties of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in the Afghan war dropped down in 2012 for the second successive year in comparison with the 2010 when the military alliance suffered the highest losses of lives.
According to iCasualties, a website tracking the casualties of NATO-led troops in the U.S.-led war on terror, 405 service members with 309 of them Americans had been killed in the militancy-hit Afghanistan from this year.
In December alone, according to the website, 14 ISAF soldiers have lost their lives, the lowest casualties in a single month over the past three years in the war against terror in the post- Taliban country.
A total of 566 coalition or ISAF soldiers lost their lives in 2011 according to the website; in 2010 the casualties of NATO-led forces in Afghanistan had been registered 711.
However, the local observers are in the view that a decline in the violence, foreign troops withdrawal and handing over the security responsibilities from foreign forces to the Afghan army and police might also be a reason for the foreign forces' casualties to be lower throughout the 2012.
Out of total casualties in 2012, up to 58 coalition soldiers had been killed in the so-called "green on blue" insider attacks when Afghan army, police or gunmen in their uniform open fire against their international partners.
In the latest such attacks, a U.S. police advisor was shot and killed by an Afghan policewoman on Dec. 16. The shooting took place inside the fortified Kabul police headquarters. The shooter was detained by the security forces and the motive behind the attack was still not known.
The Taliban insurgents, who have been waging an insurgency of more than one decade, have regularly claimed responsibilities for the green on blue attacks, saying their men have infiltrated into the ranks of Afghan army and police to kill foreign soldiers.
However, the coalition military officials have recently said that about 25 percent of the insider attacks are in some manner related to the Taliban-led insurgency.
They said the factors that contribute to the so-called green on blue shootings are wide-ranging from infiltration and impersonation to personal grievances.
However, it is said that the cultural differences between Afghan security forces and their western partners could also be a reason for the attacks.
On the other hand, the Taliban's home-made bomb or Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) continue to be the largest killer of the foreign forces in Afghanistan, as up to 315 out of 405 casualties in 2012 were caused by the IEDs.
The simple but difficult to be detected Taliban weapon, the IEDs, used in making suicide vests and roadside bombs, has proved a challenge for Afghan and NATO-led forces in the post-Talibna country.
According to U.S. President Barack Obama's withdrawal plan, the last of 33,000 additional U.S. troops pulled out from Afghanistan in September 2012, bringing the total number of foreign soldiers to 100,000 with nearly 68,000 of them Americans.
The ultimate goal is to transfer leading security responsibility to the Afghan forces by 2014.
Since launching the counter-insurgency campaign or the Operation Enduring Freedom against Taliban regime in October 2001 by the U.S.-led Coalition, according to iCasualties, 3,252 service members with 2,173 of them Americans and 438 Britons have been killed in the central Asian state.
Afghans angry at US soldiers who drove away in the night leaving rent unpaid
Only sign of huge US base is pile of rubbish and broken vehicles – and a festering land dispute in a volatile province
Guardian.co.uk By Emma Graham-Harrison Sunday 30 December 2012
Kabul - US forces left behind piles of equipment, an unpaid rent bill and a festering land dispute that threatens to undermine the Afghan government when they moved out of a volatile corner of eastern Kunar province this year, local officials and their former landlords say.
The only clue that a base that dominated Pashengar village for years had been abandoned for good was the midnight rumble of a convoy of trucks. In the morning, locals found guards gone, buildings blown up and, scattered around what had been a forbidding military encampment, piles of detritus from years of western living in a remote, mountainous valley.
Rows of air conditioning units stuck out of a damaged wall, a giant, dilapidated generator was marooned near shipping containers and twisted, dented vehicles remained. But there was no sign of a cheque for a landlord who said years of rent, running to hundreds of thousands of dollars, was owing to him.
"They stayed six years and only paid rent for one year," said Haji Najibullah Khan, who grew up in the Pashengar house that became a US base. He said the departing US commander warned him off pushing for rent money when they met a few weeks before the soldiers drove away in the night.
A few kilometres down the road, in the centre of Naray district, the US departure was neater, with a joint base handed over to full Afghan army control. But, even here, there is anger because the base was built on a muddle of small plots shared out among 90 families from the area.
They are also claiming that years of back rent is owed by the Americans and are worried they may never see their land again now Afghan government troops are firmly entrenched. The simmering dispute threatens to undermine loyalty to troops ostensibly sent to protect the area.
Gul Rahman, the district governor, has attempted to mediate but with little success. "I met the Afghan National Army (ANA) with the elders. Now the army are staying, the people are very angry and asking for the payments they are owed, but no one is listening to them."
Land is one of the most sensitive issues in Afghanistan. During 30 years of war, many legal documents have been destroyed, landowners and their families have been killed or become refugees, and people have settled on to land to which they have no legal claim.
Haji Usman, headmaster of the Naray boys' high school and owner of about two hectares of land that is now part of the base, led a delegation to Kabul that lobbied successfully for an official investigation and recognition of the villagers' claim to the land. The army is ignoring that finding at its own risk, he said.
"The people are very angry that the ANA are not leaving," Usman said. "I don't think most people who have had their land taken would be willing to join the Taliban; this is a village under government control. But there are maybe a few, who live in more remote houses, who will join if this issue is not resolved."
Rahman, the district governor, said security problems had kept him from visiting Pashengar, but he had been looking into Khan's situation and believed a sale of the military detritus could help pay some of the rent.
"I didn't visit the house but I asked some people about it, so I know that some containers, vehicles and generators were left behind. Some were destroyed but some were OK," he told the Guardian by phone from his heavily guarded offices in Naray. "This equipment left by the Americans could make up perhaps half the rent of Haji Najibullah, or at least a quarter."
But Khan said it was mostly worthless in an area of subsistence farmers. "I can't sell any of the equipment because it is not stuff that people in the district use. I just leave it in my yard, because it's quite worthless to me."
Afghanistan's landscape is littered with rusting Soviet tanks and other military junk, a constant reminder of the Soviets' troubled decade in the country, but since 2001, foreign forces have gone to great lengths to leave no trace.
To abandon even non-military equipment is unusual and perhaps a sign of the challenges facing Naray, which lies at Kunar's northern tip. Poor and isolated, it is a place where insurgents can slip easily across the border from Pakistan or down from lawless Nuristan province, where an insurgent vice-and-virtue police holds sway in some villages.
A spokesman for the Afghan army would not comment on the situation in Naray, and the Kunar provincial governor, Fazlullah Wahedi, said he had not heard about the land disputes there.
The Nato-led International Security Assistance Force declined to comment on the situation at either base. "As a matter of policy, Isaf does not publicly discuss information pertaining to potential or pending claims," said spokesman Charlie Stadtlander.
Mokhtar Amiri contributed reporting
US Family Pleas for Couple Missing in Afghanistan
Associated Press By By DENIS D. GRAY and ERIC TUCKER December 31, 2012
KABUL - The family of an ailing, pregnant American woman missing in Afghanistan with her Canadian husband has broken months of silence over the mysterious case, making public appeals for the couple's safe return.
James Coleman, the father of 27-year-old Caitlan Coleman, told The Associated Press over the weekend that she was due to deliver in January and needed urgent medical attention for a liver ailment that required regular checkups. He said he and his wife, Lyn, last heard from their son-in-law Josh on Oct. 8 from an Internet cafe in what Josh described as an "unsafe" part of Afghanistan. The Colemans asked that Josh be identified by his first name only to protect his privacy.
The couple had embarked on a journey last July that took them to Russia, the central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and then finally to Afghanistan.
Neither the Taliban nor any other militant group has claimed it is holding the couple, leading some to believe they were kidnapped. But no ransom demand has been made.
An Afghan official said their trail has gone dead.
"Our goal is to get them back safely and healthy," the father told AP on Friday night by phone. "I don't know what kind of care they're getting or not getting," he added. "We're just an average family and we don't have connections with anybody and we don't have a lot of money."
He made a similar appeal in a video posted on YouTube on Dec. 13.
"We appeal to whoever is caring for her to show compassion and allow Caity, Josh and our unborn grandbaby to come home," he said.
Before the video came out, the family had kept quiet about the case since the couple disappeared in early October. They appear to have broken their silence in hopes it might lead to a breakthrough.
But many questions remain over the disappearances.
It is not known whether the couple is still alive or how or why they entered Afghanistan. And there is no information about what they were doing in the country before they went missing.
James Coleman, of York County, Pennsylvania, said he was not entirely sure what his daughter and her husband were doing in Afghanistan. But he surmised they may have been seeking to help Afghans by joining an aid group after touring the region. In the AP interview, he described his daughter as "naive" and "adventuresome" with a humanitarian bent.
He said Josh did not disclose their exact location in his last email contact on Oct. 8, only saying they were not in a safe place. James Coleman also said the last withdrawals from the couple's account were made Oct. 8 and 9 in Kabul with no activity on the account and no further communication from them after that date.
"He just said they were heading into the mountains — wherever that was, I don't know," the father said, adding, "They're both kind of naive, always have been in my view. Why they actually went to Afghanistan, I'm not sure... I assume it was more of the same, getting to know the local people, if they could find an NGO (non-governmental organization) or someone they could work with in a little way."
There was some indication that the couple knew they were in dangerous territory, though they perhaps did not grasp just how dangerous. James Coleman said in general, they preferred small villages and communities because they felt safer there than in big cities, and that is where they wanted to focus their travels.
"I assume they were going to strike out on foot like they were doing," he added.
Both the U.S. State Department and Canadian Foreign Affairs Ministry say they are looking into the disappearance.
"Canada is pursuing all appropriate channels and officials are in close contact with local authorities," Canadian Foreign Affairs Ministry spokeswoman Chrystiane Roy said Friday, calling the incident a "possible kidnap."
It was not known whether the silence over the case by U.S. and Canadian officials and, until now, by the Coleman family was because of ongoing negotiations to seek their release. But information black-outs have kept some similar past cases quiet in an attempt to not further endanger those missing.
According to Hazrat Janan, the head of the provincial council in Afghanistan's Wardak province, the two were abducted in Wardak in an area about 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of the capital Kabul. They were passing through Wardak while traveling from Ghazni province south of Kabul to the capital.
Wardak province, despite its proximity to Kabul, is a rugged, mountainous haven for the Taliban and travel along its roads is dangerous. Foreigners who do not travel with military escorts take a substantial risk.
He said they were believed to have been taken from one district in Wardak to a second and then into Ghazni.
"After that, the trail went dead," Janan said.
He said it was suspected that the kidnappers were Taliban because criminal gangs would have likely asked for a ransom.
When the AP contacted Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid about the missing couple two months ago, he said the group had carried out an investigation and found no Taliban members were involved.
"We do not know about these two foreigners," he said in a telephone interview.
Janan's information could not be independently verified, and U.S. and Canadian officials still do not say for certain the couple was abducted.
NATO officials said they had no current information on the case, which was turned over to the U.S. State Department after it was determined the couple were not affiliated with foreign military forces.
Coleman said his daughter and her husband met on the Internet and married in 2011. They had previously travelled through Central America so they had some experience abroad.
During their recent Asian travels, they bought local goods to help vendors, slept in their tent and hostels and interacted with villagers. Despite her travel fever, love of history and a desire to do good, her father said Caitlan "wanted basically to be a housewife and have a bunch of kids."
———
Tucker reported from Washington. Associated Press reporter Amir Shah in Kabul contributed to this report.
Afghan-US Company to Build Oil Refinery in Northern Afghanistan
TOLOnews.com By Zabihullah Jhanmal Sunday, 30 December 2012
An oil refinery with an investment of $700 million will be constructed in northern Afghanistan by a joint US-Afghan company, Afghanistan Investment Support Agency (AISA) said Sunday.
The American company, AFM Co., will help establish the facility capable of refining 60,000 barrels of oil a day when the plant opens in 2016, AISA officials said.
"Following the commencement of this company's work in Afghanistan, there will be no need to ship crude oil abroad," said Wafiullah Eftekhar, head of AISA.
The oil refinery news comes as Afghanistan Industries Union officials welcomed a 40 percent increase in tariffs on imported fruit juice to help domestic producers.
"We are optimistic towards these commitments of the government. This act will encourage [domestic] investments in the country," Shirbaz Kaminzada, Head of Afghanistan Industries Union.
The Union also asked the government to follow through on its promise to support all industrial sectors across the country.
AISA said that more industrial parks will be established in different provinces of country.
But they also demanded that the government move the military bases from the vicinity of the Pul-e-Charkhi industrial park because they pose security risks to factories.
An Afghan juice company suffered a $10 million loss after a suicide attack on a foreign military contractor located nearby.
Out With The Troops, In With The Afghan Investment?
By Farangis Najibullah and Zarif Nazar December 31, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Foreign forces are preparing to leave the country, capital is fleeing, and it's the Afghan government's job to stop it.
To meet its objective, the Afghan Finance Ministry has drafted a package of incentives to assure companies and individual that their investments in Afghanistan will be safe after the expected withdrawal of Western troops in 2014.
Outlined in a bill facing a parliamentary vote in February, the incentives would reward those who invest in the country over the next two years with significant tax breaks and the right to purchase land for a symbolic price.
Najibullah Manalai, an adviser to Finance Minister Omar Zakhilwal, says the manufacturing, mining, and agricultural sectors would be the most likely areas of investment.
According to the Afghan National Bank, at least $4.6 billion has been taken out of Afghanistan in the past year, a development that has been attributed to fears over increased insecurity and corruption after the 2014 pullout.
Manalai downplays the impact the NATO withdrawal will have on the Afghan economy, but he acknowledges the incentive package is intended to "minimize such economic effects."
"We don't think there would be a major economic impact, but we are concerned about such speculation in the mass media," he says. "Such speculation could easily lead to economic downturn. So our aim is to counter such speculation and also to attract investors to Afghanistan over the next two years, which is a sensitive period."
Attractive Incentives
According to Finance Ministry spokesman Wahid Tawhidi, the goal is to entice entities willing to invest at least $1 million each into the country's ailing economy.
"Investors will be exempt from tax and customs duties for the next 10 years," Tawhidi says.
The spokesman says that companies would be given land effectively free of charge and electricity would be made available at a fraction of the current rates.
"In addition, if some companies are willing to invest but don't have enough money, we would help them to borrow the money from two state-owned banks -- the National Bank and the Pashtani Tujarati Bank," Tawhidi says. "Five hundred million dollars would be allocated for this purpose. We would enable them to borrow the money with low tax and low interest rates and to invest it in the Afghan economy."
While the incentives are looked upon as a potential boon to government coffers, not everyone shares the Finance Ministry's optimism that they can win over investors.
"Afghanistan has two major problems that scare away investors, and they are corruption and a lack of security," says Azarakhsh Hafizi of the Afghan Chamber of Commerce and Industries.
Afghanistan ranks among the three most-corrupt countries in the world in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index.
"When investors have to bribe to operate and have to pay for additional security measures because of the constant attacks and kidnappings, it costs them more money to stay here," Hafizi says.
Half Of GDP
The Afghan government has had trouble providing security even for some of its most high-profile foreign investors.
Earlier this year, a group of Chinese miners left Afghanistan after militants attacked the Aynak copper mine in eastern Logar Province. The deal to lease the mine to the China Metallurgical Group for 30 years was the country's biggest private business venture when it was agreed in 2007.
The government has high hopes for similar investments in Afghanistan's lucrative energy and mineral sectors. The country boasts significant copper, iron, gold, and oil and gas reserves. Manalai notes that the goal is for revenue generated from investment in these areas to eventually "provide half of the country's gross domestic product."
Nasiruddin Shansab, the head of the U.S.-based Afghanistan-Central Asia Transnational Company LLC, says Afghanistan's natural resources and its geographical location offer great investment potential.
However, "in the climate of constant security threats and notoriously widespread culture of bribery," Afghanistan isn't going to see major Western companies rushing to invest there anytime soon, says the Afghan-born businessman.
"Tax breaks and other incentives for investors exist everywhere," Shansab says. "Afghanistan should know that it is competing with the rest of world to get investors."
Afghan officials insist they have been addressing the corruption issues. As a part of the campaign against corruption, the country has introduced so-called merit-based hiring tests to employ managers to government agencies. Several district governors and deputy provincial governors have recently been appointed after passing such tests, scrutinized by independent monitors.
The Afghan Chamber of Commerce and Industries' Hafizi says the country still has a long way to go to eliminate corruption. "But I wouldn't say it's an impossible task," he says.
As for the lack of security, Hafizi believes many investors will still stay and watch what happens beyond 2014.
Energy Drinks Take Afghanistan By Storm
RFE/RL By Frud Bezhan December 30, 2012
What do a young woman roaring across the desert on a flashy motorbike, a sweaty construction worker, and a muscle man pulling a semi-truck have in common?
High energy -- the kind that, if the blaring advertisements bombarding Afghans can be believed, can only come from drinking caffeine-rich, glucose-heavy drinks with names like "Effect," "Gangster," and "Boom Boom."
As the commercial (see below) featuring our three high-octane heroes suggests, "There is no effect without 'Effect'." But this television advertisement is just one of dozens making the hard sell on television, billboards, and posters across Afghanistan.
Energy drinks are sold everywhere in modern Afghanistan -- from street carts to corner shops to the finest restaurants. Even hard-line Taliban militants have been known to enjoy one of the many available concoctions to quench their thirst on the battlefield.
But energy drinks are definitely rattling some nerves, leading to calls for the drinks to be banned outright.
Although many are certified as "Islamic-approved," they have come under fire from religious figures. Because of their stimulant properties, some liken them to alcoholic drinks, which are "haram" (forbidden under Islam).
Others have raised eyebrows over the quality of some of the drinks being imported, and the negative effect they could have on Afghans' health.
Sales Booming, But At What Price?
In Afghanistan, there is little government regulation and no national standards for imported drinks, food, or medicines. That has meant the Afghan market has been flooded by outdated, low-quality energy drinks deemed unfit for sale in other countries.
Abdullah, an assistant shopkeeper, says Afghan distributors for foreign beverage companies sell expired products for discounted prices, and that some shopkeepers readily buy the inferior products and sell them for a quick profit.
"Some of the drinks are past their expiry dates or have gone bad. They pose a health risk to people and shouldn't be sold. Only those that are legal, with expiry dates, and in good condition should be sold," he says. "The Public Health Ministry must regulate the market and take the necessary steps to stop this."
Despite the risks and controversy, business appears to be booming. Habib Rahman, a shopkeeper in Kabul, says they are outselling popular soft drinks such as Pepsi and Coca-Cola.
"Most Afghans like energy drinks. They think it gives them energy and can get rid of tiredness," Rahman says. "It mostly started with young employed Afghans in urban areas buying the drinks. But now, it has spread to all sectors of society."
Overall sales statistics are unavailable, but more than two dozen brands have arrived on the market, catering to a broad spectrum of consumers.
Red Bull, the Austrian-made drink, costs about $1.50 and is popular among young, urban consumers, while the Thai-made Carabao, which costs half that amount, is favored among the working class.
And well aware that Afghanistan's is a deeply patriarchal society, some foreign brands have made their energy drinks gender-specific. That means men can take on a Big Bear -- marketed "for men only" -- while women can sip a high-energy Hot Bird.
RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan contributed to this report
Fereshta Kazemi takes a risky stand for acting in Afghanistan
Actress Fereshta Kazemi violates codes on dress and work in the country to try to change the culture. There are threats, and recently an actress was killed.
Los Angeles Times By David Zucchino December 30, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - Coarse mud was clinging to Fereshta Kazemi's high-heeled boots as she tottered on a slippery footpath. No one noticed. Everyone was staring at her legs.
Her legs! They were exposed! And worse — she wore sheer hosiery that only accented her limbs and emphasized that her tight skirt ended somewhat above her knees. Her hair was uncovered too. It cascaded like a dark blanket across her shoulders.
The popcorn peddler stopped filling his soiled bags and ogled her. The vegetable man leered, and so did the security guard. Two women wearing burkas stared hard. A herd of boys and men bird-dogged this exotic figure from America, pointing and scolding in an alleyway in Old Kabul's Shar-e-Kohna neighborhood.
One boy was so transfixed that he tumbled into a sewage ditch, drawing howls of laughter from his companions. And still everyone gawked at the Afghan woman from America.
Kazemi offered no apology, no explanation. She was born in Kabul 33 years ago and left at age 2. Raised in the U.S., she is back now for the first time, determined to radically alter the way Afghans view women — particularly women who act.
If making it in Hollywood, Kazemi's previous endeavor, is demanding, making it in Kabul is brutal. In August, Benafsha, 22, an Afghan actress from a TV satire, was stabbed to death outside a mosque and two fellow actresses were knifed. Witnesses said the women had been threatened by men for "un-Islamic" behavior.
The two survivors were taken to a police station for virginity tests — and prostitution charges. Another actress, Sahar Parniyan, received death threats after the stabbings and went into hiding.
On this day in Kabul, Kazemi was on her way to a film location. It was a serial, an Afghan soap opera. Kazemi had accepted an ironic role, playing a liberated Afghan American woman who returns home to Kabul; dramatic cultural clashes ensue.
On the outdoor set, the director, Mirwais Rakab, greeted her with a startled look. "Fereshta!" he said.
"I almost passed out," Rakab said later. "Oh, the way she dresses. The way she walks. I was shocked! I loved it, but I was shocked."
Rakab pointed out that he is no prude. He's attended film festivals in Europe and Aspen Filmfest in Colorado.
"Ah, but this is Afghanistan," he said. "We are under great stress."
Kazemi is violating two Afghan codes — one that demands the submissive, fully covered Afghan woman and another that assumes every actress is a *****. In fact, Kazemi and others say, for many years the only women who could be persuaded to act here were, indeed, prostitutes.
While in Kabul, Kazemi is also filming a documentary on the lives of Afghan actors and actresses, focusing on the risks of daring to act in a repressive society. One actress she's following works as a prostitute.
Her subjects will not allow her to interview family members, who object to the disreputable craft. Kazemi herself declined to allow her relatives in Kabul to be interviewed for this article because they consider acting shameful — and a threat to their dignity and safety.
Kazemi realizes that the way she dresses and acts — literally, that she acts — is a dangerous provocation. Death threats are common. This is a country where censors blur the offending legs or shoulders of actresses in foreign-made dramas. Kissing is scandalous and forbidden, even between actors portraying husband and wife.
Kazemi knows too that merely dressing in a way that would be unremarkable in Los Angeles, where she found roles in small independent films, can signal to Afghan men that a woman is, to put it mildly, available — or, worse, soliciting for paid sex.
"I want to make sure I'm putting up a big 'No Vacancy' sign," she said.
But the eyes of Afghan men and boys follow her footfalls. One man told his friends after watching Kazemi walk to the serial set: "She should be beaten."
"Fereshta needs to be careful," said Tarique Qayumi, 37, an Afghan Canadian filmmaker here who cast her in an Afghan-themed movie shot in California. "She's very aggressive and a total feminist, and that's good. But it can be dangerous here."
Other Afghan friends have warned her: "They tell me, do not show 1 inch of skin, Fereshta," she said in her rapid-fire, New York-inflected diction.
But other Afghans have thanked her for championing actresses as artists and even patriots. "One guy, a security guard, saw me and smiled," she said. "He said, 'nooshe jan-et' — enjoy deeply — like, look at this crazy girl, no head cover, smoking, just going her own way.''
Reviving Afghan film
In the 1970s and early 1980s, Afghan cinema was modern and vibrant. Kazemi's documentary follows Maimoona Ghezal, an Afghan actress in her 60s who was a glamorous star of the era.
"I worked in cinema then, and I remember all the women's gorgeous legs — I'm hungry for all that again," said Rakab, the director.
Sadam Niko, 21, who plays Kazemi's love interest in the serial, "Kocha-e-Ma" (Our Street), said of his costar: "I think she's so brave." If the war ever ends, he said, "All these problems will just go away."
Kazemi is living temporarily with relatives in a conservative neighborhood where most women wear burkas. She refuses to wear even a head scarf.
"I respect the traditions of being covered, but I will not cover my hair. I won't," she said.
The men in the shop next to her relatives' house gossip about her, she said, and stare as she strolls past. Her male cousins insist on escorting her every time she walks to find a taxi.
One cousin told her that he would be shamed and would deny he was her relative if she appears on the TV serial. When she told him to have courage, he said it was about honor, not courage.
"He told me: 'You'll be considered a prostitute,'" she said. "The value of a female is directly connected to male honor. Her reputation — how she looks and behaves in public — is all that matters. And it's all tied to sexuality."
When Kazemi mentioned to her aunt that she plans to find her own apartment, she was told that she would first need her parents' permission.
This is true, said Kazemi's mother, who lives with Fereshta's father in the Bay Area. Kazemi asked that her mother's name not be published because she has worked in Afghanistan as a translator for American troops.
Parents had other ideas
Kazemi's parents are classic immigrant strivers who wanted their daughter to become a doctor. Both are professionals who fled Afghanistan after Fereshta's father was put on a death list by the communist government, Kazemi said. The family lived in Thailand before moving to New York when Kazemi was 6.
Even as a child, Kazemi wanted to be an actress, her mother said. "She always told me: 'One day, I'll go back to Afghanistan and change things,'" she said.
The other day, Kazemi was trying on a wedding dress for a movie role as an Afghan woman married in a village. She playfully suggested that she discard the wedding cloak and instead bare her shoulders.
"No! Cover your shoulders!" the movie's producer, Omar Zazai Ramin, told her. "Do you want to get us all killed?"
Even for men, filmmaking is often considered base and subversive, said Qayumi, the filmmaker: "Respect for the industry isn't there yet."
Qayumi spoke inside a high-rise construction site, where he was filming "The Road to the Truth," about the April 15 attack on Kabul's diplomatic zone by insurgents firing from an unfinished high-rise. The docu-drama's stars are the actual Afghan rapid response police who fought the attackers. One officer flung stones at rubber-neckers who gathered too close to the set.
Western-raised Afghans like Qayumi and Kazemi, who plans to stay here for a year, want to show that cinema can honor Afghan culture by creating admirable, nuanced characters. They resent the insipid Indian, Turkish and Iranian dramas that dominate Afghan TV and overshadow locally made productions.
"Every nation needs its storytellers," Qayumi said. "Afghans are working to heal their country — police, doctors, soldiers. What we're doing is building heroes."
Kazemi met Qayumi when he sought Afghan American actresses while completing his master's degree in screenwriting at UCLA. She won the role of the Afghan wife of an Afghan immigrant hounded in Los Angeles by a female American soldier with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Kazemi said she persuaded Qayumi to make her character — a traditional wife — stronger and more willful. She lobbied for and won a fleeting scene in which she and her husband kiss in the movie, "Targeting," a psychological thriller written by Qayumi.
Qayumi said he gave Kazemi the part because "she has a certain fire in her. She brought a lot of energy to the role."
One cold evening in Kabul, at a private club on a trash-strewn dirt street, "Targeting" was screened on a swatch of white cloth tacked to a brick wall. Qayumi, wearing a "Rambo III" T-shirt, propped the projector on a napkin box.
The audience represented a slice of Kabul's young, hip, urbane milieu. The dominant language was English with smatterings of Dari. Kazemi sat up front, well dressed and elegantly coiffed.
In the film, Kazemi's character spoke in Dari and English. The wife is respectful but bold enough to argue with her husband. In a brief long shot, they kiss. When the credits rolled, everyone applauded and whistled. Kazemi and Qayumi rose to answer audience questions.
Kazemi had a question of her own. "I don't know if everybody caught the kiss — did you?" she said. "I hope so. It's very important."
david.zucchino@latimes.com
Afghan Camps Receive Winter Aid, but Officials Say It Isn’t Enough
New York Times By ROD NORDLAND December 30, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan - The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees on Sunday distributed emergency cold-weather supplies to families in a refugee camp where two days earlier a 3-year-old died of exposure to the freezing temperatures.
But camp leaders and Afghan government officials criticized the aid delivery as inadequate to protect residents from the weather and to prevent more deaths.
Last winter, more than 100 children died of the cold in refugee camps around Kabul, with 26 dying in the Charahi Qambar camp alone. That is the same camp where the 3-year-old died Friday; it was the first confirmed death because of the cold this winter.
The distribution of supplies at the camp, which is home to about 900 families in western Kabul, had been scheduled before news reports about the child’s death, said Mohammad Nader Farhad, a spokesman for the United Nations refugees agency in Kabul.
On less than an hour’s notice, the agency convened a news conference with Afghan government officials at the camp to announce the distribution.
Each family was given warm children’s clothing, blankets, tarps, cooking utensils and soap. Separately, other aid groups, financed by the United Nations and other donors, will be distributing charcoal once every month through February, officials said.
United Nations officials acknowledged, however, that the fuel distributions in themselves were not enough to heat the mud and tarp huts throughout the season, and there were no plans to distribute food to the families. In most cases the men, who are largely war-displaced refugees, are unable to find day work as laborers in the cold weather, so they are usually unable to buy food.
“We are happy to receive this,” said Tawoos Khan, one of the camp representatives. “But we want food, and we need more fuel; we have all run out of firewood and charcoal.” He and other camp officials said large sacks of charcoal were distributed to every family more than two weeks ago, but supplies had run out.
“It’s supplementary,” said Douglas DiSalvo, a protection officer with the United Nations agency who was at the Charahi Qambar camp. “People have some level of support they can achieve for themselves.”
Mr. Farhad said, “The assistance we are providing, at least it is mitigating the harsh winter these families are experiencing right now.”
The estimated 35,000 people in 50 camps in and around Kabul are not classified as refugees from an international legal point of view, but as “internally displaced persons.” Since the United Nations agency’s mandate is to primarily help refugees — defined as those who flee across international borders — it has not provided support to the Kabul camps in the past. That changed late last winter when the Afghan government asked it to do so in response to the conditions that were taking so many lives.
This year, the agency is spearheading the effort to supply the camps, along with the Afghan government’s Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation, other United Nations agencies, and several aid groups, in order to prevent a recurrence of the crisis last winter.
Ministry officials, however, criticized the effort on Sunday — even though they were among the sponsors. “We have never claimed that we provided the internally displaced Afghans with sufficient food items, clothing or means of heat. We admit this. What the internally displaced people have received so far is not adequate at all,” said Islamuddin Jurat, a spokesman for the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation.
“Before the arrival of harsh winter,” he added, “we asked the international community and donor countries to help the internally displaced people, and luckily today U.N.H.C.R. provided them with some humanitarian assistance. But again we believe it’s not sufficient at all.”
Both aid officials and the Afghan government have said they are wary about providing too much aid for fear that it would encourage more people to leave their homes. That fear has also been why the Afghan government has refused to allow permanent buildings to be erected in the camps, many of which are five or more years old.
“The illegal nature of these squatter settlements poses an obstacle to more lasting interventions and improvements,” said Mr. Farhad of the United Nations refugees agency. “Coordination this year has been very strong, and we expect that the multiagency effort will help us to detect and respond to particular problem areas as the winter progresses.”
Little is provided in the way of food aid. The only food aid in the Charahi Qambar camp is a hot lunch program for 750 students at a tented school run by Aschiana, an Afghan aid group.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is providing the cold-weather packages to 40,000 families, 5,000 of them in the Kabul camps, at a cost of $6 million. Other Kabul camps will receive distributions in the next two days, Mr. Farhad said.
The packages, which cost about $150 each, include two tarps, three blankets, six bars of soap, a cooking utensils set, and 26 items of clothing ranging from jackets and sweaters to socks and hats, mostly for children.
Taj Mohammad, the father of the child who died, Janan, said Sunday that he believed that his son might have survived if the cold-weather kit had arrived earlier. But like many of the refugees, he was critical of its contents, which he said were hard to sell in exchange for food.
“I didn’t know a package costs $150,” he said. “It’s a lot of money. It would have been much better if they had given us the money, and we would have spent it on what we need the most.”
www.afghanistannewscenter.com