Tweet
With U.S. Set to Leave Afghanistan, Echoes of 1989
New York Times By THOM SHANKER January 1, 2013
WASHINGTON - The young president who ascended to office as a change agent decides to end the costly and unpopular war in Afghanistan. He seeks an exit with honor by pledging long-term financial support to allies in Kabul, while urging reconciliation with the insurgency. But some senior advisers lobby for a deliberately slow withdrawal, and propose leaving thousands of troops behind to train and support Afghan security forces.
This is a nearly exact description of the endgame conundrum facing President Obama as he prepares for a critical visit by Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, planned for early January.
But the account is actually drawn from declassified Soviet archives describing Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s closed-door struggles with his Politburo and army chiefs to end the Kremlin’s intervention in Afghanistan — one that began with a commando raid, coup and modest goals during Christmas week of 1979 but became, after a decade, what Mr. Gorbachev derided as “a bleeding wound.”
What mostly is remembered about the withdrawal is the Soviet Union’s humiliation, and the ensuing factional bloodletting across Afghanistan that threw the country into a vicious civil war. It ended with Taliban control and the establishment of a safe haven for Al Qaeda before the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
But scholars who have studied the Soviet archives point out another lesson for the Obama administration as it manages the pullout of American and allied combat forces from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
“The main thing the Soviets did right was that they continued large-scale military assistance to the regime they left behind after the final withdrawal in ’89,” said Mark N. Katz, a professor at George Mason University and author of “Leaving Without Losing: The War on Terror After Iraq and Afghanistan” (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012).
“As long as the Afghan regime received the money and the weapons, they did pretty well — and held on to power for three years,” Mr. Katz said. The combat effectiveness of Kabul’s security forces increased after the Soviet withdrawal, when the fight for survival become wholly their own.
But then the Soviet Union dissolved in December 1991, and the new Russian leader, Boris N. Yeltsin, heeded urgings of the United States and other Western powers to halt aid to the Communist leadership in Afghanistan, not just arms and money, but also food and fuel. The Kremlin-backed government in Kabul fell three months later.
To be sure, there are significant contrasts between the two interventions in Afghanistan. The Soviet invasion and occupation were condemned as illegal aggression, while the American one was embraced by the international community, including Russia, as a “just war,” one with limited goals of routing the Taliban and eliminating Al Qaeda. That war of necessity has since evolved into a war of choice, one the Obama administration is working to end as quickly as is feasible.
Despite the differences going in, both the Soviet Union and the United States soon learned that Afghanistan is a land where foreigners aspiring to create nations in their image must combat not just the Taliban but tribalism, orthodoxy, corruption and a medieval view of women. As well, Pakistan has had interests at odds with those of the neighboring government in Afghanistan, whether Kabul was an ally of Moscow or of Washington.
“The Soviet Union did not understand religious and ethnic factors sufficiently, and overestimated the capacity of Afghan society to move very fast toward a modern era, in this case socialism,” said Svetlana Savranskaya, director of Russian programs at the National Security Archive, an independent research center at George Washington University.
“Here I see similarities with the approach of the United States, especially with all the discussion about trying to leave behind an Afghanistan that is democratic and respects the rights of women, ideas that simply are not accepted across the broad society there,” said Ms. Savranskaya, who has written extensively on the Soviet archives.
If the Soviet experience offers any guidance to the current American withdrawal, she said, it would be to accelerate the departure of foreign combat forces — but to leave in their place a “sustained, multiyear international involvement in military training, education and civilian infrastructure projects, and maybe not focusing on building democracy as much as improving the lives of the common people.”
And she noted that the United States should already be seeking partnership with Afghan leaders beyond Mr. Karzai, who is viewed across large parts of the population as tainted by his association with the Americans.
Pentagon officials have signaled that they are hoping for an enduring military presence of 10,000 or more troops, but may have to accept fewer, to cement the progress of the years of fighting. Those troops would focus on training and supporting Afghan forces along with a counterterrorism contingent to hunt Qaeda and insurgent leaders.
In a parallel, one of Mr. Gorbachev’s closest early confidants, Eduard A. Shevardnadze, the foreign minister, advocated a slow withdrawal pace — and pressed for 10,000 to 15,000 Soviet troops to remain to support the Communist government. The Soviets left only 300 advisers.
But after losing more than 15,000 Soviet troops and billions of rubles, the Kremlin knew it had to somehow justify the invasion and occupation upon withdrawal.
Mr. Gorbachev had “to face up to a difficult problem of domestic politics which has puzzled other nations finding themselves in similar circumstances,” Rodric Braithwaite, a former British ambassador to Moscow, wrote in “Afgantsy” (Oxford University Press, 2011), his book on the Soviet intervention based on Communist Party documents.
“How could the Russians withdraw their army safely, with honor, without looking as if they were simply cutting and running, and without appearing to betray their Afghan allies or their own soldiers who had died?” Mr. Braithwaite wrote of the internal Kremlin debate, in terms resonant of the Americans’ conundrum today.
Around the time of the Soviet withdrawal, an article by Pravda, the Communist Party mouthpiece, clutched for a positive view as the Soviet Army pulled out. Read today, it bears a resemblance to the news releases churned out by the Pentagon detailing statistics on reconstruction assistance.
“Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan repaired, rebuilt and constructed hundreds of schools, technical colleges, over 30 hospitals and a similar number of nursery schools, some 400 apartment buildings and 35 mosques,” the article said. “They sank dozens of wells and dug nearly 150 kilometers of irrigation ditches and canals. They were also engaged in guarding military and civilian installations in trouble.”
The Kremlin had learned that its armies could not capture political success, but Soviet commanders made the same claims upon withdrawal that are heard from NATO officers today: not a single battlefield engagement was lost to guerrillas, and no outpost ever fell to insurgents.
That understanding seemed to animate Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta as he toured Afghanistan recently in a traditional holiday visit with the troops.
At each stop, Mr. Panetta acknowledged that significant challenges remain to an orderly withdrawal and a stable postwar Afghanistan, and not just the resilient insurgency.
He cited unreliable Afghan governance, continuing corruption and the existence of insurgent safe havens in Pakistan. None of those are likely to be fixed with American firepower.
Can Afghan troops hold off the Taliban after Nato withdraws?
The Afghan army is showing signs of strength, but it is far from battle-ready and both logistical and human obstacles remain
Guardian.co.uk By Julian Borger Tuesday 1 January 2013
Camp Shorabak, Helmand - The umbilical connection between the US marines at Camp Leatherneck and the new model Afghan army in Camp Shorabak is a sandy chicane known as Friendship Gate, where Helmand's Afghan garrison draws sustenance from its departing foreign advisers. Its dominant feature is a fortified American-manned heavy machine gun, pointing towards the Afghans.
The formidable weapon permanently aimed at a supposed ally is silent testimony to a relationship that is crucial to Helmand's future but remains a volatile mix of dependence, mutual admiration and deep distrust.
The Afghan National Army (ANA) 215th Corps is now 17,000-strong, gaining in confidence and competence and, according to local polling, generally well respected. It has managed to hold on to the main population areas in Helmand in the face of a Taliban attempt to retake lost territory and as a result the province's towns are much safer than they were a year ago.
But the ANA still cannot fight on its own. Only one of the 215th Corps' four brigades is anywhere near full battle readiness. In fact, a Pentagon report in early December revealed that only one of the ANA's 23 brigades across the country had reached that point. The Taliban's success in infiltrating its ranks has contributed to the number of "green-on-blue", or insider attacks, in which Afghan troops turn their guns on their foreign mentors. There were 12 such attacks in Helmand in 2012, all fatal, sawing away at the bonds of trust on which the Nato exit strategy is based.
Even more importantly, there are early signs that the ANA may be struggling to hold the line on a critical front in the war: the ability to protect Afghan civilians from the Taliban.
The latest UN figures show that the Taliban are now responsible for 84% of civilian deaths in Afghanistan, while the government and its foreign allies are responsible for only 6% (10% are unattributable). And the data for the August-October period shows a dramatic spike in those killings, up 28% from the same period last year, suggesting that ordinary Afghans are becoming more vulnerable as the Afghan army takes responsibility for protecting them.
Brigadier General Ghulam Farouq Parwani, deputy commander of the 215th Corps and a 30-year veteran of Afghanistan's many wars, insists his men can handle the Taliban threat on their own after US and British combat troops leave Helmand by the end of 2014. But only if they are given the tools for the job.
"If the promises made to the ANA are fulfilled, the Taliban will never regroup," Farouq said. "The only thing we lack here is equipment. We need artillery support.
"We have been promised a mobile strike force of 800 men with up-armour [shaped to deflect road mines] and advanced weaponry. And we need our own aviation, because sometimes our coalition partners are busy."
The accelerating departure of the foreign forces is felt everywhere. There were 21,000 US marines in Helmand at the height of the surge last year. Now there are just 6,500. With the departing troops having taken their helicopters and aircraft with them, moving troops around the province is harder. The exodus of US armoured cars is even more noticeable. The 215th Corps suffered 600 casualties in 2012 – 150 dead and 450 wounded, mostly from roadside bombs, or improvised explosive devices (IEDs) – increasingly the Taliban weapon of choice.
Farouq railed against the lack of capacity of Afghan police, locally recruited forces whose development has lagged far behind the army. As a consequence, the 215th has been stuck providing guards for the main roads instead of fighting the Taliban.
"The ANP [Afghan National Police] has limited capability, so our forces are busy with checkpoints," he said. "The police lack organisation, structure and because it is recruited locally, sometimes it has men available, sometimes not. If the ANP becomes capable and does its job, the ANA can get back to fighting."
Farouq's complaints about the police drew the intervention of his US advisers, who suggested he stick to talking about the army. The Afghan general smiled tightly and took up his tirade once more. As the Americans draw down their forces, their clout is visibly weakening.
The mentoring relationship in Helmand has also been hit hard by the insider attacks. It is a small number compared with the total number of daily interactions, but has had a disproportionate impact on trust, as the machine gun demonstrates.
Afghan attempts to impose stricter vetting of recruits has had mixed results. Brigadier Stuart Skeates, the British deputy commander of the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) in Helmand, believes the problem and its solution may lie deeper.
"Part of the reason why we have had a number of insider attacks, as they're called, is because the soldiers and policemen are susceptible to Taliban messaging; maybe not directly, but they hear stuff on the radio, on the TV," he said. "They hear anecdotes from home. They are susceptible to local mullahs, both at home and here, and are in many cases very suggestible."
Skeates said a British army imam, Asim Hafiz, was leading an effort to counter the Taliban influence among the mullahs but it was a long-term solution, time was short and much hung on the ability of Afghan and foreign troops to trust each other.
The greatest success in Helmand over the past year has been the security of the towns. Even fierce battlegrounds, such as Sangin, are now relatively calm, allowing the return of commerce and the replacement of poppy crops with alternative ones.
Skeates produced a pair of slides showing Sangin town in 2011 and 2012. In the first the circle representing the district centre was largely obscured by coloured dots marking attacks by insurgents. In the second, it was mostly clear.
"We are pushing the violence away from the district centre where the majority of the population live, and that, in a counter-insurgency operation, is incredibly important because if you don't see bombs going off on a regular basis, if you don't hear gunfire near you on a regular basis, your perception is that it is safe. The reality, in fact, is that it is secure," he said.
Across the country, Nato's claim is that 80% of the fighting now takes place in areas where only 20% of the population lives, suggesting that the overwhelming majority of the population is leading a more peaceful life. United Nations data shows that in the first 10 months of 2012 civilian casualties were actually 4% down on the year before – the first time that has happened for a decade. But the rise in the autumn was a source of concern, suggesting the gains are in danger of being eroded.
"The insurgency has also retained its capability to carry out attacks at roughly the same level as last year," the Pentagon report conceded. "Despite the tactical progress of ANSF [Afghan National Security Forces]-Isaf joint operations, the insurgency remains adaptable with a regenerative capacity. It retains the capability to emplace substantial numbers of improvised explosive devices and conduct high-profile attacks."
In Sangin one of the great successes of last year was the election of 33 members of a district community council, the first flowering of local democracy. But within a couple of months four of them had been murdered by the insurgents.
The people went back to the polls to elect replacements but that resilience, and the Afghan army's staying power, will be brutally tested as the Nato troops leave.
Afghanistan sets conditions for Taliban office in Qatar
By Sajad Khaama Press January 2, 2013
Afghan foreign minister Dr. Zalmai Rassoul insisted that the Afghan government will not allow to open a liaison office for the Taliban group in Qatar unless the group is not prepared to sit-in for peace talks.
While speaking among the Afghan lawmakers foreign minister Zalmai Rassoul said negotiations between Afghan and Qatar officials are in progress to sign an agreement in this regard.
He said, “The office for the Taliban group will not be opened unless the Taliban group or its representatives do not announce to start talks with the Afghan government. It will be highly risky if the office is opened and secret talks are hold.”
Mr. Rassoul further added, “The Taliban group is saying that they are not ready to hold talks with the Afghan government. Who are they going to negotiate with? We will face a big issue if they hold talks with the others and we have witnessed it in the past.”
He insisted that the Taliban office in Qatar will be opened for peace talks only and in no case will help the Taliban group to be formally recognized.
“The office will not represent the Taliban group. The office will be used only for talks between Afghan government and Taliban representatives. Afghan government will have the right to close the office at any time if any violations take place”, Zalmai Rassoul said.
He also said that the legal conditions and authorities of the Taliban office members will be specified in the framework of the agreement between Afghanistan and Qatar.
Negotiations over the agreement is in progress between Kabul and Doha, he said adding that, “We should know with whom we are holding talks and it should be clear that the Taliban representatives who are going to visit the Qatar office to which group they belong to.”
He said the Afghan high peace council will have the authority to confirm if the representatives are representing the overall Taliban group or not.
This comes as the Afghan government earlier insisted to open Taliban office in Saudi Arabia or Turkey however talks on Taliban liaison office in Qatar started following direct talks between Washington and Taliban group.
The Afghan government also reacted negatively towards the Taliban liaison office in Qatar but later agreed with the Taliban liaison office.
Afghanistan’s Roadmap to the Past
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace By Sarah Chayes Senior Associate South Asia Program December 31, 2012
A recently disclosed arrangement for ending the war in Afghanistan, reportedly concluded in secret between Afghan and Pakistani officials, would be a sad end to a process that has been driving Afghanistan—at great cost—back to pre-9/11 conditions. Pakistan, after cultivating extremist groups with precisely this objective in view, would regain indirect hegemony over its neighbor. It would also gain a say in the details of the international troop withdrawal.
While the arrangement may seem to provide the sort of “decent interval” many U.S. officials are wishing for as they plan the exit from Afghanistan, and while a number of commentators have hailed the apparent movement on negotiation that has come in its wake, it does not promise a path to stability.
There is every reason to take the “Peace Process Roadmap to 2015” seriously. It tracks with views transmitted to U.S. officials by Pakistani Army Chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and with a pattern of decisionmaking by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, whose staff includes many members of the extremist Hezb-i-Islami faction, and who sent his older brother Qayum to Pakistan to meet with Taliban leaders as early as 2007. More significantly, most of the concrete actions called for under step one in the document, such as cessation of cross-border shelling, release of Taliban prisoners in Pakistan, and a “follow-up meeting” in Turkey scheduled for December 2012, are either underway or completed.
The document’s most remarkable feature is its language. Purportedly recording an agreement between Karzai and Kayani (who calls the shots in Pakistan on these issues), it reflects neither of their writing styles. The English is flawless, and the construction British, with numbered steps formulated in the infinitive: “The negotiating parties to agree on modalities for the inclusion of Taliban and other armed opposition leaders in the power-structure of the state, to include non-elected positions at different levels.”
The first paragraph, “Afghanistan’s Vision by 2015,” reveals close familiarity with similarly titled classified U.S. interagency documents, whose rosy projections it echoes.
“By 2015,” it reads, “Taliban, Hizb-e Islami and other armed groups will have given up armed opposition, transformed from military entities into political groups, and are actively participating in the country’s political and constitutional processes . . . Afghanistan’s political system remains inclusive, democratic, and equitable, where all political actors co-exist and promote their political goals and aspirations peacefully . . . NATO/ISAF forces will have departed from Afghanistan, leaving the ANSF as the only legitimate armed forces.”
Afghan and Pakistani officials may have agreed to these terms, but they clearly had help developing them.
U.S. officials say that Washington was not involved in elaborating the initiative. Given the reduced role it envisages for the United States on critical national security priorities, such as the specifics of troop withdrawal, official American input may well have been limited—which is not to rule out freelance participation by American “advisers.” British officials and back-channel go-betweens have long worked toward this type of solution.
With no autonomous role in the process sketched out, the United States is essentially reduced to helping delist armed extremists and “supporting” (read financing) Afghanistan in the future.
Pakistan, by contrast, gains a preponderant stake. The very first step calls for a “focus on securing the collaboration of Pakistan.” In particular, Pakistan will “facilitate direct contact between the . . . Government of Afghanistan and identified leaders of . . . armed opposition groups.” Formal talks are to be launched with “authorized” Taliban representatives. Authorized by whom? The plan lets Pakistan determine outcomes by choosing the negotiators—and doubtless influencing their negotiating positions.
The negotiations, moreover, are not just aimed at converting armed insurgents into politicians and allowing them to run for office. The document also stipulates their appointment to key non-elective positions—cabinet posts, governorships, or police commands, for example. Afghan observers predict that this provision will result in their country’s Balkanization, with the Taliban effectively exercising autonomous control over much of the south and east.
Such an outcome—which would allow Pakistan to dominate aspects of Afghan public life and critical regions of the country—is what Pakistani military leaders have been working toward since they first began reconstituting the Taliban in late 2002. The effort was clearly visible at the time, as former Taliban congregated in the tightly controlled Pakistani border towns of Quetta and Chaman, opened recruiting offices and training facilities, distributed weapons and motorcycles at madrassas, and, in one case I became aware of in 2003, drove cars bearing military license plates.
The government of Pakistan claims it desires a peaceful Afghanistan. And yet, as U.S. officials have conceded for months, the Pakistani military has not just been turning a blind eye to the development of insurgent groups on its territory, but has taken an active, sometimes fraught, role in helping develop them. The question is, to what end? Why would a rational country foment explosive instability right on its border? Why would officials take the risk that the extremism they help foster might shift its focus—as it has—to them?
The answer has to do with the Pakistani military’s perception of its rivalry with India. The threat—so constantly evoked as to verge on paranoia—is that of Indian encirclement, a too-cozy relationship between Kabul and Delhi that could leave Pakistan trapped in the middle.
It was to forestall such an eventuality that the Pakistani military leadership aimed to regain a degree of the proxy control over Afghanistan it enjoyed in the 1990s via the Taliban regime. Pakistani officials, like their American counterparts, have opined that insurgencies end around negotiating tables. Through the establishment of safe havens for Pakistani-trained terrorists, the active protection of diverse and frequently reconfiguring groups, and intimate links with the insurgent leaders they have assisted and cajoled and intimidated into the fight, Pakistani officers aimed to stoke a conflict that would require a negotiated settlement, and then determine who would do the negotiating and what they would settle for.
The provisions in the “Peace Process Roadmap to 2015” indicate that, ten years on, this approach has succeeded. Should the process it describes go forward, resulting in the re-Talibanization of Afghanistan’s central government and border regions and the return of Afghanistan to roughly its pre-9/11 state, a number of dangerous repercussions will likely ensue.
First, Pakistan will be rewarded for its decision to export extremist violence in pursuit of its national security aims. The perception in Pakistan (and in other countries such as Iran) could be reinforced that the best way to punch above its weight internationally is to use asymmetric violence, be it terrorism or nuclear proliferation.
Second, as history attests, partition is rarely clean or peaceful. Given the exclusion of the Afghan population from the development of this plan, and from the process it establishes, chances are that disenfranchised constituencies opposed to Pakistani domination will eventually take up arms.
Third, Taliban control of southern and eastern Afghanistan, with no international troops on hand, will allow the Pakistani military to push its radicalized proxies, many of which are penetrated by a metastasized al-Qaeda, across the border into Afghanistan. While still able to influence these groups, Pakistan will no longer be held responsible for their actions. Interestingly, the Haqqani network, blamed for some of the most spectacular attacks in Afghanistan, is not mentioned in the document.
Finally, the instability of such a scenario is likely to result in an exodus of refugees into fragile Central Asian states to the north.
Such a conclusion to the war in Afghanistan, while ironic—a dozen years, thousands of lives, and billions of dollars, just to get back to the starting point—was perhaps to be expected. After all, President Karzai was a senior official in the first Taliban regime and the United States has persisted in financing the very insurgents it was fighting, by way of its support to the Pakistani military. If, to cap off these contradictions, U.S. officials choose to go down the path outlined in this so-called roadmap, they would do well to design strategies to mitigate its very clear dangers.
Prince Harry is a ‘jackal’ and kills Afghan civilians: Hekmatyar
By Meena Haseeb Khaama Press January 2, 2013
An Afghan warlord has launched a scathing attack on Prince Harry – describing the Royal as a ‘jackal’ who is only interested in killing ‘innocent Afghans while he is drunk’.
One of the world’s most wanted men has predicted that Afghanistan will collapse into murderous civil war after Nato troops withdraw in 2014 – and expressed his determination to kill more British troops “so they could never make the mistake of coming again to this region.”
The warlord’s comments came in an exclusive interview with The Telegraph from his mountain base, believed to be close to the Afghan/Pakistan border. Speaking into a camera, Hekmatyar answered questions sent to him via courier.
Hekmatyar quoted by the Telegraph said, “The British Prince wants to hunt down mujahideen (fighters) with his helicopter rockets without any shame. “But he does not understand the hunting of Afghan lions and eagles is not that easy. Jackals cannot hunt lions.”
The Prince is currently on a four month long deployment to Afghanistan serving his second tour of duty as gunship co-pilot.
The warlord also referred to the failed Taliban raid on the Royal’s Camp Bastion military base in September.
He claimed, “The Prince saw that he was the one about to be hunted and was searching for a hole in which to hide himself.”
In the meantime Gulbuddin Hekmatyar said his Hizb-i-Islamia party was prepared to fight in the 2014 presidential elections, which will precede the final withdrawal of British and American troops from Afghanistan.
He also insisted on a “peaceful transition” from the present Afghan government to a new administration based on “free and fair elections.”
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is the leader of part of the insurgency in Afghanistan. One of the most brutal of the country’s former resistance fighters, his forces have battle American, NATO and Afghan forces in the north and northeast of the country.
Though the insurgent group, Hezb-i-Islami, or Islamic Party, operates under a separate command from the Taliban, it has links to the Taliban leadership and Al Qaeda and has fought on a common front against foreign forces in Afghanistan.
Britain - and Prince Harry - are failing in Afghanistan, says warlord
One of Afghanistan's most feared and wanted warlords has warned that the country could collapse into a murderous civil war after the withdrawal of Nato troops next year.
Telegraph.co.uk By Peter Oborne, Abdur Rauf Yousufzai 01 Jan 2013
In the bleakest assessment yet of Afghanistan's future, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar called for a "peaceful transition of the government" to democracy. But, in a wide-ranging interview arranged with The Daily Telegraph, he added that he feared a descent into chaos and anarchy similar to that which followed the withdrawal of the Russians in the 1980s.
Hekmatyar, a veteran of that bloody war, warned: "Today the scenario of Afghanistan is exactly like that of one year before the withdrawal of Soviet Union. The Americans and their allies are tired of fighting. They can neither bear the casualties nor the expenses of this war any more. They are left with no other option except withdrawal."
This brutally realistic analysis of the military situation will be sharply challenged by David Cameron, who issued a sunnily optimistic message when he visited British troops just before Christmas.
Yet it cannot be ignored since it comes from one of just a handful of Afghan warlords who, through his Hezb-e-Islami political party, holds the key to peace in Afghanistan after coalition forces are due to withdraw in less than two years' time.
Hekmatyar has spent most of the past 11 years on the run. He is thought to have played a role in helping Osama bin Laden escape from the Tora Bora mountains after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. In 2003 he was designated a "global terrorist" by the United States, and has been labelled a "war criminal" by President Hamid Karzai's government in Kabul.
He has survived an assassination attempt by the CIA, and is believed to have masterminded some of the bloodiest attacks against American and British forces over the past few years. Today his exact whereabouts are unknown, though he is believed to be based in the mountains of south-eastern Afghanistan.
The Daily Telegraph's interview could not be carried out face-to-face. Instead, a series of questions were dispatched through an intermediary, and the answers, recorded on video tape, were returned within three weeks. The video shows that Hekmatyar, a veteran of 40 years of Afghan warfare and intrigue, now sports a white beard, though he retains his trademark black turban.
He gave answers to all of the questions sent to him. When asked what he believes will follow when combat troops pull out in 2014 his answer was both terrifying and encouraging: "The fact is that the government has failed. The authorities have lost heir credibility completely. They have fallen victims to severe internal disputes and seem hopeless and worried.
"The foreign forces have failed and the situation is worsening by the day. We might face a dreadful situation after 2014 which no one could have anticipated."
But this dire assessment was accompanied by a warm language about the democratic future of Afghanistan.
Indeed Hekmatyar sounded more like a UN election observer than a feared warlord who as prime minister of Afghanistan in the 1980s was responsible for the murderous shelling of Kabul. He called for a 'peaceful transition of the government' and demanded a 'free and fair election,' saying that the winner of a majority of the votes should 'be accepted by all.'
He added that Hezb-e-Islami was ready to take part in the 2014 presidential elections, though he set out two conditions: 'complete withdrawal of all foreign forces and elections in which all parties are equally represented. If these conditions are accepted, then we are ready to take part in the election.'
Strikingly Hekmatyar has dropped a great deal of the fanatical Islamist language for which he was notorious as a young leader. There were no calls for jihad against godless infidels.
Rather he presented himself as a leader of the national resistance against foreign oppressors. When asked whether he supported the Pakistan Taliban strategy of blocking girls' education, Hekmatyar was outraged: 'We are against the blowing up of schools and other institutions not only in Afghanistan and Pakistan but elsewhere in the world. I don't think that a devoted majahid could be involved in such things.'
Hekmatyar denied any links with the Pakistan Taliban, and accused foreign intelligence agencies of being involved in attacks on schools and other atrocities.
Indeed he insisted that Hezb-e-Islami 'consider education is as necessary for girls as it is for boys. We don't discriminate in this regard. The only thing that we are against is boys and girls being taught together. We think that is harmful from any perspective."
He mocked the Afghan National Army, upon which Coalition hopes depend for a peaceful future for Afghanistan, declaring that 'it is not a national army. It is made by the hands of others. The soldiers of Northern Alliance have worn American uniform. The basic aim behind making of this army was to use it against freedom fighters and freedom seekers.'
Hekmatyar reserved his most eloquent vitriol, however, for Britain, portraying British troops as lackeys of the Americans and describing Prince Harry, currently serving as a helicopter pilot with British troops in Helmand province, as a 'jackal'. Hekmatyar declared that "The British prince comes to Afghanistan to kill innocent Afghans while he is drunk. He wants to hunt down Mujaheddin with his helicopter rockets without any shame.
'But he does not understand this simple fact that the hunting of Afghan lions and eagles is not that easy! Jackals cannot hunt lions. During the Mujaheddin attack on the American base the Prince saw that he was the one about to be hunted and was searching for a hole in which to hide himself.
'It seems that some British authorities still dream about the times of the eighteenth and nineteenth century and they want their ambassador to be treated like a viceroy and their prince to go out in uniform to hunt for human beings and play the satanic role that they used to play in the past.' But Britain's historic role in creating such conflicts is now finished, adds Hekmatyar: 'The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have proved that Britain has to go and take part instead in proxy wars – and this is what she cannot afford even for a short space of time. The fact is that America and her allies have lost the right to rule and lead the world both administratively and morally.'
Hekmatyar insisted that British troops had achieved nothing.
Britain dragged herself into this unjustified, useless but cruel conflict to please the White House. The British did not gain anything instead they lost blood and treasure.
They never had a positive role in Afghan affairs and they will not have any significance after 2014.
I do not understand how the British public accept their children being sent to certain death in order to please American generals".
Speaking before David Cameron's announcement of further cuts in Britain's military presence in Afghanistan, he offered to facilitate an early departure of Nato forces, saying that 'if they want a respectful exit, we can help them in this regard.'
But behind these rhetorical blasts against the British and the Americans lurks an apparent readiness to play a creative role in the creation of a peaceful Afghanistan in the future. Hekmatyar concluded with a ten policy statement for his Hezb-e-Islami political party in which he called on 'all the stakeholders within Afghanistan to join hands for a workable solution for Afghanistan and resolve disputes without the involvement or influence of foreign forces.'
Watch the video of Hekmatyar's brutal analysis of Afghanistan
telegraph.co.uk/world
Afghan-US Pact Ensures Future Security: Sediqi
TOLOnews.com By Abdul Wali Arian Tuesday, 01 January 2013
The Afghan-US bilateral security agreement is vital for the future of Afghanistan and can help protect the country from insurgency and terrorism, Afghan Ministry of Interior (MoI) said Tuesday.
Speaking to TOLOnews, MoI spokesman Sediq Sediqi said that the pact would be effective in training and equipping the Afghan security forces and helping enhance security in the country.
"International support will be effective in capacity building in the Afghan security forces and in [safeguarding] the future of the country, particularly in the war against insurgency in the region," Sediqi said.
Even Senator Fazel Hadi Muslimyar, who is among the handful of lawmakers critical of the bilateral security agreement, still believes that it will be important in helping Afghanistan counter the neighbors' influence.
"I have a negative opinion about this pact, but it's important for the current situation of the country and for preventing the intervention of Iran and Pakistan," Muslimyar said.
Afghan analysts are also generally positive about the pact. Political analyst Jawid Kohistani believes that the pact could help enhance intelligence cooperation between Afghan and US forces.
"The security pact will provide better opportunities for training and equipping of the Afghan security forces and will be effective in intelligence sharing," Kohistani said.
Legal immunity for US soldiers is the main point of conflict between Afghan and US officials who are currently negotiating the pact. President Karzai, who will travel to Washington next week, is expected to discuss the matter with President Obama.
Afghan negotiator welcomes release of Taliban prisoners
Associated Press By Amir Shah and Denis D. Gray Tuesday, January 1, 2013
KABUL, Afghanistan - A top Afghan negotiator said Tuesday he hopes eight Taliban members freed by Pakistan will serve as peace mediators, describing Islamabad’s move as a major step forward for Kabul’s effort to enlist its neighbor’s help in negotiating an end to its 11-year war.
The eight released Monday include the Taliban’s justice minister when the militants ruled Afghanistan before their 2001 overthrow, as well as a onetime guard of Taliban leader Mullah Omar. It was the second group of prisoners released by Pakistan.
Although both sides describe the deal as a step toward peace, much about the release remains unclear. Kabul has lobbied hard for Pakistan to release some Taliban prisoners as a step toward talks, but Afghanistan simultaneously presses Islamabad to crack down on militants using its territory. It has not said what, if anything, this particular group might bring to the table.
Islamabad, for its part, has never said why it arrested the eight in the first place. Neither side has said where this batch of freed prisoners and a previous group of 18 released in November have gone, or what they will be doing. Another 100 prisoners are believed to remain in Pakistani custody.
In Kabul, the spokesman for President Hamid Karzai said the Afghan leader would discuss the peace negotiations with President Obama. Mr. Karzai departs for Washington early next week.
Mr. Karzai also will bring up the ongoing handover of security from NATO to Afghan forces, the training and equipping of the forces, and the shape of a U.S.-Afghan agreement after Washington withdraws most of its troops, spokesman Aimal Faizi told a news conference. NATO plans to hand security responsibility over to Afghan forces by the end of 2014.
The spokesman welcomed the prisoner release but gave no details.
Ismail Qasemyar, a senior member of the AfghanHigh Peace Council, called their release a positive step in the peace process and hoped more releases would follow. It was not known whether the eight actually favored negotiations, but Mr. Qasemyar said it was hoped they would act as intermediaries between the Taliban leadership and the Kabul government.
“This is a big victory from our trip to Pakistan for peace negotiations. This is a good, practical step toward peace from Pakistan,” said Mr. Qasemyar, the council’s international affairs adviser and a key member of a delegation that traveled to Pakistan in November.
Pakistan is seen as key in ending the conflict. Kabul hopes the Taliban can be brought to the negotiating table before the 2014 foreign troop withdrawal.
But Pakistan’s role is mixed. While Pakistan has arrested AfghanTaliban members, usually under pressure from Washington, its powerful military intelligence service also has afforded sanctuary and support for the militants.
Recently, Pakistan appears to have an interest in promoting a negotiated solution to the war across the border, as a post-2014 upheaval could bring harsh consequences, including another surge of refugees into the country.
Pakistan has longstanding ties to the Taliban, in part for geopolitical reasons. It fears that not having some control of who is or might one day be in power in Afghanistan could leave a vacuum which its archenemy, India, could fill.
Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry said the eight detainees were released to aid the peace process and included ex-Justice Minister Nooruddin Turabi and guard Mohammad Azeem. It was not known what role they might play in bringing the Taliban leaders to the negotiating table, what links they have to the group’s current leadership or their stance on negotiations.
During Taliban rule, the one-legged, one-eyed Mr. Turabi was considered among the hard-liners in the regime, charged with dispensing harsh justice for even minor offenses against the group’s draconian policies.
Today, Taliban leaders are believed to be split on the question of talks, with some favoring negotiations and others opting for continuing the war.
Waheed Mazhda, a political analyst and former Taliban member, said that Pakistan is playing a double game with Kabul, pretending to support negotiations but releasing the Taliban prisoners to please the Pakistan’s branch of the Taliban, not Kabul. The Pakistan government, he says, does not want its homegrown militants to disrupt upcoming elections.
“Where are they? What are they doing right now?” he said, referring to the 18 already released. He said that he did not believe those released favored negotiations.
The Afghan peace process has made little headway since it began several years ago, riddled by mistrust among the major players, including the United States.
• Associated Press writers Kathy Gannon, Rebecca Santana and Zarar Khan in Islamabad and Rahim Faiez in Kabul contributed to this article.
Bleak humanitarian outlook for 2013
DUBAI, 2 January 2013 (IRIN) - More violence and a worsening humanitarian situation are likely in Afghanistan in 2013, say aid agencies.
“The worsening conflict trends over the last five years indicate that civilians will continue to suffer because of armed violence and that the humanitarian situation will deteriorate,” says the new Common Humanitarian Action Plan (CHAP) for 2013, published by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
The report brings together the major humanitarian challenges facing the country in 2013, a year that will see the continued withdrawal of international forces: Afghan security forces will take control of three-quarters of the country by June.
Afghanistan has some of the worst humanitarian indicators in the world - 34 percent of the population are food insecure and 10 percent of children die before they start primary school.
With many Afghans lacking access to rudimentary government services like basic education, water, primary health services and housing, the humanitarian community is requesting US$471 million to cover the cost of projects in 2013.
Many analysts think the steady withdrawal of international forces in 2013, ahead of full withdrawal in 2014, will lead to an upsurge in violence as anti-government forces capitalize on their stronger position vis-à-vis national security forces.
The strength of these national forces is disputed. Some analysts saw “significant improvements within the Afghan military” in 2012, while the CHAP points to high levels of desertion and low levels of re-enlistment, meaning that a third of the Afghan force needs replacing each year.
While civilian deaths and injuries declined by 4 percent in the first 10 months of 2012 compared to the same period in 2011, according to the UN Assistant Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA), targeted attacks on civilians by anti-government forces increased by 53 percent in the first half of 2012, and overall, violence in 2012 has spread increasingly beyond southern and eastern areas.
Over the last few years the space for humanitarian work has reduced, especially as anti-government forces have radicalized and fragmented: aid workers say air transport is frequently the only safe way to reach remote areas.
However, the international pullout may also provide opportunities for more independent aid work and greater differentiation from the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs), which operate closely with the government and military.
Aid groups increasingly have to work in areas where the Taliban and other non-government actors operate, making perceived neutrality crucial.
Many international organizations opt to manage projects from Kabul and work through local NGOs, says a recent report by the Overseas Development Institute.
“The privileged humanitarian access enjoyed by national NGOs should be more fully exploited,” Suzanne Murray-Jones, senior adviser with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Afghanistan, told IRIN, saying that they often need capacity-building and adequate funding to do the job.
To ensure that humanitarian work is carried out in the provinces with the greatest need, the 2013 CHAP plan introduces a ranking of provinces by assessed humanitarian need, to avoid aid being directed at areas that are either easy to reach or politically important.
Natural disasters
If humanitarian challenges in 2013 were limited to conflict, they would be serious enough. But Afghanistan is also frequently a victim of natural disasters, which on average affect around a quarter of a million Afghans each year.
Harsh winters, deadly avalanches, earthquakes, landslides, droughts and floods leave nearly half of Afghanistan’s districts hazard-prone.
The last 12 months saw a good wheat harvest but with droughts in eight out of the last 11 years, a poor harvest looks probable in the coming year, according to the CHAP 2013 report.
Oxfam’s Afghanistan associate country director Kate O'Rourke says years of conflict have worn down people’s coping mechanisms: “Investing in projects designed to reduce the impact of disasters and improve people's resilience and their ability to deal with crises when they do occur is key. Only then will Afghans who are at risk be better prepared and able to cope, instead of being affected by reoccurring humanitarian `spot fires' that they are constantly trying to recover from, as they are now."
Economic pressure
Economic growth has been around 7 percent over the last few years, but opportunities remain few and the private sector is hamstrung by the lack of a reliable electricity supply.
While large mining projects are being planned, the aid effort and the tens of thousands of international troops that make up a key part of the economy are set to reduce in size in the coming years.
“Afghanistan is entering a very challenging period that will likely be characterized by growing economic vulnerability resulting from a reduction in international assistance and the pullout of most international forces that is expected to translate into significant economic contraction and job losses,” said Mark Bowden, the humanitarian coordinator for Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is the world’s most aid-dependent country, with aid worth around $15.7 billion per year, roughly the same as the national GDP. The World Bank estimates that 6-10 percent of the population have worked in aid-financed employment.
Displacement
Four decades of conflict in Afghanistan have been one of the key drivers of displacement, creating substantial refugee populations requiring support.
Around 2.7 million Afghans live in Pakistan and Iran, while within the country, 450,000 people are displaced; 34 percent of them newly displaced in the first three-quarters of 2012.
Meanwhile, UNHCR say nearly six million refugees have returned to Afghanistan in the last decade, something that has put considerable pressure on the economy and services.
“Many are being perceived as not having reached parity with other members of the communities in which they are living, and there is a possibility of additional unplanned, large-scale return,” said Murray-Jones at UNHCR.
Funding
To manage these needs in 2013, the humanitarian community is requesting $471 million, an increase on 2012 when the Consolidated Appeals Process (CAP) was $448 million.
In a sign of donor fatigue and the pressure on leading donor country budgets due to the global economic slowdown, humanitarian funding dropped by around half in 2012.
Afghanistan was the fourth-least funded humanitarian crisis, as a percentage, among the 22 global appeals, although at least $270 million in aid is provided annually outside the CAP funding mechanism.
Afghan-ISAF forces detain 4 Taliban local leaders in 2 days
KABUL, Jan. 2 (Xinhua) -- Units of Afghan and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) during series of combined operations across the militancy-plagued Afghanistan have arrested four local Taliban leaders over the past two days, the alliance contended.
Since January 1, the security forces in joint operations against Taliban militants have captured two local Taliban leaders in their former stronghold Kandahar 450 km south of Afghan capital Kabul, according to ISAF statement.
"An Afghan and coalition security force arrested a Taliban leader in Shah Wali Kot district, Kandahar province, today," an ISAF statement released here Wednesday asserted.
Without revealing the name of the captured man, the statement added that "the leader provided weapons and ammunition to insurgent fighters in central Arghandab and southwest Shah Wali Kot districts, and planned and coordinated improvised explosive device (IED) attacks targeting Afghan and coalition forces."
The statement also contended that, an Afghan and coalition security force arrested a Taliban leader in Panjwa'i district, Kandahar province on Tuesday.
The arrested leader had directed several improvised explosive device operations in Zharay and Panjwa'i districts. He also provided supplies, weapons and ammunition to insurgents for attacks against Afghan and coalition forces throughout Kandahar province, the statement said.
Another militants' local leader was also detained by Afghan and NATO-led coalition forces during joint operations in Logar's provincial capital Pul-e-Alam 60 km south of Kabul on Wednesday.
"In Pul-e' Alam district, Logar province, today, an Afghan and coalition security force arrested a member of the Haqqani network who planned and executed attacks against Afghan government officials as well as Afghan and coalition forces," ISAF statement released Wednesday said.
He was also responsible for the transportations of weapons and provided funds to Haqqani fighters operating in Pul-e' Alam district, the statement added.
Haqqani network is the military wing of Taliban militants operating in the capital city Kabul and eastern Afghan provinces along the border with Pakistan's tribal areas.
The alliance also arrested a local Taliban leader in Khanabad district of Kunduz province 250 km north of Kabul on Tuesday.
"An Afghan and coalition security force arrested a Taliban leader in Khanabad district, Kunduz province, Tuesday," an ISAF statement released here Tuesday asserted.
The arrested local leader according to the statement had organized insurgent fighters and procured improvised explosive devices for attacks against Afghan and coalition forces in the district.
Meantime, Taliban outfit in a counter-claim insisted its fighters have killed several of Afghan and foreign soldiers over the past two days. The outfit in its website claimed killing 10 soldiers in the eastern Laghman province on Tuesday, the first day of January, a claim rebuffed by officials as groundless.
It is difficult to verify the claims by independent sources since the warring sides in Afghanistan exaggerate the casualties of rivals.
Afghan Prisoner Accused Of Killing Wife During Conjugal Visit
By Bashir Ahmad Ghazali and Frud Bezhan January 2, 2013 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
SAMANGAN, AFGHANISTAN -- An Afghan prisoner serving 20 years for murdering his in-laws is now suspected of strangling his young bride during a conjugal visit.
Din Mohammad, who is serving his sentence at a prison in northern Samangan Province, is accused by police of killing his wife when she visited him on January 1. Mohammad was convicted in 2009 of killing his mother-in-law, brother-in-law, and sister-in-law during a bloody rampage.
Mohammad has yet to be charged for the latest crime.
Samangan police chief Akram Bikzad said Mohammad’s 18-year-old wife, whose name has not been revealed, visited him in jail in the provincial capital, Aybak. She was found dead in a private room used by inmates to visit close family members.
According to Bikzad, preliminary reports indicate that Mohammad strangled and then hanged his wife, with whom he had a young son. Bikzad indicated that the killing occurred just days after Mohammad had been told his spouse was involved in an adulterous relationship.
"His wife used to visit him every five days or so," he said. "Recently, [Mohammad’s] mother told him that his wife was having an illicit affair. So, during her visit to the prison -- family are allowed to visit for about one hour at a time -- Mohammad took the opportunity to strangle her."
Mohammad's mother, whose name has not been released, was detained late on January 1 as she attempted to leave the city, according to the police chief, and is being held for questioning.
Facing Execution
Bikzad described Mohammad's 20-year sentence for killing three of his wife’s family members as "lenient" and predicted he would receive a death sentence if found guilty of strangling his wife.
Najia Aimak, a women's rights activist and member of parliament from northern Baghlan Province, has condemned the killing and called for Mohammad to face execution.
"When this person [Mohammad] murdered three people three years ago authorities didn't take make a just conviction," she said. "[This punishment] allowed him to kill again. We hope judicial officials take on this case and bring the perpetrator to justice."
Capital punishment is legal in Afghanistan and applied for a variety of crimes, including murder, terrorism, adultery, drug trafficking, and treason.
A death sentence for murder, however, is uncommon. Most offenders receive jail sentences. But with no standard punishment for murder, sentences can vary with each case.
Honor Killings
The case comes amid an increase in so-called honor killings, the murder of women for allegedly dishonoring the family in some way, such as committing adultery.
The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission recorded 4,010 cases of violence against women in the seven months between March and October this year -- nearly twice as many as in the previous 12 months.
The commission lists beatings and mutilation as the most common forms of violence, while noting the spike in honor killings.
In December, the United Nations noted some progress in protecting women and girls from violence, but warned that Afghanistan "still has a long way to go."
In its report issued December 11, the UN's mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said positive steps had been taken toward applying 2009 legislation that criminalizes violence against women. But it said the laws are still only periodically enforced, with only a small percentage of reported incidents duly processed and resulting in convictions.
According to Aimak, Afghan women who have suffered from violence rarely receive justice.
Even if their cases go to trial, she said, the majority result in the acquittal of the perpetrators, the dropping of charges to less serious crimes, convictions with shorter sentences, or the female victims themselves being accused of "moral crimes" for making private matters public.
Written by Frud Bezhan, based on reporting by Radio Free Afghanistan correspondent Bashir Ahmad Ghazali
Pakistani Shelling in Kunar Kills Woman, Injures Children
TOLOnews.com Tuesday, 01 January 2013
A woman was killed and three children injured in cross-border Pakistani shelling in the Sarkano district of the eastern Kunar province Monday afternoon, local officials said.
Twelve rockets were launched yesterday afternoon, one of which hit a house, Provincial Governor Sayed Fazlullah Wahidi told TOLOnews.
"All the victims were members of one family," he said.
Governor Wahidi also cited district residents who said the Pakistani military had entered Afghan territory to target Pakistani Taliban.
"When I talked to the residents of Sarkano, they told me that the Pakistani military had launched a military operation near the [Afghan] border and started clashing with Pakistani Taliban in the area," he said.
Cross-border shelling from Pakistan and reported occasional Afghan retaliation last year dramatically increased diplomatic tensions between the two countries.
Exports of Dried Fruits Decline: Officials
TOLOnews.com By Shahla Murtazaie Tuesday, 01 January 2013
Exports of Afghan dried fruits have decreased by about 200 tonnes since last year, Afghan Raisins, Fruits and Vegetables Export Promotion Agency said Tuesday.
The Agency said that some businesses export locally grown low-quality fruit or foreign-produced dried fruits, damaging the Afghan brand. Membership of the Agency is optional, so many exporters do not abide by export-quality product standards.
"Optional membership has a negative effect on Afghanistan's exports because lots of low-quality and foreign fruits have been exported as products of Afghanistan," said Agency head Sayed Azim Mostafa.
Mostafa asked the Afghan Chamber of Commerce and Industries and the Afghan Customs Department to enforce quality standards so that sub-standard products are not exported.
Afghan dried fruits are exported to 43 countries in Asia, Europe and America, according to the Agency.
Government Should Name Land Grabbers: Lawmakers
TOLOnews.com By Sharif Amiry Tuesday, 01 January 2013
Afghan lawmakers on Tuesday asked the government to reveal the names of those involved in land-grabbing and take necessary steps to prevent more cases of land-grabbing.
Land-grabbing is a major issue for the Afghan government as a large number of the high-ranking officials and lawmakers are involved in illegally or forcefully occupying land that otherwise belongs to the public.
"The names of the land-grabbers should be revealed. Their political positions should not prevent this," Daikundi MP Mohammad Noor Akbari said.
Lawmakers also criticized the government for failing to prevent the phenomenon.
"The Afghan government has not taken the necessary steps in this regard. It should be taken seriously," Kabul MP Sayed Ali Kazimi said.
Meanwhile, Senator Hedayatullah Rehahi accused some lawmakers themselves of being involved in the crime.
"Some of the lawmakers are also involved in land-grabbing, but the government is not taking it seriously," Rahahi said.
The Afghan Attorney General has accused high-ranking government officials, Jihadi leaders and members of parliament of land-grabbing.
It has refused to name those accused and is yet to make a high-level prosecution in connection with the crime.
Karzai Meets French Defence Minister
TOLOnews.com Tuesday, 01 January 2013
President Karzai met the visiting French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian on Monday in Kabul and discussed the security situation in Afghanistan.
The officials also discussed the peace process and relations between the two countries after 2014, the President's Office said in a statement late Monday.
The French defence minister is also scheduled to meet the non-combat French troops in Afghanistan for New Year's.
Le Drian's visit comes as the last batch of 200 French combat forces left Afghanistan last month, a full two years before Isaf's combat mission is scheduled to end.
France has around 1,500 soldiers left in Afghanistan, the vast majority in Kabul. They are due to stay into 2013 to take responsibility for repatriating equipment and training the Afghan army.
Kabul Officials in Face-to-Face Meeting with Taleban
Paris conference latest attempt to talk about talking peace.
IWPR By Mina Habib, Hafizullah Gardesh 1 Jan 13
Afghanistan - It may not have amounted to formal peace talks, but a two-day meeting outside Paris last month at which Taleban representatives joined other Afghan players was a rare opportunity for bitter enemies to present their positions in a neutral setting.
The December 20-21 conference was the third such event arranged by the French Foundation for Strategic Research, but the first one to be attended by representatives of insurgent groups – the Taleban and the smaller Hezb-i Islami. The 20 participants also included officials from the Kabul government and members of opposition political parties in Afghanistan.
Speaking on December 16, France's foreign minister Laurent Fabius made it clear the event was intended to generate discussion, but not negotiations.
President Hamed Karzai expressed support for the meeting, saying he backed any forum for discussion with the insurgents.
The conference came amid renewed efforts to bring militant groups to the negotiating table. The Afghan government’s High Peace Council travelled to Islamabad in November to secure the release of potential interlocutors held in Pakistani prisons, and the United Nations Security Council has lifted travel sanctions for Taleban members taking part in peace talks. (See Afghans Unimpressed by Pakistan Talks.) The UN office in Afghanistan recently announced it would be holding a conference to which the insurgents would be invited. Meanwhile, a Taleban office in Qatar is intended to serve as a contact point for a separate talks process, and Turkey and Iran have also offered their services.
The semi-secretive nature of the French meeting meant that little emerged about what was discussed. It was clear, however, that few concessions were on offer. The Taleban envoys restated their position that neither the Afghan constitution nor the Kabul government were legitimate, and they had no plans to negotiate with the latter now or in the future.
Nevertheless, back in Kabul, the High Peace Council expressed hope that the Taleban would enter direct negotiations with it.
Council representative Ismail Qasemyar said the conference was helpful in that it helped familiarise each side with others’ positions, but in the end, substantive talks needed to exclude foreign influence.
"We are not optimistic about conferences that are not [solely] between Afghans,” he said, in an indirect reference to the French-sponsored event.
Part of the various peace efforts undertaken to date has involved identifying “moderate Taleban” who might be more amenable to a deal than others. But the delegates to the Paris conference appeared as resolutely opposed to compromise as ever.
Qasemyar hinted at a degree of flexibility behind the bluster, saying, "There are certain things we can’t talk about. The Taleban's remarks at the conference were aimed purely at an international audience. The real position is quite different."
By contrast, Satar Saadat, a political analyst in Kabul, believes the Taleban leadership is in a real quandary about how to proceed and where it can make compromises acceptable to its own followers.
“For the last 11 years, Taleban leaders have motivated their forces to carry on the fight by saying the country is under attack, its government is not Islamic, and God's religion is under threat,” he said. “While the war is framed in terms of religion, it also highly personalised because the Taleban ranks include people who have lost family members.
“If foreign forces are still based in Afghanistan, the constitution remains unchanged and the movement has no substantial guarantees inside or outside the country, how can its leaders convince the rank-and-file? This will split the Taleban."
Others take a more cynical view of the insurgents’ ability to make peace, regarding them as merely an instrument of Pakistan’s intelligence service.
"Although the Taleban are tired of fighting and want to end the war, they are controlled by the intelligence services of neighbouring countries. They have no independent political will and cannot do anything without their say-so,” Moin Marastial of the Rights and Justice Party said.
Saadat said there were too many external factors at play, with various states protecting their own interests in Afghanistan and countering the influence of others.
In this context, the Paris conference also had to be viewed as partial, he said, since the French government had historically backed Jamiat-e Islami, a northern, Tajik-dominated faction and the broader Shura-ye Nazari, sometimes known as the Northern Alliance.
"The French now realise that the Taleban will be have a stronger role in a future Afghanistan, so they are trying to broker some kind of peace between the Taleban and Jamiat-e Islami and Shura-ye Nazar, so that the rights and position of these latter groups are given consideration in any future equation," Saadat said.
Hamidullah, a university student in Kabul, agreed that outside interference was a chronic problem.
"All of the political and factional groups engaged in 30 years of war in Afghanistan have been controlled by outsiders. They are not independent – the Taleban are in Pakistan’s hands; the National Front, National Coalition and some other political parties are controlled by Iran and Russia; and the government is under United States control,” he said. “What are we to expect from these groups...? No negotiations, no conference will have any outcome unless the foreign masters of these groups reach agreement."
Marastial suggested that the 2014 deadline for withdrawing foreign troops from Afghanistan might be helpful in that it might focus minds on a long-term solution rather than short-term advantage.
"In addition to economic and political goals, the countries now trying to prepare the ground for talks with the Taleban also want a part in Afghanistan’s future, and a share of the credit if a negotiated peace is reached in Afghanistan,” he said.
Mina Habib is an IWPR-trained reporter in Kabul. Hafizullah Gardesh is IWPR's Afghanistan editor.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
New York Times By THOM SHANKER January 1, 2013
WASHINGTON - The young president who ascended to office as a change agent decides to end the costly and unpopular war in Afghanistan. He seeks an exit with honor by pledging long-term financial support to allies in Kabul, while urging reconciliation with the insurgency. But some senior advisers lobby for a deliberately slow withdrawal, and propose leaving thousands of troops behind to train and support Afghan security forces.
This is a nearly exact description of the endgame conundrum facing President Obama as he prepares for a critical visit by Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, planned for early January.
But the account is actually drawn from declassified Soviet archives describing Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s closed-door struggles with his Politburo and army chiefs to end the Kremlin’s intervention in Afghanistan — one that began with a commando raid, coup and modest goals during Christmas week of 1979 but became, after a decade, what Mr. Gorbachev derided as “a bleeding wound.”
What mostly is remembered about the withdrawal is the Soviet Union’s humiliation, and the ensuing factional bloodletting across Afghanistan that threw the country into a vicious civil war. It ended with Taliban control and the establishment of a safe haven for Al Qaeda before the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
But scholars who have studied the Soviet archives point out another lesson for the Obama administration as it manages the pullout of American and allied combat forces from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
“The main thing the Soviets did right was that they continued large-scale military assistance to the regime they left behind after the final withdrawal in ’89,” said Mark N. Katz, a professor at George Mason University and author of “Leaving Without Losing: The War on Terror After Iraq and Afghanistan” (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012).
“As long as the Afghan regime received the money and the weapons, they did pretty well — and held on to power for three years,” Mr. Katz said. The combat effectiveness of Kabul’s security forces increased after the Soviet withdrawal, when the fight for survival become wholly their own.
But then the Soviet Union dissolved in December 1991, and the new Russian leader, Boris N. Yeltsin, heeded urgings of the United States and other Western powers to halt aid to the Communist leadership in Afghanistan, not just arms and money, but also food and fuel. The Kremlin-backed government in Kabul fell three months later.
To be sure, there are significant contrasts between the two interventions in Afghanistan. The Soviet invasion and occupation were condemned as illegal aggression, while the American one was embraced by the international community, including Russia, as a “just war,” one with limited goals of routing the Taliban and eliminating Al Qaeda. That war of necessity has since evolved into a war of choice, one the Obama administration is working to end as quickly as is feasible.
Despite the differences going in, both the Soviet Union and the United States soon learned that Afghanistan is a land where foreigners aspiring to create nations in their image must combat not just the Taliban but tribalism, orthodoxy, corruption and a medieval view of women. As well, Pakistan has had interests at odds with those of the neighboring government in Afghanistan, whether Kabul was an ally of Moscow or of Washington.
“The Soviet Union did not understand religious and ethnic factors sufficiently, and overestimated the capacity of Afghan society to move very fast toward a modern era, in this case socialism,” said Svetlana Savranskaya, director of Russian programs at the National Security Archive, an independent research center at George Washington University.
“Here I see similarities with the approach of the United States, especially with all the discussion about trying to leave behind an Afghanistan that is democratic and respects the rights of women, ideas that simply are not accepted across the broad society there,” said Ms. Savranskaya, who has written extensively on the Soviet archives.
If the Soviet experience offers any guidance to the current American withdrawal, she said, it would be to accelerate the departure of foreign combat forces — but to leave in their place a “sustained, multiyear international involvement in military training, education and civilian infrastructure projects, and maybe not focusing on building democracy as much as improving the lives of the common people.”
And she noted that the United States should already be seeking partnership with Afghan leaders beyond Mr. Karzai, who is viewed across large parts of the population as tainted by his association with the Americans.
Pentagon officials have signaled that they are hoping for an enduring military presence of 10,000 or more troops, but may have to accept fewer, to cement the progress of the years of fighting. Those troops would focus on training and supporting Afghan forces along with a counterterrorism contingent to hunt Qaeda and insurgent leaders.
In a parallel, one of Mr. Gorbachev’s closest early confidants, Eduard A. Shevardnadze, the foreign minister, advocated a slow withdrawal pace — and pressed for 10,000 to 15,000 Soviet troops to remain to support the Communist government. The Soviets left only 300 advisers.
But after losing more than 15,000 Soviet troops and billions of rubles, the Kremlin knew it had to somehow justify the invasion and occupation upon withdrawal.
Mr. Gorbachev had “to face up to a difficult problem of domestic politics which has puzzled other nations finding themselves in similar circumstances,” Rodric Braithwaite, a former British ambassador to Moscow, wrote in “Afgantsy” (Oxford University Press, 2011), his book on the Soviet intervention based on Communist Party documents.
“How could the Russians withdraw their army safely, with honor, without looking as if they were simply cutting and running, and without appearing to betray their Afghan allies or their own soldiers who had died?” Mr. Braithwaite wrote of the internal Kremlin debate, in terms resonant of the Americans’ conundrum today.
Around the time of the Soviet withdrawal, an article by Pravda, the Communist Party mouthpiece, clutched for a positive view as the Soviet Army pulled out. Read today, it bears a resemblance to the news releases churned out by the Pentagon detailing statistics on reconstruction assistance.
“Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan repaired, rebuilt and constructed hundreds of schools, technical colleges, over 30 hospitals and a similar number of nursery schools, some 400 apartment buildings and 35 mosques,” the article said. “They sank dozens of wells and dug nearly 150 kilometers of irrigation ditches and canals. They were also engaged in guarding military and civilian installations in trouble.”
The Kremlin had learned that its armies could not capture political success, but Soviet commanders made the same claims upon withdrawal that are heard from NATO officers today: not a single battlefield engagement was lost to guerrillas, and no outpost ever fell to insurgents.
That understanding seemed to animate Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta as he toured Afghanistan recently in a traditional holiday visit with the troops.
At each stop, Mr. Panetta acknowledged that significant challenges remain to an orderly withdrawal and a stable postwar Afghanistan, and not just the resilient insurgency.
He cited unreliable Afghan governance, continuing corruption and the existence of insurgent safe havens in Pakistan. None of those are likely to be fixed with American firepower.
Can Afghan troops hold off the Taliban after Nato withdraws?
The Afghan army is showing signs of strength, but it is far from battle-ready and both logistical and human obstacles remain
Guardian.co.uk By Julian Borger Tuesday 1 January 2013
Camp Shorabak, Helmand - The umbilical connection between the US marines at Camp Leatherneck and the new model Afghan army in Camp Shorabak is a sandy chicane known as Friendship Gate, where Helmand's Afghan garrison draws sustenance from its departing foreign advisers. Its dominant feature is a fortified American-manned heavy machine gun, pointing towards the Afghans.
The formidable weapon permanently aimed at a supposed ally is silent testimony to a relationship that is crucial to Helmand's future but remains a volatile mix of dependence, mutual admiration and deep distrust.
The Afghan National Army (ANA) 215th Corps is now 17,000-strong, gaining in confidence and competence and, according to local polling, generally well respected. It has managed to hold on to the main population areas in Helmand in the face of a Taliban attempt to retake lost territory and as a result the province's towns are much safer than they were a year ago.
But the ANA still cannot fight on its own. Only one of the 215th Corps' four brigades is anywhere near full battle readiness. In fact, a Pentagon report in early December revealed that only one of the ANA's 23 brigades across the country had reached that point. The Taliban's success in infiltrating its ranks has contributed to the number of "green-on-blue", or insider attacks, in which Afghan troops turn their guns on their foreign mentors. There were 12 such attacks in Helmand in 2012, all fatal, sawing away at the bonds of trust on which the Nato exit strategy is based.
Even more importantly, there are early signs that the ANA may be struggling to hold the line on a critical front in the war: the ability to protect Afghan civilians from the Taliban.
The latest UN figures show that the Taliban are now responsible for 84% of civilian deaths in Afghanistan, while the government and its foreign allies are responsible for only 6% (10% are unattributable). And the data for the August-October period shows a dramatic spike in those killings, up 28% from the same period last year, suggesting that ordinary Afghans are becoming more vulnerable as the Afghan army takes responsibility for protecting them.
Brigadier General Ghulam Farouq Parwani, deputy commander of the 215th Corps and a 30-year veteran of Afghanistan's many wars, insists his men can handle the Taliban threat on their own after US and British combat troops leave Helmand by the end of 2014. But only if they are given the tools for the job.
"If the promises made to the ANA are fulfilled, the Taliban will never regroup," Farouq said. "The only thing we lack here is equipment. We need artillery support.
"We have been promised a mobile strike force of 800 men with up-armour [shaped to deflect road mines] and advanced weaponry. And we need our own aviation, because sometimes our coalition partners are busy."
The accelerating departure of the foreign forces is felt everywhere. There were 21,000 US marines in Helmand at the height of the surge last year. Now there are just 6,500. With the departing troops having taken their helicopters and aircraft with them, moving troops around the province is harder. The exodus of US armoured cars is even more noticeable. The 215th Corps suffered 600 casualties in 2012 – 150 dead and 450 wounded, mostly from roadside bombs, or improvised explosive devices (IEDs) – increasingly the Taliban weapon of choice.
Farouq railed against the lack of capacity of Afghan police, locally recruited forces whose development has lagged far behind the army. As a consequence, the 215th has been stuck providing guards for the main roads instead of fighting the Taliban.
"The ANP [Afghan National Police] has limited capability, so our forces are busy with checkpoints," he said. "The police lack organisation, structure and because it is recruited locally, sometimes it has men available, sometimes not. If the ANP becomes capable and does its job, the ANA can get back to fighting."
Farouq's complaints about the police drew the intervention of his US advisers, who suggested he stick to talking about the army. The Afghan general smiled tightly and took up his tirade once more. As the Americans draw down their forces, their clout is visibly weakening.
The mentoring relationship in Helmand has also been hit hard by the insider attacks. It is a small number compared with the total number of daily interactions, but has had a disproportionate impact on trust, as the machine gun demonstrates.
Afghan attempts to impose stricter vetting of recruits has had mixed results. Brigadier Stuart Skeates, the British deputy commander of the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) in Helmand, believes the problem and its solution may lie deeper.
"Part of the reason why we have had a number of insider attacks, as they're called, is because the soldiers and policemen are susceptible to Taliban messaging; maybe not directly, but they hear stuff on the radio, on the TV," he said. "They hear anecdotes from home. They are susceptible to local mullahs, both at home and here, and are in many cases very suggestible."
Skeates said a British army imam, Asim Hafiz, was leading an effort to counter the Taliban influence among the mullahs but it was a long-term solution, time was short and much hung on the ability of Afghan and foreign troops to trust each other.
The greatest success in Helmand over the past year has been the security of the towns. Even fierce battlegrounds, such as Sangin, are now relatively calm, allowing the return of commerce and the replacement of poppy crops with alternative ones.
Skeates produced a pair of slides showing Sangin town in 2011 and 2012. In the first the circle representing the district centre was largely obscured by coloured dots marking attacks by insurgents. In the second, it was mostly clear.
"We are pushing the violence away from the district centre where the majority of the population live, and that, in a counter-insurgency operation, is incredibly important because if you don't see bombs going off on a regular basis, if you don't hear gunfire near you on a regular basis, your perception is that it is safe. The reality, in fact, is that it is secure," he said.
Across the country, Nato's claim is that 80% of the fighting now takes place in areas where only 20% of the population lives, suggesting that the overwhelming majority of the population is leading a more peaceful life. United Nations data shows that in the first 10 months of 2012 civilian casualties were actually 4% down on the year before – the first time that has happened for a decade. But the rise in the autumn was a source of concern, suggesting the gains are in danger of being eroded.
"The insurgency has also retained its capability to carry out attacks at roughly the same level as last year," the Pentagon report conceded. "Despite the tactical progress of ANSF [Afghan National Security Forces]-Isaf joint operations, the insurgency remains adaptable with a regenerative capacity. It retains the capability to emplace substantial numbers of improvised explosive devices and conduct high-profile attacks."
In Sangin one of the great successes of last year was the election of 33 members of a district community council, the first flowering of local democracy. But within a couple of months four of them had been murdered by the insurgents.
The people went back to the polls to elect replacements but that resilience, and the Afghan army's staying power, will be brutally tested as the Nato troops leave.
Afghanistan sets conditions for Taliban office in Qatar
By Sajad Khaama Press January 2, 2013
Afghan foreign minister Dr. Zalmai Rassoul insisted that the Afghan government will not allow to open a liaison office for the Taliban group in Qatar unless the group is not prepared to sit-in for peace talks.
While speaking among the Afghan lawmakers foreign minister Zalmai Rassoul said negotiations between Afghan and Qatar officials are in progress to sign an agreement in this regard.
He said, “The office for the Taliban group will not be opened unless the Taliban group or its representatives do not announce to start talks with the Afghan government. It will be highly risky if the office is opened and secret talks are hold.”
Mr. Rassoul further added, “The Taliban group is saying that they are not ready to hold talks with the Afghan government. Who are they going to negotiate with? We will face a big issue if they hold talks with the others and we have witnessed it in the past.”
He insisted that the Taliban office in Qatar will be opened for peace talks only and in no case will help the Taliban group to be formally recognized.
“The office will not represent the Taliban group. The office will be used only for talks between Afghan government and Taliban representatives. Afghan government will have the right to close the office at any time if any violations take place”, Zalmai Rassoul said.
He also said that the legal conditions and authorities of the Taliban office members will be specified in the framework of the agreement between Afghanistan and Qatar.
Negotiations over the agreement is in progress between Kabul and Doha, he said adding that, “We should know with whom we are holding talks and it should be clear that the Taliban representatives who are going to visit the Qatar office to which group they belong to.”
He said the Afghan high peace council will have the authority to confirm if the representatives are representing the overall Taliban group or not.
This comes as the Afghan government earlier insisted to open Taliban office in Saudi Arabia or Turkey however talks on Taliban liaison office in Qatar started following direct talks between Washington and Taliban group.
The Afghan government also reacted negatively towards the Taliban liaison office in Qatar but later agreed with the Taliban liaison office.
Afghanistan’s Roadmap to the Past
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace By Sarah Chayes Senior Associate South Asia Program December 31, 2012
A recently disclosed arrangement for ending the war in Afghanistan, reportedly concluded in secret between Afghan and Pakistani officials, would be a sad end to a process that has been driving Afghanistan—at great cost—back to pre-9/11 conditions. Pakistan, after cultivating extremist groups with precisely this objective in view, would regain indirect hegemony over its neighbor. It would also gain a say in the details of the international troop withdrawal.
While the arrangement may seem to provide the sort of “decent interval” many U.S. officials are wishing for as they plan the exit from Afghanistan, and while a number of commentators have hailed the apparent movement on negotiation that has come in its wake, it does not promise a path to stability.
There is every reason to take the “Peace Process Roadmap to 2015” seriously. It tracks with views transmitted to U.S. officials by Pakistani Army Chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and with a pattern of decisionmaking by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, whose staff includes many members of the extremist Hezb-i-Islami faction, and who sent his older brother Qayum to Pakistan to meet with Taliban leaders as early as 2007. More significantly, most of the concrete actions called for under step one in the document, such as cessation of cross-border shelling, release of Taliban prisoners in Pakistan, and a “follow-up meeting” in Turkey scheduled for December 2012, are either underway or completed.
The document’s most remarkable feature is its language. Purportedly recording an agreement between Karzai and Kayani (who calls the shots in Pakistan on these issues), it reflects neither of their writing styles. The English is flawless, and the construction British, with numbered steps formulated in the infinitive: “The negotiating parties to agree on modalities for the inclusion of Taliban and other armed opposition leaders in the power-structure of the state, to include non-elected positions at different levels.”
The first paragraph, “Afghanistan’s Vision by 2015,” reveals close familiarity with similarly titled classified U.S. interagency documents, whose rosy projections it echoes.
“By 2015,” it reads, “Taliban, Hizb-e Islami and other armed groups will have given up armed opposition, transformed from military entities into political groups, and are actively participating in the country’s political and constitutional processes . . . Afghanistan’s political system remains inclusive, democratic, and equitable, where all political actors co-exist and promote their political goals and aspirations peacefully . . . NATO/ISAF forces will have departed from Afghanistan, leaving the ANSF as the only legitimate armed forces.”
Afghan and Pakistani officials may have agreed to these terms, but they clearly had help developing them.
U.S. officials say that Washington was not involved in elaborating the initiative. Given the reduced role it envisages for the United States on critical national security priorities, such as the specifics of troop withdrawal, official American input may well have been limited—which is not to rule out freelance participation by American “advisers.” British officials and back-channel go-betweens have long worked toward this type of solution.
With no autonomous role in the process sketched out, the United States is essentially reduced to helping delist armed extremists and “supporting” (read financing) Afghanistan in the future.
Pakistan, by contrast, gains a preponderant stake. The very first step calls for a “focus on securing the collaboration of Pakistan.” In particular, Pakistan will “facilitate direct contact between the . . . Government of Afghanistan and identified leaders of . . . armed opposition groups.” Formal talks are to be launched with “authorized” Taliban representatives. Authorized by whom? The plan lets Pakistan determine outcomes by choosing the negotiators—and doubtless influencing their negotiating positions.
The negotiations, moreover, are not just aimed at converting armed insurgents into politicians and allowing them to run for office. The document also stipulates their appointment to key non-elective positions—cabinet posts, governorships, or police commands, for example. Afghan observers predict that this provision will result in their country’s Balkanization, with the Taliban effectively exercising autonomous control over much of the south and east.
Such an outcome—which would allow Pakistan to dominate aspects of Afghan public life and critical regions of the country—is what Pakistani military leaders have been working toward since they first began reconstituting the Taliban in late 2002. The effort was clearly visible at the time, as former Taliban congregated in the tightly controlled Pakistani border towns of Quetta and Chaman, opened recruiting offices and training facilities, distributed weapons and motorcycles at madrassas, and, in one case I became aware of in 2003, drove cars bearing military license plates.
The government of Pakistan claims it desires a peaceful Afghanistan. And yet, as U.S. officials have conceded for months, the Pakistani military has not just been turning a blind eye to the development of insurgent groups on its territory, but has taken an active, sometimes fraught, role in helping develop them. The question is, to what end? Why would a rational country foment explosive instability right on its border? Why would officials take the risk that the extremism they help foster might shift its focus—as it has—to them?
The answer has to do with the Pakistani military’s perception of its rivalry with India. The threat—so constantly evoked as to verge on paranoia—is that of Indian encirclement, a too-cozy relationship between Kabul and Delhi that could leave Pakistan trapped in the middle.
It was to forestall such an eventuality that the Pakistani military leadership aimed to regain a degree of the proxy control over Afghanistan it enjoyed in the 1990s via the Taliban regime. Pakistani officials, like their American counterparts, have opined that insurgencies end around negotiating tables. Through the establishment of safe havens for Pakistani-trained terrorists, the active protection of diverse and frequently reconfiguring groups, and intimate links with the insurgent leaders they have assisted and cajoled and intimidated into the fight, Pakistani officers aimed to stoke a conflict that would require a negotiated settlement, and then determine who would do the negotiating and what they would settle for.
The provisions in the “Peace Process Roadmap to 2015” indicate that, ten years on, this approach has succeeded. Should the process it describes go forward, resulting in the re-Talibanization of Afghanistan’s central government and border regions and the return of Afghanistan to roughly its pre-9/11 state, a number of dangerous repercussions will likely ensue.
First, Pakistan will be rewarded for its decision to export extremist violence in pursuit of its national security aims. The perception in Pakistan (and in other countries such as Iran) could be reinforced that the best way to punch above its weight internationally is to use asymmetric violence, be it terrorism or nuclear proliferation.
Second, as history attests, partition is rarely clean or peaceful. Given the exclusion of the Afghan population from the development of this plan, and from the process it establishes, chances are that disenfranchised constituencies opposed to Pakistani domination will eventually take up arms.
Third, Taliban control of southern and eastern Afghanistan, with no international troops on hand, will allow the Pakistani military to push its radicalized proxies, many of which are penetrated by a metastasized al-Qaeda, across the border into Afghanistan. While still able to influence these groups, Pakistan will no longer be held responsible for their actions. Interestingly, the Haqqani network, blamed for some of the most spectacular attacks in Afghanistan, is not mentioned in the document.
Finally, the instability of such a scenario is likely to result in an exodus of refugees into fragile Central Asian states to the north.
Such a conclusion to the war in Afghanistan, while ironic—a dozen years, thousands of lives, and billions of dollars, just to get back to the starting point—was perhaps to be expected. After all, President Karzai was a senior official in the first Taliban regime and the United States has persisted in financing the very insurgents it was fighting, by way of its support to the Pakistani military. If, to cap off these contradictions, U.S. officials choose to go down the path outlined in this so-called roadmap, they would do well to design strategies to mitigate its very clear dangers.
Prince Harry is a ‘jackal’ and kills Afghan civilians: Hekmatyar
By Meena Haseeb Khaama Press January 2, 2013
An Afghan warlord has launched a scathing attack on Prince Harry – describing the Royal as a ‘jackal’ who is only interested in killing ‘innocent Afghans while he is drunk’.
One of the world’s most wanted men has predicted that Afghanistan will collapse into murderous civil war after Nato troops withdraw in 2014 – and expressed his determination to kill more British troops “so they could never make the mistake of coming again to this region.”
The warlord’s comments came in an exclusive interview with The Telegraph from his mountain base, believed to be close to the Afghan/Pakistan border. Speaking into a camera, Hekmatyar answered questions sent to him via courier.
Hekmatyar quoted by the Telegraph said, “The British Prince wants to hunt down mujahideen (fighters) with his helicopter rockets without any shame. “But he does not understand the hunting of Afghan lions and eagles is not that easy. Jackals cannot hunt lions.”
The Prince is currently on a four month long deployment to Afghanistan serving his second tour of duty as gunship co-pilot.
The warlord also referred to the failed Taliban raid on the Royal’s Camp Bastion military base in September.
He claimed, “The Prince saw that he was the one about to be hunted and was searching for a hole in which to hide himself.”
In the meantime Gulbuddin Hekmatyar said his Hizb-i-Islamia party was prepared to fight in the 2014 presidential elections, which will precede the final withdrawal of British and American troops from Afghanistan.
He also insisted on a “peaceful transition” from the present Afghan government to a new administration based on “free and fair elections.”
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is the leader of part of the insurgency in Afghanistan. One of the most brutal of the country’s former resistance fighters, his forces have battle American, NATO and Afghan forces in the north and northeast of the country.
Though the insurgent group, Hezb-i-Islami, or Islamic Party, operates under a separate command from the Taliban, it has links to the Taliban leadership and Al Qaeda and has fought on a common front against foreign forces in Afghanistan.
Britain - and Prince Harry - are failing in Afghanistan, says warlord
One of Afghanistan's most feared and wanted warlords has warned that the country could collapse into a murderous civil war after the withdrawal of Nato troops next year.
Telegraph.co.uk By Peter Oborne, Abdur Rauf Yousufzai 01 Jan 2013
In the bleakest assessment yet of Afghanistan's future, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar called for a "peaceful transition of the government" to democracy. But, in a wide-ranging interview arranged with The Daily Telegraph, he added that he feared a descent into chaos and anarchy similar to that which followed the withdrawal of the Russians in the 1980s.
Hekmatyar, a veteran of that bloody war, warned: "Today the scenario of Afghanistan is exactly like that of one year before the withdrawal of Soviet Union. The Americans and their allies are tired of fighting. They can neither bear the casualties nor the expenses of this war any more. They are left with no other option except withdrawal."
This brutally realistic analysis of the military situation will be sharply challenged by David Cameron, who issued a sunnily optimistic message when he visited British troops just before Christmas.
Yet it cannot be ignored since it comes from one of just a handful of Afghan warlords who, through his Hezb-e-Islami political party, holds the key to peace in Afghanistan after coalition forces are due to withdraw in less than two years' time.
Hekmatyar has spent most of the past 11 years on the run. He is thought to have played a role in helping Osama bin Laden escape from the Tora Bora mountains after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. In 2003 he was designated a "global terrorist" by the United States, and has been labelled a "war criminal" by President Hamid Karzai's government in Kabul.
He has survived an assassination attempt by the CIA, and is believed to have masterminded some of the bloodiest attacks against American and British forces over the past few years. Today his exact whereabouts are unknown, though he is believed to be based in the mountains of south-eastern Afghanistan.
The Daily Telegraph's interview could not be carried out face-to-face. Instead, a series of questions were dispatched through an intermediary, and the answers, recorded on video tape, were returned within three weeks. The video shows that Hekmatyar, a veteran of 40 years of Afghan warfare and intrigue, now sports a white beard, though he retains his trademark black turban.
He gave answers to all of the questions sent to him. When asked what he believes will follow when combat troops pull out in 2014 his answer was both terrifying and encouraging: "The fact is that the government has failed. The authorities have lost heir credibility completely. They have fallen victims to severe internal disputes and seem hopeless and worried.
"The foreign forces have failed and the situation is worsening by the day. We might face a dreadful situation after 2014 which no one could have anticipated."
But this dire assessment was accompanied by a warm language about the democratic future of Afghanistan.
Indeed Hekmatyar sounded more like a UN election observer than a feared warlord who as prime minister of Afghanistan in the 1980s was responsible for the murderous shelling of Kabul. He called for a 'peaceful transition of the government' and demanded a 'free and fair election,' saying that the winner of a majority of the votes should 'be accepted by all.'
He added that Hezb-e-Islami was ready to take part in the 2014 presidential elections, though he set out two conditions: 'complete withdrawal of all foreign forces and elections in which all parties are equally represented. If these conditions are accepted, then we are ready to take part in the election.'
Strikingly Hekmatyar has dropped a great deal of the fanatical Islamist language for which he was notorious as a young leader. There were no calls for jihad against godless infidels.
Rather he presented himself as a leader of the national resistance against foreign oppressors. When asked whether he supported the Pakistan Taliban strategy of blocking girls' education, Hekmatyar was outraged: 'We are against the blowing up of schools and other institutions not only in Afghanistan and Pakistan but elsewhere in the world. I don't think that a devoted majahid could be involved in such things.'
Hekmatyar denied any links with the Pakistan Taliban, and accused foreign intelligence agencies of being involved in attacks on schools and other atrocities.
Indeed he insisted that Hezb-e-Islami 'consider education is as necessary for girls as it is for boys. We don't discriminate in this regard. The only thing that we are against is boys and girls being taught together. We think that is harmful from any perspective."
He mocked the Afghan National Army, upon which Coalition hopes depend for a peaceful future for Afghanistan, declaring that 'it is not a national army. It is made by the hands of others. The soldiers of Northern Alliance have worn American uniform. The basic aim behind making of this army was to use it against freedom fighters and freedom seekers.'
Hekmatyar reserved his most eloquent vitriol, however, for Britain, portraying British troops as lackeys of the Americans and describing Prince Harry, currently serving as a helicopter pilot with British troops in Helmand province, as a 'jackal'. Hekmatyar declared that "The British prince comes to Afghanistan to kill innocent Afghans while he is drunk. He wants to hunt down Mujaheddin with his helicopter rockets without any shame.
'But he does not understand this simple fact that the hunting of Afghan lions and eagles is not that easy! Jackals cannot hunt lions. During the Mujaheddin attack on the American base the Prince saw that he was the one about to be hunted and was searching for a hole in which to hide himself.
'It seems that some British authorities still dream about the times of the eighteenth and nineteenth century and they want their ambassador to be treated like a viceroy and their prince to go out in uniform to hunt for human beings and play the satanic role that they used to play in the past.' But Britain's historic role in creating such conflicts is now finished, adds Hekmatyar: 'The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have proved that Britain has to go and take part instead in proxy wars – and this is what she cannot afford even for a short space of time. The fact is that America and her allies have lost the right to rule and lead the world both administratively and morally.'
Hekmatyar insisted that British troops had achieved nothing.
Britain dragged herself into this unjustified, useless but cruel conflict to please the White House. The British did not gain anything instead they lost blood and treasure.
They never had a positive role in Afghan affairs and they will not have any significance after 2014.
I do not understand how the British public accept their children being sent to certain death in order to please American generals".
Speaking before David Cameron's announcement of further cuts in Britain's military presence in Afghanistan, he offered to facilitate an early departure of Nato forces, saying that 'if they want a respectful exit, we can help them in this regard.'
But behind these rhetorical blasts against the British and the Americans lurks an apparent readiness to play a creative role in the creation of a peaceful Afghanistan in the future. Hekmatyar concluded with a ten policy statement for his Hezb-e-Islami political party in which he called on 'all the stakeholders within Afghanistan to join hands for a workable solution for Afghanistan and resolve disputes without the involvement or influence of foreign forces.'
Watch the video of Hekmatyar's brutal analysis of Afghanistan
telegraph.co.uk/world
Afghan-US Pact Ensures Future Security: Sediqi
TOLOnews.com By Abdul Wali Arian Tuesday, 01 January 2013
The Afghan-US bilateral security agreement is vital for the future of Afghanistan and can help protect the country from insurgency and terrorism, Afghan Ministry of Interior (MoI) said Tuesday.
Speaking to TOLOnews, MoI spokesman Sediq Sediqi said that the pact would be effective in training and equipping the Afghan security forces and helping enhance security in the country.
"International support will be effective in capacity building in the Afghan security forces and in [safeguarding] the future of the country, particularly in the war against insurgency in the region," Sediqi said.
Even Senator Fazel Hadi Muslimyar, who is among the handful of lawmakers critical of the bilateral security agreement, still believes that it will be important in helping Afghanistan counter the neighbors' influence.
"I have a negative opinion about this pact, but it's important for the current situation of the country and for preventing the intervention of Iran and Pakistan," Muslimyar said.
Afghan analysts are also generally positive about the pact. Political analyst Jawid Kohistani believes that the pact could help enhance intelligence cooperation between Afghan and US forces.
"The security pact will provide better opportunities for training and equipping of the Afghan security forces and will be effective in intelligence sharing," Kohistani said.
Legal immunity for US soldiers is the main point of conflict between Afghan and US officials who are currently negotiating the pact. President Karzai, who will travel to Washington next week, is expected to discuss the matter with President Obama.
Afghan negotiator welcomes release of Taliban prisoners
Associated Press By Amir Shah and Denis D. Gray Tuesday, January 1, 2013
KABUL, Afghanistan - A top Afghan negotiator said Tuesday he hopes eight Taliban members freed by Pakistan will serve as peace mediators, describing Islamabad’s move as a major step forward for Kabul’s effort to enlist its neighbor’s help in negotiating an end to its 11-year war.
The eight released Monday include the Taliban’s justice minister when the militants ruled Afghanistan before their 2001 overthrow, as well as a onetime guard of Taliban leader Mullah Omar. It was the second group of prisoners released by Pakistan.
Although both sides describe the deal as a step toward peace, much about the release remains unclear. Kabul has lobbied hard for Pakistan to release some Taliban prisoners as a step toward talks, but Afghanistan simultaneously presses Islamabad to crack down on militants using its territory. It has not said what, if anything, this particular group might bring to the table.
Islamabad, for its part, has never said why it arrested the eight in the first place. Neither side has said where this batch of freed prisoners and a previous group of 18 released in November have gone, or what they will be doing. Another 100 prisoners are believed to remain in Pakistani custody.
In Kabul, the spokesman for President Hamid Karzai said the Afghan leader would discuss the peace negotiations with President Obama. Mr. Karzai departs for Washington early next week.
Mr. Karzai also will bring up the ongoing handover of security from NATO to Afghan forces, the training and equipping of the forces, and the shape of a U.S.-Afghan agreement after Washington withdraws most of its troops, spokesman Aimal Faizi told a news conference. NATO plans to hand security responsibility over to Afghan forces by the end of 2014.
The spokesman welcomed the prisoner release but gave no details.
Ismail Qasemyar, a senior member of the AfghanHigh Peace Council, called their release a positive step in the peace process and hoped more releases would follow. It was not known whether the eight actually favored negotiations, but Mr. Qasemyar said it was hoped they would act as intermediaries between the Taliban leadership and the Kabul government.
“This is a big victory from our trip to Pakistan for peace negotiations. This is a good, practical step toward peace from Pakistan,” said Mr. Qasemyar, the council’s international affairs adviser and a key member of a delegation that traveled to Pakistan in November.
Pakistan is seen as key in ending the conflict. Kabul hopes the Taliban can be brought to the negotiating table before the 2014 foreign troop withdrawal.
But Pakistan’s role is mixed. While Pakistan has arrested AfghanTaliban members, usually under pressure from Washington, its powerful military intelligence service also has afforded sanctuary and support for the militants.
Recently, Pakistan appears to have an interest in promoting a negotiated solution to the war across the border, as a post-2014 upheaval could bring harsh consequences, including another surge of refugees into the country.
Pakistan has longstanding ties to the Taliban, in part for geopolitical reasons. It fears that not having some control of who is or might one day be in power in Afghanistan could leave a vacuum which its archenemy, India, could fill.
Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry said the eight detainees were released to aid the peace process and included ex-Justice Minister Nooruddin Turabi and guard Mohammad Azeem. It was not known what role they might play in bringing the Taliban leaders to the negotiating table, what links they have to the group’s current leadership or their stance on negotiations.
During Taliban rule, the one-legged, one-eyed Mr. Turabi was considered among the hard-liners in the regime, charged with dispensing harsh justice for even minor offenses against the group’s draconian policies.
Today, Taliban leaders are believed to be split on the question of talks, with some favoring negotiations and others opting for continuing the war.
Waheed Mazhda, a political analyst and former Taliban member, said that Pakistan is playing a double game with Kabul, pretending to support negotiations but releasing the Taliban prisoners to please the Pakistan’s branch of the Taliban, not Kabul. The Pakistan government, he says, does not want its homegrown militants to disrupt upcoming elections.
“Where are they? What are they doing right now?” he said, referring to the 18 already released. He said that he did not believe those released favored negotiations.
The Afghan peace process has made little headway since it began several years ago, riddled by mistrust among the major players, including the United States.
• Associated Press writers Kathy Gannon, Rebecca Santana and Zarar Khan in Islamabad and Rahim Faiez in Kabul contributed to this article.
Bleak humanitarian outlook for 2013
DUBAI, 2 January 2013 (IRIN) - More violence and a worsening humanitarian situation are likely in Afghanistan in 2013, say aid agencies.
“The worsening conflict trends over the last five years indicate that civilians will continue to suffer because of armed violence and that the humanitarian situation will deteriorate,” says the new Common Humanitarian Action Plan (CHAP) for 2013, published by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
The report brings together the major humanitarian challenges facing the country in 2013, a year that will see the continued withdrawal of international forces: Afghan security forces will take control of three-quarters of the country by June.
Afghanistan has some of the worst humanitarian indicators in the world - 34 percent of the population are food insecure and 10 percent of children die before they start primary school.
With many Afghans lacking access to rudimentary government services like basic education, water, primary health services and housing, the humanitarian community is requesting US$471 million to cover the cost of projects in 2013.
Many analysts think the steady withdrawal of international forces in 2013, ahead of full withdrawal in 2014, will lead to an upsurge in violence as anti-government forces capitalize on their stronger position vis-à-vis national security forces.
The strength of these national forces is disputed. Some analysts saw “significant improvements within the Afghan military” in 2012, while the CHAP points to high levels of desertion and low levels of re-enlistment, meaning that a third of the Afghan force needs replacing each year.
While civilian deaths and injuries declined by 4 percent in the first 10 months of 2012 compared to the same period in 2011, according to the UN Assistant Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA), targeted attacks on civilians by anti-government forces increased by 53 percent in the first half of 2012, and overall, violence in 2012 has spread increasingly beyond southern and eastern areas.
Over the last few years the space for humanitarian work has reduced, especially as anti-government forces have radicalized and fragmented: aid workers say air transport is frequently the only safe way to reach remote areas.
However, the international pullout may also provide opportunities for more independent aid work and greater differentiation from the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs), which operate closely with the government and military.
Aid groups increasingly have to work in areas where the Taliban and other non-government actors operate, making perceived neutrality crucial.
Many international organizations opt to manage projects from Kabul and work through local NGOs, says a recent report by the Overseas Development Institute.
“The privileged humanitarian access enjoyed by national NGOs should be more fully exploited,” Suzanne Murray-Jones, senior adviser with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Afghanistan, told IRIN, saying that they often need capacity-building and adequate funding to do the job.
To ensure that humanitarian work is carried out in the provinces with the greatest need, the 2013 CHAP plan introduces a ranking of provinces by assessed humanitarian need, to avoid aid being directed at areas that are either easy to reach or politically important.
Natural disasters
If humanitarian challenges in 2013 were limited to conflict, they would be serious enough. But Afghanistan is also frequently a victim of natural disasters, which on average affect around a quarter of a million Afghans each year.
Harsh winters, deadly avalanches, earthquakes, landslides, droughts and floods leave nearly half of Afghanistan’s districts hazard-prone.
The last 12 months saw a good wheat harvest but with droughts in eight out of the last 11 years, a poor harvest looks probable in the coming year, according to the CHAP 2013 report.
Oxfam’s Afghanistan associate country director Kate O'Rourke says years of conflict have worn down people’s coping mechanisms: “Investing in projects designed to reduce the impact of disasters and improve people's resilience and their ability to deal with crises when they do occur is key. Only then will Afghans who are at risk be better prepared and able to cope, instead of being affected by reoccurring humanitarian `spot fires' that they are constantly trying to recover from, as they are now."
Economic pressure
Economic growth has been around 7 percent over the last few years, but opportunities remain few and the private sector is hamstrung by the lack of a reliable electricity supply.
While large mining projects are being planned, the aid effort and the tens of thousands of international troops that make up a key part of the economy are set to reduce in size in the coming years.
“Afghanistan is entering a very challenging period that will likely be characterized by growing economic vulnerability resulting from a reduction in international assistance and the pullout of most international forces that is expected to translate into significant economic contraction and job losses,” said Mark Bowden, the humanitarian coordinator for Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is the world’s most aid-dependent country, with aid worth around $15.7 billion per year, roughly the same as the national GDP. The World Bank estimates that 6-10 percent of the population have worked in aid-financed employment.
Displacement
Four decades of conflict in Afghanistan have been one of the key drivers of displacement, creating substantial refugee populations requiring support.
Around 2.7 million Afghans live in Pakistan and Iran, while within the country, 450,000 people are displaced; 34 percent of them newly displaced in the first three-quarters of 2012.
Meanwhile, UNHCR say nearly six million refugees have returned to Afghanistan in the last decade, something that has put considerable pressure on the economy and services.
“Many are being perceived as not having reached parity with other members of the communities in which they are living, and there is a possibility of additional unplanned, large-scale return,” said Murray-Jones at UNHCR.
Funding
To manage these needs in 2013, the humanitarian community is requesting $471 million, an increase on 2012 when the Consolidated Appeals Process (CAP) was $448 million.
In a sign of donor fatigue and the pressure on leading donor country budgets due to the global economic slowdown, humanitarian funding dropped by around half in 2012.
Afghanistan was the fourth-least funded humanitarian crisis, as a percentage, among the 22 global appeals, although at least $270 million in aid is provided annually outside the CAP funding mechanism.
Afghan-ISAF forces detain 4 Taliban local leaders in 2 days
KABUL, Jan. 2 (Xinhua) -- Units of Afghan and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) during series of combined operations across the militancy-plagued Afghanistan have arrested four local Taliban leaders over the past two days, the alliance contended.
Since January 1, the security forces in joint operations against Taliban militants have captured two local Taliban leaders in their former stronghold Kandahar 450 km south of Afghan capital Kabul, according to ISAF statement.
"An Afghan and coalition security force arrested a Taliban leader in Shah Wali Kot district, Kandahar province, today," an ISAF statement released here Wednesday asserted.
Without revealing the name of the captured man, the statement added that "the leader provided weapons and ammunition to insurgent fighters in central Arghandab and southwest Shah Wali Kot districts, and planned and coordinated improvised explosive device (IED) attacks targeting Afghan and coalition forces."
The statement also contended that, an Afghan and coalition security force arrested a Taliban leader in Panjwa'i district, Kandahar province on Tuesday.
The arrested leader had directed several improvised explosive device operations in Zharay and Panjwa'i districts. He also provided supplies, weapons and ammunition to insurgents for attacks against Afghan and coalition forces throughout Kandahar province, the statement said.
Another militants' local leader was also detained by Afghan and NATO-led coalition forces during joint operations in Logar's provincial capital Pul-e-Alam 60 km south of Kabul on Wednesday.
"In Pul-e' Alam district, Logar province, today, an Afghan and coalition security force arrested a member of the Haqqani network who planned and executed attacks against Afghan government officials as well as Afghan and coalition forces," ISAF statement released Wednesday said.
He was also responsible for the transportations of weapons and provided funds to Haqqani fighters operating in Pul-e' Alam district, the statement added.
Haqqani network is the military wing of Taliban militants operating in the capital city Kabul and eastern Afghan provinces along the border with Pakistan's tribal areas.
The alliance also arrested a local Taliban leader in Khanabad district of Kunduz province 250 km north of Kabul on Tuesday.
"An Afghan and coalition security force arrested a Taliban leader in Khanabad district, Kunduz province, Tuesday," an ISAF statement released here Tuesday asserted.
The arrested local leader according to the statement had organized insurgent fighters and procured improvised explosive devices for attacks against Afghan and coalition forces in the district.
Meantime, Taliban outfit in a counter-claim insisted its fighters have killed several of Afghan and foreign soldiers over the past two days. The outfit in its website claimed killing 10 soldiers in the eastern Laghman province on Tuesday, the first day of January, a claim rebuffed by officials as groundless.
It is difficult to verify the claims by independent sources since the warring sides in Afghanistan exaggerate the casualties of rivals.
Afghan Prisoner Accused Of Killing Wife During Conjugal Visit
By Bashir Ahmad Ghazali and Frud Bezhan January 2, 2013 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
SAMANGAN, AFGHANISTAN -- An Afghan prisoner serving 20 years for murdering his in-laws is now suspected of strangling his young bride during a conjugal visit.
Din Mohammad, who is serving his sentence at a prison in northern Samangan Province, is accused by police of killing his wife when she visited him on January 1. Mohammad was convicted in 2009 of killing his mother-in-law, brother-in-law, and sister-in-law during a bloody rampage.
Mohammad has yet to be charged for the latest crime.
Samangan police chief Akram Bikzad said Mohammad’s 18-year-old wife, whose name has not been revealed, visited him in jail in the provincial capital, Aybak. She was found dead in a private room used by inmates to visit close family members.
According to Bikzad, preliminary reports indicate that Mohammad strangled and then hanged his wife, with whom he had a young son. Bikzad indicated that the killing occurred just days after Mohammad had been told his spouse was involved in an adulterous relationship.
"His wife used to visit him every five days or so," he said. "Recently, [Mohammad’s] mother told him that his wife was having an illicit affair. So, during her visit to the prison -- family are allowed to visit for about one hour at a time -- Mohammad took the opportunity to strangle her."
Mohammad's mother, whose name has not been released, was detained late on January 1 as she attempted to leave the city, according to the police chief, and is being held for questioning.
Facing Execution
Bikzad described Mohammad's 20-year sentence for killing three of his wife’s family members as "lenient" and predicted he would receive a death sentence if found guilty of strangling his wife.
Najia Aimak, a women's rights activist and member of parliament from northern Baghlan Province, has condemned the killing and called for Mohammad to face execution.
"When this person [Mohammad] murdered three people three years ago authorities didn't take make a just conviction," she said. "[This punishment] allowed him to kill again. We hope judicial officials take on this case and bring the perpetrator to justice."
Capital punishment is legal in Afghanistan and applied for a variety of crimes, including murder, terrorism, adultery, drug trafficking, and treason.
A death sentence for murder, however, is uncommon. Most offenders receive jail sentences. But with no standard punishment for murder, sentences can vary with each case.
Honor Killings
The case comes amid an increase in so-called honor killings, the murder of women for allegedly dishonoring the family in some way, such as committing adultery.
The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission recorded 4,010 cases of violence against women in the seven months between March and October this year -- nearly twice as many as in the previous 12 months.
The commission lists beatings and mutilation as the most common forms of violence, while noting the spike in honor killings.
In December, the United Nations noted some progress in protecting women and girls from violence, but warned that Afghanistan "still has a long way to go."
In its report issued December 11, the UN's mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said positive steps had been taken toward applying 2009 legislation that criminalizes violence against women. But it said the laws are still only periodically enforced, with only a small percentage of reported incidents duly processed and resulting in convictions.
According to Aimak, Afghan women who have suffered from violence rarely receive justice.
Even if their cases go to trial, she said, the majority result in the acquittal of the perpetrators, the dropping of charges to less serious crimes, convictions with shorter sentences, or the female victims themselves being accused of "moral crimes" for making private matters public.
Written by Frud Bezhan, based on reporting by Radio Free Afghanistan correspondent Bashir Ahmad Ghazali
Pakistani Shelling in Kunar Kills Woman, Injures Children
TOLOnews.com Tuesday, 01 January 2013
A woman was killed and three children injured in cross-border Pakistani shelling in the Sarkano district of the eastern Kunar province Monday afternoon, local officials said.
Twelve rockets were launched yesterday afternoon, one of which hit a house, Provincial Governor Sayed Fazlullah Wahidi told TOLOnews.
"All the victims were members of one family," he said.
Governor Wahidi also cited district residents who said the Pakistani military had entered Afghan territory to target Pakistani Taliban.
"When I talked to the residents of Sarkano, they told me that the Pakistani military had launched a military operation near the [Afghan] border and started clashing with Pakistani Taliban in the area," he said.
Cross-border shelling from Pakistan and reported occasional Afghan retaliation last year dramatically increased diplomatic tensions between the two countries.
Exports of Dried Fruits Decline: Officials
TOLOnews.com By Shahla Murtazaie Tuesday, 01 January 2013
Exports of Afghan dried fruits have decreased by about 200 tonnes since last year, Afghan Raisins, Fruits and Vegetables Export Promotion Agency said Tuesday.
The Agency said that some businesses export locally grown low-quality fruit or foreign-produced dried fruits, damaging the Afghan brand. Membership of the Agency is optional, so many exporters do not abide by export-quality product standards.
"Optional membership has a negative effect on Afghanistan's exports because lots of low-quality and foreign fruits have been exported as products of Afghanistan," said Agency head Sayed Azim Mostafa.
Mostafa asked the Afghan Chamber of Commerce and Industries and the Afghan Customs Department to enforce quality standards so that sub-standard products are not exported.
Afghan dried fruits are exported to 43 countries in Asia, Europe and America, according to the Agency.
Government Should Name Land Grabbers: Lawmakers
TOLOnews.com By Sharif Amiry Tuesday, 01 January 2013
Afghan lawmakers on Tuesday asked the government to reveal the names of those involved in land-grabbing and take necessary steps to prevent more cases of land-grabbing.
Land-grabbing is a major issue for the Afghan government as a large number of the high-ranking officials and lawmakers are involved in illegally or forcefully occupying land that otherwise belongs to the public.
"The names of the land-grabbers should be revealed. Their political positions should not prevent this," Daikundi MP Mohammad Noor Akbari said.
Lawmakers also criticized the government for failing to prevent the phenomenon.
"The Afghan government has not taken the necessary steps in this regard. It should be taken seriously," Kabul MP Sayed Ali Kazimi said.
Meanwhile, Senator Hedayatullah Rehahi accused some lawmakers themselves of being involved in the crime.
"Some of the lawmakers are also involved in land-grabbing, but the government is not taking it seriously," Rahahi said.
The Afghan Attorney General has accused high-ranking government officials, Jihadi leaders and members of parliament of land-grabbing.
It has refused to name those accused and is yet to make a high-level prosecution in connection with the crime.
Karzai Meets French Defence Minister
TOLOnews.com Tuesday, 01 January 2013
President Karzai met the visiting French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian on Monday in Kabul and discussed the security situation in Afghanistan.
The officials also discussed the peace process and relations between the two countries after 2014, the President's Office said in a statement late Monday.
The French defence minister is also scheduled to meet the non-combat French troops in Afghanistan for New Year's.
Le Drian's visit comes as the last batch of 200 French combat forces left Afghanistan last month, a full two years before Isaf's combat mission is scheduled to end.
France has around 1,500 soldiers left in Afghanistan, the vast majority in Kabul. They are due to stay into 2013 to take responsibility for repatriating equipment and training the Afghan army.
Kabul Officials in Face-to-Face Meeting with Taleban
Paris conference latest attempt to talk about talking peace.
IWPR By Mina Habib, Hafizullah Gardesh 1 Jan 13
Afghanistan - It may not have amounted to formal peace talks, but a two-day meeting outside Paris last month at which Taleban representatives joined other Afghan players was a rare opportunity for bitter enemies to present their positions in a neutral setting.
The December 20-21 conference was the third such event arranged by the French Foundation for Strategic Research, but the first one to be attended by representatives of insurgent groups – the Taleban and the smaller Hezb-i Islami. The 20 participants also included officials from the Kabul government and members of opposition political parties in Afghanistan.
Speaking on December 16, France's foreign minister Laurent Fabius made it clear the event was intended to generate discussion, but not negotiations.
President Hamed Karzai expressed support for the meeting, saying he backed any forum for discussion with the insurgents.
The conference came amid renewed efforts to bring militant groups to the negotiating table. The Afghan government’s High Peace Council travelled to Islamabad in November to secure the release of potential interlocutors held in Pakistani prisons, and the United Nations Security Council has lifted travel sanctions for Taleban members taking part in peace talks. (See Afghans Unimpressed by Pakistan Talks.) The UN office in Afghanistan recently announced it would be holding a conference to which the insurgents would be invited. Meanwhile, a Taleban office in Qatar is intended to serve as a contact point for a separate talks process, and Turkey and Iran have also offered their services.
The semi-secretive nature of the French meeting meant that little emerged about what was discussed. It was clear, however, that few concessions were on offer. The Taleban envoys restated their position that neither the Afghan constitution nor the Kabul government were legitimate, and they had no plans to negotiate with the latter now or in the future.
Nevertheless, back in Kabul, the High Peace Council expressed hope that the Taleban would enter direct negotiations with it.
Council representative Ismail Qasemyar said the conference was helpful in that it helped familiarise each side with others’ positions, but in the end, substantive talks needed to exclude foreign influence.
"We are not optimistic about conferences that are not [solely] between Afghans,” he said, in an indirect reference to the French-sponsored event.
Part of the various peace efforts undertaken to date has involved identifying “moderate Taleban” who might be more amenable to a deal than others. But the delegates to the Paris conference appeared as resolutely opposed to compromise as ever.
Qasemyar hinted at a degree of flexibility behind the bluster, saying, "There are certain things we can’t talk about. The Taleban's remarks at the conference were aimed purely at an international audience. The real position is quite different."
By contrast, Satar Saadat, a political analyst in Kabul, believes the Taleban leadership is in a real quandary about how to proceed and where it can make compromises acceptable to its own followers.
“For the last 11 years, Taleban leaders have motivated their forces to carry on the fight by saying the country is under attack, its government is not Islamic, and God's religion is under threat,” he said. “While the war is framed in terms of religion, it also highly personalised because the Taleban ranks include people who have lost family members.
“If foreign forces are still based in Afghanistan, the constitution remains unchanged and the movement has no substantial guarantees inside or outside the country, how can its leaders convince the rank-and-file? This will split the Taleban."
Others take a more cynical view of the insurgents’ ability to make peace, regarding them as merely an instrument of Pakistan’s intelligence service.
"Although the Taleban are tired of fighting and want to end the war, they are controlled by the intelligence services of neighbouring countries. They have no independent political will and cannot do anything without their say-so,” Moin Marastial of the Rights and Justice Party said.
Saadat said there were too many external factors at play, with various states protecting their own interests in Afghanistan and countering the influence of others.
In this context, the Paris conference also had to be viewed as partial, he said, since the French government had historically backed Jamiat-e Islami, a northern, Tajik-dominated faction and the broader Shura-ye Nazari, sometimes known as the Northern Alliance.
"The French now realise that the Taleban will be have a stronger role in a future Afghanistan, so they are trying to broker some kind of peace between the Taleban and Jamiat-e Islami and Shura-ye Nazar, so that the rights and position of these latter groups are given consideration in any future equation," Saadat said.
Hamidullah, a university student in Kabul, agreed that outside interference was a chronic problem.
"All of the political and factional groups engaged in 30 years of war in Afghanistan have been controlled by outsiders. They are not independent – the Taleban are in Pakistan’s hands; the National Front, National Coalition and some other political parties are controlled by Iran and Russia; and the government is under United States control,” he said. “What are we to expect from these groups...? No negotiations, no conference will have any outcome unless the foreign masters of these groups reach agreement."
Marastial suggested that the 2014 deadline for withdrawing foreign troops from Afghanistan might be helpful in that it might focus minds on a long-term solution rather than short-term advantage.
"In addition to economic and political goals, the countries now trying to prepare the ground for talks with the Taleban also want a part in Afghanistan’s future, and a share of the credit if a negotiated peace is reached in Afghanistan,” he said.
Mina Habib is an IWPR-trained reporter in Kabul. Hafizullah Gardesh is IWPR's Afghanistan editor.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com